By The Way

Didactic, padded, a snoozer. It was 90 minutes long and could have been 40. Interestingly, it was directed by Robert Wise who directed The Sound of Music (good movie) and Star Trek: The Motion Picture (movie that gives people intestinal cramps.) Wise clearly had a long and varied career.

Mark Brown revealed

Last Saturday, the Brown ladies and I had a wonderful time with the Vos family at the family swimming pool in Plymouth. Jennifer Vos is smart and funny and has such a killer deadpan delivery that she makes me laugh on a regular basis. Chris is one of the best husband/father combos I know. Their kids are sort of superhumanly loving and kind. They're a pleasure to spend time with.

Anyway, the problem was that Suzanne and I didn't bring bathing suits. We're both kind of shy and kind of self-conscious about certain things and so neither of us came prepared to swim. The girls had a great time splashing and jumping in and all of that. But there was a distinct sense of disappointment from Chris and Jennifer. Mainly, it was probably compassion for our vanity - "Oh, that's so sad that can't even have fun with friends. Too bad."

Well, I've felt bad about it ever since. Chris teased me throughout the night that I wasn't ready to "take our friendship to the next level" by being shirtless in his company.

I'm over it.

I'm prepared fully to reveal myself and put myself out there. I want to swim with the Vos family and I'm willing to pay the price. So here goes. This one's for you Chris:



Happy now? (I'm so embarrassed.)

McCain Has A Stroke (Of Genius)

Alright, I promise I'm not going to turn this blog into a political forum but I do have to give credit where credit is due:

McCain's choice of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is a stroke of genius. I was certain that choosing Romney would have been his death sentence. Not only would the Mormon thing have stood in his way, it would have been like wearing a t-shirt that said, "I only care about rich, white men like me." By choosing a 44 year old woman from a far-off state who likes to snowmobile and used to work as a commercial fisherman (fisherwoman?), his campaign suddenly seems a lot less out of touch and exclusionary. Suddenly, he is fighting Obama's youth, unusual-but-still-blue-collar upbringing, and physical charm with some of the very same things.



There are questions, of course, about the fact that she's been governor for less than two years and before that she was mayor of a town with less than 6000 people and after that she was some kind of county official. I mean, if McCain was grousing about Obama's experience, this is probably not the smartest choice. But we're not talking about that right now. We are simply acknowledging a masterful strategic choice.

Well played, cranky old man, well played.

Viva La Veda

Last night, Suzanne and I watched Mildred Pierce, the 1945 Joan Crawford film. It's about Mildred, a middle-class single mother unhealthily driven to spoil and impress her oldest daughter, Veda. It's a combination of film noir and melodrama - lots of moody, shadowy rooms with people smoking; lots of clipped, clever dialogue COMBINED WITH a central female character who worries about "making it" in a man's world, lots of tears glistening, mothers and daughters slapping each other across the face, etc.


(Mildred with the spoiled and, ultimately, sociopathic Veda.)

All in all, it was pretty awesome. Joan Crawford is interesting and she can shift her face from being open and attractive to stern and menacing on a dime. Jack Carson is super cool as the fast-talking, always-looking-for-an-angle Wally Fay and Eve Arden (who later played the principal in Grease) was terrific as Joan's wise-cracking assistant.

On the schedule tonight is The Day The Earth Stood Still. I can't go wrong with any movie that looks like this:



Right?

How About Vegans?

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A Very Nice Day

It is a gorgeous day in Detroit. The last couple of days have been exceptionally pretty. The temperature is only in the high seventies and the sky is clear. Yesterday, after she got her booster shots, Avery and I walked to the Astoria Bakery in Greektown and got some goodies. (Chocolate cupcake for her, cup of chocolate mousse for me.) We walked around and felt the cool breeze in our hair and felt the warm bands of light from the sun reflecting off high windows down onto the sidewalk. It was really nice. She held my hand the whole time and we talked about the different buildings we saw, the store fronts. At one point, she led me into a hip hop clothing store that sold "Destroy Racism" t-shirts and had the Fresh Prince's "Parents Just Don't Understand" blaring on the PA. It was a lovely, lovely hour of my life that I wouldn't trade for anything.

Anyway, I got to thinking about how I don't write poetry any more. Days like yesterday and today make me wish I did.

I don't though. Or at least I haven't. So, because I'm in the mood for poetry but not in the mood to write it, I'm posting one of my personal faves: Singapore by Mary Oliver. I first read this in 1992 and, to this day, certain images stay with me and I still I wish I had been the one to write some of the lines because they're so good. Anyway, enjoy!

Singapore

In Singapore, in the airport,
A darkness was ripped from my eyes.
In the women’s restroom, one compartment stood open.
A woman knelt there, washing something
in the white bowl.

Disgust argued in my stomach
and I felt, in my pocket, for my ticket.

A poem should always have birds in it.
Kingfishers, say, with their bold eyes and gaudy wings.
Rivers are pleasant, and of course trees.
A waterfall, or if that’s not possible, a fountain
rising and falling.
A person wants to stand in a happy place, in a poem.

When the woman turned I could not answer her face.
Her beauty and her embarrassment struggled together, and
neither could win.
She smiled and I smiled. What kind of nonsense is this?
Everybody needs a job.

Yes, a person wants to stand in a happy place, in a poem.
But first we must watch her as she stares down at her labor,
which is dull enough.
She is washing the tops of the airport ashtrays, as big as
hubcaps, with a blue rag.
Her small hands turn the metal, scrubbing and rinsing.
She does not work slowly, nor quickly, like a river.
Her dark hair is like the wing of a bird.

I don’t doubt for a moment that she loves her life.
And I want to rise up from the crust and the slop
and fly down to the river.
This probably won’t happen.
But maybe it will.
If the world were only pain and logic, who would want it?

Of course, it isn’t.
Neither do I mean anything miraculous, but only
the light that can shine out of a life. I mean
the way she unfolded and refolded the blue cloth,
The way her smile was only for my sake; I mean
the way this poem is filled with trees, and birds.

Mary Oliver

Vote For Obama('s Daughters)

If we were to vote for a presidential candidate based solely on the cuteness of his or her family, Obama's little crew would have that vote more than locked up. Maybe it's just because he has a good-looking wife and two adorable daughters and I have a good-looking wife and two adorable daughters. Whatever it is, he's got a really nice looking family.



"Grrr, vote for me before I snap! I'm hungry. What time is it?"

A Quick Update

I tested, graded, and briefly met with over 30 students today. I was in the basement of our decaying fortress of a building for five hours straight. At the end of the day, I was sweaty, tired, and malnourished. I needed a shower, a nap, and a chicken burrito from Qdoba. I didn't get a nap or a shower but the burrito made everything alright.



For the record, White Heat with James Cagney is really good. Not good in a "Oh this is an important, historic film and because I'm a film studies student it's part of my contract that I think lame, old movies are cool" kind of way but in an honest-to-goodness, enjoyable, really cool, pleasurable kind of way. Cagney is really good and the movie just zips along. Virginia Mayo as Verna is freaking classic. I guffawed out loud when she spat her gum out to give Cagney a kiss. It was as fun to watch as anything in the theater this very moment. Honest.



Touch of Evil. Finally, after all these years, I've seen the whole thing all the way through. What is the big, stinking deal? Orson Welles is fat. Charlton Heston is Mexican. Janet Leigh is pointy. So what? I just don't know what the big deal is. It was all very showy and theatrical but not necessarily effective. I'm probably obligated to like it as a film nerd but I wasn't crazy about it.



All Quiet On The Western Front. Not bad. I can see the influence it's had on later films. The battle scenes are surprisingly effective. The acting is very affected and silly-seeming but the film overall is still quite good.



The Jazz Singer. I was surprised by the amount of Jewish culture portrayed in a film from so long ago. I think I assumed things like that would be white-washed or made more generic. But no. Still, Al Jolson is just generally kinda creepy in a nightmare clown sort of way. I'll always prefer The Neil and Laurence Olivier.



Coming up this week, the original version of The Ladykillers, Bridge Over the River Kwai, The Day The Earth Stood Still, and Mildred Pierce.

Also, on a less academically oriented note, Lars and the Real Girl is pretty good and The Martian Child ain't bad. Neither John Cusack nor Ryan Gosling disappoint.

P.S. How many mayors of Detroit does it take to screw in a light bulb?

It's pretty much my favorite animal.

They're bred for their skills and magic.

A New Take On An Old War

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Working Wednesday

After two firings, a walk out, a student's death and the subsequent funeral, little boss decided the staff and students needed something positive here at work. So, for the next three days, we're painting. Yup, that's Rowland's idea -- no classes, just painting.

It's actually not all that bad of an idea. It gets us all doing something, it's different, and will certainly help brighten up our little corner of Corktown. But I kind of hate painting so it's not all that cool to me. On the bright side, the hallway and stairwell I'm in charge of are almost done and I've got some good student workers on my team. I work the roller, slapping on big swaths of paint, and the students do all the detail work with the edging brushes. Since edging is the part of painting that most makes me not want to do it, it's not a bad deal.

For lunch, I had my first pasty and it was divine. Suzanne and I have started going to this little bakery on the corner of 5 mile and Newburg to get an occasional treat (brownies, doughnuts, cookies, etc.) and yesterday, the woman behind the counter asked if we'd ever tried their pastys. I told her I didn't even know what one was. So she brings one out and it turns out to be a kind of meat pie - you can get them in chicken or beef and they're basically a pot pie only shaped like a calzone or something.



They were four bucks apiece so we each got one. As I said, I just had mine and I was very satisfied. I'm always pleased when I come across something new that I like. The Cornish pasty from the corner bakery is now on my list of good things in the world.

(Also on this list are the now non-existent Food Center doughnut of Rexburg, the fudgy brownie of the Wooden Nickel of Jackson Hole, the bacon cheeseburger of Casey's of downtown Detroit, the individually hand-squeezed glass of lemonade of some random store in West Yellowstone, and the coconut chicken from the Garden Cafe in Twin Falls.)

Another One Bites The Dust

I haven't had the heart to blog about it until now. But here it is: we at YDB are now short one math teacher. Last week, the big boss decided to pick another angry, vituperative fight with Raymond, our math teacher. Raymond fought back, it turned ugly, and ultimately he said, "If you think I'm doing such a bad job, you can find someone else who will do it more to your liking. I quit." And that was that.

So, to sum up, in the five months since the World's Ugliest Staff Retreat, four staff members have left our organization. One, Indira, got a better opportunity and left with dignity and good feelings. Two, Margaret and Sharron, were fired outright and told to get out of the building by the end of the day and not come back. Now, Ray has quit. No notice, no good feelings. It's not pretty, people. Not pretty at all.

Avery's Art

You know, when your five year old hands you a picture in the middle of church and explains, "It's a boy eating a shish-ka-bob," you can't do anything except scan it and post it to your blog for all the world to enjoy. What else are blogs for if not to celebrate and commemorate the quirkiness of the people around us?

50 Things

1. Do you like cheese? Yes. Fried, melted, grated, with macaroni, you name it. I do not like it in the form of Mormon musicals or romantic comedies.

2. Have you ever smoked heroin? No, but I know some smoking heroines.

3. Do you own a gun? I'm building up a collection now so I'll have a healthy arsenal by the time Maryn and Avery start dating.

4. Your favorite song? Right now? "I Want You Back" by the Jackson 5.

5. Do you get nervous before doctor appointments? No.

6. What do you think of hot dogs? It's a complicated relationship. I know they're made of dog necks and raccoon toes but I like them anyway. They're tasty and portable. What else do you need in a processed meat?

7. What’s your favorite love song? "All I Want Is You" by U2. "My Hands Are Shaking" by Sondre Lerche. "Believe Me, Baby (I Lied)" by Trisha Yearwood.

8. What do you prefer to drink in the morning? Hot chocolate.

9. Can you do push ups? Yes.

10. Is your bathroom clean? Yes. Reasonably.

11. What’s your favorite piece of jewelry? My fat ring. (Which is to say, the ring Suzanne gave to wear once my finger got too fat for my wedding ring.)

12. Favorite Hobby? Wandering around bookstores, going to movies, eating out, exploring in the car, blogging

13. What is your secret weapon to lure in the opposite sex? I ask them what their sign is, show them my sweet gold medallions, and ask them if they'd like to go for a ride in my Trans-Am.

14. Do you have A.D.D.? I'm sorry, what?

15. What’s one trait you hate about yourself? I get defensive pretty easily.

16. Middle Name: Sheffield.

17. Name 3 thoughts at this exact moment: I hate this job. It sure is nice outside. I'd sure like a hot dog right now.

18. Name the last 3 things you have bought? Hmmm. I rented the season finale of Lost season 3 last night. Does that count as something I bought? Before that, lunch at Lapita with Suzanne. Before that. . . I don't know.

19. Name 3 drinks you regularly drink? Diet Pepsi, cold water, skim milk.

20. Current worry? This job. The future.

21. Current hate? My mother taught me not to hate.

22. Favorite place to be? In bed on Friday night. Driving around Idaho dry farms. Pine Creek Pass.

23. How did you bring in the New Year? I don't remember.

24. Where would you like to go? The Smithsonian, the Guggenheim, Fallingwater, Newport Beach, Prague, crazy.

25. Best childhood memory? Too many to list.

26. Do you own slippers? Yes. They're from Australia and they used to belong to my Grandpa Brown.

27. Do you like to spend or save money? Spend. Love to spend. Huge fan of spending.

28. Do you like sleeping on satin sheets? What am I, a girl?

29. Can you whistle? Yeah.

30. Favorite color? The tawny color of Maryn's skin when she's been out in the sun.

31. Would you be a pirate? Who says I'm not?

32. What songs do you sing in the shower? No singing here.

33. Favorite girl’s name? Grace. Or Faye.

34. Favorite boy’s name? Mark. (Hee hee.)

35. What’s in your pocket right now? Space-age wallet, Verizon flip phone, about a million keys.

36. Last thing that made you laugh? Suzanne chasing me into the bedpost while she was trying to kick me, smashing my leg into the post, falling down and moaning as Suzanne and the girls both erupted into laughter. You wouldn't think it was something that would make me laugh but it did.

37. Best bed sheets as a child? The soft kind?

38. Worst injury you’ve ever had? I broke my left arm in first grade.

39. Do you love where you live? I like our street and our neighborhood. Detroit increasingly is giving me hives. Michigan in general - meh.

40. How many TVs do you have in your house? 3.

41. Who is your loudest friend? Suzanne.

42. Who is your most silent friend? All of my friends are pretty much loudmouths. Clark is reasonably quiet.

43. Does anyone have a crush on you? Who doesn’t have a crush on me? Duh.

44. Do you wish on shooting stars? Yes.

45. What is your favorite book? My Antonia by Willa Cather.

46. What is your favorite candy? m&ms

47. Favorite Sports Team? So many to choose from! I can't pick just one.

48. What music do you want played at your funeral? Uuhhhhh. I have no idea.

49. First thing you thought of when you woke up today? "Let's see, if I hit snooze now, the alarm will go off at 6:40. That would give me plenty of time to shower and dress and still get the girls up. Yeah, the snooze button is the right choice right now. Zzzzzzzzz."

50. Favorite dessert? Fresh baked chocolate chip cookies, coconut dream bars, hot fudge brownie sundaes.

Another List

My mom was disappointed when she found out the answer to Tuesday's pop quiz. "You mean, it's just that you don't like all those people?" She wasn't a fan of me circulating negativity in the world and she encouraged me to publish the list's opposite number. And so, here is a short list of people I can't do without:


Obviously.


And Dad too.


He's bald and funny-looking but still my best friend of nearly twenty years.


My compatriot in General Tso's Chicken.


Also bald and funny looking. Also my friend for over twenty years.

There are other friends and family members (my brothers and their wives and children, of course) I could add to the list but I won't. Instead I'll go wide:
(By the way, a couple of these are so obscure that no one person will guess who all of them are. . . with the possible exception of Captain Admiral whose grasp of the useless unknown is impressive and vast.)





The guy on the left, not the Pope (Although John Paul was cool too.)






And of course:

List Making

I am an inveterate list maker. I keep a pad of paper on my dresser and sometimes I'll get up five times in a night to add another thing onto my list of things to do the next day. I used to keep lists of books I read in a given year, comics I wanted to buy with my next paycheck, girls I kissed, places I've been, favorite words, etc. This tendency comes out here on my blog with entries about Stuff I Love, Firsts, and things like that.

I teach list making as a writing strategy to composition students. People who complain "I never know what to write about" (which is a valid, frequent concern) can start by making a list of potential topics. Write down every possible thing you think you may want to address in your essay. You're not married to any one idea -- just get them down on paper. Even if your list only ends up being 5 items long, that's still probably 4 more ideas than you would have had before making the list. Then the struggling writer suddenly has an abundance of choices instead of the dead-end of just one. Lists are generative - the more you list, the more you can list. Ideas come into your brain like waves washing onto a beach. Two or three ideas will come, you'll think you're dry, and then another two or three will just roll up out of nowhere. It's kind of cool and magical.

Lists themselves are wonderful because they have a way of organizing and structuring your world. Everything is in black and white and is brought down to a manageable size when it's confined to a small slip of paper on my dresser.

Anyway, the point of all this (and I do have one) is that my pop quiz from yesterday stems from a kind of list I used to keep when I was in college. At Ricks College, I majored in Angst with a minor in Woe Is Me. I also took several classes in Impotent Rage and did really well. Anyway, I spent those years wandering around in my stupid trench coat, carrying my black and white journal everywhere I went, writing lengthy, angry entries about angry things. One kind of list I used to keep was "People I Cannot Do Without." It sounds silly to write it now but it basically a list of my friends and family members that I loved, trusted, and felt I could rely on. Conversely, I also kept a list of "People I Can Do Without." It featured people that bothered me, that I found annoying, that made me mad. That list usually featured whatever girl I was mad at that week, whatever kid in class I thought was dorky, whatever professor that had a tic that I thought was irritating, etc. Not very charitable, eh?

Well, I don't really keep those lists now. (Progress!) But it did occur to me the other day when Entertainment Tonight was on as I was washing dishes that I really, really, really don't like Celine Dion. She just bothers me. Her music is bombastic, overdone, and treacly. She's skeletal-looking and creepy and, from every interview I've ever seen with her, she's amazingly self-involved. My personal world would be better without her.

And so I started thinking who else I would put on the list of "People I Can Do Without." I don't want to spend any time going down the list because nobody needs that kind of negativity on a Wednesday afternoon. The pictures speak for themselves. You know they're on my list and I like to think that somehow, through some kind of cosmic notification system, they know it too.

P.S. The last photo is, as Clark correctly identified, Neal Conan, host of NPR's Talk of the Nation.

P.P.S. Tracy, Tawnya, and Angela's answers all made me laugh out loud like a braying donkey.

Pop Quiz

What do all these people have in common?

Why Me?

Our Avery Jane is a unique little girl -- two parts iron will and sass, one part sweetness and sensitivity. She outweighs her older sister by a good 5 or 10 pounds and will undoubtedly be noticeably taller than her soon. She loves superheroes, watching movies, and spanking her dad on the butt when he isn't looking. Among her other quirks, Avery is almost monumentally opposed to doing work of any kind. She hates work and puts more effort and sweat into complaining about being asked to do something than she actually puts into doing much of anything. I'm not saying she's lazy because she's not. She just feels that making her bed, picking up her toys, helping around the house, etc. are just not for her. She's a very hard worker when she wants to be -- but it darn well had better be at something that she wants to do.

Case in point: after dinner yesterday (the very tasty Korean pork and beans prepared by the very tasty Suzanne), I was washing dishes because we were momentarily out (okay, we'd been out for three days because I didn't go shopping when I should have) of dish detergent. While I was about to clean a mountain of dishes, I asked Avery if she could pick up her placemat and shake it out.

Avery: "Why do I have to do it?! I don't want to do it!"

This is her response to almost anything she's asked to do -- picking up a magnet set she left spread all over the floor, putting forks on the dinner table, getting up in the morning for school, etc. Pretty much whatever she's asked to do triggers a deep, profound questioning in her perfectly round head that centers around the important question of "Why me?"

Seriously, she regularly acts like she's a waif in a Dickens novel and she spends her day working her fingers to the bone making shoe polish or something.

But here's the thing. Avery is complicated. As I said, it isn't that she's lazy. She's just very particular about how she spends her time. I forget this sometimes and think of her as a little slug. Really, she's just very task and accomplishment oriented. She doesn't want to bring me the tv control from across the room because 1. she figures I can do it myself (which I can but why should I when I have little, four-foot tall slaves to do my bidding?) and 2. there's no real task or cool result involved.

Avery loves to help in the kitchen and whenever she sees me or Suzanne cutting something she immediately offers to break out her "safety knife" and help out with making the salad or whatever.

She is my regular helper when I make cookies or brownies or homemade noodles for soup. She digs actually doing something and being able to see the results and say to others, "I helped do that."

I was reminded of this last night when she refused to shake out her placemat because "Why am I the only one asked to do two things? You're only doing one thing. I don't want to do two things." (She had already brought her plate to the sink and, to her mind, that was quite enough.)

I pointed out that I was washing the entire family's dishes and asked would she like to trade jobs? I'd shake out the placemat and she could do all the dishes?

She immediately said, "Yes."

So, for your viewing pleasure, I now present the photo essay entitled: The Hardest Working Lazy Girl In the World.








I did the bigger pots and the silverware but, otherwise, everything you see in this last photo was hand washed by the steely, powerful AJB (with supervision, of course.)

Musical Monday

Here is KT Tunstall bringing her one-woman-band act to a classic by the Jackson 5:

My Blog Is A Toddler!

On this day in history, pop artist Andy Warhol was born as was Romantic-era poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Also born on this day, on a steamy afternoon in downtown Detroit, was our very own Norse Penny Press blog, repository of misty-eyed reminiscences, windy rants, various cartoons, clever quotes of the week, and assorted nerdery of all types. Two hundred and thirteen entries and over ninety thousand words later, here we are.

In celebration of the last twelve months, here are links to twelve of my favorite posts:

The Arms of (snicker) Orion: The tale of dancing in the spotlight with Alisa Millar and suddenly being overtaken by a laughing fit.

Story Time: A small anecdote from Mark and Tony history that my daughters latched onto.

Projector: I list off some of my dream projects.

Detroit? Isn't That The City That's Always On Fire? The day my faith in Detroit pretty much went in the toilet.

Post-Valentine's Day Wrap Up: I love love!

Why Winter Is Evil- Reason #63: In which I detail what it's like trying to scrape rock hard ice in the dead of Michigan winter.

Potato Gigante! Because, seriously, have you ever seen bigger potatoes in your life?

I Am Not Made of Velveeta: My thoughts on being a really efficient procrastinator.

Status Symbols: I like this one because it's a subject that interests me still and it is the all time record holder for comments posted by readers. Fourteen comments - which is pretty good for a blog that only has thirty or so invited readers.

Steven R. Covey's New Career: This is one of my all-time favorites. I posted the new R.E.M. video to Supernatural Superserious in which Michael Stipe wears a suit and glasses, making him look like a general authority. I thought he bore a passing resemblance to Steven R. Covey so I invented this whole thing about SRC starting a music career. What pleased me more than anything else is that at least a couple of people (Cough - karencleveland!) thought it was real.

It Finally Happened: In which I describe my new, super-sleek, space-age wallet. What tickles me is how many of my family members have said, "So let's see your fancy wallet." For the record, the desk clerk in Cheyenne, Wyoming thought it was "sweet!"

"I don't even like baseball" or "I"ve gotta stop wearing this shirt!" In which I tell the sad story of how I don't like baseball but insist on wearing a baseball shirt. People ask me about the sport and I lie and pretend like I know what I'm talking about. Sigh.

So there you have it. A year's worth of Mark's ramblings. Happy Anniversary, readers. Go buy yourselves something nice.

Air Conditioning

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Whose Story Are You?

Apparently, I was one of Suzanne's tracting stories. She and her companion would trudge from floor to floor of towering, Soviet-style apartment buildings and, since people didn't let them in, they would tell each other stories of their long-ago, pre-mission past to keep themselves entertained. The time at Ricks, just before she headed home, when I told her I was "seriously considering kissing" her was one of her greatest tracting-story hits, I guess. I wasn't her only story, of course. She probably told the "selling cigarettes for food stamps" story, the puppy/babysitting story, and various girls' camp stories too.

I had my own stories to tell while walking the soft, mushy, baking streets of Jonesboro, LA and Gautier, MS. I liked to brag that I made Allison J. pay me a hundred dollars because she got engaged while I was on my mission. (Other missionaries looked at me in awe when they found out I got financial remuneration for getting a "Dear John" letter.) I enjoyed telling Mark and Tony stories -- the time in Jackson Hole when Tony made me laugh so hard I actually threw up, the power dates, being chased by cows, and all the rest. I especially enjoyed telling the long, convoluted tale of how a girl named Milette broke into Tony's girlfriend's apartment and stole her memory box full of his letters and photos. It's quite a story, I assure you. Every new companion I got was treated to a tale that stretched on for many blocks.

When I was back home a few weeks ago, my brother Dan made a joking reference to his "soul mate," a girl named Tara who stalked him and insisted they were meant to be together. It made me laugh but it also made me wonder.

I have all these stories that I tell, that I've polished up to a high shine by buffing out all the hard edges of inconvenient facts, and they are peopled by old girlfriends, teachers, neighborhood acquaintances, school age bullies, security guards, and people seen across the room. But these people didn't stop living after their part in my story ended. They weren't preserved, Jurassic Park-style, in amber. They're out there somewhere, doing what I'm going, living their lives, being themselves.

Doug W. is probably no longer a floppy-haired skate boarder who likes to push around kids smaller than him.

Milette D. is probably no longer crazy, wildly needy, and unstable. (Or maybe she is but has foregone the whole breaking-and-entering part of it.)

Vanessa the security guard probably ended up marrying that guy and is probably very happy.

Anyway, I wondered two things: #1 - Where are all the people of my stories now? #2 - Who is out there telling stories about me?

As much as these other people didn't stop living after their experiences with me, they probably did tell stories of their own, some of which involved me. I wonder what part I played in their lives and what kinds of stories are told about me? I wonder about the flip side of the tales I tell.

For instance, Allison J. probably tells the $100.00 Dear John story now and then but I can guarantee it's not with the sense of snotty, self-satisfied glee with which I tell it.

And what about those stories I don't even know I'm part of? The moments that meant nothing to me but everything to someone else?

I wonder if there will ever be a time when we'll get to know our whole story and how we fit into everyone else's lives. I think there probably will be. When we do, I wonder how I'll feel about my part in the big picture.

On My Mother's Health

Two Things:

#1. Mom is now doing her best impression of a Paris Island Marine with her hair style as seen below. I keep asking her if she'd like her sons to all get their hair cut that way too as a show of solidarity. She keeps telling me no.



#2. Her growths are responding very, very well to the chemotherapy. The doctor said he has rarely, if ever, seen tumors shrink so fast in such a short amount of time. We are very grateful for that. She'll continue on with a three weeks on/one week off schedule of chemo until around Christmas. She'll be bald and tired but alive and (no doubt) cantankerous as ever. We are grateful for that too.

Let's Review

I feel as though I've seen and read a fair number of things recently without really saying much about them. Not wanting to miss an opportunity to say something, I'll now offer my thoughts on a few books and movies:



Hellboy 2: The Golden Army -- Probably the most visually inventive movie you'll see this year (if you see it.) The opening sequence with marionettes, in particular, is really impressive. The movie also makes a real effort to be funny. The original was good looking but there wasn't much of anything that resembled comedy. In this sequel, I laughed out loud several times. It seems that Guillermo Del Toro, the director, is now feeling his power as an acclaimed, Oscar-nominated director and, therefore, has the confidence to put silly physical comedy (Hellboy slapping a demon across the face repeatedly cartoon-style)in his films. For anyone who is a fan of fantasy or comic books or who has an appreciation for folklore, I'd recommend this one.

The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril -- I enjoyed this book quite a bit. I wrote about my anticipation for it here and it pretty much lived up to my hopes. It was fun, light, well-written, and it made me feel smart for recognizing all the famous person cameos (Stan Lee, creator of Spiderman, the Hulk, the Marvel Universe in general, makes an appearance as a plucky news vendor. L. Ron Hubbard, creator of Scientology, is a primary character.) It's not GREAT LITERATURE by any stretch, but it was entertaining.



City Primeval: High Noon In Detroit -- This was my first Elmore Leonard novel. For those of you who don't know, Leonard is one of the country's preeminent crime writers. He's published dozens and dozens of novels and had his stories turned into films - 3:10 to Yuma, Out of Sight, Get Shorty, etc. He's a Detroiter and I was interested to see his take on our fair city. It was kind of a thrill to recognize streets and places in the book. The protagonist is introduced in Carl's Chop House which is just a few blocks away from where I work. The police station, 1300 Beaubien, is around the corner from Suzanne's work. That kind of stuff is fun for me because I'm a literary nerd like that - but the book overall didn't do a whole lot for me. Leonard is as good as everyone says when it comes to dialogue and he does live up to his personal rule of "If it sounds like writing, rewrite it." It's remarkably sleek writing but, in the end, the protagonist was just too opaque and cool for my tastes. When it ended, it was over and that was it. No resonance, you know?







Atomic Robo -- This graphic novel collects the first six issues of the Atomic Robo ongoing series. The premise: "In 1923, Nikola Tesla's career is in its twilight until he unveils a robot with automatic intelligence -- Atomic Robo! Granted full American citizenship in return for his participation in a top secret military operation in 1938, Atomic Robo goes on to found Tesladyne -- a think tank dedicated to exploring the fringes of scientific inquiry. After decades of dealing with all manner of weirdness, Atomic Robo and the so-called Action Scientists of Tesladyne have become the go-to defense force against the unexplained." It's a blatant rip-off of Hellboy's Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense and about a dozen other stories and tv shows - nevertheless, I really liked it. The primary thing that sets it apart from Hellboy or most episodes of the X-Files is that it's funny and sometimes silly. There were several points throughout the book that I laughed out loud. Most comics don't do that so it's a big plus in my book. Maryn and Avery are also big fans. They enjoy Atomic Robo's battle with the giant ants most of all. Just last night Maryn informed me that, after Jeff Smith's Bone, AR is "my most favorite comic of all."

For the record, here is an excerpt from an interview with Scott Wegener, the creator of AR, that I liked an awful lot: "As far as what Brian and I are doing with Atomic Robo, it’s pretty simple. We both love good old fashioned action movies, we both enjoy a good laugh, and we both love a well crafted movie, book, or comic that can laugh at itself. Unless you're making the comic book adaptation of the Diary of Anne Frank you can probably afford to dial it down a bit, and not take yourself too seriously. Comic book professionals should be taken seriously, but we should also keep in mind that we're not curing cancer, or protecting Democracy here. . .

Another thing that irked us and we wanted to say something about with Atomic Robo, is the "dark and gritty" garbage that seems to be the norm in comics these days. Okay fine, one or two anti-heroes are great. They spice things up. But these days EVERYONE is dark and moody, and worse than that, cynical. But y'know what? Pop a Zoloft and grab some hand grenades, because we're not doing that with Robo. We're going to fight evil robots, giant ants, and Stephen Hawking, and we're going to do it without miles of lame character introspection, and we're not going to de-construct a two-issue story into a nine-issue story.

So basically we just want to make a comic book that is fun. Remember when comics were fun? There's a little something in Robo for everyone I think. I have a wife who fell out of love with comics years ago, and a young daughter who is starting to get into them. One of my goals has been to make a book that my wife and daughter could enjoy as much as I do. So it makes me REALLY happy at cons when women and young girls come to our table and tell us they really enjoy Robo. There are two things that I love about that. The first is how easy it was -- we simply refuse to draw our female Action Scientists in Kevlar bikinis and we don't objectify them -- they are on equal footing with their male counterparts. The second is that while we are conscious of the desire to attract readers of both genders we don't angle the book to men or women specifically. We make a book that People might like."



Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film. It's big (544 pages) but surprisingly insubstantial. As the title suggests, it tracks how the Sundance Film Festival and the company Miramax affected the world of independent cinema from the 1980s until the present. It's gossipy more than anything else. Story after story about what terrible people the Weinstein brothers(founders of Miramax) are, how cruel they are to their employees, what emotional infants they are. After a while it just got repetitive and didn't seem to go anywhere. The Sundance angle more or less disappeared in the last third of the book. It was okay. Interesting but not terribly useful. I'm glad I bought it for six bucks on the Barnes and Noble clearance rack.

The Dark Knight -- Yes, it was good. No doubt. Is my life changed? No. But it was good. Heath Ledger does steal the show but everyone else does a good job as well. Every choice the director made seemed geared toward setting the film in a real world. Even in the last film, there was the vaguely sci-fi looking monorail/elevated train thingee superimposed over downtown Chicago. This time around, there's none of that. Gotham looks like a real city. Casting Maqgie Gyllenhall as Rachel Daws brought a lot more maturity and intelligence to the role than what Katie Holmes could provide. Maggie G. seems like she could actually be a lawyer whereas Katie only seemed like a spunky college freshman doing her level best to play a lawyer in a college production of John Grisham's The Firm. Having seen it now, I'm surprised no one has really mentioned Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent/Two Face. I knew Dent's character was in the film but had no idea he would become the villainous Two Face in it. Nor did I know what a cool, convincing job Eckhart did. Nor was I prepared for how utterly creepy and effective his Two Face appearance was. It looked really gross and cool and I was impressed.



That's all the news that's fit to print on the nerd media side of things today. I'll be back later on with an update on my mom's health and a few other thoughts. Stay tuned.