Wednesday, January 31, 2007
EVENT
Don't Let Me Be Lonely, by Claudia Rankine.
CONCEPT
Well. What a depressing book to read over the Thanksgiving holiday!
Although, while it was depressing, it wasn't precisely discouraging. This contradiction was one of the most fascinating aspects of this piece to me… that while the subject matter was not only somber, but entropically somber (ie. our brains are controlled by drugs dispensed by evil and all-powerful pharmaceutical companies, and so on, so what is the point of even getting out of bed, much less resistance), it rarely left me in a shitty mood. Some of this may have been due to being in a good mood generally, but I do think there was something pertinent in the work itself. I found myself comparing it a lot with Don DeLillo's Mao II. While Mao II deals with anonymity in the context of writers and dictators, the sense of universal victimization was very similar. In the case of Mao II, I was so exasperated by the end (because do we really need so much help merely to continue feeling bleak?) that I literally threw the book. I'm intrigued then, by what could have made Don't Let Me Be Lonley so palatable, enjoyable even, when it seems to follow a similar course and reach similar conclusions.
And immediate possibility is the visual look of the piece. The cover was slightly off-putting, in that an elongated shape and colorful image are offset by the obvious Photoshop insertion of the title. Not only do the words lack the graininess and light effects of, say, the clouds and sunflowers, but the angle is offset slightly from that of the billboard. I later wondered if this was an intentional "mistake."
With this sole exception, the physical presentation is meticulous. While poems are not identified, or even decisively set apart, there is an implied division in the form of eighteen static-filled television screens. This is in keeping with one of the predominant themes of the piece; loneliness and insomnia. Inasmuch as there is a strong sense of human absence from most of these poems, Rankine does evoke a sense of companionship from the television in her frequent bouts of insomnia.
There were also many images. They all had an immediate relationship to their place in the book. For example, photos of Diallo and Byrd accompany references to their murders, and the description of Mr. Tool’s artificial heart is alongside a diagram of the apparatus. Even when the references are at their most deceptive, Rankine is quick to point out the idiosyncrasy in the endnotes. An example of this is the screenshot that accompanies an evocation of The Wild Bunch. Since both represent Westerns, it is easy to assume that the screenshot is from The Wild Bunch. It is not, but Rankine admits this openly.
The piece is also very open about itself thematically. Insomnia, pharmaceutical companies, drugs, health problems, political turmoil, and racism all intersect frequently. Often the actual encounters are almost identical, or at least the sleepy way Rankine describes them causes differences to blur. The Diallo and Byrd accounts are one example of this; while their settings and circumstances, and even the cause and nature of the crime itself may differ significantly, the narrative seems to drive toward similarities. Here the emphasis falls on the fact that a individual black man was murdered by many white men through excessive, sensational, and even grotesque use of force. But more subtle examples include her multiple references to her sister’s attempts to negotiate an insurance claim regarding her deceased family. There is no conveyance of the amount of time that has passed between these encounters, or on the sister’s progress or lack thereof.
This all seems relevant to me in helping to understand why I enjoyed this book. Whereas Mao II took up a debater’s position that activity is self-defeating, and set about building an argument about unaccountability to prove its point, Don’t Let Me Be Lonely doesn’t attempt to put forth an argument at all. Or if it does, the argument is so submerged beneath layers of sleep deprivation and disorientation that it never mounts a frontal assault upon a reader. In these words, it may seem hard to believe that this could possibly be “a good thing,” but I am convinced that it is. First, given the lack of a irreducible argument, the language itself is very robust and forceful, as are the images invoked:
What do I care about the liver? I could have told her it is because the word live hides within it. Or we might have been able to do something with the fact that the liver is the largest single internal organ next to the soul, which looms large though it is hidden. (54)
Second, because the terms of the piece seem to be set down by a narrator struggling against insomnia and sickness herself, as opposed to a narrator imposing this condition upon a helpless reader, the piece not only avoids intentional hostility, but what hostility remains is organic and integral to the book’s universe.
Finally, I have to say that I thought there were moments of beauty in here, and while they stayed true to the atmosphere of the piece as a whole, only appearing vaguely and momentarily, and sometimes without narrative recognition, they make this a three-dimensional piece. In other words, despite the omnipresence of inertia and horror, there is at least an illusion of something else:
In a taxi speeding uptown on the West Side Highway, I let my thoughts drift below the surface of the Hudson until it finally occurs to me that feelings fill the gaps created by the indirectness of experience. (89)
END OF POST.
If I become your Andy Warhol, Will you be my Lou Reed?
CONCEPT
Going to put off the American Idol thing until tomorrow.
Today is too tired.
Tomorrow is in February, the month of Valentines Day and Mardi Gras.
Today is just January.
But when I write it, it will be great. I already have plans to talk about the Apollo Theater, about Pericles and the Athenian Constituion, about Corporate Plutocrats, and all that. It's going to be a truly rapturous post.
I hope to make February for this blog a month of great feasting and revelry. I do.
More soon...
Do the survey!
END OF POST.
A Survey.
DIARY
Today's big blogging project is a Periclean and Harlemite defense of American Idol. But since I haven't worked up the wind for that, here's a pretty good survey I got from Gemma. Fill in and repost, or comment in the comments.
1. Is your second toe longer than your first?
I'm not sure... it seems depends on the viewing angle. Actually, they're quite comparable.
2. Do you have a favorite type of pen?
Uni-ball ink pens.
3. Look at your planner for March 14, what are you doing?
That's a month. I don't keep those things more than a week in advance.
4. What color are your toenails usually?
The normal color.
5. What was the last thing you highlighted?
A textbooks.
6. What color are your bedroom curtains?
I use a white pashmina.
7. What color are the seats in your car?
When I have a car again, I would like for them to be purple veleur.
8. Have you ever had a black and white cat?
Yes. "Socks." From 1991 to 1992...
9. What is the last thing you put a stamp on?
Probably a credit card receipt.
10. Do you know anyone who lives in Wyoming?
Yup. I know "people" who live in Wyoming.
11. Why did you withdraw cash from the ATM the last time?
Bagel money?
12. Who is the last baby that you held?
That little one, that was bald. Shoot, I don't know.
13. Do you know of any twins with rhyming names?
Nope.
14. Do you like Cinnamon toothpaste?
I don't know that I've experienced Cinnamon toothpaste.
15. What kind of car were you driving 2 years ago?
Occasionally, I got to drive Jessica's 1991 Pontiac Sunbird. And that was better than it had been before or since...
16. Pick one: Miami Hurricanes or Florida Gators
Miami.
17. Last time you went to Six Flags?
Senior Week, 2001.
18. Do you have any wallpaper in your house?
Nope.
19. Closest thing to you that is yellow:
Post-its.
20. Last person to give you a business card?
Don't remember.
21. Who is the last person you wrote a check to?
The Landlord.
22. Closest framed picture to you?
Almost certainly a blown-up cover of "The Encyclopedia of Such-and-Such"
23. Last time you had someone cook for you?
Jess made us tomato soup and tuna melts yesterday. They were pretty awesome.
24. Have you ever applied for welfare?
I've applied for unemployment, but I was ineligible.
25. How many emails do you have?
Five that are relevant, and probably about 12,000 emails between them.
26. Last time you received flowers?
I don't know. Have I received flowers?
27. Do you think the sanctity of marriage is meant for only a man & woman?
No, I don't.
28.
What happened to #28?
29. Do you play air guitar?
Who doesn't?
30. Do you take anything in your coffee?
Occasionally, but I usually drink it black.
31. Do you have any Willow Tree figurines?
I wouldn't know a Willow Tree figurine if it wept on me.
32. What is your high school's rival mascot?
Whatever Beecher's mascot is.
33. Last person you spoke to from high school?
If emailing counts, it would be Thad.
34. Last time you used hand sanitizer?
I think I used it about a week ago at work.
35. Would you like to learn to play the drums?
THAT WOULD BE SO SWEET!
36. What color are the blinds in your living room?
I don't have blinds in my living room.
37. What is in your inbox at work?
I don't have one. I have an inbox at school. It is typically empty.
38. Last thing you read in the newspaper?
Something on the Times website about congressional funding for Iraq.
39. What was the last pageant you attended?
I never attended a pageant, unless I misunderstand the term.
40. What is the last place you bought pizza from?
Little Louis'.
41. Have you ever worn a crown?
Why, yes. Burger King crowns.
42. What is the last thing you stapled?
The Smashing Pumpkins lyrics I printed out to work on my graduate literature project. (Isn't that a luxurient sentence?)
43. Did you ever drink clear Pepsi?
I think I tried it, but it obviously didn't make much of an impression.
44. Are you ticklish?
Very much so.
45. Last time you saw fireworks?
Last week, actually, at the Idiotarod.
46. Last time you had a Krispy Kreme doughnut?
December?
47. Who is the last person that left you a message?
I don't remember. Jess is the boss of the sophisticated technology at our place.
48. Last time you parked under a carport?
I don't know that I have.
49. Do you have a black dog?
My parents do!
50. Do you have any pickles in your fridge?
No.
51. Are you an aunt or uncle?
No.
52. Who has the prettiest eyes that you know of?
Jessica does!
53. Last time you saw a semi truck?
I'm sure I saw one this morning on the BQE, six houses down, but I wouldn't have noticed it because I see them all the time.
54. Do you remember Ugly Kid Joe?
No.
55. Do you have a little black dress?
No.
**Fav-ology**
What is your salad dressing of choice?
I vary. I'm adventurous!
What is your favorite fast food restaurant?
McDonalds and/or Taco Bell, depending on amount of cash, amount of hunger, season, wakefulness, and amount and type of nostalgia.
What is your favorite sit down restaurant?
The Atlas.
What food could you eat every day for two weeks and not get sick of?
Pizza. It's hard to get sick of pizza. For me at least.
What are your pizza toppings of choice?
Mushrooms, pineapple, olives, ham, sausage, but not necessarily all on one pizza.
What do you like to put on your toast?
Butter.
What is your favorite type of gum?
Gum that doesn't suck.
**TECHN-OLOGY**
Number of contacts in your cell phone?
I don't have a cell phone.
Number of contacts in your email address book?
I use search and reply. Screw the address book.
What is your wallpaper on your computer?
The Smashing Pumpkins!
What is your screensaver on your computer?
Nope.
How many televisions are in your house?
One.
What kitchen appliance do you use the least?
The Breadmaker, sadly.
**BI-OLOGY**
Are you right handed or left handed?
Left.
Do you like your smile?
Not bad. Not bad at all.
Have you ever had anything removed from your body?
Only my soul!
Which of your five senses do you think is keenest?
Sight. But sound and smell are the most vivid.
When was the last time you had a cavity?
I probably have a few right now.
What is the heaviest item you lift regularly?
My backpack.
Have you ever been knocked unconscious?
Yes.
**MISC-OLOGY**
If it were possible, would you want to know the day you were going to die?
It's difficult to say, but I'm inclined to say 'yes.'
If you could change your first name, what would you change it to?
If I could, I probably wouldn't. If I had to, I'd probably go with "Brendan."
How do you express your artistic side?
How don't I?
What color do you think you look best in?
Jess says any bright color, which is good news for me! I'd say green. It brings out my eyes.
How long do you think you could last in a medium security prison?
I think I'd be fine.
Have you ever swallowed a non-food item?
Probably many, but I haven't catalogued it, and it hasn't been recently anyway.
How often do you go to church?
Once, maybe twice, each week.
Have you ever saved someone's life?
If so, they never sent me a "thank you" card.
Has someone ever saved yours?
But then I never sent out "thank you" cards myself.
**DARE-OLOGY**
Would you walk naked for a half mile down a public street for $100,000?
I might say it would depend on the street, but that's a lot of money. Of course, I'm a major prude. Hmmm. Yeah, probably.
Would you kiss a member of the same sex for $100?
No. I wouldn't kiss a member of the opposite six for $100 either. I don't kiss people for money. And $100 isn't $100,000.
Would you allow one of your little fingers to be cut off for $200,000?
I don't know. Maybe I would. As a writer I'm letting sleep-deprivation ruin my sanity for nothing. Presumably my sanity is worth more than my little finger, so...
Would you never blog again for $50,000?
Define "blog."
Would you pose naked in a magazine for $250,000?
It would depend a lot on the context and the magazine. Hmmm. Yeah, probably.
Would you drink an entire bottle of hot sauce for $1000?
Okay.
Would you, without fear of punishment, take a human life for $1,000,000?
Absolutely not.
Would you give up watching television for a year for $25,000?
Okay. Can we make this an annual thing?
Would you run over a dog or cat for $1,000,000?
Okay, but then I'll turn $100,000 to save animals off the street. It's a ridiculous answer, but an equally ridiculous question.
END OF POST.
Nimbus 10, 29.
DIARY
- ALMANAC SAYS -
First U.S. federal safety standards for vehicle safety issues, 1967.
- PICTURE OF THE WEEK -
While I do thinnk that the Pirate vs. Ninja thing is/has getting/gotten a little old, every so often something is too good to pass up.
- QUESTION OF THE DAY -
Which three of the eighteen ninja skills would you most enjoy to learn?
END OF POST.
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
DOOMS-DAY!
EVENT
Everyone's linking to stories about the apocalypse these days.
Okay: Here's my contribution.
I'm with the journalist, but I wouldn't bet the farm.
END OF POST.
When the Sacred Ginmill Closes, by Lawrence Block.
CONCEPT
Part of the noir reading list I put together for my thesis with the help of Robert Polito and Jeffery Allen. As such, it was "required reading."
Matthew Scudder is an ex-cop without a job per se. Instead, he bums around Manhattan doing detective-style "favors" for friends in exchange for their donations. This keeps him in liquor, pays his hotel room, and occasionally a visit to the ex and their kids. This story, then, follows Matthew as three mysteries revolve around each other. He decides to tackle two, and to leave the third alone, but of course they're all entangled, so...
An appropriate place to start, perhaps, is with this book's evocative power. I haven't encountered much else, literature-wise that has made me feel so gooey and delicious about living in New York City. This comment is almost more powerful, being a thoroughly noirish piece set in the midtown of the seventies, with its million rundown parts, murders daily, burt-out buildings and sleazy strip clubs. But who am I killing. That scene has a romance all of its own (and one which most New Yorkers seem to wax nostalgic about).
The greatest strength in the book is its ability to balance out something unredeemably icky with an odd, idiosyncratic appeal. This is most powerfully demonstrated in the relationship of the protagonist to alcohol. He is clearly an alcoholic, in a very un-subtle way (both in the way his public and private lives completely revolve around drinking at the expense of all else, and also with his capacity to drink enough to kill a horse). He frequently demonstrates how nasty he bourbon can be. And yet... and yet... he makes that burning brown liquid that almost ended North by Northwest a half hour in the most tempting thing in the world.
This ambivalence toward the stuff, which is evidently an issue in other books featuring Matt Scudder, is echoed in every major relationship in the story, including that of the protagonist to the reaser. He's incredibly sympathetic, to the extent that his actions become not so much an issue of accountability as expectation. However I am inclined to judge what he does, I am rarely tempted to judge him. This extends to the morose and grim and somehow warm depictions of Midtown and Brooklyn, to his shady bartender friends (most evocatively Skip and the Morriseys), and even to the plot itself. In fact, something truly impressive that I almost lost beneath the striking characterizations was that this is a true example of narrative idiosyncracy. While the "story" is hardly experimental in the modern tradition of a conspicuous variations, it trumps both whodunnit conventions and those of a linear story by upsetting expectations. The upset(s) (which I won't disclose) is not so much an unexpected plot twist as much as a lack thereof. That is, for once this is a novel where a "plausible/lifelike" resolution does not rest upon an assumption of balanced and suspended symmetries. Things need not be all tied up, and they don't.
It might sound like a story that ends without much of acrescendo, but this is where the building of suspense, raising of stakes, revelation of information (all, strictly speaking, "convention") are so well executed that the ending does have the feeling of a climax.
And it's dark... dark and gritty.
You'll want to floss afterwards, it's that gritty.
But also a lot of fun.
I enjoyed reading this book a lot. It had enough energy and ingenuity to drag its subject matter out of the gutters.
END OF POST.
Nimbus 9, 29.
DIARY
- ALMANAC SAYS -
Mood rides high.
Raccoons mate now.
Yerba Buena renamed San Francisco, 1847.
- QUOTE OF THE WEEK -
"Last night I stayed up late playing poker with Tarot cards. I got a full house and four people died."
- Steven Wright
- QUESTION OF THE DAY -
Demonstrate inversion.
END OF POST.
Monday, January 29, 2007
When the Sacred Ginmill Closes, by Lawrence Block.
CONCEPT
Part of the noir reading list I put together for my thesis with the help of Robert Polito and Jeffery Allen. As such, it was "required reading."
Matthew Scudder is an ex-cop without a job per se. Instead, he bums around Manhattan doing detective-style "favors" for friends in exchange for their donations. This keeps him in liquor, pays his hotel room, and occasionally a visit to the ex and their kids. This story, then, follows Matthew as three mysteries revolve around each other. He decides to tackle two, and to leave the third alone, but of course they're all entangled, so...
An appropriate place to start, perhaps, is with this book's evocative power. I haven't encountered much else, literature-wise that has made me feel so gooey and delicious about living in New York City. This comment is almost more powerful, being a thoroughly noirish piece set in the midtown of the seventies, with its million rundown parts, murders daily, burt-out buildings and sleazy strip clubs. But who am I killing. That scene has a romance all of its own (and one which most New Yorkers seem to wax nostalgic about).
The greatest strength in the book is its ability to balance out something unredeemably icky with an odd, idiosyncratic appeal. This is most powerfully demonstrated in the relationship of the protagonist to alcohol. He is clearly an alcoholic, in a very un-subtle way (both in the way his public and private lives completely revolve around drinking at the expense of all else, and also with his capacity to drink enough to kill a horse). He frequently demonstrates how nasty he bourbon can be. And yet... and yet... he makes that burning brown liquid that almost ended North by Northwest a half hour in the most tempting thing in the world.
This ambivalence toward the stuff, which is evidently an issue in other books featuring Matt Scudder, is echoed in every major relationship in the story, including that of the protagonist to the reaser. He's incredibly sympathetic, to the extent that his actions become not so much an issue of accountability as expectation. However I am inclined to judge what he does, I am rarely tempted to judge him. This extends to the morose and grim and somehow warm depictions of Midtown and Brooklyn, to his shady bartender friends (most evocatively Skip and the Morriseys), and even to the plot itself. In fact, something truly impressive that I almost lost beneath the striking characterizations was that this is a true example of narrative idiosyncracy. While the "story" is hardly experimental in the modern tradition of a conspicuous variations, it trumps both whodunnit conventions and those of a linear story by upsetting expectations. The upset(s) (which I won't disclose) is not so much an unexpected plot twist as much as a lack thereof. That is, for once this is a novel where a "plausible/lifelike" resolution does not rest upon an assumption of balanced and suspended symmetries. Things need not be all tied up, and they don't.
It might sound like a story that ends without much of acrescendo, but this is where the building of suspense, raising of stakes, revelation of information (all, strictly speaking, "convention") are so well executed that the ending does have the feeling of a climax.
And it's dark... dark and gritty.
You'll want to floss afterwards, it's that gritty.
But also a lot of fun.
I enjoyed reading this book a lot. It had enough energy and ingenuity to drag its subject matter out of the gutters.
END OF POST.
Logicalogics, by Ronald Palmer.
CONCEPT
I think this syllabus is unreasonably biased toward people with the last name Palmer.
Logicalogics was a fun way to go out. It strikingly reminded me of the sort of work I saw working on my high school's literary magazine. I realize that has to come off as a pretty dubious compliment, but it's only meant as positive. Obviously, the spoiler here is the level of craft; in the sense that Palmer knows very well what he's doing, and most high school students don't (I certainly didn't). This important distinction aside, what strikes me as common to both sets is the directness of emotional vectors and an openness in experimentation.
These statements deserve some clarification. Every text we've read has been "experimental," in varying degrees and contexts. To a lesser extent, many texts have been charged with an emotional translucence: Claudia Rankine, E. E. Cummings, Diana Vreeland, and so on. One of the things that was interesting in the work submitted by high schoolers is first that experimentation does not appear to be hierarchically sorted as it does by older writers. If I am going to choose to experiment with a poem or a story, for example, I might act on an inspiration for a draft, but in revision I am very soon considering in a more discrete, abstract way the intent and effects of whatever variation I've introduced. Ironically (and almost with chagrin), I suspect that Ronald Palmer is doing the same thing… the fact that this collection took a decade to assemble, and his consideration of physical space, balance, rhyme, and meter can only suggest that things are very closely considered indeed. There's something inexplicable and almost deceptive, then, in the conspicuous and seemingly spontaneous idiosyncracies in Logicalogics.
Part of his, I think, is simply a matter of flair. The frequent use of colons ("Their fears: then jump up to reinvent the world for us:" (18)), occasional bolding and italicizing of text ("All entries must hook the mind into a question." (23)), and almost constant interruption of words mid-utterance ("Don't get hysteric: al: beit eso: teric:" (34)) are not only very visual choices, but on first glance, they have the appearance of chaos. The same could be said of the liberal use of blank space, but between stanzas and paragraphs and between individual sentences and words, the unusual shape of the book, the texture of the paper, and even the seamless way that poems proceed unannounced from the dedication and acknowledgments, as if these were poems themselves. On a deeper level, the free play between sex (as seen in Sex Addicts: In Love: "I lick it like a steady job: like a tedious pig: like a studious slob." (56)), metaphysics ("I have failed at being: falsely ecto: morphic." (56), "So let me dine: on Wittgen:Steinian color: logic" (57)), literature ("I picture Foucault's bald head: with a lyrical halo:" (56)), and politics ("In 1978: / when I was twelve: my body became a game of logic // with a patent." (57)) seems equally extemporaneous. As a result, Palmer's experimentation feels improvised and a little wild.
The directness of emotional vectors is equally apparent. As with experimentation, I felt that in reading high school submissions one common feature was a measure of unself-consciousness in exhibiting emotion, Logicalogics arrives at a similar effect, perhaps by coming from a very different direction. Quite simply, I just think that Palmer was restrained in use of irony. Certainly, both joking ("75: Co: lons: for A: R: Am: mons" (2)) and sarcasm ("(O holographic ideal world!)" (31)) are common. However, both are clearly positioned at points within a poem as a device, whereas each poem has its own emotional signature, some providing evidence on nearly every line: ("Maybe we should pause this: till I move to the city: / Till we stir in the nitty gritty: with Pity me: Pit me: / Now you gotta trust me: (Your body's so easy to free!) / And I'm counting hour: by hour: beyond the logic of power: / Where every berry: gripes: then re-ripens to sour." (19)).
For me, the cumulative association of Logicalogics with poetry I haven't read since I was eighteen was quite emphatic and precise. It's interesting to me, then, that I didn't have the additional handicap of associating the book with the weaknesses I expect from inexperienced writers. More than avoiding the trap, Logicalogics was refreshing, in that it reminded me of what interested me in poetry in the first place.
END OF POST.
Nimbus 8, 29.
DIARY
- ALMANAC SAYS -
Fear to let fall a drop, and you will spill a lot.
- HAPPY BIRTHDAY -
Thomas Paine.
- NEWS OF THE WEEK -
BBC News: Israel's Katsav faces rape charge.
- QUESTION OF THE DAY -
What encyclopedia are you most qualified to write?
END OF POST.
Friday, January 26, 2007
Yesterday was the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul.
BODY
I should have written about it yesterday.
END OF POST.
Nimbus 5, 29.
DIARY
- THE ALMANAC SAYS -
Today is the feast of St. Timothy and St. Titus.
Tornado hit factory, Pottsville, Pa., 1843.
- COUNTRY OF THE WEEK -
Argentina.
- QUESTION OF THE DAY -
I've talked a lot (and so have you) about who we would hope to be the Democratic nominee for President in 2008. My question for today is who would you hope to be the Republican nominee?
END OF POST.
Reluctant Gravities, by Rosemarie Waldrop.
CONCEPT
It's an interesting coincidence this week that I wrote you some comments on postmodernism, in which the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle prominently features, and then we read (what most would consider an indisputably postmodern work) Reluctant Gravities, which involves the same phenomena.
Part of my angle on this thing is that I briefly majored in Physics in College, and I intended to specialize in Theoretical Cosmology. It was the math that defeated me. Today, my litmus test for any writer taking on cosmology is their interpretation of Universal expansion. Writers seem obsessed with the "Big Crunch" scenario and describe it to this day as a sort of certainty. But the Big Crunch was always the least likely prognosis and was disproven outright around the time Reluctant Gravities was published. Current cosmological thought is that the universe expands at an accelerating rate and will eventually suffer a radical form of heat death. The word "radical" is key here. It means that even if a particle cannot move at a speed greater than light, space itself can expand at such this fast. In the extreme, extreme future (long after the stars and galaxies have burnt out, and even black holes have evaporated) space will expand so rapidly that actual photons will be isolated. They will not be able to communicate with each other, meaning that light itself will cease to exist.
At any rate, Rosemarie Waldrop has been more rigorous in her allusion to and incorporation of cosmology than any other fictional or poetic writer I've encountered. This book seemed written not only with an awareness of but subscription to heat death.
I wish I had as fine an understanding of Waldrop herself. In Shelley Jackson's class last semester we read A Form / Of Taking / It All, and at the end I had very little to contribute in class because I had understood the piece very poorly. I think I fared somewhat better this time. Not only was I able to connect with the Astrophysical discussion, but I've had a good semester of avant-garde poetry to gear up, and I also knew what to expect. Also, the shape of the collection was a useful tool.
I've noticed that many of the pieces we've read this semester have a very clear, symmetrical shape, even if the content itself is ambiguous and difficult to contextualize. This was true to the greatest extent with Brock-Broido, but Carson, Hejinian, Mullen, and Palmer all have played with the shape of their pieces to suggest certain cues that may be missing in the narrative, and often this symmetry of choice goes as deep and as far as the stanza. Waldrop has taken this to a new level. There are six sections, each divided into four Conversations (numbered) "on" a particular topic. Within each section there is a general topical premise: I, spatial orientation; II, objective via vectors; III, insurmountable distance; IV, sense and exchange; V, temporal orientation; and VI, temporal shift. Each Conversation consists of four prose poetic paragraphs (which may or may not be collages; I couldn't decide), the first two of which were on an odd-numbered page, the second two on the following even-numbered page. Between the six Conversations were five Interludes, consisting of a song (first page, odd), a two-page meditation, and another song (fourth page, even). The whole piece kicks off with a three page Prologue ("Two Voices"), which brings the total number by Prologue plus Interludes to six. The total number of sections is therefore twelve, including a total of twenty-four Conversations. The effect of this arrangement is also that each Conversation is intact even if it were a single page ripped from the book, and any Conversation, Interlude, or section could be removed without overlap. This is unquestionably the most extensively organized piece we've read.
Reading the structure against scientific inquiry that is a constant backdrop throughout the book, a case could perhaps be made that such balance and symmetry is meant to suggest the fine-tuning of physical properties that must occur if matter is to interact in any form whatsoever. Some Physics friends of mine have speculated that for every universe capable of sustaining life, for example, there are likely millions or billions of unstable counterparts. That is, it is the precise balance of matter and energy that enables a controlled expansion for a time without immediate collapse. Or, perhaps, Waldrop just thought this was a cool structure to work with.
What does seem explicitly intended however is an examination of language in conjunction with these properties of physics. To put the idea more aggressively, what do these cosmological discoveries mean for the substance and use of language? Such an inquiry is borne out both in the structure (such as the topics of conversation and their arrangement), and line-by-line: "The galaxies avoid collapsing onto each other by virtue of their recessional motion, he says," (44). Later, she writes:
We want to believe a focus on light clarifies, if at the price of harshness. But a century of looking through the ultimate keyhole has leached the revelation from under covers and drawn blinds. Now all we've got is a bald mountain. (79)
If the reference here is what I think it is; that inflation theory, or acceleration of expansion leads to darkness by heat death, then I disagree with her conclusion (that "all we've got is a bald mountain.") Inflation theory requires the establishment of physical properties at the moment of the Big Bang, and this, at least metaphysically, implies the possibility of other universes. More, while I agree with the Publishers Weekly review claims that "where many American poets flee scientific realism for bodily or religious transcendence, Waldrop's work plays intellect off against itself, appealing to chaos theory, non-Euclidian geometry and contemporary cosmology, in order to undermine ordinary ideas about language, truth and logic," I'm still pretty hazy on the rigor and reach of that goal. "Undermining" can take many forms, and this piece was too dense to reckon with intentionality and argument in such detail on a single read.
Ultimately, while I did have limited access to the collection through Cosmology and very clear structure, I've felt with both Waldrop pieces I've read, as I did with Brock-Broido, that the act of reading is much like prayer. It's too easy to fall into the rhythm, and without perfect clarity and concentration in the moment the words just become automatic utterances. I don't think that this is a liability in the writing itself, but it is an additional obstacle for a reader to overcome.
END OF POST.
Thursday, January 25, 2007
D.V., by Diana Vreeland.
CONCEPT
As you’ve probably gathered from my email, I still haven’t finished the book. Although I think I’ve over halfway through if everything I read from the beginning and near the end is counted. At any rate, I’m disappointed that this is the one book I’ve evidently dropped the ball with, because I’ve enjoyed what I’ve read and think that was a class discussion I would’ve been quite involved in.
Among the things I remember coming up frequently in that discussion was the observation that D.V. was "superficial." People ended up making arguments in favor of the book beginning, "she’s very superficial, but," and then there was a somewhat smaller group that was just saying "she’s very superficial." I disagree with both groups.
I like the word superficial... I use it a lot, including in this class. The word’s Latin history is very straightforward, super meaning above and ficial being a surface. The word, then, stripped of its pejorative connotations constrains the modified object to the surface or exterior (in whatever sense the context provides). At the same time the word reflexively implies an alternative to the surface; something that is not the surface. This other substance can either be present or absent, defined or undefined, and connected or disconnected from whatever lies beneath. The word is useful, then, because it easily allows a complexity that the alternative words "form" and "content" do not handle very well in practice. Superficial is useful for making distinctions, but it is not so easily trapped in false dichotomies.
Even though we didn’t discuss this in class, I do think that most of the references people made utilized the word superficial in this broad sense. By describing D.V. as superficial, one asserts that nothing is hidden in the text, that what we notice is what there is to examine about the text. Those arguing against the book on this basis would then make the argument that it is soulless. Those arguing in support of the book would say something to the effect that superficiality creates a complexity in omitted dialogue. For example, many people spoke of the loneliness and tragedy of the piece. In Vreeland’s energy, they would argue, there is a repudiation of decay and banality, but in her superficiality, this repudiation becomes a little desperate. This is the complexity of the piece.
I can get on board with much of the second argument. I sensed what I thought seemed to be a real reluctance to talk extensively about life’s horrors, and the decisiveness of the maitre d’s suicide near the end, or in a less melodramatic sense, the simple fact of leaving a place and a group of people forever did seem to result from a genuine reluctance to engage these subjects. At least to engage them in a published memoir.
What I disagree with, however, is the restrictiveness of the verdict. There is a huge difference between saying that "D.V. is superficial" and stating that "the superficial characteristics of D.V. suggest a denial." I think the first view, which almost everyone who spoke somewhat largely seems to result from a bias going into the book. I think that there’s a bias in favor of darkness – I think that most writers in our program (and perhaps in general) associate happiness as simplicity and lack of interest or rigor. I think that (certainly in prose, and very likely in poetry) there is also a preference for complexity, and this most frequently comes out in the form of thematic and interpersonal conflict; both sides of an issue will have to negotiate a compromised, less accessible position to get what they wish. I certainly think there’s a bias against the "fashion world," simply because we’re steeped in images of Hollywood aloofness, or anorexic models, or ridiculous extravagance, and so on. Finally, there might even be a bias against the style of writing. These images of the horses on the Upper East Side and trips to Wyoming and St. Petersburg are evocative, but they don’t linger. Vreeland frenetically changes subjects, and as soon as she’s evoked a detail, she shoos it off the page.
I’ve gotten a little theoretical here. To pull it back little to my main point, fashion as described in D.V. is elbow deep in all sorts of complex and pertinent issues. From the very beginning Vreeland is describing the changing class structures of the first half of the 20th century. She discusses these issues primarily from the perspective of fashion and high society. But she also incorporates her sense of history, politics, and technology. She talks about growing up, forming a sense of place, forming a sense of loyalty, first to people that maintain contact, even though setting changes. She goes on to extrapolate the importance of loyalty to concepts. When she describes her parting from Buffalo Bill she writes "I can still remember standing with my sister at the back of the train with tears pouring down out faces, waving…" (24). This moment cannot escape complexity held against her impressions of Paris and New York, and even Albany where "everyone was older than us," (33).
I agree that the style and purpose of D.V. suggests a loneliness or uncertainty that Vreeland is unwilling to wrestle with within the text itself. But I wouldn’t stop there. As a book with a prominent and extravagant surface, D.V. is sumptuously superficial. The surface, however, is only the beginning.
END OF POST.
Nimbus 4, 29.
DIARY
- ALMANAC SAYS -
Today is the Feast of the Conversion of Paul.
G.D. Dows patented an improved soda fountain, 1870.
- HAPPY BIRTHDAY -
Robert Burns and Virginia Woolf.
- LINK OF THE WEEK -
The Theoi Project.
- QUESTION OF THE DAY -
Who is your favorite god in the Greek Pantheon?
END OF POST.
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Google Ad-Sense.
CONCEPT
While I'm not going to sully this fair space with advertisement, I've been blogging for over three years now and haven't made a single red cent.
So... I've resurrected the original Blue Skies Falling. Basically I installed code for Google Ad-Sense and will re-post CONCEPT art and review posts there. The site still gets about 100-150 hits a day (residual image searches), and I might as well try to do something with that.
Feel free to go take a look around, but seriously, don't click on the links (unless you see something you want to buy), because I have an injunction from Google that I could lose my account if I solicit clicks.
END OF POST.
The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett.
CONCEPT
Part of the noir reading list I put together for my thesis with the help of Robert Polito and Jeffery Allen. As such, it was "required reading."
This is actually the second of the "assigned books" that I picked up, but it has such an undeniable place in the canon that I feel I have to address it first. I'd seen the Humphrey Bogart film a number of years ago, but it's been awhile and I didn't remember much. In fact, what I do remember was a sense of slight disappointment... the film didn't terrify me, or even make me feel ill-at-ease, and I had a sense of where the plot was going even though I couldn't predict individual twists and turns.
That's the problem, I think, with reading in the 2000s what was intended for the 1930s. We know the sultry dame, the wise-cracking detective, the hot-headed police sergeant all too well. It says something, however, that in spite of being saturated in such images, and having already heard the plot once in a movie, the book was still a page turner.
Or maybe I'm just a very forgiving reader.
Beyond all that, here's are some other things I've been given by this book:
- A superficial conundrum: We feel an almost instinctual compulsion to carry out our duties, to act with fidelity to certain roles or relationships, however distasteful we may find the people or responsibilities involved.
However superficial the argument may be, it comes through with panache and style. - A much deeper conundrum: An object or goal desired too much becomes abstracted from itself, and is unattainable literally and metaphorically because the quest evolves into a more tangible subject than the object/goal itself.
In short, another aspect of the "Enkidu moment."
This wasn't as central to the plot as the point above. It was, subtly evoked. - Fog and San Francisco. Frequently seen and always sexy, but close to an original here.
- Alcoholism never looked so glamorous.
- On the other hand, the story didn't dress up its misogyny as well as it did its booziness. I often think that what people classify as "misogynistic" would be better called "clueless obnoxious ignorance." The Maltese Falcon, however, is about as misogynistic as anything I've ever read.
I don't have much more to say, actually... genre fiction gets a bad rap, which I think is unfair, as literary invention and skill can flourish within genre conventions just as well as within our less acknowledged literary conventions. That said, The Maltese Falcon was and is remarkable for the vividness of the hand it shows, rather than a corresponding skill of deployment. The best literature, I believe, demonstrates both skill and vividness. I recognize the importance of this novel and enjoyed it. I would not, however, describe it as "astonishing."
You'll find I'm vague at times here, or at least lacking specific examples. I'm not being a jerk. I don't want to give the endings away.
END OF POST.
The Postman Always Rings Twice, by James Cain.
CONCEPT
Part of the noir reading list I put together for my thesis with the help of Robert Polito and Jeffery Allen. As such, it was "required reading."
I read The Postman Always Rings Twice prior to The Maltese Falcon, mainly because the former was shorter.
I can understand why The Maltese Falcon is the grandaddy of the genre, and especially its hard-boiled angle. Characters like Brigid O'Shaughnassy and Sam Spade are so vivid that reading them is something of a visceral experience, and so simply and directly rendered that their dopplegangers might crop up in any number of stories. Still, I never lose a sense of stylization in the Maltese Falcon, and like most stylized writing, its symbolic vocabulary is so netted in time and place, that the thing read as somewhat dated.
Postman had its dated moments too, and was probably equally stylized, but the elements were neither as intrusive or conspicuous. Part of this clearly derives from the focus of the stories. In The Maltese Falcon the biggest mystery is actually the protagonists' intentions. To accredit their emotions is to basically give away their hands, so at most the characters' feelings are described as symptomatic, and in most cases are affected. The question for the reader, then, is if she can determine who to selectively trust and when. It is a story of semantic and gestural clues.
There is never any question of authenticity of emotion in The Postman Always Rings Twice. Certainly, the characters deceive one another, but the candor of the narrator with his readers is in such a direct opposition to his conduct elsewhere that there seems to be no reason to second-guess him. Seemingly absent from the plot are the mechanical subtleties of cause-and-effect that are so abundant in the Maltese Falcon. More the emotions the characters engage are instinctual and ubiquitous in any reader's life: lust, hunger, jealousy, anxiety... The question for the reader, then, is whether he can predict where these familiar but unpredictable desires will take the character.
The novel is officially noir when the characters voluntarily choose a dark and nasty path.
So I liked this novel, and it was fun, even if the end is predictably wretched for all involved. It was eminently more feasible than Falcon and certainly more psychologically compelling. Which is not to say that it's the better book; both are exceedingly well crafted in very different ways. But if I wanted to recommend one of these two classics to frighten and/or trouble you, Postman is the clear choice.
END OF POST.
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, by Agatha Christie.
CONCEPT
Part of the noir reading list I put together for my thesis with the help of Robert Polito and Jeffery Allen. As such, it was "required reading."
This was actually the first mystery I read for the project, and having read it last November, my memory gets a little hazy. While it's certainly not as dark as either the Cain or Hammett, it has a chilling conclusion that is much more frightening, by contrast to the tone throughout. This won't be of much use in Rats, where there is nothing atmospherically subtle, and the book almost fooled me, but I did get a lot out of the way it systematically deployed clues for interpretation.
Of all the books I've read, this is the closest to a traditional whodunnit.
I'm really in a bind as whether or not to say much more, because even for a mystery the element of surprise, the choreographed deployment of information, is essential to an enjoyable read. It is certainly best suited to a reading that is itself, asmospheric... so old Viennese coffee shop with a fire, maybe, or a late night with hot chocolate. I know I'm bordering on the clich♪8 here, but I always want to respond that only affectation is clichè. Or, how can a "thing" be clichè? It wasn't the first time it was used.
Anyway, that's a digression. The characters are strikingly rendered, albeit with an almost Dickensian whimsicality. It contrasts with the other books I've been reading in that most of the characters are ultimately likeable. I don't think that's a virtue in-and-of itself, but it is refreshing in the midst of bleakness. Also, the paradox that solving the mystery requires a careful and methodical read, whereas encourages fast and reckless page-turning, is pronounced here. It is probably the best crafted of the thesis readings I've done so far.
Which is probably part of the reason Agatha Christie was so famous.
END OF POST.
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, by Agatha Christie.
CONCEPT
Part of the noir reading list I put together for my thesis with the help of Robert Polito and Jeffery Allen. As such, it was "required reading."
This was actually the first mystery I read for the project, and having read it last November, my memory gets a little hazy. While it's certainly not as dark as either the Cain or Hammett, it has a chilling conclusion that is much more frightening, by contrast to the tone throughout. This won't be of much use in Rats, where there is nothing atmospherically subtle, and the book almost fooled me, but I did get a lot out of the way it systematically deployed clues for interpretation.
Of all the books I've read, this is the closest to a traditional whodunnit.
I'm really in a bind as whether or not to say much more, because even for a mystery the element of surprise, the choreographed deployment of information, is essential to an enjoyable read. It is certainly best suited to a reading that is itself, asmospheric... so old Viennese coffee shop with a fire, maybe, or a late night with hot chocolate. I know I'm bordering on the clich♪8 here, but I always want to respond that only affectation is clichè. Or, how can a "thing" be clichè? It wasn't the first time it was used.
Anyway, that's a digression. The characters are strikingly rendered, albeit with an almost Dickensian whimsicality. It contrasts with the other books I've been reading in that most of the characters are ultimately likeable. I don't think that's a virtue in-and-of itself, but it is refreshing in the midst of bleakness. Also, the paradox that solving the mystery requires a careful and methodical read, whereas encourages fast and reckless page-turning, is pronounced here. It is probably the best crafted of the thesis readings I've done so far.
Which is probably part of the reason Agatha Christie was so famous.
END OF POST.
Nimbus 3, 29.
DIARY
- ALMANAC SAYS -
Gymnast Mary Lou Retton born, 1968.
- PICTURE OF THE WEEK -
Esteban, Tia, and Tau pursue Mendoza's galleon in the Condor.
- QUESTION OF THE DAY -
How many goats would you be willing to take on in your current house or apartment?
END OF POST.
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Incidentally...
EVENT
A combination of factors have changed my mind about the troop surge. However...
By "combination of factors" I suppose I mean a flurry of op eds, critical objections, and other articles, sometimes coming from Republicans and experienced generals in addition to Democrats and progressives, as well as the pervasive, stubborn "brute force" strategy that seems to be the only way this administration can work out any equation.
By "changed my mind" I mean that I am going from cautiously supporting the troop surge to cautiously supporting a prompt phased withdrawal. I think that everyone who has spoken to me in public and private were essentially right; our hands are tied by now. 20,000 troops is not the beginning of a fix.
By "however..." I mean that everything I said before about having an rigorous and invested discussion about the situation and needs of Iraqi civilians, a discussion involving the Iraqi people has been tragically absent from this debate. I believe that the whole political spectrum has been somewhat complicit in this. We still don't have a clear picture of what a demographic cross-section of Iraqis want.
I should lastly add something I learned today. If you want your blog to get 60 hits in 3 hours, just put "Saddam Hussein" in the title of your entry. Nobody's left a comment, though.
END OF POST.
Dead by 2007. Saddam Hussein.
EVENT
Somebody was saying something about celebrity deaths coming in threes. This month we've had:
- Gerald Ford
- James Brown
- Saddam Hussein
2. Saddam Hussein.
Although I have much more incentive to have very clear, articulable thoughts about Saddam Hussein than Gerald Ford... my exposure to him, his relevence to our times, his infamous record... I have an easier time discussing and considering an ex-president with a (relatively) unremarkable administration that was finished before I was born. I cannot decide if this is reaction is weird or expected. Sometimes the lack of investment makes conclusions easier to draw.
Of course, there are plenty of conclusions I've drawn about Saddam; it's only that they're foregone conclusions, so obvious that they don't really call for much circumspection. As an illustration of this, I remember attending an antiwar rally before we invaded Iraq. One of the speakers, inostensibly talking about the horrendous effects of depleted Uranium in Afghanistan, commented that Saddam hadn't really gotten a fair shake. I remember thinking, "not really." Certainly, he was betrayed by a powerful neutral-friendly ally, if we could be called that, but he also killed a few hundred thousand of his own people. I was always firmly in the camp, both with regard to Saddam and to terrorists (who need no connection to each other to be individually terrible) that an apologetic stance only weakens our own argument.
I always thought that the "collateral damage" should be considered a casualty, and be subjected to as rigorous scrutiny and investigation as deaths that occur within combat, much as fatal "friendly fire" is treated. Civilian casualties ought not to be the incidental matter that they are.
Maybe I'm making my case more pragmatically than I intended, and maybe I'm not talking much about Saddam Hussein the man himself. But I always thought that up to the war, the antiwar movement was either falling all over itself to comdemn Hussein even while not doing anything about him, or trying to contextualize his actions to some point where they might conceivably be justified.
I always thought that his monstrousness ought to be a foregone conclusion. Following from that point, the world is filled with monstrous dictators, and our desire for justice and/or equilibrium (inasmuch as we can address pomo concerns that we have no such desires) still have to operate on the basis of reality.
It's a confusing point to make, and I don't know if I've been clear. I think it boils down to the Left being the movement championing individual civil rights and liberties, the movement with the greatest desire to define freedom as a necessary aspect of its proliferation, gets a little carried away in not recognizing a distance, even if a distance encompassing lots of gray areas, between those who deserve a fair shake and those who must be accorded one out of necessity. Due process? By all means. The Geneva conventions? Certainly. Let us not be hypocrites. Well, okay, it's way too late for that.
But in our homes and among our friends, let us personally admit that this one man honestly deserved whatever he had coming to him. What we lack in passion, it is perhaps reasonable to lack also in sympathy.
Thoughts?
END OF POST.
Nimbus 2, 29.
DIARY
- ALMANAC SAYS -
China's giant pandas added to the endangered species list, 1984.
- QUOTE OF THE WEEK -
"Majority rule only works if you're also considering individual rights. Because you can't have five wolves and one sheep voting on what to have for supper."
- Larry Flynt
- QUESTION OF THE DAY -
What are you having for supper tonight?
END OF POST.
Monday, January 22, 2007
January, 2000.
DIARY
[Yes, the year is randomly determined.]
Ah, 2000. 1999 - 2000 was one of the great years, and kicked off with one of the last and greatest of the Crawford's New Years Eve parties. At the time I had an immense crush on a girl I still know, and yes I was able to kiss her at midnight. Unfortunately, in the following hour or two, she reconciled with her former boyfriend and that was that. The 1999 side of that vacation was more exciting than the 2000 side, but I still hoped for some change in the winds from the mysterious Girl R, so it was with huge reluctance that I returned to Chicago. For the next week, I spent a lot of the time in the basement of the Reynolds Club, sitting at a computer and writing my Michigan friends. This was the first thing that made January extraordinary.
The problems with such partiality became immediately evident, however. I was directing the UT studio production of Artaud's The Cenci, and not only was it one of the most ambitious projects I'd ever taken on, but I had been given permission to essentially pursue the project however I wanted. I had to get "in the mood," and fast. I still remember the night I broke urban-explored my way into Bond Chapel in the middle of the night and spent around two hours in there trying to figure shit out. I really wish I remember how things had added up, because from that point on distraction was not even an issue and the pieces really flew together. This was the second thing that made January extraordinary.
It was also the beginning of my Andy Kaufman obsession (which would, ironically, impact the production of Cenci, and many other things besides. In December my obsession with R.E.M. had drawn me to the film Man on the Moon, and with a new curiosity about Kaufman, I took the crew of Cenci to downtown Chicago to the Chicago Cultural Center for a lecture given by Andy's friends and families. I began to appreciate his work in a more nuanced way. This was the third thing that made January extraordinary.
At the end of the first full week, studio auditions followed the mainstage. Actors filled out a two page audition form that covered their schedules, their feelings about on-stage nudity, and required drawing a picture. We also offered cookies. I cast Derek as Orsino, Lydia as Bernardo, Ben L as Andea, Phil as Giacomo, Mark as Camillo, and Juliette as Lucretia. Megan "Thrasher" played Beatrice and Sean, who walked into auditions with a smile (dressed all in black) at the very last moment of the very last day, and from the moment he spoke had a lock on title role. He's been a best friend ever since, and this was the fourth thing that made January extraordinary.
The crew consisted of Ben B as Stage Manager, Courtenay as Production Manager, Letizia as Technical Director, Lindsey as Lighting Designer, Travis as Sound Designer, and Amber as costumes and props. Amber also had help from a girl with an inexplicable first name (Jepetta) and an unpronounceable last name (Jlkjfccnaljknerelafjkan). And this was the fifth thing that made January extraordinary.
To get into the politics and developments of the rehearsal process that first month, would take a much longer post. Actually, I ought to write that post because it would be fun to write and interesting to read. In short, however, I'd spent several years developing a kind of "process-oriented" rehearsal system that combined stringent personal responsibility with more democratic production choices and a philosophy of immersion. Of the four productions I directed with this approach The Cenci came the closest to a perfect application, and even won some reluctant support from our often quarrelsome governing student committee. And this was the sixth thing that made January extraordinary.
In classes I was surviving due to my instructors' generosity and patience, with the exception of Number Theory, which I started failing immediately. But in the evenings, between rehearsals, I met with the cast and crew for work and films and plays and trips and lectures and concerts and adventures. On the last weekend, nine show participants took a road trip to Flint to see Flint Central's production of The Tempest, and we stayed at Josh's three room house, with nine doors to the outside, shaped like a 1950s flying saucer, in Burton. On the 30th, we were of a party so crazy, so manic and out of control, that Samuel Hopkins Adams would have blushed.
That was number seven.
Where were you in January, 2000?
END OF POST.
The Postman Always Rings Twice, by James Cain.
CONCEPT
Part of the noir reading list I put together for my thesis with the help of Robert Polito and Jeffery Allen. As such, it was "required reading."
I read The Postman Always Rings Twice prior to The Maltese Falcon, mainly because the former was shorter.
I can understand why The Maltese Falcon is the grandaddy of the genre, and especially its hard-boiled angle. Characters like Brigid O'Shaughnassy and Sam Spade are so vivid that reading them is something of a visceral experience, and so simply and directly rendered that their dopplegangers might crop up in any number of stories. Still, I never lose a sense of stylization in the Maltese Falcon, and like most stylized writing, its symbolic vocabulary is so netted in time and place, that the thing read as somewhat dated.
Postman had its dated moments too, and was probably equally stylized, but the elements were neither as intrusive or conspicuous. Part of this clearly derives from the focus of the stories. In The Maltese Falcon the biggest mystery is actually the protagonists' intentions. To accredit their emotions is to basically give away their hands, so at most the characters' feelings are described as symptomatic, and in most cases are affected. The question for the reader, then, is if she can determine who to selectively trust and when. It is a story of semantic and gestural clues.
There is never any question of authenticity of emotion in The Postman Always Rings Twice. Certainly, the characters deceive one another, but the candor of the narrator with his readers is in such a direct opposition to his conduct elsewhere that there seems to be no reason to second-guess him. Seemingly absent from the plot are the mechanical subtleties of cause-and-effect that are so abundant in the Maltese Falcon. More the emotions the characters engage are instinctual and ubiquitous in any reader's life: lust, hunger, jealousy, anxiety... The question for the reader, then, is whether he can predict where these familiar but unpredictable desires will take the character.
The novel is officially noir when the characters voluntarily choose a dark and nasty path.
So I liked this novel, and it was fun, even if the end is predictably wretched for all involved. It was eminently more feasible than Falcon and certainly more psychologically compelling. Which is not to say that it's the better book; both are exceedingly well crafted in very different ways. But if I wanted to recommend one of these two classics to frighten and/or trouble you, Postman is the clear choice.
END OF POST.
Nimbus 1, 29.
DIARY
- ALMANAC SAYS -
Today is St. Vincent's day.
- NEWS OF THE WEEK -
Comet McNaught, visible in the southern hemisphere, is the brightest comet to be viewed in forty years.
- QUESTION OF THE DAY -
If you were to produce your own yearly almanac, what would you name it?
END OF POST.
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Oh, why not. (In my humble opinion.)
EVENT
Since I'm awake.
Another fiery political thing.
I like talking politics with Gemma, and we agree probably 80-90% of the time. If I may be so bold, however, there is one issue where my disagreement is becoming more and more emphatic in the recent weeks. Here it is in a nutshell:
Progressives should not pull punches in the 2008 Presidential election, either in their support of candidates or their hopes for the election in general. I say this for two reasons. First is that the Democrats are already prone to the sort of self-compromising hesitancy that will always look weak and undesirable when matched against conservative campaigns defined by a strident and confident rhetoric.
But where my argument really comes to roost is what seems to be this fundamentally flawed notion that inheriting the country after Bush will doom whoever follows to a nasty, unworkable legacy. This really is not likely unless we elect a mediocre president, and frankly, mediocre presidents don't come off so hot even in less contentious times (ie. Carter, Harding).
The obvious example for my case is Abraham Lincoln. Not only is he considered by just about everyone to be the greatest president, but he took over the position from James Buchanan whose administration was startlingly like Bush's in a number of ways. I'm not talking about slavery (although you all know my feelings about current Republican stances on civil rights). I'm talking about combining a rhetoric of national crisis with an uncompromising unilateral agenda and really crappy cabinet appointments.
There are other examples besides Lincoln. FDR took over from Hoover during the worst years of the Great Depression. The transition to Truman was not smooth, and he had many critics while he was in office, but history has treated him kindly. If I recall correctly, many people considered Bush 1 to be a letdown after Reagan (though I personally beg to differ). Although one could argue that his rehabilitation may have something to do with his son's poor track record.
Truthfully, if I were to claim that a nasty Bush administration is a boon for his successor, I would be jumping the gun, and probably wrong. What I think is a more reasonable conclusion is that, given our very limited sample set of 43, there is no particular evidence to correlate success in office with prosperity / lack of national trauma.
That, and nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Do we really have to bellyache about the race right now?
Shouldn't we be rallying for a vigorous race, whoever enters?
More, shouldn't we be trying to build some momentum out of our congressional victories to turn the national dialogue in a more progressive direction, broadly. That was, after all, what the conservatives did (quite successfully) during the Clinton administration.
At this point, I'm not officially supporting either Obama or Clinton. I think Obama makes a more interesting candidate with politics probably more in sync with my own. But I also respect the across-the-board experience Clinton would bring to the office.
And yes, if they can mount a strident and confident campaign, I think that either could win.
END OF POST.
William Lustig's Maniac.
CONCEPT
I usually don't post on the weekends, and I certainly don't post at 3 AM, but I just finished watching William Lustig's Maniac and now I think I'm going to have to sleep with all the lights on and episodes of Taxi on all night. Not really, but jeez.
There was a lot I kind of hated about this movie. It was as much horror as it was a psychological thriller, and so fell into what seems to me1 to be the most common pitfalls of the genre. Namely 1) a troubling rendering of women, and 2) it never ever ever ever ever leaves you wanting more.
I had other complaints, too, specific to this film.
3) He wasn't abused nearly bad enough to end up as messed up as he was. That's a pretty big generalization on my part, but the whole movie seems to build up to the revelation, and when I found out I thought, that was it? We should all be homicidal maniacs.
4) The film is an hour-and-a-half long, and at least the middle hour is quite predictable, plotwise. During the last third I really wasn't frightened at all because the film only had one trick, and it was possible in the end to acclimate.
5) There are a couple really inexplicable twists at the end, quite outside what is reasonable for an audience since this is built up from the very beginning as a sort of psychological thriller. But the twist is fun, if nothing else, and ought to appeal to Kennedy, Sawyer, and Meridith. That list, actually, probably is a pretty good hint at what the twist is.
6) Finally, this is yet another one of those films with the moral "hot people shouldn't date weird looking people, because the weird looking people of the world are psychopaths who will impale you and then cut off your scalp to put on a mannequin."
Oh, and it was supposed to be disgusting. I guess it was certainly pretty disgusting for 1980. But it was still less grisly than Day of the Dead2, which approximate marks the line where my stomach starts to get a little queasy.
But I'm basically just doing all this complaining to stall the point, which was that the film scared the crap out of me. It's been a couple years, at least, since a film left me leaving this soiled and distressed. This is basically because:
6) It is told almost continuously from the serial killer's perspective, and with an admixture of voiceover, dialogue, and on-screen mumbling, it does a really good job putting you inside his demented head.
7) You have to wait a ridiculously long time for what is going to happen to happen, even when what eventually happens is what you'd probably expected in the first place.
So that's that. The Ring is kid's stuff compared to this.
1. A necessary qualification since I am not as film-1337 as the rest of you.
2. There was actually one film that made me physcially want to vomit, and it was the English version of the 1960 film "Eyes without a face." I seriously almost lost it at Palevsky cinema.
END OF POST.
Friday, January 19, 2007
Noctus 28, 29.
DIARY
I didn't post until late yesterday because my internet was down for most of the day. You can read the post here. Or you can punch "Page Down." Your call.
- ALMANAC SAYS -
Law raised salary of U.S. president to $100,000, 1949.
- HAPPY BIRTHDAY -
James Watt, Edgar Allen Poe, and Janis Joplin.
- COUNTRY OF THE WEEK -
Chile.
- QUESTION OF THE DAY -
What does your last name mean?
END OF POST.
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Noctus 27, 29.
DIARY
- ALMANAC SAYS -
Dow Jones industial average first passed 1,000 mark, 1966.
- LINK OF THE WEEK -
Scientific American: The Case of the Pilfered Planet.
- QUESTION OF THE DAY -
What kind of themed calendar ought to exist but probably does not.
END OF POST.
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
A change in the air...
For the first time in almost two years there are going to be active posts at this address. A friend suggested I register with Google Ad Sense, since I post extensively about the arts, and build a focused blog around that premise. I will not belabor this point, because I'm not supposed to call conspicuous attention to the ads.
Since I do not want to compromise the integrity of the blog I keep for friends and family, all of the content here will also be hosted at the complete Blue Skies Falling blog. However, that blog will continue to host primarily personal and political thoughts and meditations.
This blog will focus exclusively on the arts, with an emphasis on both literature and "experimental" art.
For more information on my own projects, I encourage you to visit my website.
The background, incidentally, is a scene of the Foster Street Beach in Chicago taken in May 2005.
END OF POST.
"There's no way to describe what I do."
BODY
Today is Andy Kaufman's birthday. His is fifty-eight years old.
Happy Birthday, Andy.
Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning——
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
END OF POST.
January, 1999.
DIARY
Such a high note... when the staid ball finally touched down kicking off one of the more eventful years of my life, I was in the middle of a huge revelry at the Crawfords. I'd arrived several hours before with Elliot and Mitch in tow, and a decades worth of friends new and old were crowded in the basement. Upstairs, the grown-ups mulled and laughed and ate hors d'eurves (sp?) and drak tequila. The cool kids were all down in the basement. Demetrius taught us dance moves, and Madonna's Ray of Light, which was the novel thing just then, played at least three times through. This was, effectively, the night on which I met Lindsay and Annie and Amanda and Tony and some of those other Central kids. They were in their sophomore and junior and senior year of high school, whereas I was a second year at the U of C. Mitch left on his own, and Elliot and I were out until three-ish.
Several days later, my aunt gave me a ride back to Chicago, and I was not thrilled to be there. This was the year I was stuck in BJ #629D, or as I knew it "the Ghost Room." In fact, I remember very little of this month except that I was writing constantly to my new friends, and every week or two I took the train home to visit them and my family.
Actually, this was the month when I changed my major to Physics.
It happened following a long conversation with Professor Vandervoort on a cold and frosty gray day.
Where were you in January, 1999?
END OF POST.
"I never told a joke in my life."
CONCEPT
Today is Andy Kaufman's birthday.
He died on May 16, 1984, or twenty-two years, three months, and thirty days ago.
- I just want real reactions. I want people to laugh from the gut, be sad from the gut-or get angry from the gut.
- I never told a joke in my life.
- I try to please people, to give them a good time, but I refuse to make my act conform to traditional show-biz standards of entertainment. There's a little voice that says, 'Oh, no, you can't do that, that's breaking all the rules.' That's the voice of show business. Then this other little voice says, 'Try it.' And most of the time, when the voice comes on and says, 'No,' that's the time it works.
- If I play my cards right, I could bring network wrestling back to TV. Unfortunately, to most people, wrestling is a laughingstock. But fortunately, I'm reaching people who otherwise wouldn't watch it.
- My mother sent me to psychiatrists since the age of four because she didn't think little boys should be sad. When my brother was born, I stared out the window for days. Can you imagine that?
- Pure entertainment is not an egotistical lady singing boring songs onstage for two hours and people in tuxes clapping whether they like it or not. It's the real performers on the street who can hold people's attention and keep them from walking away.
- The critics try to intellectualize my materiel. There's no satire involved. Satire is a concept that can only be understood by adults. My stuff is straight, for people of all ages.
- There's no drama like wrestling.
- There's no way to describe what I do. It's just me.
- What's real? What's not? That's what I do in my act, test how other people deal with reality.
- When I perform, it's very personal. I'm sharing things I like, inviting the audience into my room.
- When I was 7, I believed Howdy Doody was in a little world inside that glowing box. I was hypnotized and I wanted to go away, to be with him in there. When I was 8, I started doing party magic shows for kids - grown-ups had to leave. Then later, at college in Boston, I worked up my own kid's show, Uncle Andy's Fun House.
- Whenever I play a role, whether it's good or bad, an evil person or nice person, I believe in being a purist and going all the way with the role. If I'm going to be a villainous wrestler, I believe in going all the way with it and not breaking character and not giving away to the audience that I'm playing a role. I believe in playing it straight to the hilt.
- While all the other kids were out playing ball and stuff, I used to stay in my room and imagine that there was a camera in the wall. And I used to really believe that I was putting on a television show and that it was going out to somewhere in the world.
END OF POST.
Noctus 26, 29.
DIARY
- ALMANAC SAYS -
Ben Franklin born, 1706. Bridge game expert Norman Kay died, 2002.
- HAPPY BIRTHDAY -
Anton Chekhov and Andy Kaufman!
- PICTURE OF THE WEEK -
A beautiful goose.
- QUESTION OF THE DAY -
What symptoms do you show of being truly angry with yourself?
END OF POST.
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett.
CONCEPT
Part of the noir reading list I put together for my thesis with the help of Robert Polito and Jeffery Allen. As such, it was "required reading."
This is actually the second of the "assigned books" that I picked up, but it has such an undeniable place in the canon that I feel I have to address it first. I'd seen the Humphrey Bogart film a number of years ago, but it's been awhile and I didn't remember much. In fact, what I do remember was a sense of slight disappointment... the film didn't terrify me, or even make me feel ill-at-ease, and I had a sense of where the plot was going even though I couldn't predict individual twists and turns.
That's the problem, I think, with reading in the 2000s what was intended for the 1930s. We know the sultry dame, the wise-cracking detective, the hot-headed police sergeant all too well. It says something, however, that in spite of being saturated in such images, and having already heard the plot once in a movie, the book was still a page turner.
Or maybe I'm just a very forgiving reader.
Beyond all that, here's are some other things I've been given by this book:
- A superficial conundrum: We feel an almost instinctual compulsion to carry out our duties, to act with fidelity to certain roles or relationships, however distasteful we may find the people or responsibilities involved.
However superficial the argument may be, it comes through with panache and style. - A much deeper conundrum: An object or goal desired too much becomes abstracted from itself, and is unattainable literally and metaphorically because the quest evolves into a more tangible subject than the object/goal itself.
In short, another aspect of the "Enkidu moment."
This wasn't as central to the plot as the point above. It was, subtly evoked. - Fog and San Francisco. Frequently seen and always sexy, but close to an original here.
- Alcoholism never looked so glamorous.
- On the other hand, the story didn't dress up its misogyny as well as it did its booziness. I often think that what people classify as "misogynistic" would be better called "clueless obnoxious ignorance." The Maltese Falcon, however, is about as misogynistic as anything I've ever read.
I don't have much more to say, actually... genre fiction gets a bad rap, which I think is unfair, as literary invention and skill can flourish within genre conventions just as well as within our less acknowledged literary conventions. That said, The Maltese Falcon was and is remarkable for the vividness of the hand it shows, rather than a corresponding skill of deployment. The best literature, I believe, demonstrates both skill and vividness. I recognize the importance of this novel and enjoyed it. I would not, however, describe it as "astonishing."
You'll find I'm vague at times here, or at least lacking specific examples. I'm not being a jerk. I don't want to give the endings away.
END OF POST.
Dead by 2007. President Gerald Ford.
EVENT
Somebody was saying something about celebrity deaths coming in threes. This month we've had:
- Gerald Ford
- James Brown
- Saddam Hussein
1. Gerald Ford.
He was Michigan's only president, originally from Grand Rapids, which is my mom's hometown. He has also become un-controversial enough by now that just following his death his Wikipedia article is only "semi-protected."
Interestingly, I've learned 90% of what I now know about Ford from actually the months just prior to his death, when I was working on Facts on File's Eyewitness History: The 1970s. I read about his (ultimately) ineffectual grappling with stagflation, his tough stance against New York City's deficit, and his Cambodian "moment of glory." He appointed a Donald Rumsfeld as Secretery of Defence, but the man's personality seemed light-years away from what we've seen. And of course, First Lady Betty Ford was known not only as we know her today - for the clinic with her name - but for her candor with reporters and controversial stances on sex, marriage, and illegal substances.
What I knew Ford for prior to my work here, and what of course we all remember him for today, is his relationship to the Watergate scandal. A popular representative and House Majority leader before his appointment, he was chosen to shore up the reputation of the White House after the resignation of Spiro Agnew, who was almost as notorious as Nixon would later become. The following years kind of put Ford on the fence via the office. On the one hand, he was never connected to either Watergate or its cover up, as were a whole domino row of Nixon advisors. On the other hand, his most memorable moment historically came just several months following his move to the Presidency, when he pardoned Nixon. I've heard the typical argument that the move cost him the White House, but I've also heard surprisingly compelling arguments that the pardon actually worked in Ford's favor long term, by allowing him to confront the nation's foreign affairs and economic issues without distraction.
Regardless, public cynicism in the presidency was eroded to the point that, despite his reputation as a "good" and "honest" man, Jimmy Carter's election was essentially a vote of no-confidence in the Washington status quo. (Reagan, of course, turned such sentiments on their heads.)
I know these seem to be unremarkable and summary observations, and I wish I had been blogging when Reagan died, because he was someone I felt strongly about. Weirdly enough, when Jess points out to me the number of presidents from Ohio (eight, or roughly 20%) I always tease her that they're the least memorable 20%. I realize that people might say the same about Ford. A counterthought would go that he presided over the nation during a troubled domestic transition, those weird years between the upheaval of the sixties and the neoconservative momentum that started to build in the eighties... that because such a political atmosphere was unpresidented since Reconstruction, his administration must only be considered interesting and worth considering. The counter counter is that the "boring" Ohio presidents are probably boring only because of their removal. Taking into consideration the difference in media saturation, we might reasonably expect to have felt as strongly about, say, a President Harrison.
Then I remember that many of those Ohio presidents were elected soon before and after Reconstruction.
I guess periods of domestic recalibration are given to modest leaders with understated legacies.
Thoughts?
END OF POST.
Noctus 25, 29.
DIARY
- IN THE ALMANAC -
Louis Riel, leader of Mètis resistance vs. Canada, hanged, 1885.
After black clouds, clear weather.
- HAPPY BIRTHDAY -
Lisa!
- QUOTE OF THE WEEK -
"There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else."
- James Thurber
- QUESTION OF THE DAY -
Just to cap off the movie questions for a little while, what's a movie everyone else seems to enjoy, and it just annoys you?
END OF POST.
Monday, January 15, 2007
Noctus 24, 29.
DIARY
- ALMANAC SAYS -
Martin Luther King Jr.'s Birthday (observed)
- NEWS OF THE WEEK -
New York Times: U.S. and Iraqis Are Wranging Over War Plans.
- QUESTION OF THE DAY -
How do you celebrate Martin Luther King day?
END OF POST.
Friday, January 12, 2007
Christmas to Carnival.
BODY
Tomorrow is the last day of Christmas, and Sunday marks the beginning of Winter Ordinary Time, or as our better halves ought to call it "Carnival."
During the last couple weeks I have neglected to write about Christmas, the Epiphany, the birth of John the Baptist anyway. Honestly, though, I think exactly 0 people read this blog because they're interested in my religious thoughts, so I approach them more casually than the rest.
Truthfully, the next several months are going to be light for blogging while I'm working my thesis and sailing the seven seas.
Happy Carnival, though!
END OF POST.
Troop Increase for Iraq?
EVENT
To tell the truth, I don't know how I feel about a troop increase.
If called out, to make up my mind and set aside the (many) reservations I have about my own opinion and the limitations of my knowledge, I would say I support a troop increase, but only as one aspect of an extensive overhaul of our relationship to the Middle East. I would cut my losses, buy out the contract with Halliburton and offer it to our allies as incentive for their involvement. We might even have to go beyond that for broad European support.
I would engage Iran and Syria diplomatically on the grounds that establishing a stable Iraqi govenment would put less economic strain than funding a sectarian war-by-proxy with an uncertain outcome. I would offer them targeted economic support in exchange for their strategic support.
I would draw a line in the sand for troop withdrawal, but it would be a distant line. Say, 2012. A deadline years away would work against the insurgent momentum and, more importantly, their foreign sponsors, but a definite date would give both Iraqis and Americans a concrete goal and a more objective understanding of their own resources and what is expected of them. During that time I'd take my lumps by restricting American intervention elsewhere so that we could give Iraq more support without reinstating a draft. This could be partly accomplished by ceding some of our operations in the Pacific and Europe, largely symbolic relics from World War II. But most of the transfer would mean scaling back operations in Afghanistan and elsewhere, which would mean taking more creative, non-military approaches to, say, terrorism around the world.
This is the best solution I can think of, and you probably disagree, and that's fine because, frankly, it's completely infeasible from a political perspective. There's no way the White House would ever propose such a plan, and if it ever did, there's no way either party would back it in Congress.
I've been opposed to this war from the very beginning, and I was out on the streets in Chicago on the night that 500 people were arrested. So I fully expect many people here to disagree with me now, but if I dissent from my friends, that is my right too.
Now to the "many" reservations:
I certainly feel that a troop increase or even stablizing Baghdad is not sufficient. The only scenario in which I can see long term success in Iraq requires almost unilateral international support. We didn't only mess up in disrupting a stable (if despotic and genocidal) regime and thereby its region, but we haven't given our allies any incentive to invest, and we refuse to engage with regional interests for political and ideological reasons. So my problems with a troop increase is that I cannot see it helping without international support bought with embarassing (for the U.S.) political and economic concessions.
On the other hand, once we've disrupted the status quo of a sovereign power by invading and bombing its cities and infrastructure to oblivion and igniting sectarian strife, I object to our own expedience as the strict motive for withdrawal. Which seems to almost exclusively inform the phased reduction arguments.
We've reached a point where all major religions and philosophies argue that human is human is human, whether an Iraqi or an American. While it is inevitable that our political institutions will and must act first on the interests of their constituents, I also think there is a point where common sense requires a sort of override.
I would argue then that when we invaded Iraq, when we drove our allies away by giving out undeserved exclusive contracts, and when we refused to engage with regional powers, we sacrificed the right to either stay or withdraw at our convenience. Our 3,000 casualties are a tiny fraction, maybe as low as 1%, of civilian deaths in Iraq. This number does not count civilian casualties due to economic sanctions under the Clinton administration (responsible for 2 million deaths), or resulting from Desert Storm.
It is worth pointing out that number now represents now almost 10% of the entire population of Iraq. 16 years have passed since Desert Storm, meaning that maybe half of Iraq's population has been born during a period when they have witnessed uninterrupted harship connected (if not caused, directly and indirectly) by American intervention.
It is worth pointing out that most casualities today are not connected to the insurgency, but are what we would call (I hate this phrase) "collateral damage." Iraq, like America, is a complex society with a variety of political and religious views. You would be as hard pressed to find a "typical" Iraqi as you would a "typical" American. So claims identifying Iraqis unilaterally as pro-isurgent or pro-Western-style-democracy are equally misinformed.
It is finally, and ultimately, worth pointing out that despite four years of reading about Iraq in the news, I have encountered only a handful of articles about how a the Iraqis feel about our presence. None of these articles were systematic or statistical. None were surveys. They were anecdotes that typically offered up a pro- and/or con- of our occupation. I think almost every American overestimates their knowledge of how the "average" Iraqi feels. We should be an experts on this subject. We should know, for example, in a survey of 10,000 Iraqis X% want the Americans gone now, Y% want us gone by next year, and so on. Not only do we not know, but we can't. The work has either not been done, or if so, it hasn't been picked up by the mainstream media.
By and large, Democrats and Republicans, pro-war and anti-war camps are not concerned with the interests and perspective of the Iraqi people. They enter our arguments only occasionally, and then only to bolster whatever opinion we've already formed. So while I agree that a troop increase is not *the* answer, I don't buy the rhetoric of a phased withdrawal as either party has presented it. I want to talk about the Iraqis and hear from them, and know what they believe is the best route for their country. I'm sad both because I think that's a dialogue that won't happen, and because I think it's a dialogue that most Americans don't really care about.
I should finally say, though, that unlike the choice the go to war in the first place (which to me seemed an obvious mistake, and one only attributable to recklessness and arrogance), we are at a point there is much information that conflicts. Predicting outcomes, long term, seems to be a lot like predicting the weather.
I don't disapprove of anyone who disagrees with me, however vigorously, about the addition of more troops. I could be completely wrong about that, myself.
The present lack of and need for an fuller Iraqi perspective? That, I feel quite strongly about.
END OF POST.
Links
Previous Posts
- 2009 IL Primary Elections - Blue Skies Falling End...
- Event:Pass Health-Care Reform Yesterday!
- Diary: Life these days, these times.
- Event: It's Friday. Some videos.
- Concept: It's Friday. Here is some stilly stuff, ...
- Event: My letter to the newspapers.
- Event: My letter to Sen. Dick Durbin.
- Diary: Should I Call It Platform Surfing?
- Event: I support the Chicago 2016 Olympic Bid.
- Body: Today is Michaelmas.
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