Monday, February 28, 2005
Jesus
Lives, And He's Serving You Fries
Just
finished The DaVinci Code today, mainly to see what all the fuss was about--and
boy, can I see it. It's undeniably entrancing, sure, but it's so damn obvious
in doing so. If this book was a movie, it'd be one of those old outer-space
flicks where you can see the wires holding up the spaceship as it flies in
front of a spraypainted bedsheet. (Yes, I know it's going to be a big-budget
Ron Howard movie; I'm talking more in metaphoric than cinematic terms here.)
But there are lessons to be learned here, friends.
First off, the plot, if you're not already aware. We've got The Church, here
represented sort of as the Legion of Doom in purty robes. (They've even got
their own Solomon Grundy-like lunatic albino.) And we've got the Priory of
Sion, this super-secret society that's tasked with protecting The Greatest
Secret In All Human History. When Solomon Grundy knocks off a Louvre curator
with connections to the Priory of Sion (I'll preserve suspense for the three of
you who haven't yet read it), all hell breaks loose, and a resourceful (of
course), ruggedly handsome (of course) Harvard symbologist (wha...?) and an
attractive (of course) French codebreaker chick (ooookay) find themselves in
pursuit of the Holy Grail itself, while themselves being pursued by the French
police and The Church, who are both in this book a lot more resourceful than
you'd think. The symbologist and the French hottie are forced to jump through
all kinds of logical hoops and riddles left by the dead curator, most of which
are either 1. completely obvious or 2. of the CSI variety, where they just
happen to stumble onto exactly the right answer.
Anyway, I'm going on way too long here, but here's the upshot. Dan Brown can write
him a cliffhanger. I HAD to keep reading this book to figure out what was going
on. The cliffhangers in this book are like pizza or sex; even though they're
weak and obvious, they're still pretty good. (Also like bad sex, I felt a
little used and dirty after reading this--like I could've spent the five or six
hours in MUCH better ways.)
So--do I recommend it? Aw, sure; you know already if you'll like this. I'm a
conspiracy--well, not "obsessive," not "nut" or
"freak"--let's say "conspiracy enthusiast," and this feeds
into the suspicion that a lot of folks have that there's Somebody Out There
Pulling All The Strings. And although the theology and academic rigor is
grade-school level, I do like the idea espoused here that true faith
understands that the stories of the Bible are metaphoric. That's another
journal for another day, but the literature professor in me has always been at
war with the faithful side; knowing how texts are created through history tends
to make me look a bit askance at certain stories that I was told to, literally,
take as gospel.
The Da Vinci Code ain't gospel, not by a long shot, but if I can pull off the
kind of page-turning tome that Brown has here, I'll be mucho pleased
with myself.
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
Comics
That Just Ain't Right II: Special Black History Month edition
"We all smiled, like it was just some throwaway joke at Old Man
Weatherbee's expense. Then Archie turned those all-American blues on me and
hissed, 'Don't let the sun set on your ass in Riverdale, boy.' After Archie
turned his back, Betty leaned in close, pointed at my glass of milk and
murmured, 'Like the taste of white, do you...?'" --From A Token In a
Land of Quarters: Memoirs Of The Only African-American Within Fifty Miles Of
Riverdale, by Charles "Chuck" Clayton.*
This cracker-approved cover courtesy of the fine folks at www.millarworld.biz --and some
damn poor editing.
*-And yes, that's the character's real name. I found it in less than five
minutes of googling. God bless you, Internets!
The
Dumbest Student I Ever Taught
I
teach occasional classes in literature at Georgia Perimeter College, a fine
institution in the suburbs of Atlanta. Fully 99 percent of my students are dedicated,
thoughtful, often quite insightful, and most importantly, willing to take the
leap to understand that while literature won't get you a better job, it will
give you a fuller life.
However...there is that 1 percent. That group of students who are so incredibly
foolish that I wonder how they remember to inhale after they exhale. I'm not
talking about book smarts or computer smarts--I'm talking about class ethics.
It's incredibly easy now to plagiarize papers--visit Google, type in your works
for study, cut, paste, and boom--instant paper. Except none of these little
geniuses seems to figure out that if they can find something on Google, I can
too. And at the end of every semester, my wife can count on me storming through
the kitchen on Rant #43--"How Can These Kids Be So Damn Stupid When I've
Warned Them About Plagiarism Fifty Times?"
I'll leave the sociological and philosophical root causes of this plagiarism
infection--it's not an epidemic yet--for another time. For now, I'd like to
tell you about the dumbest student I ever taught. This fool decided to write a
paper on author Robert Olen Butler, a Pulitzer Prize-winning short story
writer/novelist of no small skill. Fine and dandy. They turned in a paper that
was obviously plagiarized. Not just strike one; end of ballgame. However,
something about the paper's phrasing seemed familiar but tough to place, like
when you can only hear the bass line of a song coming from behind someone's car
windows. I typed in a few key words to Google, and all was made clear. This
future Rhodes Scholar had plagiarized this article right here...
...an article written by none other than me.
I did a classic spit-take all over the monitor, then laughed hard enough to
pull some chest muscles. Lesson for all my students who may be reading
this...don't plagiarize, but if you do--make sure you know whose work you're
plagiarizing. 'Cause being a dishonest student is bad--but being a dishonest
moron is far, far worse.
Monday, February 21, 2005
HST
Hunter
Thompson's dead. Goddamn. There are maybe four or five "famous"
people on earth whose passing I'll truly mourn, and HST is one of them. He was
a genius, a groundbreaker, a fucking American. Like any writer who
wants to be worthy of his own profession, I first dove into HST's stuff in high
school--got blown away by the sheer POWER of his vision in Fear & Loathing
in Las Vegas and Hell's Angels. And a couple years back, I found an old copy of
Rolling Stone from 1986 or so that had a piece Thompson wrote as a journalist
in Saigon during the Vietnam War ("War Junkies" is one of the titles
it's run under, and it's reprinted in Songs of the Doomed II), and sweet Jesus,
Thompson made you feel like you were sitting right there beside the bombed-out
pool in the shadow of a dessicated formerly-luxurious hotel, with the heat
sticking close and death sticking even closer, jaded fellow journalists
smirking glassy-eyed at you, and only a few glasses of Jack Daniels stood
between you and total bug-out.
I even tried to chase down Thompson once, when I was living out in Colorado.
Being young and stupid, I figured what the hell, I'd drive to Woody Creek and
see if I could find the man. Couldn't be that hard, could it? I located the
Woody Creek Tavern, went in and shot some stick there but couldn't get up the
balls to ask the bartender if Thompson was coming in that night--I didn't want
to stink so badly of Desperate Acolyte. On my way out, though, I saw a framed
sheet from a waiter's notepad that read something along the lines of "I
pledge never again to throw smoke bombs in the Woody Creek Tavern, Signed, Dr.
Hunter S Thompson." Beautiful. I later went out driving in the absolute
primordial blue-black of a rural Colorado winter night looking for the gates to
Thompson's estate, and considering how well-armed and paranoid the man was,
it's probably a damn good thing I didn't find it.
So...here's to you, Hunter. We'll try not to fuck things up too badly in your
wake.
Thursday, February 17, 2005
Comics
That Just Ain't Right I (First in an occasional series.)
Certain
comics rank amongst the most insightful, challenging literature of the last
century.
The ones in the Comics That Just Ain't Right series...don't.
And since nothing kills like a Freudian pedophilia joke, I lead with the good
stuff and present to you The Greatest Comic Book Cover Of All Time:
...that thank-you note at the bottom just adds that extra dollop of creepy,
don't it?
Meet
the Family II: The Girl
Here's Riley, five-year-old kindergartner and my vote for Most Perfect Child In
Creation. This picture was taken on her first day of big-girl school, as she
was ready to get on the bus for the first time. And, as you can see, she's
already starting to pull away from Dad and look for cooler friends to hang out
with.
If you don't have a daughter of your own, you cannot begin to conceive of the
homicidally protective thoughts that enter into your mind the very moment the
little princess enters the world. It's all funny-ha-ha when you're the guy
ringing the doorbell to Meet the Folks--Dad, all chummy, tells you to
"have my daughter home by nine, young man!" while you're trying to
decide whether there's any significance to the fact that he's got what appears
to be a necklace of VC ears dangling off the mantel. (One time, I actually drew
blood from my date before we even left her house. It was the homecoming dance,
she was hot and I was playing way over my head. And with her family--mom, dad,
jerkwad little sister--watching, I went to pin the corsage on her dress. And
then I realized my hand was just...inches...from...them...and poink, I
jabbed her, and not in a good way. The date went downhill from there--we went
to the restaurant where a buddy of mine was the host, and the jackass called me
by my brother's name. Needless to say, Date 1 was also Date Fini. Shame, too,
because that girl grew up to be Cameron Diaz.)
Okay, so it's a boatload of hormone-driven stress when you're taking out a
young lady. But when you're on the other side of the generational divide, it's
completely different. Because now, you know exactly what goes on in
the minds of the scrawny little bastards that show up in their ill-fitting
Sunday sportcoats. And while I'm hoping that Riley has enough sense to keep
these little jerkwards in their places, I'm hedging my bets by altering the
rules of the game. Last Friday, Riley and I went to a Father-Daughter
Valentine's Day Dance, and after all this time, I know damn well how to impress
a lady. I gave her a rose, took her out for a fine meal (which she picked at
but didn't eat--good job, sweetie!), danced with grace and devotion, and paid
attention only to her--in short, did right what every horny little high
schooler is going to do wrong eleven years hence. I'm going to raise her
expectations of men so high that nobody's going to meet them until she's, like,
35 or so. Happy Valentine's Day, angel!
Friday, February 11, 2005
Meet
The Family: The Boy
Jay Busbee, Inc. possesses quite possibly the most incompetent Board of
Directors since Enron. Pictured here is The Boy--Logan to everyone else,
including his parole officer--admiring his Jackson Pollock approach to interior
decorating, a dramatic and daring use of the Crunch Berry medium.
Flicksadaweek:
Shaun of the Dead, The Ladykillers
I
don't want this blog to be just a bunch of reviews of media that I
consume--hell, two months in, and I don't know exactly what I want it to
be just yet--but anyway, saw a couple good flicks over the last week. I'm a
Coen Brothers junkie; have been ever since Raising Arizona. (Best. Comedy.
Ever.) Ladykillers was really more of a cartoon than an actual flick--every
quirky character was dialed up to 11 and painted in one color. Tom Hanks'
bizarre Colonel Sanders-versus-Tennessee Williams mashup commandeers every
scene he's in, but Marlon Wayans (playing the same lunatic homey he played in
"Don't Be a Menace...") and JK Simmons as a civil rights
activist-turned-demolition expert are also reliably fine. The plot's
simple--collection of nutjobs, led by Hanks, steals cash from a casino by
tunneling from a sweet old lady's home--and it's not the Coen Bros.' best work.
But it may be the only film in history where a garbage barge is a persistent
and resonant visual metaphor.
Shaun of the Dead is about thisclose to being a cult classic; too many dead
spots (ha!) slow down this tale of British pub slackers against the undead.
It's damn funny in spots, winking smartly at its audience--early in the flick,
as a depressed and indifferent Shaun rides the bus, folks around him are
coughing fitfully and, in the background, dropping to the ground dead. Best
scene of the movie is when Shaun and his drunk buddy (whose name escapes
me--Vic, I think) encounter a zombie in Shaun's backyard--"I think she's
sweet on you, mate," Vic says as Shaun tries to avoid getting bit by the
zombie. Shaun and Vic then throw an entire laundry basket--including the
basket--at the zombies, to no avail but lots of the funny. See it, preferably
after a few pints.
Wednesday, February 09, 2005
A
Vision Of Things To Come
First taste is free...announcements coming shortly.
Tuesday, February 08, 2005
Cooler
Than You'll Ever Be
Got the Miami Vice first season DVD today. Holy crap, is this show perfect.
The key to any great TV show--Homicide, The Simpsons, The Sopranos--is the way
that it just shows up sui generis, simultaneously staking out its own
unique territory and slamming the door behind it so that anything that comes
afterward looks like the pathetic imitation it is. TV has metamorphosed so much
in the last fifteen years that Vice can seem dated and corny, but looking at it
through a twenty-first-century lens is akin to wondering why Robert Johnson
didn't mix in a drum-and-bass track with "Love In Vain."
By current standards, the show's got some seriously goofy elements--Sonny Crockett's
wacky alligator pet, Philip Michael Thomas's acting, the occasionally
melodramatic background music--but man, this show encapsulates the '80s like
nothing else. (Whether that's a good thing or not depends on whether you lived
through it.) Even though it's constrained by '80s network standards--which
didn't even allow dead bodies to be shown--it still hints at a darkness that
shows like The Shield would deliver on years later. Being a good Southern boy,
I expect my stories to have a strong setting--and Vice delivers that every
episode. South Florida is a living, breathing character in this series.
So--Vice is good stuff. I watched it first as a high schooler, then more
recently in reruns while I was handling Logan's midnight feedings a year or so
back. And it's done strange things to my creativity...which I hope to reveal in
the coming months.
Sunday, February 06, 2005
Hype:
The Live Super Bowl Blog
I have
this theory that every guy ought to have watched at least one Super Bowl in a
truly bizarre, disturbing location, one like that scene in “Boogie Nights”
where Marky Mark’s trying to make a drug buy from the future Doctor Octopus,
and the little houseboy is throwing fireworks as Night Ranger’s “Sister
Christian” rattles the walls. For me, it was 1991, the Bills-Giants game. I was
in Colorado, defending the slopes of Keystone from Iraqi invasion. My buddies
and I didn’t own a television, and rather than do the logical thing like go to
a sports bar, we went door-to-door in the resort employees’ dorm looking for
anyone else watching the game. (We also braved heart failure by jumping from
hot tubs into snowbanks. We were idiots.) Anyway, cable was expensive, meaning
nobody out there had it, so I watched Norwood shank the field goal on a tiny
black-and-white set with a coathanger antenna hung out the window. Ah,
memories.
That there's an excerpt from my live Super Bowl blog over at the Chicago Sports
Review. Check out the whole deal by clicking here...but
make sure you bring along something to eat. You'll be there awhile.
Friday, February 04, 2005
Hype: Top 10 Sports/Comics Crossovers
Just
published a piece in the online version of the Chicago Sports Review
documenting the Top 10 Sports/Comic Book crossovers. Didja know that Superman once
fought Muhammad Ali? Or that the Yankees once repelled an alien invasion? Learn
all this and more by simply clicking
here.
Tuesday, February 01, 2005
Flicksadaweek:
The Bourne Supremacy, Knockaround Guys, Walking Tall
I use
different media as accompaniment to my writing, depending on what type of work
I'm doing. Fiction demands blues; the Florida crime script I've been working on
has flowed astonishingly (disturbingly) well when I've listened to Jan Hammer's
Miami Vice soundtrack. Opie & Anthony on XM always make for good websurfing
accompaniment. And when I'm doing the first passes on journalism, I enjoy
having a good dopey movie on in the background. The three flicks I watched this
week certainly fall into that category. The Bourne Supremacy is killer escapist
entertainment, all European car chases and CIA intrigue. Ludlum was one of the
first "real" writers I ever read way back in early high school, and
the Bourne flicks nail the international air of conspiracy running throughout
the novels. The cast is first-rate--Joan Allen, one of my favorite actresses;
Julia Stiles, another one of the good ones; Brian Cox, who always looks like
the jolly uncle that'll threaten to kill you when Mom's out of the room; and
Matt Damon, who kicks the crap out of that fop Richard Chamberlain in playing
the role of Jason Bourne.
Knockaround Guys is that rare fish-out-of-water flick that doesn't once stoop
to cheap laughs. A bunch of Brooklyn mobsters head to Montana to recover some
misplaced money; problems ensue. Barry Pepper is the standout here, but Seth
Green is surprisingly good as the screwup who loses the money; the sad
resignation in his eyes during his final scene is light-years away from Scott
Evil in the Austin Powers movies.
Walking Tall is just about the shortest film I've seen in awhile--not even
seventy-five minutes. I've waited longer for freakin' pizzas. As a result,
there's not much there beyond the basic smash-'em-up plot, but the players are
all standouts. Between this and The Getaway, I'm now convinced that The Rock
can handle the mantle of "next Schwarzenegger." Johnny Knoxville is
demented without mugging for the camera, and Neal McDonough is the same
just-this-side-of-oily smooth character he plays in Boomtown and Band of
Brothers. Recommended--hell, you can watch the whole damn thing while you're
waiting for your lady to get ready to go out.