What are you reading, gentle reader? Anything other than the ticker feed at the bottom of ESPN? Something longer than 140 characters at a time? Perhaps a chunk of text that comes above the COMMENTS section?
What?
How about Vince Flynn's The Last Man or Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach. How about that one book you've read every summer since you were twelve. Those count, you know.
What?
How about Gatsby. Again?
What?
Thursday, July 24, 2014
Saturday, July 5, 2014
A Very Guilty Pleasure
So I found myself watching Bloodsport on TV a few nights ago. You know Bloodsport, that 1988 action thriller starring Jean-Claude Van Damme as Frank Dux, the "American" trying to win the Kumite. What's a Kumite? I can't help you. Perhaps in another blog, gentle reader. Anyway, Bloodsport has all the ingredients of a late '80s movie that makes my wife roll her eyes in polite, I-suffer-this-awfulness-on-my-television-because-I-love-you-but-you-can't-make-me-watch-it disdain:
1. a backstory about loyalty, impossible odds, and crazy non sequiturs
2. a terrible Belgian accent from the American protagonist
3. characters wearing tank-tops tucked into khakis, on purpose
4. an inspirational 80's pop rock song about 2/3s of the way into the film
5. really fantastic and absolutely realistic kung fu, complete with back to back roundhouse kicks in slow motion that would make Pat Swayze from Roundhouse blush
I have no excuse. It's a terrible movie. And I can't not watch it. Like Roadhouse, or Gone in 60 seconds or Happy Gilmore. I am a grown man. I should know better. But I don't care. In light of it being July 5, I am feeling incredibly patriotic and free, so I want to celebrate myself. Like Whitman, I want to loaf and celebrate me. Do I contradict myself? Oh well.
Some favorite lines:
"Ok USA!"
"What the hell's a dim mack?"
"Very impressive. But brick not hit back."
That last one comes from the fighter-villain Chong Li, a non-English speaker, so don't hold the poor syntax against him. He's trying to intimidate Van-Damme's character. Of course, we all know that Van-Damme's characters can never be intimidated. They don't threaten. Because of the roundhouses.
I'm curious. What are your guilty pleasures? I love this topic, because it gives us a chance to breathe easy, side-step any literary or Hollywood heavy lifting, and just kick around some titles of entertainment. How summer is that?
By the way, I am finishing Ian McEwan's Saturday. Because reading in the summer is allowed...
1. a backstory about loyalty, impossible odds, and crazy non sequiturs
2. a terrible Belgian accent from the American protagonist
3. characters wearing tank-tops tucked into khakis, on purpose
4. an inspirational 80's pop rock song about 2/3s of the way into the film
5. really fantastic and absolutely realistic kung fu, complete with back to back roundhouse kicks in slow motion that would make Pat Swayze from Roundhouse blush
I have no excuse. It's a terrible movie. And I can't not watch it. Like Roadhouse, or Gone in 60 seconds or Happy Gilmore. I am a grown man. I should know better. But I don't care. In light of it being July 5, I am feeling incredibly patriotic and free, so I want to celebrate myself. Like Whitman, I want to loaf and celebrate me. Do I contradict myself? Oh well.
Some favorite lines:
"Ok USA!"
"What the hell's a dim mack?"
"Very impressive. But brick not hit back."
That last one comes from the fighter-villain Chong Li, a non-English speaker, so don't hold the poor syntax against him. He's trying to intimidate Van-Damme's character. Of course, we all know that Van-Damme's characters can never be intimidated. They don't threaten. Because of the roundhouses.
I'm curious. What are your guilty pleasures? I love this topic, because it gives us a chance to breathe easy, side-step any literary or Hollywood heavy lifting, and just kick around some titles of entertainment. How summer is that?
By the way, I am finishing Ian McEwan's Saturday. Because reading in the summer is allowed...
Monday, June 2, 2014
College Tip #14
"Find your study spot early."
Claim it, like a plot of soil in a Wild West land grab; like a hunting territory to be protected against orca and bears; like an ancient burial ground that brings things back to life only imbibed with mystical powers.
Like your college GPA depends on it.
You see, gentle reader, it does. Your study spot will dictate your staying power in college. It is non-negotiable. You will either make the grade or you will not, and you will not if you don't carve out a quiet, sustainable place to lay your books and your technology and your caffeine about you, a wall of academia to firmly push the world back with, to be pushed upon by the world.
For the record, your dorm room (or other living situation) cannot count as your study spot. Because other people are there. The math is that simple:
[All things ready to be studied. A knock on the door. Enter any other human.]
HUMAN: "Hey, what are you doing?"
YOU: "Nothing, wanna do something?"
HUMAN: "Uh huh."
[You and other human exit room. Or stay in room, doing things not studying. End scene.]
As for me, I went Underground. To IWU's old Sheean Library, basement level, English literature side, southeast corner carrel. I had a carrel! Now this was pre-phone, gentle reader, and I did not yet own a laptop, so I carried nothing with me but books and pens and such. Antiquity, I know. But that is where I carried my stuff. And I sat there, staring at books and notes. I sat there and studied. And studied. And I wrote. I reorganized. I churned things over. I also daydreamed, and fantastically, I went wandering up and down those rows of literature. I read Yeats. And Frost. Yes, I was wasting time, but I was wasting time reading Poe and Steinbeck.
I became a student down there.
Listen, this isn't about pretention. Or impeding your social agenda. I don't care where your study spot is, or what decorations hang near it, or who else shares it, or how severely isolated it is, or what tree you had to fell in order to supply the fuel to heat the room, or other such madness. This isn't a contest. But it is about the very real reason why you are attending college in the fall. To do college-level academics.
You can't accomplish those without your study spot. Mine was in the basement. There were no windows, it smelled like old books, the carpet was clean but old and trampled, the lighting was poor, the desk had a weird rut burrowed into the right-hand side which made writing on single sheets of paper tricky, but it was mine. I had to find it out. And I still remember it, among other things.
Happy hunting.
Claim it, like a plot of soil in a Wild West land grab; like a hunting territory to be protected against orca and bears; like an ancient burial ground that brings things back to life only imbibed with mystical powers.
Like your college GPA depends on it.
You see, gentle reader, it does. Your study spot will dictate your staying power in college. It is non-negotiable. You will either make the grade or you will not, and you will not if you don't carve out a quiet, sustainable place to lay your books and your technology and your caffeine about you, a wall of academia to firmly push the world back with, to be pushed upon by the world.
For the record, your dorm room (or other living situation) cannot count as your study spot. Because other people are there. The math is that simple:
[All things ready to be studied. A knock on the door. Enter any other human.]
HUMAN: "Hey, what are you doing?"
YOU: "Nothing, wanna do something?"
HUMAN: "Uh huh."
[You and other human exit room. Or stay in room, doing things not studying. End scene.]
I became a student down there.
Listen, this isn't about pretention. Or impeding your social agenda. I don't care where your study spot is, or what decorations hang near it, or who else shares it, or how severely isolated it is, or what tree you had to fell in order to supply the fuel to heat the room, or other such madness. This isn't a contest. But it is about the very real reason why you are attending college in the fall. To do college-level academics.
You can't accomplish those without your study spot. Mine was in the basement. There were no windows, it smelled like old books, the carpet was clean but old and trampled, the lighting was poor, the desk had a weird rut burrowed into the right-hand side which made writing on single sheets of paper tricky, but it was mine. I had to find it out. And I still remember it, among other things.
Happy hunting.
Thursday, May 29, 2014
It's time to graduate, seniors!
To conclude, gentle reader, please continue. Onward and upward. With awe and excitement and whatever else you prefer. Just continue.
The single greatest lesson to extract from your years stationed at your English desk, like a grizzled Army Commando posted at a missile silo, is to respect the laws of inertia. You want to be an object in motion, because they tend to do stuff. Sometimes the stuff is ridiculous, and most of the time imperfect, but it is stuff. Your stuff. Gardner tells us that life is all conjunctions, one damn thing after another, a perpetual list of ands. Art deals in the subordinate, the because. But only about things that are doing. Like your stuff.
So go do your stuff.
In case I don't see ya, good afternoon, good evening and ---.
There is nothing either good or bad but ---.
Make it a great day or not, the choice ---.
The river is moving. The blackbird must be ---.
That which we are, we ---.
And so we beat on, boats against the ---.
Have a great summer, and then a great fall, and then a great winter.
And then.
The single greatest lesson to extract from your years stationed at your English desk, like a grizzled Army Commando posted at a missile silo, is to respect the laws of inertia. You want to be an object in motion, because they tend to do stuff. Sometimes the stuff is ridiculous, and most of the time imperfect, but it is stuff. Your stuff. Gardner tells us that life is all conjunctions, one damn thing after another, a perpetual list of ands. Art deals in the subordinate, the because. But only about things that are doing. Like your stuff.
So go do your stuff.
In case I don't see ya, good afternoon, good evening and ---.
There is nothing either good or bad but ---.
Make it a great day or not, the choice ---.
The river is moving. The blackbird must be ---.
That which we are, we ---.
And so we beat on, boats against the ---.
Have a great summer, and then a great fall, and then a great winter.
And then.
Saturday, May 17, 2014
No, I haven't read Divergent,
and that is perfectly okay. You see, Divergent and its other series books are not "up my alley" as they say. I want to be crystal clear with this: Veronica Roth has done something tremendous, and her books must be good. You simply don't garner the following she has without tapping into something powerful in the reader's mind.
The reader's mind. Just not mine.
You see, gentle reader, I am not the target audience. And rather than diverge (you see what I did there?) off course and into a hoity-toity discussion on literary merit, substance, endurability throughout the ages and epochs of all time, let us all stop and appreciate what Roth has accomplished:
She made it awesome, once again, to read.
Let us consider the timeline, starting at present and moving backward in time and space:
That is over a decade of fans wanting to read the next installment. Waiting. WAITING. ON BOOKS! TO COME OUT!!! I can still recall visiting my local Border's Bookstore (shed small tear here...) at 11:something p.m. to grab my copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, waiting in line for an hour, standing next to kids and adults alike dressed in long robes and funny hats, and then driving home to read it. Actually, I was delivering it to my lovely wife who was nine months pregnant and desperate for distraction. I believe she finished it in one hour flat. Potter is her thing, you see.
Back on point: Divergent is not my thing. Neither was The Hunger Games if we're keeping score. But really, we are not. I love the idea that all the pockets of readers out there have their thing, and that they fight over it, and call the other things lesser things. That we get hoity-toity and territorial about our things. For the record, I am a Tolkien man. LOTR is my thing, and all other things listed here pale in comparison to hobbits and Nazgul and seeing stones and old kings with weird names. Avada Kedavra that, Voldemort.
No, I haven't read Divergent. I may, if only to see what all the fuss is about. And there is a bunch. But that's okay. And the next time I swing by and arrogantly point out that your taste in literature isn't as good as mine, it's also okay to fire back. After all, one could do worse than be a swinger of birches.
Or a fighter of taste in books.
The reader's mind. Just not mine.
You see, gentle reader, I am not the target audience. And rather than diverge (you see what I did there?) off course and into a hoity-toity discussion on literary merit, substance, endurability throughout the ages and epochs of all time, let us all stop and appreciate what Roth has accomplished:
She made it awesome, once again, to read.
Let us consider the timeline, starting at present and moving backward in time and space:
 |
| Divergent |
 |
| The Hunger Games |
 |
| Twilight |
 |
| Harry Potter |
Back on point: Divergent is not my thing. Neither was The Hunger Games if we're keeping score. But really, we are not. I love the idea that all the pockets of readers out there have their thing, and that they fight over it, and call the other things lesser things. That we get hoity-toity and territorial about our things. For the record, I am a Tolkien man. LOTR is my thing, and all other things listed here pale in comparison to hobbits and Nazgul and seeing stones and old kings with weird names. Avada Kedavra that, Voldemort.
No, I haven't read Divergent. I may, if only to see what all the fuss is about. And there is a bunch. But that's okay. And the next time I swing by and arrogantly point out that your taste in literature isn't as good as mine, it's also okay to fire back. After all, one could do worse than be a swinger of birches.
Or a fighter of taste in books.
Tuesday, May 13, 2014
THE UNFERTH ACCIDENT in print
It's here! Forgive me, gentle reader, for a moment of self-collection. Like Rob (John Cusack's character ) from High Fidelity, I, the critic, the professional appreciator of all things literary, am putting something out there into the world.
I am very proud to present The Unferth Accident available in print:
Keep emailing those folks at SparkNotes.com. Because we want to see this book placed squarely between a hyperlink for Catcher in the Rye summary notes and a TSwift Look-a-Like poll. It belongs there.
Immediate orders can visit HERE. Official release date on Amazon has actually come and gone, with links on B&N to follow. There is an issue with how the author name is displaying a bit weird on Amazon at present, but we are fixing the glitch.
"Alright, let's get in there." (I need to go. My daughter has just finished her Saturday morning fort and has been waiting patiently. And I have been summoned.)
I am very proud to present The Unferth Accident available in print:
Keep emailing those folks at SparkNotes.com. Because we want to see this book placed squarely between a hyperlink for Catcher in the Rye summary notes and a TSwift Look-a-Like poll. It belongs there.
Immediate orders can visit HERE. Official release date on Amazon has actually come and gone, with links on B&N to follow. There is an issue with how the author name is displaying a bit weird on Amazon at present, but we are fixing the glitch.
"Alright, let's get in there." (I need to go. My daughter has just finished her Saturday morning fort and has been waiting patiently. And I have been summoned.)
Wednesday, April 16, 2014
The Bee's Knees
Do you ever wonder, gentle reader, where in the blue blazes certain phrases come from? What in tarnation do we mean by these slangy turns of expression? Are they slangy? By George, I just don't know.
What I do know, as an official language appreciator -- and, therefore, professional non-doer -- it that using these types of phrases is the bee's knees.
The bee's knees!
Apparently, this harmless little nonsense phrase was thrown around a little during the late 18th century to denote "something of a small nature" or just plain old "smallness." The initial thinking behind this phrase derived from a literal bee and its literal knee and the pollen caught there. The tiny bits of pollen. Small amounts. Smallness. The bee's knees.
That little yelling match I had with the sandwich artist at Subway about the correct way to cut my sandwich bread was the bee's knees. It won't lead to any trouble. I'm a regular there. They know me. And if they didn't know me before, they certainly do now. Besides, I can watch to make sure nobody spits in my sandwich. Clear Plexiglas.
(Were there sandwich artists in the 18th century? A bee's knees issue.)
Fast forward to the Roaring '20s and we observe the flappers instituting their sense of cool upon this almost-forgotten kenning. Sans hyphen, of course. (No offense to Beowulf or his bard.) The bee's knees was thrown in with other nonsense phrases to simply mean cool. As in groovy or sweet or rad or boss.
As in cool. No antonym for warm, no verb for to decrease temperature. Just cool.
That monster truck Harley with the shark fins and the fireworks and the bacon. That thing is the bee's knees.
That sandwich artist reference above sounds illicitly bad, redundantly so, like a Daisy Buchanan screw-up, which, in its offending awfulness, is the bee's knees. The awfulness, not the deed.
The what?
The bee's knees.
What I do know, as an official language appreciator -- and, therefore, professional non-doer -- it that using these types of phrases is the bee's knees.
The bee's knees!
That little yelling match I had with the sandwich artist at Subway about the correct way to cut my sandwich bread was the bee's knees. It won't lead to any trouble. I'm a regular there. They know me. And if they didn't know me before, they certainly do now. Besides, I can watch to make sure nobody spits in my sandwich. Clear Plexiglas.
(Were there sandwich artists in the 18th century? A bee's knees issue.)
Fast forward to the Roaring '20s and we observe the flappers instituting their sense of cool upon this almost-forgotten kenning. Sans hyphen, of course. (No offense to Beowulf or his bard.) The bee's knees was thrown in with other nonsense phrases to simply mean cool. As in groovy or sweet or rad or boss.
As in cool. No antonym for warm, no verb for to decrease temperature. Just cool.
That monster truck Harley with the shark fins and the fireworks and the bacon. That thing is the bee's knees.
That sandwich artist reference above sounds illicitly bad, redundantly so, like a Daisy Buchanan screw-up, which, in its offending awfulness, is the bee's knees. The awfulness, not the deed.
The what?
The bee's knees.
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