CONSUMED: A PARTIAL LIST.
babayaga (book). toby barlow's book-length werewolf poem introduced me to a new breed of supernatural fiction, and i was thrilled when his follow-up novel materialized here at my office. scrappy eastern-european witches and noirish spy types in postwar paris, you guys! smoking owl pellets, turning policemen into fleas, and, er, developing ad campaigns (i'm probably ready for TB's other career in marketing to stop informing his novels)! this one (in prose, except for the witches' songs) is also wildly inventive—the subplot about the policemen who become fleas is particularly lovely, and the magic is fascinating and brutal—but it is also seriously patchy. the central love story falls kind of flat, and the main character, he of the ad campaigns, is so undercharacterized that i had a hard time caring about what happened to him. while i still think barlow's work is umpteen times more interesting that your average summer murder-in-paradise pop fiction, i also think he needs to crank up the lyrical spookiness with his next project; it's still the most exciting thing about his work.
the bling ring (film). sofia coppola's latest, based on a vanity fair true-crime piece called "the suspects wore louboutins," follows emma watson and several other sweet-and-sour young things as they burgle* their way through star-spangled los angeles. hey, there they are in paris hilton's house (seriously, coppola filmed there)! it's megan fox and brian austin green's unexpectedly-tasteful stuff! it's gavin rossdale, "acting"! i suppose one could argue that the film's anemic plot and abrupt ending double down on its characters' superficiality and junior-varsity existentialism, but let's call a spade a spade: the bling ring is exquisitely-composed television,** not a movie. i miss lost-in-translation-era sofia c.
the comedy of errors (play). shakespeare in the park is playing to the groundlings this summer: both of the public's 2013 offerings are comparatively short (90 and 100 minutes, respectively), intermission-free comedies, and the second (love's labour's lost) is a musical by the folks who brought us bloody bloody andrew jackson and peter and the starcatcher, which is probably why joe and i haven't been able to score tickets via the virtual line (for three goddamn weeks we've been trying! get out of my line, broadway types!). comedy's goofy double-mistaken-identity plot is perfect for extra-broad, scooby-doo-times-three's-company hijinks, and the cast was up for it. hamish linklater and jesse tyler ferguson are accomplished clowns, and it was satisfying to see them with a full show's worth of the sort of material shakespeare usually hands them for short riffs. 90 minutes of, like, the pyramus-and-thisbe slapstick from a midsummer night's dream is not the sort of thing i need to see every summer, but this summer it was grand. also, it began with "sigh no more" performed as a forties-era torch song! that was as satisfying as watching a nun hand out licorice (grand street, i salute you).
the dog stars (book). a world-devouring superflu has killed almost everyone on earth; now a man flies a prop plane around colorado with his trusty dog, occasionally feeding him the survivors they encounter. on paper the dog stars sounds like a touchy-feely post-apocalyptic cross between illusions and the road, and it...is, but that's not such a bad thing. peter heller is a widely-published outdoor writer, and he writes like a guy who's spent a lot of nights in a tent (i recognize this type because i spent a lot of nights in my backyard in a tent). he also writes like a guy who really loves dogs, like a guy who's taken care of a white-muzzled dog or two, and the way he describes old jasper, man-jerky-eating aside, breaks me right in half. i don't tend to recommend novels i've enjoyed to joe—raymond chandler is maybe the only writer i've gotten under his skin—but i might have a go with this one; it's an elegant alternative to those child-contestant-killing and brain-chomping ends of the world you hear so much about these days. it is also, predictably, solid in-flight reading.
great plains (book). ian frazier, dear reader, is a motherfucking delight. i think i have a crush on his curiosity: he knows just when to ignore a story's paved route and crash through the laundry lines in someone's backyard. i came out of his travels in siberia nearly as besotted with the place as he is, and this earlier account of how he cobwebbed across the US in a nasty old van in search of ghost towns and crazy horse's people makes me want to bully my stepsister into letting me drive her car to california.*** he presents watching the beautiful robinson sisters of nicodemus, kansas perform a founder's-day dance in church-lady clothes to prince's "when doves cry" as an unironic peak life experience (or platonic anamnesis, depending on where you're sitting?), and i totally buy it.
the master builder (play). i like both john turturro and ibsen, and i made the mistake of thinking i would like john turturro in ibsen (as halvard solness, the titular builder). i'm almost alright with having made this mistake, for katherine borowitz**** as his bereaved and thrown-over wife was fascinating, if not as fascinating as ibsen's other ladies. solness is supposedly tormented (the next generation is clawing at his heels! his erections, har har, are few and far between! he has an annoying and probably imaginary young friend in a petticoat!), but turturro just seemed irritated, like a guy who promised himself he'd remember to buy coffee on the way home last night and woke up to a cupboard of weird old tea. fortunately my theatregoing ladydate kinda hated the show as well, and collective indignation is a hallmark of our friendship, so the evening ended on a high note.
imaginary reading group discussion questions
01 have you ever gotten into trouble in mexico?
02 what would your version of "sigh no more" sound like?
03 blood meridian was unreadable for me. should i give cormac mccarthy another chance and read the road, or should i move on and read some young-adult vampire novels instead?
04 how many nights have you spent in a tent?
05 do you pass books on to significant others?
06 team joan or team ian. pick a side.
*emma watson's "i want to rob," pronounced in her best unskilled-british-mimic's-approximation-of-a-so-cal-accent, is funny but misleading: robbery is, say it with me now, the taking of property by force or threat of force.
**call it an extraterrestrially-gorgeous episode of the OC, perhaps one of the ones where marissa cooper gets into trouble in mexico.
***joan didion, she of the languid cigarette and the white stingray on a thousand pinterest boards, never brings me along on her "secular communion" with freeways. i'm turning into the sort of reader and perhaps the sort of writer who needs generosity in her nonfiction. and muchness.
****turturro's offstage spouse, as it happens.
07.31.13
the dirty dozen-ish {notes from my hometown police blotter, as reported by the oc register}*
Disturbance. 12:52 p.m. The caller reported a man and a woman making out on the grass and said it's not appropriate.
Illegal peddling. 7:36 p.m. The caller reported a man going door to door and arguing when he's refused.
Disturbance. 11:37 a.m. The caller reported an argument with 16-year-old grandson over a computer.
Citizen assist. 12:46 p.m. The caller said someone is spitting on his car every morning. The caller thinks it's a neighbor who lives behind him.
Suspicious person/circumstances. 7:57 p.m. The caller reported a boy smoking marijuana behind the electrical shed.
Suspicious person/circumstances. 8:00 p.m. The caller said people are possibly lighting something on fire in the park.
Vandalism in progress. 12:27 p.m. The caller reported a woman lying down on the bus stop and writing on it with a pink marker.
Disturbance. 5:45 a.m. The caller reported inviting a woman over and said she is now refusing to leave.
Suspicious person/circumstances. The caller reported someone trying to get into a wedding party as an uninvited guest.
Disturbance. 1:26 p.m. The caller reported a man eating yogurt, yelling about the government and using bad language.
Disturbance. 11:37 p.m. The caller reported loud people who have hopped the fence and are in the pool.
Disturbance. 10:39 p.m. The caller reported four people on bicycles being loud.
Defrauding an innkeeper. The caller said a man drank $100 worth of alcohol and left without paying.
Suspicious person/circumstances. The caller reported a drunken man sleeping in the planter. The caller said there are newspapers all around him.
Suspicious person/circumstances. The caller reported hearing someone knocking on the door twice. The caller's husband turned on the light and saw shadows.
*inspired in part by chelsey johnson's excellent incident reports from park rapids, minnesota.
Disturbance. 12:52 p.m. The caller reported a man and a woman making out on the grass and said it's not appropriate.
Illegal peddling. 7:36 p.m. The caller reported a man going door to door and arguing when he's refused.
Disturbance. 11:37 a.m. The caller reported an argument with 16-year-old grandson over a computer.
Citizen assist. 12:46 p.m. The caller said someone is spitting on his car every morning. The caller thinks it's a neighbor who lives behind him.
Suspicious person/circumstances. 7:57 p.m. The caller reported a boy smoking marijuana behind the electrical shed.
Suspicious person/circumstances. 8:00 p.m. The caller said people are possibly lighting something on fire in the park.
Vandalism in progress. 12:27 p.m. The caller reported a woman lying down on the bus stop and writing on it with a pink marker.
Disturbance. 5:45 a.m. The caller reported inviting a woman over and said she is now refusing to leave.
Suspicious person/circumstances. The caller reported someone trying to get into a wedding party as an uninvited guest.
Disturbance. 1:26 p.m. The caller reported a man eating yogurt, yelling about the government and using bad language.
Disturbance. 11:37 p.m. The caller reported loud people who have hopped the fence and are in the pool.
Disturbance. 10:39 p.m. The caller reported four people on bicycles being loud.
Defrauding an innkeeper. The caller said a man drank $100 worth of alcohol and left without paying.
Suspicious person/circumstances. The caller reported a drunken man sleeping in the planter. The caller said there are newspapers all around him.
Suspicious person/circumstances. The caller reported hearing someone knocking on the door twice. The caller's husband turned on the light and saw shadows.
*inspired in part by chelsey johnson's excellent incident reports from park rapids, minnesota.
07.24.13
conversations at the corporate refrigerator {I}
1: are those little...gifts?
2: homemade pickles, actually.
1: is that how one usually wraps...?
2: i had all this painter's tape, i didn't want them leaking on the subway, and...here we are.
1: no one wants pickle juice on...
2: no one.
1: are those little...gifts?
2: homemade pickles, actually.
1: is that how one usually wraps...?
2: i had all this painter's tape, i didn't want them leaking on the subway, and...here we are.
1: no one wants pickle juice on...
2: no one.
07.18.13
conversations with doctor omnibus* {omnibus on the road}
doc: not that you'll remember this because you won't come in then, but i'll be out the week of august 12th.
LMO: oh, are you going somewhere fun?
doc: the coast of oregon.
LMO: your daughter lives there, yes?
doc: she won't come and visit me because i said something she didn't like.
LMO: what did you say?
doc: i said, 'you were born on third base and think you hit a triple.'
LMO: sometimes daughters need to hear that.
doc: [...]
LMO: she'll get over it.
doc: [laughs merrily] like i care!
*have i ever mentioned that he's seventy? he's seventy.
doc: not that you'll remember this because you won't come in then, but i'll be out the week of august 12th.
LMO: oh, are you going somewhere fun?
doc: the coast of oregon.
LMO: your daughter lives there, yes?
doc: she won't come and visit me because i said something she didn't like.
LMO: what did you say?
doc: i said, 'you were born on third base and think you hit a triple.'
LMO: sometimes daughters need to hear that.
doc: [...]
LMO: she'll get over it.
doc: [laughs merrily] like i care!
*have i ever mentioned that he's seventy? he's seventy.
07.11.13
People have gone to extraordinary lengths to coax rain from the Great Plains sky. For example, an experimental cloud-seeding program sponsored by the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Montana used high-speed jets to chase down and seed small clouds which often had a life span of less than thirty minutes. The program had plans equipped with laser probes, suction samplers, and armor plating against hail. In 1910, C.W. Post, the cereal magnate, began an ambitious rainmaking project on his 200,000 acres of the Texas plains. Post had noticed that in accounts of wars which he had read, heavy rains always seemed to follow artillery battles. He believed that with enough explosions he could produce rain. He blew off boxcars and boxcars of dynamite on the plains around his town of Post City, Texas. The dynamite was laid out on the ground and fired at intervals designed to simulate artillery barrages. Post and his staff kept at it for several years, and produced drizzles and one or two rainstorms, which encouraged him.
(ian frazier, from great plains)
07.06.13
it's taken me some time to come around to writing about how chuck died. when we first started dealing with his cancer, it fortified me to think that talking about my research and how we used what we learned might benefit someone in a similar situation; i wanted so badly for his suffering to mean something. after failing so utterly to protect him - after losing him so quickly and so suddenly that i feel like a great hand came together out of nothingness and simply took him, he was taken - i don't know that i have the right to talk about guardianship at all.
back when our week-long trip to california and arizona to visit family still seemed like a possibility, i cancelled our plans with our customary petsitter and arranged for a vet tech from our oncologist's office to come take care of chuck and steve. though she seemed wonderful and had much more experience with veterinary chemo patients than we did, it didn't feel anything like right to leave chuck, and i dropped out of our plans. i spent a morning on what felt like grief burlesque, calling hotels, rental car companies, and airlines to explain that i needed the indulgence of a refund because my cat was dying. you don't know me, but i'm about to fall apart on the phone to you because my cat is dying. i should be the one to call everyone, joe said, because it's harder to refuse a crying woman. he was right, i suppose, as everyone but jetblue agreed to let me out of my portion of our commitments. they had lost animals too, those representatives in phoenix and los angeles, and they were so sorry. my voice was gone by the time i took down the last cancellation number. it was such a relief to know i wouldn't be leaving him, that my vacation could be a week with him in our apartment.
march in my desk calendar is full of mysterious initials; i haven't referred to it in months. i continued giving chuck mirtazapine, his appetite stimulant, for a few more days, and started him on zofran, an anti-nausea medication, which did little to keep him from throwing up prednisone, his oral steroid. on our oncologist's orders, we stopped giving him leukeran, the oral chemo that works on 80 percent of cats with lymphoma (but not ours). on thursday, march 14, i begged a livery cab driver not to kick me out of his sedan for having a cat in my bag - he was so sick, i just needed to get him to his vet for a follow-up ultrasound and a flow cytometry test (a last-ditch non-biopsy attempt to diagnose small-cell lymphoma), he wouldn't leave any kind of residue in the car - but we returned to the cold and the curb anyway. you've got to go, mami. on friday, march 15, joe flew to arizona and i brought chuck back to the vet to take a chance on elspar, the $500 one-time subcutaneous chemo that, if effective, would confirm for us that he had large-cell lymphoma. more prednisone and zofran that weekend, and no change from the elspar. posters on the lymphoma message board told me i needed to educate myself about "assisted feeding," so i watched a bunch of youtube videos of a woman who assured me her cat wasn't traumatized in the slightest. on st. patrick's day, without joe's knowledge or consent, i bought high-calorie food and three impossibly huge syringes from the little pet shop near our old apartment in hell's kitchen. i stayed in bed all of the next day, curled around the limp C of chuck like the border of a copyright symbol.
our oncologist called on tuesday to tell me that the flow cytometry had confirmed once and for all that we were dealing with small-cell lymphoma. i took the train back up to her office for cytoxan, a different oral chemo, and more zofran. joe came back from arizona on wednesday, the first day of spring, and we steeled ourselves for new, more serious treatment. there are notations for C, C3, and CER smattered across that week in my calendar - i think CER was a different kind of appetite stimulant? - and little Vs for each day chuck vomited. there was no vomiting by thursday or friday of that week, as i think he'd stopped drinking water at that point. he was holed up at the back of my underwear shelf in the closet, back where i used to accidentally poke him in the nose because i couldn't see him when i reached for a bra in the dark.
on saturday morning i pulled him from that cubby as gently as possible, and he staggered when i set him down. i unwrapped one of those horrible syringes and the food i tried to coax into chuck's mouth didn't even make it; he couldn't close his mouth. we took one last black car up the west side highway to one of our oncologist's colleagues, who made it clear that leaving chuck to be stabilized at the clinic overnight would be a long shot at best. my chuck, the thought of you dying alone in a cage in that place crumpled me like a tissue.
we were ushered down to an underground room with a leather couch. chuck came back to us in a little plush donut of fabric, arranged to look as if he could stand up whenever he felt like it. i thanked him for taking care of jude for so many years, and for teaching steve how to be a cat. i told him i knew we were for each other at the shelter in san francisco when i turned back to see his little black ears crest the bottom of the window, when he stood watch for me for the first time. i told him i was so lucky to have a shadow, and i told him i was so sorry. we pressed the little buzzerless button to summon the vet back.
a thin young guy with a beat-up acoustic guitar boarded the train home with us at bryant park and sang.
wouldn't that save you?
wouldn't that save you?
wouldn't that save you?
a few weeks later i got a call about picking up chuck's ashes. the bag with the box and our vets' notes of condolence included a little plaster piece with the impression of chuck's paw, something i consented to before they left us and that they made after he died. CHARLIE BRONSON stamped around the edge. they'd gotten his name wrong at intake a month earlier and i never corrected it; i'd told myself he was at the doctor's with an alias, and that nothing could happen to him if they couldn't call him by his name. i want to throw it in the river.
07.03.13
I did not know one person in Montana. I sat in the house and tried to write a novel about high school; I went for walks, drank quarts of Coors beer, listened to the radio. At night, a neighbor's horse shifted his weight from hoof to hoof out in the trees, and sometimes cropped grass so near I could hear him chew. The first snowstorm blew in from the north, and crows crossed the sky before it like thrown black socks.
(ian frazier, from great plains)
06.18.13
CONSUMED: A PARTIAL LIST.
amsterdam (book). my plan to bathe in the healing light of ian mcewan's booker-prize-winning novel after a comparatively underwhelming experience with atonement, she was not so successful. amsterdam isn't a bad book—it's funny, it anticipates in a slumping english newspaper the sort of editorial panic those of us in magazines enjoy these days, and it makes the lake district sound mildly interesting—but it is also quite short, and its morality-tale ending feels abrupt. part of the pleasure of a book like atonement is the painterly buildup to a character's shocking decision; amsterdam in its entirety feels as long as the tallis family's fateful dinner party, and its payoff doesn't justify the broad strokes mcewan has to use to get his characters in place in the time he allows himself. i'll give you one more chance, mcewan, and if you don't behave, i'll turn you into a goon.
an equal music (book). vikram seth's the golden gate (pushkin sonnets about san francisco) is my second favorite novel-in-poetry,* and it's had me promising myself for years that i'd read his prose as well. an equal music feels quite a bit like poetry; it's about chamber musicians, love, and sexy old europe [london, vienna, and venice], and its central romance is studded with substantial chunks of unabashedly florid prose. normally that would bug me, but seth's sincerity feels sweet rather than creepy most of the time.** music at its best feels like a really, really long alex ross column, and who can object to that?
frankenstein's army (film). the missus and i make a point of seeing the most ridiculous-sounding horror movie at the tribeca film festival every year, and this one—a found-footage stinker in which a platoon of russian soldiers attempt to win world war two by enlisting dr. frankenstein and are instead torn apart by a gaggle of what look like the anthropomorphic bomb-goblins from labyrinth—was that. it feels a bit unsporting to call it nonsensical, but i do expect my horror to be internally consistent, and frankenstein's sloppy video-game angles and haphazard plotting make the leprechaun franchise look like tolstoy.
fresh meat (film). "there are so many amazing movies at the festival this year," said director danny mulheron,*** "and then there's this movie." mulheron's horror-slapstick (about a family of cannibals "who happen to be maori" held hostage by violent fugitives in suburban new zealand) felt like low-budget kiwi robert rodriguez circa four rooms, and i kind of loved it: fresh meat was the last thing i saw at tribeca this year, and after two weeks of dancing for Extremely Serious Filmmakers, i was delighted to meet one who ripped all of the reserved seating markers out of his theater so that everyone could sit where they liked. a cannibalism-comedy double feature with fresh meat and eddie the sleepwalking cannibal would not be a bad way to spend an evening, is what i'm saying.
julius caesar (play). joe and i nearly took a weird train out of london to see the RSC's julius caesar on our trip to england last fall, and i'm a bit sorry we didn't, both because impromptu shakespeare binges are awesome and because when it crossed the atlantic it landed at the BAM harvey theater, a problematic little venue full of loutish cell-phone answerers which makes me think without fondness of when i was limber enough to fold myself up like a hipster's bike. theater aside, the theatre was quite good: the production is set in present-day africa,**** and caesar & co. bring to mind any number of nasty modern dictators. "nasty" is the key word here; i don't find any of shakespeare's tragic heroes especially cuddly, but julie has always been down at the bottom of the list, and he's still there now. the minimal concrete set felt postapocalyptic rather than military—lots of postapocalyptic shakespeare around these days—and the witchy-tribal soothsayer made the players' very modern punishments feel ages old. i like this new timelessness.
pym (book). did i find pym, mat johnson's tale of an unemployed professor who leads a team to antarctica in search of the cold-ass honky described at the end of edgar allan poe's narrative of arthur gordon pym of nantucket, or did pym find me? i first set out for it after storming out of a washington hotel room in a fit of hanger (i found neither it nor food, but i did acquire a lovely edition of 1Q84). when i finally did get my own copy, i found, among other things, a surprisingly awesome story-within-the-story of a thomas-kinkade-like conservative (orange county is composed almost entirely of pastel stucco and republicans; we have strong feelings about thomas kinkade, and conservatives). i've also found mat johnson to be one of the few writers i can follow on twitter without wanting to pull out my own teeth. bring pym to the beach this summer! lily concurs.
the reluctant fundamentalist (film). first a 2007 novel by pakistani author mohsin hamid, the reluctant fundamentalist was, by the time we met, a Very Serious Post-9/11 Thriller featuring, among other things, british/pakistani dreamboat riz ahmed, kate hudson as a recent college graduate with terrible brown hair, and kiefer sutherland as a wall street master-of-the-universe type (kicking down terrorists' doors has been very, very good to him; i didn't recognize him when i saw him at the premiere). it's thoughtful and intense—both ahmed's character's response to the ongoing way he's stereotyped and his movie-spanning chat with liev schrieber are put together quite pleasingly—but i imagine one's enjoyment of it and, more to the point, one's appreciation of its twisty conclusion would be rather compromised if, say, one had to tiptoe out of the theater ten minutes before it ended in order to collect audience award ballots. ah, the heartbreak of film festivals.
stranger things happen (book). kelly link's first collection didn't kick me in the teeth nearly as hard as her second one did, but it's still some of the cleverest, scariest, most original fiction i've read in years. come for the prospective father-in-law with interchangeable handmade noses ("water off a black dog's back"), stay for the stuff in "the specialist's hat" that i'll reference without actually talking about because it makes me nervous. salon's laura miller called stranger things happen "an alchemical mix of borges, raymond chandler and 'buffy the vampire slayer;'" that's about right.
V/H/S/2 (film). like frankenstein's army, V/H/S/2 is found-footage horror (here, an anthology of four short films united by the premise of a couple of investigators breaking into a house to find a missing man and finding videocassettes full of mayhem*****); unlike frankenstein's army, it was occasionally so scary it was actually exhausting (in shorts which don't have time to develop fancy plot points, you're mostly dealing with jump-shock after jump-shock; also, i saw it by myself at midnight on a friday). "a ride in the park," by the blair witch project's co-director, is themost only enjoyable helmet-cam video i've ever seen; "slumber party alien abduction" features the fictional suffering and demise of the director's own dog, but said dog was rewarded with innumerable hot dogs at the shoot, we learned in the Q&A after the movie, so i'm alright. this love we have is real, late-night tribeca.
imaginary reading group discussion questions
01 the leprechaun franchise, she is rebooting this year. shall you watch?
02 do any of shakespeare's tragic heroes tug at your heartstrings?
03 do you get hangry?
04 how hard would it be to talk you into going to antarctica?
05 the shit: when was it last scared out of you?
06 what is the premise of your found-footage horror film?
*toby barlow's crazy, lurid sharp teeth - free verse about werewolves in los angeles - is my first.
**the love story does occasionally stray into bridge across forever territory, but the two decades i've put between myself and richard bach have made echoes of him in other books slightly more manageable.
***(once a nominee for best female performance for his work as heidi the hippo in meet the feebles)
****the RSC's artistic director was inspired by nelson mandela's notes on julius caesar in the robben island bible, a copy of the complete works of shakespeare smuggled between south african political prisoners. each man underlined passage which was meaningful to him, and mandela chose "cowards die many deaths..." from julius caesar, act II, scene II.
*****generic mayhem, not blackstone's mayhem or dean winters as mayhem****** in those allstate commercials.
******a fellow volunteer claimed to see dean winters at the same premiere at which i encountered kiefer "babyman" sutherland. she was beside herself.
amsterdam (book). my plan to bathe in the healing light of ian mcewan's booker-prize-winning novel after a comparatively underwhelming experience with atonement, she was not so successful. amsterdam isn't a bad book—it's funny, it anticipates in a slumping english newspaper the sort of editorial panic those of us in magazines enjoy these days, and it makes the lake district sound mildly interesting—but it is also quite short, and its morality-tale ending feels abrupt. part of the pleasure of a book like atonement is the painterly buildup to a character's shocking decision; amsterdam in its entirety feels as long as the tallis family's fateful dinner party, and its payoff doesn't justify the broad strokes mcewan has to use to get his characters in place in the time he allows himself. i'll give you one more chance, mcewan, and if you don't behave, i'll turn you into a goon.
an equal music (book). vikram seth's the golden gate (pushkin sonnets about san francisco) is my second favorite novel-in-poetry,* and it's had me promising myself for years that i'd read his prose as well. an equal music feels quite a bit like poetry; it's about chamber musicians, love, and sexy old europe [london, vienna, and venice], and its central romance is studded with substantial chunks of unabashedly florid prose. normally that would bug me, but seth's sincerity feels sweet rather than creepy most of the time.** music at its best feels like a really, really long alex ross column, and who can object to that?
frankenstein's army (film). the missus and i make a point of seeing the most ridiculous-sounding horror movie at the tribeca film festival every year, and this one—a found-footage stinker in which a platoon of russian soldiers attempt to win world war two by enlisting dr. frankenstein and are instead torn apart by a gaggle of what look like the anthropomorphic bomb-goblins from labyrinth—was that. it feels a bit unsporting to call it nonsensical, but i do expect my horror to be internally consistent, and frankenstein's sloppy video-game angles and haphazard plotting make the leprechaun franchise look like tolstoy.
fresh meat (film). "there are so many amazing movies at the festival this year," said director danny mulheron,*** "and then there's this movie." mulheron's horror-slapstick (about a family of cannibals "who happen to be maori" held hostage by violent fugitives in suburban new zealand) felt like low-budget kiwi robert rodriguez circa four rooms, and i kind of loved it: fresh meat was the last thing i saw at tribeca this year, and after two weeks of dancing for Extremely Serious Filmmakers, i was delighted to meet one who ripped all of the reserved seating markers out of his theater so that everyone could sit where they liked. a cannibalism-comedy double feature with fresh meat and eddie the sleepwalking cannibal would not be a bad way to spend an evening, is what i'm saying.
julius caesar (play). joe and i nearly took a weird train out of london to see the RSC's julius caesar on our trip to england last fall, and i'm a bit sorry we didn't, both because impromptu shakespeare binges are awesome and because when it crossed the atlantic it landed at the BAM harvey theater, a problematic little venue full of loutish cell-phone answerers which makes me think without fondness of when i was limber enough to fold myself up like a hipster's bike. theater aside, the theatre was quite good: the production is set in present-day africa,**** and caesar & co. bring to mind any number of nasty modern dictators. "nasty" is the key word here; i don't find any of shakespeare's tragic heroes especially cuddly, but julie has always been down at the bottom of the list, and he's still there now. the minimal concrete set felt postapocalyptic rather than military—lots of postapocalyptic shakespeare around these days—and the witchy-tribal soothsayer made the players' very modern punishments feel ages old. i like this new timelessness.
pym (book). did i find pym, mat johnson's tale of an unemployed professor who leads a team to antarctica in search of the cold-ass honky described at the end of edgar allan poe's narrative of arthur gordon pym of nantucket, or did pym find me? i first set out for it after storming out of a washington hotel room in a fit of hanger (i found neither it nor food, but i did acquire a lovely edition of 1Q84). when i finally did get my own copy, i found, among other things, a surprisingly awesome story-within-the-story of a thomas-kinkade-like conservative (orange county is composed almost entirely of pastel stucco and republicans; we have strong feelings about thomas kinkade, and conservatives). i've also found mat johnson to be one of the few writers i can follow on twitter without wanting to pull out my own teeth. bring pym to the beach this summer! lily concurs.
the reluctant fundamentalist (film). first a 2007 novel by pakistani author mohsin hamid, the reluctant fundamentalist was, by the time we met, a Very Serious Post-9/11 Thriller featuring, among other things, british/pakistani dreamboat riz ahmed, kate hudson as a recent college graduate with terrible brown hair, and kiefer sutherland as a wall street master-of-the-universe type (kicking down terrorists' doors has been very, very good to him; i didn't recognize him when i saw him at the premiere). it's thoughtful and intense—both ahmed's character's response to the ongoing way he's stereotyped and his movie-spanning chat with liev schrieber are put together quite pleasingly—but i imagine one's enjoyment of it and, more to the point, one's appreciation of its twisty conclusion would be rather compromised if, say, one had to tiptoe out of the theater ten minutes before it ended in order to collect audience award ballots. ah, the heartbreak of film festivals.
stranger things happen (book). kelly link's first collection didn't kick me in the teeth nearly as hard as her second one did, but it's still some of the cleverest, scariest, most original fiction i've read in years. come for the prospective father-in-law with interchangeable handmade noses ("water off a black dog's back"), stay for the stuff in "the specialist's hat" that i'll reference without actually talking about because it makes me nervous. salon's laura miller called stranger things happen "an alchemical mix of borges, raymond chandler and 'buffy the vampire slayer;'" that's about right.
V/H/S/2 (film). like frankenstein's army, V/H/S/2 is found-footage horror (here, an anthology of four short films united by the premise of a couple of investigators breaking into a house to find a missing man and finding videocassettes full of mayhem*****); unlike frankenstein's army, it was occasionally so scary it was actually exhausting (in shorts which don't have time to develop fancy plot points, you're mostly dealing with jump-shock after jump-shock; also, i saw it by myself at midnight on a friday). "a ride in the park," by the blair witch project's co-director, is the
imaginary reading group discussion questions
01 the leprechaun franchise, she is rebooting this year. shall you watch?
02 do any of shakespeare's tragic heroes tug at your heartstrings?
03 do you get hangry?
04 how hard would it be to talk you into going to antarctica?
05 the shit: when was it last scared out of you?
06 what is the premise of your found-footage horror film?
*toby barlow's crazy, lurid sharp teeth - free verse about werewolves in los angeles - is my first.
**the love story does occasionally stray into bridge across forever territory, but the two decades i've put between myself and richard bach have made echoes of him in other books slightly more manageable.
***(once a nominee for best female performance for his work as heidi the hippo in meet the feebles)
****the RSC's artistic director was inspired by nelson mandela's notes on julius caesar in the robben island bible, a copy of the complete works of shakespeare smuggled between south african political prisoners. each man underlined passage which was meaningful to him, and mandela chose "cowards die many deaths..." from julius caesar, act II, scene II.
*****generic mayhem, not blackstone's mayhem or dean winters as mayhem****** in those allstate commercials.
******a fellow volunteer claimed to see dean winters at the same premiere at which i encountered kiefer "babyman" sutherland. she was beside herself.
06.14.13
"Mr. Andrews, there is a folk tale that before being born, every human soul knows all the secrets of life and death and the universe. Then, just before birth, an angel leans down, puts his finger to the new baby's lips, and whispers, Shhh." Harris touches his philtrum. "According to the story, this is the mark left by the angel's finger. Every human being has one."
"Have you ever seen an angel, Mr. Harris?"
"No, but I once saw a camel. It was in the Bronx Zoo. Choose a door."
(stephen king, from "afterlife," tin house #56)
06.07.13
the dirty dozen {mystery train,* round V}
it's been nearly a year and a half since i last asked you to guess what folks on the new york city subway are reading based on what i tell you of their fripperies, and that makes me sad; there are few things i like as well as sweeping generalizations based on clothing and books. the world has changed since some gal on the B train abandoned her paul auster for an oriental trading company catalog and the marriage plot probably disappointed a male backup dancer on a different B train: hilary mantel won the booker prize again, michelle williams announced she was growing out her pixie cut, natasha trethewey became our poet laureate, and visible bras became socially acceptable. it's time to reconsider the mystery train.
who's giving foxy knoxy her day in court? should i, in turn, give one to hemingway?** how would one benefit from a zipper which opened across but not around one's knee? is the male reader going extinct? how does the way we talk change the way we work? book titles are linked to descriptions and cover images, if additional research is your bag. if you correctly pair a book with its reader, i'll update the lists; if you understand the bra thing, that makes one of us. guess early, guess often, and good luck!
{the peeps}
01F, early 20s, bobbed hair, round tortoiseshell glasses, beauty mark, grey cowl-neck sweater, black wool coat with pearly purple buttons, little brown satchel worn over left shoulder and right hip, black-and-white knee-length tweed skirt, short black lace-up boots with black socks, M train [the catcher in the rye, j.d. salinger - MDF spots a twitchy lady]
02 F, late 30s, red polarfleece hat, nordic blonde hair, moss-colored floral scarf, black quilted barn coat, long grey sweater, dark jeans, brown pebbled leather slip-ons with orthopedic soles, black hobo bag with gold zippers, pregnant, B train
03F, 20s, forest green flapper hat with brown leather band pulled low over brow, ivory knitted scarf pulled up over mouth, black and white chevron tweed coat, red right sleeve, crossed legs with royal blue tights, black loafers with white tongues, M train [a moveable feast, ernest hemingway - anon pegs a farewell to awesome]
04 M, late 20s, shaved head, heavy stubble (proto-beard?), blue-gray striped oxford rolled up to the elbows and worn open over a white tee, loose blue boot-cut jeans, extremely clean black hiking boots, B train
05M, late 60s, gray bottlebrush moustache, gold-rimmed readers worn low on nose, khaki baseball cap with "new york" in white embroidered script, metal cane and black messenger bag between knees, dunkin donuts cup at feet, blue plaid shirt, black slacks, brown leather slip-ons, F train [lords of the north, bernard cornwell - MDF's second victim]
06 F, early 20s, long brown hair tucked behind ears, beauty mark under right eye, nails bitten to the quick, grey heather tank, shrunken khaki band jacket, mint and navy blue keds, black skinny jeans, multicolored tote bag at feet, F train
07 F, early 20s, white-blonde hair in high, tight ponytail, grey cocoon cardigan over black tank, marigold-yellow nails, blue skinny jeans, black loafers, cover bent behind book, flipping back and forth between pages, B train
08 F, late 20s, wild streaky ringlets, black button-down with white polka dots, eight multicolored friendship bracelets, happy face with dimple in black marker on back of right hand, pegged patchwork jeans, black platform supergas, mustard-colored jansport on both shoulders, F train
09 F, early 20s, high black folded-over bun, sheer white lace top under small black cardigan, black skinny jeans, louis vuitton damier print tote, black watch plaid wellingtons, D train
10F, early 20s, glossy brown hair in kerchief headband, thin gold chain with small medallion, oversized camo-print jacket over loose white button-down, black skinny jeans, cracked tan leather crossbody bag, black tasseled loafers, coffee in right hand, F train [victoria, knut hamsun - MDF makes the ID]
11 F, late 40s, heavy, square-framed black glasses, wavy hair swept back with wide band, big black cardigan over rumpled blue and white shirt, black slacks with heavy silver zipper across left knee, huge spring-green bag in lap, black airwalk sneakers with tan laces, white plastic shopping bag hooked over left wrist, five silver rings, F train
12 F, 30s, shoulder-length, wavy brown hair, cornflower blue long-sleeved spandex top, dark grey yoga pants, black windbreaker, black-and-white pumas, tall fuchsia umbrella between knees, victoria's secret shopping bag at feet, large black leather purse with silver hardware in lap, coffee in right hand, B train
{the books}
la vérité sur l'affaire harry quebert, joël dicker
waiting to be heard, amanda knox
lords of the north, bernard cornwell
the catcher in the rye, j.d. salinger
victoria, knut hamsun
how the way we talk can change the way we work, kegan lahey
a storm of swords, george r.r. martin
the river why, david james duncan
robopocalypse, daniel h. wilson
en el tiempo de las mariposas, julia alvarez
a light to the gentiles: reflections on the gospel of luke, william c. mills
a moveable feast, ernest hemingway
*tip of the hat, as always, to coverspy.
**i know i ask every year or two. reader, that's how hard it is.
it's been nearly a year and a half since i last asked you to guess what folks on the new york city subway are reading based on what i tell you of their fripperies, and that makes me sad; there are few things i like as well as sweeping generalizations based on clothing and books. the world has changed since some gal on the B train abandoned her paul auster for an oriental trading company catalog and the marriage plot probably disappointed a male backup dancer on a different B train: hilary mantel won the booker prize again, michelle williams announced she was growing out her pixie cut, natasha trethewey became our poet laureate, and visible bras became socially acceptable. it's time to reconsider the mystery train.
who's giving foxy knoxy her day in court? should i, in turn, give one to hemingway?** how would one benefit from a zipper which opened across but not around one's knee? is the male reader going extinct? how does the way we talk change the way we work? book titles are linked to descriptions and cover images, if additional research is your bag. if you correctly pair a book with its reader, i'll update the lists; if you understand the bra thing, that makes one of us. guess early, guess often, and good luck!
{the peeps}
01
02 F, late 30s, red polarfleece hat, nordic blonde hair, moss-colored floral scarf, black quilted barn coat, long grey sweater, dark jeans, brown pebbled leather slip-ons with orthopedic soles, black hobo bag with gold zippers, pregnant, B train
03
04 M, late 20s, shaved head, heavy stubble (proto-beard?), blue-gray striped oxford rolled up to the elbows and worn open over a white tee, loose blue boot-cut jeans, extremely clean black hiking boots, B train
05
06 F, early 20s, long brown hair tucked behind ears, beauty mark under right eye, nails bitten to the quick, grey heather tank, shrunken khaki band jacket, mint and navy blue keds, black skinny jeans, multicolored tote bag at feet, F train
07 F, early 20s, white-blonde hair in high, tight ponytail, grey cocoon cardigan over black tank, marigold-yellow nails, blue skinny jeans, black loafers, cover bent behind book, flipping back and forth between pages, B train
08 F, late 20s, wild streaky ringlets, black button-down with white polka dots, eight multicolored friendship bracelets, happy face with dimple in black marker on back of right hand, pegged patchwork jeans, black platform supergas, mustard-colored jansport on both shoulders, F train
09 F, early 20s, high black folded-over bun, sheer white lace top under small black cardigan, black skinny jeans, louis vuitton damier print tote, black watch plaid wellingtons, D train
10
11 F, late 40s, heavy, square-framed black glasses, wavy hair swept back with wide band, big black cardigan over rumpled blue and white shirt, black slacks with heavy silver zipper across left knee, huge spring-green bag in lap, black airwalk sneakers with tan laces, white plastic shopping bag hooked over left wrist, five silver rings, F train
12 F, 30s, shoulder-length, wavy brown hair, cornflower blue long-sleeved spandex top, dark grey yoga pants, black windbreaker, black-and-white pumas, tall fuchsia umbrella between knees, victoria's secret shopping bag at feet, large black leather purse with silver hardware in lap, coffee in right hand, B train
{the books}
la vérité sur l'affaire harry quebert, joël dicker
waiting to be heard, amanda knox
how the way we talk can change the way we work, kegan lahey
a storm of swords, george r.r. martin
the river why, david james duncan
robopocalypse, daniel h. wilson
en el tiempo de las mariposas, julia alvarez
a light to the gentiles: reflections on the gospel of luke, william c. mills
*tip of the hat, as always, to coverspy.
**i know i ask every year or two. reader, that's how hard it is.
05.30.13
Oddly, given Bang's stated aims, she's happy to court obscurity. She says that the she-wolf that detains the pilgrim outside the wood has a "bitch-kitty" face; Virgil tells the pilgrim to climb the "meringue-pie mountain" that lies ahead. "Bitch-kitty" gets an explanatory footnote: Bang says it's something she found in the Dictionary of American Slang. My edition of that book says "bitch kitty" was a phrase of the nineteen-thirties and forties. (Roughly, it meant a "humdinger.") Did Bang expect today's readers to know it? Not really, it seems. She says that she wants these oddities to be fleeting pleasures for us. To me, they're not pleasures, but just oddities, something like finding a Tootsie Roll in the meat loaf.customers who bought this item also bought: bible stories in cockney rhyming slang
(joan acocella, from "what the hell," on new translations of dante's divine comedy, new yorker 05.27.13)
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