Edward Champion's Return of the Reluctant

The John Birch Monthly

I never thought I'd see the day when the Atlantic advocated racist generalizations. Actually, it's the white guys who never seem to wash their hands in the bathroom. Generally the Caucasians about to broker a deal, the suits fond of the handshake. People like Cullen Murphy. Scary shit really, but all it takes is hanging out in a fancy-schmancy men's room for an hour and keeping track of who doesn't wash their hands.

Oh, and Happy New Year!

Your Brain's Guide to a Safe New Year

Today, please adjust the settings in your mind, as follows:

4:00 PM: Yearly Self-Diagnostic. Run defrag program. Check for viruses. Finish organizing and prioritizing memories of 2003 events.

5:17 PM: Finish Kith and Kin Telephonic Check-In program.

7:22 PM: Register 2004 New Year Resolutions with CPU.

8:42 PM: Determine whether Body Unit intends to drink. If blood-alcohol levels = unmanagable, then capitulate keys to Sober Mind Obligated to Protect Other Body Units.

9:06 PM: Kiss Long-Term Companion Unit, listen to L-TCU's last thoughts and resolutions.

10:34 PM: If 2003 New Year Resolution = Program Not Executed in 2003, Then 2003 New Year Resolution = 2004 New Year Resolution. Don't worry. Other Body Units and CPUS will probably forget, particularly OBU (Quite Inebriated) types.

11:22 PM: Exchange 2004 New Year Resolutions with OBUs and L-TCU.

11:46 PM: Obtain champagne.

11:50 PM: Last-minute Kith and Kin Telephonic Check-Ins.

11:54 PM: Find L-TCU or L-TCU (Potential).

11:56 PM: If L-TCU (Current) or L-TCU (Potential) Does Not = Hand (Champagne), then obtain champagne. L-TCU (Not Champagne) = L-TCU (Champagne).

12:00 AM: If one second before Turn of the Year Announcer = Mouth ("One"), then when Turn of the Year Announcer = Mouth (Null) or Turn of the Year Announcer = Mouth ("Happy New Year"), Your Mouth ("Happy New Year"). Kiss with L-TCU optional, though with obvious advantages for both CPUs.

General Program Notes: If L-TCU = Unavailable, don't worry. This is the result of Propaganda (New Year's) running in several OPU's CPUs. Propaganda (New Year's) was a virus authored long ago by some bored fifteen year old punk. Disregard all conversational facets pertaining to this and be sure that CPU = Happy, if L-TCU = Unavailable. See General L-TCU Maxim for more information (i.e., CPU = Not Happy continues L-TCU=Unavailable condition, CPU=Happy, and CPU=Confident and Listening, improves likelihood of L-TCU=Available condition, though timing of new variable impossible to predict).

Cutting Off the Collectors

Patrice Moore, a 43 year old one-time mail clerk, was trapped under a pile of books and paper. Emergency workers filled 50 garbage bags with paper. It's still not nearly as bad as the Collyer brothers, extreme reculsives who never threw anything out, got caught within their own debris, and who died of starvation and being gnawed upon by rats, respectively. (And, in fact, there's a book on the Collyers called Ghosty Men.)

A Moore-Collyer type in training might be this 18 year old, who chooses books over partying. An admirable Hobson's choice, but how does this kid expect to meet people?

French book commercials are a big controversy.

Linguist Charles Berlitz has passed on.

And, apparently, there are a few Bernard Goldbergs running around in France.

More Quickies

Way to go, Brian!

And, another good victory.

Bertrand Russell's last essay: "There could be a happy world, where co-operation was more in evidence than competition, and monotonous work is done by machines, where what is lovely in nature is not destroyed to make room for hideous machines whose sole business is to kill, and where to promote joy is more respected than to produce mountains of corpses. Do not say this is impossible: it is not. It waits only for men to desire it more than the infliction of torture. There is an artist imprisoned in each one of us. Let him loose to spread joy everywhere. There is an artist imprisoned in each one of us. Let him loose to spread joy everywhere." (via Wood S Lot)

Harvey Weinstein publishes a satirical book about Miramax: "Contrary to popular belief, we do have a sense of humor about ourselves." Yeah, right. (via Maud)

Gaddis Was The Man

Today, Wood S Lot reminded me that eighty-one years ago, one of the most underappreciated American novelists was born.

I first came across Gaddis when I was 25, stumbling through a bookstore and coming across some book called The Recognitions that had an incredible Hugo van der Goes painting on the cover. Something that looked like an anguished Neanderthal, but could have easily been a tortured wrestler. Plus, the book was thick. And instinctively, I've always been drawn to anything huge.

It took me three weeks to finish the sucker.

Gaddis wasn't your fly-by-night novelist. He demanded that you work. One minute, he'd be drowning you in remarkable descriptions, placing you in fascinating tableaus that would never end. The next minute, he'd be giving you sentences like, "The door was opened to the length of a finger," or "He got up and lit an American cigarette," always reinforcing precise absurdities. (Why should the nationality of a cigarette matter so much? Why measure a door by a finger when a hand isn't there?) The thing that kept his books worthwhile was Gaddis's presence as a relentless imp. He'd skewer anything, whether it was Dale Carnegie's disciples, bizarre organizations like the Use-Me Society, or the chronic counterfeiters who riffed throughout his books. His dialogue of debutantes and dilletantes always came across to me as astutely observed. The spoken lines were prefaced only by dashes, immersed within the pages as if to imply that the dialogue itself was inseparable from the tragic vapidity of human behavior.

Without Gaddis, there would not have been a Thomas Pynchon, nor a David Foster Wallace, nor a John Barth. He ushered in a postmodern wave where anything was fair game, where Balzacian observation could dance hand-in-hand with Mencken and the Marx Brothers. And that's why I was particularly sad the day he died not long later.

Related Link: William Gaddis video interview with Malcolm Bradbury.

Snaps

No less an authority than University of Wisconsin professor Barbara Chatton has revealed that the film form is bad for Dr. Seuss. Chatton notes that the predictable rhymes make the Seuss books encouraging for beginning readers and points out that kids tend to resist the tacked-on morals Hollywood insists upon. Next year is the 100th anniversary of Mr. Geisel's birth.

The Boston Globe profiles thriller writer Derek Raymond. All of his books are out of print in the States. Also in the Globe is an interview with Marion Cunningham, a lady interested in bringing back the family dinner hour. She points out that some people have never seen other people cooking. But what does this really mean? Will we see an upsurge in kitchens with mirrors (to add to the many reflective surfaces)? I envision a sudden wave of kitchen narcissism, of lonely people cooking alone, admiring themselves in the mirror, standing naked save for a "Kiss the Cook" apron, and swinging a brand new garlic press like they mean business. Not much of an identity, I know. But if I was pressed to predict a trend for 2004, this would be it.

Aniruddha Bahal is pleased as punch. As you may recall, Bahal won the Bad Sex Award earlier this month. He says book sales have spiked and notes that, "A lot of people actually thought it was a good piece of writing." This from the man who wrote of breasts that were "placards for the endomorphically endowed."

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has an update on the island in The Egg and I.

And the latest person to sue Disney is French author Franck le Calvez, who claims that Nemo is a ripoff of a character he created named Pierrot.

Mayfly

Here's my Mayfly 20 word capsule: Holed up, reborn, maturity, resolve, decisions, less damnations, hitting the ground running, whipping my lazy ass for next year's kill.

The Un-Ethicist

Shortly after Xmas, I was astonished to get this email:

Dear Mr. Champion:

Randy's at it again. Every time our family gets together for the holidays, not only does my older brother go on and on about the ethical way to carve a turkey, but the little fucker can't stop going on about his lucrative Times and NPR gigs. I'm sick and tired of being the odd sibling out. I'm sick and tired of introducing myself as "Randy's younger brother" at cocktail parties, only to have these people gloss over my fine haircut and unusual eating habits. What's a younger brother to do?

Yours,

Miguel Cohen

I hadn't heard of Miguel Cohen before, but I could sympathize with his concerns. I put two and two together and realized that he was actually Randy Cohen's brother. We had a few email volleys. And I learned that Miguel, beyond having a few "unique" views on life, is also quite an interesting writer. I asked Miguel if he was interested in having a regular place here on Sunday. And he pitched me on an idea that was questionable, but nevertheless fair. He plans to answer the same questions pitched to Randy.

Hey, R.P., get with the fucking program! Those student loan companies are rapacious vultures. No less a benign authority than David Sedaris says so. Since it's illegal to kick those greedy bastards in the teeth, or to cut off the heads of their roan ponies and make them offers they can't refuse so they can stop sending those "consolidated" forms to you, what better way to get back at them than mining this 9/11 thing for all its wortht?

Making money off tragedies or freak occurrences is a grand American tradition that goes back to P.T. Barnum and spans out, more recently, to Jerry Bruckheimer with that stupid Pearl Harbor film that lots of people paid ten bucks to see. The plain truth is that there are a lot of dumbfucks out there who will pay big bucks for this kind of memorabilia. And, besides, it's not as if you're auctioning off Nazi china, or some other memento mori from a fascist regime. (Then again, the way things are going, and judging by the way my bourgeois brother keeps his complacent trap silent on politics, and all of these paranoid emails I keep getting from Conspiracy Nation, it may end up that way.)

Even so, sell the motherfucker. Get some boob to pay for it, preferably to someone employed by Sallie Mae, and keep the sale relatively anonymous, if you're concerned about this thing becoming public. In the grand scheme of things, even if it does become public knowledge that you sold this ticket, people will judge you by the collective scope of your actions. And who knows? Maybe years from now, when this tragedy isn't being exploited by the Republican National Convention, you'll have a funny yarn to tell your grandkids.

You'll probably be accused of dishonoring the dead, but keep in mind that the 9/11 widows and widowers have been given more money than you'll probably ever make in a year. And after those limitless Portraits of Grief that ran forever in my bro's paper, they've had more than enough attention. Meanwhile, where are you, R.P.? You're probably working some job you're overqualified for, wrestling with all those damn student loans.

Sell the sucker now while it's a hot item. And if your friends disown you, you just tell them Miguel says it was okay. And if they don't like it, I'll kick their teeth in.

Solid Contentions

Apparently, Ewan McGregor's uncle (Denis Lawson, who played Wedge Antilles in the original Star Wars trilogy) turned Ian McEwan's infamous short story,"Solid Geometry," into a film last year. [Denis Lawson interview.] While this version doesn't appear to be available online, this wasn't the first film adaptation of "Solid Geometry." This forum thread includes an article that chronicles the initial 1979 version. Set to be directed by Mike Newell, BBC-2 pulled the plug when they learned of a nine-inch penis prop. Producer Stephen Gilbert issued public statements, was fired by the BBC, and entered into a substantial dispute. This BBC audio review, featuring smug British intellectual types dismissing the controversy and the penis, details the new Lawson version and covers, in part, the 1979 version.

Putting the Cock in Caucasian

Angry Asian Man points to this fascinating article on the booming plastic surgery in Asia: "The culturally loaded issue today is the number of Asians looking to remake themselves to look more Caucasian. It's a charge many deny, although few would argue that under the relentless bombardment of Hollywood, satellite TV, and Madison Avenue, Asia's aesthetic ideal has changed drastically. 'Beauty, after all, is evolutionary,' says Harvard psychology professor Nancy Etcoff, who is the author of Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty—not coincidentally a best seller in Japan, Korea, Hong Kong and China. Asians are increasingly asking their surgeons for wider eyes, longer noses and fuller breasts—features not typical of the race. To accommodate such demands, surgeons in the region have had to invent unique techniques. The No. 1 procedure by far in Asia is a form of blepharoplasty, in which a crease is created above the eye by scalpel or by needle and thread."

Quickies

The Guardian has an excerpt of Carol Shield's unfinished novel, Segue, which she was working on at the time of her death.

Terry Gross interviews Stephen King. Hearing Terry Gross describe the beginning of Gerald's Game in such clinical intellectual terms (apparently, without irony) is pretty hilarious, as are the additional queries that jump from third-person to first-person ("Let's get Stephen King to the kind of gore and terror and suspense that you create."). But the second interview has King talking about his accident.

The Globe and Mail features a New Year's-themed article on the description of drinking in literature that's also unintentioanlly funny. Really, I couldn't make this stuff up: "You can, with a little licence, trace an arc in 20th-century drinking literature that follows the act of drinking itself. In Hemingway's work, the drinking was never-ending, and often celebratory when it wasn't the weary duty of the lost generation. Hangovers were left largely undescribed, something that could be walked off in the clear air of the Pyrenees, or washed off in a fine and true Michigan trout stream."

More fun from J.M. Coetzee in the latest NYRoB.

Speculation in the Age on 2004's Australian heavy-hitters.

Tony Kushner gushes over Eugene O'Neill.

Biggest surprise: USA Today names both Living History and The Five People You Meet in Heaven as worst books of 2003.

Stavros has a translation of the Lost in Translation commercial scene that reveals (no surprise) remarkable caricatures.

And about 70 books on Mao were published in China this year. Perhaps because the 110th anniversary of Mao's birth was yesterday.

Res Ipsa Loquitur

According to the Google News algorithm, six American lives are worth more than 20,000 Iranian lives.

Report

The streets remain quiet, even after Xmas has come and gone. Those who remain hide behind locked doors. But some can be found on buses or in bars, reclining in cafes, quietly socializing on public steps, or catching up on movies, alone or with companions. The sun peaks above three-story Victorian edifices, but it gets very cold, California cold, at night. It is a San Francisco that resembles 1970s cinematic imagery: Bullitt, Dirty Harry, The Conversation. Before it was impossible to find a parking spot. Back in the days when an apartment was affordable. Before major events brought points of convergance and people flooded through the makeshift turnstiles when the cornets and drum machines let loose. Those who remain are silent about their private quests, but are congenial. They volunteer for worthy causes. They wish total strangers, "Happy holidays." They look out for each other. They commit time without burdens, fueled by a laconic spirit of giving, unencumbered by familial artifices, their smiles resisting bourgeois falsehoods against Pottery Barn splendor. They are the true souls of the City.

There was a reason why so many buildings eschewed Xmas lights, even in the affluent pockets of Lake Street. The residents within didn't expect to stick around.

But when the remaining two-thirds of the population return from their holiday getaways, replete with booty and fruitcakes, the streets will flood with people again. The mad rush, the pitter-patter of cell phones, the trundling streetcars snailing beneath Market Street at rush hour, the chaotic dichotomy of whether to stick around or extirpate roots to head to another town that will advance a career. All will return. Ineluctable regularities. The anguished groupings.

For now, peace on earth truly rules in the air. But perhaps it's just me.

A Very Scary Xmas

Karl Rove reads "Santa's New Reindeer." Beyond the expected lack of conviction, let me count the many ways that this is wrong.

Can They Sink Any Lower?

Melissa Panarello's One Hundred Strokes of the Hairbrush Before Going to Sleep, the latest "sexually frank memoir," is different from the usual memoirs, but only in the sense that Larry Clark's Kids is an artier, more teen-centric approach to the oeuvre of Zalman King. As the Times reports (user: dr_mabuse, pw: mabuse), "The title of the book refers to a kind of purging ritual that the book's narrator, also named Melissa, performs after she is prodded by one of her sexual partners into having sex with him and four other men at the same time. That happens on her 16th birthday."

Indeed. Personally, I'm waiting for Three Thousand Ice Cream Cones Against His Left Testicle Before the Horse Sodomized My Sister, the frank memoir written by an eight year old incest survivor who, like Panarello, smokes cigars, but only Cubans.

Meanwhile, the real criminals can be found in Iowa, where a woman has pled not guilty to stealing 450 library books. If she's guilty, the funny thing here is the lack of subtlety. 117 hardcover cookbooks disappeared gradually over a short period. If you're going to do something as ignoble as steal from the library, shouldn't you broaden your interests just a tad?

Script Before the Book

Sarah points to this article on Philip K. Dick adaptations, which suggests that the best PKD movies are those made by directors dismissive of the source material. The Post article points out that Ridley Scott dismissed PKD's work and hadn't even bothered to read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? But what the article fails to acknowlege is that, unless the director is also writing the script, the director's job is to visualize the story, not actually develop it. With Minority Report, Spielberg was more attracted to creating a future than adhering with the PKD hardline (although Spielberg notes in the Wired interview that he had read Dick). But the fact is that a lot of filmmakers don't read the original books when the script falls into their hands.

Girl with a Pearl Earring -- (Michael Weber): "I deliberately held off reading the book for a while as well. There was one thing I was scared of: I had the script, I had done about eight months working on the script with the writer. I was worried that if I read the book too soon, I would have a whole load of knowledge, just there in my subconscious..."

Nicholas Nickleby -- (Charlie Hunman): "Yeah, I read it at school. It was probably mandatory to read at least one Dickens and it just so happened that I was asked to read Nickleby. But when this came around I couldn't really remember what the book was about. I was just nine years old when I read it and, like most things at school, I didn't really pay too much attention. I read director Doug McGrath's adaptation for the film before I re-read the book and I thought he did an amazing job."

The Hulk -- (Ang Lee): "We had tried several drafts of the screenplay, but it didn't quite work - I didn't really know what I wanted to do yet. And then one day James [Schamus, co-writer] brought to my attention that in one issue of Hulk they brought the father back, and then an idea hit me. But at the same time I thought, Oh no, not the father/son thing again! But I wouldn't have done it unless I felt that it was bringing something fresh."

The Eggers Rumor

Okay, folks, here's what I know about the Eggers-Where the Wild Things Are connection.

I contacted Playtone Productions, the production company that's behind Where the Wild Things Are. (I won't dare reveal how I got the number.) I was told by Playtone that they could neither confirm nor deny that Eggers was involved on the screenplay, which suggests that Eggers is possibly involved, but no one is ready to make an official announcement as of yet. I asked if they could tell me if any writer was involved, and they told me, "We don't give out that kind of information." So what we have so far is a blank slate.

I then tried contacting Eggers' office, but was caught in a voicemail labryinth and couldn't get a live human being.

So at this point, we have nothing but rumors to base a conclusion on. The possibility exists that Eggers has written a screenplay, or is working on a screenplay. Since I've lambasted Eggers so much, I seriously doubt he or one of the 826 Valencia people will return the message I left in the general voicemail box. But perhaps someone closer to the fray can give us a definitive answer.

[UPDATE: Couldn't get a live body at Good Machine. Tried Michel Gondry's company, Partizan, but didn't get anywhere, save for a helpful receptionist who replied, "Who is Dave Eggers?"]

Nice Guys & Lesbians

Oddly enough, I had a "date" similar to this, though nowhere nearly as extreme:

ME: Why is she walking home and why are you picking her up.

AFV (now in full blown rage) BECAUSE YOU TRIED TO KISS HER you asshole! Why did you try to kiss my girlfriend. What the hell do you think you're doing?!?!?.....

ME: What are you talking about? I was on a DATE with her!

AFV: You weren't on a date.

ME: I picked her up, I bought our tickets to the concert, and I bought our beers. I mean that's a f*cking date right.

AFV: It wasn't a date, she just went out with you because she thought you were a nice guy!

(via Six Different Ways)

Work in the Prison

Jospeh T. Hallinan's Going Up the River has countless revelations for anyone interested in how the prison-industrial complex has changed American life. But two, so far, have particularly stuck out for me:

"Well," he says, "my wife and I have been married twenty-eight years and lived nineteen years in a travel trailer." He looks me dead in the eye. "Do you have any idea?"

After ten years, he will be eligible to receive medical coverage after retirement, a benefit so precious, he says, that he is willing to spend his days among killers and thieves. "Be fifty-four and try to go out and buy health insurance."

The second item concerns teachers attracted by the increased pay rate afforded to public school teachers who have since moved on to educate prisoners in Beeville, Texas:

He and Dave, I knew, feel a little guilty about their defection. Both mention repeatedly, for instance, how much they miss working with kids. But they don't feel that guilty. "I'm much more relaxed," Dave says. "I have more time with my family. My lesson plans are a lot easier to write. I haven't had a parent come to see me yet. And all in all besides that I got about a six-thousand dollar raise."

Stafford will be fifty-six in a few days, and Texas has mandatory retirement at sixty-five, which means he's got nine years left. Whether he'll stay that long, he doesn't know. "I tell everybody I'm doing five to ten," he says. "My inmates like that."

Beyond the rising incarceration rate, and beyond the ways in which corporations have cut exclusive deals for both the products used in penitentiaries and the labor employed to manufacture American goods, is the startling realization that the penitentiary, in some impoverished towns, has become the new Wal-Mart. If your employer won't pay your health benefits, or if you can't afford the exorbitant rates of an HMO, work in the prison. If you want to really teach, but can't afford to live on the impoverished rates the school districts are paying teachers, work in the prison. Not only will they pay you more, but your teaching demands will be considerably less. Because most of the inmates are high school dropouts (in Texas, 60% are, and Hallinan notes that this is about equal to the national average). Of course, even if you rehabilitate prisoners through education, their prospects are grim. In the 1960s, there was a brief moment in which grants were given out to prisoners so that they could earn four-year degrees. The grants were killed in 1994.

Bah Humbug

For all those who have offered, "Happy holidays," thank you for the well-wishes that don't specifically reference Xmas. Happy holidays and good cheer back to you.

For those who have polluted the air with insufferable carols, for those who have tried to induct me into their hellish Xmas-Christian propaganda with almost complete artifice and ideological solipsism, for those who say hello to their family and friends but once a year (now, but never any other time), for those who think that a pre-printed card with a mere signature below some bullshit Hallmark "witticism" somehow makes up for this yearly discrepancy (not unlike signing an annual blackmail check), for those who have forced the issue, whether it's the execrable bastards in control of the Muzak machines or the hypocritical assholes who really couldn't give a good goddam for those alone, friendless or homeless (the true people in need of attention), then either wander off a butte and die or get with the program.

If you're in San Francisco (or anywhere), I dare you to throw off the shackles of holiday bullshit and actually do something for the downtrodden. Don't max out your credit cards on trinkets. Just get in there, volunteer a few hours, and selflessly give of yourself to someone who needs it. Think of others for a change on real human terms. Here are a few organizations that could use your time.

That's about all I have to say about this sham of a holiday. Except bah humbug.

Quickies

Infinity expert A.W. Moore compares David Foster Wallace's Everything and More against two other books specializing in the subject and concludes that DFW is wrong: "The sections on set theory, in particular, are a disaster. When he lists the standard axioms of set theory from which mathematicians derive theorems about the iterative conception of a set, he gets the very first one wrong. (It is not, as Wallace says, that if two sets have the same members, then they are the same size. It is that two sets never do have the same members.)...He goes on to discuss Cantor's unsolved problem, which I mentioned at the end of the previous paragraph. There are many different, equivalent ways of formulating the problem; Wallace gives four. The first and fourth are fine. The second, about whether the real numbers 'constitute' the set of sets of rational numbers, does not, as it stands, make sense. And the third, about whether the cardinal that measures the size of the set of real numbers can be obtained by raising 2 to the power of the smallest infinite cardinal, is simply wrong: we know it can."

Heather Havrilesky interviews David Callahan, author of The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead.

Bernard Goldberg's Arrogance has sold considerably short of sales. Retailers will get a half-price credit. And to think that a little less than two years ago, Goldberg was the man of the hour. All demagogues fall. When Ann Coulter?

Dave Eggers may write the script for Where the Wild Things Are for Spike Jonze. Oh no. (via Maud)

And if you haven't seen this end-of-the-year wrapup yet with the bookblog cabal, check it out.

Prisoner's Dilemma

4,000 men were questioned in Britain. The results: Married men are more likely to suffer mental health problems than those who live with their partners. But the reverse holds true for married women. And women, in general, are actually better off without men. Meanwhile, single men are more likely to suffer from depresison.

So if you're a man, you can remain single and depressed. Or you can get married and get depressed. But if you live with your partner sans commitment, you'll be dandy.

And if you're a woman, you can remain single and remain the happiest. Or you can get married and remain reasonably happy. But if you live with your partner sans commitment, you'll be miserable.

Or to look at it another way:

Living Together Without Commitment: Man (Happiest) + Woman (Miserable)
Married: Man (Miserable) + Woman (Reasonably Happy)
Single: Man (Depressed) or Woman (Happiest)

In other words, what we have here is a startling development, should a woman need to be in a relationship. Relationships and marriages, it seems, are essentially exemplars for game theory. But the difference here is that the man alone is miserable and the woman, without any effort whatsoever, is happiest. A woman need not do anything to remain happy. Is this misery because men make most of the efforts in initiating a date or a meetup or is this misery extant within the Y chromosome? If the psychological hypothesis in these findings holds true, then what we have here is a clear biological indicator that women are the superior gender.

Their Threat Fatigue and We Need To Do My Things On Your Alert

What Tom Ridge Said: "I don't think we've got to worry about threat fatigue. We need to be on the alert and America needs to know that those who need to do things are doing them, that their government is working 24-7 to protect them against terrorist attack."

What Tom Ridge Might Have Meant:

"threat fatigue" -- A little known cousin to "chronic fatigue syndrome." Either that or, as Wordspy notes, "ignoring or downplaying possible threats because one has been subjected to constant warnings about those threats." So if Tom Ridge tells us that we don't have to worry about threat fatigue, am I to infer that he's telling us to be scared shitless? And it all sounded so benign!

"We need to be on the alert." -- In Homeland Security vernacular, one cannot be alerted, nor can one be prepared for alert. One is "on the alert," which, for some strange reason, conjures up imagery of Donald Rumsfield on the rag. Nonetheless, this might mean that, collectively, the nation is close to the alert button, or about to be alerted, but not quite there yet.

"America needs to know that those who need to do things are doing them." -- As opposed to wanting to know? Do we citizens not have "to do things?" Can we sit in our La-Z-Boys and eat Cheetos? Can we really trust "those who need to do things" to do them?

And then there's troubling shift in perspective. Ridge goes from "we" to "those who need to do things" to "their government" in one sentence! Which suggests to me that "we" (the citizens) are sorta involved in any potential alerts, ad hoc, but are not people "who need to do things." Additionally, Homeland Security and the U.S. citizens are joined at the hip, but "their government" implies that "they" are either the U.S. government or some unidentified government we are at battle with. (Perhaps Canada unknowingly?)

All I know is that Tom Ridge is full of shit, couldn't speak intelligibly to save his life, and really has me worried about the DHS's ability to communicate. I haven't seen government language like this since the Nixon Administration.

Doctors, Lytton & More

British practitioners are tired of writing doctor's notes. Apparently, there's a rampant epidemic of comparative note shopping. This collection of notes, however, suggests that the aspiring malingerer might be better off forging their own. One note reads: "Both breasts are equal and reactive to light and accommodation." Indeed. Unfortunately, doctor's notes don't make for compelling drama. That didn't stop these guys from trying.

Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victorians has been a hoot, filled with some great reductio ad absurdum arguments: "Now, two propositions were accepted by both parties -- that all infants are born in original sin, and their original sin is washed away by baptism. But how could both these propositions be true, argued Mr. Gorham, if it was also true that faith and repentance were necessary before baptism could come into operation at all? How could an infant in arms be said to be in a state of faith and repentance? How, therefore, could its original sin be washed away by baptism? And yet, as everyone agreed, washed away it was. The only solution of the difficulty lay in the doctrine of prevenient grace, and Mr. Gorham maintained that unless God performed an act of prevenient grace by which the infant was endowed with faith and repentance, no act of baptism could be effectual; though to whom, and under what conditions, prevenient grace was given, Mr. Gorham confessed himself unable to decide."

What's interesting is that a sizable chunk of Strachey's papers can be found at the University of Texas at Austin. Who knew that such a pioneering iconoclast would end up where Bush II once presided as governor?

The Guardian has a list of 2003's overlooked books. Plus, Crimson Petal author Michael Faber isn't smitten with Motherless Brooklyn and Robert Louis Stevenson's poetry is given a second look.

And, in a Maryland elementary school, comics are being used to get kids reading. Jim Trelease, author of The Read-Aloud Handbook (excerpts can be found here), is cited in the article as one of the inspirations. Among some of Trelease's conclusions: He attributes the popularity of Harry Potter to a desire for plot-driven page turners. He sees human beings as pleasure-centric and believes that because of the greater likelihood of finding rare words in children's books, reading narrows the word gap from the 10,000 words or so we use in conversation and the broader vocabulary that we don't.

I've Always Wanted to Do This

Reading on a Dream: I hope these kids take their show on the road. Opening night at the Library of Congress?

Somewhat Related Link: If Libraries Were Like Amazon.

Beyond the Pale

Maud's posted a great little ditty on pallor. But I must assure Ms. Newton that she don't have jack on my albino ass. For years, I was terrified of wearing shorts. I wore T-shirts to apartment complex swimming pools, and I resented the fact that, no matter how powerful the sunblock, I'd return home with ruddy, blistered flesh. Beyond this brutal reddening, I was hopelessly etiolated.

P.E. was always the toughest period to get through. Beyond my scrawny, clumsy self being among the last selected when softball or basketball teams were established on brutal Lamarckian terms, I was subjected to merciless ridicule about my skin that all seems quite silly now. I was terrified of changing out of the school-sanctioned T-shirt and shorts, back into my regular threads. And no matter how silent I remained, the jocks and their jocose acolytes berated me without letup. I was called ghost, freaky, whitey, paleface.

The turning point came, oddly enough, with the Goth movement. I was never into Peter Murphy or those other silly, angst-ridden singers. But the Goth girls would come up to me and say, "You are so Goth." At first, I thought they were referring to a towering spire that had somehow affixed itself to my back. But it soon became apparent to me that these young vixens, with their colored hair, tenebrous deportment, and passionate piercings, intended to compliment me.

When I moved to the City, the weather certainly worked to my advantage. But since the unspoken policy here was to accept everyone, eventually I had no problems wearing shorts on rare sunny days. I had no problem at all being Mr. Paleface.

They may be honest in Brooklyn, but I'm convinced that some people aren't meant to turn tawny. And that's a good thing. I'm also convinced that healthy pallor is one of the most underrated attributes of beauty. Particularly in a lady.

I've Got the Power

Last night's planned baking extravaganza went awry. The situation was perhaps best described by today's Chronicle in a remarkably redundant headline: Blackout puts S.F. in the dark. Personally, I've always wondered if a blackout could bathe a city in light. And, last night, it did in spurts. Flashlights, headlights, candles, and small halogen lamps replaced cruddy fluorescents. There was a rustic silence in the air. Who knew that so many things turned on, locked behind multi-unit buildings and overlocked doors and Victorian facades, created such a subtle din? It was nice to walk the streets, wandering around my neighborhood, looking at my life and surroundings without clutter.

From my own building, an anemic "Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee" seethed from the dark newels and balustrades. But it didn't stop hands from groping in the dark. I became unexpectedly acquainted with my neighbor's breast, and apologized for this unique, quite accidental housewarming. The sound lost its fresh Duracell perfect pitch quite quickly. This electronic vowel wavered, crumbling with the concealed security systems. It died in the dead of morning.

Phones were denied their electric juice. I was grateful to have a charged cell phone, if only for the dim LCD display functioning as a temporary candle. Humanity's move to cordless had sucked the life of urban telephony dry. But I did hear one pleasant sound as I walked the streets. From a window, an old-school phone rang, the stark analog bell reminding me of those pleasant chimes we had forsaken long ago. There was purity in that sound, and I missed it. But progress was irrevocable. The phone went unanswered.

While mom-and-pop corner stores locked and chained their doors, Albertson's stayed open, evincing the mantra, "We Never Close." A backup power generator fueled a few registers. The overhead lights flickered. People smiled and couples bought bottles of wine, preparing to drink naked beneath undulating counterpanes. I was able to use my ATM card to buy candles, but I felt like I was cheating at a board game. But I wasn't as ungainly as one young whipper-snapper, who hoped to get his pictures developed at the one hour photo machine. At first, I thought he was joking. And so did the helpful lady behind the counter. When he responded with "Thanks for the sarcasm," this clerk and I laughed our asses off. Some people fail to understand that human beings once lived for centuries by candlelight. Why pictures now? What pressing priority did this young man have?

Perhaps it reflected the quiet desperation in the air. With routine disrupted, I saw many people standing around, at a loss with how to expend their time. Some sat in stairwells, smoking cigarettes, drinking from bottles, talking, flashing lights at strangers, counting flowers on the wall. Some walked their dogs. Some soothed little ones. Others shined powerful rays out their windows, perched solitary on sills. What to do without the blue orbs reporting "reality?" What to say when they set their minds on silence?

Predictably, the bars were packed. Dipsomaniacs forewent their whiskey-and-cokes and downed straight Jack. Aside from the attached and the hard-line alkies, there weren't a lot of women. The shuffling shadows kept them indoors, wondering when the power would be restored.

Eventually, I headed home. When I woke up at the crack of dawn, I heard my computer humming. The monsters weren't due on Maple Street, but I sure as hell missed the silence.

Who the Hell is Emeril?

While trying to score some bakeware this afternoon, I ran smack dab into a huge display that read "Emeril." Physically, I was unharmed. Emotionally, however, I was quite devastated. "Emeril," you see, was photographed with his arms outstretched on the various boxes. I did a quick search on the Internet and found the following photos:

There doesn't appear to be a single photograph of this man with his arms close to his body.

Can someone tell me who this Emeril guy is? I don't have cable television. I'm completely in the dark about his show. But what I do know is that it's morally wrong to photograph a chef as if he just dismounted from a high beam. It does not, shall we say, inspire others to have fun in the kitchen.

To be perfectly frank, I'm alarmed by this man. His arms are so long that I wonder if they're mechanical enhancements. While one can look into Emeril's face and see that he's just a giddy, harmless bastard, what of the moral costs?

All I needed was an extra baking sheet. Instead, the Emeril display had me sobbing like an infant.

Bad Santa

Like everyone, the Muthafu'in Holidays have kept me so perplexed that I'm dropping key letters from colorful adjectives and creating nonsense. Expect something coherent again on Monday. In the meantime, why not try some of the many fine establishments on the left?

___________ of the ___________

Well, now that I've seen It (It being a high-profile film release that will make many people rich this week alone), I must confess that I'm a bit disappointed. Not outright hostile towards the film, not hating it, but decidedly underwhelmed and, if it can be believed, even more ill-disposed towards the source material than I was before. The last twenty minutes of It featured more anticlimaxes than I had seen in five years of summer blockbusters. Even the effects played out like cut scenes from a crudely rendered computer game. (Here's a tip to the boys in the editing room: When you cut directly from an overhead shot that is clearly computer-generated to a medium angle that involves real people on real horses, it sort of hinders the illusion. Also, things like rain and night, and actual build-up, help disguise visual blunders and work to your advantage, as they did so well in the Helm's Deep battle from the last film.)

Loved the trolls, loved Howard Shore's score (Wagner-like, the best of the three), loved the opening Smeagl-Deagol moment (and nearly every moment with Gollum). But the problem with It is utterly clear: These characters have no flaws. They are not nasty or mischevious in any way, unless frat boy nips in the weed count as intelligent behavior. (Even Indiana Jones was sardonic enough to blow away a swordsman with a gun. Even Superman sacrificed his powers for the woman he loved. Even John McClane had to pick out shards of glass from his feet. Even Luke Skywalker confronted his father to clear up a complicated domestic situation. You see where I'm going with this?) They are people wandering around a beautiful landscape, getting involved with battles, and there is every assurance that they will come back from the wars unscathed. Despite the fact that everyone else around them has been flung about by elephant-looking things.

Amused? On some basic adolescent level, yes. Will I see it again? Maybe the Extended Edition. But ultimately I've now come to terms with the sad reality that character no longer means a thing in an action movie. And that's a pity.

On a somewhat related note, Tom has some thoughts on moviegoing. I must say that one of the best moviegoing experiences I ever had was seeing Rear Window at the Castro. Despite the fact that nearly everyone there had seen the movie, they remained on the edge of their seats. The oohs and aahs of Hitchcock's suspense rippled through the crowd like magic. Years later, the film had lost none of its power to thrill.

Sometimes, Bright Blue is Just Bright Blue

Anthony Lane on internal practice: "I tend to send my copy in on deadline, which by New Yorker standards is tacky. It has to go through three or four proofs. The fact-checkers proof; the grammarians proof. And it is amazing. Someone does go to see the film, to make sure I'm not lying. If I'm reviewing a Tim Burton film and I say that Ewan McGregor's wearing a bright blue shirt, they'll say to me, 'It's more like bright turquoise'. But you should get it right, especially if you're going to have some fun with it. Otherwise it's cheating. The New Yorker is the only place in the world where you can pull a piece to change a comma to a semi-colon. It's a haven for the pedant. I love it.""

Quick Links

Apparently, self-publishing at the office pays off. Bruno Perara wrote a novel called Little Murders Among Partners. The book portrayed his co-workers for what they were. The firm fired him. But a mediation court ruled that Perara was unfairly dismissed and awarded him £50,000. So if you can't get that lucrative advance, I suppose there's always the unexpected rewards of the middleman.

Mao's little red books still bear influence.

Edwin Abbott's Flatland has been mined once again for inspiration (after Rudy Rucker's Spaceland) -- this time, for VAS: An Opera in Flatland, which takes a biogenetic approach. For those interested in the original Flatland, public domain has effected its availability. Fun stuff, if you never read it. (via The Complete Review)

B&N fiction buyer Sessalee Hensley is drunk with power, albeit unknowingly. Even worse, all thrillers are inexplicably held up to a Barbara Kingsolver litmus test.

And, apparently, writing is good for your well-being. Too bad that your life expectancy is slim if you want to be a full-time professional. Go figure. (via Moorish)

Wonder if George Knows His Thomas

"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all." -- Thomas Jefferson in letter to Abigail Adams, shortly after Shays Rebellion.

prose-aic

xmas prop a gander did we vote?
ears calumniated by duplicitous speakers
silent sales sandwiched between stale scrambled

egg
nog
ick

unilateral steel toe lapping blood hard red green bow

spirit of giving
hungry

pint special sale medicine holed up
phone dead analog nosound
bathtub hot cold
alone at last

naturally

Why?

On the Return of the King front, David Hudson has again outdone himself with some great armchair analysis. Beyond collating some ideas on what this might mean for the Oscars, he offers some hypotheses based on critical ramifications: "One wonders if there was a sense of alarm at all, and if so, what color the alert was over at New Line when, early on, the National Board of Review not only passed Rings over for Best Film but didn't even include it in its top ten. Had they given conventional wisdom a nudge that would snowball into serious momentum away from Rings?"

Personally, I've recused myself from getting involved with the hype, largely because anything I put down on paper (or the Web) is pointless before I've seen the film in whole. I feel uncomfortable calling any opus a Great Thing (or even a Piss-Poor Thing) before I've experienced it (to use the PR parlance of our time). Not unlike a chowderhead who sounds off on a topic he hasn't read one single book on. Have we truly become a culture in which we're prepared to love every high-profile film well in advance? Is there no longer any room for an evaluation that dares to suggest There is No Santa Claus?

When I watched the supplements on the Two Towers Extended Edition, one thing that struck me was the unbearably placating tone. There seemed to me a strange amount of attention trying to explain the filmmakers' motivations behind the much-derided changes to Faramir and Tom Bombadil. All fine and dandy. Some people need to be educated. But the supplements seemed curiously targeted, directed towards the hard-core fanboys with an almost apologetic tone. With the conveniently timed November relase, it was almost as if the boys on the fourteenth floor took the time to scour the Internet, conduct a few focus group meetings, and address everyone's privations, thus clearing heads, assuaging nerves and gearing the audience up for an experience entirely designed for them.

The same fanboys whose mouths foamed after the Christopher Lee fiasco are now prepared to love this film no matter what. And it's due in no small part to Jackson's low-profile courting of illiterate fanboys like Harry Knowles and even the presence of avidity in the Gray Lady (see "journalist" Jesse McKinley working himself into a frenzy over Bombadil). But, unlike Star Wars, the Lords fanboys are more common. It's okay to announce your love for Lords around the water cooler, and to tell everybody that you're going to see the first show at the stroke of midnight. This wasn't the case with Star Wars or even the Matrices. With Lords, the fanboy has suddenly acquired a mainstream legitimacy.

The marketing has been so good, so eerily transcendental and cross-demographic, that I almost expect a war room somewhere on the New Line lot containing a wall-sized blackboard, a space to project Powerpoint presentations on demand, and envelopes marked TOP SECRET revealing every known opinion on the film.

The question I have: Why do we have to see the film the first week? Or opening day? There are plenty of films out there, plenty of media to consume, and plenty of stories far superior to Tolkien that you can find in a bookstore (see Fritz Lieber, Michael Moorcock or Mervyn Peake, to name three). And more importantly, plenty of things to experience in the real world.

Howard and Clark

Letters from H.P. Lovecraft to Clark Ashton Smith (via Quiddity)

Move Over, Amazon

Coming soon: print.google.com. [Sample results] [FAQ] (via Publisher's Lunch)

Dickens Not in Vogue

This morning, I was shocked to learn of the news that Charles Dickens is "not in vogue these days." While Boston Globe reporter Sam Allis's statement was brazen, it is, nevertheless, absolutely true. Unfortunately, a 2,000 word section that cited specific examples was cut by the Globe. One of my inside sources, referred to here as "Tina," explained to me that a part-time copy editor opposed the section, believing that Mr. Allis was somehow channeling his subject. ("Tina" reports that Mr. Allis's word rate is "unbelievably lucrative.")

So what we received instead was an unsatisfactory generalization to back up Mr. Allis's findings ("He is no longer the staple in humanities courses on this side of the Atlantic."). However, "Tina" was kind enough to forward me a summary of what Mr. Allis's original draft included:

1. Arthur Quilip, the little-known dwarf actor who was Verne Troyer's stand-in in Bubble Boy, came very close to landing roles in Bad Santa and Carnivàle. However, he was narrowly beaten out by Tony Cox and Michael Anderson for the respective parts. The casting directors on both productions had read The Old Curiosity Shop and quipped to Quilp that he had, in the words of Oscar Wilde, "a heart of stone."

2. Oliver Twists, once a popular cocktail at a Ramada Inn bar ("two for one Tuesdays!") in Louisville, Kentucky, have declined in sales. Customers are now gravitating towards whiskey sours.

3. At an El Torito restaurant in Bridgeton, Missouri, a table for four, reserved in the name of Pickwick, was withheld at the request of the manager. Four elderly gentlemen were left to stand around while others enjoyed their "fine Mexican meals." A few customers complained at the presence of these men, referring to them as "old, smelly and decidedly not in vogue," and were thrown out of the restaurant by Boris, short-order cook and salsa preparer, with characteristic pugilism.

4. Back in September, a young boy by the name of David had walked hundreds of miles to Manhattan to escape an unfortunate domestic disturbance. Hoping to unwind his weary feet, and having been given a pass to the VIP room at Club Copacabana by a cheery busker, David showed up at the club and attempted to redeem the pass, only to be told by the bouncer, "No magicians in dis place." David has since subsisted in a studio apartment that he shares with other orphans, but only by selling his own blood on a thrice-weekly basis.

5. Calvin Klein has called upon all of his underfed models to lead a public burning of the collected works of Charles Dickens. His circulars have had remarkable results. Kate Moss is said to keep her nose up in the air for at least four minutes when she hears the words, "Barnaby Rudge." Naomi Campbell plans to take full-page ads in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal that read in part, "Thank god that son of a bitch didn't finish Edwin Drood. Who needs him?"

You've Got the Touch

I stumbled onto this and was perplexed. But now I think I understand what goes on in the Upper West Side. And, yes, frankly, it's a little weird to me too, but not that weird. But I respect it, even if there's no way in hell I could adopt it. Taking the contrarian stance in a society that acts out the opposite takes (no contrarian pun intended) a good pair of balls. But if the likely result is loneliness without touch, well then goodness me.

The Reluctant Tries to Remain Impartial Too, But...

The BBC has banned its journalists from writing newspaper and magazine columns pertaining to current affairs. The m.o.? "Impartiality." The ban extends to both staff and freelancers. There is at least some consolation: voicing vitriolic opinions on things like food is considered impartial. Whether such a restriction will trickle over the Atlantic to the "fair and balanced" networks remains to be seen.

Mayor Cleese? (via Tom)

New OED words: "fuckwit," "non-homosexual," "Norman Rockwellish," "no-talent," "cut and shut," "fist-fucker," "gang-bang," "huevos rancheros," and "super-unleaded."

The Illustrated Complete Summary of Gravity's Rainbow (via MeFi)

Mary Shelley's original MS. for Frankenstein has been saved thanks to a grant. The draft, with Shelley's handwritten corrections, can now be found at Oxford's Bodleian library.

Books I Did Not Read This Year

This whole gambit reminds me of that moment in David Lodge's Small World where academics confessed titles they had not read. I'll see Crooked Timber's list, and raise the ante with more egregious not-reads, this year or any other year:

1. Anything written by Jhumpa Lahiri
2. Brick Lane by Monica Ali
3. Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem
4. Anything written by the Believer ultra-vixens (Vida & Julavits)
5. The Bug by Ellen Ullman
6. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
7. Anything written by ZZ Packer
8. Anything written by J.M. Coetzee
9. Anything written by Jane Smiley
10. Anything written by Kinky Friedman
11. My Life as a Fake by Peter Carey
12. Bruce Wagner's cellphone trilogy

Boo yah, baby! Take that!

Of course, I was too busy reading Quicksilver, catching up on William Faulkner, Virginia Woolf, Kevin Starr's California Dream books, Robert Caro's LBJ biographies, and Richard Powers, along with discovering folks like Frederick Prokosch and John P. Marquand, the latter now judged by the silly copy you see on his covers. (He ain't delicious trash, baby. He's a clean writer; a tad dated perhaps, but no less relevant. Write a novel more brilliant than Sincerely, Willis Wayde and then come back to me, darling.)

But, really, where do you people find the time to read all this stuff? What dimensional plane do you folks saunter off to? Or perhaps my rampant quasi-literacy has a lot to do with the fact that I'm attracted to big books, generally around 700 pages or so, written in microscopic fonts and requiring regular assualts on the unabridged.

Forgotten Legacy

From Kevin Starr's Inventing the Dream: California Through the Progressive Era:

The Chinese had preceded the Japanese into the fields of California. By 1880 fully one-third of the state’s agricultural labor was Chinese. As the Chinese presence in agriculture increased in the 1870s with the fall-off of mining, so did violence against them. On 15 March 1877, for instance, an organization of white gunman calling itself the Order of Caucasians broke into a cabin of Chinese workers near Chico, robbed the immigrants, then set fire to the cabin, killing four Chinese men. After the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 [the first anti-immigration bill at a national level, passed shortly after the transcontinental railroad] cut off Chinese immigration to California entirely, the Chinese held their own in rural California for a while but tended in the 1890s to drift back into cities and towns. At first, as the Chinese left the countryside in search of better opportunities, the large-scale farmers and ranchers of California gave serious consideration to importing blacks from the South to the replace them, but by the 1890s not blacks but Italians, Portugese, Japanese, and later Mexicans began to replace the Chinese in the fields.

By 1900 nearly half, 45 percent, of California’s total farm labor was Japanese. At first the Japanese underbid their competition, including the lingering Chinese work force, in order to gain a foothold. They entered the fields strongly organized, hiring themselves out through kieyaku-nin, trusted middlemen who negotiated contracts and guaranteed living arrangements, including smoothly functioning eating and boarding clubs and other support services. Once they had eliminated the competition through low bidding and efficiency, the Japanese began to behave just like union labor: controlling their numbers to keep wages high, negotiating one grower against another, organizing quick strikes when they felt exploited, boycotting farmers they did not like. They also began to rent land whenever they could and eventually to buy their own farms. Skilled in intensive farming (their California farms averaged 54.7 acres), Japanese agriculturists were capable of paying higher rents or paying more to own marginal land ($15 an acre in 1910, when the going rate was $10) because they could coax a higher yield from the soil once it was theirs.

By 1910 some 1,816 California farms, for a total of 99,524 acres in Los Angeles, Orange, Fresno and Sacramento counties, most of it in vegetables, potatoes, fruit, berries, grapes, sugar beets, and other intensive crops, were controlled by Japanese. By 1913, 281,687 acres were in Japanese hands, either owned or leased; 383,287 acres by 1920. One San Joaquin Delta farmer, George Shima, who arrived in California as a young laborer, controlled 28,000 acres by 1913, from which came 85 percent of California’s potato crop, earning Shima the undisputed title of Potato King. Not only did the Japanese outdistance all other groups in farm ownership, they also established an interlocking network of marketing cooperatives and protective associations, presided over by the United Japanese Deliberative Council in Northern California and the Central Japanese Association in the South.

Bested in farm ownership, outproduced, outmarketed, excluded from employment (only George Shima showed any willingness to hire non-Japanese labor), white California grew envious, then angry, then overtly anti-Japanese, complaining, as did Elwood Mead, of the impending Asiaticization of California agriculture. The major offense offered by Japanese success was that it cut to the core of a dream that just was not working: small family farms for white California.

Sad Old Men

Maud has a story about her father. "Now, standing before the stacks of Tupperware, I had two choices. I could clean out the kitchen cabinets to make room for the containers or I could admit to myself that Dad was going to end up a sad old man surrounded by stacks of newspapers and plastic forks and roaches." Go read it.

The Cole Valleyites

Cole Valley seems to be populated by a sizable faction of urban professionals who can kindly be described as Gavin Newsom voters, and can less kindly be referred to as smug, elitist fuckheads. I do my best to ignore these people, living by a maxim I once overheard while working at the docks ("Whatever floats your fuckin' boat, motherfucker."). The intent of this quote, as passed from one day laborer to another, was less benign. But the basic principle still holds water.

Despite my willful avoidance, these people accost me. They approach me as I'm scribbling shit down in a notebook. Or if I'm walking up to the Haight. I dress prgamtic. A shirt and blue jeans. Sometimes a T-shirt. And, yes, I wear a pair of Timberlands, but fuck you. How the hell was I supposed to know that these were au courant couture at the Great Mall of America? All I know is that I went to the shoestore and found a fairly robust pair to serve my needs. And then I started seeing the ads every Sunday in the New York Times Magazine. Goddammit.

I wear glasses. But some days I forget to shave. Outside of a receding hairlilne, there is nothing about me that says "yuppie scum." Or so I believe.

Tonight, as I was walking up Cole, it happened again. Shortly after a homeless man, trundling north with a sleeping bag on his shoulder, asked me for change (my wallet was exhausted of cash and I apologized), I overheard another man behind me, a Cole Valleyite, a thirtyish man who had shaved his pate to disguise the fact that he had no hair on top, sporting some sort of bullshit L.L. Bean chamois. Cole Valley was trying to "understand" this man, but not giving him a damn thing in the way of change or compassion. His right, of course. Judging by the slow gait and the weary expression, the homeless guy had seen it all. But then Cole Valley started kvetching to the homeless guy about how many times he was panhandled on any given day.

Then the following conversation went down:

COLE VALLEY: Did you hear what I said to that guy?

ED: [ignoring him]

COLE VALLEY: I said, did you hear what I said to him? Goddam. Fuck. Biggest headache living in this City is how many times I get panhandled.

ED: The biggest headache in this City is that no one has the plan or the wherewithal to do something for the homeless.

COLE VALLEY: That bleeding heart liberal I was nineteen, twenty, he's dead.

ED: No remnants?

COLE VALLEY: Fuck that, man. You live here long enough, you get wise. You and Michael Moore are so fucking clueless, you know that?

ED: Michael Moore doesn't speak for me, man.

COLE VALLEY: If I lived in any other city, I'd be a liberal. Here I'm a conservative. Anti-death penalty and I'm a conservative. This is the greatest fucking country in the world.

ED: I hear you.

COLE VALLEY: You know what Howard Stern says about Michael Moore? He says he's a left-wing Limbaugh with worse hygiene. [walking away]

If I was still a brash, choleric twenty-two, I would have beat the shit out of him. But not today. Let the guy walk away. Because one day, if he talks like that with the wrong person listening, his mouth is going to get him into some major trouble.

A Guest Column from Patti Thorn

[Because Mr. Champion has become temporarily unavailable due to the holidays, Return of the Reluctant turns over the rest of today's content to Patti Thorn of the Rocky Mountain News. Ms. Thorn has graciously offered to expand upon her previously expressed concerns within these trusted waters.]

Dear Motherfuckin' Santa: Goddam you and the reindeer you rode in on. Rudolph can lift his leg and piss on David Remnick's head for all I care. And while we're at it, let Graydon Carter choke on those Dunhills he's always sneaking into his office. I'm Condé Nasty, you son of a bitch. And don't you forget it!

I'm writing this open letter to you for three reasons. First, my Prozac prescription ran out. Since that thin girl behind the counter always wears a Santa hat, I figured that you were the one I should address.

Second, the Rocky Mountain News editor-in-chief has accused me of suffering from a rare apoplexy known to affect book critics. How dare he! Michiko may go a little crazy from time to time, Laura Miller may remain humorless and John Updike may very well be steeped in formal language. But, outside of Dale Peck, that doesn't make us any less important or any less sane! When I left the hospital shortly before I embarked on my journalistic career, I was given a Certificate of Sanity. You better believe I earned that thing, taking tests, mopping floors, getting in touch with my inner child. I stood on the dais next to the other young ladies jumping up and down in red robes. They may have filled the halls with their terrifying ululations. But I stood still, even when I felt the temptation within my solar plexus to howl to the seven winds. Their saliva oozed down their pendulous chins, Santa. But, oh no, not mine. I kept my reserve. The antidrool impulse inside me was impeccable. Months of telling myself that there was always something else to blame seemed to put things into perspective. I had a small paper napkin, something I had stolen from the kitchen long before. After carrying this napkin with me for six months, this final rite empowered me to use it. I wiped the corners of my mouth. I remained misty-eyed, yes, in light of the ritualistic transition to sanity. But other than this, my face was clean. Antiseptic. The man shook my hand, handed me my certificate, and said, "Go! Go, Young Patti! To the moutains, you shall find your destiny!" I replied, "Thank you, Uncle Ted. I will spend the rest of my time on this earth looking up." Well, Santa, you know where I am today.

I can't quite remember the third reason, but I'm pretty sure it involved you delivering some editorial assistant's head on a platter. I've always had a thing for Baptists named John.

In conclusion, books are troubling things. The words wend and blur when I stare at the page. And those publishers. Who do they think they are? Why does the newspaper pay me? Why do I read? Why do I write?

My therapist says that I should look within for answers. But why effect personal achievement when I can take out my frustrations on a small readership?

Sincerely,

A Perplexed Critic on the Edge,
Patti

On the Run

Move over, Ali (Muhammad, not Monica). MIT scientist Michael Hawley has created the largest book. And he has the Guinness credentials (the record, not the beer) to prove it. Bhutan: A Visual Odyssey Across the Kingdom is 5' X 7', 112 pages and costs $2,000 to produce. Hawley's charging $10,000, with the balance going to charity.

Madonna's interested in a Ph.D. I don't know what's more frightening: the idea that Madonna has intellectual pursuits or this photo. (via Bookslut) [UPDATE: Well, goddam. Maud reports it's a hoax! That's what I get for racing through the newswires in a hurry.]

Richard Kopley has tracked down an unexpected Hawthorne inspiration source: an anonymous novel entitled The Salem Belle.

Hilary Clinton: "'I love independent bookstores. I tried to go to as many of them as I could on this book tour. I had promised to try to go to the top markets and I'm slowly but surely checking them off.'' Funny. The Simon Says site seems to be down, but she sure seems to be hitting a lot of Barnes & Nobles.

[Insert your obligatory Moses/Rasputin/Unabomber/Nostradamus-Hussein comparison here. Ha ha.]

Heft, Hate, Outlines and Vanity

Looks like Vollman's got competition. Muhammad Ali's definitive life story weighs 75 pounds, runs 800 pages, costs £2,000, and includes over 3,000 photographs. The mammoth bio, however, is a team effort, with contributions by Norman Mailer and Tom Wolfe. However, Greatest of All Time does suffer from an unfortunate acronym.

The Bakersfield yokels are hoping to ban Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye from classrooms. Because anything dealing with sexual abuse and racism is, you know, "provocative."

Patrick O'Brian's unfinished 21st book in the Aubrey-Maturin series is being talked about for possible publication. O'Brian had an outline and a few chapters. But thankfully HarperCollins doesn't plan on hiring a ghostwriter.

Forget Zoe Trope and the Gen Y spokesperson fracas over at Moby Lives. Factor in vanity presses and there's plenty of speakers to go around, albeit unreadable ones. Mom and twelve year old are trying the self-publishing racket.

And is this headline the case of an overtaxed copy editor ready to slit his own throat because of all the Xmas hype?

Fact Checking Laura Miller's Ass

It's bad enough that Laura Miller can't refrain from mentioning films or television in her New York Times book pieces, but she's also ill-informed on the history of Peter Pan film adaptations. The "first live-action film" of Peter Pan actually came out in 1924. In fact, Kino issued it out on DVD not too long ago.

Bad Santa

Bad Santa is a beautiful movie. It's the kind of risk-taking, no-holds-barred razor held against a sacred cow that comes but once in a generation. I think Alexander Payne's going to be duking it out with Terry Zwigoff over who gets to fire the satirical howitzers.

Only someone foolish enough to buy in completely to the hypocrisy that is Xmas would hate it. If that's your thing, go see Elf instead. Bad Santa has at least five kicks to the crotch. It features an antihero who has no compunction about fucking heavy-set ladies in the Plus Size fitting room, but has problems being accused of "fornicating." It has an indelible image of Billy Bob Thornton and Tony Cox walking across a parking lot in slow-motion, Thornton with a bottle of bourbon and a cigarette. It includes John Ritter in a great role as a politically correct manager who was "against the Clinton impeachment." It has Bernie Mac as a man who cannot stop putting terrible things into his mouth. It has a sweet, pudgy kid who remains a hapless believer in the face of misery. It has Ajay Naidu from Office Space as a lunatic looking for a fight. It has one of the best dwarf roles seen in cinema since Even Dwarves Started Small. It features a woman who cries, "Fuck me Santa. Fuck me Santa," in the back of a car.

It is unapologetically dark. It will piss off the prissy. But, strangely enough, you'll come away feeling damned good about the human race. Bad Santa is probably one of the funniest films I've seen this year. Joe Bob says check it out.

Literary Grandson to Launch Unexpected Career

In response to the recent news that 25 year old John Buffalo Mailer, the youngest child of Norman Mailer, will be taken over the reins of High Times, Return of the Reluctant has learned that Ishmael Harris Bellow, the illegitimate grandson of novelist Saul Bellow (and little-known son of Adam Bellow), age 2, will become editor-in-chief of Playboy Magazine.

"We needed credibility," said original founder Hugh Hefner. "Someone in touch with the next generation's tastes."

The decision to hire Bellow came hot on the heels of other noted family involvements (Drew Barrymore's mom and Michelle Pfeiffer's sister, to name two pictorial collaborations). Magazine insiders report that the Bellow decision, not unlike the Mailer hire, is nothing less than a desperate attempt to boost sales of a magazine that has lost its cultural relevance.

"Hugh Hefner is the worst publisher of his generation," said Dale Peck, who then declared Playboy "homophobic" because it had refused to publish his stories.

"Goo goo ga!" replied Bellow, who then demanded to be burped and had two unpaid editorial interns close the door to his spacious Manhattan office.

Dale Peck Statistics

Number of times the word "gay" is mentioned in the profile:

Salon: 3
James Atlas's NYT Profile: 3
The Guardian: 2
Gawker: 0

Word Count of Profiles:

Salon: 2,629
James Atlas's NYT Profile: 4,123
The Guardian: 3,288
Gawker: 2,379

Comparatively, Approximate Word Counts for Classic Short Stories:

O. Henry, "The Gift of the Magi": 2,000
James Thurber, "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty": 2,050
Ray Bradbury, "A Sound of Thunder": 4,300
Flannery O'Connor, "A Good Man is Hard to Find": 6,200

A Sure Way to Keep Dale Peck from Manhattan: "For the next year I am working for Howard Dean or whatever Democrat gets the nomination or whenever Hillary decides to enter the race, I guess. And if a Democrat wins, I will be far more prone to stay, but if George W. Bush is reelected I think I really want to leave and just get the hell out of Dodge."

Dale Flexing His Wit : "I am not sure if you can print this. But they are a bunch of pussies."

If You Disagree With Peck, You're...: "ditch-dirty stupid" or "homophobic."

The James Atlas Memorial Brown Nose Generalization Award: "This really is a man writing, as the cliché has it, for his life: Domestic violence is a gift and postmodernism is the religion through which he interprets it."

Dubious Peck Prose Sample: Zoetrope, "Making Book": "'Fuck off!' I yelled at the TV in general and at Ace's ass in particular, but with the video paused and the television suddenly silent--there had been a bass track, courtesy of these two like totally obnoxious dudes who'd been next to us on the beach, but it disappeared when I paused the video--I could almost see my words carry past the television to my door, and then push on through to my mom at the top of the stairs."

Better Peck Prose Sample: Zoetrope, "Bliss": "The shapeless clouds, the crisp diamond lattice of the chain-link fence through which I saw them, the fat gate guard, his uniform stretched so taut across the gelid curves of his body that it seemed to cry out for the pierce of bullet or knife. Black eye-shaped puddles reflected the limestone walls of the prison and rendered them hollow, insubstantial, penetrable, until a car traveling the length of the parking lot spat grit into them, causing the walls to disappear momentarily. Then the water stilled, revealing the image of Shenandoah Manson. He was dressed in stiff jeans and a chambray shirt faded nearly white, the sleeves rolled up over arms nearly as faded, and etched by pale blue veins and razor-blade-and-Bic-ink tattoos of Jesus, Mary, and a snarling Ford pickup."

Slow Fade to Black

Jan Wong has some great tips on how to kill your journalistic career. "Try to come across as sympathetic, nice and non-threatening," she says to aspiring journalists. Wong apparently reads through hundreds of articles, looking for contradictions. That kind of preparatory work is fine. But Wong isn't applying her bum rush approach to sacred cows. Instead of going after potential contradictions within the story of a breast cancer survivor performing self-biopsies in Antarctica, Wong asked her subject about her troubled marital woes. And when a Beijing University student approached Wong for help in fleeing to the West, Wong turned the student over to the Communist Party.

And that's not all. After putting away her tape recorder and paper, Royal Bank CEO John Cleghorn confessed to Wong off the record that his wife had, at one point, left him. Wong used the quote anyway.

It's one thing to be a muckraker, asking the tough questions and exposing the hypocrisies within a subject. Rattling the chains is what good honest journalism is all about. But when trust means nothing, when one cannot distinguish between the interview environment and the off-the-record comments that subjects confess sotto voce (I've heard more than a few in my on-again, off-again work and, no, I ain't fessin'), then what's the point of journalism? In the long run, as more subjects catch whiff of Jan Wong's style, they'll be less likely to reveal anything or even present themselves for an interview.

This is exactly what happened to Rex Reed. Reed made a name for himself in the 1960s with frank, confessional pieces (if you can find it, the now out-of-print Do You Sleep in the Nude? includes some of these career-building interviews), even earning Tom Wolfe's seal of approval, before he humiliated Warren Beatty in Esquire. The Beatty interview (in name only) involved Reed writing a lengthy profile about trying to interview Beatty, using hearsay and unsubstantiated facts in an effort to sabotage him as a has-been, just as Bonnie & Clyde was to be released to the American public. It didn't work. Predictably, Reed's career drifted away from profiles, towards uneducated and flamboyant film reviews (case in point: read the end of this Roger Ebert Jurassic Park 3 review) -- all best avoided, unless you think the vapidity of People Magazine is sui generis. The Reed-Beatty "interview" is now regarded as a textbook example of dishonest journalism.

Of course, Wong's hypocrisy has had a few side effects. The article also notes that Wong can be found cowering from Margaret Atwood and Allan Fotheringham at Toronto writer functions. My guess is that in ten years' time, we'll find Wong replacing some major critic on a Canadian movie reviews program, before writing a column that nobody reads in a major Toronto newspaper.

More Voices

Now that the New York Times has brought it up, BBC Four has a designated place for author audio. You can find Kingsley Amis, Agatha Christie, Robert Graves, Vladimir Nabakov, George Bernard Shaw and Virginia Woolf. (And, yes, Woolf does sound like a schoolmarm.)

And here's China Miéville, offering a reading, an interview, and the correct pronunciation of his name.

The Voices of Authors

The New York Times (user: dr_mabuse, pw: mabse): "When A. A. Milne reads from 'Winnie-the-Pooh,' his creations sound like Victorian gents — soothing, paternal Victorian gents reading a bedtime story, it's true, but rather Victorian nonetheless.....Virginia Woolf is startling for a different reason. The voice that is so graceful and elegant on the page sounds deep and distressingly like that of an effete schoolmarm.....Arthur Conan Doyle is as crisp and straightforward as you'd expect Sherlock Holmes's creator to be, explaining how he decided to write a story in which, he says, 'science would take the place of chance.'....And although there is a crackling sound behind the 1890 recording of Tennyson reading 'The Charge of the Light Brigade,' it captures how well his sonorous reading suits the heroic attitude of the poem."

Incredibly, you can listen to a few samples of these recordings online. Doyle is, yes indeedy, beautifully crisp with a charming Scottish lilt. Florence Nightingale, who was recorded at age 70, is edgy and feisty, offering us a hint of the grand reformer she was early in life. And Edith Sitwell reads William Walton's "Man from a far countree" along with an orchestra, but she doesn't seem to know whether she should sing or read. And Edgar Wallace, who was the UK king of the mysteries during the 1920s, is more formal than you might expect for a man describing horrific behavior.

Putter Patter Silver Platter

Hugh Hefner plans to auction off his black books. Among the entries? "Big blonde from 'Wild Women of Wongo.'"

Brian Stillman remembers Hal Clement.

Stories from Eric Kraft at The Hamptons.

Life working at B&N (via Maud).

Sad news from Ohio: Almost half of the third-graders failed a reading test, with a wide gap in race. And in Scotland, half of the 14 year-olds failed a national writing test. Writing of an altogether different sort might be in the horizon for NYC subways.

And a comparative oldie, but a goodie: J.M. Coetzee's Nobel speech.

The Golden Scam

I don't have cable. Hell, aside from a DVD every now and then, I barely turn my television on. But Gary Dretzka's TV Barn column makes me wish I did have cable, if only for an hour. It seems that Trio's got sixty salacious minutes making the rounds. A modest tell-all ditty from When We Were Kings director Vikram Jayanti called The Golden Globes: Hollywood's Dirty Little Secret. The doc goes into length on how the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the junket whores behind the Golden Globes, is granted endless loot and, well beyond the shameful nod to Pia Zidora in 1982 and other dubious merits, the awards ceremony is inclined to favor young, dumb, and full of come mythos.

Jeffrey Wells has more on the subject: "With relatively few exceptions, the HFPA members are a bunch of eager-beaver pseudo-journalists (a fair portion of them write for publications in Germany and Japan) who smile much too broadly and get far too excited when celebrities are in the room. They're not ardent admirers of the art of motion pictures as much as people who appreciate huge bowls of tasty shrimp sitting on studio-supplied buffet tables. They're pigs who squeal on cue in order to flatter Hollywood and keep themselves feeding at the trough."

It's not unlike what seems to be going down in the literary world of late, at least as Choire Sicha reports it.

(It looks like there was some serendipity in finding the links, but Greencine Daily led me to Wells.)

Rictus in Training?

What disturbs me more than the mouth is that not one of his follicles is out of place. If ever there was a poster boy for pomade, Gavin Newsom is it. Too bad he couldn't straighten his tie though. But that could be the hard front lighting.

Nureyev By Subway

Who's Got the Biggest Balls of All? "Does one really need the perimeter of three subway seats to provide salvation for the sensitive seed?....Bizarre that the same boys who cringed at junior high school calisthenics are now exercising their manhood with the barbaric bravado of Baryshnikov." (via Maud, who has more to say on the subject).

The odd thing is that here in San Francisco, only the young gangsta wannabes seem to do this. But then the fact of the matter is that our subway cars are too crammed at rush hour to allow for this. But I suspect there's a correlation to the male need to read while on the crapper. (Oddly enough, while I've been known to read in the buff, I don't like the idea of reading as I defecate. Or shortly after.)

An Open Letter to Sara Bauer

Dear Young Woman Who Writes Snotty and Unfunny Open Letters for McSweeney's:

The first moment I read you, I knew you were the same. The same as all those other passive-aggressive tidbits they seem to publish over there. Here, in the midst of (not amidst?) these publishing conglomerates, was independent prose. Look at her relentless second-person stance! Look at the soft snark extant within the piece, hypocritically unchecked from Julavits and Vida, addressed to no one in particular! How convenient! My partially digested dinner went up my esophagus and out my mouth to you.

I know it's hard for you. Most McSweeney's writers are thirtysomething Donald Barthleme wannabes who wouldn't know funny if it bit them on the ass. I know you deal with wanting to get published, sans compensation, in this environment, and having to proffer the wonted generalizations. Your cowriters like you, but they receive the same rejection notices, because they really don't understand you. They've read the same books you've read, they continually revere people like Julie Orringer as sages ("It is extremely important to hang out with non-writers and be interested in things that have nothing to do with writing." Duh.), and fail to ponder the intellectual value of hunky authors and authoresses salivating over, rather than questioning seasoned veterans like Joan Didion.

You're lonely. Writing's a lonely racket. And you want to find someone who will publish you. But you've picked the wrong target, missy. That Chain Bookstore Worker's probably just doing her job, working close to minimum wage, and using any leverage she can get in the smiles department to get through the day, to deal with smug fucks like you, because she's quasi-literate at best and she'd like to read more. But there's that second job to get to.

The world, you see, isn't all about you after all. And should you ever publish a book, I will photocopy your little satire and distribute it amongst workers at Barnes & Noble and Borders. I will watch as they move your book away from a prime spot in the new books section and into some poorly lit corner. Because chain bookstore clerks are people and they do read. And I will laugh my ass off.

Sincerely,

Edward Champion

No More Politics Until March 1

Sure, I'm a bit disappointed. Derek, meanwhile, is ready to draw blood in a post entitled "Motherfucker." I should remind Derek that in the 1999 runoff, Ammiano lost to Brown by 40,000 votes. Gonzalez, meanwhile, tonight lost by a mere 10,000 votes. Sure, it sucks. But this is progress. By all reports, the Gonzalez campaign was disorganized. The Newsom folks hit upon the brilliant idea of victory by absentees. And the voter turnout in the Bayview/Hunters Point, Visitation Valley, and Ingleside areas was nothing short of abysmal, because neither of the candidates wanted to recruit the downtrodden. But don't listen to me. Look at the precinct breakdown on the SF Department of Elections page.

But, really, that's enough about politics until March 1, 2004. This blog, in its return, has become polluted with simplistic liberal sentiments within its slightly more informed opinions on literature and the like. And who needs more of that? It's about as unpalatable as suffering through another warblog. As such, I shall make every effort not to mention politics until things heat up in the inevitable Dean-Bush showdown next year. You deserve better than my chiaroscuro.

Perhaps I should mention that I'm casually drunk right now.

Viva Gonzalez?

She was across the street, curly blonde locks tucked beneath a snow white cap, flowing down her shoulders, bright teeth matching the hue of the hat on a cold rainy night. It was just close to poll's close. She raised her arm and accosted me.

"Excuse me, do you know where the polling place is?"

"Who are you voting for?" I asked.

"Gonzalez."

"I'll personally escort you there myself."

But, hey, I would have done it even if she was voting for Newsom. She was a cutie. No. Get that boat back into rational rivulets. She was a voter.

There aren't election results up yet, but it's looking pretty good for Gonzalez. I've learned that Gavin Newsom sent somewhere in the area of 150,000 abentee applications to potential voters. This despite a Clinton and a Gore endorsement. I've never heard of a candidate ever resorting to anything like this.

But just to be safe, I've conducted an informal poll among people who are, what I would call, traditional Democrats.

The publisher of a major magazine: "Gonzalez. Begrudgingly."

A Gore voter with a pragmatic reactionary tilt: "Well, I had to vote for Matt after eight years of Brown."

Even a person who's normally apolitical confessed that he's voting for Gonzalez.

Gonzalez has a momentum here that Ammiano didn't have back in '99. It was a hell of a coup to get people to write Tom Ammiano's name onto the ballot and get him in the runoff. But the minute the runoff went down, momentum shifted. People became painfully aware of Ammiano's limitations and were willing to let the pragmatic Democrats west of Twin Peaks have the final say.

But not this time. The Financial District signs are split evenly between Gonzalez and Newsom. Pragmatism has shifted. People are hungry for something new. Different. Honest. I suspect the fact that Newsom has never appeared in a photograph with his hair tousled in any way has something to do with it. What were the Newsom people thinking?

I'm amazed to say that it may actually happen tonight. 82% of San Francisco voted against the recall. We do things differently here. And we could be the first city in the United States with a Green Party mayor. If it does go down, I'll be very proud to be a San Franciscan. Very proud to be part of a movement that tells the nation, "Politics doesn't have to be an unctuous business. Sometimes, under special circumstances, you can have results."

UPDATE: We lost. But it was fun ride. Tim Redmond calculates that Newsom spent $34 a vote to Gonzalez's $4. It's still a respectable showing.