Wine, Petty Thoughts

“Well I been to Brooker and I been to Micanopy” just like Tom Petty, though I’ve never been asked to sing at the Super Bowl. Probably we’re better off.

Micanopy is south of Gainesville, Petty’s hometown and mine, across the prairie where Mayberry meets the Twilight Zone. And Brooker? Brooker’s on the same exchange as Monteocha.

Late in August, the muscadines and the scuppernongs, the sweet grapes of Florida, come ripe and hang off the vines in voluptuous presentation. I know an ole boy on a few thousand acres, sent me some wine from his 2007 vintage. Careful now, homebrew has a potency untested, little sips little sips to see if yes indeed you can take it. I wouldn’t call it red. I wouldn’t call it white. I wouldn’t make derogatory comments on its culture. It swirled up the sides of the bowl with fat thighs and had a sweet smell that portended pancake syrup. A cautious taste, ready to spit…it was surprisingly light. Despite the heavy aroma, the thick legs, it lay lightly on my tongue and went down like swallowing an essence rather than a liquid. Monteocha may be an obscure location, but its wine upholds subtle refinement. Still, I wouldn’t drink too much of it at one whack.

I am not a self-appointed sommelier (except of course when we’re camping). Generally I rely on the mouths of experts when it comes to fermented grape juice selection. For instance, I went to our local winemongery looking for a nice engagement present and I had in my head something funny like BIG HOUSE RED or CARDINAL ZIN, appropriate for the occasion. The expertessa recommended a bottle of VIRGIN CHARDONNAY. She told me to come back if things didn’t work out; she had another bottle called BITCH.

In my last life I was born a termite. I love the taste of wood—the woody wines of California over the French any day—the redwoods, oaks, and birches. (Even with tea I like twig-flavored brews.) Perhaps I prefer the cask more than the effort of the fruit, but I do enjoy a chardonnay that tastes like a buttered slice of oak.

Certainly I break with the connoissewers when it comes to red meat. Red meat—red wine. White meat—white wine. And if you’re having ‘possum…? (No one’s ever answered that question.) I say there’s nothing better than a good steak and a nice buttery chardonnay. A chardonnay is better compliment than a baked potato and less fat. Why dull the sacrifice of beef with a starchy tuber?

Cheers, and enjoy the super bowl.

Cutting Edge

What’s the difference between James Clavell and James Michener? One guy’s book was made into a musical and the other one wrote a book that turned into a TV miniseries starring Toshiro Mifune and Richard Chamberlain.

SHOGUN, despite what its name implies, is not a western, but an eastern, in much the same way as THE SEVEN SAMURAI, which is another Toshiro Mifune film when it’s not being called THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN. I was watching SHOGUN last night with a friend who was zapping through commercials with the remote and I said, “What did you do, tape this off your television set in 1980?” Yep. Authentic ads and all.

Anyway, southern California looks very lovely, whether its playing the great American West or Japan or even the Australian outback, as in THE THORN BIRDS. Yes, you remember the ‘80’s, some of you—the last final episode of MASH where Alan Alda seems to fall in love with a chicken, and Richard Chamberlain plays Father de Bricassart who seduces young Meggie while she wears a dress the color of ashes of roses…Chamberlain sticks to the TV screen from “Blackthorne” to “Thorn Bird,” heterosexual heartthrob played by a closeted gay guy.

An artist’s life is never easy. It is a constant struggle against a reality that doesn’t exist but everyone’s agreed upon. Art has been abstracted, hung on white walls instead of being the building, viewed as unnecessary in the infrastructure of food, shelter, clothing, warmth. In our earlier forms, the line between life and art does not exist. Existence is art, creation. Subsistence is craft, the creative process of innovation. Perhaps blogging is bringing us back to that point. Dirty Monkeys Smell Bad—Divide, Multiply, Subtract, Bring more monkeys….

Miyamoto Musashi sits above my headboard. That’s probably not very Feng Shui to have a legendary swordsman hanging over you while you sleep. If I were at peace with myself, maybe I wouldn’t blog. Musashi is seated and has blue feet, well I mean they’re blue socks, and he looks contemplative. I like him. He’s not so bad as the salmon scowling Japanese warrior prints I have residing in my closet, facing the wall. Who wants to wake up and see that in the morning? What does that inspire, other than to put those guys in the closet? Yesh. Regardless of their sexuality, it’s bad enough I have to see the rest of my family in the morning. Worse for them that they have to look at me.

What do you call a Japanese vase? Answer: East Urn.
What do you call a gun battle?—Western.
What do you call a good swordfight?—Deadly.

Novel Idea

Tolstoy described WAR AND PEACE specifically as “not a novel.” He decried conventionality and “European forms” in story-telling. Probably this essay is trying to be more intelligent than I am. Probably it is.

I sit around attempting to write a Pulitzer Prize winning novel. Doesn’t everybody? No. It’s a novel thing. It’s new. It’s not something everybody does. (That’s blogging.)

The western novel, as it was taught to me, first appeared in Eighteenth Century Britain, roughly corresponding with the exchange of eggs for abstract currency. The Foucautians would argue conspiracy theory brought about the literary “form” of the novel, and the Bakhtinians would argue more towards chaos theory—heteroglossia—engendered this new capability for multiple voices. The appearance of the literary novel also corresponded with the transition of general lock up in the prison system—“Bedlam”—to the Panopticon; whereby, you have a central tower that oversees spokes of separated prisoners. (Don’t you love how I condense several thousand dollars worth of college education into a marbled jumble?)

I have a theory that you could write a novel with only a bucket of chicken and a gallon of sweet tea. Course you might have to get up and go to the bathroom a few times, but you could do it, you could write the whole thing.

However, if you start with a formula, you'll get an answer. I don't want an answer. I want questions. Questions have more potential to unearth new things, novel things.

Have you noticed how the words “The End” never appear any more at the conclusion of a book? You know you’ve reached the termination of a sustained work of fiction when you read the words, “About the Author.” It’s like the covers on books—you can never have just the title. You have to have the title, then underneath the title a qualifier: “A Novel.” Heaven forbid, it might not actually be “A Novel” without a label on it.

On the cover of my book, I want my title, then "A Story" printed underneath. "A Novel" is so pretentious and inaccurate. How can it represent anything "new" if everybody is doing it?

You may be well armed with fresh theory and examples, but a good argument for certain literary trends or tools doesn't necessarily give you a compelling story. I hate to play defense against that. I hate to play defense at all because I find myself a more offensive person, as most people do.

I won't worry about my humble beginnings. Jesus was born in a barn, but He learned to close the door on anonymity. And nothing sells better than the Bible.

Scandalous Notes

Lillian Hellman shares a birthday with me, except I think she’s about six decades ahead. She is most famous for her play, THE CHILDREN’S HOUR, and had a scandalous affair with Dashiell Hammett, author of THE MALTESE FALCON and other manly adventures. It was all very hyper-sensual I’m sure. It was all before my time.

Today I shall be serene and calm, but not until much later. Today I have to chaperon a Fourth Grade class field trip. If there is a merciful God, He will put off His jests towards me, and I will NOT have to ride the school bus with the children. Despite the price of fuel, my sanity is more valuable than gas, I hope. This chaperoning is my good deed for the day, that is my comfort. I don’t have to seek for any other good deeds beyond this one. I have strong plans for a VERY cold beverage immediately upon my return home, and no further hopes of accomplishment.

I stayed up last night entirely too late watching a good movie: NOTES ON A SCANDAL. It almost made me want to read the book, but not quite. The story-telling in the movie is well done, with tension paced throughout this tale of schoolyard misconduct. Each new moment brings another small twist that knits into a terrible knot of deception and heartbreak. Besides, nothing is going to portray the characters better than the performances of Dame Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett. Blanchett can portray on her face pages of emotion, and Dench can move with her eyes an hour’s worth of anxiety. The book, I fear, would only remind me of the movie.

Whatever I suffer, I suffer. It will not be endless. I took two aspirin in case I do have to ride the bus. In a few hours, it will all be over. It will be a mild inconvenience, not near so enduring as a scandal.

Whether Man

It’s refreshing. I’m refreshing. I’m fast food. This is the movement of personal revelation for Nicolas Cage’s character in THE WEATHER MAN.

“To be, or not….” While Hamlet is the archetypal whether man, Cage as Dave Spritz is a worthy latter-day Prince of Denmark. His father is dying, his ex-wife is unforgiving, his son is in rehab, and his daughter is called “camel toe” because the shape of her genitalia is vivid from her tight pants. This is a movie about a man in the fuck of a life crisis.

I’d love to be an actor; you have no agenda outside the immediate present. An actor arrives at his home and doesn’t rush inside for a pee, he doesn’t carry anything except what he’s going to use, he is not hungry except where it moves the plot, he does not drink except to have the character drunk, and even then, he is faking drunkenness so he has the luxury of only looking terrible in the morning without actually feeling it. Dave Spritz wears his great, dark car like his great, dark overcoat. He arrives at his home and has a significant argument with his ex-wife instead of feeling the stomachache over the chilidog he ate for lunch or considering the traffic he’ll have to face before dinner. He takes his time to throw a snowball at his ex-wife, and breaks her glasses in doing so. He takes his time with that.

I don’t agree with the end message, though, that nothing in adult life is easy. That can’t be right, but that’s the message our hero needs to hear. He needs to hear that so he doesn’t feel bad for himself against the tough issues he has to face. He has to do the work, he has to reconcile himself to do the work, and in order to do that, he has to chuck some self-sympathy and just get it done. Yes, sometimes adult life is like that.

What we see at the beginning of the movie is that Dave Spritz has bad aim. He needs a target. He needs practice. He needs a weapon more potent than frozen water. So he takes up archery.

While Spritz does acquire a bow to walk the streets of New York City, the film does not show any essence of levity in his adult life. I am not surprised at the absence of a WEATHERMAN 2. All work and no play would make for a very dull sequel. There is also NOT an HAMLET II. Anyone left at the end of that play was killed; even Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are executed to ensure the impossibility of a second run. Decisiveness is easy, you just have decide to do it.