The Blog-O-Rama

Super Bowl Village

2012-01-29T00:30:00.000-05:00

Super Bowl numerals on Monument Circle

Today we headed downtown to take a look at the Super Bowl Village and the related activities that have been set up in preparation for the World Championship of All Football—and to get in a good walk, which, for various reasons, we have not had the chance to do for awhile. To prepare for all of the traffic downtown, of both the pedestrian and vehicular varieties, I took no special precautions whatsoever. I took the same route—straight out Michigan Street from our house, and then turn north on Park Avenue and park the car, for free, anywhere along the sidewalk between Michigan Street and Mass Ave.

From there, it’s a bit of a hike down to where the Super Bowl Village is set up along Georgia Street between whatever this week’s name is for where the Pacers play on the east end and the Manningdome on the west end; but we were in the mood for a good walk, so it wasn’t a trouble. There are also a number of concert stages, the giant Super Bowl numerals up on Monument Circle, and—of course—the zip line. We bypassed the NFL Experience that is set up inside the convention center, because that would have cost $70 for the three of us to get into.

32 NFL teams, 32 specially-painted IndyCars

Those faint black lines at the top center are the four zip lines over Capitol Avenue. The convention center is on the left.

In addition to all of the NFL-related activities going on—which mostly involved just walking around and people-watching—there were food trucks lined up for most of the afternoon along one quarter of Monument Circle (and a tiny sliver of Market Street), which is another good reason to come downtown for Super Bowl activities. I’ve mostly just read about all of the food trucks that have started to appear in Indianapolis, and I always have to work on Fridays, which means that I have not yet had a chance to get to one of the food truck frenzies for First Friday (heh) in the parking lot of the Murat. The only food truck fare I had had before today was West Coast Tacos and the NY Slice, and I tried both of those at the Irvington Halloween Festival (though not in the same year).

Today we tried food from the Scratch truck; and lest you think noshing on food purchased from a vehicle powered by a generator is daft, here’s some of what they had on the menu today: The Scratch Burger, with a third pound of ground beef, arugula, gorgonzola, and bacon marmalade; Green Chile Mac and Cheese, with roasted poblano peppers, red bell peppers, red onions, sweet corn, and pepper jack cheese; and Texas-style chili (no beans) topped with cheese and onions. And those were just the things we tried. Check out the magic internets for the rest of the menu that they will be serving all throughout the Super Bowl period.

Amy and Jackson took turns tackling each other on some replica field turf that had been installed over part of Capitol Avenue, below the zip line; and while they were doing that, I watched people sailing down the zip line—including one guy who held onto the harness in such a way that his head was actually pointed toward the ground while he zipped. (The actual turf that they were playing on was surprisingly photogenic.) I would have liked to try the zip line, but I had no interest in waiting in a line that I had heard took up to six hours to get through.

Indiana: Working Hard to Be the Most Ignorant State in the Union!

2012-01-26T22:49:00.000-05:00

Indiana House Bill 1073, which would have cleared the way for meaningful mass transit for at least Marion and Hamilton Counties, went down in committee, 10-11, because of right-to-work language included in the bill. It is, of course, no secret that Republicans are against labor. Speaker Brian Bosma, a disgrace of a politician, has rammed right-to-work down the throats of Hoosiers who don’t want it (like the guy in the original The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo who raped Lisbeth’s mouth), but that’s not enough for these right-wing monsters in the Statehouse. They can’t just have union-busting right-to-work. They also have to destroy the possibility of mass transit by including right-to-work language. How much more embarrassing can this incredibly backward, hilljack state get?

Answer: Quite a bit. Now the mouth-breathing Retardlicans want to pass a bill that would allow the teaching of creationism in science classes. That’s sort of like teaching woodworking during band class. Earth to right-wing, conservative, Republican retards: CREATIONISM IS NOT SCIENCE! It is no way, shape, or form, science. It is a belief system—period, end of report, next case.

Would you believe that I am actually not fundamentally opposed to the teaching of creationism in schools? I’m really not. I don’t believe in it, of course, because it is nonsense (creationism is about as valid as saying that yellow and blue make twelve); but I am not opposed to its being taught—in religion or philosophy classes, where it belongs. It’s so embarrassing to be a citizen of Indiana right now. The people who run this state, and the monkeys who vote for them, are so fucking ignorant.

Click here to find your state legislator. Let them know that you support House Bill 1073, and that you oppose Senate Bill 89.

Right-To-Work

2012-01-24T14:14:00.001-05:00

So I got this e-mail from MoveOn today, with a link to a petition that one of its members had put together. The petition opposes the new right-to-work legislation with which the majority Republicans are currently tyrannizing the minority in the Indiana House of Representatives. I’m not 100% sure where I stand on right-to-work (despite being married to someone who belongs to a union), and I’d like to read more about it, though without any of the spin that I imagine I would get from the “sources” on each side. The Republicans support the measure, which means it’s probably bad, but I don’t get the impression that it’s like the social conservative issues, which are pretty much black and white and about which Republicans and conservatives are completely incorrect.

There was a Contact link on the web page where you actually signed the petition, so I sent an e-mail to the guy who set it up, asking if he might point me in the direction of some good information. Hopefully I will get more of a response from him—read, any kind of response at all—than I have gotten from various Republicans I have contacted in the last few months, including John Gregg, Mike Pence, and Cindy Kirchhofer. (And yes, I am well aware that, being a MoveOn person, he is likely to steer me toward left-leaning sources. As long as it’s not cherry-picked studies from either of the sides directly involved in the process, or the shady fund-raising groups that they have in their employ, I don’t really care where it comes from.)

This is yet another minor attempt at civic action on my part. I know it’s not much, and I know that Indiana will never be cured of its conservative sickness until all of the liberals and moderates stand up and make their voices heard—which, yes, involves more than just signing internet petitions and writing the occasional incendiary blog post that almost no one reads—but right now, this is pretty much all that I can do. It’s not enough, and I know that, and it’s there in my head to work on it more; but there are a lot of other things in my head that I’m also trying to work on, and there just isn’t enough time in the day for all of those things.

The Jeopardy! Online Test

2012-01-18T21:02:00.001-05:00

I finally signed up to take the Jeopardy! online test, and it starts in less than four minutes. I always used to hem and haw and make excuses about why I never did this, but once I switched over to the fancy high-speed interwebs - and realized that you did not HAVE to take the test on the date/time specified for your time zone (which was always Tuesday night for me, a night when I always have to work) - I decided that I was pretty much out of excuses. Now it's under 90 seconds until the test starts, so here we go.

And nine minutes later, the test is over. I looked at the website this morning - okay, this afternoon - and read that the test would only take about ten minutes, for 50 fill-in-the-blank questions. That turned out to be the case, and even though I knew it was going to be quick, it seemed to go a lot quicker. I had hoped to keep track in my head of all the questions I knew I got right, but I wasn't more than about ten questions into the test before that idea went out the window. I didn't get an answer typed in before the time was up for two of the questions, and there are at least two that I know for sure that I got wrong.

I don't imagine that I will actually get on the show, but I guess it was about time for me to at least take the test and have a go at it. They used to have a practice test on their website, and I took that once and got 30-ish right out of 50. The website said before the test that you generally needed to get around 35 questions right to have a chance to get on the show. I know I got quite a few right tonight, but I don't think it was 35. I couldn't even get 35 when it was practice and there was no pressure to get the answer typed in before the time ran out. Oh well...

Carnage

2012-01-16T02:08:00.000-05:00

I’m still in the early stages of parenting, and Jackson isn’t yet to the point in life when much of what he does each day is separate from either me or Amy; and so with that in mind it’s hard for me to get much of a grasp on whether or not society as a whole needs a gentle reminder that older kids live in a world that is almost entirely separate from that of their parents. I have no doubt that I will need to be reminded of that truism one of these days, and when that day comes, I hope to be able to reach for a copy of this film on DVD—or to be able to stream it from my iCloud account, or from Netflix, or whatever—so that I can laugh like an idiot at what short-sighted clowns grownups and parents can be when they lose sight, even for a moment, of that seemingly basic fact.

Carnage opens with a playground scene shown in its long view, and a developing argument between two young boys. They begin to swat and slap at each other, and then one of the boys picks up from the ground a stick so long that it might as well be called a branch; and with this weapon, he strikes the other boy across the face. Fight over, fade to black. The next scene—the second of what will be a total of four scenes in the film—opens in the apartment of Michael and Penelope Longstreet, with Penelope sitting at her computer and composing a letter—a statement, rather—expressing her and her husband’s view of what happened between their son, Ethan, and Zachary, the boy with the stick from the previous scene. Thanks to Zachary, Ethan has cuts and bruises on his face, and has lost two teeth.

Two incisors, his mother specifies. Not necessarily because incisors are any more important than other teeth—but mostly just because Penelope Longstreet (Jodie Foster) likes to specify things. Zachary’s father, Alan, takes issue with Penelope’s description of Zachary as being “armed with a stick,” and eventually gets her to acquiesce to using the phrase “carrying a stick.” Once the parties involved—Penelope and Michael (John C. Reilly) and Alan and Nancy Cowan (Christoph Waltz and Kate Winslet, respectively) are satisfied with the statement, Penelope prints a copy and hands it to the Cowans—specifying, of course, that this just represents the statement of the Longstreets, and that she expects a statement from the Cowans to follow in due course.

Other than the long shots of the boys in the opening scene (and later in the closing scene), these are the only cast members who are actually seen on screen. Consider for a moment the filmmaking pedigree here contained: Roman Polanski—thrice nominated for and once awarded the Best Director Oscar—co-wrote and directed this picutre, and he brought in Foster, Reilly, Waltz, and Winslet to act in it—a group of actors with four Oscars between them. And the four of them (plus the crew) are going to occupy this single apartment set for the next eighty-odd minutes. This is one of the reasons that adapting stage plays to the big screen can be difficult. In his review of the film, Roger Ebert notes that plays structured in this way are especially well-suited for the stage; and then he goes on to say that he is “not sure it called out to be filmed.”

I disagree wholeheartedly, and for a couple of reasons. The first is that a stage play is likely to be seen by far fewer people than a feature film—even a fairly small feature film such as this. That’s unfortunate, especially in this case, because there is some surprisingly funny social commentary that takes place in the film’s short running time (80 minutes). A lot of that commentary is directed toward the role that cell phones play in most people’s lives, how ridiculous are the people who are tied to those goofy devices. I’m completely in favor of anything that helps people to understand and treat their addictions to their cell phones. The film also comments on other material goods, and to a lesser extent on the lifestyles of people who care too much about material goods.

The second reason that I disagree with Mr. Ebert is because of the kind of film that this is. For the most part, you have four people, in one apartment, talking to each other. You know—actors acting the lines of a solid screenplay. Things that you have to think about a little bit. No explosions. Sure, some of the dialogue feels a little bit theatrical, and the characters are exaggerations; but the film was shot in real time, making it necessary for the cast learn all of their lines in one go, both of which are practically unheard of in the movie world. (Check out the production notes here.)

So what happens in the film? The four parents talk over what is to be done about the mess their kids have gotten themselves into. Alan, a lawyer, constantly excuses himself to take calls on his cell phone; Penelope tries to be all new-age parent-y, wanting the boys to get together and talk about their feelings, while she does an increasingly poor job of keeping a lid on her nearly boiling rage at what has happened to her son; and Michael and Nancy, at first, attempt to run interference for their respective spouses. Then they break out the Scotch. Watching these actors portray the actions and reactions of their characters is a real treat, especially as the film progresses and the dynamics of the conversations evolve and opinions and allegiances undergo both subtle and not-so-subtle changes. The ending is especially satisfying (other than the extremely silly and entirely out of place penultimate scene), the back end of the frame employed in the opening scene, which, when juxtaposed with what goes on between the bookend secnes, puts a pretty funny perspective on the way parents behave with respect to their kids.

Deep Thoughts #71 - Special Topical GOP DOA Edition

2012-01-16T01:14:00.001-05:00

Instead of a reasonable person, the ignorant Republicans (redundant, yes) would rather nominate a weasel who’ll say anything to get elected.

Verdell Jones III Gets Booed? Really?!

2012-01-14T01:41:00.000-05:00

I couldn’t bring myself to read the article in my e-mail about IU’s loss to Minnesota last night until just now, when I got home from work; and what I found when I read the article is that Verdell Jones III was apparently booed by the fans last night at the Assembly Hall. That ain’t even close to cool. Sure, dude had an off night—maybe the mother of all off nights—and didn’t score a point. The article says that Jones III got booed when he came back into the game with less than a minute to play—how’s that supposed to make him feel when it’s crunch time and he’s a senior whose best moment of the night might be the last sixty seconds of the game?

I didn’t see the game, or even listen to it on the radio, so I don’t know how the whole thing went down, nor what Jones III might have had the chance to do in that last minute; but I just don’t see how you boo the guy, especially when the game is close and you still have the chance to win. The season is barely half over, and this remarkable Indiana team has already given us so much more than even the biggest believers thought was possible when the season started. They hung the first loss of the season on then-#1 Kentucky, on what might have been the most dramatic shot in Indiana basketball since Keith Smart drained a baseline runner to win the national championship over Syracuse in 1987; they gutted out a win over then-#2 Ohio State, to become the first Indiana team ever to beat both a #1 and a #2 in the same season; and they’ve even done the little things that aren’t so sexy, like winning road games—something they did not do very often during Tom Crean’s first three seasons as Indiana’s head coach.

They play hard every night, but this is the Big Ten, kids; and for all of their achievements, this remains an Indiana team that is, in many ways, dramatically overachieving. They’re going to have their off nights. They’re going to lose games. Did I mention this is the Big Ten, maybe the deepest conference in the country? It also needs to be noted that Minnesota, despite the fact that they had not won a league game before last night, lost their first three league games by a combined 16 points—and Illinois needed two overtimes to beat the Gophers, in Champaign. Minnesota only lost to Michigan, in Ann Arbor, by 5. They were 12-1 before opening league play, and that included back-to-back wins over Virginia Tech and USC. Much as I hate to see Indiana lose, Minnesota was due for that first league win—and Indiana was probably due for a loss at home.

And there will be more losses. Some of them will be at home. Indiana has come a long way from the rock bottom they found themselves in after the Kelvin Sampson tornado blew through; and Tom Crean has done what can only be described as an amazing job picking up the pieces and bringing Indiana basketball back to national prominence, where it had stood proudly for so many years under Bob Knight; but there is still a long way to go, and there are going to be bumps along the way, off nights for everyone, from seniors like Jones III to freshmen like Cody Zeller.

But don’t boo them. These guys deserve way better than that, especially the guys like Verdell Jones III, who have been around for the entirety of the post-Sampson era. It’s those guys who have played hard, and fought, and hustled to get Indiana back to being the kind of place where kids like Cody Zeller want to come to play basketball. He could have followed his brother Tyler to North Carolina, one of those programs that never seems to have an off year. My buddy Scott likes to say of those kinds of programs that they don’t rebuild—they reload. I don’t know if Indiana is ever going to be that kind of program again, but thanks to guys like Jones III, who kept on fighting even when the losses were coming in droves, Indiana is…well…we’re back, baby!

Deep Thoughts #70

2012-01-14T00:21:00.001-05:00

BREAKING NEWS! France loses AAA credit rating! President Obama in danger of losing support of those self-identified as Parisian-Republicans!

Mama Irma Restaurant

2012-01-05T04:31:00.000-05:00

Today we had lunch at yet another new establishment in Fountain Square, Mama Irma Restaurant. Just northwest of Prospect and Shelby on Virginia Avenue, the restaurant is small but comfortable, the walls a bright, but not overhwleming, yellow. Someone forgot to give owner Hilda Cano a copy of the memo that says any new restaurant in Fountain Square has to ooze with a vaguely pretentious air of trendiness. I’m not sure if it was the bright colors on the walls, the minimal decor, or the way that our server knew the menu cold, including pronunciations; but something about the place was charming right down to the ground, in a “where everybody knows your name” kind of way.

The restaurant features the cuisine of Peru, about which I knew practically nothing before we sat down to eat. I don’t know much more about it now, except that the menu is long on rice and noodle dishes, fried seafood, and a ceviche that the two press reviewers who wrote about the restaurant in NUVO and the Star couldn’t get enough of. I had the Arroz con Pollo, described as “cilantro base rice, paired with chicken, and vegetables.” Amy had the Camarones al Ajillo, “sautéed shrimp in special Peruvian garlic sauce, served with fried Yucca root.” We also got an order of fried plantains to start, though that and the entrées came out together, after what felt like sort of a long time, given that we were the only two diners in the restaurant, other than a couple that was already on dessert.

The plantains were tender and sweet, but not as crispy as some, and a little bit on the soft and oily side. That could be the way they eat them in Peru (though Amy’s fried Yucca root, nearly a kissing cousin to the french fried potato, was quite crispy), but it could also be an indication that the temperature of the fat they were fried in wasn’t high enough. A minor quibble, though, as they provided a nice counterpoint to the savory, earthy flavor of my chicken and rice. I wasn’t sure I could taste cilantro the way I was expecting to taste cilantro; but once again, that could just be the Peruvian style, and the fact that I’ve never experienced it before to know what it tastes like. Whatever I was tasting, it was very good, and very hot (not spicy, but hot like it had just come out of the pan or the oven), and very satisfying. Amy’s shrimp also were very good, their garlic seasoning a bit more familiar.

Toward the end of the meal, the owner, Hilda Cano, came out of the kitchen and said hello both to us and to the other couple, who were finishing their dessert and settling up. She addressed the gentleman by saying, “You’re back!” He had apparently been in a day or two earlier, and had come back because he had to have some more of the ceviche, which he said he had been craving and could not get anywhere else. It was not the sort of thing you would have experienced in a chain restaurant, where the manager wears a hands-free communication device and makes the rounds asking how everything is only because the corporate policy says he’s supposed to. He doesn’t really care what you think of your meal, only that you finish quickly so he can turn the table; and, of course, chain restaurants do not have actual owners—never mind owners who are actually in the kitchen cooking the food that you eat.

Fountain Square has so much going for it in terms of food that you could eat one meal a day at a different independent restaurant in the neighborhood, and it would be going on a fortnight before you had to repeat yourself—maybe even longer than that. I’m not actually keeping score. Go all the way back up Virginia Avenue into downtown proper—with a side trip up College Avenue to hit Iaria’s and the Milano Inn, and you could well go a month without eating at the same place twice, and without eating at a chain place at all.

And I was mostly kidding when I made that crack about being too trendy earlier. I’ve only gotten that vibe at one place in Fountain Square, and the food was so good that it wound up not bothering me. Most of the places are comfortable and kitschy and historical; and Mama Irma Restaurant totally gets the neighborhood vibe. Run, don’t walk, yo.

1058 Virginia Avenue

423-2421

www.discoverfountainsquare.com/merchant.cfm?id=270

Deep Thoughts #69 - Special Topical Strategy Failure Edition

2012-01-03T00:59:00.002-05:00

I’m glad that Bill Polian is unemployed, but now they need to start breaking up the Bible Study Club by firing Pudgy Dungy—er, Jim Caldwell.

Deep Thoughts #68 - Special Topical Strategy Failure Edition

2012-01-03T00:54:00.002-05:00

If Bill Polian has to hock his Super Bowl ring for beer money he should give Rex Grossman first dibs since he owes half of it to him anyway.

Accidents & Postcards #3

2011-12-31T00:44:00.000-05:00

I had this grand plan of getting up today and getting some stuff done around the house—a little bit of cleaning, take some recycling in—and then going out to take a walk around downtown to take a look at the progress on the last few legs of the Cultural Trail, along Washington Street and down Virginia Avenue toward Fountain Square. I also wanted to take a look at Georgia Street to see how that was progressing toward the pedestrian plaza they are envisioning for the Super Bowl.

But it was raining this afternoon when I got up, and it kept raining for most of the afternoon while I puttered around the house and tried to do a little bit of writing; and then around mid-afternoon it looked like it was going to clear up…sort of…so I started to get ready to go out, and put a bunch of recycling in the car, and then headed for the recycling center, which is just down the street. I dropped all of that stuff off, got paid for the aluminum cans, and then headed down to the Super Target in Southport for a few miscellaneous items. I narrowly avoided getting off of Southport Road onto 65 north when I saw some kind of traffic jam that went as far north as I could see from where I was—and as far south, too. Every bit of 65 that I could see from the Southport Road bridge was bumper to bumper, and stopped. I wound up taking back roads up to downtown and got started on my walk around five o’clock.

I parked on Park Avenue between Michigan Street and Mass Ave, one of the few places left downtown where you can still park for free at any time, and then headed for the library to take back a CD that had been with a book that Amy took back the other day. We had listened to the CD one night and forgotten to put it back in the book, so Amy asked me to take it back for her while she and Jackson were in Florida; but the library was closed by the time I got there, so that will have to wait for another day. Then I headed for the South Bend Chocolate Company on Monument Circle for a cup of coffee, and then I got the walk started properly.

There was a Pacers game tonight, so there were people out and about in the Wholesale District, having dinner and making their way toward whatever the arena the Pacers play in is called this week, and it was nice to walk around downtown at night when there were lots of other people milling about. It’s been a long time since I’ve done that, and I had almost forgotten how vibrant our downtown can be when there are events taking place. I can only imagine what it’s going to be like at the end of January, when everyone and their mother is downtown for the Super Bowl. The new plaza on Georgia Street, however, is pretty much just a walkway right now. I guess there will be more going on during the Super Bowl, but for now it’s just another place to walk. I went from there toward Virginia Avenue to check out the progress on the Cultural Trail, but then I changed my mind once I got to the sort-of three way intersection of Washington, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. With the sun down, it was getting colder in a hurry, and it’s a long way down Virginia Avenue to Fountain Square—and then back again. Amy and I had seen part of the Virginia Avenue leg of the Cultural Trail in its nearly-completed state when we ate at Siam Square for her birthday, earlier this month. Driving home, I observed that much of that leg of the trail was complete in Fountain Square itself, and in the downtown section—but that whatever they were going to do with it where it passed over the interstate still had much work to be done.

So instead of embarking on that long walk, I went up Pennsylvania Street and headed back toward the car; and it turned out to be fortuitous that things turned out that way, because as I was walking up Pennsylvania Street, I saw one of the 46 for XLVI murals on the south wall of the Summit Realty building at 241 North Pennsylvania (across the street from the courthouse). It was dark, and my blood was pumping from the walk, and I was feeling good—and then I saw the painting, of one guy in a hat playing the piano, and another guy sitting nearby with what looked like a cup of coffee.

Though the plaque on the building describing the mural proved my first thought incorrect, the painting made me think of what it might have been like in one of those old speakeasies, in the Jazz Age. I got a very Midnight in Paris kind of vibe, like a car was going to pull up next to me and Scott Fitzgerald would lean out and invite me to come have a drink with him and Zelda. Obviously, that did not happen; but I was headed toward Mass Ave, and I knew of a few places up that way where I could keep the feeling of that vibe going.

As I got further away from the Wholesale District, the sounds and footsteps of people out and about with the Pacers game on their minds became fainter, and after awhile it was just me out on the sidewalk, and I turned up Mass Ave and headed toward Agio, which has been closed for awhile now; and even though it has been closed now for some time, it looks almost as though you might be able to unlock the doors and get right to work serving dinner. You’d have to sweep out the leaves that have blown into the outdoor seating section, but all of tables inside are set with plates and folded napkins and silverware, as though the staff had prepped the place for the next day’s service before leaving one night, and then simply failed to come in the next day. It’s vaguely creepy, and reminds me of the way Stephen King describes one of the towns in ‘Salem’s Lot other than the eponymous one—a town that I think was called Momson, where it looked as though the people had just up and left one day, with dinner still on the table.

Then I ducked into the alley behind the Chatham Tap restaurant, an alley that is actually a tiny part of the Cultural Trail. It’s designed for people to walk on, but I would not have been surprised at all if there had been a car back there…the one with Scott and Zelda in it. Alas—again—it was not the case; but I was awfully glad that I had gone ahead and taken the walk that I had almost decided not to. It wasn’t the best day for a walk, but it was still pretty good for the penultimate day in December. Had it been as cold this December as it was last December, the storm that passed through today would have left several inches of snow on the ground, and I would certainly not have been out for a walk in that at night.

You can click here to check out information on those Super Bowl murals at the website of the Arts Council of Indianapolis. They have been painted by both local and national artists, and though they have gone up all around downtown only because of the fact that we are hosting the Super Bowl, they will remain as beautiful and amazing public art in our city for years after the Super Bowl craziness has passed. I have seen only a few of them, and I don’t intend to make a checklist and spend a day tracking down all of them. If I did that, I would miss the beautiful accidents like the one that led me to the “Pennway” mural this evening; and that’s one of the things I like most about walking around, both downtown and here in Irvington. I never know where or when I am going to be inspired by what I see or what happens.

The Evolution of Bob Kravitz

2011-12-30T00:15:00.000-05:00

I didn’t like Bob Kravitz when he first started writing a sports column for the Indianapolis Star. (I also don’t remember how long ago it was, but it was awhile. I’m pretty sure it was before they were assimilated by Gannett, back when the Star was as respectable as it was possible to be for a paper run by ultraconservative hillbillies.) I seem to recall his writing as being sort of mean-spirited and sarcastic (not unlike my own sometimes, but remember this was many years ago, and my awareness of self has been a long time incubating), and I got the feeling—I think—that he didn’t much like us. (Back then, I would have been filled with faux pride for Indiana. No longer, of course. Conservatives and other limited people probably feel right at home in a silly place like Indiana; but for anyone even slightly more evolved than that, the place is stifling.)

But Mr. Kravitz’s writing has evolved, as it was wont to do over time; my self-awareness and my thinking have both evolved, too; and I have come to find that I actually agree with some of the things that he writes. He once took the time to write a whole column about the way he writes, and why he says some of the abrasive things that he says. The bottom line was that, even though he was mainly a sports writer, part of his job was also to sell newspapers; and that meant that he would often write things that were designed almost or entirely to get a reaction—to get someone to buy the paper. I like that he copped to that, and I’m stunned that the paper let him get away with it.

And so I wonder how a Bob Kravitz column about the game Indiana lost to Michigan State last night would have read all those years ago. You have to factor out certain things, of course, like the fact that, all those years ago, Bob Knight was still the coach at Indiana. He was disliked as much as he was liked, especially by those possessing no affinity toward Indiana University, and its basketball program in particular. These days, however, Tom Crean is the coach at Indiana, and it would appear that he is genuinely liked and respected across the board. It would have been easy for Mr. Kravitz to be snide toward Indiana under Mr. Knight, and not so much for him to be snide toward Indiana under Mr. Crean—especially given the remarkable amount of progress that Indiana made in just its first twelve games this year.

The column in today’s paper, however, was not at all snide—no trying to sell papers here, just an honest look at what happened last night at the Breslin Center in East Lansing; and what happened was that Indiana got beat. It was the first loss for a much-improved Indiana team, on the road against a Michigan State team that had won 11 straight after dropping their first two games of the season to North Carolina and Duke—not exactly cupcakes. Mr. Kravitz pointed out things that Indiana has been doing well all season, but which they did not do well last night, including free throws, three point shooting, and getting production out of freshman phenom Cody Zeller.

And this was another one of those tests for an Indiana team that has not had much to brag about the last few years. So far this year, they have managed to obliterate cupcakes in Bloomington, stay competitive in games where they don’t dominate, win road games against respectable teams, and play hard and stay in the game with a ranked opponent at home. The icing on the cake was that remarkable win against Kentucky, on Christian Watford’s last-second three point shot. The Hoosiers faced those challenges—and won them all. What they had not faced so far this season, before last night (and with apologies to N.C. State fans), was a road game against a genuinely good team; and it’s the one hurdle they could not clear. Mr. Kravitz is correct, however, when he says that “this group is for real.”

Mr. Kravitz had a column about Purdue’s Robbie Hummel, earlier this year, that I also enjoyed. (I think I may have written about that in one of my NaNoWriMo warm-up posts.) I don’t know if the guy has mellowed with age or what; maybe it’s just that he genuinely loves sports and is inspired by what’s going on with Indiana and Purdue basketball. He’s also written some good columns about what has gone wrong with the Colts this season, and he tends to be critical of Bill Polian, which I totally support. (Bill Polian tried to use some expired passes once, and got pissy with me when I said that he couldn’t use them. Here’s one of the biggest big-shots in the NFL, and he gets pissy over twenty bucks worth of expired passes. Really? I wish I could say that he just accepted what I said and went on about his business, but like most customers these days, he just kept griping and complaining, like a child, until I let him use the passes. I don’t know who coined the phrase “the customer is always right,” but that person clearly never had to deal with actual customers. They have signs on the wall at a Jimmy John’s sub shop that I go to sometimes that say, “The customer is usually right.” [Emphasis mine.] I think even that is giving them too much credit. Based on my experience, customers are—maybe—a percentage point or two slightly more evolved than cattle. And usually wrong.)

But I digress. If you haven’t read Bob Kravitz in awhile, go check out the column. If you had formed a negative opinion of him from his early work at the paper formerly known as the Star, you might be surprised by this one.

Englished, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Girls with Tattoos

2011-12-29T03:11:00.000-05:00

When it was first announced that an English version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was going to be made, I was irritated, without being asked to be, on behalf of all of the Swedish people who did such fine work to bring to release both the novel and the original Swedish film. I thought the making of an English version of the film was just a stupid sap to the weak people who refuse to see movies that they “have to read,” and I made up my mind not to see it. And then I was talking to Heather at work one day last week, and after stating my position on the movie, she got around to asking me what about translations of novels, from their original languages into English?

It’s not exactly the same thing, but it got me thinking. I can’t read any language besides English, other than a little bit of French—but not enough to sit down with a novel in its original French and be able to get anything out of it. There is no way that I would ever be able to consume Don Quixote or Crime and Punishment or One Hundred Years of Solitude if it were not for the translations of those novels from their original languages into English; but I can enjoy foreign films without knowing the original language because of two things: subtitles; and the fact that I can see what is happening on the screen.

I knew in the back of my mind that there were movies I had seen and enjoyed that had been re-made into English versions after the original foreign versions had already come out, including The Birdcage, The Departed, Vanilla Sky (yes, I liked it; and yes, I know that I’m the only one who did), Unfaithful, and Twelve Monkeys. Then I searched Google for films in English that had been adapted from foreign language films, and I found a list on Wikipedia that contained quite a few films that I had enjoyed without ever having had any idea that they were originally foreign films. That list includes Mixed Nuts (once again, I am aware that I am the only one who liked this film), Three Men and a Baby, True Lies, Scent of a Woman (it’s possible that I knew this one had been Englished, but I can’t be sure of that), and—hang on—The Lion King.

That was about the point when I realized that my argument wasn’t going to hold up. That there is a film in English that was originally released in a foreign language is not in itself a bad thing; but something was still bothering me about it, about this particular film. The novels have been ginormous bestsellers for years, so why did it take Hollywood so long to decide that they wanted to make movies out of them? Or perhaps more to the point, why did it take the relative success of the three Swedish films to make Hollywood realize that they should make English versions? (According to Box Office Mojo, the original The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is the 24th highest-grossing foreign language film of all time. The two Swedish sequels are 30th and 62nd, respectively.)

You know, though, the more I think about it, the more I think that the argument is completely falling apart. Filming of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo commenced in early 2008, and the third film had been released in Europe before the end of 2009. For those of you scoring at home, that’s three films in less than two years—a fairly torrid pace, even by Woody Allen standards. The first novel was not published in the United States until late 2008, after filming on the first installment had already begun. Anecdotal evidence suggests that Paramount was contemplating a film adaptation shortly after the publication of the first novel in the United States; but filming on the English version did not ultimately commence (with the film now at Sony, not Paramount) until late 2010.

I am going to assume that there is material out there that can shed some light on why it took so long for American studios to get around to making their version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo; but I’m not going to take the trouble to locate that information. There’s a concept in the movie biz called “development hell,” and it’s not just a clever name. Note the fact that it was less than two years from the time filming began on the Swedish version of the first film to the European release of the third—and that it took David Fincher and Sony over a year to get from the beginning of filming to the release of just the first film in the trilogy (and never mind the two years between the U.S. publication of the first novel and the start of filmmaking for Fincher’s version).

Based solely on the small amount of research I have done for this post, it seems plausible to me that studios in the U.S.—major ones, at that—had more than a passing interest in making films out of these novels. The Swedes just beat them to the punch. (It would not surprise me in the least to learn that it takes far less time for a Swedish studio to make a film than it does for a major American studio to make a film.) It would seem that English version of these films were inevitable, not the result of the devious behavior of American studio executives who just wanted an easy ride on the (Swedish) gravy train.

Having said all of that, I have almost managed to talk myself into wanting to see this new version of the film—almost. I’m intrigued by some of the casting, including Christopher Plummer, Stellan Skarsgård, Joely Richardson, and Robin Wright—thought not by Daniel Craig or Rooney Mara; and Fincher, of course, is Fincher. Though he churns out the occasional crappy movie (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), his early work on dark, grisly films like Se7en and Fight Club leads me to believe that he’ll at least get the mood right on this one. I suppose the prospects for the English version could have been much worse—what if it had been a Michael Bay Joint?

I still probably won’t get around to seeing Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, though not any longer because I necessarily hold a grudge against the picture or the people who decided that it needed to be made. Hollywood movies are about money, not art; and there is definitely money to be made with these films. I may get around to getting it from Netflix one of these days, and I suppose that I can hope that Rooney Mara is even a fraction as good in the Lisbeth Salander role as Noomi Rapace—but I’m not going to hold my breath.

The Descendants

2011-12-06T02:55:00.000-05:00

Matt King is a haole with Hawaiian blood that goes back a number of generations, and he is the trustee of 25,000 acres of nearly pristine land on Kauai that has been in his family for all of those years. As a successful lawyer, he is imminently qualified to determine the course of action to be taken with respect to which bid the family should accept when the time comes to sell that land. As a husband and father, he is less successful. He is a prudent, careful numbers guy, and not so much of a family man. When his wife suffers a severe head injury in a boating accident and goes into a coma, he finds himself in the position of having to care for two young daughters he barely knows. He has expended so much effort over the years to provide for his family that he has taken for granted that they will always be there for him, even though he is rarely there for them. Though he seems pretty well put together on the surface to outsiders, he’s actually sort of mess to the people who really know him.

I have a hard time buying George Clooney in this role—had a hard time buying it even as the film went on—but by the end, director and co-screenwriter Alexander Payne had me mostly convinced. He shot the film in cinemascope, to ensure good, tight close-up shots, and that’s probably the key to the film. The sometimes breathtaking location shots are very pretty to look at, but the story is another matter altogether. By way of those close-up shots, Payne forces the audience to look at Matt King as he begins to see the things he has refused to look at for so many years. The dynamics of dysfunction drive the narrative, as tragedy forces the characters to confront truths they seem always to have preferred to ignore.

The hardest part for me was trying to see the film through the eyes of someone who has not read the novel. I read the novel a few weeks ago, and thought it was quite good. Author Kaui Hart Hemmings (who makes a cameo in the film) does a good job of getting to the heart of the things that drive us most crazy about the people we’re supposed to love the most. She does this by writing in first person present tense, which allows Matt King to describe to the reader both what is going on currently, and what led those things to happen. It’s a fine device for a novel, and Hemmings deploys it skillfully, but it’s difficult to bring to the screen, because much of what informs the story is in the main character’s head. That generally translates into voice-over narration, and that is the case here.

And it’s not as though Payne doesn’t do a good job with what he has given himself to work with. In fact, pretty much everything in this film is done very well; I’m just not sure that there’s enough of it. Clooney eases into a role that’s one step removed from the kinds of roles that he steps into with ease—Ryan Bingham in Up In the Air, Danny Ocean, the eponymous Michael Clayton—but by the end of the film, he has mostly nailed it. Matthew Lillard wasn’t as bad as I thought he was going to be. I kept picturing Stu from Scream, but he’s aged fifteen years since that film came out, just like the rest of us. He’s not the actor that Clooney is, but he does just fine in a relatively small role. Shailene Woodley does well in the role of Alex, Matt King’s eldest daughter. She is away at school when we join the story, and the circumstances of that situation are never fully revealed. Woodley plays her as the teenage rebel we presume that she is, but she also shows us with Alex’s guard down, at times when the defiant young woman is overcome by emotions she hardly knew were there.

That’s where I have the most trouble seeing the film through the eyes of someone who hasn’t read the novel. Most of the characters feel vaguely incomplete, which makes it difficult to connect with them emotionally. Too much of the time, I got the feeling that Payne was relying on plain vanilla social conventions to generate emotion and drama. We should feel sadness and sympathy for someone who is in a coma and is probably going to die; we should feel anger and resentment at the prospect of marital infidelity; we should feel consternation (but also, of course, love) for children who buck authority wantonly and often fail to do what they are told; and we should feel contentment when, in the end, people do the right things.

All of those things are lovely and noble; but in and of themselves, they are not interesting. I didn’t quite feel a strong enough connection to these characters to become emotionally invested in what was happening to them—at least not as contrasted with the masterful way Hemmings dissects the same characters and lays them bare for the reader to examine. By way of example, there is a scene toward the end in which a piece of very bad news is related to King’s youngest daughter; but instead of letting the scene play out, with the attendant pain and awkwardness, Payne gives us the scene in a muted montage, avoiding, as he does throughout the film, the hardest things that these characters have to face.

I wonder if the characters might have felt more developed if Payne had used a few more strategic bits of voice-over or allowed the characters to talk to each other a little more in the quiet moments—rather than using so many lingering shots of the landscape. Matt King’s character explains in voice-over, early in the film, that even though Hawaii is beautiful, it has its bad neighborhoods and dirty streets and downtrodden citizens, just like the other forty-nine states; but this bit of exposition is a bait-and-switch. Those parts of Hawaii undoubtedly exist; but they have nothing to do with this story, just as Hawaii itself, both as a place and as a concept, has far less to do with the story than Payne seems to believe. He has constructed a fine—but not great—film, but only a fair adaptation.

Deep Thoughts #67 - Special Topical Reactionary Twit Edition

2011-12-03T00:52:00.000-05:00

Twitter should encourage this apologizing for nothing thing nationwide. People would tweet even more meaningless drivel than they tweet now!

My Week with Marilyn

2011-11-29T15:31:00.000-05:00

If you take away that Elton John song; the shot of her standing over the sidewalk vent from The Seven Year Itch; that she was married to a couple of the guys she was married to (Arthur Miller and Joe DiMaggio are the ones I’m thinking of, and I guess I’m not 100% sure that she was actually married to DiMaggio); and maybe a handful of the films she was in (the aforementioned picture with the infmaous street scene, Some Like it Hot, and…yeah, those are actually the only two that I can come up with), then the only thing I could tell you for sure that I know about Marilyn Monroe is that she was one of the most beautiful women who ever lived.

And that, contends this new picture starring Michelle Williams as the iconic Monroe, might just have been the problem. The film tells the story of the week that Colin Clark spent with Monroe while he was the third assistant to director Laurence Olivier while the latter was filming The Prince and the Showgirl, which starred Monroe. It’s a little bit dangerous for me to write anything about this film, since I don’t, in fact, know all that much about Monroe. There is a subset of human being that obsesses over her, and I can totally believe that they spend a lot of time patrolling the magic internets so that they can flame anyone who gets even the most minuscule fact about Monroe wrong.

I thought that, anyway; and then I found proof positive of it when I landed on the Amazon page listing the book upon which this film is based, one that collects two books by Clark into a single volume for the first time—The Prince, the Showgirl, and Me: The Colin Clark Diaries and My Week with Marilyn, the first being Clark’s diary from the set of the film, and the second being a memoir of the period. There are two user reviews, both of which seem to take great umbrage at the fact that Clark’s books do not square precisely with how they have come to know their dear, dear Marilyn. The second of these goes on and on about how Clark could not have been on hand to witness Monroe having a miscarriage.

I don’t know how that plays in the book (though I do plan to read it, so I guess we’ll see), but I can tell you for sure that the miscarriage scene is so quick as to be inconsequential in the film. David came in while I was watching the film last Tuesday night, to tell me that he had finished watching his own movie and was getting ready to leave; and in the one or two minutes we were talking, the miscarriage scene came and went, and then was not alluded to again. The Amazon reviewer writes as though Clark has personally besmirched him, noting that Monroe, having passed, cannot defend herself. Perhaps the reviewer did not take the time to learn that Clark has also passed and is also unable to defend himself.

Alas, however, this is not a documentary. It is a dramatization, and as such, it has to conform to certain standards pertaining to the narrative arc. There are not a great many people whose lives have been textbook narrative arc material, which is another way of saying that even many of the most interesting people who have ever lived need to have a few things either made up about them or embellished up from the foundation of the truth in order to make their life stories interesting enough to sustain modes of entertainment like novels and feature films. (Which is not to say that people should just make stuff up about other people in order to sell books and movies. But at the same time, people need to realize that sometimes the larger story cannot be told without an exaggeration here or an embellishment there. No matter how much care is taken with the procurement and presentation of facts, even the most the rigorous piece of non-fiction is, at bottom, also a work of fiction.)

So with all of those annoying caveats out of the way, what else is there to say about the movie? The big thing is that Michelle Williams is excellent as Marilyn Monroe. She plays a Monroe who is both confident and terribly insecure, and in many scenes she says just as much with her eyes as she does with words. Her version of Marilyn Monroe gives us the young woman who wants to be more than just the manufactured sex symbol—except that she can’t manage to convince anyone that there is more to her than her sex appeal; it is both her stock in trade and the seeming bane of her existence, a self-fulfilling prophecy in which she is both trapped and aware that she is trapped.

The script takes some liberties with history, compressing time so that Clark can be on hand for the aforementioned miscarriage, and so that he can be there for Marilyn to hang out with after husband Miller returns to New York. According to the commenter on the Amazon site—and yes! I’m using an internet commenter as a source!—Miller had left for America and then returned to the UK in time to be there for Monroe’s miscarriage, a fact that would have precluded quite a bit of what happened in the film; and whether that internet commenter is correct or not, much of what takes place when Clark and Monroe get to spend time together has the feel of a fairy tale—which I think in the end comes back to haunt the film.

Eddie Redmayne is fine as Colin Clark, neither overly impressive nor particularly awkward. Kenneth Branagh is over the top as Olivier, but after all these years, does anyone really expect Branagh to be anything but over the top? I don’t know anything about Olivier either, but Branagh’s performance seemed to fit the character pretty well; and for all of that bluster, there were a few genuine moments that an actor less nuanced than Branagh (who can be so when he wants to be) might have fumbled. The saddest part of the movie is the waste made of Emma Watson, in her first live-action role in a film that does not begin with the words Harry Potter. She plays the production’s costume girl that Clark had been flirting with and had asked out—before he became so besotted with Monroe. She doesn’t have much of a part, and so can probably be forgiven for failing to bring much to her few lines; but it would have nice to be able to see her flex her acting chops without the aid of a wand. (That chance is coming, however; Watson stars in The Perks of Being a Wallflower, for the Gen Y set, next year.)

The point of a movie like this is to see Marilyn Monroe as portrayed by someone else; everything else is ancillary, including the background story, and some of that background material gets short shrift here. A lot of the time, a sudden, intense attraction between two people turns out to be a temporary thing. In Clark’s case, the attraction was one-sided; Monroe simply used him to get things that she wanted or needed. (I suppose you could make the case that she was attracted to him too, but I think it’s a weak argument, especially considering how manipulative Monroe—as portrayed by Williams—tended to be.) The grounded-in-reality part of the story that frames the would-be fairy tale, then, should either be razor thin and without serious distraction, or fully involved in the initial and further development of the character at the heart of the fairy tale. Neither is the case here, unfortunately. The addition of the Watson character muddles what the audience is given to ponder about Colin Clark, and that also takes away from the clarity of the fairy tale.

The filmmakers seem to get the idea that they have an interesting story to tell, but they seem to have much less of an idea about how to place that story in a larger context. It’s almost as though they expended so much effort on the Marilyn parts that they didn’t have enough left in the tank for the rest of the film; and it’s important for the rest of the film to be strong, or else Williams’ performance is just a performance, and not a part of something greater—but I’m afraid that in the end, that’s what we have: a really strong performance by Williams, and not much more than that.

Winning & Blegging

2011-11-29T00:49:00.001-05:00

I can barely believe that almost the whole month of November has already shot by. I was all giddy to get started with National Novel Writing Month back on the 1st, a Tuesday. It was just about all I could do to wait until midnight on Monday night to start writing, but it worked out for me. I got to 50,000 words last night, and validated the word count for my second NaNoWriMo win in a row. It was the wee hours of the 28th, but for me it was still the 27th, so I count that as having gotten to 50,000 words three days early—better than last year by two days. By every conceivable metric, it was a better NaNoWriMo for me this year than it was last year.

Unfortunately, what I have now is a scattershot sort of manuscript that bounces all the over the place and pretty much completely lacks cohesion. I kept making up new sections as I went along, going with whatever thread felt like it was going to bring forth words each night when I sat down to write—but I’m sort of excited about taking what I have now and weaving it into something coherent. It has many of the elements that I have tried (and failed) to write about in the past, including college and the Mafia; but there are also things I’ve never even thought of writing about before, like one character who went to Japan as a foreign exchance student and wound up getting heavily involved in the burgeoning ramen trend—and she might wind up having a brush with the Yakuza too, I’m not sure.

And what’s sort of funny is that I wound up writing much less about Irvington than I would have guessed was possible for a book that I intended to be a long novel about Irvington. Part of that is because I’m still trying to work out how I want Irvington to operate as a character in the story, part of it is because I still need to figure out how each of the things that are important to me about Irvington fit into the larger story, and the last bit of it is that I need to gather more information on the darker side of Irvington. I have made a small amount of progress on that front by getting books out of the library; but I have also run into problems in that regard, too.

I have so far been unable to find well-written books about haunted places in Irvington and Indiana; and it happens that my luck is actualy getting worse. I’ve read the Irvington Haunts books a couple of times each now, and the writing in those books, while not remotely good, is at least passable. Where my luck has gotten worse is with a book called Haunted Backroads: Central Indiana (and other stories), by Nicole R. Kobrowski. The writing in this book is actively bad and completely inconsistent. The Kobrowski book and both volumes of the Irvington Haunts books list Westfield, Indiana, as their publication address, which does little to raise my opinion of the wasteland that is Hamilton County. This is where the blegging part comes in: I would love to read some books about haunted places in Indiana generally and Irvington specifically, and I would love for those books also to be well-written. If anyone out there knows of any books that fit both categories, I would love to hear from you in the comments section.

I have two others that I got from the library last week: Haunted Travels of Indiana, by Mark Marimen; and Hoosier Hauntings, by K.T. MacRorie. Neither of them is published out of Westfield, Indiana, so I guess there’s that; and neither of them is very long, either. There is also a series called Haunted Hoosier Trails that I plan to look into, but if these other two are disappointing, I may have to give up on that for awhile.

Two Constitutionals in Haunted Irvingotn

2011-11-16T14:00:00.001-05:00

This started out as a blog about National Novel Writing Month, and then would up becoming one about the walks that Jackson and I take around Irvington each Wednesday afternoon when the weather is nice. When I started typing up these notes at work the other night, it was about NaNoWriMo and how well that was going so far this year; but then it took a long detour around the places where we walked last Tuesday (we took our walk last week on that day because I needed to go vote—and that ended up being a good thing, because the weather on Wednesday was not remotely conducive to taking a walk), and how my memories of those places is helping to shape the things I am writing about for NaNoWriMo this year.

We stared out by going over to the Irvington Presbyterian Church, by way of the library so I could drop off some items, and then after I voted, we went over to Lazy Daze; and then after that, we walked back around Johnson Avenue to Audubon Road and took that south to Irving Circle, which we followed one quarter of the way around, to University Avenue. I don’t remember precisely why I chose to walk along University, which I usually avoid because the sidewalks are horrible if you’re pushing a stroller, but that’s where we went; and when we got to the intersection of University and Oak, I realized that we had never—that I could recall, anyway—continued along the stretch of Unversity that goes from Oak to Arlington (on foot).

Irvington is the old stomping grounds of a great many people that I met in college—including my wife—and one of the many nice things about living in Irvington and taking walks around the neighborhood is that I get the chance to reminisce on those days when I happen to pass by a house where one of those friends from college used to live. There are two such houses along that stretch of University between Oak and Arlington, though I don’t remember the exact location of one of them, just that it’s along that stretch of University. So instead of passing it by, we went down that stretch of University, and then wound up at the corner of Arlington. Nothing really caught my eye or got my attention, though, so I didn’t linger on it—and instead thought about walking by another Irvington landmark, though one that bears no relation at all to anyone I knew in college (or so I thought before I sought it out).

For some reason, I looked up H.H. Holmes on the magic internets the other night, and I found a website that I had seen before but not marked, maintained by the people who currently live on the lot where once there stood a house that was rented by one Mr. H.H. Holmes. Legend has it that Holmes took up residence in the house specifically so that he could bring a young boy there and kill him, thereby adding the house (which was either demolished at some point or…moved?) to the haunted lore of Irvington. (The story is dramatized in a novel called The Devil in the White City, by Erik Larson, and there is also a documentary about it available on DVD.) While looking at the website, I noted the address of the house that currently occupies the lot where the Holmes house once stood. I knew by the address number—5811 Julian—that it was a place I had walked past at some point, but that particular Irvington legend had never stuck with me, so I had never marked the address the way I had marked others. But since I’m working on a very long Irvington story for NaNoWriMo, I’ve been trying to make note of more of those types of things—so I decided that I wanted to walk by the house and have a look.

When I first thought about walking by that house, I had planned to save it for Wednesday, when I would have more time to be out and about, without having to worry about getting home at a certain time so that I could go to work. But that Tuesday it didn’t take long to vote, and it also didn’t take long to stop at the library or the coffee shop—and the unexpected jaunt out University to Arlington pretty much meant that I could swing by the place on my way home without going any further out of my way—and at that point, there was still plenty of time left in the two hours that I had budgeted for the walk. So away we went, going north along Arlington to Julian; and I resisted the urge to get off of Arlington (or its sidewalk, at any rate), thinking—correctly, as it turned out—that none of the cross streets would lead me to where I wanted to go without some serious backtracking. So we turned left on Julian, and I started looking out for number 5811.

And it turns out that 5811 Julian is at the corner of Julian and Bolton—and that the house is literally three doors down (sorry) from another of those houses where someone I knew from college used to live. I grew up way the hell out near 10th and Post, where nothing remotely interesting has ever taken place. But all of these people I used to hang out with in college grew up in Irvington, including the girl who used to live on Bolton, three doors down (sorry again) from the lot that used to be owned by a fellow who is now thought of as America’s first serial killer. The website Holmes in Irvington, the one maintained by the people who live on the lot, indicates that as of March 2011, they were thinking of selling their house and moving on. I don’t know if I could sell my own house and move into that one—nor that it would be good idea to try, especially considering the roughly ten grand we’ve dropped on fixing up the house we currently live in—but man, does the idea of living on haunted land strike a chord with the overactive imagination that led me down the path of letters.

And wouldn’t you know that this story has an epilogue? The day after election day last week was very windy, and it got progressively colder as the day went on; and by the time I was ready to go out on my usual Wednesday walk with Jackson, it was not only windy and cold, but also a little bit rainy—not really rainy, but that fine sort of mist doesn’t give you enough cause to open your umbrella, but winds up getting you wet, eventually, anyway. It was an unpleasant day to be out in the world, at least with people who aren’t hardy enough to stand up very well to such things. Four-year-olds are not very hardy when it comes to cold, wet, windy weather; but I was too much in the mindset for a walk, even if it was going to have be a short one—and that’s what it wound up being, just a quick jaunt out to the coffee shop and then an even quicker nip past that Holmes house/lot one more time.

Nothing at all creative came to me that second time I walked past it, but I had had an idea for the title of my NaNoWriMo project the day before, after we had walked by it and I had started thinking about how close it was to a house I had actually been inside of once or twice before (and maybe that my wife had too, since she was good friends with the person who used to live there when they were in high school together), and about all of the other things in Irvington that are either haunted or are reputed to be. The unexpected Tuesday walk wasn’t just a good walk for a Tuesday, it was a good walk, period; and I had almost passed on it, because we never go for walks on Tuesdays.

Next: An actual post about how National Novel Writing Month is going for me this year, and hopefully some pictures of Jackson. I got the big idea to separate all of the Jackson pictures from the non-Jackson pictures, and then label and categorize the non-Jackson pictures, mostly so I have an idea of what Irvington things I have photographed, so that I can go back and look at those things for reference, if I need to.

Martha Marcy May Marlene

2011-11-10T00:29:00.000-05:00

There’s a fine line between finding out enough about a film to decide whether or not you want to see it and hearing so much about what other people thought of it that you wind up with your mind part of the way made up before you even sit down in the auditorium. That nearly happened with me and this film, because I heard from most of the people who watched it before we opened it that it wasn’t all that good. On the one hand, that gave me a bit of hope, because I often tend to like the quirky indie pictures that other people find irritating or boring; but on the other hand, the opinions were pretty much negative or blandly equivocal across the board. That doesn’t bother me when it comes from the general public, which tends to like bad movies and not even understand good ones; but our staff is several notches more evolved than the general public when it comes to film appreciation, which made their solid dislike of the picture a bit worrisome.

That didn’t kill my desire to see the film, but it did color what I thought of probably the first third or so of it when I watched it last Friday night after I got off work. Things that I like when other directors do them got under my skin here. This is director Sean Durkin’s first feature, and early on it felt very much like a first feature. There were a lot of shots in the beginning of a stationary camera that simply observed what happened in the frame, not moving when the focal point of the shot moved off screen. That’s classic arthouse technique—just sit there and watch while I capture art, rather than chase it all over the place like a spastic cat. Kelly Reichardt is practically an expert at composing a shot and letting that shot speak for itself; but then, she was a professional photographer before she started making films, so she had that kind of training. I’m having a spot of trouble finding out what else Durkin has done, other than a couple of shorts—well, apart from film school. He obviously went to film school, because he’s clearly showing us all the artsy things that he learned there.

But really, that’s just picking at nits. It isn’t that his shots aren’t well composed, it’s just that I was ready to be disappointed by what I was about to watch; and it didn’t help that it looked a lot like he was trying to replicate something that a director I admire very much is very adept at herself. Durkin’s temporal cross-cuts weren’t bad either—and probably would have seemed pretty clever and well executed if I hadn’t already seen them done, and in much the same way, by Derek Cianfrance in Blue Valentine; but the thing with Cianfrance’s cuts in the earlier film is that his were much more jarring—you didn’t realize that he had skipped backward or forward in time until something happened in the scene that was completely out of sync with what took place in the previous scene. By contrast, Durkin foreshadows most of his cuts; and while this serves the higher purpose of informing his characters, it feels like another chapter out of the film school textbook.

I will grant you, however, that it’s an advanced chapter out of the textbook; and it’s to his credit that he wants to make sure the audience follows the progression of the narrative closely. This is a character-driven film that relies on Durkin’s ability (as both writer and director) to impart information gradually. If the foreshadowing feels a little bit ham-handed at times—and it does—that, too, is in the service of a higher purpose, allowing Durkin to make direct connections between Martha’s past and present, which helps the audience to get into Martha’s head—not at all an organized place to be.

The title of the film comprises the three names the main character is given at various points in the story. Elizabeth Olsen plays Martha, a young woman with a troubled present predicated entirely on her troubled past. Some of the people I talked to before I saw the film said that nothing much happens over the course of the nearly two hours it goes on. To an extent, this is true; but what that analysis misses is that the whole thrust of the narrative is simply to get to know this girl, with very little offered up in the way of direct information. It reminded me of a card game I played a few times in college, called Mr. Mao. As the story went, the point of the game was to learn the rules. (You were also supposed to get rid of all the cards in your hand, but you had to learn how to do that by playing the game and learning the rules. It’s definitely the kind of thing that could get annoying, but I thought it was fascinating.)

It’s entirely possible that this particular narrative strategy, and the story it serves, are more film school tricks—but here I’m not so sure. It’s important for the audience to connect with the main character, and Durkin offers up an interesting challenge by making getting to know the main character the whole point of the film. It’s an ambitious feat for a first-time director, and that Durkin is ultimately able to pull it off redeems his reliance on standard tropes to get the thing off the ground.

And since the point of the film is to get to know its main character, it’s a little bit hard to say too much about the story itself without giving away that which makes the film a joy to watch. Olsen, aged twenty-two, has the voice and bearing of someone much older and wiser. At some point in her life, it seems that Martha joined up with a cult, led by the charismatic, but intensely creepy, Patrick (John Hawkes), who christens her Marcy May, because he must act as both creator and Christ figure to the women he keeps. That she is part of this cult is established early on; the specifics of her joining are never revealed, though the process by which anyone can be assimilated is hinted at later; and the reasons she might have had for abandoning her previous life and joining the cult are also hinted at later.

She escapes the cult—the only major issue I had with the film was how easy this seemed to be for her to accomplish—and winds up staying with her sister Lucy and brother-in-law Ted at their summer place in rural Connecticut. One of my favorite lines in the film comes the day after Martha escapes, when she is talking to her sister and she asks how far away they are. The sister says, “From what?” and Martha replies, “From yesterday.” It’s an easy leap from the literal to the figurative, but Olsen’s delivery is haunting. Martha spends the next several days trying to adjust to life on the outside without actually addressing what happened to her while she was “away,” the excuse she gives to her sister for having been out of touch for two years.

The balance of the film reveals things that happened to Martha while she was in the cult, a series of flashbacks that Durkin places in chronological order to show Martha’s gradual indoctrination into the cult—the process by which she goes from Martha to Marcy May; and as Marcy May climbs the ranks of the women on Patrick’s farm, the flashbacks reveal a series of events that should make the audience wonder whether everything is as it seems.

As a family drama, it doesn’t work as well as it might because the characters of Lucy and Ted are stubbornly one-dimensional. For most of the film, they seem almost willfully ignorant of how troubled Martha is, of how desperately she needs serious professional help to deal with what has happened to her. In this respect, Martha is an enabler—she fails to reveal exactly what happened to her. She makes only passing references to the time she has spent “away,” thereby neatly folding the episode into what is gradually revealed to be a lingering problem of how little Lucy was there for her after the passing of their mother.

If some of Durkin’s visual tricks early in the film are too clever by half, he more than makes up for it with how cleverly he employs ambiguity to propel the narrative. Is Martha so traumatized that she is unable to speak about what has happened to her—or is there something more sinister at play, something that forces her not to speak about what happened to her? Durkin uses this ambiguity throughout to ratchet up the suspense as the story unfolds, and ultimately he is able to craft an effective thriller out of what might have been merely a mildly interesting family drama. By weaving the two together, he demonstrates a far greater mastery of screenwriting than he does of direction. (And yet he is also able to coax this remarkable performance from Olsen, which does, in fact, demonstrate some directing chops—though it must be said that he gets a big boost here from Olsen, who is extremely gifted.)

Perhaps the strongest element of the film is just how satisfying and effective this ambiguity is, a feat that has flummoxed greater directors than Durkin. The Coen brothers could speak from personal experience, having crafted a series of ambiguities, toward the end of their version of No Country for Old Men, that were made much clearer in Cormac McCarthy’s source novel of the same name—to the consternation of many a viewer and reviewer; but Durkin does something so subtle that I am afraid it will be missed, and the damnable misery of it is that I just can’t bring myself to explain exactly how he does it. To do so would ruin the ending. When I mentioned the angle that I am thinking of to Dione at work, after we had both seen the film, she thought it was interesting, and said that it had not crossed her mind either while she was watching the film or when she talked about it with folks afterward; and she’s usually pretty good about reading movies like that, to pick up the little things that often get missed.

And this is definitely a film that begs a close reading. It’s also one of those that I’m going to be rooting for when Oscar nominations come out—and, if it gets some, a month later when the awards are handed out. This is the kind of difficult, challenging film that Oscar should pay attention to and reward—but seldom does. That this is the first major film for both Olsen and Durkin makes the achievement all the more impressive.

National Novel Writing Month 2011 #1

2011-11-02T14:54:00.000-04:00

I started on my NaNoWriMo project Tuesday morning (or Monday night, or whatever) at literally the stroke of midnight; but then, of course, I felt way too much pressure to get down something that was just right, and perfect, and so I wound up sitting there for like twenty minutes before anything came out. And then what came out wasn’t anything to write home about. I started to wonder about the wisdom of starting to write when I was only going to give myself about an hour to get 1700 words. (I expected to start on it Monday night after midnight, and then do more on it Tuesday afternoon, and maybe Tuesday night after work; but I wanted to start on it as soon as possible, because Tuesday is usually the toughest day of the week for me to get any writing done.)

Slowly but surely, though, the words began to take shape, and then they began to flow; and about one hour later, I had just over 1000 words. I thought most of them were pretty good, but what I liked best was the way the tone of those words struck me. I won’t say that I’m trying to write like Tom Perrotta, but I have a great appreciation for the darkly comic tone that he brings to his work. He often begins with seemingly tragic characters, and yet seems to wind up in a place where there’s a little bit of hope—not a riding-off-into-the-sunset kind of disingenuously cloying hope, but the kind of honest hope that makes you think you can wish for it to happen with at least a reasonable expectation that it might. I’m not precisely trying to write like that, but I do hope to tap into the same kinds of themes—whatever it is about middle America that makes people of certain means who get there wish that they had just kept going.

By the time I finished work Tuesday afternoon, I had over 2000 words, which is a very healthy start; and I managed to get a few more down at work, and by the time I knocked off for the night, with my first full day of writing complete, I was at almost 3000 words, which is a very good start—especially considering that I got that many words during the part of the week that is generally not all that conducive to getting a lot of writing done.

A Halloween Poem

2011-10-31T22:19:00.000-04:00

Before they go out for trick or treat,
This is what straw-colored fruit bats eat.

This straw-colored fruit bat lives at the zoo.

And this one is frightfully scary, too!

Too-Tender Hearts Upon Our Sleeves, Or Skin As Thick As Thieves

2011-10-30T01:12:00.000-04:00

I recently read, I think in an e-mail from Indianapolis Monthly, that there was a new local food magazine called Edible Indy; and I thought I saw some people walking around with copies at the Irvington Fall Festival this afternoon, so I was on the lookout for whichever booth had sample copies that they were giving away. This was after we had been there for a little bit and eaten already and done one pass around all of the booths. Amy and Jackson were waiting in line for one of several bounce houses, and I was doing yet another pass to see if I could find the place where they were giving out that magazine*, and at one point I found myself looking at a dude wearing sunglasses and pushing a stroller…and sort of looking at me liked he recognized me, the way I was sort of looking at him like I recognized him.

For a second, I thought that he looked vaguely like Ana’s husband, Damien; but they are in Australia, so there’s no way that I would run into either one of them randomly like that at the Irvington Fall Festival. I almost kept walking, but then decided that there was no way that the person could have made me think of Damien, and been looking at me like he recognized me, and not actually be Damien. So I turned around and stopped and took another look, and sure enough, there was Ana, and in the stroller was their little girl, Nara Elgin; and of course, it was Damien. How I recognized him behind sunglasses on a street full of people when it had been years since I had seen him? No idea. No idea whatsoever. But there you go.

And I couldn’t think of anything interesting to say, despite the fact that I am super fired up about National Novel Writing Month starting here in a couple of days and the fact that I have just recently submitted three different stories—one of which I think is quite good—to three different writing contests, which constitutes as much real effort put into getting my work out there and published (and maybe paid for) as I have ever done. That didn’t come out right. What I meant to say was that I’ve only ever sent stories to about three other contests before, in all of the years that I have been writing and that I should have been sending things in to contests.

(And of course, I had to go back and figure out exactly how many contests I had entered since I started writing. I wouldn’t be moderately OCD if I could mention something like that, not be 100% sure of the exact number, and then let the thing pass. No…that would be semi-normal—none of that nonsense for me. And the answer, if you’re interested, is that I had previously entered four contests—two in late 2002, one in late 2003, and one in late 2009. I did not win any of them, but got subscriptions to [or prize issues of] the journals in question, and received a form rejection letter from two of them. I never read the copies of the journals that I got from the first three contests—until I cracked open the copy of Mississippi Review mostly by accident earlier this fall—but I did read most of the two issues that constituted the subscription to the journal for the contest I entered in 2009. I don’t have any record, near to hand anyway, of entering a fifth contest, but I have a copy of the Missouri Review on my shelf, and I can’t imagine that I would have just come across that at a bokstore and picked it up—especially since the date on it places it within the time frame when I was entering contests the first time. And of course, being moderately OCD [though undiagnosed], I will have to go back through some of my writing folders later tonight to see if I can turn up any record of having submitted a story to the Missouri Review.)

But boy, do I digress. The point was that I could not think of anything interesting to say to these two friends of mine—at least I hope that’s what they are—whom I had not seen in years, even though there were at least a few interesting—if minor—things going on in my life at the moment. I’m proud of those things, even if they’re not much, and I talk about them ad nasueum in this blog space—so why am I reluctant to talk about them out loud, to actual in-the-flesh human beings?

That, friends and neighbors, is a hell of a good question; and I don’t know that I have a good answer for it. It’s possible that I am not as proud of these little half-accomplishments as it feels like I am when I write about them at home, alone, in front of the computer. If it were not for the Stats that you can check on Google, I would not even be sure that anyone reads this blog anymore; and while that is fine—I have long maintained that what I am up to here is now mostly writing exercises for my own edification, and that if others find such material to be interesting, then that’s cool, but it’s not what motivates me to write or to post these musings—it may be creating some kind of false bravado, an artificial sense that I am doing anything more than writing in a vacuum.

I might also be blowing it way out of proportion, too. I hadn’t any coffee at that point, and I was heading in the direction of the coffee shop when I ran into them. Yes, I was keeping an eye out for that magazine, but I was also heading for coffee. It’s a dodgy business getting coffee at Lazy Daze on the day of the Fall Festival. I don’t know for sure if it’s their busiest day of the year or not, but I would be willing to bet that it is—and that means you can lose a lot of your day waiting in line. There is a Starbucks in Irvington, but I have no idea if it is their busiest day of the year, too. I have literally never set foot inside that store. I can’t really think of a valid to go into Starbucks at all, given how many great indie coffee shops we have in Indianapolis; and I certainly can’t of a valid reason to go into a Starbucks when one of those great indie coffee shops—maybe the greatest of them—is literally two blocks away.

The truth of the matter, though, is probably that I am just socially awkward—or that I have become socially awkward over the years. I tend to avoid that kind of social interaction, but once I realized that it was, in fact, Damien I had seen, I wanted to turn around and say hi to those guys. In fact, it felt like I wheeled around so fast that there might have been a collision if someone had been walking too close behind me. And then when I got turned around and said hi, I didn’t know what else to say, nor how to say it. Looking back on it now, with the benefit of a few hours, I probably looked and sounded like an idiot.

I have trained myself to avoid running into people like that, because I am not proud of the fact that I am still doing the same stupid shit I was doing thirteen years ago when I got out of college. I’m still working at a movie theatre (and even if it’s a little bit better than the movie theatres I have worked at in the past, and even if I spend more time now thinking about cost of goods and payroll dollars than I do popping popcorn and sweeping floors, it’s still a movie theatre, one that, I’m sorry to say, is getting more and more like the ones it used to be better than as each day goes by); and I still haven’t published any writing. I haven’t really even written anything for anyone to reject, other than those aforementioned stories—and the ones from those first few contests were not very good. It’s so rare for me to want to see anyone from back before I hadn’t done anything with my life that I literally have no idea what to do or what to say when that does happen. My brain cannot compute what is going on in front of its thin candy shell.

But oddly enough, for all of that looking and sounding like an idiot, if that was indeed how I came off, and with the benefit of being able to think about it in the hours since—I have figured out something important about myself; and that is that, though I have over the last couple of years made progress with my writing and am proud of that, I still experience the reflexive emotion of not being proud of what I have done with my life since college. (And that lack of pride has nothing to do with Amy and Jackson. They’re awesome. I’m talking about work here. Things I have done—or in this case, not done.) I am extremely happy with and proud of what I have accomplished over the last couple of years, including two very short stories published in Ichabod’s Sketchbook, winning National Novel Writing Month last year, submitting three stories to contests this year, mostly completing a draft of a novel within the time frame I set for myself earlier this year, writing in my journal every day, and focusing the things I write in this blog in a way that I hope is helping me to always improve and sharpen my writing. It’s not enough just to have done those things that I feel good about, and to feel good about having done them. I also have to feel good about sharing the things I have done and how having done those things makes me feel with the people that I care about.

* Yes, I know that that seems like a lot of work to go to for a magazine. I could easily afford to subscribe to the magazine, which is $32 a year for four issues; but that’s not the point. The point is that it would be foolish to throw down any amount of money on an unknown when you can get a sample for nothing. I can hope for something that is as good as Lucky Peach, but I probably won’t be that…ahem…lucky. (And yes, given my occasionally vocal disdain of Dave Eggers, I’m a little bit surprised to hear myself express appreciation for Lucky Peach—but you have to give credit where credit is due, and Lucky Peach, or the first issue anyway, is a great magazine.)

The Monster Season

2011-10-29T03:06:00.000-04:00

I was all set to start writing another warm-up exercise today before I went to work, and it was going to be about Steve Jobs and Apple, a piece that I had started writing shortly after Jobs passed away, but which I stopped working on because there was already so much out there. I basically had what I have already written here, and then I checked my e-mail and got an IU basketball newsletter from the Star.

And then Bob Kravitz goes and drops a question in today’s column that is impossible for me to resist, so now there will be two things for me to write today, and an even bigger challenge. Can you do two 1700-word posts, thereby potentially getting two day’s worth of work done in the span of one? I have to return to the idea that it’s much easier to write when you are channeling things onto (virtual) paper that you already have in your head, which is what I have been doing with these long posts over the course of the last week or so; and I sort of wish that I could start in on my NaNoWriMo project, just to see if I really can get 1700 words on that as easily and quickly as I have been getting 1700 words on all of these other things. That would be cheating, though, and there’s no point in doing National Novel Writing Month if you don’t want to do it the right way, because the whole point of it is to be the kind of exercise that helps you to find out if you can do that kind of work in that amount of time.

So then, to Mr. Kravitz’s question. First we link to his column for today, and then we speak briefly about it. He makes twelve observations about the Big Ten (in honor of the twelve teams in the conference*), one of which is that, “If Purdue’s Rob Hummel can stay healthy and have the kind of season most expect him to have, it will be one of the best college basketball stories of the year. Even IU fans have to feel like rooting for this guy. (Right?)”

It’s sometimes hard for me to tell where the friendly nature of a rivalry ends for some people, and where it turns into outright dislike. I have talked about this once before, and it still puzzles me. Unless there’s a silly little trophy involved—which, in and of itself, has no more meaning than the game over which it is being played—how is it any sweeter for Indiana to beat Purdue than it is for them to beat anyone else? (Hell, anymore, it’s nice when Indiana can manage to beat anybody, regardless of whether or not it’s Purdue—and regardless of whether it’s in football or basketball) I can understand the concept of rivalry a little bit more with respect to the Colts and the Patriots, because there is often—though most assuredly not this year—something big at stake when those two teams play each other. Plus, for a long time it was the Patriots that the Colts could not beat—neither in the regular season, nor in the playoffs, when it really counted; and the Colts-Patriots rivalry is a relatively recent thing—maybe going back ten years, but probably less than that. Indiana and Purdue have been playing each in everything for like a million years or something.

Some years Indiana is better, and some years Purdue is better. I just don’t get the point of hating another school just because they are your rival. I know I’m not a very good sports fan anymore, but I just don’t get it—haven’t really understood it for a long time. I hope Robbie Hummel comes back fully healed and has a great season, even if it seems like the odds are against him. For those who don’t know, Hummel was a standout at Purdue through most of three seasons, before he tore his ACL and missed the end of his junior season. He was expected to return for his senior season, but then re-tore the ACL during a practice and missed that season as well. After surgery and rehab, he is on track to return (again) for his senior season this year.

And Indiana fans have sort of been in the same boat. Though not of the same caliber as Hummel, Maurice Creek has missed parts of the last two seasons at Indiana because of injury; and he, too, is on track to return to the floor this year—for what should be a much-improved Indiana team, with the addition of high school phenom Cody Zeller. So Indiana fans, especially, should understand what their Purdue counterparts are going through, and they should be rooting almost as loud for Hummel to come back and have a monster senior season as the Purdue fans are. I don’t imagine many of them are, but they should be. Purdue’s head coach, Matt Painter—who is going into his seventh year as the head coach at Purdue, and I can barely believe that that many years have gone by since he took over for Gene Keady—is doing a great job with that program, developing talent in much the same way that his predecessor did.

Tom Crean is slowly but surely getting the Indiana program back on its feet, after it was demolished by Kelvin Sampson. Crean has the aforementioned Zeller in this year, and he currently has the #1 recruiting class in the country coming in for 2012. Painter and his crew will have to be on their toes if they want to be able to compete with Indiana in the next couple of years—and that seems like the logical end to the concept of rivalry to me, a friendly kind of excitement when you think about the idea of playing a particular team. You want to beat your in-state rival for bragging rights, or whatever, but it should never get beyond fun and games, and there should be handshakes all around when the game is over. There’s always next year!

I just don’t get how it develops into the kind of thing where you hate the other team or wish any kind of ill upon their players or coaches. I felt those kinds of things when I was a kid—especially for the Duke teams after 1992, the year that Duke beat Indiana in the Final Four; but college basketball was more important to me back then than it is now, and the fact remains that I was, in fact, a kid then. I grew up, and then grew out of it, because there was no reason for me to continue to bear any ill will toward Duke. I’m not going to say that it wasn’t pretty sweet, ten years later, when Indiana improbably knocked off a much better Duke team in the Sweet Sixteen. Was it a little bit sweeter because it was Duke that Indiana beat? Sure it was—but that’s all it was, just a little bit sweeter. There’s nothing wrong with Duke because they beat Indiana in 1992.

In fact, it should be something of a point of pride to Indiana fans that Duke is as good a program as it is. Mike Krzyzewski, the Duke head coach, broke into coaching as an assistant at Indiana, under the tutelage of Bob Knight. He only spent one year at Indiana, but he went on to coach at Army, where Knight started, and then took the head coaching job at Duke in 1980. This past season, Coach K won his 900^th game as a head coach, becoming only the second coach in Division I history to win 900 games. The first coach to 900 was Bob Knight.

Okay. That’s all I’ve got. My writing time is just about up for tonight, and this has not been as good a post as some of the others that I have been writing as warm-ups for National Novel Writing Month. In fact, I’m using this especially lame last paragraph pretty much just as filler to get to 1700 words; but that’s also part of National Novel Writing Month—forcing yourself to keep going even when the writing isn’t very good or isn’t pouring out of you quite as well as you would like. What you have at the end of the month is going to be crap. The time for revision starts on December 1^st. Before that, all you’re doing is writing, and trying to get as much down as you can. If this were actual NaNoWriMo work, it would be a prime target for revision after November 30^th; but since this is only a warm-up, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is keeping it going, and getting through to the end.

Oh, and the answer to whether or not you can get two 1700-word posts done in one day? No. Not at this point, anyway. That would have been a lot of writing, and would have required way more time in front of the computer than I had at my disposal today.

* Yes, there are 12 teams in the Big Ten. For years, it actually made sense, and there were only 10 teams in the Big Ten. But don’t ever listen to anyone who tells you that college sports is about anything other than money, because college sports is all about money. The Big Ten added Penn State to the mix in 1990, largely because Penn State was a football powerhouse in a conference that—up to that time, and apart from Michigan and Ohio State—was mostly thought of as a basketball conference. I believe the theory was that adding Penn State would make the Big Ten slightly more competitive in the Rose Bowl, a New Year’s Day game that traditionally matches the champions of the Pac-10 and the Big Ten against one another, and which has mostly been dominated by the Pac-10. Penn State has appeared in all of two Rose Bowls since they entered the league, but I guess maybe it might have been more if not for that whole Bowl Championship Series thing, which is the worst idea ever in the history of sports, other than Myles Brand.

Feedback Loop

2011-10-28T03:19:00.000-04:00

It’s possible that I have not made a go of the writing yet because I failed to take college seriously enough. I got through five years of college (one of those years was only part-time, nine hours each semester) without taking a single 400-level course. The requirements for the degree (back then) stated only that you had to have X number of hours at the 300- or 400-level; it never said anything about taking a certain number of 300-level classes and a certain number of 400-level classes. I was always afraid of the 400-level classes because they sounded hard in the course catalog. They were probably supposed to sound hard, but I never developed the right set of tools for working as hard in college as I should have done. The problem was that I got along for far too many years getting pretty good grades without really putting in a whole lot of effort.

See, I skipped second grade, and I was in the academically-advanced class in elementary school for grades four through six. Then I was in the X classes—what we called the academically-advanced classes when we moved up to the big bad world of Creston Junior High—in grades seven through nine (back then, only sophomores, juniors, and seniors attended Warren Central). By ninth grade, my grades were starting to flag in some of those X classes, and my first year at Warren Central, as a sophomore, would be my last in X classes. X English was the last one, and at the end of the semester, the teacher interviewed each student individually and made a recommendation for the next level in English. Most of the X kids were going on to the two-course Great Books series, with the caveat that the courses would be difficult and rigorous. She recommended that I not pursue this course, and I wound up taking 20^th Century American Fiction.

She was marginally notorious, among the students at the time, for having supposedly had a nervous breakdown. I don’t recall if this alleged breakdown occurred at school or elsewhere—though I’m sure I knew how the rumor had it back then—but the result was that people thought she was a little goofy. I don’t recall a strong opinion of her either way, though I remember that she talked very quickly and sometimes had to repeat words. She also introduced the whole bunch of us in that sophomore X English class, albeit inadvertently, to author Bret Easton Ellis. His most recent novel at the time, American Psycho, was creating something of a stir for its strong, graphic descriptions of sex and violence. Though a number of men met gruesome ends at the hands of Patrick Bateman, he was particularly awful towards women—first by having sometimes violent sex with them, and then by, you know, cutting them.

Today, of course, a random mention of a novel like that would surely not take place inside a public school classroom, but things were different then—or at any rate, frivolous lawsuits and class actions, brought by the kind of shady lawyers who by rights should meet their own ends at the hands of Patrick Bateman, were not remotely as prevalent as they are today. I was deeply into horror fiction and horror movies back then, so I immediately checked the book out of the library—I would have been, let’s see, 14 or 15 at the time, and there was no self-checkout at the library back then, so the staff at the Warren Library must have thought nothing of letting me check out such a book at that age. I didn’t understand the novel at all, of course, but I liked reading it, because the sex and violence parts were titillating, which was part of the point—though the wild excesses of 1980s Wall Street that led Bateman to commit such horrific acts were lost on me; but Ellis would remain on my radar, and I would go back years later and read the novel again (several times), and I also saw the film, with Christian Bale, and once I got the satire Ellis employed—Bateman at one point introduces himself to a couple of girls at a bar by saying that he’s into “murders and executions,” instead of saying “mergers and acquisitions”—I liked the novel even more. Ellis has become one of my favorite writers, and I actually like an earlier novel, The Rules of Attraction, better than American Psycho.

But that’s not the best thing that she did for me. Though I wasn’t happy about it at the time, the best thing she did for me was to recommend that I not go into the Great Books courses. She steered me toward 20^th Century American Fiction, as I said, and it was in that class that I got to know Mr. Neal Shortz. He would go on to have more of an influence on the writer I was to become than any other person I have ever known. But in 20^th Century American Fiction, he mostly just gave reading assignments and then left us to read quietly to ourselves in class. There was some class discussion, but I don’t remember if there were papers or tests. It was in that class that I discovered A Farewell to Arms, The Grapes of Wrath, and Winesburg, Ohio. I also had the misfortune of reading All the King’s Men, which at the time was one of the most boring novels I had ever read not having to do with adultery and red letters. I should probably have another go at it, though, because I am much more interested in its subject matter of political corruption than I was in those days.

The class might well have helped to shape my interest in literature, but the main thing it did was get me acclimated to the personality and teaching style of Mr. Shortz, who would be my teacher for College Research and Review (commonly known as College Comp), the following year; and it would be in that class that I would learn—sometimes the hard way—how to master the building blocks of grammar to craft solid, persusaive pieces of writing. I don’t remember what all of the specific class assignments were—the things we wrote about—but each week would start with…actually, I don’t remember exactly how the assignments started, either. Maybe we got the reading assignment on Friday and had to have it done by Monday, and then we wrote the composition in class on Monday. Either way, Mr. Shortz would set some sort of reading assignment, and then we would spend one full class period writing a composition on that reading assignment. We would get the papers back the next day and then have the opportunity to revise them in class and also to take them home that night to complete the revisions. However, if you turned in a composition that contained even one sentence fragment or run-on sentence, you got an automatic 65 and could not hand in a revised composition.

I turned in one composition that semester that had either a fragment or a run-on, but only one. I sort of wish I still had those papers, but I imagine that they got lost in the shuffle between high school and now and got discarded at some point. I do still have the big research paper that was the equivalent of a final exam for that class, though. We all had to choose a subject or person from the Harlem Renaissance and write a paper on that subject or person. I wound up with Langston Hughes, and it was not just an opportunity to put everything I had learned about writing that semester to use; it was also a chance to learn about one of the most interesting periods of art and literature and music in American history. That introduction paved the way for me to enjoy a number of different works by black writers in several different classes I took in college, including one whole class on black literature at IUPUI; and I wound up getting a 95 on that paper, which was an A-, from a teacher who very rarely gave A grades.

When I started college, I thought that I wanted to major in business management, because I had spent part of the summer between high school and college “working” at a comic book shop inside a flea market near our house. That last summer, the guy who owned the shop was going through a rough patch in his marriage, and pretty much let me run the show in his absence. I opened the shop, worked all day, and then closed the shop—Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, every weekend. The owner even had me make the rent payment for him a time or two. I enjoyed the autonomy and the work, and thought that I had a knack for it. What I did not have was a knack for the prerequisite classes that you needed to get into the business school. Unfortunately, I kept at it until sometime during my sophomore year, when I finally decided to dump the B-school—after having completed so much of the prerequisite work that I was actually admitted to the business school—and take on an English major.

The seeds of not working hard enough in classes had been sown all throughout junior high and high school, as the work got harder and I was no longer able to get by on natural ability; and it didn’t help that I spent the first several semesters of my college career taking mostly classes that I didn’t care about at all. I was a solid C student the whole time I was taking business classes, and even into the semesters after I quit the business school; but I had moved up a whole letter grade by the time I graduated, finishing as a solid B student with a lit major—quite a ways from the yo-yo who couldn’t get into Great Books in high school. But if I had gotten into Great Books, I might not have had Mr. Shortz for College Comp, and the writing bug might not have bitten me as hard as it did.

The whole idea of a feedback loop seemed to work better in my head while I was thinking about it this morning at work. Now that I am at the end of this NaNoWriMo warm-up piece, the idea no longer seems so clear. By not working hard enough in high school, I managed to Plinko my way into a class with a teacher whose rigorous grading forced me to become a better writer in a very short amount of time; and yet in spite of how much better I got by working hard in College Comp, I coasted through college without working very hard and without speaking up much in class. I dropped really hard classes, and avoided the 400-level completely; and even after college, I still wasn’t working very hard, and it took me way too long to realize that I didn’t really know myself at all, that I didn’t really know what I wanted to write about, what I wanted to say. That, in some ways, goes back to family, what I wrote about in the previous post—and maybe that’s the real feedback loop. I don’t know if my lack of closeness to anyone in my family is because I didn’t express an interest in family, or because my parents never talked about it much, or because I wasn’t listening when they did. It’s probably a bit of each of those things, and it’s maybe too late in the game to try to pin down exactly what went wrong and why.

I am working hard now, though; and even if the writing doesn’t bear fruit—and by fruit, of course, I mean piles and piles of money—I sleep well knowing that it is good work, that it addresses themes that are important to me, and that the time I spend on it is time well spent, time spent learning more and more about myself and the world around me—and then, hopefully, expressing well with words those things that I have learned and that I am still learning.

Perfect Free Shipping for Large Price

2011-10-27T02:46:00.000-04:00

After Shane M. White

So the thing I’m going to write about tonight is whether or not I should be a hypocrite when it comes to buying books on the magic Internets. Except, yeah, I’m not really buying books. I’d be buying two magazines, though both are girthy enough that they could pass for books. But you know what I did when I got online tonight? I looked them both up on Amazon, found them both for less money than I had expected to pay, and was nearly ready to check out when I thought that maybe I should at least call the Barnes & Noble at Clearwater Crossing to see if they were going to carry the one that is a current issue. Then I decided to call the other “nearby” Barnes & Noble stores to see if they were going to carry it. (I would not have had to call around if Borders still existed. River Crossing always carried Granta, and I would have just gone over between sets on Friday night and picked it up, no worries. But no—now I have to make calls, and check the Internet and whatnot.)

And just real quick, so you know what I’m talking about, the two magazines are Granta, issue 117, and The Comics Journal, issue 290. Granta is a quarterly literary journal—117 is the next one—with a different theme for each issue. The theme for issue 117 is Horror, and the issue features a new short story by Stephen King. I came by this information in a Stephen King Newsletter e-mail, but that e-mail also said that Granta 117 is available for sale on October 27^th—that’s tomorrow to you and me, kids (or today, depending on when I get this finished and post it)—but the folks I talked to at Barnes & Noble tonight said that the current issue stays on sale until November 13^th. Maybe it takes awhile for these things to get across the pond. (Granta is published out of the U.K.)

The Comics Journal stopped putting out a print magazine when they got to issue 300 in November 2009, but apparently came back with an even bigger issue 301 this past August. That’s what I’ve been able to gather from the Internet, anyway. Comics Journal 290 had a lengthy roundtable discussion with a handful of comics professionals and Monte Schulz, son of Charles, wherein they discussed the merits (or lack thereof) of the recently published biography of Charles Schulz, Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography, by David Michaelis. I read this biography and liked it very much, but the Schulz family, Monte in particular, has been very outspoken in their disappointment with it. Monte says that Michaelis cherry-picked his sources in order to support a pre-ordained agenda. Reviews of the novel, including one in the Wall Street Journal by Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin & Hobbes, were positive, and I’ve been curious to read this roundtable, but I just never got around to getting online to get a copy of the issue in question. I happened to be thinking about it earlier tonight and realized that the cover prices of the issues would be more than $25, which would qualify for free shipping on Amazon—that’s mostly why I checked Amazon first. As will be made clear if you elect to keep reading, I looked into it further after I had that first inspiration.

I got a definitive “no” from the guy at the Clearwater Crossing Barnes & Noble. He told me about the re-evaluation they did with their magazines earlier this year—it’s all based on sales, he said…go figure, right?—but he also said that it looked like Granta had been dropped earlier than that. The folks at the Carmel and Greenwood Park Mall stores were less certain of themselves, but each eventually managed to conclude that the current issue doesn’t go off sale until November 13^th. The Carmel store has that issue—I know because I have been to the store recently and seen the issue on the rack—but the guy at Greenwood said that they had not received any copies of the current issue, despite the fact that they usually carry the magazine.

I’ve been dropping money on literary magazines a little more than usual this year, partly because you need to know what kind of work journals are publishing if you want to submit to them, but also because I just like to read them, and I think that you ought to support the things you enjoy, to the extent that you are able. I don’t buy Granta very often, though, because it’s pretty expensive—cover price is $16.99—but the one or two issues I have bought I have thoroughly enjoyed. I know that the Stephen King story will just wind up being collected into his next book of stories that comes out, but I’ve always enjoyed horror writing in general, and I’m interested in the work of some of the other authors listed in the issue’s contents, including Don DeLillo and Roberto Bolaño. I’ve never read DeLillo, but have heard good things about him, especially a big novel he wrote called Underworld, which is set in New York, among other places. The late Bolaño has a pretty solid cult thing going on right now, mostly, I think, on the strength of his novel 2666, which I read last year and enjoyed very much. There’s also a story by Paul Auster, whose interview with The Believer I read not too long ago (and whose wife, Siri Hustvedt, was featured in a recent issue of Poets & Writers) and really enjoyed—one of the more enjoyable interviews in The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers; and one by Daniel Alarcón, who read a Bolaño story called “Gómez Palacio” for a New Yorker podcast.

And now to procuring copies of both of these magazines. The library actually has a copy of Comics Journal 290, but it’s bound up in their archival magazines, and not available for checkout. I don’t recall exactly how long the Peanuts roundtable is, but it’s very long, and would take far too long to read for me to just sit there at a table in the library and knock it out. I called a few comics shops when I first heard about it, but none of them had back issues of the magazine, so that pretty much leaves just the Internet. I could probably come up with an excuse to go up to Carmel sometime and get a copy of Granta at Barnes & Noble, but it’s an awfully long way to go just for a magazine—and unless it’s a weekend trip, the traffic is bound to be bad

So the first place I looked was Amazon, where I found a used copy of Comics Journal 290 for $0.37, listed in “very good” condition from a third-party seller listed as “bargainbookstores”; but for $0.37, it could just about be falling apart at the seams, and I’d take it. They also had Granta 117 for $10.95, six dollars less than cover. The two together did not qualify for free shipping, but even with shipping at about four bucks for each item, the grand total would be less than if I had bought both at cover price and got the free shipping. The problem, of course, is that buying from an outfit like Amazon is part of the reason that bricks-and-mortar stores like Borders are going away. So I fired up Barnes & Noble to see what I could find there, and I found pretty much the same thing—used copy of Comics Journal 290 (it was even from the same third-party vendor, though here it’s $1.99) and new copy of Granta 117 at $10.95. The shipping was even the same, about four bucks each.

Not a whole lot of difference between the two, except that going with the Barnes & Noble website would at least be supporting a company that operates bricks-and-mortar bookstores. The online model might be cutting into actual sales at those bookstores that they operate, but getting my dollars that way instead of losing them to Amazon would at least help them to be able to continue to operate those bookstores. In the long run, of course, the few dollars that I am going to spend on this transaction are a drop in the bucket for either company, and will make no real difference in the grand scheme of things. Buying online will also push a tiny bit of business to the U.S. Postal Service, because I’m not about to spend any extra money to have it shipped in a day or two by one of those overnight couriers. The post office needs more help than Barnes & Noble, though, so in the end it’s probably a push. I help the post office by buying online, and I maybe help Barnes & Noble a little bit more by going out of my way to pick up the issue of Granta at their actual store in Carmel. (Of course, the sales tax would go to Hamilton County, which I’m not in favor of supporting, but what the hell? It's a buck and change. That won’t buy much in Brainardville.)

And then in the end I wound up not pulling the trigger on either transaction, the Barnes & Noble one or the Amazon one. No help from me for the postal service or the bookstore today. I’ll wind up doing it tomorrow, or making some excuse to go up to Carmel here in a week or two. There’s a new Stephen King book coming out on November 8^th, and I’ll have to go by a Barnes & Noble to get that, and that might well be the excuse I need to go up to Carmel to see if they have Granta. I’ll have to go the Internet route at some point to get the issue of Comics Journal 290, and if that’s the only thing I’m going online for, it really won’t matter if I use Amazon or Barnes & Noble—except that in some small way it will matter, even though the fact that it matters won’t matter to anyone but me.

Just When I Thought I Was Out...They Pull Me Back In

2011-10-26T13:51:00.001-04:00

I’ve been on vacation for the last six days, and that’s part of why I have been able to pound out the last three fairly length blog posts (which have doubled as warm-up exercises for National Novel Writing Month, all of them containing more than the necessary daily word count to stay on pace for 50,000 words by November 30th); but another part of it is that getting that many words, in one writing sitting (which can encompass several hours and overlap the doing of other things unrelated to writing, such as cleaning the bathroom or organizing photos from the pumpkin patch), seems to have gotten easier since I have started actively working on it over the last few days. Intuitively, this makes sense, given the old adage that practice makes perfect; but there have been many nights where I have struggled mightily to get even a fraction of the 1700 words I have surpassed in each of the last three posts. (And it remains to be seen how well it will work when it comes to fiction. Most of what I wanted to write in these last few posts has already been in my head. Once I start in with National Novel Writing Month, I’ll be making most of it up as I go along. That’s where I’m afraid that I will run into trouble with pacing.)

Now that I’m back to work, there is much less time for writing, either fiction or blog posts. I started on a little story this afternoon, though, and had nearly 1300 words almost before I knew what was happening. Like much of my writing, it’s a fiction piece that started out with little nuggets of things that actually happened—and then it went off in directions I had not begun to imagine. One of the things that I find myself struggling with in real life is the issue of family. Other than the people living in my house with me—my wife and my son—I do not have a close relationship with anyone in my family, either on my side or on Amy’s side. Other than Amy and Jackson, there are only two people—again, on either side—that I even see on what could be considered a regular basis. That would be my mom and dad, who still live where they have lived since not long after I arrived on earth. Amy and Jackson and I live in the same zip code they do, though we could not live much father apart and still be in the same zip code. We live about half a block east of Emerson, where 46219 becomes 46201; and they live two blocks west of Post Road, where 46219 becomes 46229.

And that’s pretty much it. My brother lives in Kansas City, and we see him maybe once a year when he comes home for Thanksgiving or Christmas. I have four cousins, only one of whom lives in Indianapolis—at the moment…I think—and I never see him or his mom. The other one lives in Chicago, and I can’t remember the last time I saw him, although it must have been at Grump’s funeral. One of the others still lives in Jersey, I think, but I have no idea about the fourth—she’s in the theatre business and travels a lot. Their parents still live in Jersey, but I haven’t seen them since my grandmother’s funeral, going on eight years ago. I could probably find some or all of them on Facebook, but I have no interest in Facebook. I’m not close to anyone on Amy’s side of the family; the likeliest contestant there is her youngest brother, but we only really ever get together for holidays or the occasional Kings Island or Cedar Point trip, and even when he agrees to get together on holidays (not always a sure thing), I miss those events a lot of the time because of my job. Amy’s middle brother is only slightly less isolated from the rest of his family than North Korea is from the rest of the world; and he keeps reptiles.

This is not, however a forum for airing the family’s dirty laundry—which I have no desire to do—so that’s about as far as my theorizing about why I’m not close to anyone is going to go; but I’m beginning to feel the compulsion to explore these things in my writing, especially the Jersey connections on my side of the family. And just like the little story started to erupt from within me this afternoon, so too has this blog post, such as it is so far, erupted from within me in the thirty-odd minutes that I’ve been sitting at the computer since I got home from work. That thirty-odd minutes has yielded about 500 words (to go with the 200-odd I got on this before I went to work), but I don’t think I’m going to get anywhere near 1700. That means I probably won’t post this, since I’ve only been posting the ones that make it to 1700 words in one day’s worth of writing. (Note: I started this on Tuesday and finished it on Wednesday, though I had most of the words down Tuesday night. I had to cut some things and edit a couple of paragraphs to make the main points clearer, but it was mostly done Tuesday night, and so counts as a postable NaNoWriMo exercise. The point is to work on finding the time and inspiration to get out enough words each day to stay on pace. This exercise took longer than the ones I have posted previously, but it accomplished the same end.)

I’m not averse to airing my own personal dirty laundry, however. Whatever responsibility I bear for not being close to anyone in my family hinges on two things: the first is my job, and the second is my failure (so far) to make a living as a writer. I started doing the movie theatre grind when I was eighteen years old, the summer between my freshman and sophomore years in college; and back then, I loved it, because that was where my friends worked, and the hours were agreeable to someone who had never (so far as I can recall, at any rate) been a morning person. Those were also the first heady days of being able to say “no” to my parents when they said that it was time to do something or go somewhere. Whether I wanted to or not, I often had to work when they had planned some kind of family function, and I have no doubt that there was a part of me that reveled in being able to do this thing—go to work at a place I loved and being with people I loved (or at least really liked a lot)—instead of doing whatever it was that my parents thought I should be doing. I gave myself to it wholeheartedly, and the result was that I worked really hard at the job and became very good at it—and managed to distance myself from my family in the process. This was not intentional, but it was a consequence of what I was doing at work.

(One of the worst work-related decisions I might ever have made was when I quit a job one of my professors at IUPUI had offered me in order to take an hourly management job at the theatre. The professor had asked me to help her in the very early stages of creating an online Shakespeare course, and I had accepted the job and begun the work—which started with scanning into a computer images from an illustrated screenplay of Kenneth Branagh’s four-hour, 70mm epic version of Hamlet, from 1996—before I got the offer to move up into management at the theatre. If memory serves, I actually tossed the idea around for awhile and thought about what I would be leaving behind, because there was no way that I would be able to do both things; but I thought I wanted the management job more than anything else in the world at that point in time, and I took it. I don’t remember if I called the professor or told her of my decision during class or while I was doing some work for her one afternoon; but I did tell her that I could no longer do the work that she had offered because I had accepted a job doing something that I had wanted very much to do almost since I started working at the theatre. I had a chance to get in on the ground floor of creating online college courses, and I passed, for a fucking hourly management job at a movie theatre. I don’t know what else there is to say about that.)

The other thing is my failure to make a living at writing. I could use parentheses at this point to say that I have only “so far” failed to make a living at writing, but that ain’t the truth. I have failed at it. I have failed at something that I am very, very good at. Writing, in fact, might be the thing that I do better than anything else. But it doesn’t pay the bills, and I had always sort of thought that by this point in my life, it would. From here to the end of this paragraph is second-draft material, because what I started to get off on was why I have failed at writing; but that’s not why the fact of it has contributed to my not being close to people in my family (and this applies to people other than family, too). What makes it an issue with me and family is that, quite frankly, it’s embarrassing to answer the questions about writing the same way, year after year—“I’m still working on that novel that I’ve been working on since college.” Look at me, what have I done with my life in the—yes—thirteen years since I graduated from college? Not a goddamn thing. This is not a pity party, however. This is an exercise, part of an attempt to understand how family and writing are related and how the fact of one influences the fact of the other. I think that part of the answer might be that I need to write about family in some way in order to come to terms with those issues and move past them in order to get down into whatever deeper themes I really want to write about. I think one needs to understand one’s place in one’s family—not just be aware of it, but really understand it—in order to truly know oneself. That’s a hurdle I need to clear.

Another one is finding out why my dad thinks he “can’t” tell me any more about his uncles and the Jersey mob than he has already done. But that’s another story entirely.

Writing Update

2011-10-25T04:11:00.000-04:00

I have spent much of 2011 continuing with the progress on writing that I started to make in 2010, and I have managed so far to achieve two of the goals that I set for this year. The first was to complete a draft of a novel by the end of June. I was well on the way toward this goal when we left for Kansas City at the end of April for my brother’s wedding, but I spent longer getting toward the end than I would have liked, once we got back. I did manage to get to the end, but there were some hiccups along the way, and—as usual—I’m not entirely happy with what I have. I plan to pick up where I left off at the beginning of 2012, with one of my already-planned goals for the new year being to have a second draft of the same novel completed—using the Scrivener software to help with organization—by the end of March. This is half the time I allotted myself to complete a first draft this year, but I should not be writing the second draft completely from scratch (though with my track record, this is a distinct possibility).

I hope that using Literature and Latté’s Scrivener software will help me to stay focused on my primary theme and keep things moving along. Ever since Apple decided to pull the plug on AppleWorks, my word processor of choice, I have been using Bean, a free application that is a stripped-down word processor that just gives you space to write. The upside, apart from cost, is simplicity—you have to tweak a few things in the preferences to get the program looking the way you want it to look, but there isn’t a whole manual’s worth of things to learn, like there would be with Word or, say…Scrivener. The downside is that organization is left entirely up to you. I’ve never been one to outline, because I have always been afraid that doing so would destroy some element of the spontaneity of writing—those “accidents” I have been talking about in recent posts, the irrelevant things that I referenced from the Joanna Scott essay in Black Clock. Having said that, though, it has become abundantly clear that I need to have some kind of organizational system in place—not an outline that tells me where to go with each new section or chapter or part, but rather a system that gives me the tools to gently steer me in the right direction when I start to go astray—when those irrelevant things invade my thought process and take the writing off in a direction that I don’t want for it to go.

Scrivener’s project templates provide just this type of system, and the bonus is that the software was designed specifically for Macs. The days of total incompatibility between Macintosh and Windows machines are long gone, thanks to the advent of an open, Unix-based Mac OS, and the switch to Intel processors; but even though that is the case, I am still a little bit isolationist when it comes to software. I generally find that software designed for the Mac works better than other software, although the most recent version of the Safari browser is a notable exception (and one of the very few annoying Apple software products that I have ever encountered). I have only begun to scratch the surface of everything that Scrivener can do, but part of the goal of completing the second draft is to get myself familiarized with Scrivener in a crash-course kind of way. I like what I have seen so far: when you fire up the program, you select from a menu of templates, like Blank, Fiction, or Scriptwriting; then you get an interface that is reminiscent of the Mail interface, with a Binder (where the sections and parts and whatnot are stored in a hierarchical manner, like file folders in a list view) on the left, toolbars at the top, and a writing space in the middle; and from there you can add new “files” to the Binder, as you move from section to section, as well as view your writing spaces in a corkboard view or an outline view. The preferences are no less daunting than those in Word, and you have to spend some time getting things set up just the way you want them; but Scrivener is designed for creative writers, unlike Word. It’s also cheaper, and updates are generally free of charge. They’re on version 2.1, and the only time they have ever charged for an upgrade is when they released 2.0—and that upgrade was only $25. I plan to get to know Scrivener at the same time that Scrivener helps me to get a better handle on the novel and make the second draft a much better piece of writing than what I have right now.

For the second half of 2011, my goals were to work on short stories for contests during July, August, September, and October, and then dive into National Novel Writing Month in November; and with this in mind, I took out yet another subscription to Poets & Writers. I have subscribed to Poets & Writers off and on over the years, and I have sort of a love/hate relationship with the magazine. I’d have to go back through the issues I have saved up to make a complete list of writers I might never have heard of if not for profile pieces or cover stories about them in the magazine—a short list would include Jennifer Egan, Mary Gaitskill, and Donna Tartt; there have also been illuminating articles about writers I already knew of, including Jonathan Franzen, Toni Morrison, Chuck Palahniuk, and Jay McInerney; and even when the articles are on writers who don’t do all that much for me, there is always something in there about the writing process, and I find that kind of thing endlessly fascinating. The listings for contests and prizes takes up over a third of the pages in the current issue, and all of those listings are vetted by the editors, so you can feel comfortable submitting to them without having to worry about whether or not the contest is legit.

The hate part of the relationship comes into play when there is a long article or (ick) whole issue that focuses on the business end of writing. If I have ever had a dream, it is to make a living with my writing; and I understand that to do so means that I will have to dirty my hands in the nuts and bolts of the business of writing, but that doesn’t mean that I have to like reading about it. Every three or four issues, you get one that has a group of editors or agents on the cover, and you read over and over again about how hard it is to break into publishing, or how much of an advantage it is to get an MFA and then teach at a university while you work on your writing at night; and, once again, I understand that this is information that writers need to know, that forewarned is forearmed and what not…but that kind of stuff can be very dispiriting. It’s the commodification of something that comes from the soul, damnit, and it just feels dirty. If I ever manage to find an agent, whose business is the business of writing, who feels the same way about the thing, then I’m going to be set.

Every now and then, though, I get a subscription offer in the mail from Poets & Writers, and sure enough, one showed up earlier this year, offering a year (six issues) of the magazine for $9.95. For any magazine other than weeklies (which are always cheaper to subscribe to), I look at the subscription price and try to decide how often I would buy the magazine on the newsstand over the course of the next year; and if the money I would probably spend at the newsstand is more than the subscription price, I consider subscribing—if I think I would actually read all of the issues. Poets & Writers is $5.95 on the newsstand, so the one year for $9.95 meant that I would spend more money at the newsstand if I bought only two of the next six issues. I don’t buy the magazine at the newsstand all that much, but I can’t really imagine that a calendar year would go by wherein I would only buy one issue; and since one of my goals this year was to get some stories out to some contests, it was a no-brainer to send in the subscription card.

The funny thing is…I only wound up entering one contest that I read about in that first issue of my new subscription. I knew that I wanted to submit to that contest as soon as I came to it in the listings, and I spent part of the four month period allotted to stories writing the one for that contest. (I also spent a large part of the time period working on a story for a contest I had come across before I started taking Poets & Writers again.) But the remainder of the list I made of contests from the back pages of that first issue failed to yield anything that suited me; and yet in spite of that, I managed to write three stories and submit them to contests, well before the start of National Novel Writing Month. I also had a second story published in the third issue of Ichabod’s Sketchbook, but I’m not sure that I’m going to try to come up with anything to submit for the fourth issue. There are a number of reasons for this, some of which are…um…I don’t know, not politically correct? Certainly not diplomatic, at any rate.

That gets me pretty much up to now. I don’t know for sure what I’m going to do for National Novel Writing Month just yet, although I am pretty sure that I am going to work on what will be one-fourth of what I would like to be a very long novel about Irvington. I have a couple of other ideas that I have kept set aside for November, but a series of happy accidents a couple of weeks ago while Jackson and I were out for a walk while Amy was at choir practice made me start to think more seriously about this Irvington novel, which I have had percolating in the back of my mind for some time. It would, I think, be the most challenging of the several ideas that I have had for NaNoWriMo this year—and that makes it both scary and exciting. We’ll see what happens, I guess, starting one week from today.

The Elusive Borders Essay

2011-10-24T04:10:00.000-04:00

I tried to do a second National Novel Writing Month tune-up exercise by going for 1700 words on the closing of Borders, but I only got to about 1200 words before I ran out of things to say—and yet here I am trying it again! It’s just another big corporation gone by the wayside, though in this case due at least as much to bad decisions the company made as to that whole recession thing people have been talking about; but it is just another big corporate chain, even if it was one that gave something to Indianapolis that no indie store has been able to do. There are still Barnes & Noble stores around town, but shopping there is not the same experience that it was at Borders.

I never bought much from the music or movies sections of Borders stores, even if they had something I wanted that I could not find at Best Buy*. The score to the film Revolutionary Road comes to mind. (Leaving aside the fact that the film was just a mediocre adaptation of a really fine Richard Yates novel, the Thomas Newman score was haunting and lovely.) I was not surprised that Best Buy did not have it in-store, and I was also not surprised that Borders did have it and that they were charging an arm and a leg for it (relatively speaking). It was something like $17.99 or $18.99 at Borders, and I actually had the CD in my hand at, I think, the downtown store, and was just about to grin and bear it and take it down to the checkout counter—when I decided that I would finally try the ol’ iTunes Music Store, where it was only $9.99. That’s still the only thing I’ve ever bought with iTunes (other than one song from the Vs. re-issue that just would not rip correctly off of the CD I bought at Luna), but it was totally worth it.

I don’t buy DVDs at all anymore, and that’s mostly because the movies I like enough to own are things that Amy would never want to watch with me. Other than the occasional collector’s edition, like those versions of the Lord of the Rings movies that came in a box with a collectible sculpture, or the collector’s edition of The Lion King (pre-3D re-release), I rely on Netflix and the library for any DVDs I want to watch. Borders charged an arm and a leg for DVDs, too, and are there even any indie video stores out there? I don’t know, and it doesn’t mean so much to me that I’m going to spend the time to find out.

Books, on the other hand, are tremendously important to me, and always have been. I was into books before I was into music and movies, and though I still love music and movies, my interest in them has cooled somewhat over the years. Mainstream music is hit and miss, and almost all mainstream movies are terrible. Literature is pretty healthy, even if printed material, as an aggregate medium, is in trouble. E-books were a spectacular failure the first time they turned up, because no one wanted to sit at their computer and read for very long; but this second iteration is hitting, due largely to the viability of portable devices like the Kindle and the iPad. That doesn’t mean that physical books (and the bricks and mortar establishments that trade in them) are dead, but it does mean that they have to change the way they do business.

They have to provide a means for reading e-books, which Barnes & Noble managed to do with their Nook e-reader. They developed the device themselves, married it to the Android platform, and launched it two years ago. Borders got into bed with Kobo, but didn’t launch the device until almost a year after the Nook came out. Borders was never any great shakes at the technology stuff anyway. While Barnes & Noble jumped solidly into online bookselling, Borders limped along at first on their own, then in partnership with Amazon, and then on their own again. And there was also the problem of the revolving door at the CEO position and changes in ownership.

But they got their stores right, at least. They installed bookshelves in the walls, which made the stores feel more like libraries than places of business. They still had racks and fixtures out on the open floor, but they made much better use of their wall space than Barnes & Noble, where things are packed in tight and the lighting is dim. It always seemed to me like their selection was better, too. That might just be my impression of the Indianapolis Borders stores versus the Indianapolis Barnes & Noble stores, but it always seemed like there were more copies of the books on the shelves at Borders—so that you had more to pick from, to make sure that you got a book that was in good shape.

Borders generally had a better selection of literary magazines, too, though I have only become very interested in journals in the last couple of years (and so can’t be sure that I am remembering this entirely correctly). I remember that the original Castleton store had a whole end rack in their magazine section that contained nothing but literary magazines, and that the River Crossing store had a respectable selection. They always had Film Comment and Poetry, both of which I have to actively seek out now when I want them. The Clearwater Crossing Barnes & Noble doesn’t carry Film Comment, and they only occasionally stock Poetry. I have to go to Greenwood or Carmel to get Film Comment now—which is pretty far out of the way to go just for a magazine.

I made my last visit to a Borders store on the Tuesday before they shuttered the Indianapolis stores for good, and that visit was to the south side store. Jackson was at school that day instead of at home with me (I think maybe because of Labor Day—was it that long ago?), so I had time to make my way down there before going into work; and it was nice to be able to make that store the last Borders store I visited. If I had not made time for that trip, the store at the Castleton Square Mall would have been the last one I ever visited, and that would have been sad, because that store sucked from the day it opened. The location was terrible (whoever designed the parking lot when they added those shops on the outside of the mall is an awful, awful human being), the lights were always turned up to 11, and it was the only Borders I can recall ever visiting that felt more like a place of business than it did a place to be at peace among books. By contrast, I used to stop at the south side store on my home from Amy’s, before we were married, when that store had just opened and stayed open relatively late. It was comforting and inviting, like the others of its kind in town.

And on that last visit, there were still lots of gems to be had, when the discounts were up to 70-90% off the original price. I first picked up an anthology of stories that had appeared in McSweeney’s, but wound up putting it down when I came to a novel called Elizabeth Street, which I had looked at before but never purchased. It’s a fictional account of true events in the history of the author’s family, and it is concerned with life in the Little Italy section of New York City; and at 80% off, I was all in. I also got a copy of the 2009 World Almanac, from the bargain section, at 70% off its $1.00 sticker price, which put it at a whopping thirty cents. A Modern Library trade paperback edition of Henry V was all of fifty-nine cents.

I got to all of the other stores in the area before they closed, too—even the one up in Carmel, where the happy coincidence of dinner with Amy and her parents let me stop on my way at the Carmel Borders to pick up Roberto Bolaño’s excellent 2666 at 40% off and whichever issue of A Public Space was current at the time at 50% off. Two last stops at Castleton netted me Mary Gaitskill’s Don’t Cry and another Modern Library Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part I. My last stop at River Crossing saw me walk away with two volumes of interviews from The Paris Review. I picked up One Hundred Years of Solitude downtown, and also a beloved book from childhood, The Cay, for Jackson. The only store I didn’t get to before it closed that I would like to have done was the one in Bloomington; but it closed before Borders went into Chapter 11, and I didn’t even know that it was going out.

I spent a lot of time and money at Borders stores over the years. I don’t remember the first time I went to one, though it might have been the original Indianapolis location at 86th and Allisonville, when I was in search of Dan Quayle’s memoir in paperback for a class I was taking in college. I remember discovering “bargain books” for the first time at a Borders in Chicago when Amy and I went up there with a friend of hers to visit someone in a hospital. My mom was the one who got me started on Borders, because she used to get the books she gave us for birthdays and Christmas there when Matt and I were younger. She always stuck the bookmarks you got at checkout into the books, so I had Borders bookmarks going back to when I was in junior high or so. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a Barnes & Noble bookmark; but maybe that’s what separates the good from the great.

* When I buy CDs now, I go to Luna. It took me awhile to get around to this decision, which is sort of surprising given how much I blather on about supporting the indie outift and eschewing the corporate chains. I used to chafe at the idea of spending several extra dollars per CD at Luna, but I finally made peace with the fact that since I only buy CDs rarely anymore, it doesn’t really hurt me to drop those few extra dollars. It’s voting with your dollars, and I fully acknowledge that it’s pathetic that it took me so long to get comfortable with spending that little bit of extra money.

Accidents & Postcards #1

2011-10-22T03:30:00.000-04:00

Okay, so here’s the explanation of the idea behind the first Accidents & Postcards post. I think this will be sort of a long post, partly because I need to see what kind of shape I’m in for National Novel Writing Month, which starts in just a few short days. In order to get to 50,000 words by the end of the month, you have to be able to kick out almost 1700 words every single day. That is a monstrous pace, one to which I have not been adhering over the course of the eleven months since the last NaNoWriMo. This particular post was probably going to go a little bit long anyway, because it’s a long way around getting to the crux of the story; and by making it a tune-up of sorts for NaNoWriMo, I may have to add more to it than I had originally planned. (By way of example, this first paragraph is around 170 words, which is one-tenth of what you need to stay on pace for NaNoWriMo. I’ll have to kick out nine more paragraphs of roughly this length in order to get to 1700 words for the post.)

I’ve started this previously on a couple of occasions, but have not finished it because I wasn’t sure exactly where I wanted to begin. Do I try to go back to the very beginning, where the idea first took shape; or do I just jump right in at the present, work my around to the beginning, and then double back to the present? The latter, non-linear form, would feel much like the first two Tarantino films, and I think it would probably feel slightly more organic, since I could bring things up out of order and then sort of fit them into the context of how I came to think about them with respect to the original idea. The former, of course, would be more organized, but I’m not entirely sure I would get everything in just the right place; and the idea of going back and forth to make sure everything is put together in just the right way is slighty maddening to me.

(Yes, I understand that this is the way in which novels get written, and that it is perhaps my inability or unwillingness to work very hard at this that has kept me from becoming an actual novelist. But it’s just not the way I work. Everything has to come out mostly the right way the first time, in mostly the right order, or I’m just not happy with it. This in contrast to John Irving, who has said that he still desperately loves the work of constructing a novel. But to paraphrase T.S. Eliot, I am not John Irving, nor was meant to be.)

Which leaves me no closer to knowing whether I want to start at the beginning or jump right in with the right now and try to get myself back to the point where I decided to start writing the story that bears the name of this post (minus the enumeration). I’m just not sure where the goddamn beginning is. But for the sake of argument (and because it’s getting late and I’d like to have this done by two in the morning so I can get some reading done before I go to bed), let’s say that the beginning was when I read a literary magazine round-up in Poets & Writers, many months now in the past. One of the articles in the magazine (I don’t remember which issue, but it’s not more than a year or two old) had agents or editors or some other group of people in the business offering little blurbs about which literary magazines they were reading or were interested in at the moment. Several of them mentioned a journal called n+1, though the reasons each of them gave for why that particular journal was interesting at the moment I no longer recall. (It’s possible that I will go back later and shore this up with some actual quotes or references from the issue of Poets & Writers in question, sort of like the way Eliot bulked up “The Waste Land” with notes.)

As I have alluded to before, going in search of literary magazines in Indianapolis is something of a fool’s errand. It was no slam dunk when Borders was still around, and is even less of a slam dunk now that they are gone and Barnes & Noble has dramatically reduced the titles they stock. Nonetheless, and this was before Borders closed and Barnes reduced their inventory, I went out looking for n+1 and found a copy of issue number 10 at the Clearwater Barnes & Noble. (I’m not going to get into what the journal is about. You can get a good idea of that by checking out their website and reading some of their online content.) It was $13.95, which is more than I like to spend on literary magazines, but I picked it up anyway, took it home, and added it to the pile of journals I have bought (few of which I have gotten around to reading, but that’s another story, too).

I read part of it at once, because one of the features was a series of four responses to Freedom, the new novel by Jonathan Franzen. And now that I think about it, I must have picked up the copy of n+1 sometime last year, because I read the responses to Freedom before I read Freedom, which I started late last December. I started the issue of n+1 from the beginning some time after that, and was close to finishing it when we left for Kansas City for my brother’s wedding, at the end of April of this year. I finished it in the car on the way to Kansas City, and one of the ads near the back of the issue was for another journal, called Black Clock. The blurb for that one listed a number of authors I admire, so I made a mental note to check out their website when we got settled at the hotel. Once we were settled, I fired up my laptop and hooked up to the Marriott’s Wi-Fi (and would you believe that the Marriott charges $10 a day to use their Wi-Fi?) and then brought up their website. Print issues of the journal cost $13, but PDF versions of those same back issues were only $3, so I ponied up for the most recent issue, which at that time was #13.

And it took me a long time to get around to reading that one, too. I still haven’t read the whole thing, but one of the pieces I did read was an essay called “The Sting of Irrelevancy,” by Joanna Scott, which had originally been published in Black Clock #7, from Fall 2007. The essay describes, among other things, how seemingly irrelevant things can in fact be very relevant, if only the writer can manage to take note of the irrelevant thing without losing focus on the matter at hand. This, at least, is the way that I interpret what I read. It struck me as interesting, so I filed it away in that part of my active mind where I keep things that I want to remember without having to think about them all the time.

In the essay, Scott writes, “If an openness to experience is maintained, then the most irrelevant experience can contribute meaning to a distant story.” This is in the same spirit that Stephen King describes the process of having an idea, in the novel Misery. The main character, Paul Sheldon, relates that he often goes out for a walk in order to clear his mind and prepare it to receive whatever ideas may come to it—as opposed to actively trying to “Have An Idea,” which he describes as somewhat akin to the idea that a watched pot never boils. It is also in the same spirit as the idea of not being able to see the forest for the trees, though in this case Scott describes it within the context of writing.

The idea has had a dramatic impact on the way that I look at the world, especially when I’m out on walks with Jackson on Wednesday afternoons, or when I’m at a bookstore—or even when I’m just at work. I transmuted the nebulous concept of irrelevancy into the more concrete example of accidents, making an adjective that is subjective into a noun that is objective—and in some cases, an actual object. Sometimes it’s a chance encounter, like the girl at the mall who at first was looking for the food court and then wanted to bum a cigarette. Other times, it is, as I say, an object—a postcard stuck in the pages of an issue of National Geographic in the clearance section at Half Price Books. I wove both of those things into a long story I just yesterday mailed off as a contest entry, along with fictional versions of a dominatrix Steve and I ran into once at the Chatterbox, an evening of backwoods stargazing during my freshman year in college, and the time I had to drive one of the bartenders at the Slippery Noodle home because she drank too much during her shift.

If not for a series of seemingly irrelevant episodes, maybe that story never gets written. I don’t know. But I loved the way all of those random things came together, and—like John Irving, for once—I loved working the original draft down into something that was much tighter and more coherent in its final form. It took a long time—I started it over the summer, finished the first draft just a few weeks ago, and then did two sets of revisions, both for length and for content. I worried over the ending for a long time, and finally hammered something out because I thought that where it stopped before I tacked on the ending wasn’t a good place to end; but it turned out to be just the right place for it to end. When I got to the end of the second set of revisions, I realized that my tacked-on ending was completely unnecessary. A few little tweaks turned what was originally an abrupt stopping point into a haunting little ending.

So there it is. I compressed a few things in this version—the postcard in the National Geographic for one—that took up whole paragraphs in the first version; and it’s a bit after two in the morning as I am wrapping this up. But by the time I get to the end of this, I will have put down over 1800 words, in less than an hour.

National Novel Writing Month, here I come.

My Last Word on "Civic Action"

2011-10-18T12:28:00.002-04:00

My little experiment in civic action has failed. Tomorrow it will be three weeks since I sent e-mail to John Gregg, Mike Pence, and the Indiana Democratic Party. I got nothing back from any of them, other than the automatic acknowledgement from the Gregg website (which does not count). I knew Mike Pence was worthless, and I suspected that a southern Indiana “Democrat” like John Gregg might actually be a worthless DINO; but the lack of response from the machinery of the state party is particularly sad. Part of me wants to keep firing off the questions I set originally to John Gregg, just to see who out there might answer them; but I would only be setting myself up for disappointment. Part of me also wants to sit here and rail against how conservative and disappointing this state and its people are; but that doesn’t do any good, either. I tried to engage with some local politicians, and my efforts failed. The best thing to do is report the results—my questions were completely ignored by John Gregg, Mike Pence, and the Indiana Democratic Party—and move on. I know that I should actually be even more engaged than I am, that I should be doing more than just sending some strongly-worded e-mails; but working to correct the conservative nature of this state and its people feels more and more like a fool’s errand as each day goes by. This state and its people are happy to be conservative and ignorant. There’s a fine line between being engaged in local politics and just plain wasting your time; and I’m sure as hell not going to waste any money on it.

Accidents & Postcards #2

2011-10-15T23:59:00.000-04:00

[Note: I realize that there is no Accidents & Postcards #1, and you will note by the end of this post that I have only alluded to what the idea means. I have started Accidents & Postcards #1, complete with explanation, but I have not finished it yet. This one just poured out of me tonight, and I wanted to post it right away. The prequel, if you like, will be along soon.]

Another accident: Discovering that the Mississippi Review publishes work that seems to be relatively boundary-free. (As an aside, I am sure that there really are boundaries, and that there are certain things you simply cannot put down in print and expect to have published; but within reason, within the scope of what can be considered literature [and like people sometimes say about obscenity, it’s just the kind of thing you know when you see it or read it], there should not be boundaries.)

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Here’s how it started. A couple of weeks ago, on a Tuesday morning while Jackson watched his Thomas the Tank Engine DVDs in the background and played with his Thomas the Tank Engine toys in the living room, I sat at the dining room table over the current issue of Poets & Writers and consulted the listings for contests and deadlines in the back of the magazine. I wrote down the information for contests that: were looking for short stories; were offering a subscription to the journal or a copy of the prize issue with the reading fee; and had deadlines that were far enough in the future that I felt I could come up with something to submit in the amount of time remaining.

I already had a story in the works and knew which contest I wanted to submit it to, but I wanted to get a couple more done and submitted before National Novel Writing Month started. I finalized and submitted the first story and then wrote the second one, which I finalized last night. So tonight, I picked up my list of contests and went through it and crossed out the ones whose deadlines had passed since I made the list. Then I loaded up the website of the first one on left the list and checked to see if they had posted any prize-winning stories that I could read online to see if what I had written was something along the lines of what they had published in the past. (This is a nebulous concept, but one of the big pieces of advice you run into frequently when you start investigating contests is that you should read the work of the journals you want to submit to, to make sure that what you are writing will be a good fit. Like literature and obscenity, it’s just one of those things that you know when you see it.)

They did, and I read the 2011 contest winner; and I did not think that my writing was a good fit, so I moved on down the list, but none of the contests that were left on the list felt right. None of them had samples online, and I didn’t get the right vibe from the information that was available on the websites. So, pretty much at random, I went to the websites of contests I had submitted to a number of years ago, the first time the Entering Contests Bug bit me, thinking that maybe there was an off chance that they would have contests going on that had not been listed in the issue of Poets & Writers I had looked at.

One of these was the Mississippi Review, published by the University of Southern Mississippi. They had a contest going on. The deadline had not passed. Each entrant gets a copy of the prize issue. While looking for samples to read online, I came to their back issue page, and saw the cover of the issue I had received when I entered their contest the first time. They did not have sample stories online, and I might have given up, except that one of the people whose work appeared in the issue was called Angela Williams. I used to know a girl by that name in high school, so I went over to the bookcase that holds my literary magazines, and I picked out the issue and turned to the back to check the notes on the contributors. It was not the same person I had known in high school, but since I had the issue in my hand, I started to flip through it. I found the story that had won the fiction prize, and I read the first paragraph, which consisted of two sentences. The first sentence reveals the narrator to be a sixteen-year-old girl, and the second reveals that she is about to blow a dude with a big dick.

That got my attention, and it was totally an accident that I happened to get there from where I started when I sat down to work on my submissions tonight. Is the story obscene? Based on the first two sentences, a lot of people would probably say that it is. They would cringe, put the magazine down, and probably give me a dirty look for having brought it up in the first place. I, on the other hand, have a great deal of respect for a journal that would publish something like that. It means that they are willing to publish material that might be considered objectionable, that they are not afraid to court controversy, that they are not afraid to look taboo in the eye and say that they are its equal.

I like art that challenges taboos, that challenges people to go outside of their comfort zones—that makes people think hard about themselves and the world around them. It’s how minds open up and thoughts become freer. That’s what challenging art can do for the person who consumes it. For the person who creates it, challenging art can be a way to explore new thoughts and ideas, to confront problems, to exorcise demons, to come to terms with things that have been festering inside, among so many other modes of expression. In a free-thinking, open-minded world, that kind of art can help more than just the person who created it and who was helped or healed or refreshed by that creation; but when there are limits on art, those kinds of things get put away, and they can’t help anyone else.

I read the current issue of H.O.W. Journal earlier this year and was very impressed with the stories they published; and I knew after reading just the first story that I wanted to submit a story of my own to the contest they currently have open. I only had to read the first two sentences of the prize-winning story in an issue of the Mississippi Review to know the same thing about that journal, and that’s the contest I’m going to enter with the story I finalized last night. It’s entirely by accident that I found that outlet, even though the journal has been sitting there in my bookcase—unread—for years. If I don’t win, that’s okay; but going about this in a way that feels right to me is the only way that I’m ever going to be happy with it. It may not make me rich, but it makes me happy, and it makes me proud of what I have done, proud of this mad, lonely vocation I have chosen to pursue.

Insert Rocky Joke Here

2011-10-02T17:09:00.000-04:00

We were out and about pretty much all day today, and I actually managed to get some interesting pictures from the zoo—including a video of Jackson racing a cheetah. I think this was just my second visit to the new tiger exhibit, and it was much better than the first time. I seem to recall that the tigers were not moving around much that first time, but this time one of them was going back and forth right in front of the glass (clearly hamming it up for the people who were watching). This picture isn't all that great, but hopefully it gives you an idea of just how close you can get to tigers in the new exhibit. More to come.

Hoosier Outdoor Experience

2011-09-30T02:38:00.002-04:00

Two Sundays ago, we went up to Fort Harrison to have a go at Hoosier Outdoor Experience, a DNR event with all kinds of different things to see and do. I thought about trying it last year, but big things like that with Jackson can be daunting for me. There is so much to see and do that you would need to spend most of the day there to get to all of it, and even then you might not make it. We spent a couple of hours and visited each of the three sections of the event, but seemed to spend the most time at the pony ride and the straw maze. They called it a straw maze, anyway; but by the time we got there, it looked more like the house in Three Little Pigs after the Big Bad Wolf comes through. Jackson loved it, though, because there were big piles of straw that he could climb and then fling himself from the top of. I even managed to get around to posting some of the photos I took while we were there.

More Civic Action

2011-09-27T14:45:00.000-04:00

Today I got a letter in the mail, from the Indiana Democratic Party, asking me to sign a petition to get John Gregg and Joe Donnelly on the primary ballot for Governor and U.S. Senator, respectively. I don’t know anything about Joe Donnelly, except that he’s running for the U.S. Senate—which I did not know until I got the letter; and I still don’t know much about John Gregg, except that his campaign ignores information requests submitted from his website. I still haven’t received a response to the questions I submitted on September 14th, and I also have not received a response to a follow-up message I submitted on September 21st. That ain’t cool.

But then again, I submitted very obviously liberal questions to a DINO. Maybe he just ignored me because he thought that nothing he could say would win my vote—or maybe it was the other way around, and he assumed that my obviously liberal questions meant that I would definitely vote for him. Neither supposition is accurate. I would write-in my Zippo lighter before I would vote for Mike Pence, but I’m also not going to vote for just any old hilljack, just because he claims to be a Democrat. (I sort of wish the two parties would abandon the Democrat and Republican designations and simply call themselves Liberals or Conservatives. That would make politics in this country a whole lot more honest. It would still be disappointing, backward, Conservative politics; but at least we would be able to see the true face of the intransigent monster obstructing progress. But whatever.)

So just for fun, I brought up Mike Pence’s website today, checked to see if anything on the site directly addressed anything I asked in my questions (no), and then used the feedback form to submit the exact same set of questions that I submitted to John Gregg—verbatim, except that I replaced “Mr. Gregg” with “Rep. Pence,” and changed “Governor Gregg” to “our next Governor” (which necessitated a small grammatical change a few words later) there near the end. I left everything else the same, including the one or two bits of moderately fiery rhetoric that were clearly anti-conservative. Here’s the strange thing: Mike Pence cannot win my vote, but if he actually answers my questions, I will have more respect for him than I do for John Gregg.

Deep Thoughts #66 - Special Topical Meaningless Numbers Edition

2011-09-21T15:23:00.002-04:00

I finally got American Weather, by Charles McLeod, on eBay. When I left feedback, that gave the seller a net positive feedback score of 666.

John Gregg for Indiana - Not So Much

2011-09-21T14:45:00.001-04:00

So it’s one week later, and I have not received a response by e-mail for any of the questions that I sent to Democratic gubernatorial candidate John Gregg through his website. This is discouraging. As a liberal, I expect nothing from a useless human being like Mike Pence. I do not expect much more from people like John Gregg, who are basically liars—saying they are Democrats when their values hew much closer to those of Republicans and conservatives.

But regardless of what I think of them as human beings, I would expect any person running for office at least to respond to questions asked by a potential voter. Were my questions leading? Sure they were. I don’t imagine it’s possible to read those questions I wrote and not know that they were written by a liberal with the express hope that they would be answered by someone of like mind. I did not realistically expect that they would be answered that way. I am sure there are a few liberals in southwest Indiana, but I suspect that the likelihood of running into one of them randomly is about the same as that of randomly running into a liberal Saudi in the Arabian Desert.

I thought there would at least be whatever the electronic version of a form letter is as a response; but, you know, not so much. If this is because the Gregg campaign somehow did not get my e-mail submission from their web form, then that’s one thing (which I’m going to look into); but if it’s any other reason, then that’s a pretty good indication that liberals in Indiana are fucked for the next four years, regardless of which candidate is elected to replace Mitch Daniels.

John Gregg for Indiana (?)

2011-09-14T13:05:00.005-04:00

I know this isn't going to make a lick of difference. Everyone knew as soon as he announced that Mike Pence was going to be the next governor of the laughingstock state of Indiana. The vast majority of people in Indiana are the kind of foolish conservatives who think Mike Pence for...well, for anything...is a good idea. The damage that will be done by eight years of ultraconservative bigotry and stupidity will take generations to undo—assuming that enough people of intellect and character choose to remain in Indiana in the hopes that conservatism will eventually pass into history like other outmoded ideas—such as slavery and communism.

John Gregg doesn't have a prayer of beating Mike Pence, but I can't just sit idly by and not at least try to do something to prevent a Pence Administration, which will surely be the worst thing to happen to the State of Indiana since...I don't know, the KKK? I'm actually tempted to sign up for both Facebook and Twitter, just to give the guy a couple of more "likes" and "followers." Pence is currently obliterating Gregg on both Facebook and Twitter, and that's sad because those are largely the domains of young people—and young people are supposedly bread and butter for the Democrats.

That said, though, I don't necessarily want to throw my support behind a conservative dressed in blue, just for the sake of voting for a Democrat. I'm not a Democrat, and I don't think Democrats are really that much better than Republicans. Liberals are better than conservatives, of course, but Democrat does not always equal liberal—especially in a laughingstock state like Indiana. When I read on Gregg's website that he's from southwest Indiana, I just shook my head. There aren't any liberals for miles around down there. That's Brad Ellsworth Blue Dog country, and that dude got smoked by Dan Lobbyist-Coats in a Senate race. Gregg will get likewise smoked by Pence because Hoosiers, mostly, are stupid.

And having said all of that, I still feel like I need to find out a little something about John Gregg before I decide if I'm going to vote for him or not. (And I won't vote for the Libertarian, either—those people are just pretentious faux-intellectual conservatives anyway.) So with that in mind, I went to Gregg's website today, and set him the following questions:

I am curious to know Mr. Gregg's position on issues such as education, gay marriage, Planned Parenthood, and immigration.

Does Mr. Gregg support the "letter grade" system of evaluating schools? This kind of simplistic system does a disservice to all parties (and is condescending, besides). Will Mr. Gregg instead support (or propose) a system of evaluation - for both teachers and schools - that focuses primarily on how much students learn year over year, rather than what they can demonstrate that they have memorized by taking a standardized test - and which, of course, provides different tiers of evaluation for different students, especially English Language Learners (ELLs) and those with special needs?

Does Mr. Gregg support the right of two people of the same sex to marry? When the State denies a marriage license to two people of the same sex, the State is committing gender discrimination. The national tide is turning, correctly, in support of gay marriage, and I believe that the next four years will see homophobic politicians swept out of office and those who support equal rights for ALL PEOPLE swept just as eagerly into office.

Does Mr. Gregg plan to immediately reinstate funding to Planned Parenthood? This organization provides many important services to women in need - not only the abortions that fear-mongering conservatives blindly claim are its sole reason for existence. By removing funding for Planned Parenthood, the State of Indiana sends an alarming statement about its lack of concern for women and children.

Does Mr. Gregg support the DREAM Act, and any other measures that would provide a path to full-time legal status or citizenship for thousands of people who are in this country illegally through no fault of their own? For those who have violated or are violating the law by being in this country, does Mr. Gregg support a plan that would allow these people to make restitution for their infractions and then pursue full-time legal status or eventual citizenship?

These are important issues, not just for Indiana, but for the whole country - and, indeed, for the world. I hope that the citizens of Indiana can count on Governor Gregg to lead with integrity on these issues, and I look forward to finding out where he stands on them.

Thank You.

Deep Thoughts #65 - Special Topical Hilljack Republican Edition

2011-09-13T02:10:00.001-04:00

I was wrong. Bobby Jindal endorsed Rick Perry for the GOP nomination - proving Jindal is just as deep-fried as the rest of the Retardlicans.

170 Million Americans for Public Broadcasting

2011-09-07T13:59:00.001-04:00

I get the feeling that I have to defend myself if I make the assertion that people should support public broadcasting; and I find it sad that I get that feeling. I find myself thinking that I should make my own arguments, rather than just linking to bullet points put together by someone else; but it seems like every time I start, I wind up going off on a rant, which is completely counterproductive. I'm going to take a deep breath and give it a shot, though: Public broadcasting is non-profit, it has no agenda, and it offers some of the best programming that radio and television have to offer; and because there is no advertising, you get to see and hear more of that great programming than you would see or hear if you were watching American Idol or listening to Smiley. If you’ve never listened to public radio or watched public television, you really should give it a shot. Public broadcasting needs public support. You can find more information at 170 Million Americans for Public Broadcasting, and if you sign up for their e-mail list, you can download a free music sampler.

Peddie Lake Overflows!

2011-08-28T22:25:00.008-04:00

I never even knew there was a Peddie Lake. I knew there was a Peddie School, but I didn't know about the lake. Hurricane Irene went through all of New Jersey—the school is located in Highstown, which is sort of in the middle, and which is where this photo was taken. It just happened to be the first image in an msnbc slideshow posted sometime on Sunday—or I might still not know that there is a Peddie Lake.

Deep Thoughts #64 - Special Topical Hilljack Republican Edition

2011-08-20T09:49:00.001-04:00

Yeah, I know—are there any non-hilljack Republicans? Bobby Jindal. That’s it. The rest are batter-dipped and deep-fried just like fair food.

Deep Thoughts #63 - Special Topical Hilljack Republican Edition

2011-08-20T09:41:00.003-04:00

How stupid are Americans? An ultraconservative science-ignorant prayer freak from Texas is making waves in the GOP race for President…again.

And This is the Explanation of the Test

2011-08-20T00:49:00.002-04:00

Though I have sporadically posted photos of Jackson over the years, I have never posted any videos of him. The same camera we take pictures with also shoots video, and I’ve shot plenty of little movie snippets of Jackson over the years; but I’ve never had the means to post those video snippets on my blog. The reason for that is simple—stupid, but simple. I did not have high-speed Internet. (And yeah, I can hear the collective gasp from the crowd. “You didn’t have high-speed…does that mean…have you been using dial-up all this time?”)

Yes. I have been using dial-up all this time—and really, it hasn’t even been that much of a bother. The handful of websites I go to regularly—msnbc, Weather Channel, the library, my blog (and the blogs of others—all of which, oddly enough, are Blogger blogs), IMDb, and the Yats website to check the menu—work reasonably well with dial-up; my computer is still relatively zippy, even though it’s well over two years old; and the Safari web browser is pretty freaking fast, even with dial-up. Other than that, I mainly use the Internet for reading—and text loads just about instantly no matter how fast the connection.

I also figured it would probably be a hassle to switch over to broadband, even with IQuest (or Lightbound, or whatever the hell they’re calling themselves this week), which is an extremely unobtrusive—and extremely reliable—service provider. Then there’s the matter of this lonely attic room I live in. It has a grand total of two wall outlets—neither of which is grounded. However, with a surge protector/power strip and a couple of extension cords, I’ve managed to rig it to where I have power from one end of the room to the other. (The attic isn’t all that big, but it does run the length of the house.) Telephony is a bigger issue, though. There’s no phone jack up here. I had to run a phone cable from the floor jack downstairs, up a wall, across the ceiling, and through the air vent to be able to plug it into the phone port on my surge protector. Then another phone cable goes out of the surge protector and into my computer. If going to broadband was going to be anything more complicated than that, I was going to have problems. I knew I was going to have to make the switch at some point, but I was sort of holding out for the day when I got my credit cards paid off and could potentially afford an iPhone. I would be able to configure the phone as a Wi-Fi hotspot and use that for my Internet connection.

Oddly enough, though, Apple forced my hand before I could get to that day. They started the forced march away from dial-up, with the line of unibody aluminum notebooks that came out in 2008, by omitting the internal modem from those computers. They were not entirely dismissive of dial-up users, however, because they also started to sell an external dial-up modem that you could buy separately. I bought one of those modems when the internal modem on my iBook G4 died, but the iBook wasn’t powerful enough to support the modem. Then I bought one of the unibody aliminum MacBooks, configured the external modem, and went about my business.

Last month, Apple put an end to the sideshow altogether, with the release of Mac OS X 10.7, code named Lion. It was the first major upgrade to the Mac operating system in a number of years, and there was a lot of buzz over the way it brought a goodly portion of the iOS experience to the traditional Mac desktop. I read a lot about all of the new features of Lion—including that it would only be available as a download from the Mac App Store, which meant that I would have to download it at work by sponging the free Wi-Fi at Nordstrom (which is hella faster than the mall’s Wi-Fi). What I did not read about—probably because no one imagined that there might be Mac users who were still rocking the Internet dial-up style—was that Lion would not support the Apple USB modem. The way that I discovered this was by bringing my computer home the night I downloaded and installed Lion and reading the error message at startup that told me I could not use an Apple USB modem with this computer.

It should not have come as a surprise, because Apple has been doing that kind of thing for years—they phased out floppy disks with the first iteration of the iMac, they dumped internal modems, and now it looks like they might be contemplating the phase-out of the optical drive, which means no more CDs or DVDs. But all’s well that ends well, I guess. I called IQuest and signed up for their DSL, which costs $28 a month (double the rate I was paying for dial-up), plus $63 for the DSL modem; and I was back up and running in just a few days. The modem was no problem to set up, my computer configured it automatically, and I only had to add one plug to my power strip. I was able to use my existing phone cabling without changing a thing, except to hook up a couple of DSL filters on the two floor jacks downstairs. And now I’m cooking along even faster than when I used the Nordstrom Wi-Fi at work. IQuest claims 1.5 Mbps downstream, and a third-party network monitor app that I use shows my actual throughput to be just a hair slower than that. It took me about nine hours to download Lion at work—when I re-downloaded it at home to make a bootable startup disk with a flash drive, it took about six hours.

I don’t really have an ending for this. It was just a long way around explaining why I have never posted any videos of Jackson. It also partly explains why I’m so inconsistent about posting pictures of him, which actually works with dial-up (unlike posting videos, which does not)—but takes a really long time, on top of the time it takes to go through all the pictures on the camera and sort them out. I will once again pledge to try to be better about posting pictures and to not get bad about posting videos. This first video is a short clip of Jackson watching a train up close. We were out for a walk on Wednesday and just happened to be walking down Audubon Road, south of University Avenue, when we heard the train’s whistle. We were still a few hundred yards away from the tracks when the train started to pass, and Jackson encouraged me to go faster, so he could see it—which, obviously, he did.

This is Only a Test

2011-08-18T00:19:00.002-04:00

Deep Thoughts #62

2011-08-14T00:54:00.000-04:00

I just noticed that my invoice for Poets & Writers says, “Your first issue is on it’s way.” The people sending the bill must not be writers.

Best. Bumper Sticker. Ever. #4

2011-08-11T23:18:00.003-04:00

Keep the Immigrants
Deport the Republicans

Si, por favor. That was a bumper sticker on a car right here in Irvington. And if anyone ever actually runs on that platform, I'm totally voting for them.

Escape Is Not His Plan. I Must Face Him, Alone.

2011-08-07T17:11:00.002-04:00

A Gun at the Tie Dye Grill

2011-07-29T01:01:00.001-04:00

The three of us ate lunch at the Tie Dye Grill on Tuesday afternoon before I went to work, and I came home all set to write this long, scathing rant against guns and Republicans because I observed the owner of the Tie Dye Grill carrying a visible firearm tucked into the waistband of his jeans…but I didn’t have time to finish writing it before I went to work, and then later I lost the fire in the belly I would have needed to see it through to the end. And what would be the point? Ordinary Hoosiers loves them some guns, and that apparently extends even to the people who operate an establishment that trades on the Sixties theme of peace and love. (And yes, I know that a restaurant’s theme is just part of its shtick, but the irony’s sort of rich, isn’t it?) I didn’t take the time to speak to the owner and ask why he felt compelled to carry his firearm openly while working in the kitchen of his restaurant, so I don’t know if he felt he needed to be packing heat in order to feel safe in his own restaurant. I hope that’s not the case, but it doesn’t really matter. I won’t be spending any more of my money there, and I sure as hell won’t be taking Jackson back there. I’m never going to win any Father of the Year awards, but the least I can do is limit Jackson’s exposure to Republicans and the right-wing gun nuts who pull their strings.

Spending Twelve Bucks on a Magazine

2011-07-18T15:11:00.002-04:00

Literary magazines blur the line between magazine and book to the point that such a line pretty much ceases to exist. You think of most magazines as relatively thin, relatively tall, and stapled; they come out every one to eight weeks. Literary journals are perfect-bound, often very thick, and usually contain almost no pictures. Like magazines, they come out regularly (though not as often); and like books, they contain a great deal of writing and often cost quite a bit. I recently came across something called H.O.W. Journal on a trip to Barnes & Noble after work one evening.

It was twelve bucks, so I put it right back down. So was something called upstreet, which I also put back down. In fairness, standing there in the store, upstreet looked more interesting than H.O.W. Journal. Barnes & Noble has recently made changes to their literary magazine selection. They rearranged the magazine racks (at the Clearwater Crossing store) and dramatically reduced the number of lit magazines they carry (at both Clearwater Crossing and Greenwood Park Mall)—though they do seem to have added Poetry, at both stores. They used to carry Zone 3, published by Austin Peay State University, but they don’t seem to anymore. Zone 3 is only five bucks a copy. They also used to carry The Normal School, a relatively new journal that also only costs five bucks. A number of other journals, with price tags in the less-than-$10 neighborhood, have also disappeared.

But anyway, back to H.O.W. Journal and its twelve dollar price tag. There is sometimes a way around those hefty prices if you just want to get a taste for what a journal publishes but don’t want to commit to a whole issue. Oftentimes, they will have part of their current issue available for download from the website. Other times, they have other information—such as details of their current fiction contest—that will change completely the way you’ve been thinking about their product. I’ve entered the occasional fiction contest over the years; and since I’m not made of money, I tend to prefer the ones that have relatively low reading fees and which offer a sample issue or one-year subscription to the journal as part of the entry fee. H.O.W. Journal wants $20 for the reading fee, and does not offer a sample issue or subscription.

For me, though, they offer something way better. Mary Gaitskill sits on the board of the journal, and she is the one judging the fiction contest. I came across her name in a profile article in Poets & Writers awhile back, and she’s been on the ol’ radar ever since. Her fiction tends toward the transgressive, which I like; and the language of her interviews tends toward the salty, which I also like. Breaking taboos is one of the best ways to drive things out into the open and advance humankind a little closer to the ideal of the extermination of conservative thought.

I bought a copy of the journal, of course. They say you’re supposed to get an idea of what a journal publishes before you submit to it or enter a contest. With no samples to look at online, I had to buy the journal—because I knew I was going to enter the contest. Even if I don’t win, Mary Gaitskill will have read my work. That’s worth the twenty bucks all by itself. (Also, I will have accomplished part of what I wanted to accomplish this year, which was to submit to short story contests during the second half of this year—after completing the current draft of the phantom novel I have been working on.) I’m about halfway through the copy of the journal that I bought, and I have really enjoyed the stories I have read so far. To a degree, they are all somewhat transgressive—not a one has been afraid to drop an F-bomb, and several of them have dealt with sexual subjects, either directly or indirectly.

I don’t necessarily think F-bombs and sex are necessary in all stories, but I feel reassured when I see them in print journals. That generally means that there no limits—or very few limits—when it comes to the kind of work you can submit to such a journal. Even if I have no plans to break them, I don’t like limits when it comes to creative work. When you put limits on submissions and contest entries, I sort of wonder why you bothered to get into the business of literature in the first place. Literature has no limit. You can’t put a fence around your imagination and expect to do good work—and no one should expect that of you, least of all the people who claim to be attempting to advance literature.

I feel like I am in a better place as a writer and reader because I accidentally happened upon this particular journal during a random stop in at Barnes & Noble one night after work. If the journal had existed only on the magic Internets, I probably would never have run across it; likewise, if the bookstore I went to (now that the good ones in the city have closed) had not been carrying this particular issue of the journal, I probably would never have run across it. These are the kinds of happy little accidents that make bookstores so necessary. They are the kinds of things I hope are happening to other people and that I hope keep people other than just myself going into bookstores—bricks and mortar physical bookstore—on a regular basis.

(I will update this later, with links and a few more sentences about a David Hoppe NUVO article from back in April, when the River Crossing Borders was going away. I have to sign off for the moment because Amy and I have the rare opportunity to go out on a date.)

Midnight in Paris

2011-07-18T01:32:00.001-04:00

Woody Allen has been churning out roughly one movie a year for the last 143 years, and he shows no signs of slowing down. I don’t imagine that very many people are going to be swayed by the news that this is his best-reviewed movie in many years. Some might find themselves slightly less disinterested when they learn that Allen himself is not in this particular movie. Others will see it without knowing anything about it other than that it is the new Woody Allen movie—because for some people, Woody Allen can do no wrong. I loved it because it’s steeped in literature and art, and those things appeal to me. They don’t appeal to everyone. So what if it’s the best movie Allen has done since Husbands and Wives…what does that even mean? You know? It’s crazy!

This is the story of Gil (Owen Wilson, in the role played so often in the past by Woody Allen), the accidental tourist, as it were, who is in Paris with his fiancée and her pretentious, elitist parents (who support the retarded Tea Party, of course!). He’s a frustrated writer who is trying to escape what he sees as the tedium of screenwriting for the loftier goal of being a novelist; and during a somewhat drunken walk through the streets of Paris one night (while his fiancée is off dancing with another pretentious couple), just as the clock strikes midnight, a car stops along the street where he is walking—and the people inside beckon him to join them.

The people inside the car are Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, and they take Gil with them to a party where Gil is introduced to Ernest Hemingway, who suggests that Gil show his manuscript to Gertrude Stein to get her take on it, since she has always been honest with Hemingway’s work. At Stein’s house, Gil meets and starts to fall in love with Adriana, Pablo Picasso’s mistress. Claiming writer’s prerogative, he skips out on activities with his fiancée and her family each night and goes to meet the car that will whisk him away to his new friends from 1920s Paris. Eventually Gil rewrites part of his novel and shows it to Stein again, who says he is on the right track. He winds up taking a walk with Adriana one night and going back even further in time, to the Belle Époque, Adriana’s idea of the golden age of Paris. Gil is momentarily floored by the idea that someone from the Jazz Age could possibly think that any other time in history would be a better time to have lived in; and then he begins to understand the subtle shadings that separate idealism from realism.

Like a lot of recent Woody Allen movies, there isn’t a lot of subtext here. Allen plays with the idea that life would be much grander if we could simply zip back in time to the period when we would have liked to live, but by the end he steers Gil toward the somewhat melancholic understanding that most people wouldn’t be any happier in any other time and place than the one they currently occupy. He also steers Gil toward a girl whose interests more closely align with his own than did those of his fiancée (with whom he breaks up in a scene that descends only slightly into the turgid morass of fatalism that sometimes tails Allen’s characters like weepy shadows).

At this point you might be thinking that I’m giving away the store, and in a way you would be correct; but the underpinnings of this story are standard rom-com stuff, with a small twist: the nice guy winds up with what might be the right girl (though not—and this is the twist—what might be the ideal girl), and he comes to understand himself and life a little bit better along the way. The film adds a dose of realism, too, by making the Republicans look, sound, and behave like idiots—just like they do in real life!

This is not one of those movies where the point is to puzzle out the ending or decipher the mystifying symbolism. Since Allen’s working thesis is that wishing for a different life is an unrealistic fantasy, he turns most of the film into an unrealistic fantasy and lets his main character loose in it in order to test the hypothesis. Some of the characters, such as Hemingway and Dalí, are drawn with broad strokes as caricatures (Hemingway, especially); some are drawn more closely to their historical selves, like Josephine Baker and Gertrude Stein; and some are just barely hinted at, like Buñuel and (more’s the pity, for me anyway) T.S. Eliot. The fun lies in watching the actors play up the idiosyncracies of these artists and writers—and there’s a lot of that fun to be had.

Deep Thoughts #61

2011-07-17T23:59:00.000-04:00

I know that tens of millions of people did, but it’s always disheartening to find concrete proof that anyone actually voted for Dubya twice.

Deep Thoughts #60

2011-07-08T01:11:00.000-04:00

I’m indifferent to Facebook; I don’t care what those I went to high school with are doing now. But this is almost enough to make me sign up.

Deep Thoughts #59 - Special Topical Fake Three-Day Weekend Edition

2011-07-05T18:16:00.002-04:00

The Captain America movie will have its titled changed in some countries; so when will the conservatives start drooling over this non-issue?

Deep Thoughts #58 - Special Topical We the People Edition

2011-06-27T03:06:00.002-04:00

The right-wing yo-yos who have been stroking off on the 10th Amendment should read this week’s Time magazine cover story (if they can read).

MacKenzie River Pizza Company

2011-06-23T00:42:00.001-04:00

Though I did not post about it at the time, Amy and I did indeed get to have another late lunch, just the two of us, last Wednesday; but we chose to eat at a place called MacKenzie River Pizza Company, a new chain restaurant, with a hunting lodge sort of theme, in the possibly cursed location where Something Different and Snax used to live on 82nd Street. Since those two venerable eateries closed, two other establishments have come and gone in quick succession, and now this new place has opened. It’s a perfectly acceptable place to eat, and if you have no compunction about chain places, then you’ll probably like it. It’s new enough that the staff is still falling all over themselves—per the corporate training manual, of course—to make your experience a pleasant one, but it’s also been open long enough that they have worked out the wrinkles to the point that a late lunch on a Wednesday afternoon presented no problems.

We shared something called Cowboy Nachos (organic corn chips, cheddar cheese, black olives, tomato, green onion, jalapeño, and house salsa) and a small, thin-crust Rancher pizza, which was topped with ground beef, bacon, tomato, pepperoni, red onion, and green pepper. Both were, again, perfectly acceptable, although sliced tomato should never be put on pizza; and the nachos have nothing on the astonishing versions served up at the Slippery Noodle. That said, you could do much worse along that stretch of 82nd Street—one of the worst stretches of chain places in the whole city. (If the Starbucks and Quizno’s hadn’t closed, the people from Fishers would feel right at home.)

Jackson's 4th Birthday - More Photos

2011-06-17T00:40:00.002-04:00

Two photo posts in the same calendar year. Can you even stand it? If so, you can click here for some more pictures from the birthday party we had for Jackson at our house. Cake, candles, presents, etc. I even managed to catch some amusing expressions on his face when he was opening his presents. His favorite present, though not pictured here, was a Cars tricycle that my parents bought for him. So far he's been able to bike back and forth between our house and Lazy Daze without too often having to relinquish the tricycle in favor of being carried on someone's shoulders; and if I can manage yet another post to the photo site, the next batch will be of Jackson rolling along on his little trike.

Restaurante Oaxaca

2011-06-08T23:59:00.003-04:00

Today we tried our luck at Restaurante Oaxaca, a Mexican place up on MLK that had a nice review in NUVO a few weeks back that spoke well of the mole (and of the other things to eat there, too—but mostly the mole). The exciting part was getting there, because I don’t know the west side all that well, and also because we didn’t decide on this place until we were in the car. Even though I knew it was on MLK, and MLK is finite—it only exists from 38th Street to West Street—I still wasn’t familiar with that part of town, and I usually get it wrong when I have to guess which way to turn; and I guessed wrong today, too, except that the restaurant was in the little strip mall I guessed at, just not in the specific storefront I eyeballed from the road.

We weren’t entirely sure they were open when we walked in. The lighted sign in the window said they were open, and the door was unlocked; but there was no one in the dining room, neither diner nor employee. After a minute or two, though, someone came out to greet us and we were seated. The dining room is very spare, a four-by-four space that looks sort of like a cleaned-out convenience store or a Chinese take-out place; but it’s sometimes those little hole-in-the-wall places that wind up being the best kept secret in the neighborhood. That might well be the case with Oaxaca, which used to live inside a grocery store on Lafayette Road.

The menu, like the space, is somewhat spare; but it has the aforementioned mole, which you don’t find too often, even in the those Mexican restaurants where the menu has hundreds of choices and goes on for pages and pages. They offer tacos and fajitas and a burrito, as well as menudo soup—and a number of other things, but I have to confess to a bit of journalistic ineptitude here, because I didn’t commit them to memory or write them down, and the restaurant does not have a website. I ordered the three tacos for five bucks. They are offered on the menu with your choice of chicken, beef, or barbacoa (shredded beef); and I got one with chicken, one with barbacoa, and I asked if they could put chorizo in the other one—which they could. Amy ordered the mole ($8.95).

Instead of the usual chips out of a bag and thin salsa, what they brought out to whet our appetities was a bowl of something green that looked like either thick salsa or thin guacamole. That was served with chips, and the chips were so thick that I wondered if maybe they had actually cut up tortillas and dropped them into oil while we waited. I didn’t think to ask, but they were a few minutes coming out, so I went ahead and guessed that they were homemade. Either way, they tasted great, with a good solid crunch and not much in the way of an oily feeling. The green stuff in the bowl was unlike any salsa I have ever tasted—packed with avocado, cilantro, and enough jalapeño that you could taste the pepper and feel the heat.

The tacos were also unlike what you get in most Mexican places when you order tacos. The gringo version of this Mexican staple has morphed into a crunchy corn shell filled with meat and topped with some combination of lettuce, tomato, cheese, and sauce. The only thing this has in common with an authentic Mexican taco is the meat filling. An authentic Mexican taco is meat served on top of two soft corn tortillas and topped with cilantro and onion. They are only served folded if they are “to go.” Other than Oaxaca, La Bamba is the only place in town where I can remember being served authentic tacos.

The barbacoa was nothing to write home about, being somewhat greasy and listless and not especially flavorful. The chorizo, on the other hand, was crisp and bright with flavor; and the chicken was seasoned perfectly, more flavorful and interesting than chicken tends to be at places like this. The mole, I thought, was only so-so. There was quite a lot of it, over a one-quarter bone-in chicken. The sauce was sweet at first taste, and stayed sweet to me through the finish. Amy said that subsequent bites let the other flavors of the mole open up a bit, but I did not go back for a second taste and so had to take her word for it.

It should also be noted that both dishes came out piping hot, like the food had gone from grill or oven directly to the plate and then directly out to our table, within a span of seconds. Other than that impressive piece of timing, the service was spotty. We were the only customers in the restaurant from the moment we walked in to the moment we walked out (and lest you think that says something about the place, we came in around 2pm, well after whatever lunch rush there might have been); and even though that was the case, both drink refills and the check were awhile coming. That’s a minor quibble, though. The food more than makes up for a bit of waiting, and we’re both pretty sure we’ve found our second-favorite Mexican place in town (after the inimitable El Sol de Tala). A lot of Mexican places tout their “authentic” food, but remember—if you get a taco in a crunchy shell, it’s not authentic.

I know a lot of people will stay away from this place just because of its location on MLK, and that’s unfortunate on multiple levels. If, on the other hand, you’re already planning to visit the art museum to see the Thornton Dial exhibit of art made from found objects, why not swing by Restaurante Oaxaca on your way—or on your way to check the museum at Crispus Attucks High School, which is down at the other end of MLK. Remember, “we can’t close our eyes to the plight of the cities.”

2958 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Street
490-2429

Jackson's 4th Birthday

2011-06-05T23:59:00.001-04:00

And yet another series of pictures of what our little boy looks like on his birthdays. There are some other good pictures from Jackson's party this afternoon, and I will do my best to get those posted to the Picasa page in the next day or two. (Four of the pictures here are repeats from last year, which is mostly because I'm running out of previously unposted pictures from each of his birthdays).

Thai Café

2011-06-02T01:49:00.001-04:00

Today we took advantage of Jackson’s still being in school to gallivant about town for the afternoon, and we zipped up to Broad Ripple to satisfy Amy’s craving for Thai food at Thai Café. It’s one of three ethnic places lined up in a row in a strip mall area just east of, I don’t know…Winthrop? The dining area is a small space that will hold maybe two dozen diners on a busy night, and yet it did not feel precisely cramped. We were seated immediately and asked if we wanted more to drink than the water that our server poured for us (also immediately); and when we declined additional beverages, we were left to peruse the menu.

Said menu contained the full complement of standard Thai offerings, including noodles and curries and soups and appetizers, many of which trade heavily on the signature Thai flavors of chile, lemongrass, lime, coconut milk, and sweet basil. And before I get any further with this, I want to note one thing in particular. You, the diner, get to choose how spicy your dish will be. Though Thai restaurants have started to explode on the culinary scene here in Indianapolis, I suspect that many people still think of Thai food as the ultra-spicy redheaded stepchild of Chinese cuisine. Though the flavor of chile peppers is an important element of Thai cuisine, it need not be present in every dish.

You also don’t have to break the bank. While Thai food is generally a bit more expensive than Chinese it is, also generally, of much higher quality; and Thai Café has a lunch menu with seven different entrées at $6.95 a pop. Dinner entrées will run you two to four dollars more, and appetizers are in the $7-$9 range and are so generously portioned that they might well serve as a meal unto themselves for people with lighter appetites.

Amy and I each had the lunch portion of Padd Priew Waan, which consisted of pineapple and vegetables stir-fried in a sweet and sour tomato sauce. With each entrée, you get your choice of meat (beef, chicken, pork) or tofu; or you can go vegetarian or vegan with any entrée on the menu. Amy had chicken, and I had tofu. Entrées come with soup or salad, and we each chose the lemongrass soup—a light chicken broth flavored with lemongrass and accented with cilantro. It was just a bit salty, but the flavors were balanced and well proportioned. We got a plate of vegetarian spring rolls, which was $6.95 for six; and I thought that might be too many, but we made them disappear.

The main course was also quite good. The Padd Priew Waan was served very simply with a mound of white rice and had big chunks of tofu and pineapple and vegetables. I went with a three on the 0-5 heat scale, but could not really detect anything serious in the way of heat. The sauce was maybe a little strong in both the sweet and sour departments, but was still delicious. I imagine there will be a return trip in the near future for a run at their Padd Thai, a stir-fried noodle dish. Jasmine Thai (on 96th Street) has the best Padd Thai I’ve ever had, but I have no doubt that Thai Café is going to give it a run for its money.

1041 Broad Ripple Avenue
722-1008
www.indythaicafe.com/cafe/index.html

Crash

2011-05-31T01:12:00.002-04:00

I’m not sure that I ever would have forced myself to watch this picture if it had not been for a long profile article about Paul Haggis in The New Yorker. Haggis is a filmmaker and former Scientologist, and he left the “church” over a flap to do with one of their spokesmen making a statement that made it seem as though the “church” supported California’s discriminatory and illegal anti-gay law known at Proposition 8. Standing up for gay people and renouncing churches (even goofy fake “churches” like Scientology) are both good things. This would be a much better world to live in if both of those things happened a lot more often. I gained a tremendous amount of respect for Haggis after reading that article, and that respect was what finally made me break down and jump Crash to the top of my Netflix queue.

It remains to be seen, though, whether or not I can write objectively about the film. I was deeply disappointed in the cowardly voting of the members of the Academy when they gave the 2005 Best Picutre Oscar to Crash instead of Brokeback Mountain; and though it is not the fault of either the film or Haggis that the majority of the voting members of the Academy are frightened homophobes, I bore the film an irrational grudge anyway. Eventually, though, I came to the film in my own way, propelled by a newfound respect for its writer-director. I enjoyed much of the film (particularly Terrence Howard’s role), but not all of it; and now that I have seen it, I can unequivocally state that Brokeback Mountain is, without question and beyond any shadow of a doubt, vastly superior to Crash.

The film probes the inner workings of human nature, examining the ways in whch a varied group of people react to instances of overt and covert racism (as well as corruption and abuse of power). It does this against the backdrop of Christmas in Los Angeles. The lives of many of the characters intersect at various points throughout the film, an affectation meant to illustrate the point that even in a bustling, populous city like Los Angeles, it’s a small world after all. It’s not a documentary, or even a docudrama, so suspension of disbelief is required; but despite being a narrative film, the events that take place occur in the world of the real—which means that what takes place, while unlikely, is technically possible. This requires a different brand of suspension of disbelief than if one were watching, say, Harry Potter. When the narrative consists of wizards and magic wands, suspending one’s disbelief is akin to turning a light switch on or off.

The suspension of disbelief that comes with a narrative film set in the world of the real also comes with an asterisk. There is an implied bargain between filmmaker and audience: The audience will accept that this is a work of fiction, provided that the filmmaker keeps it real. When the sense of realism begins to shift toward idealism, then didacticism comes into play. The terms of the bargain change. Haggis manages these themes on the thin end of the wedge here. Every major character in the film is first examined either as racist (or corrupt or abusive, but mostly racist) or not, and is then shown later in the film from the reverse angle; and while this is reasonably compelling from a dramatic standpoint, it falls short of the profundity for which Haggis is clearly striving. It’s almost as though Haggis wanted to see what the Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder hit “Ebony and Ivory” would have sounded like if Spike Lee had written it for Tupac to record.

Is there, in fact, good and bad in everyone? Of course there is. Do people react to those forces in different ways, sometimes randomly? Of course they do. But there is random and then there is random. As Hannibal Lecter is quoted in The Silence of the Lambs, a series of supposedly random occurrences can also be read as “desperately random, like the elaboration of a bad liar.” And while that is not the same as me calling Paul Haggis a bad storyteller, I will grant you that the two just might be kissing cousins.

But it’s also possible that there is something else at play here. I think it’s also possible that Haggis might be using the religious backdrop of Christmas in order to subvert his main theme with a much more interesting subtext. As the film unfolds, it becomes clear that each of the characters is destined to suffer through something bad happening to them before their better self is revealed; and those bad things happen to just about every character in the film, both major and minor—or, the Jews wander in the desert for forty years before getting to the promised land. But for all of that, only one character seems to rage against the seemingly pointless series of unpleasant events. That character takes it upon himself to stand up to the unfair treatment, staring down death and refusing to give up his dignity or his rights at the point of a gun.

Maybe there is no promised land. Maybe there is only the good luck and bad luck that we achieve on our own or bring upon ourselves. The film doesn’t answer those questions, and it does not attempt to. The whole point is to provoke thought, and this it does quite well. The problem is that Haggis directs with a heavy hand. He seems to understand that he is working with very difficult material that is constantly on the verge of slipping from his control; but instead of trimming the material to a manageable amount, it is as though he is demanding to be allowed to say everything there is to be said about the themes he has chosen to treat. And yet chaos is integral to his themes, too. So we come back to the elaboration of a bad liar.

These characters run into each other too much. Haggis clearly means to show a cross-section of Los Angeles, but he almost winds up creating a grittier version of Stars Hollow. It’s very thought-provoking and would probably reward multiple viewings much more than would be expected for a film that relies so heavily on shock value, but Haggis is trying to do far too much with the material. The intention and effort are both admirable, and the film is very good; but ultimately it falls short of the greatness to which it clearly aspires.

Deep Thoughts #57 - Special Topical Race Day Edition

2011-05-29T13:11:00.000-04:00

In a perfect confluence of disparate rivers of poo, the guy doing the race invocation actually name-checked Izod, the IndyCar title sponsor.

Deep Thoughts #56 - Special Topical Plain Old Saturday Edition CONTINUED

2011-05-21T14:55:00.000-04:00

I previously assumed I would not be raptured, but I just went to the food court for pizza and my total was $7.77. So I guess you never know.

Deep Thoughts #55 - Special Topical Plain Old Saturday Edition

2011-05-21T00:19:00.001-04:00

Which is goofier? Applying deductive reasoning to the Book of Genesis to explain the rapture, or believing that intelligent design is valid?

All Sales Final—No Returns or Exchanges

2011-05-19T00:22:00.002-04:00

These Borders stores have got to quit going out of business. They’re positively wrecking my goal of getting rid of more books than I acquire over the course of this calendar year. I have acquired eight new books this year, and five of them are from going-out-of-business sales at local Borders stores. Two of the others were gifts, which means that other than the Borders books, I’ve only bought one book this year. Unfortunately, the stack of books in the outgoing pile has just as many qualifications as the stack of books in the incoming pile. One I got from a girl at work who had two copies of it and gave one to me because we had been talking about it and I said I hoped to get around to reading it one day but didn’t want to buy a copy. Two are Consumer Reports guides that are only going away because I recently acquired newer editions (although I have not added those two newer editions to the stack of incoming books, which I suppose I should do since I’m counting the old ones in the outgoing pile—and which will make the incoming pile even bigger, damnit). The others are books I have owned for some time and have never read and decided to read because I didn’t think I really needed to own them any longer—and those are the ones I’m trying to get rid of first, books that I bought in the first place for no good reason except that they were in the bargain bin or the clearance section and I thought that one day they would be useful for something and that spending a buck or two on them would not be a problem.

Financially speaking, at least, I was correct. I’m not going to go broke buying ten bucks worth of books here and there at Half Price Books, or grabbing a bargain book now and then at Borders. The problem is physics. Books take up space, and I don’t have a lot of space in my house. I do, however, have lots of books for which I have no real use. Whatever interest I might once have had in film has plateaued. I still like movies, but I will never make a career of making them (or writing them); and that means that I really don’t have much use for a book about the Cannes Film Festival that was written twenty years ago. Biographies of George Lucas or Stanley Kubrick? They’re there. Do I need them? Nope. Have I read them? Nope. I suppose it’s possible that I will read them one day and find that I really do want to keep them, but my interests have shifted. I still have that biography of Rudy Giuliani, which I want to get rid of but can't bring myself to read. It's awfully long, and I just can't get my head around spending that much reading about a douchebag who is the second most successful person in history to make a career out of milking 9/11 for all it was worth (after Osama bin Laden).

We’re going on halfway through 2011, and I had hoped the outgoing pile would be significantly higher than the incoming pile by now. It probably doesn’t help that I have taken a break from reading books of my own that I want to get rid of because I have been slogging through Stephen King’s It, for what I think is only the second time ever, because I wanted to experience the vibe of it to see if that vibe was the same kind of vibe I have been thinking should run through a long novel I have been thinking about writing about Irvington. That, and I can’t seem to tame the stack of magazines that sits next to the stack of library books next to my reading chair, which I also can’t quite seem to tame (the library books, not the chair). I even reduced the number of magazine subscriptions I take, down to two from five (or three from six, if you count Film Comment, the new issue of which I buy every time it comes out, but which I do not have delivered to my home by the postal service), but—thanks again, Borders—I have recently added quite a lot of literary magazines that were on sale, and a couple I got in Kansas City at the Barnes & Noble at Country Club Plaza, which has the best selection of literary magazines I have ever encountered (except maybe for Elliott Bay in Seattle, but it’s been a long time since I was there, and I may just be romanticizing its excellence at this point, though I don’t believe this to be the case).

So Borders is giving it to me from both directions—punishment, perhaps, for all of those Rewards Certificates from back in the day. One of my credit cards used to be a Borders Rewards card (though the issuing bank has since ended that program), and I would earn a $5 Borders Reward certificate after accumulating a certain number of points, aggregated based on dollars charged to the card, not including interest or balance transfers. One time, there was an error—it’s been so long now that I don’t remember the source of the error—and a number of Borders Reward cardholders got a LOT of Rewards Certificates one month. I got so many that they came in one of those manila envelopes with a metal clasp at the top. Buried in amongst the Rewards Certificates was my credit card statement. The total value of the Rewards Certificates was just north of $800, if I recall correctly. The bank eventually decided that it wasn’t worth the time and trouble to try to get the certificates back from the people who got them; and they sent out a letter saying that we could spend them, but that we should limit how many we used at once, so as not to overwhelm the poor sales associates at the Borders stores. I don’t remember all of the books I added to my stacks with those Rewards Certificates. I imagine that it was the bank that paid for those certificates, though, and not Borders—so these going-out-of-business sales coming right when I’m really trying to reduce my inventory of books is just a coincidence. I think.

One of the guys at work is convinced that all the Borders stores are going to go away, and at first I resisted that idea on principle because I have always thought the Borders stores around here were superior to the Barnes & Noble stores. However, now that River Crossing and Downtown have gone away, I’m not sure I care anymore. Those two were far better than any of the others—the newest one at the Castleton Square Mall is horrible—and even though the one on the south side is adequate, I’m almost never down there anymore. From where I sit, it doesn’t seem to matter much anymore whether Borders exists in Indianapolis or not. Its best stores are gone, and if the one at Castleton is anything to judge by, any new stores they might build—not that I can imagine that they would build any new ones anytime soon—aren’t going to be much to write home about. And even though the Barnes & Noble is still there at Clearwater Crossing, I still have to find a new place to get Poetry and Film Comment because that Barnes & Noble doesn’t carry either magazine. They carry Zone 3, a five dollar literary journal published by Austin Peay State University, but not Poetry. You know who does carry Poetry? The Barnes & Noble in Avon, and the Barnes & Noble at that goofy Metropolis “mall” out in Plainfield.

There wasn’t really any point to any of this. I just felt like writing about it. It has taken a really long time to read (it clocks in at nearly 1100 pages), and it wasn’t nearly as good as I was hoping it would be. It’s from the pre-intervention phase of Stephen King’s career. The first half of Hearts in Atlantis, a post-intervention book, does the theme of the loss of childhood innocence way better—and in only about 250 pages.

Best. Bumper Sticker. Ever. #3

2011-05-06T00:52:00.004-04:00

Gas Prices Stink

The sticker was circular and pink, with a gas pump in the middle, the first two words above and the last one below. And believe it or not, it had been slapped on the back of an SUV. Yep. Someone bought a gas-guzzling sport utility vehicle and then had the temerity to complain about gas prices. That's the kind of ignorant idiot who will vote for Mike Pence for governor. That will be the true barometer of Indiana ignorance. When the 2012 election results are certified, check the number of votes for Pence for governor and you will find out, to a person, how many people in this state just don't know any better.

Top Ten Films 2010

2011-05-02T13:32:00.003-04:00

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Late again.

10. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
I caught the last twenty minutes of this by accident one afternoon when I had to give out passes for a fire alarm, or some such thing; and those last twenty minutes were so intriguing and well done that I immediately wanted to get the novel and read it and then watch the rest of the film—which, eventually, I did. The film does a very good job of efficiently compressing the story told in the tightly-plotted, rapid-fire novel; and Noomi Rapace, though not a spot-on match of the girl described in the novel, delivers a striking performance, gifting the audience with one of the most compelling characters in years.

9. Blue Valentine
The feel-bad movie of the year—hands down; and yet, it’s so cleverly presented that it’s hard to look away. The story is told in non-linear fashion, but to say that director Derek Cianfrance is channeling his inner Tarantino is to understate just how helter skelter the movie really is. Ultimately, though, that’s also part of its charm. Cianfrance cuts between time and place with absolutely no transition, leaving it to the viewer to make the connections between one scene and another. It’s awfully well made, but it’s awfully harrowing, too. Very challenging - for an American film.

8. The Kids Are All Right
At this point, you almost have to ask yourself what exactly Annette Bening has to do to win that elusive Oscar. She earned her fourth nomination for her role as the uptight breadwinner in this dramedy about a lesbian couple whose kids reach out to their sperm donor and wind up getting to know their dad. What might have kept her from winning here is that Julianne Moore was also very good, playing the laid-back, fun half of the couple. Moore has nearly as many noms as Bening, and also no wins. The film is a little too perfect in places—almost like an advertisement for a new Pottery Barn store in Stepford—but the strong acting and strong writing more than make up for that.

7. The Illusionist
A hand-drawn animated film with almost no dialogue—and what dialogue there is, is in French. Okay, if you got that far, then maybe you can get your head around a story about an aging illusionist (it’s not just a clever title) who no longer impresses audiences with his simple sleight of hand—but continues to go from place to place in search of those audiences anyway. For a time, his path crosses that of a young girl who is just starting make her own way in the world, and they settle into a vaguely symbiotic father-daughter relationship. By the end, of course, things have changed; but what is unique (and refreshing, and ultimately very satisfying) is that those changes happen organically, which opens up lines of existential thinking that are almost never triggered by animated films. Pound for pound, one of the more rewarding films of the year.

6. Nowhere Boy
I’m not necessarily convinced that this is a great film; but as so often happens with movies that are steeped in music from the 1960s, I really liked it (even if, technically, this movie was steeped more in the music of the 1950s). Aaron Johnson doesn’t resemble John Lennon so much as he resembles Buddy Holly, but he’s got the swagger we might imagine that Lennon had when he was young. But more than anything else, the film portends Lennon’s tragic end and gives us something of an idea of what informed his thinking, his politics, and his music. Great supporting turns by Anne-Marie Duff and the inimitable Kristin Scott Thomas effectively bolster the eponymous role played reasonably well by Johnson.

5. Inception
So yeah, it turns out that this film was everything it was cracked up to be. Pretty much a non-stop cavalcade of sharp visuals and snappy sounds—and it also had a reasonably compelling (if perhaps unnecessarily complicated—this is Chris Nolan, after all) story and some fine acting. In fact, I think there’s one performance in particular that really helped to elevate this film from unfathomable schlock to very watchable chaos. Leonardo DiCaprio and Joseph Gordon-Levitt both do a good job of getting into their roles and chewing scenes—but it’s the appearance of Ellen Page that brings that little bit of levity that is necessary for something this dire to work. I sort of hate to say that she humanizes the film to some degree, because that sounds hokey; but it might also be the truth. Nolan generally packs too much into his movies, but he also finds ways to make those overstuffed kerfuffles eminently appealing—and that’s the most important contribution Page makes to the film. (And just try to take your eyes off of Marion Cotillard. Can’t be done.)

4. Rabbit Hole
This was supposed to be a thoroughly bleak, utterly heart-rending exploration of what happens when two parents have to confront their worst nightmare; and yet, while it was certainly not the happiest film I’ve ever watched, it wound up being far more uplifting than I ever would have guessed. The writing is so good that, in the midst of the all the gloom, there are actually places where you can safely laugh out loud. Post-Botox Nicole Kidman is a little scary to look at sometimes, but her acting chops are still in good working order; and Aaron Eckhart seems to get better with every role. The surroundings are a little too Pottery Barn, and the ending has a kind of muddled tone that betrays the fearlessness of the rest of the film; but those are minor quibbles, and they’re not enough to derail what is otherwise an exceptional film.

3. The Fighter
I can’t even remember what my quibbles were with this one. No, wait…it was a couple of the songs on the soundtrack, and some of the montage sequences. The acting was incredible, particularly Christian Bale as a crackhead has-been boxer who pretends to be his brother’s trainer. Mark Wahlberg is the brother, and he gives what I thought was a really underrated performance as blue-collar fighter Micky Ward. Wahlberg was understated in a movie full of scenery chewers, but it plays well thematically. Melissa Leo was just fine as Micky’s mother, but Amy Adams really stole the show as his girlfriend. I don’t know that she has done a finer piece of work. I absolutely fell in love with her while I was watching this film.

2. The Social Network
You could choose to take this film just as an entertainment, regardless of its veracity, and you would certainly be none the worse for wear. It is well written, well acted, and brilliantly edited; and there’s even an arrangement of “In the Hall of the Mountain King” by Trent Reznor, of Nine Inch Nails fame. So about that veracity, then: it’s way too complicated to try to explain in a brief blurb like this. Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin used as source material a book by Ben Mezrich called “The Accidental Billionaires.” If you read the book, you will find many, many chapters and sections that begin with phrases like “We can imagine that…” or “We can guess what happened next…” Mezrich supposedly got much of his information from Eduardo Saverin, the co-founder of Facebook who supposedly got screwed over by Mark Zuckerberg. Thus, you would think that a movie based on such a book would paint Zuckerberg in a bad light. In reality, though, not so much—at least, I didn’t think so. Time magazine named Zuckerberg their 2010 person of the year, and there’s quite the fawning portrait of him in the Person of the Year issue. The truth about Mark Zuckerberg is probably somewhere between the character portrayed in the film (brilliantly!) by Jesse Eisenberg and the character they wrote about in Time. The Social Network builds on a strong foundation of cinematic elements; and while the little details might be compressed or altered (or possibly even imagined), the broad strokes that Sorkin paints with are accurate. The result is an extremely impressive film.

1. Winter’s Bone
This film was based on an actual work of fiction (the novel of the same name by Daniel Woodrell), but it might be more authentic than The Social Network; and the reason for that is director Debra Granik’s meticulous approach to her craft. Set in a bleak no-man’s-land in the Missouri Ozarks, near the Arkansas state line, the story tells of Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) and her family—in particular, her meth-cooking father, who has jumped bail and disappeared. When the sheriff comes to her door and tells her that her father had put up the house and land for his bond, and that the family will lose both if he fails to turn up for his court date, Ree—all of seventeen—decides that the only thing she can do is find her father. What follows his a harrowing journey of discovery that is frighteningly effective at reframing the concept of loss of innocence. The authenticity builds from the foundation of Granik’s decision to shoot on location and to convince locals to appear in the film and allow the crew the use of their homes. The story gives itself up reluctantly, because the people who live here do the same with their secrets. By the time you get around to the end, it’s entirely possible that the revelations are foregone conclusions; but the real payoff comes when you realize that after everything you have seen, life is going to keep on keeping on for these people. There is only survival to strive for in this part of the world, and perhaps not even that for very long.

Catching Up with Jackson

2011-05-01T01:11:00.003-04:00

So here are some random shots of Jackson that I have taken this year. I know I haven't been real good about posting pictures on a regular basis. I haven't stopped taking pictures, I just haven't forced myself to sit down and get them organized and posted. However, I did manage to find some time on this trip to Kansas City, so here you go. These go as far back as February, and I promise to do my best to get around to a select handful of shots from November 2009 to the end of 2010, to close the gap.

Poetry Magazine #2

2011-04-30T10:50:00.003-04:00

So we were driving back to the hotel last night from the rehearsal dinner (at Barley’s Brewhaus, but more about that later, maybe), and I told my dad to turn a few blocks ahead of when we should have turned; and as a result, we wound up driving past a Barnes & Noble I would otherwise have missed. (I may well have marked it this morning when we went out for coffee, but who can say for sure?) It was certainly close enough to walk to from the hotel, though my dad thought it was not a good idea at that time of night, because he didn’t know the streets. I wasn’t about to get into how little sense that made, but I got online and mapped it when we got back to the hotel; and sure enough, it was only half a mile away. Google maps even estimated that it would take about ten minutes to walk there from the hotel.

Unfortunately, they closed at ten, and it was after ten when we got back from dinner. This morning, however, we took a walk and went past the bookstore for coffee at Scooter’s (another one of those chains that copied almost everything about Starbucks except the mermaid and the lingo) and then doubled back to the bookstore. We had to go upstairs to get to the newsstand, and I took that to be a good sign. They had a nice, big, wraparound newsstand section that took up three walls and was easily twice the size of the newsstand section at the Barnes & Noble at Clearwater Crossing. I saw n+1 in amongst some political and cultural (but not precisely literary) magazines, and was afraid that that might be it—but then I let my gaze travel along the bottom row (because those kinds of magazines are almost always on the bottom row—you gotta make sure to leave the prominent rows clear for pretentious shit like Esquire) and sure enough, there were the literary magazines, a couple of sections down.

And they had Poetry magazine. But when I got over there and picked it up…it was the May issue. The issue with the Dorothy Parker article that I had my eye on was the April issue. (I may not have mentioned that the last time I wrote about this.) I just can’t win for losing! Though the Poetry issue was disappointing, there were plenty of other interesting titles on the racks—including The Normal School, Boulevard, n+1; and some journals I had never seen before, like The Objective Standard and SubTerrain.

(Yes, I found The Objective Standard to be of interest. I admired Ayn Rand’s fiction and philosophy long before the Tea Party retards co-opted it—incorrectly, of course, but do you honestly expect that conservatives would do anything with philosophy other than misinterpret it and fuck it up?—for their own nefarious purposes. Ayn Rand was not a libertarian, and the only reason the Tea Party retards have latched onto her is because they’ll reach for even the flimsiest branch if they think it will make their goofy ideas look even remotely plausible. Plus, anyone who thinks that Objectivism equals the kind of "Don't tread on me" nonsense the Tea Party retards babble about either hasn't read Ayn Rand's fiction or simply doesn't understand even the basic tenets of the philosophy—but again...that the Tea Party retards don't understand something is not a concept that should come as a surprise to anyone.)

The selection obliterated the selection at any bookstore in Indianapolis that I know of (although it occurred to me as we were going up the escalator at Barnes & Noble that I should go back to the Books-A-Million location at Trader’s Point, because I seem to remember that they had a pretty solid selection of magazines in general, though I don’t recall what they had for lit journals in particular), and almost made me want to move to Kansas City—except that Kansas City is just as midwest as Indianapolis is, and to hear my brother tell it, even hilljackier than Indianapolis. I find that hard to believe, but that might only be because Kansas and Missouri don’t have In God We Trust plates, which sort of give you an idea of the number of hilljacks and bad drivers we have in Indianapolis.

Clark, I Think This is the Wrong Exit

2011-04-29T09:24:00.006-04:00

This is a shot of the St. Louis Arch and the Mississippi River, badly swollen from the recent rains. We're on the road from Indianapolis to Kansas City for my brother's wedding. We started Wednesday afternoon and stopped in Effingham, Illinois, for the night; and then we were on the road again Thursday morning.

Jackson did pretty well on the trip, considering that he had to endure being strapped into a car seat for eight hours. (Splitting it up into two segments was probably a good idea. Unfortunately, we won't be able to do that on the way home on Sunday.) Despite being good, though, he didn't care much for having his picture taken.

We got into Kansas City with just a little bit of time to kill, and then it was off to the rehearsal. I didn't get any pictures of it, but I think it might have been the first Catholic church I'd ever been inside in my life. Apparently they worship "in the round," because there was a big marble dais in the middle of the charmingly retro sanctuary. It looked sort of like an Elizabethan thrust stage, but I didn't voice that opinion out loud to see if anyone agreed. We were probably pushing our luck with one of the other groomsmen talking about how the building wasn't up to code becuase there were no sprinklers. Jackson eventually warmed up to the girl who will be chucking flowers while he walks down the aisle with a ceremonial pillow in his hands, and I managed to get one almost-respectable shot of them cavorting down the aisle togeher.

Poetry Magazine

2011-04-24T00:56:00.002-04:00

So you may have heard that Borders is…well…dying, I guess would be the right word for it. They filed for bankruptcy and announced that they were going to close about a third of their 600 stores all across the country. The initial list of closing stores included just the downtown location here in Indianapolis, but a second round of closings gobbled up the store near the Fashion Mall. To my knowledge, those were the only two bookstores in town that carried Poetry magazine, and I am now at a loss as to where I can get my hands on an actual hard copy of the magazine.

And before you start damning me for a Luddite, yes, I am well aware that the full contents of every issue of the magaizine are available at no charge on their website on the magic Internets. In fact, I have already saved a copy of the story that caught my attention in the current issue of the magazine. I am also aware that I can use their magic Internets portal to buy an actual hard copy of the magazine. The point is not having access to what’s in the magazine. The point is finding a copy of the magazine somewhere in town.

I called the Barnes & Noble at Clearwater Crossing, but the gentleman I talked to said that it looked as though they had not carried Poetry since summer of last year. I don’t remember ever seeing it on the shelf there, but it’s just since last year that I’ve really gotten serious about my writing, so it’s entirely possible that I wasn’t really looking during the time when they did carry it. It’s also possible that I just never looked at all, since I always go to Borders first and Barnes & Noble only if the three most convenient Borders stores fail to turn up what I’m looking for.

Today I checked the Borders on the south side and the Barnes & Noble at the Greenwood Park Mall and did not find the magazine at either store, though I was not expecting to. The Greenwood Barnes & Noble has a surprisingly robust newsstand, given where it’s located. (The infestation of In God We Trust license plates is particularly virulent on the south side, to the point that I’m surprised that side of town can support one bookstore, never mind two—and the Barnes & Noble carries Nature, if you can believe it.) I’d give up on the Greenwood Barnes & Noble altogether, except for the fact that they carry—or used to carry—Canteen. I nabbed issues four and five there, but I haven’t seen issue six yet (and according to their website, issue seven is supposed to hit stores this spring).

Even before Borders started closing stores, the Clearwater Barnes & Noble had the best selection of literary magazines—but not Poetry—of any of the local bookstores that I frequent; but I rarely get out to the west side, and I don’t like going to Hamilton County, so I don’t know what the Barnes stores in those areas carry. I hope that Borders can regroup and get back in the game, but I’m not optimistic. Their web presence was a disaster for many years (during which time Barnes & Noble basically cornered whatever parts of the online market Amazon had not already assimilated), and apparently no one bothered to tell them that this time around e-books are for real.

And yeah, John-O the Luddite still wants to be a writer and publish, you know, actual books. What the hell, right? If anyone knows of a store that carries Poetry, I’m all ears. I don’t know if I’d walk a mile for a Camel, but I’d go to Hamilton County for a copy of Poetry.

Maybe.

Hmm...

2011-04-08T01:02:00.001-04:00

I know what you’re thinking—that this most recent bumper sticker post was clearly ultra-conservative and right-wing, and also that I said I would not be posting that kind of inbred nonsense. Well…both of those things are true. The bumper sticker is ultra-conservative and right-wing, and I did say that I would not be posting that kind of garbage. Oh well. Sorry. I suppose I should originally have written that I would post both uplifting, progressive bumper stickers and the kind of right-wing verbal diarrhea that only the gun-toting hilljacks who live out where the buses don’t run could seriously support. Unfortunately, this is Indiana, so there are going to be way more of the right-wing ones than the uplifting progressive ones. I guess at the end of the year there may be two polls, one for best bumper sticker and one for most ignorant bumper sticker. You can’t even stand it, can you?

Best. Bumper Sticker. Ever. #2

2011-03-31T23:50:00.001-04:00

If it ain't King James
It ain't Bible

I really have to restrain myself from editorializing about this one—it’s just so blindingly ignorant on so many levels.

Deep Thoughts #54

2011-03-18T12:18:00.002-04:00

I would be happy to donate to any Republicans who want to sterilize themselves so that they don’t pass on their stupid thinking to children.

Deep Thoughts #53

2011-03-18T11:55:00.003-04:00

Just like with the Iraq war, stupid Republicans—there’s an oxymoron of the highest order—used fabricated evidence to rationalize a bad vote.

Deep Thoughts #52

2011-03-13T00:39:00.000-05:00

Watching an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation that has a major sub-plot to do with romance is like listening to a love song by Rush.

Second Published (Very) Short Story Forthcoming

2011-03-09T23:49:00.002-05:00

It seems like a long time ago now, but the Borders store at River Crossing, near the Fashion Mall, used to stay open until eleven every night—probably because they were just down the road from the Barnes & Noble at Clearwater Crossing, and all the Barnes & Noble stores used to stay open until eleven. Then there was the financial crisis and the Kindle and, of course, the iPad. Now books are practically anachronistic, and Borders has filed for Chapter 11 and announced that they plan to close roughly one third of their stores.

The Borders at River Crossing no longer stays open until eleven, but I used to enjoy walking over there after I got off work at ten on Friday nights and browsing the shelves for half an hour or so. I rarely bought anything, but sometimes I did. I had no intention of buying anything the night I walked over there and saw the second season of Night Court on DVD, but I wasn’t about to pass that up—and right there Borders made thirty bucks because they stayed open until eleven. My weekly trips and occasional purchases, however, were certainly not reason enough for them to stay open that extra hour, particularly when their industry was beginning to convulse toward oblivion.

But the idea that they might stay open for me if I made some kind of deal with them sort of got itself stuck in my head and wiggled around there for awhile until I decided to sit down and write about it. Even then, though, it failed to germinate properly, so I let it go for awhile. I don’t remember when I first had the idea for that story, but I brought it back out again last December, when it was time to work on something to submit for Ichabod’s Sketchbook. I didn’t have a lot of time to work on it, and I was having trouble coming up with any new ideas that sounded like they would work in the format specified by Ichabod’s Sketchbook’s submission guidelines.

The deadline for Ichabod’s Sketchbook is typically a week or so before Christmas, which meant that I had to shift almost immediately to thinking about that submission deadline after I had just spent the month of November going at a breakneck pace to try to “win” National Novel Writing Month. I had the “deal with Borders” idea in my head, and I also started toying with a little story on a parenting theme. I’m not sure either was particularly well-suited for the less-than-1000 words stipulated for prose pieces submitted to Ichabod’s Sketchbook, but I worked both of them up anyway and used the magic Internets to zap them in just a day or so before the deadline.

I felt “clicker’s remorse” almost immediately. I did not think that either was really very good work—the parenting theme story because it was quite dark and probably needed some more time, and certainly more words, in order for the theme to be able to breathe; and the “deal with Borders” story was, at least a little bit, a backhanded slap at the fact that we don’t have very many good indie bookstores here in Indianapolis. In point of fact, we don’t have any good indie bookstores that have both a good selection of new books and a newsstand. There used to be a couple of decent newsstand places downtown, but Bookland on Market Street closed after one of those exploding manhole covers basically obliterated its storefront. There was also one on Delaware Street, but it has also closed. Northside News, at 54th and College, has apparently also bit the dust. As for indie bookstores, there are still a few places—including Bookmamas, which publishes Ichabod’s Sketchbook—where you can go for secondhand books; but none of them (that I know of) have anything close to a decent selection of new books, and none of them have newsstands.

So I was pretty surprised when I checked my e-mail at work on Saturday and found a message from the editors of Ichabod’s Sketchbook, letting me know that they wanted to accept “The Deal” for publication in the next issue of the journal. Much like last year when I got a similar message (also at work), I immediately started to grin like an idiot. That grinning did not last as long as it did last time, but getting the news definitely helped improve a day that had started out pretty crappy. The next issue of Ichabod’s Sketchbook is due to come out in July, although it’s not outside the realm of possibility that that release date will be pushed back, as it was last year; and once again I will have the opportunity to get up in front of people and make an ass of myself while trying to read fewer than 1000 words out loud. I wasn’t able to make it to the launch party last year because I had to work, so I guess I really have to give it the old college try this time. The launch party is open to the public, and they will have copies of the journal for sale—so anyone who wants to come and see me make an ass of myself is welcome!

Deep Thoughts #51 - Special Topical Dolt Things Considered Edition

2011-03-08T19:04:00.002-05:00

If the right is going to maintain even the tiniest shred of credibility, then it must refudiate entrapment voyeur James O’Keefe immediately.

Deep Thoughts #50 - Special Topical Limey Git Edition

2011-03-07T02:36:00.003-05:00

Of Phil Collins, Noel Gallagher of Oasis said, “You don’t have to be great to be successful.” Can you believe that a guy in Oasis said that?

Best. Bumper Sticker. Ever. #1

2011-02-27T18:58:00.001-05:00

Best. Bumper Sticker. Ever.

God wants spiritual fruits
Not religious nuts

Okay…maybe not the very best bumper sticker ever. But it’s a good one; and it’s going to kick off a new segment here at the Blog-O-Rama, called Best Bumper Sticker Ever—sort of an homage to the way Neil Peart always mentioned the church signs he saw on his travels in Roadshow: Landscape with Drums, A Concert Tour by Motorcycle. Whenever I see an excellent bumper sticker, I’ll post the witticism here (maybe with an editorial comment, maybe not). Then at the end of the year—again, maybe—I’ll put them all together in a poll to see which is the most popular. My polls attract so much attention and debate that it’s sort of a no-brainer.

(And, of course, there will be no right-wing or conservative bumper stickers posted. None of them can possibly be the best bumper sticker ever, because they are stupid.)

The Fighter

2011-02-11T23:59:00.001-05:00

I’ve been putting off seeing this picture for quite awhile now, though I had become more interested in seeing it since Christian Bale and Melissa Leo started bringing home pretty much every piece of supporting acting hardware there was to be had this awards season. (And that’s a little bit unfortunate, because Geoffrey Rush is awfully good in the remarkably overrated The King’s Speech.) I even waffled about staying after tonight to watch it, even though it started earlier than it had been starting for the last few weeks and I have tomorrow off. But then I clocked out and said to hell with it, and stayed to watch it.

It’s the true story of boxer Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg) and his white trash working-class family—complete with spaced-out crackhead has-been-boxer brother Dicky (Christian Bale), whose claim to the dubious title of pride of Lowell, Massachusetts, is that he once knocked down Sugar Ray Leonard in a fight. When he’s not strung out on crack—and sometimes even when he is—Dicky is Micky’s “trainer,” and his mother Alice (Melissa Leo) is his “manager.” And somehow no one has put these two bits of trivia together with the fact that Micky just keeps losing and losing and losing. Well, no one puts it together until Micky starts dating Charlene (Amy Adams), a college dropout-cum-bartender who is the most urbane character in the film.

Micky’s loyalty to his family is admirable, to an extent; but he is at first unable, and later unwilling, to admit the fact that they are holding him back. Mostly it’s Dicky and his crack problem—though Dicky’s being strung out gives Bale lots of room to move and to steal scenes and to generally prove that he totally deserves the Oscar he’s going to win here in a few weeks—but there is also the problem of his mother, who thinks she is better at managing Micky’s career than she is, and who is nearly as pleased with Dicky’s past glory as Dicky is himself. Leo doesn’t have as much room to work with this character as Bale does with his, but she does well, especially in the handful of scenes when Alice’s emotions get the better of her and we start to see that she realizes—even if she will never say it out loud—that Dicky hurts Micky more than he helps him. Leo will probably also win an Oscar, though I don’t think it’s a slam-dunk performance like Mo’nique’s was last year. I’m not even sure Leo is the best supporting actress in this film, never mind all the others that came out this year.

Amy Adams is simply terrific, playing Charlene as a tough realist who doubles as Micky’s backbone once he realizes that it’s time to cut his family loose but can’t bring himself to do it. She’s not afraid to drop F-bombs or throw a punch—though to be fair, that does not distinguish her from anyone else in the picture except the two little kids—but that wee little bit of having-gone-to-college-and-been-a-high-jumper refinement makes her a little more sure of herself, a little more aware of what’s going on in the world she inhabits—and a little better at helping Micky to achieve the goal he has set for himself, which is to get back to winning and maybe, just maybe, to win a title.

For someone who’s trying his hardest to make a living beating the crap out of other people, Micky Ward comes off as a little bit of a softie here, though that might just be because he’s the actual fighter and the one who both benefits and suffers from the things done by the other people in his family. He has to weigh the value of loyalty to his family against the possibility that he will never make it in the ring; and in a family filled with lunatics and borderline degenerates, he has to be the one to hold it all together, even if everyone pretends that’s his mother’s job. Wahlberg is surprisingly understated here, reserving Micky’s passion and fire for when he is really distressed about something—cops whaling on his brother, say, or his ignorant white trash sisters trying to whale on Charlene.

I sat down and started writing this review as soon as I got home from work, with the film as fresh in my mind as it could possibly be. That’s always the best way to do this kind of writing, even though it almost always means I don’t get as much done on the other writing as I usually do at night when I get home from work. Writing about the movies I see often changes the way I feel about them, too, since I have to take the time to consider each thing about the film that I want to say. Case in point here is Mark Wahlberg’s performance, which I had not considered especially impressive while I was watching the film. (I will absolutely cop to the fact that I was definitely paying way more attention to Amy Adams. I think it’s possible that I might be in love with her.) But having taken the time to write about the movie immediatley after seeing it, I’m beginning to realize that Wahlberg actually did a tremendous job with this role.

In fact, it might be that the direction (and one choice of songs) is the only thing I have to quibble about—and even there, there’s not much wrong with the picture. The training montage sequences are hammy—a little bit too eye of the tiger for a film that is refreshingly light on melodrama. One of those training montages has an Aerosmith song behind it, and that’s the one thing that really irritated me. At that point in the film, Micky has decided that he has to get over a bad loss and get back to some serious training if he’s really going to make a run at this fighting thing as his living. No big trick to think of which Aerosmith song we’re talking about here, but the fact that they included it—along with a Whitesnake song as Micky enters the ring later in the film—is a little bit pathetic. Wahlberg’s performance is so subtle and convincing that these jarring and completely obvious songs just get in the way. That said, the film is otherwise excellent.

Deep Thoughts #49 - Edición especial douchebag tópico

2011-02-10T22:38:00.002-05:00

Senator Delph, it looks to me like the best part of you ran down the crack of your mama’s ass and ended up as a BROWN stain on the mattress!

Deep Thoughts #48 - Special Topical Walk Like an Egyptian Edition

2011-02-06T13:31:00.001-05:00

An incontrovertible sign that nothing about a world leader merits their being a world leader is that Darth Cheney sticks up for that person.

That's the Smallest Movie Theatre Screen I've Ever Seen! What's the Deal With That?

2011-01-23T00:15:00.004-05:00

Notwithstanding the argument that an "art house" what plays Speed Racer might not, in fact, actually be an "art house," the main problem with playing mainstream movies is that people who like mainstream movies come to see them.

And to drink beer.

Blue Valentine

2011-01-19T17:39:00.003-05:00

One of the other managers at the theatre, who happened to screen this film one night before I did, said that it seemed to have been designed in such a way as to not make obvious the time period in which it is set; and that comment wound up being one of those things I could not get out of my head while I watched the movie, to the point that I was actively looking for signs that would give away the time period. There were enough of them to seat the film firmly in the very recent past (the family SUV and a reference to Bush 43), but what I noticed while I was looking for those signs was that there was a rather considerable dearth of externalities in the film. It is so focused on its core idea—observing Dean and Cindy throughout their life together—that almost nothing else gets on screen unless it is directly related to that idea.

There are no subplots; or at least, there are no subplots that are not directly related to Dean and Cindy—not only to Dean or only to Cindy, but to Dean-and-Cindy, perhaps as some kind of nuclear organism; and the film’s tracjectory is inevitably drawn back to Dean and Cindy, as the present day is intercut with flashbacks that present the total picture of Dean-and-Cindy, from beginning to end. The reason this formula works is because the central character in the movie is their relationship, from its unlikely beginnings to its inevitable conclusion.

“Inevitable conclusion” is, of course, just a nice way of saying “fiery breakup” or “they never should have gotten together in the first place.” Is that giving too much away? I can’t imagine that it is. Nothing you could read about this film will give you the slightest idea that there is anything uplifting to be seen; and if this is a film you actively want to see, then you’ve probably read up on it enough to know what’s coming, so that the actual detail is neither a surprise nor a spoiler. It is how what happens is presented that makes the film compelling.

Writer-director Derek Cianfrance picks up the story of Dean and Cindy toward the end, but he paces the flashbacks in such a way that we get the whole story by the time we get to the end of the film. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say about this film when I started writing, and I’m still not sure what I want to say. It’s one of the more straightforward films I’ve seen in awhile: despite one last attempt to right a sinking ship, a young couple is ultimately unable to save their failing marriage. Ryan Gosling is Dean, Michelle Williams is Cindy, and they both play their parts admirably and courageously—particularly Gosling, who has to spend much of his time being ignorant, selfish, and downright bellicose. Dean doesn’t exactly have a lot going on in his life, but even having said that, Cindy, laden with some considerable baggage of her own, is also not his one-way ticket to a better world.

It seems reasonable that Dean would be attracted to Cindy, even if you factor out how hot Michelle Williams is. While Dean did not graduate from high school and moves from job to job like a Joad, Cindy is in college and pursuing the medical school track. There is also the matter of how they meet. The company Dean works for is moving an elderly gentleman into a nursing home for the first time, and the gentleman just happens to get the room across the hall from Cindy’s grandmother, on whom Cindy dotes. There is, of course, the obligatory moment when Dean and Cindy see each other through doorways—but the moment is not electric. It’s more like an oasis—and it might be the most clever part of Cianfrance’s screenplay. Their eyes find each other in that space because they share nothing but being young in a place that is filled with old people.

It’s possible that how old so many of these old people are is something of an affectation on Cianfrance’s part; but then again, without some sort of impetus, this thing was never going to get off the ground. People meet in lots of different ways, and they are attracted to each other for lots of different reasons; and, as this film makes clear, they stay together for many different reasons, too—even when some of the reasons are not very good ones.

Dean is interested because Cindy is a pretty girl, but it takes some time before Cindy reciprocates his interest. Indeed, a major plot point, which occurs between when they meet and when they get together, would almost lead you to believe that Cindy winds up with Dean more because he is not someone else than because he is who he is—perhaps one of those nebulous reasons that people get together when maybe they shouldn’t have done. In between is another major plot point that reveals perhaps the best of Dean, and possibly the most compelling reason for Dean and Cindy to try to stay together, despite what seem to be considerable odds.

The film is difficult to watch at times, and it does not end well; but it is very well crafted and is in many ways a gem of a little picture. It’s much less polished than a picture like Rabbit Hole, but is no less effective and no less worthy of the “art film” moniker. It is, however, more challenging. (And yes, I understand that I am making the somewhat absurd assertion that something other than a Darren Aronofsky film could be more challenging than a John Cameron Mitchell film.) It is also, unfortunately, the sort of film that Oscar can easily ignore. The acting is very good, but not quite revelatory; and the considerable excellence of the screenplay and editing will be overlooked as surely as pick-a-Pixar-film will be praised far more than is warranted. Nevertheless, if you feel up to the challenge, you could do much worse than taking in this very fine film.

Zest! Exciting Food Creations

2011-01-16T00:58:00.002-05:00

We once again roped Grandma into watching Jackson, and we ventured north to try Zest! Exciting Food Creations, on 54th Street between Keystone and College, in a little strip of shops that might actually be called, if I remember correctly, the 54th Street Shops. Space is not an abundant commodity at Zest!, either outside with respect to parking, nor inside with respect to a space where people can wait to be seated, should they arrive when the restaurant is busy. And you should expect the restaurant to be busy, since it’s situated in that part of town that has apparently been christened SoBro—and everything in SoBro is terribly, terribly hip at the moment.

Zest! is one of those places where they serve both breakfast and lunch from when they open until they switch over to the dinner menu in the late afternoon, a kind of fusion between the fine dining dinner places that have popped up in SoBro in the last couple of years (Recess, Taste) and über-brunch places like Patachou and Three Sisters. I haven’t eaten at any of the fancy new dinner places, but we’ve been to Patachou and Three Sisters several times each. Zest! doesn’t have the charm of the big old house that became Three Sisters, or the vaguely retro diner feel of the Patachou places, but it does have excellent art and photographs on the walls and a welcoming staff that sort of helps to offset the cramped feel of a place that doesn’t quite have enough space to serve the number of people that it hopes to attract.

That said, the menu is ambitious, with breakfast standards like omelettes and biscuits and gravy and sandwiches and salads for lunch. The mushroom sandwich, with marinated wild mushrooms, goat cheese, organic greens, tomato, and balsamic vinaigrette called out to me, as did the stuffed tortilla, which is basically a big breakfast burrito with eggs, sausage, cheese, and the slightly more unusual black bean and corn salsa and lime sour cream. But it was the omelettes that got me, as is almost always the case when I wind up at a place where they serve omelettes. It’s even better when you can get the omelette made with egg whites, which Zest! offers (as one of the three ingredients in a make-your-own omelette for $9.95).

I took the egg whites option and added wild mushrooms and white cheddar cheese for my other two ingredients, with whole grain toast and what they call “beautiful fruit” for the side. The menu says it’s the most beautiful fruit they can find, but in reality it’s just a cup of mostly pineapple, with a couple of grapes and one lonely, thin slice of strawberry. The omelette also did not quite live up to its name, coming out as a dish of scrambled eggs with mushrooms and cheese worked in—not the rolled up or even folded over presentation one usually associates with the word omelette. It tasted awfully good, though. The mushrooms, in particular, gave it added texture and an earthy flavor that you don’t get with plain old button mushrooms. Curiously, Swiss cheese, which works beautifully with mushrooms in just about any setting, is absent from the list of omelette ingredients.

Amy had the meatloaf and “world famous” macaroni and cheese ($8.95) from the lunch menu. Also modestly portioned, the macaroni looked like ziti (a nice touch) and was baked under crunchy bread crumbs and served piping hot—a good thing on a cold, windy day. Along with a slice of somewhat dry, but undeniably delicious meatloaf, it was a solid comfort food dish that would satisfy most, but perhaps not the heartiest, appetites.

There are some intriguing options on the dinner menu, including Asiago ‘fried’ chicken (their quotes, not mine) served with wild mushroom ragoût, rosemary-gorgonzola polenta, and roasted green beans, and the so-called 3-napkin burger loaded with barbecue sauce, grilled red onion, white cheddar, smoked gouda, bleu cheese, and cherry-wood smoked bacon; but I can only imagine what the parking situation and wait times must be for dinner, even on a weeknight. A return trip could be in the offing one of these days, to have a go at that dinner menu; but I can’t imagine coming back for an omelette—not as long as Patachou and Three Sisters are still going strong.

1134 East 54th Street
466-1852
www.zestexcitingfood.com

Rabbit Hole

2011-01-15T22:52:00.002-05:00

This is not a perfect film. The only reason I say that right up front, right out of the gate like that, is because if I don’t, I’m going to wind up writing a long-winded rambling explanation of why this is, in fact, a perfect film. It’s a very, very good film, but it’s not quite perfect. It does many of the things that I admire most about film as an art form, and it avoids most of the things that I don’t really appreciate about film—but not quite all of those things.

It’s the story of Howie (Aaron Eckhart) and Becca (Nicole Kidman), a couple who have recently lost their four-year-old in a tragic accident. The accident is only eight months in the past, and Howie and Becca are struggling to come to terms with living through such a thing. They live in a suburb of New York, in a huge house, and are clearly people of intellect and means. At some level, they understand that they must eventually go on with life; but there is nothing that they have in their lives that seems to help them along that path. Howie still goes to work, but Becca has left her job, and they are so far unable (or perhaps unwilling) to reconnect with friends and neighbors.

They go through the motions, but what is missing from their lives is not just the physical form of a little boy, but some part of each of their souls. Eckhart and Kidman are both equal to the task of playing characters who are in many ways empty, robbed of something that was so integral a part of them, both individually and as a couple. The film’s tagline is “The only way out is through.” There is no way for them to get through their grief without facing it, but they go about this in different ways.

There is, of course, a powerful sense of guilt that radiates from both Howie and Becca, a feeling that by going on with their own lives they are in some way dishonoring their son or his memory. Becca is unable to reestablish physical intimacy with Howie when, early in the film, she rejects Howie’s attempt to massage her shoulders and then accuses him of trying to seduce her. Kidman does an excellent job here of showing on her face, in one moment, her body’s physical response to the pleasure she feels from her husband’s hands on her shoulders, and in the next moment, her rejection of his touch with a guilty shiver.

The inability to return to physical intimacy is an outward sign of their inability to communicate effectively with each other in any meaningful way. They try a group therapy session, even though Howie knows that it is not the kind of thing that Becca will respond to. He continues to attend the sessions even after she has given up, and she begins to take down their son’s paintings from the refrigerator and bag up his clothes for donation to the Goodwill. He can’t get right with the paintings being gone, but she can’t get right with their still hanging on the refrigerator, and neither of them can properly talk about it.

Becca is the more frustrating of the two, because she is the one who seems to think that the world should be waiting on her to process her grief in her own way before it begins turning again. She is the very embodiment of the overprivileged, exurban sense of entitlement that makes Americans look ridiculous to people in most of the rest of the world. One of the best scenes in the film occurs when Becca goes back to Sotheby’s, the New York auction house where she used to work, and asks at the reception desk after several of her former co-workers, only to find out that they no longer work there. On her way out, she runs into one of the kids who used to run coffee for the people who did the real work, only now he’s one of the people who do the real work, and he has been promoted to the job of one the guys Becca had come to see (or whose name she had tried to drop—take your pick). Kidman has always done severe facial expression well, and the way she shows shock and then coldness here tells us plainly that it had never even occurred to Becca that anything might still be going on in the real world while she was mourning her son. Though the scene amply demonstrates her affluent smugness, it also shows, I think for the first time, the human being that is buried somewhere under all of that smugness and all of her defense mechanisms.

There are many awkward encounters like this throughout the film, and the path toward healing inevitably winds up leading Howie and Becca further apart than they already are. At bottom, it seems as though they understand that they will eventually be able to go on with their lives, given enough time to process what has happened; but neither of them knows how to get there, and the efforts they make to do things together wind up failing. They retreat into themselves, and they seem to understand what is happening to their marriage as well as they understand that eventually things are going to get better.

Screenwriter David Lindsay-Abaire, adapting his own stage play, is wise enough to give Howie and Becca room to expand and contract; and Eckhart and Kidman are skilled enough to fill that space with the urgency of their characters without resorting to histrionics or unnecessary action. Director John Cameron Mitchell, best known for far more outré work, including Hedwig and the Angry Inch and Shortbus, here takes a cue from Woody Allen’s Husbands and Wives and allows his characters to fill up his (ahem) interiors and then expand outward as they begin to get through their pain and guilt. Becca and Howie pursue different paths toward getting their lives back together, and sometimes they stray far from where they began; but just as they understand so many other things, though perhaps without being able to express those things, they also understand that their love is the only thing that will get them all the way through the rabbit hole.

Though firmly on course through the first two acts, the film starts to veer toward melodrama in the third act, culminating with the final couple of scenes: a hackneyed, cloying montage, with voice-over, that presents the film’s rather effective conclusion at the same time that it softens all of the hard edges that had made the film so compelling. In a way, it’s sort of impressive that such an ending can be drawn from material that was, at times, fairly harrowing; but it would have been so much more satisfying without the slow-motion and the quiet voice-over and all of those smiles.

Deep Thoughts #47 - Special Topical Deep Fried Hilljack Edition

2011-01-11T15:02:00.001-05:00

A clear sign that Republicans won the Statehouse: First order of business is a bill to allow beer and wine sales at the State Fair. Yee-haw!

The King's Speech

2011-01-06T23:58:00.001-05:00

This film has everything that is supposed to make it quite likable and make it the target of much attention when awards season rolls around. It’s an historical drama about British royalty, with the spectre of World War II looming in the background; the main character must overcome something difficult that stands in the way of his achieving his destiny; and all the while, a who’s who of well-respected thespians from across the pond deliver delightful supporting and incidental performances. It has all of these things and more—terrific cinematography, exqusite locations, and a fairly unobtrusive score. It even keeps the melodrama to a minimum.

And yet I kept hoping that it would just end, that it could somehow speed up and get to the end more quickly. I don’t think there’s necessarily anything wrong with the film. I just didn’t feel the kind of emotional connection to the main character, King George VI (Colin Firth), that would have been necessary for me to really lose myself in the film. Firth and Geoffrey Rush (playing Lionel Logue, the speech therapist hired by George VI’s wife) are both excellent, as they usually are. Firth does a very fine job of pretending not to be able to talk properly, and Rush is terrifically restrained as the commoner tasked with helping turn a man into a king.

I suppose it’s natural that someone with a speech impediment (here, a fairly paralyzing stammer) would in some ways shut others out and develop early into a curmudgeon; and it’s even possible for curmudgeons to be fairly likable as characters (see much of the later work of Jack Nicholson and Robert Duvall); but Firth holds something back here, or is simply missing the grizzled charm that helps to transform a grumpy person into a character that resonates with the audience. It’s certainly not a fatal flaw for me, and probably won’t even be a flaw for most people who see the film; but for me, it is the difference between a very good film and a great one.

Pretty much everything else is solid. The story proceeds organically, with the failing health of George V and the ascension of his less-than-kingly eldest son David (Guy Pearce, getting the seemingly rare chance to use his native accent), which takes place during the years leading up to World War II; but the dramatic tension of the fact-based story is already in place, giving the writers a little bit of a free pass, where they might otherwise have had to overdramatize certain elements. To their credit, they don’t stumble with the free pass, getting out of the way so that Firth and Rush can work. Everyone else gets out of the way, too, including the commanding Helena Bonham Carter in the role of the future Queen Mother. Without ever stealing a scene from either Firth or Rush, she manages to do just enough to advance the story in a couple of key places.

Director Tom Hooper in some ways improves upon his previous outing, The Damned United, in that the ending here is not an awful one that very nearly ruins what had been a fine picture; he stays the course and the film ends as well as it began and as well as it was going along in the middle. But it never quite soars, even though it does seem to know that soaring is expected of it. The Damned United does soar in places, but is ultimately derailed by a terrible ending. The King’s Speech is exactly what it is supposed to be, which is charming period Oscar bait; but it is not at all challenging. One of these days, Tom Hooper is going to get all of the pieces put together in just the right way and come up with a truly excellent film. As good as it might be, though, this is not that film.

Ralph's Great Divide

2010-12-21T01:49:00.002-05:00

On a recommendation from someone at Amy’s church, we decided to try Ralph’s Great Divide for lunch today. It’s one of those places you probably have to be told about, or else you’re just going to drive right by it every time and never stop. It’s on New York Street, just before you pass under the highway and then over the railroad tracks. Their website says that they are located in historic Lockerbie Square, but that’s pushing it. Technically, yes, but if you’re thinking of those big, historic houses and brick streets, those are on the other side of New York Street and a bit west of Davidson.

We were seated in a tiny part of the dining room just inside the front door, close enough to the entrance that we could feel the rush of cold air every time someone came in or went out; but the lunch rush was pretty much over, so the door didn’t open and close too much. It’s a smoking place, and the smell of stale cigarettes actually made me vaguely nostalgic for my grandmother’s house in Columbus, so close was the smell to that of her kitchen. The bar, and what appeared to be a larger dining area, were inside to the left of where we were.

The lunch menu is mostly club sandwiches, burgers, and ham sandwiches made with Dave’s Bourbon Baked ham, described as “Slow Baked Pit Ham with Bourbon and Spices” on the menu. I tried the Lucy ($7.99), a ham and swiss sandwich on grilled rye. The rye bread was nicely grilled, crunchy but not explosive, and the portion of ham was quite generous; but the cheese was sweaty more than melted, and didn’t contribute much to the flavor of the sandwich. Amy had the Frenchie ($7.49), a burger topped with creamy brandy and peppercorn sauce and smoked cheddar cheese. Again, the flavor of the cheese was obscured, this time by the rich sauce (though it was admirably peppery). She chose plain old potato chips for a side, but I had the pickled beets - something you don’t see offered as a side in too many places. They were perfectly adequate, but probably came out of a can. Same with the cream of tomato soup, which was hot and satisfying on a cold afternoon, but in no way unique.

Steak, chicken, and seafood entrées round out the dinner menu, but seem somewhat overpriced for a place that has a naked woman carved out of wood mounted on the wall over one of the tables. (It was mounted over the table we sat at, in fact, but I didn’t notice it until I stood up to leave. If Shaquille O’Neal had been sitting at that table, he would have dashed his brains out on her breasts when he stood up to leave.) Probably this knickknack was once mounted on a small boat of some kind, but these kinds of things always seem to wind up on walls at restaurants.

Generally speaking, it was a perfectly fine lunch in a quirky little mom-and-pop place. Their chili was supposedly remarked upon once by Bon Appétit magazine, so a return trip to sample that dish might be in order; but better sandwiches can be had elsewhere, and it’s over-21 only, so we won’t be able to take Jackson. We don’t get the chance to go out for lunch without the little guy very often, and Old Point Tavern is just a few blocks away—which makes the odds pretty slim that this one will ever make it into what passes for our regular rotation.

743 East New York Street
637-2192
www.ralphsgreatdivide.com

Closing Out 2010

2010-12-19T22:02:00.002-05:00

National Novel Writing Month was a long hard slog, and then there was the signing up for and preparing the manuscript for the free proof copy from Create Space - and it turns out I didn’t even come close to preparing the manuscript enough for that proof copy process. But then by the time I had a chance to sit down and think about it, it was already the middle of December.

I didn’t think I was going to have time to come up with anything to submit for Ichabod’s Sketchbook III, with its December 18, 2010 deadline; but I managed to work an idea I had had first for a series of blog posts into a short short story, and I used a Robert Frost poem as the starting point for a second short short story. (Actually, I used it as the end point and worked backward until there was a whole story, or as much of a story as I was able to cram into less than 1000 words.) I wrote them a little too fast, but was mostly content with both of them by about two in the morning on the 18th; and I submitted them to the editors, for better or worse.

I spent the first half of December working on a slimmed-down version of the story I had been working on before I shut everything else down for NaNoWriMo in November, and also on editing the first three chapters of a novel one of my co-workers asked me to have a look at; and I read the proof copy of the “novel” I wrote during November, and man—it’s rough. I should have at least taken the time to run a spell check. Being sure to insert page numbers would also have been helpful. I suppose I could always fix some things and order another copy, but at least I’ll have a better idea of how to do it if I manage to get to the end of NaNoWriMo again next year.

I’m reading one last book to add to the stack of books going away at the end of the year. There might be time for one more little one, but my hold on the new Jonathan Franzen novel is in transit from the library, and I want to make sure that nothing else is on my reading plate when that comes in. There are still nearly 300 holds lined up for it, so I won’t be able to renew it. There were nearly 500 holds already lined up when I submitted my hold request for it—and that surprised me. I would never have guessed that nearly 500 people in Indiana had even heard of Jonathan Franzen, much less that that many would have any interest in reading his new novel.

2010 will go into the books as my most successful year as a writer, though that is not saying much. What will be saying something is if the focus I put on writing—and on what I have been reading—this year helps me to produce more substantial writing next year. If all goes well, that will include the story I am working on being finished by the end of June; a handful of short stories written and submitted to contests between June and November; a second consecutive National Novel Writing Month “win” by the end of November; and a couple more submissions to Ichabod’s Sketchbook in December.

I also plan to keep a completely accurate account of how many books I bring in during the year versus how many books I read and get rid of during the year—with the goal there being to get rid of more books than I bring in. I have to get serious there, too. It’s way too easy to spend half an hour in the clearance section at Half Price Books and convince myself that someday I might read this book or that book—and since it only costs fifty cents or a buck, it doesn’t really matter if I ever read it or not. I have a biography of Rudy Giuliani on my shelves. There is no viable reason for that. I have a book of writing about sharks. And mammoths. Seriously. Those are things that at some point I was more interested in having than money.

It was a damn long time coming, but it feels really good to finally get serious about writing. Bring on 2011.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1

2010-12-14T01:47:00.002-05:00

I’m going to have to preface this piece with the disclaimer that I adore the Harry Potter books. I have read all seven of them several times each, and I find myself drawn back to the best of them - the fourth through the seventh - at least once or twice a year, when I will read three or four of them back to back in quick succession. If I were better at this whole movie review thing - or perhaps just more frequent and consistent with respect to actually doing it - I might be able to better evaluate the films as entities separate from the novels that spawned them.

Alas, that is not the case. I just can’t do it. J.K. Rowling has created a world so rich in characters and settings and imagery that watching the films would be enormously satisfying if the only thing to be said about them is that they are quite well-executed visual interpretations of seven of the greatest novels ever written. They are not going to satisfy every lover of the novels, because there is simply too much in the books - especially those last four, which are quite long - to cram into one movie. (There’s even too much in the thicker books to cram into two movies, though fitting more into the film was not the reason for splitting the seventh book into two films - that decision was all about the Benjamins).

This one begins with the evacuation of Number Four, Privet Drive, as the Dursleys flee because they will no longer be safe once Harry’s whereabouts are known. (I don’t recall if the reason for this was explained in the last film or not, but it is not rehashed her for those who are not well-versed in the story. Dumbledore placed special magic on the home of Harry’s aunt and uncle and cousin, so that he would be protected there from Voldemort. However, when Harry comes of age, at seventeen, which is set to occur early in the film, the magic ceases to operate. This places both Harry and his relatives in danger.) In the novel, there is a nice moment when Dudley, Harry’s cousin, cottons to the fact that Harry is not going with the Dursleys. In his awkward way, he asks if Harry is going to be all right, acknowledging that he cares about Harry because Harry once saved his life. The two, who have never been especially friendly, make peace, and it’s a nice scene - but is omitted here, one of the few quibbles I had with the movie.

There’s probably not much point in hashing over the plot points of the story, except to note that what’s really going on here is that Harry and his friends are being pursued by a malevolent force while they try to figure out how to vanquish that force, using incomplete information passed on by someone who is no longer with them. Though overloaded with special effects (which can’t really be avoided in a story steeped in magical lore), the elements of a classic horror movie are pretty much in place here. Most of this film is concerned with the increasing power of Voldemort and his singleminded desire to destroy Harry. For his part, Harry does his best to work out what Dumbledore told him about horcruxes, so that he and Ron and Hermione can find the ones that are left, destroy them, and then destroy Voldemort.

The element of horror is best captured in a scene in which Harry and Hermione visit Godric’s Hollow, the place where Harry was born, where his parents were murdered (and are presumably buried), and where - Harry just now discovers - Dumbledore grew up. They arrive in Godric’s Hollow on what appears to be the night of Christmas Eve, with snow on the ground and few people out and about. They come to the house where Voldemort murdered Harry’s parents, and then to a cemetery, where they find the headstone belonging to James and Lily Potter. Presently, they encounter a silent old woman, whom they believe to be a noted magical historian with information about Dumbledore that might be of use to Harry. He and Hermione follow the old woman into her house - where a horrifc surprise awaits. Though effective in the novel, the scene is suspenseful enough that it works even better cinematically.

They find one horcrux, and dispatch it (though not without some trouble); and they begin to find out about the Deathly Hallows, three magical objects that, put together, make their possessor a master over death. The Hallows will present an interesting dilemma for Harry and his friends in Part 2. The only other minor quibble I had with the film was with some of the dialogue. There were places where characters were talking about things in a way that is designed to present the viewer with information, though often the dialogue came off hurried, or muffled, or otherwise reminiscent of mumblecore. This isn’t a problem for people who are familiar with the story from having read the novel; but for those viewers who have not read the novel, it’s a disservice. The biggest conceit of the entire Harry Potter film series is that the films generally assume that the viewers have read the books; and while this is probably the case for most viewers of the films, it is not the case for all viewers of the films. But again, that’s a minor quibble, just one of a couple in what is otherwise a very fine film.

Black Swan

2010-12-13T00:54:00.003-05:00

Based on the reviews of this film that I have already read, I was apparently supposed to watch The Red Shoes before watching this film. I was not aware of that; I didn’t get the memo. I just thought this looked and sounded like an interesting picture, even if director Darren Aronofsky’s last picture (The Wrestler) was a bit uneven. Two movies before that, however, was Requiem for a Dream, which was a remarkable film - and easily the most disturbing film I have ever seen. Billed as a “psycho-sexual thriller,” Black Swan is the story of ballerina Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman), who lands the role of the Swan Queen in a new production of “Swan Lake.”

But wait! If you act now, you can also get the lecherous company director (Vincent Cassel), the has-been control freak mother (Barbara Hershey) and the free spirit to your straight lace (Mila Kunis)! Special added bonus: a dancer being “retired” because she is too old (Winona Ryder) and who exists in the story for no particular reason, other than possibly to ratchet up Nina’s bizarre emotional stew another couple of notches.

Nina desperately wants her dancing to be perfect. Other than a scene late in the film when she goes out to a club with Lily (Kunis), as much to irritate her mother as to have fun herself, perfecting her dancing is all that we see Nina doing. She lives in an Upper West Side apartment with her mother, a place that feels cramped and stifling and which it appears as though time has forgotten. Nina’s bedroom is a study in pink and stuffed animals, and mommy is the only person in Nina’s life, apart from her fellow dancers and the narcissistic company director.

For most of the film, Nina’s sole expression is that of someone who continues to do something painful and difficult despite clearly wanting no longer either to do it or to get what comes from doing it. When she ducks into a restroom stall and calls her mother to let her know she got the part, she bursts into what are unquestionably tears of joy; but it is also possible to read them as the frightened tears of someone who is yoked to a terrible sadness. It’s a testament to the strength of Portman’s performance that those tears can be read both ways. (This will not be the scene used when Jeff Bridges reads Portman’s name in the list of nominees for this year’s Best Actress Oscar, but it should be.)

The pink color scheme and stuffed animals are but the first indication that Nina’s perspective is a bit skewed; her symbiotic relationship with her mother is another. Nina is a grown woman, but these indications point to someone who has willfully put off most of what it means to grow into adulthood so that she can achieve this thing for which she has been working since she was very young. When she says that she wants her dancing to be perfect, she is referring to technical perfection - the ability to execute steps and turns and leaps correctly, as they are taught. She yearns for an objective perfection that can be rendered definitively. It is almost accurate to say that she has subordinated her life to this goal; but it is more accurate to say that she has suppressed everything else in her life in order to achieve her goal of balletic mastery.

On the one hand, she has succeeded - both in mastering the steps and turns and leaps and in holding back her life in order to force her body to learn these motions; but on the other hand, she has failed - because the perfection she seeks actually comprises more than technical mastery. She cannot effectively portray both the perfect White Swan and the sensual Black Swan, which the part requires, because to achieve the former, she has forced herself to press down those things inside her that are needed for her to become the latter.

Unable to acknowledge, much less understand, her own deficiencies, she projects the frustrations these cause at those around her: she sees threats in Lily and Beth where none exist; she feels imprisoned by her mother, though she is free to leave at any time; and she reads sexual predation into Thomas’ efforts to get the Black Sawn to emerge from her. This last affront is the only one that is real, but her perception of it is amplified by her refusal to submit to - or perhaps even acknowledge - her own natural sexual maturity.

As Nina is pulled to and fro by these forces within and without her, Aronofsky uses the mortal weakness of her own body to symbolize what is happening to her inside her own mind. She constantly inspects her feet for damage, finding broken toenails and blood; and despite an obsessive attention to keeping her fingernails trimmed she finds scratches on her back, more blood. Her mother’s artwork taunts her from the walls where it hangs, and Nina cannot even go out for a drink with Lily without losing herself in a dream.

What is most compelling about the film, though, is the way in which Nina gradually begins to change the things about her that keep her from being able to portray the Black Swan. Slowly but surely, she sorts out what is real and what is not, what is of her own making and what is not. Portman’s expression may not change all that much, but she begins to imbue Nina with an energy from within, as Nina begins to understand more and more about herself and the world she has built for that self. It is not revealing too much to say that, by the end, Nina has perfected both the White Swan and the Black Swan; but it would be revealing too much to say exactly how Aronofsky and Portman get her there. You’re just going to have to see that for yourself.

Proof Copy

2010-12-07T00:14:00.002-05:00

I think I mentioned somewhere along the line that one of the prizes for "winning" Naaknowrymo (Hi, Steve) was that you could sign up with one of their sponsors and get a free proof copy of your "book." That was actually one of the things that really helped to keep me motivated to stay on pace throughout the month of November - the idea of having a printed copy of something I had written that I could hold in my hands. It would be a very rough copy, of course, but it would be something.

Had I investigated the matter a bit further, however, I probably would have been less enthused (and potentially less motivated to get to 50,000 words by the end of the month). The sponsor in question is CreateSpace, which is a self-publishing service provided by the monolithic Amazon. You create an account with them, then upload your manuscript, then create a cover for it, and then wait while their submission robot checks to make sure everything is formatted correctly. Along the way, they assign an ISBN to the book. This is the part that worries me. I don't know enough about self-publishing to know whether or not I've just committed this manuscipt to self-publishing for eternity or not. I should have stopped what I was doing and gone surfing for some information, but that damnable lust for a printed copy of my work was gnawing away at me.

Then I got an e-mail from the robot saying that everything checked out and that it was time to order my proof copy. Huzzah! So I logged in and ordered the copy, which was totally free - both the cost of the book and the economy shipping option were covered by the discount my NaNoWriMo winner's code got me. The next step - in theory - is to review the proof and make any corrections and probably re-submit the manuscript and then set up sales channels.

Yeah...sales channels. That's the part they don't tell you on the NaNoWriMo website. They just say you can get a free proof copy. You're not compelled to set up sales channels and sell the book, and I sure as hell don't plan to do that; but the whole process has got this thing a little closer to being out there in the world than I would have liked.

But I will get to hold that printed copy of the "book" in my hands. I don't exactly feel like I shook hands with the devil here, but the whole thing feels a little icky; and I'm not sure holding a copy of what I wrote in my hands is going to mitigate that feeling entirely. Oh well...I decided a long time ago that I wasn't going to pursue this particular story for actual publication anyway. It was an exercise and an exorcism, with the goal being to get it out of my system so I could stop thinking about it and start writing something serious that I would want to publish one day.

Here's what the front cover looks like:

Deep Thoughts #46

2010-12-05T23:32:00.001-05:00

If you had told Jack Del Rio at the beginning of the season that his team would win its division, he would have laughed you out of the room.

Deep Thoughts #45

2010-12-04T00:30:00.000-05:00

Someone should probably call a meeting of all four teams in the AFC South and remind them that one of them actually has to win the division.

Notes on the End of NaNoWriMo 2010

2010-11-30T01:34:00.001-05:00

Now that National Novel Writing Month is over, for me anyway, I feel two things quite distinctly. I want both to write more immediately and not to write another word for a long time. (That’s a relative span of time; though I might want not to write for awhile, a very long time for me to go between writing sessions would be a day or two.) There were times during November when I was working on the day’s words and getting up to (and now and then slightly past) two thousand words, and my head would just start to swim and I would sit back in my chair and think that there was no way I could go on. As much as I had looked forward to the start of November, so I could finally start writing down all of the ideas I had been having for the novel, I was starting now to look forward to the end of November, so that there would no longer be this enormous pressure to hit a certain mark every day.

At first I thought it was going to be bad luck that I had to close on the last two days of November, but it actually wound up being good luck. Starting last Wednesday, on the 24th, I made a conscious effort to squeeze more words out of each day than I had been getting, so that I would have a cushion for the last two days. By Wednesday I was closing in on 40,000 words, and was much farther along than I had imagined I would get; and I wanted to make sure that I got all the way to the end. Last year, it quickly became obvious that I was disastrously behind and that I would never be able to catch up. This year, I never got that feeling once. There were days when I got behind, depending on what my work schedule was like, but I was always able to bounce back a day or two later and make up whatever ground I had lost. And then, last Wednesday, I started down the home stretch.

I started to accumulate more words per day than were needed for me to keep pace; I began to amass a word budget surplus; and I kept that going for the next four days, until I got done with the writing on Sunday night and found myself at 49,300 words. It was another one of those nights when I don’t think I could have written another word - not one single additional word; but I was awfully tempted to try, as close as I was to the end. But if I had tried to press on, just to get to the finish line that night, I would have written 700 very bad words; and then I would have had to wake up today and fix (or, worse, delete) those 700 words. So I left it, and when I woke up this morning, I had those 700 words left to go, and they just poured out of me. As soon as I passed 50,000 by the word count at the bottom of my word processing file, I uploaded to the NaNoWriMo website for an official count, and it was a skosh under 50,000, but not by much. Then I took out the date markers, deleted a sex scene that seemed to fit at the time I wrote it but afterward just sounded icky, and changed most of the character names. That put me a few hundred words under, but there was so much more to write now that it was no longer a question of getting to 50,000. It’s even conceivable that I could do some writing tonight when I get home, and tomorrow afternoon - so the question is really going to be how far beyond 50,000 am I going to get?

But I made myself stop at a certain point this afternoon because I wanted to take a short walk around Irvington to celebrate what I had done. (Now that I’m thinking back on it, I realize that I didn’t take any pictures. I had planned to snap some pictures on my walk, as a record of what Irvington looked like the day I won NaNoWriMo for the first time - but I completely forgot to do it.) That’s the lucky part about having to close the last two days of November, particularly today. I almost always work a nine-to-five shift on Mondays (which I. Fucking. Hate.), but got the close shift today because the manager who usually closes on Mondays is on vacation. I finished the last few tweaks on the novel in enough time to walk over to the coffee shop and back before I had to get in the shower and get to work. And even though all the leaves were already down and nothing was really going on, it was a nice walk - on a fairly warm afternoon - and it made me think how nice it would be if I could really make a go of this writing thing and do it well enough and consistently well enough to make a living at it.

And really, that’s why I want to sit down and get right back to writing - because the actual doing of it is the only way I’ll ever be able to get to the point where I can make a living at it; and now that I have accomplished a 50,000 word novel in 30 days - and one that is reasonably coherent and has a distinct beginning and end, even if there are some pretty big holes in the middle that need to be filled - going back to the pace I was at before, barely 500 words a day, seems like child’s play. The story I was working on before NaNoWriMo had begun to drift out of focus because of a set piece with one character that just went on and on and on; and even though I have trashed a piece of writing only to immediately start it over far too many times, I am going to do that one more time and begin anew with the story of a football widow who, despite strong feelings of commitment to her family and strong religious beliefs, finds herself gradually falling in love with a customer at the local farmers market who is also a cook at a local restaurant. He is, of course, more than that, and it’s probably important to point out that he’s a cook at a local Italian restaurant. Now why would I go to the trouble of pointing out that it’s an Italian restaurant? For exactly the reason that you think. This story is also going to get into some themes - religion, marriage, the Mafia - that I have wanted to explore but have never been able to get to coalesce into one particular thing.

I will be doing some copy editing work for a fellow novelist for a good part of the month of December, while at the same time hopefully making notes and plotting the trajectory of this new version of the aforementioned story; but I hope to start on the new novel at the stroke of the New Year. I also plan to change the direction of this here Blog-O-Rama as of the beginning of 2011. There will still be the occasional post on film, the occasional fake tweet, and other such miscellany; but I plan to focus mostly on writing and reading, to continue the progress I have made in 2010 toward becoming a serious writer. But in the meantime, Happy Holidays! And, in the words of the inimitable Kurt Vonnegut, I thank you for your attention.

National Novel Writing Month 2010 - Progress Report #4

2010-11-29T13:47:00.006-05:00

I just uploaded my novel for word count verification, and here's what I got:

Officially verified word count is 50,391. Title of the novel is "I'm Only Passing Through," and here are the last two paragraphs:

I wasn’t sure what I thought I was doing either but I took that walk around the park and thought about that song and about the girl who had spoken lines from it to me years before they became lines in a song. I no longer ached for her, but the memories could come back at any moment and they could come back strong; and though I no longer ached for her, I sometimes wondered where she was and what had become of her. We had never had our time. I kept hoping to get a card at Christmas or a letter out of nowhere, but it turned out that she really had been only passing through.

As you get older, you can start to understand about a thing like that; but when you are in college, especially when you are new in college, it’s hard to get your head around just how fleeting everything is. This is especially true of time and of friendship. You can’t do anything about time except to stand by idly as it gains momentum and moves a little faster every day. Sometimes there is not much you can do about friendship, because sometimes it is just in our nature to do things that hurt other people, whether we mean to or not. But it does not do to dwell for too long on the past, although it is sometimes necessary to spend a little bit of time in the past to be able to understand it as best you can and to be able to get on with the present. It is just so dangerous to spend even one moment too many on that return to innocence.

National Novel Writing Month 2010 - Progress Report #3

2010-11-25T00:54:00.001-05:00

The third progress report for this year’s National Novel Writing Month finds me at just past 40,000 words - more than double what I had last year, and still on pace to get to 50,000 by month’s end. However, I was looking at the calendar at work last night, and I realized that November 30th is a Tuesday, which is the one night a week that I have to close at work; and Tuesday afternoons, one of the two afternoons a week when I have Jackson to take care of by myself, are not generally big writing afternoons. What all of that means is that I’m going to have to up the daily output to make sure I have enough time to write what I need to write next Tuesday and upload the finished product to the website for word count verification before I go to work.

And as for the story itself, it has gone in directions I had not anticipated, which is usually what happens when I write. I’ve always believed that it’s healthy to let the story sort of lead you by the hand, as long as you have a general idea of where you want it to go. Unfortunately, this has not yet proved a successful strategy for writing a whole novel - at least not for me; and yet I feel constrained even thinking about working up an outline. This story was supposed to be mostly about one character and a series of short glimpses into his life at various stages, starting in college and moving into his twenties as an adult. But at 40,000 words, it’s still in the college phase, and still in the “main” character’s freshman year. This is territory I have always wanted to mine, but I have never been able to get it just right. I’m not sure that this just right, either, but I have managed to keep it on course and mostly focused - though the focus has drifted from one “main” character to three - one of whom is a sort of alter ego of the “main” character, and the other of whom is something of a foil (also of the “main” character).

Also, what was supposed to have been five 10,000 word sections has turned into four sections of varying length. Each of the three sections has been from a different point of view, and in a different person - both of which were things I wanted to accomplish when I started this project. The final section - which is what I have left to write - will revert back to the same point of view and person as the first section, bringing the focus back around to the “main” character. And if all of that works out the way I have it planned in my head, then I should have a very solid piece of writing in hand at the end of the month; and I will have hopefully exorcised a demon that has been gnawing at me for years. The work will not be ready for prime time, of course; but if it holds up to a re-read, probably after the new year, then it will have been a very successful National Novel Writing Month.

National Novel Writing Month 2010 - Progress Report #2

2010-11-13T01:52:00.001-05:00

I haven’t done a very good job with progress reports on this year’s National Novel Writing Month project, but I have a pretty good reason for that; and that pretty good reason is that I have actually been keeping up with the pace necessary to get to 50,000 words by the end of the month. I have just started the writing for tonight (November 12th, which I only specify because I tend to write, and do blog posts, near the technical end of the night, as the witching hour draws nigh and then fades into the rearview - so in one sense, the writing I do tonight could be thought of partly as writing for November 12th and partly as writing for November 13th, though I think of all of it as writing for November 12th), and assuming it goes as well as it has gone to this point in the month, I will surpass, by a relatively considerable margin, the entire output I managed during the whole of last November.

I haven’t been in 1667-words-per-day shape for a long time, and no matter how fast you type, that’s a lot of words to get down in one day - especially when you devote a relatively small amount of each day to getting those words down. Of course, now that I think about it, I churned out three progress reports last year, every tenth day, at the same time that I was getting down far fewer words than I’m getting down this year; and if I manage to finish and post this progress report, that will be two for this month, with over half the month left to go - while I’m averaging almost 1700 words a day.

And at the end of today’s writing, I’m at 20,263 words, which is 259 ahead of schedule for the month. In fact, I have only failed to hit the daily pace four out of twelve days so far. There’s still a long way to go, but the story is flowing smoothly and I haven’t felt stuck once yet. The second of the five sections, which I should have finished tonight, is going to go over the 10,000 words I had planned for it. That’s all right, though, because it might bode well for the future of this piece of work beyond the scope of the National Novel Writing Month project.