A Few Devil's Night Thoughts

So one of Detroit's fine traditions besides crooked, foul-mouthed mayors and poor sanitation, is Devil's Night. The night before Halloween people go out and set fire to abandoned (and sometimes not abandoned) houses and buildings. It's this quaint tradition that makes people of Detroit as "the city that's always on fire."

At my job, my students are in the business of learning to build houses and, right now, we own two different houses - one complete but unsold and another that's about midway through construction. Having had one of our houses on the same street firebombed a few years ago, we're obviously concerned about our property.

Rather than pay someone to watch it or asking for a select few students and staff to monitor our interests, the powers-that-be decreed that everyone - all students, all staff - had to participate in a mandatory lock-in. We are to stay all night in our main building and rotate in shifts out to our properties a few miles away.

So rather than carving pumpkins tonight or staying with my kids while Suzanne goes visiting teaching, I am here at work. It's 11:30 at night as I write this. I've already watched a movie for school (Preminger's Laura with Gene Tierney), whipped some students at Scrabble ("hex" while landing on a triple word score tile), and eaten lots of hot dogs. Soon, I will find a secluded corner, lay out my egg-carton pad and sleeping bag, and try to ignore the students hooting and hollering all night.

Do I need to be here? No.
Am I doing any real good here? No.
Do I have a choice? No.

I haven't mentioned it here on the blog because it's become too stupid and sad and comical to even repeat but we lost two more employees this week. One, Sabrina, got a job with the state as some kind of case worker and today was her last day. The other, Duane, despite having been here for five years and being the only person who knows how to file all the reports and statistics that keep us funded, got fired. Why, after five years of loyal service, did he get fired? Did he steal? No. Did he show up to work drunk? No. Nope. He complained about having to participate in the lock-in and when Bev, our boss, called him a wimp and a whiner, he lost his temper. He yelled a little bit because he was really offended. (Duane is gay and so the term "wimp" is a little more touchy for him than it might be for someone else.) Within 24 hours, he had his termination letter in hand and that was that. Five years of service and crucial knowledge down the toilet because Bev couldn't handle being called on her rude, unprofessional, and insensitive behavior. Awesome.

On another subject, as those of you who are regular readers of Suzanne's blog already know, she was laid off yesterday. Compuware's stock is plummeting faster than the employee count here at YDB and so their solution was to lay off about 10% of their workforce. Suzanne didn't have seniority and so off she went. It kinda sucks. She feels good about her time there and understands that her leaving has nothing to do with performance but still, nobody likes to be let go.

Anyway, I have a on-campus interview at a community college in Illinois next week and we're really, really hoping it works out. If it doesn't, it doesn't. We're in a peaceful, accepting mode right now but it would be really nice if I got the job. If you're the praying sort, throw a few our way so we can get out of the burning city.

My Own Horn and How I Blow It

I've never been big on self-promotion. I've always resented professors who make the textbook they wrote a required purchase for their classes and never appreciated people who push their personal product on friends and family. (I mean, what do you say to these people? "I know you've poured your heart and soul into this new book/CD/painting/project/etc. but I resent having to buy one just because I'm your relative/friend/roommate/etc." There is no way out of that situation.) I've never felt comfortable making a big deal out of things when something good happens to me. If people ask, I'll tell them, but I never been the type to say, "Hey, guess how good my life is going!"

Nevertheless, having said all that, now is the time when good ol' Uncle Mark hawks his wares. I'll give you the lowdown and then I'll tell you why I'm making an exception for this case.

So five or six years ago, Suzanne, the girls, and I were driving to Malad, Idaho to visit my grandmother. We passed through Marsh Valley which is this vast, wide spot between the mountains that ring Pocatello and the hills that fill Oneida county. Out in the middle of the valley, surrounded by miles of absolutely nothing is Marsh Valley High School. It serves all the farm kids from Inkom, Lava, Downey, and other small areas. They drive in or get bussed in from all over. Anyway, as we were heading south past the school, I noticed a little cow creek with an outcropping of basalt nearby and I wondered if kids ever snuck out there to smoke. In my high school, there was an old box car set in the far corner of the parking lot and kids could easily wander out there, duck behind, and light up on lunch time. Out in the middle of nowhere, there weren't many places to hide so I envisioned two friends standing with their backs to the rock outcropping, watching the water flow by while they hid and smoked cigarettes.


(A view of MV in the winter.)

So that image was where it started - but somewhere along the line, I wondered what would happen if, as those two friends were standing there, snakes started to erupt out of the ground at their feet. Weird, right? I have no idea where that particular image came from but it stuck with me for a long time. Good, Mormon boys sneaking away to smoke and coming face to face with erupting snakes. Eventually, when we were living in Twin Falls, I sat down and started writing the story. I wrote the first section of it in a couple of days and then it sat for the better part of a year until I decided it needed to be finished. Over the course of a couple of weeks, I picked away at it until I had a full draft. I sent it off to a couple of wise friends who gave me good feedback - some of which I took, some of which I ignored (out of laziness, not out of disrespect for their wisdom). I ended up with a flawed but interesting little story. Officially, it was called "Cause" but my friend Stephen Carter gave it its more interesting and fun title, "Mormon Snake Volcano!" It sat on my hard drive for a couple of years until the fiction contest for the journal Irreantum came around. I figured it couldn't hurt to submit what I now call "MSV."

It didn't win anything. I heard from my friend, Darlene Young, that it was a finalist but ultimately it lost out to other, more polished stories. Eh. You win some, you lose some, right? Fortunately, Angela Hallstrom, editor of Irreantum and author of the excellent Bound on Earth, read the story during the selection process and thought it was worth salvaging. She wrote and asked if I'd still like it to be published. I said, "Nah, I don't care." Just kidding. I wet myself and then fell over my tongue and then said, "Yes, yes, sweet, fancy Moses, yes!"

So I spent a couple of months having the story beaten to a bloody pulp by the fiction editor who, I'm pretty sure, is a direct descendant of Marquis de Sade or might have escaped Germany to South America right around 1945. No, no, she's a lovely woman. Just kinda. . . uh. . . severe sometimes.

Anyway, all this is to tell you that the story is coming out in the November issue of Irreantum and it's going to be available for purchase soon. The journal website is http://irreantum.mormonletters.org but the info about buying the new issue isn't posted just yet.

Now, the reason I'm telling you to buy this issue (it will cost 12 bucks which seems like a lot for a journal but it's 300 pages long and so you will more than get your money's worth) is not just because my story is in it. That's the main reason, of course, but not the only one.

The other reason is that Irreantum represents the very best in Mormon writing and it needs support. It is not wildly liberal or obnoxiously in-your-face and confrontational like, say, Sunstone has been in the past. Nor is it sommnambulantly safe and predictable like the stories published by Desseret Book (not that there's anything wrong with either of those if that's your cup of fictional tea -- Postum, hot chocolate, whatever.) The main focus of the journal is to publish interesting, entertaining, well-written stories, essays, and poetry that somehow address the world and/or experience of Mormonism. The problem is, because it's less controversial, people hear about it less and it doesn't get the attention or the subscriptions of the other, larger entities out there.

So I'm telling you to shell out 12 bucks via PayPal because #1 - I'm publishing my first piece of fiction at age 34 and, by golly, that's worth 12 bones, #2 - it's a worthwhile cause, at least half as worthwhile as paying 12 bucks for candy bars from your kids' school, and #3 - there's a good chance you will read something in it that you will really, really like. It may not be my story (probably won't be) but there will be something, I can almost guarantee. (And actually, if you wanted to pay just a few dollars more, you'd get a whole year -- 3 issues -- of literary goodness delivered right to your door. Be the first kid on your block!)

* Correction: According to Angela Hallstrom, the issue will be 260 pages and will only cost 10 bucks. That's still a lot of fictional goodness for less than the cost of two value meals at Wendy's.

Cheeky Student

I have to post this candid, football photo simply because it's awesome.

Wanna Learn Something New?

Harry Bennett was Henry Ford’s right hand man. Officially, he was in charge of Ford’s accounting department but, unofficially, he was the company’s union breaker. He was the guy responsible for photos like this:


(On the left, you see Ford-employed goons. On the right, you see a pro-union Ford guy getting pounded.)

Bennett did whatever under-the-table activities necessary to ensure that Henry Ford could maintain control over his undereducated, largely immigrant workforce. Because of Bennett’s efforts, Ford was the last of the major auto companies to unionize, not doing so until 1941.

However, there was more that was “on the down-low” about Harry Bennett than even Henry Ford knew. When he wasn’t busy being Ford’s enforcer, Bennett was busily embezzling and building up his own personal empire of crime. Through manipulating the company accounting department and through outright theft and misappropriation of company materials, he made himself very wealthy and influential. He also enmeshed himself in the organized crime scene in Detroit and was known to associate with members of the famous Purple Gang. (For those who don’t know, the Purple Gang was a notoriously vicious organization in the D. They were immortalized in Elvis Presley’s “Jailhouse Rock” with the line about the prison band, "The whole rhythm section was the Purple Gang.")

Well, Harry liked his privacy and wanted a little place where he could get away from the hustle and bustle of the city, away from the prying eyes of law enforcement. So he had a home built on the shore of a small lake in north central Michigan, about ten miles north of a small town called Clare.


The house was an Arts and Crafts style design made primarily out of poured, molded concrete. As you can see, the concrete was sculpted to look like rough-hewn logs and, back then, probably custom painted to look like wood. Concrete was a popular material for home building at the time but, in addition to being fashionable, it had the added advantage of being much more bullet-proof than regular wood construction. You see, Harry used his lakeside house as a hideout and a safe haven for some of his illegal doings. Yes, it was an expensive, hand-crafted mansion in its day with five bedrooms, a pool and outdoor bar, massive fireplaces, and beautiful year-round views of the lake where he would entertain guests and dignitaries, sometimes hundreds at a time – but it was also designed so he could escape from any room of the house. There were secret tunnels and hidden doors, bulletproof glass in the windows, a moat around the entire property, and the one bridge to island rigged with dynamite that could be detonated any time Bennett wanted. There were machine gun turrets mounted on the roof and a boat always waiting in the lake to carry him across to a hidden car (a Ford, of course) that would take him to his nearby private landing strip. Bennett was ready in case the Feds came rolling up the long, dirt road to his home. His house was designed to be both his castle and his getaway accomplice.

Bennett, much to his chagrin, didn’t take over Ford Motor Company. Henry Ford was ailing and Edsel, his son and the President, died of cancer. Bennett was in position to take control because it was in the middle of the second World War and Henry II, the grandson in line to take charge, was overseas as a soldier and wasn’t around to stop Bennett and his machinations. The remaining stateside Fords went directly to Washington D.C. and told members of Congress they had two weeks to produce the heir to the company’s throne and, if they failed to do so, their company, which had retrofitted their many of their production facilities to build war machines, would stop the building of jeeps, airplanes, and tanks cold. Henry II was delivered post-haste to the U.S. and Bennett did not take control of one of the most powerful companies in the world.

What became of Bennett’s house on the small lake? It’s still there and is one of the central buildings for the Lost Lake Boy Scout Reservation in Clare County, Michigan.


The grand fireplace in the 60 foot long main room. Almost all of the furniture is original. I sat on the same weirdo, custom-made couch as Al Capone and Bugsy Siegel.


This flooring was supposed to be in the main lobby of the Lansing plant. Bennett decided that the colors didn't match and so a whole new floor was ordered while the old stuff was conveniently taken care of by Harry.


A chunk of four inch thick bullet-proof glass from the house's original windows.


A portion of the 128 foot long porch that faces the lake.


The only way on or off Bennett's island. This is the bridge that was loaded with dynamite and ready to blow at a moment's notice.


Just an ordinary bookshelf, right?


Wrong!!


Creepy, uneven stairs that lead to a concrete bunker and an exit to the lake.


The big, bushy tree you see in the middle is the one under which Bennett kept a car in case he had to escape. He'd made his way across the lake, find the car, drive to the airstrip, and escape to the skies.


Anyway, according to that all-knowing oracle, Wikipedia, when Henry II fired Bennett, he went straight to his grandfather's room expecting to get chewed out for firing Henry I's main man. Instead, the older Henry simply said, "Well, now Harry is back on the streets where he started." Cold, Henry, cold.

Wikipedia also tells us that Bennett died penniless in 1979 of natural causes.
When I left for this retreat, I had no idea I'd be learning all about gangsters and Ford Motor Company history. Who knew, right?

Where Have I Been?

Where have I been, you ask. Well, I was. . .


staying here


with these guys,


watching them do stuff like this


and this,


wearing funny hats,


climbing high wires,


sitting around the fire,


eating fine cuisine,


and just generally enjoying nature.

It was good times but it's good to be back. Stay tuned tomorrow for the story of the Ford executive gangster and his hidden, lakeside lair.

Good News For Mom

I talked to my mom earlier today and she had just finished an appointment with her oncologist. Apparently, she is on the tail end of her chemotherapy. She'll have two more treatments and then won't begin radiation therapy until after Christmas. Generally speaking, her cancer has responded miraculously well to the treatments and her doctor has been continually impressed with the progress she has shown and rate at which her tumors have shrunk. Initially, when my mom first found out about her diagnosis, we were facing the possibility of not having her around for much longer. I'm extraordinarily grateful that she and her oncologist have, so far, officially laid the smack down on her cancer and that we can look forward to having Mom around for a long, long time.

(Below is an actual photo of my mom beating the physical manifestation of cancer silly with her mean right hook. Note the haircut she's sporting now.)

A survey is not a survey which alters when it alteration finds

The other day I got tagged with a survey by my friend Tracy. Problem is, I've already done the survey she tagged me with. So to liven things up, I'm going to alter some of the questions to make them more interesting.

1. WERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE? becomes
IF YOU COULD HAVE A DIFFERENT NAME (FIRST OR LAST), WHAT WOULD IT BE?
I've always been drawn to really solid, traditional, very General Authority sounding last names like Richards or Stephens. I would be happy to be called "Jones" as either a first or a last name.

2. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED? becomes
WHERE IS THE MOST EMBARRASSING PLACE YOU HAVE EVER CRIED?
In the dining room of the Pocatello Papa Kelsey's the afternoon I found out my grandpa had died.

3. Do you like your handwriting? becomes
On a scale of 1-10 (1 being most legible and 10 being completely illegible) how legible is your handwriting?
7 or 8.

4 . WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE LUNCH MEAT? becomes
WHAT IS YOUR LEAST FAVORITE LUNCH MEAT?
Anything involving the word "loaf.

5. DO YOU HAVE KIDS? becomes
ARE YOU THE PARENT YOU THOUGHT YOU WOULD BE WHEN YOU WERE GROWING UP?
Yeah, more or less I am. There are definitely things I would have done differently in the past and things I can and should change now - but generally I think I do okay.


6. IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON, WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOU? becomes
WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU MET THAT REMINDED YOU OF YOURSELF?
I don't know about the last person necessarily but I do remember meeting this kid in the MTC who in his personality and demeanor and speech could have been my twin. I hated him.

7. DO YOU USE SARCASM A LOT? becomes
WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE PIECE OF SARCASM?
When somebody asks me a nosy question that I don't want to answer and I innocently say, "Oh, didn't I tell you?" and they say, "No," and I say, "Huh, must be none of your business then." I've used it many a time.

8. DO YOU STILL HAVE YOUR TONSILS? becomes
DO YOU REMEMBER HAVING YOUR TONSILS/WISDOM TEETH REMOVED?
Tonsils - no. I have a photo of myself at age 4 after getting out of the hospital but no actual memories. Wisdom teeth - yes. Sort of. I remember going in. I remember taking work off. But for the experience itself, I was blissfully unaware.

9. WOULD YOU BUNGEE JUMP? becomes
WHAT WOULD IT TAKE TO GET YOU TO BUNGEE JUMP?
A minimum of a thousand dollars.

10. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CEREAL? becomes
WHAT IS YOUR LEAST FAVORITE CEREAL?
Anything with clusters. Or an absence of sugar.

14. WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT PEOPLE? becomes
WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU THINK PEOPLE NOTICE ABOUT YOU?
My voice maybe. Possibly my height.

16. WHAT IS THE LEAST FAVORITE THING ABOUT YOURSELF? becomes
WHAT IS ONE OF YOUR FAVORITE THINGS ABOUT YOURSELF?
My ability to do impersonations. It practically saved me as a young teenager.

17. WHO DO YOU MISS THE MOST? becomes
WHO ARE YOU GLAD IS OUT OF YOUR LIFE?
Well, she's not gone yet but I have high hopes for Sarah Palin.

20. WHAT WAS THE LAST THING YOU ATE? becomes
WHAT WILL BE THE NEXT THING YOU EAT?
I'm planning on lunch out - so possibly a Casey's Burger with fries. Maybe cheap Chinese food from The Great Wall.

23. FAVORITE SMELLS? becomes
LEAST FAVORITE SMELLS?
Wet eggs sitting in the sink after breakfast, ear wax, certain CK perfumes.

24. WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU TALKED TO ON THE PHONE? becomes
IF YOU COULD BE TALKING TO ANYONE AT ALL ON THE PHONE RIGHT NOW, WHO WOULD IT BE?
If not Suzanne, then probably Tony. He never fails to make me laugh.

32. LAST MOVIE YOU WATCHED? becomes
NEXT MOVIE YOU PLAN ON SEEING?
I have to finish Howard Hawks' The Big Sleep. Honestly, I'd like to see You Don't Mess With the Zohan. I don't know what's wrong with me.

36. FAVORITE DESSERT? becomes
NAME ONE DESSERT YOU'D RATHER GO WITHOUT.
Any kind of pie with fruit or berries in it. Yuck.

39. What book are you reading now? becomes
What book do you wish you read but haven't?
I still need to finish Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. Because I'm an English guy, I wish I had read Moby Dick.

43. ROLLING STONES OR BEATLES? becomes
BILLY JOEL OR NEIL DIAMOND?
The Neil, of course. But Billy is good. Nothing against Billy.

So there. A little alteration for a Monday afternoon. Feel free to take and answer these. Or to make your own questions up. If there's one thing Sarah Palin has taught us so far, it's that if you don't like the question you're asked, you can always just answer the one you wish you were asked.

Pssst - What's the Answer?

What you are looking at, dear reader, is the ugly face of dishonesty. Yep, you are viewing an honest-to-goodness, hidden-up-the-sleeve, stolen-answer cheat sheet. This one is the second of two I confiscated from students on Friday. One group of students is at their midterm point in our program and, therefore, were scheduled to take their evaluation exam to determine how far they've progressed in the last five months.

I was really encouraged by their initial scores - some of them made huge jumps from sixth and seventh grade levels to twelfth grade level. I thought they had just really buckled down and worked hard because our program director had offered two additional personal paid-leave days for anyone whose score increased by more than two grade levels. Yes, I am Naive Nancy.

Having discovered the cheat sheets (from two students who aren't as good at hiding their actions as some of the others), I now realize that the majority of this group was just outright cheating. Someone stole an answer sheet, copied it, and circulated it among the others.

Frankly, it was really disheartening and it made me really angry. I took the tests of the two I caught and sent them and everyone else with these giant grade jumps home for the day. We'll retest in the next couple of weeks and see how they do.

I know I probably shouldn't take it personally but I do. I can't help but feel like the hand of assistance that I hold out to my students just got spat on. Gross but true.

Nerd

I'm not a Trekker or Trekkie or whatever you call it. I saw all of the first six Star Trek movies and enjoyed my fair share of the original series but I never had much use for the Next Generation or any of the many spin-offs.

However, I'm a fan of J.J. Abrams and, as I have pointed out here before, I'm really fascinated with remakes/reimaginings/reboots - especially of big-time pop icons. So, even though I don't speak Klingon and don't have any interest in attending a convention of any sort, this cast photo from the new Star Trek reboot, directed by Abrams, does fill me with a small measure of gleeful anticipation:



(l to r - Checkov, Kirk, Scotty, McCoy, Sulu, Uhura.)

And just for good measure, here's one of Spock laying the Vulcan smackdown on Kirk:

The Morning Debate

This morning, I came around the corner to find Maryn and Avery holding a box of granola bars up to the door of the refrigerator and going back and forth about something in a "He is too!" "He is not!" sort of way. They were holding the box up to Maryn's Columbus Day project that had pictures of the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, plus a picture of those vessels' famous captain. Turns out, they were trying to decide if this guy:



and this guy:



are the same person or just father and son. Said Avery: "They have the same face but different hair."

The Hug

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, because of my adjunct work, I am able to make the girls breakfast and either bike or drive them to school (depending on the weather). It's been a nice change to get to spend some time with them in the morning and take things a little easier.

Yesterday, we drove over because it was chilly and overcast. We parked, got out, and walked to their respective lines. I rarely wait around for Maryn because, as the chattiest second grader I know, she gets in her class line and immediately starts talking to someone and forgets I'm even there. So I walk Avery around the corner of the building to the first-grader doors.

We got to her line and, once there, she wrapped her arms around my waist and just stood there. She rested her cheek on my belly and quietly watched her peers wander over from the bus. Neither of us said anything. I put my hand on her back and we waited for the bell to ring. I looked around and saw that all the other parents had placed their kids in line and then stepped back. I was the only one over four feet tall in line. For a second, I considered dislodging Ave and moving a few feet away.

But then I thought to myself, how much longer will Ave be like this? How many more years or months before she doesn't want her dad standing in line with her? How much longer before she's not willing to just hug me wordlessly with dozens of people around?

Neither of us moved a muscle until the bell rang. I'm glad I didn't step back.

I See Film People

Recently, a few of the film studies majors got together and formed the Wayne State Film Society, a student organization dedicated to furthering the interests of students in and heightening the profile of the film studies program at the university.

One of our initiatives (sounds so formal!) is to have a monthly film screening series. Each film is chosen by us from our various Qualifying Exam lists and the student in charge that month introduces the film (which is very big here for some reason - introducing films - like people can't figure stuff out on their own) and then that student also leads a post-screening discussion.

Our inaugural film was Alan J. Pakula's paranoid thriller, The Parallax View. We advertised but not many people showed up. Nevertheless, we took pictures. It's not every day a film society has an inaugural event, you know.


I'm not sure what I was saying at this exact moment but it pleases me immensely that my friend and colleague, Carole Piechota, is looking at me as though I just told her she'd won the last Golden Ticket to Wonka's factory. I also like that Jenna Gerds' hand looks like its vibrating into another dimension. Poor photography pleases me apparently.



Mark bemused.


Carole parallaxed.

Sunset Boulevard and The Killing

There are certain movies you always hear about. They are referenced, satirized, ripped off, etc. You know certain famous lines from them and they're always mentioned when people talk about "great" movies.

The more films I watch, the more I realize these films are almost always what they're cracked up to be. I'm not one to automatically buy into the idea of canon. I'm not going to like or praise a film just because it's supposedly "important." I'm far too much of a philistine for that. I like too much low-brow to embrace the high road that much.

But, as I say, I'm finding that these films aren't "great" because they're "important" but rather that they are important because they're great. Over the weekend, I watched Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard. I knew about "I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille" and had seen Carol Burnett goof on Gloria Swanson's portrayal of Norma Desmond. I knew it was narrated by the dead guy floating in the swimming pool at the outset of the movie but I'd never actually seen the thing.

Well, now I have and I can tell you what everyone else will tell you: it's great. Swanson as an unhinged silent film actress determined to get back on the big screen is really a sight to behold. She balances her manipulation, her neediness, and her jealousy on the head of a pin and does it all while convincingly moving and talking like a silent film actress who never quite figured out how to exist in the more modern world of the Talkies.

One thing that's really interesting about the film is how reflexive it is - a Hollywood production about Hollywood production. Cecil B. DeMille plays himself as does gossip reporter Hedda Hopper. Silent film greats like Buster Keaton and H. B. Warner play themselves in small cameos. In its reflexivity, it reminded me a lot of Robert Altman's The Player. It too was a poison pen letter to Hollywood signed by some of its biggest names.





Stanley Kubrick's The Killing is not often mentioned in the same breath as "the greats." When we hear Kubrick, we think A Clockwork Orange or 2001. Maybe Full Metal Jacket and hopefully not Eyes Wide Shut. Before any of that, The Killing was Kubrick's first feature length film with a professional cast and crew. It's stars Sterling Hayden as Johnny Clay, an ex-con out to make one last score. He's out to make the titular killing.

Other than it being Kubrick's first big film and seeing the beginning of directorial touches he developed over his career, it's notable for its disjointed narrative. The story shifts back and forth in time as it shows Clay and his accomplices arrange to steal a cool 2 million dollars from a race track. Though I haven't read it anywhere, I'm pretty sure this has got to be one of Tarantino's touchstone films. Both Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction borrow from it, I think. It's an under appreciated classic. Give it a try.

More Accurate Names for Current TV Shows

Grey's Anatomy = Doctors Having Sex

Private Practice = More Doctors Having More Sex

ER = The Exploding, Burning, Shot-Up, Held-Hostage, Contagious Break-Out Hospital

Lost = Pretty People in Tank Tops

Big Brother = Terrible People

Brothers and Sisters = Yelling and Crying

All Fox Game Shows = Let's Make a Deal For Your Dignity

Roll Call: Calling Mr. Fat and Sloppy!

I call roll in a different, silly way each day. I'll call roll by middle names - I say your name, you tell me your middle name. I'll do it by nickname, by the name of your favorite relative, by the last good movie you saw or book you read. It keeps the students on their toes, allows them to reveal a little about themselves in a safe way, and it entertains the heck out of me.

So today's roll call topic was "Who do people tell you that you look like?" Between my two classes, I have a Sylvester Stallone, a J-Lo, a Mya, an Omar Epps, a Princess Jasmine, a Liv Tyler, and a gaggle of people who say they look like their siblings or parents.

I told them about Suzanne's insistence that I look like Christian Slater. First of all, half of them didn't know who that is. (Which is a bad sign for Christian - but he's been on that downhill slide since Kuffs in 1992.) Second of all, those who do know who that is said, "No. In fact, you look like the guy from Knocked Up." With horror and disgust on my face, I said, "Not Seth Rogen?!" And with glee and evil on their faces, they said, "Yes, exactly! That guy!"

So in my second class of the day, I called roll the same way and started to plead my case to them, saying, "The other class thought I look like Seth Rogen." At least two people said, "I've thought that since the first day of class!"

I then excused myself to the hall where I cried softly for a time and then raised my fists in rage, crying, "Why?! Why have I gotten so fat and sloppy?!" Then I drove to the nearest Rally Burger and bought two milkshakes and an order of deep-fried lard balls to drown my sorrows.

So I did an image search to see if it's as bad as all that. My main problem was, I couldn't even begin to imagine any resemblance. Not having seen Knocked Up, Superbad, The 40 Year Old Virgin, or any of his other super-naughty films, I didn't have a strong sense of what the guy looks like.

This is the primary image I have of him in my head:



Nothing doing, right? Well, I searched around a little more and found this:



If I had a camera with me right now, I'd take a photo of myself in my white shirt and tie, with my little square glasses, and my week's worth of facial growth. I'd post it near the above picture so everyone could say, "Hey, wow, Mark really does resemble that chubby, super-foul guy. Lucky him."

Yeah, my life is sweet. It used to be Christian Slater who at least at one time was considered a sex symbol. Now I've slid down the scale to resembling the chubby, funny guy. Awesome. Kevin James, here I come.

Goodbye To The Jolly, Bronze Giant

Okay, first things first. We must discuss the recent developments on DWTS, my friends. (I will use the term "my friends" as much as possible in this post to make my McCain-supporting readers feel comfortable.) My friends, I was deeply saddened by what happened to Misty May Treanor. First of all, the sound of an Achilles tendon rupturing is about the worst sound in the world. If it makes me squinch up and cry a little to hear it, my friends, I don't even want to imagine what it feels like.



It makes me sad that our friendly, jolly, bronze giant isn't going to be on the show anymore. First, I had Misty picked as a finalist and it was a pleasure to watch her take on a different persona with each new performance. She had a lot of raw talent and was so aggressive about her approach that her dances were never boring. I'll miss her, my friends, because she was fun to watch. But I'm sad also because she seems like a really nice, genuine person. There wasn't much that was entertainer-ish about her. She just seemed like that nice neighbor you could chat with over the fence or that you could ask to grab things off your roof so you didn't have to get out your ladder. My friends, it seemed like she was honestly sad that she wasn't able to continue on and that was sort of touching. (Although, honestly, she was probably more worried about what the injury means for her volleyball career than she was about not being able to do the jive with Maks.)

Another development that deserves attention is the emergence of Warren Sapp as a serious contender. The man is three hundred pounds. Three hundred, my friends. He kills quarterbacks for a living and yet the man is light on his toes and a heck of a lot more graceful than kitchen grease-stain Rocco Despirito. Who knew? Carrie Ann has a weird, too-intense crush on him that is sort of embarrassing to watch.



One other aspect that needs comment: Cloris Leachman is still there. Whatchutalkinbout, Willis? My friends, is all of Florida voting for this woman to consistently keep her around? What's keeping Kim Kardashian and Rocco Despirito from killing themselves over the shame of being outsted before Cloris? I just don't know what it all means, my friends.

One of the few things I'm going to say about this

Or, rather, one of the few things I'm going to quote about the upcoming election:

"Stop voting for people you want to have a beer with. Stop voting for folksy. Stop voting for people who remind you of your neighbor. Stop voting for the ideologically intransigent, the staggeringly ignorant, and the blazingly incompetent.

Vote for someone smarter than you. Vote for someone who inspires you. Vote for someone who has not only traveled the world but who has also shown a deep understanding and compassion for it. The stakes are real and they're terrifyingly high. This election matters. It matters. It really matters. Let me say that one more time. This. Really. Matters."

Michael Seitzman

P.S. It's pronounced "noo-KLEE-urh" not "nook-YOO-lurh."

Wanna See Something Really Scary?

It's October and this weekend Suzanne hauled out all the decor - the jack-o-lanterns, the plastic spiders, the faux bubbling cauldron, the string of ghost lights, and the various witches. We added some new strings of orange lights for the outside of the house and bought "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" figurines for the shelves in the living room. (Charlie Brown himself with his ghost costume with too many eye holes, Snoopy as the WWI Flying Ace atop his dog house, and Lucy complete with an apple-bobbing tub.) For whatever reason, Halloween is our family's favorite holiday, second only to Christmas. The decorations, the candy, the dressing up - it's just more festive than, say, Arbor Day.



The thing about Halloween is that it's best (to me) when it carefully treads the line between spooky and fun. I don't really get anything from the severed-head, fake-blood, people-jumping-out-with-chainsaws aspect of the holiday. I never liked the haunted forest, haunted house, haunted cornfield, haunted shopping mall, haunted port-a-johns that proliferated all over my native southeast Idaho. I've never taken much pleasure in being scared. Some people love it. Good ol' Tony, friend of years and tears, loves being scared. Loves horror movies. Loves being in frightening places. When he was a teenager, he and a friend would go to a local cemetery at night and take turns hiding behind gravestones while the other wandered around, waiting to be leapt upon.

Not for me.

I don't like horror movies at all and never have. As a young teenager, there was some cultural cache among my friends in somehow finding a way to see the latest Nightmare on Elm Street or Friday the 13th. There was something supposedly manly and "cool" about watching people get cut up or impaled. I watched my share, mostly with my brother Jason who liked scary flicks, but I never liked them. Even as an adult, my tastes haven't changed. Tony took me to see Gore Verbinski's version of The Ring and, while he left the theater exhilarated, I left just feeling gross and bummed out. As I said, no pleasure there for me.

Interestingly, horror is a topic of great interest in the film studies world. It seems it's an "important site" worthy of examination for the cultural and psychological blah blah blah it reveals. Whatever. Certainly, it's fraught with all sorts of ideas and manifest desires. But I don't care. It bores me and when it doesn't bore me, it sickens me.

However, as I was mowing the lawn on Saturday between sessions of General Conference, I was listening to Dean Martin's Greatest Hits (yes, I am that eclectic and cool) and the music combined with the beautiful fall weather and all the Halloween decorations made me think of one of the few movies that actually creeped me out in a good way: The Lady In White.

Made in 1988 by a nearly one-man-show named Frank LaLoggia (wrote, produced, directed, and even composed the music) and starring a very young but post-Witness Lukas Hass, The Lady in White is about a young boy who witnesses a murder that is reenacted by the ghost of the victim. The whole thing is spooky and well-done but is never gross, repellent, or lame. There's one moment in the film (I won't say which) that still gives me the shivers every time I see it. It's a still moment but scary and unexpected. (Those of you who have seen the movie will probably know what I'm talking about.)



The other film I remember genuinely scaring me as a kid (and I know my brother Jason can get behind me on this one) is the 1980 film The Watcher in the Woods with Bette Davis. It was the third to the last film she ever did and I just remember her being really disarming and unsettling. IMDB's summary of the film reads, "When a normal American family moves into a beautiful old English house in a wooded area, strange, paranormal appearances befall them in this interesting twist to the well-known haunted-house tale. Their daughter Jan sees, and daughter Ellie hears, the voice of a young teenage girl who mysteriously disappeared during a total solar eclipse decades before..." Again, the film frightened me and filled me with a fun sense of dread without being gory or resorting to stupid shock tactics.



So if you're looking for a couple of Halloweenish movies to watch on a Friday night that don't involve blood and guts, I recommend these two. (Keep in mind that I haven't seen The Watcher in the Woods since I was seven or eight. There's a chance it's turned to pure cheese in the intervening decades.)

Anyone else? Genuinely scary movies?

P.S. Ten cool points for those who can name the source of my post title.

Little Debbie and Jack Johnson in league with the devil

(The face of the devil?)

An old college acquaintance of mine, Grant Gold, couldn't stand Little Debbie oatmeal cream pie cookies. I'd brought a box of them to school (because it was college and bringing an entire box of fat-filled, cream-slathered cookies to snack on before, during, and after class seemed like a good idea) and offered one to Grant. He refused and I didn't think much about it. After he'd turned me down the second or third time, I started to wonder what his damage was. I mean, really, who turns down cookies at all? To my sugar-addled brain, it just didn't compute.

Turns out, when he was a kid, Grant stole a box of cream pie cookies from his family's pantry, hid in a closet, and ate all twelve individually wrapped lard bombs in one, claustrophobic sitting. Or maybe he didn't quite make it through all twelve. He was trying to, of course, because he wanted to get through them all so he didn't have to share with his siblings. He'd gone through the trouble of liberating the cookies and he wanted all the spoils. Being in such a hurry proved to be his undoing. He stuffed them in his mouth so fast, there were adverse effects. He got sick. Very sick. In the closet. Hemmed in by coats, shoes, and umbrellas, Grant lost the contents of his stomach in a spectacular fashion. His mom heard him retching and opened the closet door to find quiet a mess. It wasn't a good day for anyone involved apparently.

Once he told me that story, I understood his feelings for the cream pie cookies fully and I put the box in my bag so he didn't even have to look at the picture on the front.

This story explains my feelings for the music of Jack Johnson. I used to really, really like JJ. I had a copy of his album On and On and I listened to it incessantly. It was soft, mellow, and acoustic - just the way I like a lot of music. (Seriously, for a while it seemed like the only thing I ever listened to was music by lesbians with acoustic guitars -- the Indigo Girls, Melissa Etheridge, Ani Difranco, etc.) But something happened to me somewhere along the way. At some point, Jack's music, specifically that album, started to make me feel like I had just downed my seventh cream pie cookie and was shakily trying to stuff number eight into my cream-and-crumb-covered pie hole. Suddenly, I just couldn't stand it any more. The first few strums of the album opener, "Times Like These" makes my stomach contract. The very sound of track two, "The Horizon Has Been Defeated," gives me shingles. I'm pretty sure if I tried to listen to the whole album in one sitting, my heart would rupture. Then disintegrate. Then catch on fire.

Extreme? Yeah, probably.

There's nothing wrong with his music and nothing wrong with people who like it. Just like there's nothing inherently wrong with Little Debbie cream pie cookies. It's just that too much can turn a good thing into a closet full of puke, know what I mean?

(Satan rides a surfboard.)

He may have been a silly peanut farmer with lust in his heart, but Jimmy Carter said some wise things:

"A strong nation, like a strong person, can afford to be gentle, firm, thoughtful, and restrained. It can afford to extend a helping hand to others. It is a weak nation, like a weak person, that must behave with bluster and boasting and rashness and other signs of insecurity."