Out

I'm on vacation. I have no opinions left this year. There are no questions remaining to ask, except about the future, and 2008 will come soon enough.

Christmas Cast

Really, you could make everybody into a part of speech. Who needs psychology when personality types are already written into the mechanics of grammar? I propose you could diagram your family tree like a sentence to life. Take, for example, the cast of Christmas, I’m not talking about the Nativity set, I’m talking about the people you’re with during the holidays, the proper nouns, and the improper ones too. First you’ve got the active verbs, they may be small, but they wake you up VERY early in the morning and remain VERY active all day. The passive verbs, on the other hand, can sleep in any comfortable chair, despite what’s going on around them. You may have a subjunctive set of relations, the could/should/would set who take a caseworker to sort out. There’s kin who use a modifer, and stay well modified all day. There’s the inbetweeners, who can join any two ideas together with a big enough “but.” And the interjectors! You can’t overlook the interjectors! (Beware, however, of those who speak in parenthetical phrases.) You may have an aunt or an uncle as annoying as a split infinitive. I take an aspirin to gently dull a split infinitive. There are those who parade merely as pronouns and some are empty as adverbs. If you’re like me, you have cousins as prevalent as prepositions, and they are anything/anywhere you can do or be to a house. These people are part and participle of every family no matter what holiday you celebrate, from Chanukah to Humbug.

Happy holidays to all, and to all a good write!

Intelligent Interior Design

(I’m not going to talk about God this week. I sat through THE MESSIAH on Sunday, isn’t that enough?)

The idea is to create an other-worldliness, a sensation when you step into a room that you automatically inhale as a response, wanting to take it in, this other world that is new and refreshing, at once stimulating and full of comfort, a place you want to put your body into and not just look at. It draws you in and you draw it in.

Some designers accomplish this by jamming so much crap into one space that you have to inhale, to gasp, in response to being choked by drapes and carpets, overstuffed chairs and couches, tables, ottomans, knick-knacks, mantles, shelves, pillows, paintings, and fixtures which coagulate and set you pondering where you’d put your keys down if you lived there, and if you did put your keys down, how would you ever find them again?

Of course there are period styles—rooms so Baroque you’re afraid to touch anything, or so antique you feel lost without a corset, or so modern you feel you’ve landed on an alien planet, or so minimalist you’ve landed in a Petri dish and your very presence is pollution. Objects can be placed and spaced so they appear as if to stand at attention when met by your eye, giving a false sense of having servants standing by, ready to wait upon your every whim of décor.

How do these people have children? Surely this is not an accurate picture. The true sadness, though, is what if it is? Filigreed lives lived on the tiptoes on dust-free surfaces. What if the children conform to the stiff props of style, instead of dismantling their surroundings to find themselves?

The truly accomplished among designers is the one who leaves negative space, areas for your eyes to breathe. Then the respiration its natural—inhale, exhale—a meaningful dialogue through the passage of air around the notion of style.

I compiled a list of ten writing tips from the January 2007 edition of ARCHITECTURAL DIGEST. The tips were not by famous writers; they were collected from architects and interior designers. I misappropriated a word or two and certainly I mislaid the context, but for some quotes, I let the metaphor stand on its own—architecture for narrative elements and throw pillows for details. I omitted designer comments which applied specifically to interior design because those were the more banal. My favorite tip was contributed by Steven Ehrlich who said, “Breathe deeply.” That’s the person I want designing my home—someone who is open to the big picture, someone who knows God gave us a lifetime supply of air to figure things out.

Direct Address

To blog, or not to blog,--that is the question:--
Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous comments,
Or to take arms against a sea of silence.


Jesus is the great I am.
Shakespeare wrote in iambs.
We write IM's.


It’s a little joke, exhibited through the ages, the resounding declaration of existence, through word play in the English language.

Psalm 8: “The Moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; [but] what is man, that thou art mindful of him?”

What a piece of work is man! How
noble in reason! How infinite in faculties! In
form and moving, how express and admir-
able! In action, how like an angel! In appre-
hension, how like a god! The beauty of the
world! The paragon of animals!
…Lifted directly from the mouth of Prince Hamlet into the lyrics of HAIR, this question of human placement in the presence of the universe. The King James Bible being produced contemporaneously with the King James Version of Shakespeare, you expect some similarity, then direct translation in to the modern tribal-love rock musical. Yeah. All of that a bit before my time….

Iambic is such a natural cadence to our English speech we make mistakes within our own grammar. It causes Captain Kirk "To boldly go..." splitting infinitives throughout the universe just to fit the pattern--unstressed-stressed, unaccented-accented, unlife-life. In our language, we divide what is living from what is unheard in a dance so smooth that we do not recognize it as a dance. It is a way of calling out: I am alive! I am living! I AM!

I visited the Dome of the Rock. I had to wear cloth coverings on my feet so I wouldn’t touch the prayer rugs and I could walk on holy ground. When I was leaving, I glanced back and saw the site of the Ark of the Covenant, the place of the holy of holies. The guards wouldn’t let me stop, but I glanced where only the priests were allowed to go. Now we have Protestantism and reality TV, where anyone is permitted.

Was it not in the final throes of the Roman Empire that the Coliseum introduced live feedings of the lions using Christians? Was it not at that point that they switched from staged battles to unscripted executions?

Here are the networks, competing with the Internet over amateur entertainment, and Journalism playing second class to blogging.

To blog is to speak into the universe as if I have faith that it will answer back, that those who blog are seeking God. They seek their consciousness to know that they are, a witness to bear reflection of their existence, a dialogue with all that is to ensure that they are part of it. There's nobility in that pursuit.

Prince Hamlet also said, "conscience does make cowards of all of us." Does that mean cowards of death, in modern parlance? In our consciousness, we do not wish to be alone?

I heard a prostitute on National Public Radio say that if you didn’t have a website—technology being largely driven by pornography—you really weren’t…. I have crawled out from beneath my rock, and this is the place where I will speak my existence into the World Wide Web.

I blog, therefore I am.

Wheat Poisoning

One day I will conquer cling wrap. I will spread it firmly and flatly over a dish of left-overs without wading it into a morph of origami animals. One day, I will conquer cling wrap, but until that day comes, let me just say this:

I was wheat-free, when wheat-free wasn’t cool.

I was born to peal a wrapper off a frozen dinner and pop it straight in the microwave, and nobody, I mean nobody, can put a crank on a can opener like I do, but oh no, God has a bigger sense of humor than that! I live with a person who is wheat-gluten intolerant. As this diagnosis has become the flavor of the month, I’m sure most of you are familiar with it. It is a failure of proper digestion, kind of similar to lactose intolerance, but caused by wheat gluten and a variance of other grains, depending on the person.

You ever seen somebody order a double cheeseburger, throw the bread out, then turn the meat patties in to use them as containment buns for the lettuce and tomato? Or how about the three finger special on a pizza? You place index and middle fingers at the crust of a slice, and span the thumb to touch the point, then bring the three digits together. Topping comes right off. A pizza buffet will kick you out on your butt if they catch you doing the three-finger special. Ever tried to find a knife and fork in a fried chicken joint? It’s nothing but sporks and foons! Again, not pretty. Piles of chicken skins, a stack of pizza crusts, poor homeless buns, faking sacrament at Communion, ordering salad without croutons—these are the adventures of the brave and the wheatless.

Absolutely no processed foods. Wheat is so often an additive, they’ve found traces of it in prepositions. It most certainly shows up in any white-based soup or sauce. There’s no saving a casserole with a can of cream of mushroom! Wheat flour comes in hidden processing too, like on the conveyor belts for certain chewing gum. Even soy sauce has wheat! How does a rice-based culture come up with wheat in its sauce? And Twizzlers, they have wheat too. Of course cakes, cookies, and breads have to be avoided unless they are prepared at home where you can be certain of gluten-free ingredients. It’s enough to make you think there is a God, and that God has a great big fat sense of humor on me.

Rice Crispies is a pantry staple, like you might have flour or sugar or a bottle of vanilla. I have Rice Crispies cereal. It goes in meatloaf. It tops casseroles where normally you would crumble Ritz crackers. It’s the filler of sausage stuffing.

Strips of green cabbage substitute for noodles in soup.

I have made tabbouleh with quinoa, at roughly the street price of cocaine. Then again, quinoa is reputed to be the perfect grain. Couscous is just fun to say.

I rejoice in the new products rushing to serve the exponentially increasing demographic of the gluten-intolerent. I welcome you who are newly diagnosed with celiac disease. Perhaps one day you shall have a candidate for President. Prior to the days of Paul Newman’s O’s, which delicately mimic Oreo cookies (with all the delicacy you can muster towards an Oreo) prior to that, any and all wheat-free cookies you could find in the obscure corners of the dirt-smelling health food store, yes, any of those old school wheat-free cookies were not just wheat free. They were also devoid of milk, eggs, sugar, and all resemblance of food substance. They were made strictly of sawdust, and exploded inside your mouth into the bitter dryness of sheet rock putty.

Pasta was another great stumbling block of the earlier days. For years, corn pasta was the only wheat alternative. You drop corn pasta in boiling water and instantly it congeals into one giant starch blob. You have to stir and fight and be diligent and vigilant! If you have religion, it’s likely to make you lose it. If you don’t have religion, you’re likely to pray to as much as a dirty ashtray trying to cook this mess. Now they have rice pasta, which is much better behaved. It doesn’t store quite as well as its wheat counterpart once cooked, and you’re not likely to find chocolate linguini in rice noodles, but the rice is better than the corn.

I have memorized the proportion of xanthium gum to one cup of rice flour, but some recipes translate better than others. Works pretty well for Nestle Toll House cookies. They come out more grainy and dense, but cookies really don’t have to rise a lot, so the essence is there, but try substituting rice flour in your favorite cake recipe.

My favorite cake recipe comes in a box. You add three eggs, oil and water. Me and Betty Crocker, we’re like this…I’ve stopped typing so I can put my two fingers together…second only to Duncan Hines. But that would be easy.

I make cake from scratch. Extra beat the eggs for more fluff to help the dough to rise. One teaspoon of xanthium gum to one cup of rice flour. Forget the electric mixer. You’ll kill it. And I’ve broken more wooden spoons…. You have to knead it, you have to want it, and then you have to knead it again. It’s like massaging a buffalo, except it’s the tar baby. You put your hand in. Your hand gets stuck. You put your other hand in. Your other hand gets stuck. Put your foot in. Call for help, using your nose to dial.

The batter comes out of the oven in the exact shape you put it in. It doesn’t rise and fill the pan. It stays in the one lump, like it’s antisocial with the heat. Baking only preserves the odd-knobs and who-bubs you failed to smooth. Alligator hide has a better complexion. Furthermore, it’s hard. You haven’t baked a confectionary delicacy to enjoy after dinner—YOU’VE MADE BISCOTTI! It is hard and dense, and you need a hatchet to crumble it into various bits, servable only after you retrieve them off the floor and all corners of the kitchen. Dogs fail to recognize the crumbs as scraps. Even cockroaches are unattracted.

I’m sorry that so many people have this condition. I’m sorry for their suffering, but I’m thankful too. Without the ever-growing market for easy wheat-free products, the new instant mixes would have never appeared on the shelves. Even the Atkins Diet has helped by prompting restaurants to offer no-carb menu selections, which also means no wheat. I’m sorry for those of you who have wheat-gluten intolerance, but I thank you too, because you have improved my quality of life. I cannot catalogue how many more wheat-free products are available now, or how much easier it is to order out without back flips of substitutions, not to mention the labeling addition “contains wheat” which makes selection safer.

With food consciousness raised by emerging food allergies and intolerances, such as gluten intolerance, no doubt, I’m going to live far longer than I should. I’m going to cook and eat from more pure ingredients, closer to the raw materials, the building blocks of nutrition, probably extending my life way beyond what some would prefer. Perhaps I shall have to take up smoking.

People used to scoff at the hazards of lead-based crockery; now we’re recognizing the realities of wheat poisoning. Bon appetit, sans wheat!

Cock & Bull Story

It’s true, I’ve watched battle scenes in movies before, but I had never seen anyone put hot chestnuts down his pants. The chestnut scene of TRISTRAM SHANDY was definitely unique in my movie watching experience. Also unique was several seconds of black screen in the middle of the movie. You can watch and hear the actors talking and suddenly you don’t see them any more. Then just as you fumble find the remote to adjust your set, the picture comes back and you realize the joke’s on you, it’s all over you, again and again time.

The movie wiggles back and forth across the lines of reality and fiction until the lines look like the squiggle signatures on the Constitution. I’m not sure why the deleted scenes were deleted, or why the “Behind the Scenes” was included on the DVD extras. The whole thing plays like a “Special Features” movie edition. I can only assume that it is simply modern custom, the template of DVD production, to set aside some segments. There’s probably a computer program that automatically removes three to five scenes from any given feature-length film and stuffs them under the file allocation “Deleted Scenes.” It’s probably not a decision from the director at all, because what human being would delete the baby tossing scene? Filmed in true cinematic fervor, we see the baby’s head emerge from between two knees, and carefully held, cuddled, then tossed about from one cast member to the next in a heap of overjoyment that can only be appreciated at the absolute smashing point of reality with fiction.

Steve Coogan is the British actor who seems to be vigorously famous but no one’s heard of him in this country. He plays himself, Tristram Shandy, and Tristram’s father in a mixed up folly that’s all really one person. Furthermore, he makes comments on the child actors who portray him, giving them acting tips and discussing how little or much they resemble him. I don’t think he mentioned the dummy baby they tossed about, but that scene was deleted anyway.

When I was in college, my English English professor…that’s not a mistake, he really was English by nationality and taught English literature…my English English professor handed me a completely unreadable book: THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF TRISTRAM SHANDY by Laurence Sterne. I tried to read it for a week, until the professor told me that it wasn’t meant to be read in any sort of linear fashion. Towards the latter half of the text, Sterne employs meandering diagrams to describe the progress and aim of the plot, and very nearly comes close to outlining the intricacies of a bee dance for directions to honey. The nectar of the book, and the movie, is the complete farce of one man’s life, even from conception. Coogan describes it as being Post-Modern, before there was a Modern to be Post about—something like that, I’ve misquoted a paraphrase. Perhaps I shall not be indicted for plagiarism this week. Sterne finished writing TRISTRAM SHANDY in 1767 and died the next year. He predates the debut of Monty Python’s Flying Circus by two hundred and two years, yet enjoys the same royal flare of entertainment.

The cinematic version is a happy acknowledgement to any literature student who has tried to read the book with the same heart by which you would approach a Jane Austen wood brick or any fibrous masonry from the Bronte sisters. For those who have not read the book, you don’t need to. Laurence Sterne would give a standing ovation from his grave for the movie. Threatened as an unfilmable story from an unreadable novel, the filmmakers did the only thing they could do: they were true to the book. It’s a cock and bull story.

Family Life

There’s a delicate balance between being Southern and being a redneck. Probably I’m about to cross it.

Milton Bradley was not a Southerner. Nor was he a redneck. He invented the game we call “Life,” which poured on the market in 1860 when the nation went to war…with itself. But that’s history, and I’m talking literature.

We were supposed to learn in high school that an archetypal hero is an orphan. If you missed that on the SAT, well, here’s an overview:


OEDIPUS: line of confused heritage leads him to marry his mother—oops!

JESUS: earthly mother, but separated from His father by the great divide of flesh

HAMLET: father displaced by his uncle in his mother’s bed

(You notice in these older texts that orphan status relies on misplacement of the father, but not necessarily the mother? The testament of female status is changing in modern times with…)

HARRY POTTER: parents are murdered and he’s entrusted to his muggle uncle and aunt

SUPERMAN: an alien raised by earthlings

SPIDERMAN: with great responsibility comes great power, but no living parents


All these people, ALL these archetypal heroes of ancient and modern times, all of them are not Southern. An archetypal hero is never returning a casserole dish or buying lipstick from his cousin who sells Mary Kay. He is not pictured as a young toddler with a stack of dead squirrels. He does not burn diesel in his tiki torches or spend hours ogling an engine that’s driven four hundred thousand miles past the point where it was declared totaled. That just doesn’t happen.

That is why I will never be an archetypal hero.

I invented my own board game; it’s called “Family Life.” It has nothing to do with the vice and virtues that steer your advancement or demotion in Milton Bradley’s game. In my game, you begin at the grandparents’ row of your family tree, you work your way down through your parents and aunts and uncles, then through your cousins and siblings, then your nieces and nephews. Heaven help you if you get married. The object of the game is to reach YOURSELF through these inherent characters. Every relative is an opportunity to gain success or to lose money. And that can be a simultaneous event in the South. Each branch of the tree (hopefully your tree branches, but not in all cases), each branch has vital influence on how you grow up and what your adult world is like.

As I approach Thanksgiving, with its quilt-covered dining tables and church-borrowed chairs, I’m thankful that I’m never going to save the world. I’m glad to contribute to a potluck holiday with a patchwork of cousins, and where friends are as welcome as family. In my life, there’s enough pie to go around. Literally. We’re Southern. Somehow we always have a pie for every person present. Nobody plans this; it’s just what happens in a family like mine. No, I will not be an archetypal hero, and furthermore, an archetypal hero will not be Southern.

Chastizement

Roz Chast is the only NEW YORKER cartoonist I don’t like. Of all cartoonists I’m NOT likely to meet, Roz Chast would be the exception. It’s because I don’t like her. Fate works that way: I don’t like her, so, by some strange coincidence, I’m bound to meet her. I don’t like her so much, that she’s the only cartoonist I can remember by name. I keep her name at handy index in my brain for cocktail conversation, when I can smile and nod over mention of her and know that I am being false, not just ignorant. A lot of people do like her. Someone in my family likes her, but I can’t remember who it is right now. Forgive me, family, a lot of people like Roz Chast, but I do not.

I only read THE NEW YORKER for the cartoons. It’s like the converse opposite of having a PLAYBOY subscription. I look at the pictures, not the articles. A lot of you do that, you just don’t admit it. The other NEW YORKER cartoonists draw a simple, compelling image, then a brief caption. I consume them like eating popcorn, then go on to the next handful. It’s delicious. But Roz Chast’s cartoons read like a trifocal nightmare. There is no negative space in her drawings. The images are frenetic with scribbling congestion. The characters are always hunched and have bulging eyes, as if they drank one too many four-packs of Red Bull. It’s not the calm, classy clean lines of the rest of the magazine. Roz makes a four by six block of space into a comic book style crowdedness. New York itself isn’t that jammed at rush hour.

Plus also she commits double redundancy: she draws a picture AND says a thousand words. The feature articles of the magazine don’t use up that much text, which she prints in little tiny writing. What is smaller than Elite type? Why it’s Super-Elite—AKA Roz Chast! My brain sees that and my eyes automatically say, “Pass.” There are plenty of other good cartoonists in THE NEW YORKER, artists who can convey a simple point with humor and I don’t have to work and squint to understand. Furthermore, I don’t think Roz’s cartoons are funny. They’re certainly not worth squinting that hard over.

And now she’s illustrated a children’s book for Steve Martin (THE ALPHABET FROM A TO Y WITH BONUS LETTER Z!). Yippee. Okay, so I admit it, it’s the only Steve Martin book I’ve read. For children’s level, it’s a decent book, mostly; although any time you single out the planet Uranus to the exclusion of the other planets, the material becomes suspect. Still, he manages to get on a page words and combinations of words that appeal to the under-four-foot set. Roz’s accompanying illustrations are typical of what you see in the NEW YORKER. They are too busy, too complicated, too esoteric. Even Steve Martin, in a recent interview on National Public Radio, mis-identified a figure she had drawn and she had to correct him on the air. HE didn’t understand her illustration either.

Ouch.

Her only noteworthy accomplishment in Martin’s book is on the front and back inside covers. The book is about the alphabet, and groups words starting with the same letter. However, the inside covers depict alphabetic letters omitted in the English language, and thus left out of the book. Letters with umlauts and conjoined consonants and other symbols that I can’t find on my keyboard. These foreign letters stand around and make comments about not being in the book. It’s fun and clever, and, after all, it’s on the inside covers, so you won’t really miss anything if you skip them. Except they’re the best cartooning I’ve seen from Roz Chast.


Dear Roz, I don’t care for your style. I wanted to say that before we meet so that I’m not forced into being fakely complimentary, and so you know that I have paid attention to your work, which is the best compliment anyone can pay.

Wood Monkey

Monkeys do not have a fancy French word that means climbing. To claim that David Belle invented Parkour is like saying Christopher Columbus invented America. Parkour is life is health is flight from persecution and bounding over obstacles in the path to a goal…it's what primates do, what they have done from the earliest demarcation of their order, and what they are likely to keep on doing for their continued existence. David Belle only named it, the same way Adam named the monkey.

The great apes' taxonomic line diverges from the monkey branch at the height of true brachiators: the gibbons and the siamangs. On the monkey side, you have the animals with prehensile tails, which assist with gripping, the quadrapedalist climbers (really pentapedalists in some cases). And on the ape side you have the knuckle walkers and the bipedalists, that's us! All great apes climb at some point in their lifespan, but maintain a larger proportion of terrestrial lifestyle than do monkeys. From the baboons (a bridge species often not considered a true ape) to orangutans to gorillas to chimpanzees to humans, we are generally well-grounded. Humans as a whole are particularly bad climbers in comparison, so we've had to grow our brains and come up with other pursuits. David Belle and Mark Toorock have decided to go retro, and they're not making a bad show of it really.

Let's face it, though, for the rest of us, we got laughed out of the trees years ago. Gibbons and siamangs are also known to be the most vocal of the primates, so we probably got howled out. And yet we retain this primordial reverence for trees. Think about it in terms of the importance of Biblical trees: from the Tree of Knowledge (symbol of original sin) to covering up sin with fig leaves, to Noah who preserved countless species in a wooden boat, to Jonah who was comforted and discomforted with the life and death of a tree, to Jesus' earthly father, Joseph, who shaped wood in the practice of carpentry, to the cross itself—a specifically wooden object of modern worship. We worship trees. We build and furnish houses with them. The Bible from the Gutenberg forward is printed on trees. We may not climb them so much as other animals, but we are a species of tree worshipers. Is it because they have defeated us? Did humans create fire in order to get rid of them? Are current deforesting practices a sign of the ongoing conflict?

My cousin ran a paper mill so I asked her how much of a tree was used to make one ream of paper (I was concerned, of course, about the great sacrifice of the forest to my meager writing); however, she being an engineer, could not give me a concise answer. She said they lose a quarter of material off the tree in debarking, which is a very important process, especially for the removal of dirt for the end product, “dirt” being a technical term with weighty implications for the paper industry yet still just means dirt. A quarter of the weight after that is water. So off the top, fifty percent of a live, healthy tree is unused and discarded. Depressing isn’t it. Probably analogous to what happens with my query letters.

One year I bought a palm tree at the beginning of Lent and by Easter, it had one frond still alive. I can kill a houseplant at a glance. The ones that do survive are rather honest life forms. When I get them, they look like they’ve never lost a leaf in their lives. Now they seem as if the color green were only a tentative hue, subject to change at any moment. I’ve managed to kill egg carton gardens and had bean seeds with a failure to launch.

And now I’m busy butchering trees with moderate prose. If in the beginning was the word, and the word was God, then trees were the most damned race of beings ever invented. Maybe if we go to Hell we grow up as a tree, the fodder of flame. That or we’ve made a huge error of printing medium. Probably we were supposed to use stone as God did for the Ten Commandments. Maybe that’s what the eleventh commandment said: “Thou shalt use rocks on which to build my laws.” Rock, paper, scissors? Ah metal. Joseph Smith of the Latter Day Saints had the tablets of gold. When I get to Heaven (if), then I shall open the bedside drawer and see what stationary the Gideons have left.

(Yes, you may notice a slight reprise here, a composting of “Garden Ashes” for a richer, nutrient base in support of my new idea. I’ve recycled words to cut down on emissions, to be AlGorical through my actions.)

'POSSUM ART

It’s really difficult to find good ‘possum art. It’s hard to find ‘possum art at all. I mean with armadillos, we’re over-run with armadillos as much as they are run-over by us. Their neat, symmetrical pattern of dermal scoots, a suite of armor, armor that hasn’t quite had enough eons to adapt for car tire impact.

I’ve eaten armadillo meat. Tastes like stringy chicken. Honestly, though, there was so much spice on it, it really tasted only like spice, which makes me believe that anything that needed that much seasoning was probably really nasty. I’ve never had ‘possum. Even my grandfather wouldn’t eat ‘possum. He lived through the Depression and he dined on squirrel steaks and rack of raccoon, but he wouldn’t eat ‘possum. Too much of a dirty animal. A ‘possum’ll eat anything, but mostly in my experience they eat cat food.

‘Possums are like oversized rats with rat-bald tails and a pointed face, but they’re stupid, and they hiss, and should one bite you you’d probably die from the bacteria in its mouth. I found one in a latrine. Tried to help it out with a stick, which it wouldn’t climb because it was too busy playing dead, so had to rope it and drag it out by its noosed head.

I’ll let that story sink in, then I tell you it was a new latrine, hadn’t been used yet. That makes the story not so awful.

But they do that. ‘Possums play dead. Like they’re the biggest cowards on the planet. You swat one with a broom and he lays down, which make him easy to get rid of, but if you don’t go bury him right then and there, he’ll jump up later, and he’ll be gone! To come back the next night and stir up the dog while he’s stealing cat food.

I wonder, though, if there isn’t a jealousy factor going on. ‘Possums are the only marsupials in North America. None of us other mammals here can carry our babies in a pouch. That could explain the lack of ‘possum art, or it could be that ‘possums are the most unliked species on the continent, so unliked, that everybody wants to promote their non-existence, partly through artistic omission. I mean an armadillo isn’t even a Florida native, though it’s the number one road kill on Florida highways. Again, not a terribly bright animal. Armadillos dig holes in yards, compete with the national bird for flight time (off your bumper), and they aren’t very much afraid of you, even when you encounter them in the deep woods. Armadillos go about their business regardless of what’s going on outside their shell. Intellectually, there’s not much difference between an armadillo and a ‘possum, except an armadillo doesn’t tend to hiss at you and behave like a…a…well, a ‘possum.

I thought it would be fun to collect ‘possum art. I didn’t know it’d be impossible. I started ten years ago with a great wood block print by George Meyer, “Mother Possum.” I thought it would be a unique collection because you never see ‘possum art, but that’s the thing: you never see ‘possum art. Among the myriad of armadillo paraphernalia, from psychedelic shells to armadillo earrings, you never see ‘possums among that stuff. Raccoons get a pretty good show, not so much as the armadillo, but descent. I’m not talking the fancy fine art shows, I’m talking the folksy arts and crafts festivals, happen in tents, like a tribe of Bedouins, moving their flock of crap from one small town to the next. I thought surely I’d be able to pick up ‘possum art in that venue. In my ten years’ effort, I have only the one piece. George Meyer has some nice animal wood block prints. I bought an armadillo from him as well, but it’s the ‘possum I really like. He said that one didn’t sell as much. I bought print number twenty-seven of two hundred and ninety-four he couldn’t sell. There’s a real niche in the market, I’m telling you visual art people, it could be the next best thneed. I’m ready for it!

SPENDING TIME

I remember when it was a big deal, I mean a BIG deal to pay fifty bucks to get a clock chip added to your computer. You could use the word processor…or the spreadsheet—not both!—AND see the time displayed. It was a vast luxury, especially if you were in college and you had a wristwatch and a wall clock. I had some explaining to do to my parents. Anyway, is there a computer today manufactured without a clock function? Time may be money, but I think time is getting cheaper. Maybe time is linked with the sub prime market.

(If the above paragraph seems familiar, my point exactly regarding the non-governance to prevent things from happening at once and repeatedly on the Internet.)

If time is money, and money is paper, then time could be a crane or a hippopotamus. Time could be folded into any number of charitable or uncharitable offenses. You could probably fold it into the wrinkles of your skin. An elephant could be a very wealthy animal, especially if he lived on the bank. And he could simultaneously be very cheap.

Time is limited. God is infinite. Elephants get wrinkles for free. Botox costs money. Money is time. Time is limited. Put your hand on the wall and keep turning left.

I drove home one night along the coastal road. The moon lit the topside of the clouds. I caught glimpses of the ocean between the dunes. I took my time about driving. I knew no matter when I got home it would be late. Late had already happened, and it was in the process of happening, and it would continue to happen until the flip side when late became early, but because my vector had started in late, I would still be late even if my arrival occurred in early. Don’t be tense; walk straight ahead.

Sometimes I feel like I’m just on the other side of the wall to one of my stories. I had been thinking about a woman that night while I was driving home, how to write her into a story. I had so many things to write about that night. In the morning though, I could only remember the topics, but not how to write them. I think the woman was writing a history of France called “Memoir of France.” It had a great title is all I can remember, sadly. I wanted to have a character writing a book by that title because it’s a great title, but it’s not a book that I could write. This will all make sense, or it won’t, but if it is compelling to read, read on.

If a bird could fly at the speed of light from Cleveland to Washington, how many feathers would it have by the time it reached Buffalo?

Writing is very easy. You have to tell exactly what’s there. It’s seeing what’s there that’s difficult. You can’t simply give the blocking of a character without the reader’s understanding of the motive behind that blocking, in which case, the blocking is unnecessasary because the reader already knows how the character will move.

I am impressed by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ characters who live exactly in the present. I guess many of them are poor, so that helps. They can be walking down a road, not thinking about laying stores for the future, but walking barefoot, feeling the heat, feeling the sand, hearing the wind in the trees and the birdsong carried on it. They feel their way in the present, a vibrant intake of senses despite if they have been down that road before habitually.

The Bushmen in THE GODS MUST BE CRASY are portrayed as unneeding of added stimulus. They read the tracks in the sand to know what’s happening in the world around them, check the direction of the wind. They live very close to their world, in its immediate season, and enjoy it.

This is how art must be. Perhaps art was not regarded much when people lived more closely with their immediate worlds, but it could have growing importance as we live farther removed from what is physically around us. Art makes us live in the immediate and consider. Good art comes from sitting still. Good art is timeless, its value is priceless, but I wouldn’t mind getting paid.

I’m supposed to be doing something now, while I’m doing something else, which seems like a waste, but in our era, it is revered as multi-tasking, so I keep doing it, its, all of the its at once. Ah the wizardry of the modern age. Technology is driving toward the greater importance of art in our world. Art, like death, makes us stop and consider. It draws our attention to a single thing. I predict that art will increasingly be revered as a luxury, a luxury that everybody needs.

GOOGLING GOD

RE: IN SEARCH OF GOD ON THE INTERNET


There’s no chemical imbalance to blogging. To blog is a mask for seeking God. That talking out into the unknown somewhere…and then see if something answers back. Sure, blogging can be cosmically gratifying, or it could be a good way to meet a sexual predator. God knows where you live; keep your address to yourself.

I tried to post an entry on a WASHINGTON POST webpage that was relentlessly complaining about Christians in the United States. All I was trying to say was that Christians are fine as long as you aren’t threatened by them, except somehow my computer locked up and whirled forward at the same time, and my one simple statement appeared like six times on the page, as if I were some crazed, spastic zealot. I think next time I’ll just stick to door to door proselytizing.

Then I figured why mess around, why play games when the answer could be very simple. When the car stops, check the gas first before you overhaul the motor. I typed “GOD” into my Google search. Here are the results of the first ten listed websites.

#1 – Wikipedia entry of God. You’ve kind of got to wonder which is more ubiquitous, God or Wikipedia.

#2 – God.com. Now that’s as straightforward as it gets, folks. I wonder how many people type “God.com” into their computers. I wish I’d thought of that address. Anyway, it opens into a list of more questions than answers, thereby embracing the mystery of God, but quickly dispels the mystery on its links, neatly wrapped in conservative answers trenched in scripture.

#3 – God is Imaginary – 50 simple proofs. I thought this showed particular non-religious bias on Google’s part. Indeed this site has fifty mini-diatribes and a score of videos as well, and touts, “Why won’t God heal amputees?” as the most important question that we can ask about God. I’d rather know who’s going to win the next World Series.

#4 – Simple English Wikipedia – Wikipedia smotes ignorance again!

#5 – “The Interview with God – official website” – This site had the most legitimacy. It would not load more than a blank screen onto my computer. I loved it! The mystery of God fully intact! (Yet with the acknowledgement that the answers do exist.)

#6 – answers.com – With Catholic and Jewish sponsored links.

#7 – Catholic Encyclopedia – I felt guilty not to read it.

#8 – All About God – The mission is “to share the Good News with the Globe via the World Wide Web.” They publish content on the first few pages of popular search engines. Doesn’t that seem lazy?

#9 – Who is God? – A website from All About God. You can’t get away from them. They’re like Wikipedia.

#10 – doesgodexist.org – Science and faith are friends, not foes. How else could God exist on the Internet, which is driven by the findings of science? And then there’s a lot of stuff to buy, from books and videos and DVD’s and even a correspondence course.

Thus the Internet is no different from any other forum where you might ask about God. It offers a buffet of answers as long or as wrong or as right as you would like them. So where does this bring you and God? Probably right back to where you are, direct link, no secondary sources.

WASTING TIME

God invented dinosaurs first before He figured out how to fold intestines. I figure it was a straight shot, mouth to anus, a really really long digestive track that allowed adequate time for nutrient absorption by virtue of its very length. Then God realized how bad dinosaurs were for the environment. They were huge! They produced huge waste! Then He killed them off and buried the fossil fuels so they wouldn't be a trouble to us.

That was before God figured out how to fold time.

Let us consider the pocket watch. No single technological device has revolutionized fashion and power as much as the pocket watch. The cell phone is simply the upgraded version. The pocket watch necessitated an extra and specialized pocket to be sewn into the waistcoat, wherever waistcoats were worn. Sure Big Ben was visible from the mid-eighteen hundreds up and down the river, but you could be in an interior chamber of an interior chamber waiting for St. Paul’s Cathedral to chime and wondering how long you’d have to wait. If you had a pocket watch, then you had knowledge in the palm of your hand.

If KNOWLEDGE IS POWER and TIME IS MONEY and if you had a pocket watch, then you’ve Ben bringing home the Bacon!

“Knowledge is power.” Francis Bacon 1597
“Time is money.” Benjamin Franklin 1748

If you could fold time into the pocket of your clothes, then travel to anywhen is nearly possible; certainly travel to anywhere along the connections of you wireless Internet device.

(I remember a time when it was a big deal, I mean a BIG deal to pay fifty bucks to get a clock chip added to your computer. You could use the word processor…or the spreadsheet—not both!—AND see the time displayed. It was a vast luxury, especially if you were in college and you had a wristwatch and a wall clock. I had some explaining to do to my parents. Anyway, is there a computer today manufactured without a clock function? Time may be money, but I think time is getting cheaper. Maybe time is somehow linked with the sub prime market.)

American physicist, John Wheeler, coined the term “black hole” and also said that “Time is nature’s way to keep everything from happening at once.” But who’s to stop the Internet? Everything DOES happen at once on the Internet and there’s no clock to stop it! Information is loaded and used and moved without stratigraphy to form any kind of context. For instance, one of the rudest forms of communication is chat format, whereby you can have a conversation with everybody talking at the same time. It’s like a party where you have to shout over the music in order to be heard. But who is really listening? Miss Manners would certainly fail to approve.

Is time natural, as Wheeler infers? From Darwin we understand evolution in terms of change as a function of survival plus time. Who is time’s keeper? Does God make time for us? Or do we make time for God? Where does time come from? Where does time go? Does time walk before it flies? Does time ever land? How many feathers are there in a second? How many clocks are sold in second hand shops? How many minute hands does it take to push the hours along? Is time really ours?

Needless to say, my time management skills are…well that’s why I blog. It’s the perfect use of lack of focus between any given hash marks of the clock face.

MEET THE BAISERS

Cavemen did not say “ugh.” Neither did cavewomen. Physical evidence of early hominids points to the position of jaw and musculature and shows that cavefolk were incapable of creating a noise so far back in the throat. This is the same kind of engineering that encourages babies to make their first sounds in the front of their mouths, the da-da-da. Sting never evolved much beyond this point. In any case, baby’s first word is da-da, and shortly after that, culture comes into play, the culture of women. The endearing mother, hoping to endear a man to support her and her baby, she tells a man that he is the father and, most importantly, that the baby is calling his name. What man hasn’t fallen for this yet? The trick is as old as Eve! Oh well, you get the point: hardwired human linguistic capabilities.

I like to read two stories at the same time from a single book. I love innuendo and the mileage you can get from of a single phrase with more than one meaning. However, linguist, Noam Chomsky, views language strictly from the hardwired perspective, and does not see language as organically linked to culture. I say he must not laugh at very many jokes. Poor Numb Chumpsky. Double entendre would not exist without a link between language and culture. The link underlines the double lives that people lead, the one they recognize and the other one that perhaps is only seen in de ja vu. Count how many French terms I use in this paragraph and consider Franco influence on duality theory.

Consider Franco influence on American movies.

MEET THE FOCKERS and THE BIRDCAGE are really one in the same movie. Here is an inverse case, where two expressions run through identical territory. They’re both about families coming together over a wedding, each movie with one side of the family being more openly sexual than the other. Double entendre is alive and well in both films, as is double misunderstanding, which drives humor in duplicate.



Note on the title of this post: Never mind. It’s too dirty to explain in English.

MOONSPINNERS

My father taught me to say two things in Greek. The first one is poe-say-ka-nee. You use it in the marketplace: poe-say-ka-nee! Then you say: poe-leh-ah-kra-voh and you shake your head a little bit. These are the only two things you have to know in Greek, my father told me. The first one means “How much?” You’re talking to the vendor in the marketplace. He picks up the object you’ve pointed to in his booth. It doesn’t matter what he says in response. You don’t have to understand him. Then you use the second phrase, poe-leh-ah-kra-voh, which means “Too much.” You keep saying it, “Too much, too much,” and he’ll keep bidding and you keep saying “Too much,” until he puts the object down, which means he’s given his final bid, at which point you hold out your hand with your palm full of money. You don’t have to understand the money. He’ll only take from you the last bid that he offered. He doesn’t want to rip you off; he just wants you to haggle properly to show mutual respect.

My father spent time on the Island of Crete. He said the people there are completely honest. They do not know about stealing. Maybe it is different in big cities, my father says, but in the remote parts on the island, he used to throw his wallet and his watch on the dashboard of his car and go down to the beach for a swim. Why would we take your things, his Greek friends would ask; they do not belong to us. I think times have changed for the Island of Crete since my father’s time there. Disney’s movie, THE MOONSPINNERS, would not exist without the turmoil caused by a jewel thief and a fugitive.

THE MOONSPINNERS is a Disney non-classic girl movie. The lady librarian where I borrowed the tape said it was her favorite movie when she was growing up. I had a feeling that maybe it still is her favorite movie. It has action, adventure, and daring of an adolescent who puts herself in harm’s way so she can grow up. She spends a night out among the ancient ruins with a dashing young man who’s running from the law and for his life. He’s a wanted man, but it’s all very innocent, Disneyesque. Not even naked photographs are exchanged.

The thing I find curious is the old custom of looking up a fellow countryman in a foreign land. A British girl and her Aunt arrive in this little far away village and immediately they try to make contact with a fellow native-English speaker. (Don’t you travel to get away from what you know?) Okay, maybe in the old days when people didn’t travel so much, maybe that was part of common courteousy, like saying hello…but today? Today if you find another American with whom you were not previously acquainted—stay away from that guy! Franz Boas is dead. Traveling has turned to empirical science with an agenda of expectation, not surprise or exploration for the sake of exploration.

“This is Bay Street. You will shop here,” the surrey driver kept repeating in the Bahamas. I didn’t obey him. I had the notion to walk to Fort Fin Castle. It was just up the hill; I could see it. Why not walk there? Well, for one thing, the sidewalks don’t connect. You can’t take a simple pedestrian stance from the cruise ship port to the fortress in any kind of straight path. Furthermore, as you start walking, you lose sight of the water tower, which is adjacent to your goal. Down on street level, you can’t see what you’re aiming for. And you have to keep crossing and recrossing streets to find one that doesn’t look like you’re going to be mugged to walk up it. I couldn’t hide the fact that I’m American; what I could do was affect the look that I’d already lost my American Express card. A little disheveled, a little disheartened, sweating, hair frazzled. This aspect is not difficult to accomplish. I encountered one man walking down the street randomly begging, but he was begging to everyone and to no one, sort of mumbling off in the air while his hand was extended, palm up. I witnessed a drug transaction, but that was very quick. Other than that, I made it to the base of the Queen’s steps and found the first three of them buried under trash. The walk back was much easier because I could see my ship all the way down the hill, and plus from the Fort vantage, I was able to plot a better course. It was a little off of a direct route, but it went straight to Bay Street, and from there I knew I’d be okay.

But then I recall a time in Germany, in not a tourist town in Germany. I knew someone; we went to his friend’s place. She wasn’t American, she was Canadian, so maybe this doesn’t count. Mostly her apartment was filled with Germans. She was having a party. Her parents, I guess, were concerned about her in another country and so far away from them. She had made these appetizers and stuck little Canadian flags on toothpicks all in the little bites, then when everyone had a miniature maple leaf flag in hand, she took a picture to send to her mom, like everyone there was Canadian! Hi Mom. She was the only Canadian. I was one of three Americans. The rest were Germans. Okay, so maybe this custom does happen in remote areas today, but not in tourist areas. Okay, so maybe that does work. I talked myself into it.

The thing that kills THE MOONSPINNERS is too much monologuing, too much. THE MOONSPINNERS is made from a book of the same title, and there’s too much of the book in the movie. While static shots and paragraphs of single character lines may have been common practice of older films, I cite the lack of these elements as an improvement to modern movie making. This movie is slow in a no passing zone. Even the chase scene is slow. It may have enough love interest to sustain an audience of pre-teen girls, but I doubt it would hold the attention of boys in this day or the past. Poe-leh-ah-kra-voh.

REALITY LEAKS

If you can get past a penis stalking through the first scene of RIDICULE, you may appreciate the dark side of humor portrayed in this French film.

The power of insult prevails in the high court of Louis XVI. A landowner from rural France comes to compete in this powder wig world in order to gain favor for his people. He campaigns for a drainage project that will save his serfs. Despite his country background, he is a keen man—he knows to play the part and how to play it—but alas, he is inexperienced, and he is kind, the flaws that bring about his downfall in his initial campaign. The end of the movie is the beginning: he takes his most base revenge on the man who did subdue him: he pisses on him.

That may not be a real, human penis, penises being fickle things. This is not pornography where bodily fluids are more easily exchanged than dialogue; this is high art of film. This is French. This is cinéma! This is a prosthetic phallus, is my guess. I don’t know what is the French word for “Fluffer,” but I’m thinking I didn’t see it in the credits.

Furthermore, that’s not real urine. Unless hepatitis and HIV are less communicable in translation, I doubt that’s more than yellow-tinted water, eau de nothing. Do you realize the biohazard suggested in this scene? Human primates, just like any primates, are extremely contagious to each other, even in France.

A theater company was preparing to do Sam Shepard’s CURSE OF THE STARVING CLASS, a play that involves blood, pee, a live lamb, and a bushel of artichokes among its properties. They made the blood out of peanut butter, diluted and dyed red. It smeared well and stayed on the wall to give a coagulated effect. Of course they used creamy not crunchy. As for the pee, well, it’s one thing to pee in a cup; it’s another thing to pee in front of an entire audience. Besides, who wants to clean up real urine between scenes? They rigged the actor with a false bladder and a tube and had to make sure he didn’t leak. The lamb and the artichokes were not so difficult.

Blood, sweat, urine, saliva, tears, semen, and vaginal secretions are substances you should avoid unless they are your own. Share them carefully. And microwavable plastic wrap in an ineffective disease prevention because of its perforations. I just thought that you should know too. Reality leaks can be just as dangerous as illusion.

ANIL'S HAUNTING

Disclaimer: I didn’t read THE ENGLISH PATIENT, or see the movie. I heard they both were very good, maybe too good to be true, so I read ANIL’S GHOST. Thus this is my virginal take on one book of one man’s work.


“A writer. They have time to get into trouble…. ” Michael Ondaatje writes toward the end of ANIL’S GHOST. Really anyone has time to get into trouble, but it’s the writer who thinks of it. Ondaatje thinks of it more that most in my opinion of this book.

In school, they have you read these stories with the smallest possible details, which are only mentioned once and are irrelevant to the story as a whole, and then you’re tested on them to see if you were paying attention. It’s a little ah-ha, gotcha! that teachers use to snap your brain awake. Then you grow up thinking wow that’s clever, and clever is good, clever is power. You learn to write clever, not realizing that clever is not interesting. No one likes a clever prick.

Michael Ondaatje, MO we shall call him because I’m not sure how to say his last name, so MO does not write clever. He is interesting. Through fact and tone and philosophy he draws the reader in, makes you want to learn more. MO’s an educator without being a prick about it. He spends his time to set the scene, bring it about in the context of history, religion, politics, medicine, and art, which gives his writing a heavy tonal value. The characters seem to move through the work like notes in a chord. It’s a beautiful piece to listen to, to lie back in, and enjoy….

Aside from tone, red herring is the most prominent literary device of ANIL’S GHOST. In that way, it does come off like a schoolbook, with parts you will be tested on later, but which do not relate to the characters or plot. We learn at the beginning that Anil is a swimmer, or she was when she was young. We invest some depth into knowing this. I keep waiting for her to escape peril via swimming the swiftness set up in her youth, but MO never cashes in on the investment. Indeed the setting, Sri Lanka, the island, surrounded by water on all sides, yet there is no escape from it, not through Anil or the mystery skeleton who is her duty to investigate. She nicknames him “Sailor,” an epitaph of aquatic escape, yet it turns out that was not his occupation at all. He is tied to the ground, deep in the ground. All the characters are tied to the ground, through mining, or archaeology, or death. This is the central conflict of civil unrest for the country, because all citizens are tied to the ground, their allegiance to earth, their sense of place. While swimming is Anil’s history and brings her to her homeland, it is not where she is going. Okay, a fine introduction, but…and? Behind the back cover, it seems like an unrealistic detail because it is useless. It is like describing a table as indescribable. If the table is indescribable, then why mention it?

Despite Anil’s travel and work in other worlds, like the American Southwest, she feels her place is eating bean curd. She leaves a friend in Arizona, a friendship that seems to be the closest relationship of her life, yet she leaves this friend behind. The friend prematurely gets Alzheimer’s and is forgotten. Without closure, that string of narrative is abandoned. Why?

Perhaps it is a cultural difference. I am an American. I expect the female lead to sleep with the male lead, or at least sleep with another character they are both close to create a sexual element that plays into the external conflicts and experiences and endurances. I am granted atmosphere and isolation, spirituality and beauty, but never carnal knowledge, except between Anil and her brother. Her brother! The phrase comes in passing that she has to grant him a sexual favor. What? I had to read that again and out loud to make sure I read it correctly. It’s mentioned at the end of a paragraph without details and nothing more is said about it. Clearly this is a cultural difference, I thought, that an author can pass off sex between siblings as casual nature.

So we have this lovely tone, but how do I get from the spa of words into meaning that I can slap down on the streets in the face of my opponents? No, that is an unfair question. It is cheap and external. Anyone could ask it of any story and sound superior to the story. This is treating the story as specimen, not as a person.

Stories are people, in a metaphoric sense, of course, but otherwise we wouldn’t care about them so much. They live, they breathe, they work or are lazy, and they die. Methods of literary analysis, or story construction or deconstruction, are mechanical devices by which to measure the pulse, the respiration, and the blood-sugar levels of a story. What we have with MO’s story seems to be a hospital patient in a happy coma. The ending is organic in that the story remains a vegetable! We have life and health and pulse, but the brain capacity to make ends meet with the investment of clues is flat line.

I am not a proponent of happy endings. I am a proponent of natural endings. The end of this book seems to come as an unnatural demise to its details. This is partly the scandal that reintroduces Anil to her homeland, but what now? I have no sense of how she will carry on, or why or what, or if she will carry on at all.

ANIL’S GHOST is not the last MO book I will ever read. I am supporting the idea that because of its strong tonality, ANIL’S GHOST has symbols and allusions and illusions that haven’t caught up with me yet. I’m not willing to diagnose it brain dead until I can declare myself with full mental capacities functioning. I suspect ANIL’S GHOST needs time to sink in, needs time to haunt me. The tone resides easily in my head. It is so subtle that it easily entered and now will be difficult to dismiss. It is like cologne on a person you nearly almost just met, but you still think you can know him better.

SIDE EFFECTS

If you take a person who is right-handed and make him switch to writing with his left hand, you run the risk of creating dyslexia—dyslexics of the world untie! The brain just doesn’t have that kind of elasticity; it specializes, side to side, lobe to lobe, region to region. Different parts are in charge of different functions, just like some of us write code, or sell coffee, or clean the litter box.

Creative functions are often mapped to be right-brained functions. Oh and by the way, whichever side of your brain is dominant, it drives the opposite hand, like we were all cross-wired when God created Adam. My question is, say you take a left-handed person, someone with a theoretical greater aptitude for painting, drawing, writing—WRITING. Say you take left-handed writer, a person dominated by creative function, working from his right brain and accustomed to using his left hand to imagine his art AND THEN YOU GIVE HIM A KEYBOARD on which to write. You invoke use of both hands! What then happens to cognitive function? There’s got to be some effect. If it’s important enough not to change writing hands to preserve mental stability, what does sudden two-handed involvement create? How does it change use of brain sidedness? And what effect does that have on the writing?

Certainly this would not work for a person with a severed corpus callosum—the connection of the two hemispheres of the brain. Both sides must think together in order to tell the fingers how to move. Or does it? What do I not know?

The keyboard went through 26 variations (one for each letter of the alphabet) before it standardized at the QWERTY (your upper left alphabet keys). It had to be redesigned so all the letter arms wouldn’t stick together on the old manuals when they moved up to strike the ribbon. Makes me wonder, though, about the bias of the consonants and vowels, those assigned to the left. How do we use those in the language today differently perhaps from the time before the emergence of typewritten text?

Here’s the thing. Left-handedness, the left, has long been considered bad. Of course the social bias has begun to lift in modern times, but it’s still more difficult to find left-handed scissors. B. F. Skinner teaches us that behavior can be learned by either positive or negative reinforcement. If long-term, culturally ingrained behavior has given us a bias against the left for centuries, how could we believe we created and use an alphabet-scrambled keyboard unbiasedly?

I know there are writers who’d swear by their Underwood, or their Dell, but how do you scratch your head in the middle of writing or enjoy a cup of hot beverage? You have to take your hand off your art to think or to sip. How can this be productive? Progressive?

Musicians are shaking their heads at my questions. How many instruments do you play one-handedly? The kazoo? Musicians always have to play both-handedly, compose that way too. So this is a dumb debate. But I still wonder how different music would be if, say, a piano keyboard were arranged backwardly, descending notes left to right. How much of our language has to do with its written and read form left to right? How is our culture affected? How would we be different if we wrote English from right to left? Does opposing primary brain-sidedness in a culture cause conflict? Is war a side effect?

HIGH PATHETICAL

If a man were a complete sentence—Mr. Complete Sentence, let’s say—his person would be the subject and so he would start off naked. Well, we would have to DO something about that, wouldn’t we? So we’d put his underwear on and his underwear would be the verb, or he could wear swimming trunks, in which case he’d be all set—the man and his swimsuit would be a complete sentence, noun and verb: “Jesus wept.” Indeed. Of course the man might want to do something more elaborate than swimming, like going to work or taking a trip and so we could put more clothes on him, shirt and undershirt forming prepositional phrases to support the central noun. His watch would be an adjective (and if he were Mrs. Complete Sentence he’d have a lot more adjectives as women often do) and his belt is the adverb because it describes how the verb is covered. Oh my, we could be getting into dangerous territory here. Let’s not even talk about what forms a period or an exclamation point! ! Let’s not talk at all. I’m tired of talking. Sentences are often too long and should be commuted, right? Right? All this nonsense only proves that I’d be a disaster at early childhood education, and at politics.

ADD VICE

A person without a vice is a dangerous thing. Have you tried practical jokes? I find them wonderfully appealing, but there's always revenges you have to keep ducking. And I'd avoid victimizing anyone under your own roof. You really don't want retaliation to visit you in your home. I miss working in an office with co-workers who were always ready prey—the copier loaded with hot pink paper, the paper clips all linked together, a whole birthday party for someone when it isn’t her birthday. Still, now I have the neighbors, some of them. You have to choose wisely who can take a joke, someone who would play a joke back on you, then avoid that person like the avian flu.

What makes a bad habit a good bad habit? Does it have to be ingestible? Does it have to be something you can pick up at a gas station? I drink hot tea. I mean hot tea! It's a habit, but I don't think it could ever be classified as bad! You certainly couldn't get it between the pickled eggs and lotto tickets. Tea indeed! Plus it's way too unexpensive. Tea!

Surfing? You can't put that in your mouth. Besides, it has a spiritual reputation. If you can't mix it with peyote, I don't think you can classify it as vice, nor any sport for that matter, except golf maybe, but who counts golf as sport? I thought that was just another name for adultery. Adultery isn’t a vice because it’s so strictly a sin, listed by name on Moses’ tablets. It’s not petty enough to be vice. Besides, who has time for a fling? If I had time for a fling, I’d have time for way more shoes than what I have.

Look, if you’re not going to take drugs or caffeine or alcohol, and you can’t do extreme sports all the time, you might want to consider putting on a shirt and tie and riding around town on a bicycle because Mormonism is about the only bad thing there is left that doesn't cause acid reflux.

Angelina

Can someone explain to me the appeal of Angelina Jolie? I was watching “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” the other night and couldn’t help but think, for the millionth time, that there’s something rather ridiculous about our collective fascination with “Angie”. For one, does she always make that face? At the beginning of one of her movies I’m sure she’s making a face. But then as the movie goes on I have to entertain the notion that she’s not making a face at all but that I’m seeing her features in repose. Always a bit disconcerting to imagine that kewpie-doll pout at all hours of the day, in sleep, while reading, while working out, etc.

Now, Mr. and Mrs. Smith is a terrible movie, and I don’t want to judge her too harshly based on her work therein, but I think it’s probably a bad sign when you find yourself thinking, “Man, Brad Pitt is way more talented and classy than his co-star.”

That thought occurred to me about twenty minutes in. Then, near the climax (which, for these two randy assassins, is a “no-pun-intended” affair), I had another thought that was equally disturbing: “Man, Brad Pitt is acting circles around his co-star here.”

Not sure you could describe what she does as “acting.” Angelina seems to have three primary faces which she employs at random in her scenes. There’s the “I’m beautiful and mysterious” face with the eyebrow cocked and the pillowy lips outthrust; that’s apparently the default. Then there’s the “I’m angry as hell and about to take you out” look, which varies from look number one in that the upper pillow is drawn back to show some teeth. Finally there’s the “this emotion is rather strong. I might cry” look, which builds on looks one and two by adding an uneven crinkle between the eyes.

Now, I don’t know if Angelina has had plastic surgery or not, but I’m often uncomfortable watching those who have (Jerry Jones, Michael Jackson, Melanie Griffith, Robert Redford). I get nervous for these people. I’m worried the face won’t hold up, that during an exchange with the interviewer (presumably an editor can remove these moments in television or movies) the reconstructed face will make a false move, will betray itself as less and human. I’ve seen it happen. A sudden smile, a laugh, an expression of surprise is marred by a series of muscles that turn left instead of right, and the face conveys baffled rage, for instance, instead of cosmopolitan amusement. I’ve seen it happen so many times that I really have a hard time watching anyone who’s had extensive work. I had the same worry about Angelina before I realized that she’s solved this problem by limiting herself to the above three expressions, all of which she’s mastered (other stars, take note).

So I got to thinking; I’d like to change my mind. I’d like to be convinced. Can someone explain the appeal of Angelina Jolie? Don’t tell me about breasts or legs; let’s face it, lots of women have those (almost all!) and some in superior proportion, etc. I want to know about star power, charisma, talent, some combination of above. If that fails, can someone at least tell me a decent movie in which she’s starred? I couldn’t come up with anything. There’s the Tomb Raider series (practically unwatchable), Mr. and Mrs. Smith (literally unwatchable) and then…what else? Girl Interrupted was good, I guess. But all Angelina did was scowl and smoke cigarettes. I’ve seen parts of Gia, and it wasn’t bad but all Angelina did was scowl and smoke cigarettes. I mean, can this girl *act*? Does that matter?

One final note. Yes, I’m aware she might be a person of high moral character, a hard-won virtue resulting from years of reckless living. She apparently supports certain charitable causes. And yes, her reckless times were suitably lurid. She once had relations with her brother, for instance, and once kept a phial of blood around her neck. But then, her vices were rather ostentatious, weren’t they, and on further reflection, nothing out of the sex/drugs/rockandroll ordinary. So I’m still looking for some reason to find her significant. If I were Jennifer Anniston, I’d be pissed. I’d be watching Mr. and Mrs. Smith and thinking, “He left me for this? A stop light has more range than this woman. I was in Good Girl. Did anyone see? I was in Good Girl.”

DRAG MOVIES

TSOTSI is not the South African remake of the Dustin Hoffman film, TOOTSIE, not at all. At no point does young Tsotsi, radical as he may be with his violence and subsequent moral turn-around, at no point does he dress in drag—not to hold up a man on the subway, not to harass a man in a wheelchair, not to force a woman at gunpoint to breastfeed a baby.

It wasn’t his baby. He stole the baby, but that was by mistake, everything else was intentional. He shot the mother and I couldn’t figure out why she was coming back toward her car as Tsotsi was stealing it, the viewer doesn’t find out until you hear the baby cry. Long away from the crime scene, long away from its mother, long away from where the car functioned, Tsotsi takes the baby with him. In a hopelessly surprising move, he puts the baby in a shopping bag and begins his change. Tsotsi is at the end of his rope, where he can hold on no longer, and now he holds a baby as well. Priorities shift. Paradigms change. The baby needs a change!

How a newspaper diaper works in conjunction with excess neglect is beyond my suspension of disbelief, but okay. It’s a movie, no human beings were harmed in the making of this….but Tsotsi is seen killing ants off the baby’s face, so red flag to the animal rights activists. Maybe they were computer-generated ants.

Anyway, with a lecture on decency in his head, a lecture delivered by a friend whom he beats to cosmetic oblivion, all Tsotsi needs is some tenderness. He finds it in his care of the infant and tenderness begins to grow inside of him. He gives the baby back. He refuses the easy answers and he gives the baby back to the arms of the father, not on the ground or in the shopping bag, not following police instructions, he gives the baby back into the arms of the father. Then he gives himself up, a christ with arms extended away from his body, ready to give all of himself. Roll credits.

The South African setting doesn’t particularly inform on nationality or ethnicity. (Or if it does, it’s lost something in translation.) The story could have happened anywhere poverty exists outside of opulence, and vice versa. It could have happened in English as easily as it happened in Tsotsi-Taal. Despite the violence, despite the cute baby, despite the beautiful breast feeder, this morality tale does not stretch beyond archetype. It is interesting/amazing that someone could make that kind of changed in his life, but it’s only entertaining to that point, simply to know that it happened, otherwise it drags. It is not interesting to let the story play out. It is more interesting as a story that is told and not shown, unlike TOOTSIE.

UNFITTED SHEETS

My mother told me not to have sex in a sleeping bag. It just wasn’t a good idea. She did not elaborate. However, she failed to warn me off deep-fitted sheets.

My bed wears garters. Yes, garters. Elastic runs corner to corner, side to side and clamped down on that ever-loving fitted sheet. Without the garters, the sheet flips off in the middle of the night, or in the middle of something else, and wraps up around your head. It’s quite an astounding fright. It might be something that would happen in an Edgar Allan Poe story except it happens too instantly—snap! And your head’s wrapped up in the corner of your fitted sheet.

This wouldn’t happen with a standard mattress, except I don’t have a standard mattress. Oh no. I had to get a deep mattress with a pillow top. Surely if they make the mattress they’d make the sheet for it. Not so much. If that were really the case, no one would manufacture mattress garters. Mattress garters! I tell you, put some stockings on my bed’s four legs and it’d be ready for a night out!

DRIVING FORCE

"All the world's a stage," wrote William Shakespeare, merrily tapping his foot in pentameters as if to the rhythm of life. Nowadays we've commuted the individual life to a sentence of greater good: all the nouns and adjectives working together to push the action forward, "moving" as the constant verb. The show must go on. It's a compelling notion, especially applied to individual fulfillment in America, where even life is biggie-sized to be larger than itself. We are obsessed with entertainment and new technology ushers wave after wave of venues for us to present ourselves as entertainers, from reality TV shows to blog sites, and there are no small parts, only Danny DeVito....

FRIED GREEN TOMATOES was filmed in Juliette. Lovely town. About nearly erased by kudzu before the movie in 1991. I visit every year because my great great grandfather begat ten children in that town, and the begotten of the begotten be getting together for a picnic that’s happened every year for more than a century.

The summer we arrived in 1991, just after the movie filming, pulled up at the church and looked over in the cemetery. Couldn’t that many people have died in the past year! There weren’t even that many people in Juliette. At least twice as many more gravestones popped up in twelve month’s time. They were fake. They were Styrofoam. My, what funny pictures we had from that year’s family reunion: little old aunts lifting great monuments above their heads, snickering smiles on their faces that would hold up the world. We got to keep them, the fake tombstones, take as many as we liked. We loaded up our trunks and then went to redecorate our friends’ yards when we got home. You can’t stop death, but you can have some fun with it.

Juliette might have faded into the kudzu entirely after the movie came and went. Oh they opened the “Whistle Stop Café,” and it drew a two hour wait for lunch, longer if you want the sheriff’s booth, the place where he ate the barbecue. But you can spit from one end of the town to the other and still overshoot the downtown district. Then Atlanta hosted the 1996 Olympics. The interstate twenty minutes outside of Juliette got six-laned from the Macon by-pass to Peach Capital. Then Juliette became bedroom community proper, houses sprang up like they’d seeded the fields in two-by-fours. Juliette maintained its inner city’s core, but the exterior is pastureland of McMansions. It’s still a good two hours south of Atlanta by interstate, but that ain’t nothing to a city with the “highest annual per-capita gasoline costs in the country” (THE NEW YORKER, April 16, 2007). And what’s there to explain that kind of travel time, severe addiction to books on tape?

We live in these triangles. We depend on motion for our very object of being. We don't live where we work, we don't work where we eat, and we don't eat where we live. Something like that. We are alive only when in motion, constant motion, lateral motion sometimes, we just have to be going somewhere, making a discernible path, even if it is down.

What happened to the efficiency of the one room house? Now we've got to have many rooms. Square footage is the index of home value, stretching out hallways as a grand indicator of wealth. And so we have to drive from one room to the next in our mansion of life, as if the greater our commute, the more opulent our life. But the wealth is making us miserable. We spend all our time rambling through our mansion jam-packed with isolation. The communication devices--cell phones and e-mail--become props to our loneliness; we rely on their potential instead of using them as tools of human interaction. Life becomes the collection of errands we run on the way to our own funeral.

“Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste...” sans driving.

FREEDOM RINGS

The public library is supposed to be a quiet place, perhaps so quiet you cannot hear that freedom rings off the hook inside. Of course it’s not truly free. You own the collections by virtue of your taxes, but these materials—books, music, and movies—are an extension to the shelves of your home, only these items are catalogued in a findable fashion and someone else has to dust them. Furthermore, if you want something specific, you can call ahead and they’ll pull it for you and have it waiting at the check out desk like will call.

This prime service is especially appealing to me in my current poverty enriched life. In other words, I’m harvesting my assets, I’m paying my way into fashionable coffee shops with rolled coins. I’m so poor, I keep meat in the meat drawer of the refrigerator. Who keeps meat in the meat drawer? That’s supposed to be for cold beverages, but I can’t afford those. I’ve got to maximize my resources; the public library is top of that list. Of the plastic cards in my wallet, my library card is the only one I have memorized. It won’t buy me shoes, but neither will my other cards right now. In addition to the obvious collection offerings, there’s free wireless, sans the cost of coffee, and even free computers for when my laptop is repossessed. I can go to the public library and have the resources of a king. Freedom rings!

Of course I’m in the company of the other royalty: the Earl of Indigence and Lady Turret. The Earl of Indigence doesn’t bother me because he’s asleep. He may not smell good, but I can move away from that. Lady Turret, however, tends to seek me out. I don’t know how she can find me every time I step outside my house, but she’s not limited to any branch of our public library either and has come to settle beside me at Barnes & Noble in my more affluent days. She starts with apologies under her breath, head down, as if she were speaking to her breastbone, then she moves to racial slurs, marked with increasing volume to her profanity. The goode library has issued a decree discretely stating they will expel her and any behavior of her ilk from the kingdom of books using the force of the sheriff’s department. Yes, yes, I quite agree. It is a shame to banish royalty, but such behavior cannot be condoned among the subjects. It is the unavoidable symptom, no doubt, of the complicated bloodlines of royal families here and abroad, I mean look at Prince Charles. He may be very public school, but he is not for our public libraries. Prince Harry is our British currency, Prince Harry Potter.

In addition to stimulating my intellectual growth, I rely on the library for entertainment. Blockbuster may have obliterated late fees and Netflix will deliver to your mailbox, but movies at the library are already paid for. Why not use them? True, the selection may not be as cavernous as the size of the local flea market. I understand that the best selection of DVD’s in our county lies in the most rural of our library branches. I’ve found that most of the movies are skewed towards the 1980’s, the era when video tapes first became available for private public use. (Does that make any sense?) I’ve checked out such classics as ARTHUR, LADYHAWKE, and CROCODILE DUNDEE in a sort of rewind of my life, when rental of such films felt like a vast liberty.

The age of VCR’s ushered in a freedom of movie-watching where you didn’t have to rely on movie houses to re-release titles to the big screen, or wait for HBO to play a movie nine million times over the course of a week, all of which occasions were inconvenient to you and then you had to wrack your brain to figure out how to set the VCR to record at the appropriate time and channel. Now with VCRs and rental movies, you had control of the movie with the power of “pause,” “play,” “stop,” “rewind,” and “fast forward.” These are terms synonymous with “pee,” “sleep,” “snack,” “quick before you’re fined,” and “don’t let the kids see that!” Yes, the very act of watching a movie of your own choosing at your own pace is a freedom unto itself. Add it to the service of the public library and you can hear the stars and stripes flapping in applause.

Ahem. Getting back to this form of eighties entertainment, generously afforded me by my local public library.

ARTHUR (1981) – Dudley Moore, Liza Minnelli—yes! Yes!—the butler who won an Oscar for his droll delivery of “I’ll alert the media.” It’s all as I remembered it. And as I remembered it so well, I went straight to sleep.

LADYHAWKE (1985) – Rutger Hauer, Michelle Pfeiffer, Matthew Broderick (before he made the mistake of trying to grow up on screen and play a heterosexual). In my memory, this movie works, I mean really works—you have a cool dude, slick, good with weapons and fighting, and severely flawed with romance; a fop; and an ephemeral princess, light as air who could rise to the sun on the wing of a thermal. Hello slow. Made slower still by a warped, sappy soundtrack and the visual decay of the tape that renders light and dark as film and not as dramatic effect. I had been looking for this movie. I had wanted to watch it. I thought the kids would like it—the castles, the hawk, the wolf. I screened it, watched the whole thing through, didn’t pass out with disgust or drink, but when it was over, I returned the tape and decided I never needed to see that movie again. It was better the way I remembered it.

CROCODILE DUNDEE II (1988) – (I had to watch them out of order because the first one was checked out.) “Don’t need a gun; I’ve got a Donk,” is the best line of the second CROCODILE DUNDEE movie. Beyond Donk’s cameo appearance (Donk is the outback ruffian Dundee kisses in the first movie to make him spill his beer)…beyond Donk’s cameo, CROCODILE DUNDEE II is not worth watching, even if you did borrow it for free from the public library.

CROCODILE DUNDEE (1986) - Actress Linda Kozlowski is beautiful and she uses her beauty to distract the viewer from danger in a brilliantly arranged scene: she slips her shoes off at water’s edge, then her skirt. She’s wearing a one-piece, black butt-floss that generously reveals a flank of buttock. Dundee is watching, unbeknown to her, silently consuming her beauty with his eyes. He shifts for a better view and bonks his head, a nice comic touch that shows us his vulnerability to her. She kneels to refill her canteen

RAAAAAaaaaaaa!

The crocodile strikes from beneath the placid water. My kid backed up a clear six feet from the television set. My stomach still aches from laughing at the child. Yeah, that’s good stuff. But once she asks Dundee back to New York with her, the hunter is trapped. The tension goes lax. Yes, they still have to overcome her engagement, and there’s a legion of petty pratfalls of the country mouse with room service and a bidet, and a couple of encounters with gender non-specific characters. But Mick Dundee doesn’t have much chance to use his charms. He delivers his lines from his snare and we’re just waiting for her to walk over and bite his head off. Once the flirtation is through, there’s nothing fueling the forward momentum. Of course off-screen Paul Hogan and Linda Kozlowski fall in love, get married, and ruin the third movie. Congratulations and best wishes. Here’s hoping your real life is better than your reel life.

ASTRONAUT FARMER (2006) – You’re right, you’re right, this movie is not as old as BEN HUR, nor as contemporary as the latest Prince Harry Potter. Nevertheless, ASTRONAUT FARMER was shown on the big screen of our neighborhood public library, no admission fee, with popcorn and soft drinks free. It was an evening screening. The Earl of Indigence and Lady Turret were not in attendance. I could view in peace.

Okay, so I was late the first five minutes. I had to get the kids set up on the floor and pour soda for a girl with a broken hand and a broken foot who’d been in a car accident the day before. So I missed the plot set up. Big deal. A NASA cast off engineer builds a rocket in his barn and has to rely on his family to realize his dream-come-true-flight-crew. They have to ransom the farm to buy rocket fuel, and that’s all you really need to know. The rest unspools through characterization in scenes so authentic you feel like you’re sitting in a chair at the Farmer’s kitchen table. Billy Bob Thornton makes a home-baked space mission as realistic as the launch of a minor blog site into a universe of popularity.

Let freedom ring.

UGLY JANE

UGLY JANE

Harvey Nigel Bains is the worst catch in all of coupling history, but he is nevertheless the fated object l’amour of Jane Edwards at the Bayview Retirement Home on British comedy’s WAITING FOR GOD. Harvey’s sleazy, underhanded ways only drive Jane’s desperate defense of him in all things, despite his open rejection of her (“Jane, you’re touching me!”) while she plays the inroads to get him to be the man she wants him to be.

Harvey, played by Daniel Hill, is dark, fit, and handsome. He is not gorgeous. He is neither particularly tall nor astoundingly muscled and probably wouldn’t warrant a general casting call in America, but he is a decently handsome man.

Jane, however, though an extremely sympathetic character, looks like she would have been drowned at birth had she been born anywhere near the West Coast of the United States. Ugly Betty’s got nothing on Jane. Actress Janine Duvitski capitalizes on her appearance to heighten the pathetic nature of her role.

WAITING FOR GOD is not a crossover show that has been translated into American like COUPLING or THE OFFICE, nor do I think it will be because of content—the subject matter is a nursing home, with old people, and wrinkles and flabs. And plus nobody could play the indomitable Diana Trent in quite the brawny path Stephanie Cole has set out. And no one in America is willing to cast talent over looks these days. “Talent is sexy,” Burt Reynolds said when he recruited Sally Fields to play opposite him in SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT. Talent is sexy and the Brits are unafraid to cast a young woman who has wide hips or an actor with over-large teeth. They cast people who know how to use their looks instead of people who only know how to look beautiful. Dear, pathetic Jane is only believable because Janine Duvitski can act, and that is an ability of true beauty.

FREAKY PRIUS

SUV’s are great protection on the road, but only if you’re inside them. Their safety rating goes down considerably for people in the parking lot, short people, human objects the size of children whose heads are hopelessly below the bumpers. I ride so high in my behemoth automobile I could go out running over polar bears and not even feel it. Consequently, I drive perpetually in roaring first gear, tiptoeing through the parent pick-up circle, around Little League fields and to and from soccer. And in-between I’m stuck in traffic. My average speed is idle and I put a second mortgage in the tank every time I stop at the pump, but it’s better than the alternative.

Recently I had the unglorious opportunity to drive a Prius, truly a freak of automotive nature. While this gas unguzzling hybrid may be green-friendly, it puts the “poor” in “transpoortation.” Freaky Prius is so quiet it sneaks up on people, you could startle a squirrel! You never know whether the thing is on or off. I keep trying to restart at stoplights after it shudders to its electric mode. It has the stealth of a golf cart, and the acceleration of one too. And you never know what gear you’re in, except reverse, which beeps LOUDLY and displays the view at the base of the back bumper, which is the same perspective you could get if you just look down your shoulder blade. I never know when I step on the gas if we’re going to go forward or jump sideways. With that car, I wouldn’t be surprised at anything. The display gives your fuel consumption or GPS position. You dust the touch screen and it gives you the fuel consumption of the satellite tracking you. Furthermore, there’s no place to put the key in the ignition. You put the key in the cup holder. What’s there to keep you from walking away from the car without turning it off? Public service for someone to steal it, I suppose.

For my next car, I swear I’m going to be able to front end parallel park, but I won’t be driving a Prius. For my next car, I’m going to drive a Mini.

GOOD PITCH

There have been other Vin Diesel movies I liked, I just can’t think of what they are right now. I watched Pitch Black from The Chronicles of Riddick; however, and I liked that one. It was akin to Aliens, made over with an escaped convict, and holds the element of hidden agenda which endangers the other characters. Really I had planned to get up and do laundry and take a shower during the movie because with the last Riddick movie I saw, one scene was the same as the next with people running over a lava planet. Pitch Black actually kept me on the couch, though. And I wasn’t asleep.

MONK SONG

The Monks of Santo Domingo de Silos are of a great comfort first thing in the morning. Their vague, Latinate lyrics, ambiguous as dawn, harmonize with the primordial solitude of waking in that time before you want to be with people or attempt any kind of interaction. The simple monotonic chanting bears no threat of bright chords or a false sense of sunshine. It’s not a requiem to your hangover; it just sounds like a bunch of guys who haven’t had coffee yet either. The music gives you space to forgive yourself of whatever you were doing the night before. The low unison voices well up from deep commiseration, but they don’t come near castrati range. This is NOT the Vienna Boys’ Choir. These are men. They pour prayers over your head in slow-moving phrases. They remind you to take one breath at a time. They send you on your day feeling disciplined and holified, so everything you do can be sacred again.

The Pursuit of Happyness

The Work:
The Pursuit of Happyness

The Artist(s):
Directed by Gabriele Muccino. Written by Steve Conrad. Starring Will Smith, Jaden Smith, and Thandie Newton.

Description:

Critic: Will Smith is Chris Gardner, a struggling salesman who isn't exactly living the American Dream. His young son (Jaden Smith) is being raised by a television and his resentful wife (Thandie Newton) works double shifts in a hotel laundry to make ends meet. With his family sinking slowly into debt, Gardner has a chance encounter that changes his life when he decides, despite the odds against him, that he will become a stockbroker. Gardner must persevere through homelessness, destitution and other setbacks to keep his little family together and pursue his dream.

Consumer: (chewing) Did I miss anything? I was just making a sandwich.

Purpose:

Consumer: Let me take this one, okay? The goal of this movie is to make you come out of the theater feeling good. And maybe win Will Smith an Oscar. He acts his ass off in this movie, by the way.

Critic: I agree that the overall attempt is for a Hortatio Alger effect with a little grit thrown in. This is a classic “hero” movie. Take a character, put them in danger, give them a way out, and then dangle them over the failure/danger pit for the next hour before finally allowing the hero’s good qualities to deliver them from evil and give them possession of their dream.

What Works:

Critic: Thandie Newton as the wife is, I think, good in some spots. There’s a wonderful exchange early in the movie when, oozing desperation, she asks Will Smith how she’s supposed to pick up their son, feed him, put him to bed, and still get back for her second shift in the laundry. That exchange communicates everything you need to know about the family’s circumstances.

Consumer: And there’s another scene where she’s in the bathroom with her uniform unbuttoned, showing off her body. That’s actually pretty nice. You don’t usually get skin in these inspirational movies.

Critic: I’m ignoring you. Jaden Smith is good as the son. The plot is pretty straightforward and Will Smith has the gravitas necessary to pull off his role. San Francisco looks beautiful. There’s a scene at a basketball court with the city as the backdrop that is particularly well-done because it shows Chris Gardner in view of San Francisco (the promised land) but separated from this dream by a tall fence. There are overtones of captivity (the prison of poverty, etc.). The whole scene works well.

Consumer: I cried at the end. I was surprised.

Critic: We’ll get to the ending in the next section.

Consumer: And Will Smith is a good runner. He runs more in this movie than those dudes in Chariots of Fire.

Critic: That’s true, Will Smith does lots of sprinting. As a matter of fact, I’ll bet he’s got eight or nine scenes where he’s running full steam toward or away from something. That’s part of the Oscar-worthiness of this performance. Critics like it when you run. Remember Forrest Gump? Remember Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man? I was thinking of Will Smith’s running as the equivalent of Jaime Foxx’s head-waggling and ivory-tickling in Ray. You know Will Smith was thinking, “If Jamie Foxx can win an Oscar…”

In the course of the movie Will Smith completes almost all the prerequisites for an Oscar (the “losing my mind” scene, the “strength in the face of obstacles” scene, the “I’m tender on the inside" scene) but forgets to melt down in front of a mirror, which I think is absolutely critical to an Oscar win. You know this one, where the guy stands in front of a mirror, usually late at night, usually all alone, and breaks into horrific sobbing as he comes to a full realization of his plight. Doesn’t happen in this movie. No wonder Forrest Whittaker won.

What Doesn't Work:

Critic: Unfortunately I’m going to have to pick the ending as something that doesn’t work, but let me explain why: the ending is not bad in itself, but is not a sufficient payoff for the suffering inflicted on us during the previous 116 minutes. There’s very little lightness in the plot. All the characters are deadly serious about their situation, and of course, that’s certainly believable, since homelessness and poverty are serious issues. So while I can agree with the plot in theory (Chris Gardner encounters setback after setback, his survival and his dream are in doubt), in practice it made me resentful. How about a little comic relief? What, Will Smith can’t crack a joke? Where’s the Fresh Prince when you need him? So by the time I got to the ending, which is fine in itself, I’d suffered too much darkness to be satisfied with one pleasant and well-constructed “triumph” scene.

Consumer: Yeah, there was too much poverty. Poverty sucks, man. I don’t need to go to a movie to see that. But the ending made me cry a lot. After this movie I decided to become a single dad. It looks like a lot of fun if you can make it through the poverty part.

Verdict:

Consumer: Are you kidding? No way. There’s no explosions and no sex. The only way you should rent this movie is if you want to look sensitive in front of a girl. Just let the tears flow and don’t hold back.

Critic: I’ll give it a favorable verdict for its story, which is ultimately uplifting, for its acting, which is decent, and for the restraint shown by the director. Happyness has certain deficiencies which prevent it from moving into the “very good” category, but it’s not bad. I won’t watch it twice but don’t regret watching it once.