Syntax of Things

Not in My Neighborhood

San Diego is America's Finest City.  We have great beaches, scenic mountains, an amazing park, the best zoo in the world.  So what do we need with a bunch of books and reading?  Might explain why we're the 39th most literate city in the U.S., behind such places as Toledo, Ohio, and Newark, New Jersey.  But hey, at least we aren't L.A (#60).  Or Stockton (dead last).  Still, we've got a long ways to go if we ever want to be like Seattle or Minneapolis.  We'll trade you a few days of sunny and mild for a library or two.

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Did anyone else think of this guy when you saw who had been named the new editor at Harper's?

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The folks at Dogmatika have posted a brief interview with author Sam Lipsyte.  So does he listen to music when he writes? 

Not when I write. When I do the dishes or mop the floor I listen to music. I need silence to write, especially when what I’m writing is leading my nowhere. Lately I’ve liked The Hold Steady, and a band from Connecticut called Fatal Film.

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It appears that C.S. Lewis opposed a screen version of his Narnia Chronicles.

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I'm keeping it brief today thanks to some work-related insanity monopolizing much of my time.  To make up for it, I offer this bit of nostalgia.  {Warning: embedded video of the Replacement's appearance on SNL could make you long for the good old days.}

Ask Dr. SoT

Finally, something useful to offer you from the Dr. SoT files.  Check out these 18 tricks to teach your body. Basically, this is the quickest route to successfully place mind over matter.  My favorite is this one:

3. Overcome your most primal urge!

Need to pee? No bathroom nearby? Fantasize about Jessica Simpson. Thinking about sex preoccupies your brain, so you won't feel as much discomfort, says Larry Lipshultz, M.D., chief of male reproductive medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine. For best results, try Simpson's "These Boots Are Made for Walking" video.

Say Something Beautiful

Just a reminder that the Kansas-based Citizens for Literary Standards in Schools, a group of overly concerned zealots who have way too much time and not enough common sense on their hands, are targeting fourteen books that they would like to see removed from the schools for one reason or the other. Here's the list and, if you're curious, you can click on the book to find out just what has their dander up:    

1. All the Pretty Horses    
2. Animal Dreams    
3. The Awakening
4. The Bean Trees
5. Beloved
6. Black Boy    
7. Fallen Angels    
8. The Hot Zone    
9. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
10. Lords of Discipline  
11. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
12. Song of Solomon  
13. Stotan  
14. This Boy’s Life

For real, there's nothing to worry about Kansas. After all, I've read all of these books with the exception of #13, and I'm perfectly normal.  Don't smoke, don't drink, curse only when necessary.  I'm straight, married, have a regular paying job.  And it's not true what they say about me.  None of it.  At least most of it.  Definitely not the part about not being allowed back inside the state of Alabama.

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While Kerouac's On the Road scroll continues to make its way across the United States {you're next, San Fran}, the final draft of his The Dharma Bums--also in scroll form--was recently purchased by The Kerouac Project for $60,000.  The artifact will be housed at Kerouac's old home in Orlando, Florida.

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There's a great piece by Doug Lansky in the Kansas City Star (Missouri, right?) about the (mis)use of English on street signs. 

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NPR plans to webcast the November 30th  Iron & Wine/Calexico show from DC's 9:30 Club. 

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Could it be true: the Decemberists signing with a major label?

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Waste away your workday, but don't cheat!

Just Another Cyber Monday

Nothing says "Happy Anniversary" like a big bowl of melted cheese, not to mention metal skewers.  Elaine and I made it to three years of being a legal and state-certified couple yesterday.  We celebrated with some fondue the night before, but then forgot that yesterday was our anniversary until about midday.  I blame the undercooked meat for my poor memory. Hope everyone else enjoyed our anniversary.  Now these:

The Chicago Tribune takes a look at the seemingly ever-changing definition of "the book" in our electronic culture:

The idea of the book as an inert entity is gradually giving way to the idea of the book as a fluid, formless repository for an ever-changing variety of words and ideas by a constantly modified cast of writers.

One medium that seems to be invading on "the book's" territory, according to the experts, is the blog.  "Blogs are pretty significant. It's a popular art form. It's folk art -- it has the inconsistency, but also the vigor and energy, of good folk art. It's very powerful," says William J. Mitchell, head of the Media Arts and Sciences program at MIT.

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Even though it isn't mentioned in the movie Capote, Monroeville, Alabama, where Truman Capote lived for a short time in his teens and where he met Harper Lee, who still lives there to this day, is taking pride in being the hometown of two of the most famous literary celebrities in the state's history. 

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Speaking of Southern writers, Oxford, Mississippi's mayor--and owner of the amazing Square Books--provides a list  of some of the essential books in the Southern literary canon.

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If you're in the Santa Barbara area this week, you might want to check out the Sartre Centennial Celebration at the UCSB campus:

The celebration will feature a library display showcasing original Sartre manuscripts, a colloquium of renowned international figures, a staged reading of Sartre's play No Exit (“Hell is other people”), and a jazz concert starring two hot local ensembles and a globetrotting French trumpeter.

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Fans of Sylvia Plath are clamoring for a monument to be erected in her honor at her alma mater, Smith College.  [Tasteless commentary deleted.]

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Try your luck at the Globe & Mail's "Great Canadian Literary Quiz" and you could win yourself a nice prize.  I think I would have better luck answering questions about Quantum Physics.

Look Away, Look Away

Well I'll be.  The Associated Press has an interesting article about the changing South.  There's a lot there and for a Southerner who is now on the outside--and way outside considering that many of my Southern kin consider California another separate and very strange country--looking in, I'm always amazed at the relative speed of change happening in Dixie.  Still, if you drive down some of the back-country roads in many parts of Alabama and Mississippi, you'll soon find that the capsule is still in tact.  You'll still find the Confederate flags waving off the front porch of a trailer.  You'll still see the the old man in overalls with the big wad of tobacco in his cheek speaking with a drawl slower than this his walk.  And then you can drive into a neighboring town and see that Martin Luther King Jr. Drive runs its length across railroad tracks that once divided it between black and white, rich and poor, them and us.  That's the kind of change I love seeing.

I miss the South a lot of the time.  I often long for the food, the storytelling, the seeming ease of life that I associate with living there. But after being there for a few days, I'm ready to leave.  I'll always be a Southerner. You can hear it in my speech and sense it in my attitude, but I'm also not Southern anymore.  I'm tainted by my voluntary move away from there.  If I return, I return as a prodigal son.  I'll have to earn my Southerness back.  I'll be like one of those Northerners moving into my parents' neighborhood who can't seem to fit in right away.  They have to go to church or offer up tomatoes from their garden or slip an ain't or a y'all into their conversation.  Perhaps it won't take me as long as it does them.  Who knows.

I'm sure that those kin of mine who have been in Alabama since their birth don't take too kindly to all this talk of a changing South.  Sure, if it boosts the image of the state or the region, that's fine.  If you're asking them to change their ways, you better wait a few years, and then a few years more.  And then maybe you'll see that they've come to accept that their neighbor speaks funny or that they don't eat fried foods with every meal or that they listen to hippie music.  Just remember, no matter how much it appears to change, the more it in many ways will stay the same.

Thankfully

...I'm still around another year to post about being thankful, that cigarettes or car wrecks or crazy co-workers or rabid dogs or life didn't take me away.

...I've made it a week without smokes.  And no one has been subject to the wrath that I feel within.  Yet.

...There's an open Thai buffet not too far from here so that I don't have to cook on Thanksgiving.

...Wilco put together a great live album, which makes for a nice Thanksgiving Day soundtrack.

...I have some great folks who continue to read and comment and email.  I hope you all have a great day and that you don't eat too much, drink too much, too much too much.

...I have a great wife, a sober brother, two wonderful dogs (and a cat), and a 36" TV to keep me sailing through the days.

The Beautiful South

Great news for all of you native, expatriate, and wannabe Southerners out there.  The new issue of Oxford American is out and this time around the theme is Southern Art & Architecture.  From their website:

The Oxford American's SOUTHERN ART & ARCHITECTURE ISSUE marks an OA first. Never before in the history of the magazine have we pursued this enigmatic subject. Our quest, we thought, was simple, but it seemed everyone we consulted--critics, curators, gallerists, museum buffs, etc.--had differing opinions. Because, we now know, art arouses intense passion, from pleasure and ire to all-out warfare. 

Here is the question we set out to answer: Has the South contributed as much to American art as it has to American literature and music? 

We'll let you decide, but please note that we were inspired to add thirty-two pages to what was already a double issue--just so that we could include the revelatory creations--abstract, realistic, wacky, wonderful--we fell in love with. 

The fine folks on the staff at OA sent me a review copy and I must say that it has been a balm for my sore, nicotine-starved brain.  Not being able to concentrate on anything longer than an MTV video, I've been able to sit with this magazine and stare at the great art they've featured in what they're calling the OA Gallery.  One section has works by Southern writers: a photograph by Eudora Welty and paintings by Tennessee Williams, Zelda Fitzgerald, Donald Justice, and Stan Rice.  Scattered throughout are various pieces by Southern artists such as Howard Finster and William Eggleston and dozens of others I'd never heard of.  My favorite piece in the gallery is a photo by Eggleston called "Untitled, Tennessee."  For some reason, it brought to mind a certain Wallace Stevens poem, only with a Nehi bottle instead of a jar.

In addition to the magazine, OA is also opening an online gallery/auction house where you can view and purchase selected pieces.

Finally, some of the must-read articles in this issue deal with Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath of the devastating storm.  One I won't forget is Patty Friedmann's piece, a haunting and touching account of her post-Katrina experience.

Once again, OA has outdone themselves.  And this time around we didn't have to wait so long for a great new issue.

Feast in a Bottle

Jones Soda has their holiday flavors out once again.  This year, they're offering national and regional packs in the following flavors:  Brussels Sprout with Prosciutto, Cranberry Sauce, Turkey & Gravy, Wild Herb Stuffing, Pumpkin Pie, Broccoli Casserole, Smoked Salmon Paté , Turkey & Gravy, Corn on the Cob, and Pecan Pie.

If someone out there is brave enough to try the Brussels Sprout or Smoked Salmon Paté soda, do let us know if you survive.

Staring at the Sea

I missed this Slate article last week while I was in DC, so I thought I would take a few seconds to reveal my first literary crush.  Although I spent a lot of my high school and college days reading and rereading Kerouac, the one book that thrilled me to my marrow was Albert Camus' The Stranger.  And no, I didn't read it because of the Cure song.  In fact, I found out about the song only after I had read the book.  It did send me to the library to check out all the Camus I could find, but none had the same effect as The Stranger. 

As for the article itself, I always have a hard time figuring out when Neal Pollack is being serious.  Is he kidding when he claims Middlemarch as his favorite book from his college days?  Good grief.  That is one book that almost made me reconsider my major.  No offense to the George Eliot fans out there.

Hack

Five smokeless days in the books.  It seems that my body has finally started the slow road to recovery.  At least that's what I hope all of this hacking is.  I completed an online survey about quitting and found out that based on the average number of cigarettes I enjoyed every day I spent 23 days of any given year smoking. Twenty-three days.  Now as if the nicotine fits aren't bad enough, I have the post-nicotine depression to look forward to and the flu-like withdrawal symptoms to deal with.  But I remain strong.

Thanks to everyone for all of the support.  And for your great song recommendations for my compilation project, which I'm calling "Butts and Ashes: A Musical Tribute to Fags."  There's still time to add yours if you haven't already.  Now for some Tuesday morning items you may have missed:

The Stranger talks to New Yorker fiction editor Deborah Treisman and asks her some rather interesting questions, such as:

You recently published a story by Tom Drury about a guy who nearly gets hit on the head by a beer bottle, but doesn’t. I was wondering what your thoughts are on publishing a story about a guy who nearly gets hit by a beer bottle but doesn’t in a time when the country is in a bloody, horrible, intractable war.

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Just when you thought that every subject imaginable had been covered by memoirs, along comes Dwight Thomas' The War Against Toenail Fungus.

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The Scotsman profiles actor Matt Dillon who stars in the movie adaptation of Bukowski's Factotum:

Factotum, which was published in 1975, is one of Dillon's favourite books. But when Hamer, the film's director, approached him with the project the actor initially turned it down. "I was surprised when they offered the part to me. I said, 'Are you sure you got the right guy?' Everybody thought he was this dirty old man, but it turns out when he was my age he wasn't like that at all. The idea of him as a slob was wrong. He just wasn't into material things, but he did like to drink and get laid. The interesting thing is that he wrote all the time - he was a functioning artist and a professional drinker. But very few of us can live like that. The graveyards are full of those who tried."

Meanwhile, I'm still patiently waiting for a San Diego screening of the movie. 

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Two from MeFi: 

• Ka-BOOM! : A Dictionary of Comicbook Words on Historical Principles, Based on the Latest Conclusions of the Most Dubious Wordologists & Comprising Many Hundreds of New Words which Modern Literature, Science & Philosophy have Neglected to Acknowledge as True, Proper & Useful Terms & Which Have Never Before Been Published in Any Lexicon
• FindSounds.com, a free site where you can search the Web for sound effects and musical instrument samples. Take a look at the types of sounds you can find.

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Pioneer musician Link Wray passed away earlier this month.  If you're interested in hearing a Link Wray song as performed by Calexico, you can download "Falling Rain" here.

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Oh good god.  Kate Moss is teaming up with Shane MacGowan for a remake of the Pogues classic "Fairytale in New York."  Hide the hard stuff!

Plug

Nominations for this year's Plug Music Awards have been announced.  For a full list of nominees and a ballot, go here.  To help you in the voting I thought I would run through the list and give the Syntax of Things official endorsements.  Debate welcome!

For Better or for Madonna: The SoT/Ms. SoT Review

Longtime readers of Syntax of Things know that I did not begin this site with the intentions of making it a lit blog or a music blog or any type of blog.  Instead, I was looking for a way to keep my relationship with my wife a happy and healthy one.  Elaine (Ms. SoT) describes me as an opinionated snob, as someone who can hurt another's feelings without intending just by saying how bad or dumb or worthless another book or movie or, most often, musician might be.  Of course, I usually preface my opinions with the fact that they are just that.  But Elaine tends to take things personally and our dinner conversations would often end in silence after a promise to never bring up music or movies or anything ever again.

Thus, over two years ago, I opened up a Blogger account.  At the time, I intended to make it a place to share my opinions without constraint.  Of course, I realized that my wife would be reading, so I felt a need to hold back some.  I knew that one thing especially could collapse the blog's fourth wall and add to a continuing and often ugly argument that we inevitably would have.

Madonna.

Elaine loves Madonna.  For her, the Material Girl is an icon, a happy part of an often sad childhood.  She recalls spending Saturday evenings inventing dance routines and lipsynching along to an entire Madonna album. I knew the consequences of trampling on this idol, but I couldn't avoid it.

Now that she has a new album out, Confessions on the Dance Floor, I've decided to prove that I'm willing to open my mind, if only just a small crack, and try out that which I most dislike.  And to further prove that I'm not all about slamming Esther, I've asked Elaine to temper my review with one of her own.  So below, you'll find the first ever Syntax of Things dueling review.  Keep in mind that I could only bear to listen to this CD once, so I wrote as I listened. Also remember that I recently quit smoking, and I had to fight more than a nicotine fit once this album was over.  That said, I'll step aside and let my amazing wife give a brief introduction.

Your Help Appreciated (The LHB Update)

As a sort of farewell to a longtime companion, I'm trying to put together a music compilation full of songs about cigarettes, but with my brain still fried by the need for nicotine (though it is starting to ease somewhat three days removed from my last smoke) I'm having a hard time coming up with much to put on there.  So far, I can think of only two songs: Dramarama's "Last Cigarette" and The Smithereens "Cigarette".  I guess I could extend this to smoking in general, such as "Smoking in the Boy's Room." 

So, if you need some homework for this weekend, give me a few suggestions.  It doesn't have to be in the title or the main theme of the song, just a nice mention of cigarettes or smoking or quitting.  I'll post the results and possibly the compilation once I've put it together.

UPDATE:  Moving the songs up from the comments section and adding some songs I remember or have searched out:

"Last Cigarette", Dramarama
"Cigarette", Smithereens
"Another Puff," Jerry Reed (Bonnie)
Quitting Smoking Song," Princess Superstar (Bonnie)
"Nicotine and Alcohol," Mark W. Winchester (Bonnie)
"Stop Smoking," Rich Medina (Bonnie)
"The First Time I Quit Smoking," Tommy Mandel (Bonnie)
"You Cannot Quit Smoking," Nathan Asher & the Infantry (Bonnie)
"One Cigarette Away," the Supersuckers (Vargas)
"Three Cigarettes in an Ashtray", Patsy Cline
"Love Is Like a Cigarette", kd lang
"Crooked Cigarette", Rev. Horton Heat
"Smokin'", Joni Mitchell
"Another Puff", Jerry Reed
"Good Year for the Roses", Elvis Costello (Jenny)
"I Hope That I Don't Fall in Love With You," Tom Waits (Cynthia)
"A Day in the Life," The Beatles (Cynthia)
"Cigarettes Will Kill You," Ben Lee
"Smelling Cigarettes," Fiery Furnaces
"Cigarettes," Greg Dulli
"Dead Man's Cigarettes," I Am Kloot
"Cigarettes and Alcohol," Oasis
"Cigarettes and Coffee," Otis Redding
"More Cigarettes," The Replacements (how could I have forgetten this one???)
"Deckchairs and Cigarettes," The Thrills
"Red Vines," Aimee Mann (Carolyn)
"The Hymn for the Cigarettes," Hefner (Carolyn)
"Ashtray Monument," Jawbreaker (Scott)
"Chesterfield King," Jawbreaker (Scott)
"Rock and Roll Suicide," David Bowie (Levi)
"Cigarette," Lael Alderman (Lauren)
"Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! (That Cigarette)," Tex Williams (Jim)
"Can't Hardly Wait," the Replacements (Matt)
Lambchop's entire album, How I Quit Smoking (Joel)
"Last Cigarette," Boo Hewerdine (Craig)
"Jesus Etc." Wilco (Sami)
"Cigarette," Ben Folds Five (Sami)
"What She Said", The Smiths (Ear Farm)
"Cigarette Dangles", The Pursuit Of Happiness (Lalitree)
"Cancer," Joe Jackson (Kurt)
"Little Jimmy," The Who (JS)
"Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk", Rufus Wainright (Susanne)
"Cigarettes, Whiskey, and Wild, Wild Women", Buck Owens (Susanne)
"Asshole", Dennis Leary (Susanne)
"Cigarette In Your Bed," My Bloody Valentine (Aaron)
"Nicotine Bomb," Mission of Burma (Aaron)
"Cigarette Sandwich," The Scud Mountain Boys (Rolfster)

One Day Down

I've met misery and its name is Nicotine Fit.  The gum is helping but not enough so that I don't constantly think of wanting to light one up.  Ah well.  Perhaps the weekend will give me needed distance and a lessening since of need.

"The passion readers used to feel for venturing into the serious novel has withered," Norman Mailer said in his speech accepting the NBA's honorary medal for lifetime achievement.

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"[T]he barbarians are at the gate, and the dominant mercantile culture welcomes them," Lawrence Ferlinghetti said in his speech accepting the NBA's first ever Literarian Award for outstanding service to the world of literature.

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The Mobile Register's Books columnist John Sledge has more on the Brad Vice plagiarism controversy, including this from an email that Vice sent to him explaining the situation:

I borrowed about 20 lines of description from Carmer's book and scattered them through the text of my story because I wanted my characters to see what he saw. Later at the cross burning scene I borrowed a hate speech a Klansman makes. Since I studied Carmer's book as a work of nonfiction I thought this speech had a truth value apart from Carmer ... I thought I was paying homage to Carmer. I worked hard for over fours years on this story. No real writer wants glory for another writer's work. But few of us work from whole cloth, either. I have mentioned Carmer in a public reading of the story at the 2004 Mississippi Philological Association and in print. ... And yet for all this, it doesn't change the fact that because I was ignorant of the rules of fair use I didn't acknowledge him directly in the print acknowledgments of the book. I deeply regret this and I deeply regret any harm and embarrassment I've caused.

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Here's another sign o' the times:  A British mobile phone service plans to condense classic literature into SMS text messages:

John Milton's epic poem "Paradise Lost" begins "devl kikd outa hevn coz jelus of jesus&strts war." ("The devil is kicked out of heaven because he is jealous of Jesus and starts a war.")

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The controversial San Diego high school literary magazine that raised the ire of local parents and educators because it published revealing photos of students in its pages has won a best of show award from the National Scholastic Press Association.

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Check out Discovering Dickens for pdf or paper versions of the original serialized editions of Charles Dickens' novels Hard Times, A Tale of Two Cities, and Great Expectations, complete with illustrations. {via}

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Information Leafblower has revealed his annual survey of music bloggers listing the top 40 US bands in 2005.  Normally, I wouldn't gripe about such things, but I'm still having a hard time figuring out the Sufjan Stephens craze.  And how the hell does Wilco dip that far down the list, below Kelly Clarkson?  Wilco's new live album should be generating enough "buzz" to lift it a little higher.

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If The Nationals squared off against Clap Your Hands Say Yeah in a soccer match, what would the outcome be?  Well, it happened. 

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Finally, because I feel that I need to give back due to the fact that so much has been given to me lately, I give you something that will surely make your Friday brighter if you're a My Morning Jacket fan:

My Morning Jacket - "Rocket Man"

DC Flickr'd

I've put up my DC photos if you care to view them.  Mostly a bunch of shots of buildings that you've seen a bunch of times before.   Please excuse the fingerprint smudge in some of them. 

Vollmann Victory

Congrats to Vollmann for his National Book Award win.  This photo, however, is priceless.  "So Joan, can I show you how I grieve?"

Return of the SoT

So first, a confession:  I didn't say or do anything to Newt Gingrich.  At first, I wasn't even sure it was him.  He was actually standing next to me in the queue as we waited for an older couple to finish making complete arses of themselves over some oversized carry-on bags.  I kept looking at him and saying to myself, "Man, that really looks like Newt.  This is DC.  We are flying to Atlanta.  Must be Newt."  He boarded ahead of me thanks to his "first class" status.  By the time I made it into the cabin he was in his seat with some papers in his lap.  The line paused long enough so that I was able to read "Newt Gingrich" typed across the top margin.  My one politician sighting in DC was a Newt.  Great.

Also, I think I may have spotted Hall of Famer Phil Niekro in a Starbucks near the White House.  This one I had no way of confirming and I'm not the type to walk up to a stranger and ask.  But he looked like what I imagine Phil would look like these days and he had those stooped shoulders and was wearing a Rockies baseball hat.  I don't know if the latter proves anything, but I do seem to remember Phil coaching a women's professional baseball team called the Colorado Silver Bullets.

Okay, a second confession:  The official quit day was moved to today.  It was something of a strategic decision.  I didn't want to spend my birthday fighting a nicotine fit.  Please, don't take this as a sign of weakness at the outset.  I have the nicotine gum ready and by the time this post goes live, I'll be well into my first day as a former smoker.

Speaking of my birthday, I won't bore you with the details of the nice presents and well-wishes that I received, but one in particular is noteworthy.  My amazing wife got me the new Madonna album. For her birthday, I think I'll get Elaine Padres season tickets.  {By the way, Madonna sucks.}

One of the true highlights of my trip was meeting up with DC-area resident Dallas Hudgens, author of Drive Like Hell, one of my favorite books of 2005.  We had a nice conversation about Atlanta (his former hometown), music, writers, and the Braves.  The German breakfast wasn't half-bad either. Dallas is a good guy and a promising writer.  If you haven't read his book yet, you should. 

Finally, but not leastly, I would like to extend my gratitude to TJ for filling in for me this week.  His posts were that great combination of insightful and funny and filled Syntax of Things with a nice injection of quality for a change.  I really don't think I could have chosen a better guest host and hope that TJ and I can collaborate on some projects in the future.  Oh, and make sure to visit Creekside Review where TJ will keep you in the know about all things Iowa and beyond.

Lagging

I've landed safely on California soil.  A full update and details of the trip (and some thank yous) to follow once I've fully celebrated my birthday.  Actually, the only thing I want at this moment is a long nap.  Most years I wouldn't want to sleep away the precious minutes of Jeff Day, but since I've picked up three hours thanks to the time change, I'll make good use of them by making sure that the bed still accommodates my shape.  By the way, what would you do if you were sharing a plane with Newt Gingrich? 

Before I go, here's the best present I've found on my maxed out Bloglines: YANP has a new Flaming Lips video. 

See you in the morning.

The Tale of the $500 and Nic O'Teen

TJ's last day:

As you read this, our intrepid host is drumming his fingers on a pleather chair, waiting for his flight to be called, wondering just when it was exactly that airports stopped letting you smoke inside them, but grateful they did because it removes the choice to smoke for him for the next ten to twelve hours of this day, his first day of not smoking, and his thirty-fifth birthday. Bend your thoughts to this gum-chewing traveler and wish him a safe trip, a good birthday, and as smooth a transition over the next weeks as quitting smoking can bring.

Or, you know, you could leave a comment, if you're not the thought-bending type.

In honor of Jeff's decision, I'll share a quitting smoking story. Let it be a cautionary tale that tells the quitter you're never safe from the Snare of Nic O'Teen.

I smoked from the age of 15 to the age of 30. Half my life with half a dozen quit attempts in there. The most successful and most shameful attempt came in the spring of my (first) senior year. My grandparents knew everyone in my family smoked and having quit themselves ten or fifteen years before, wanted us to quit, too. They offered $500 to anyone in the family who would quit for three months.

I took the offer. I had nothing to lose. I didn't have to pay them $500 if I smoked. But there I was at college--how would they know if I really had. This was going to be my big moment of honor. I really did quit. Cold turkey. I told all my friends and they helped me not slip up, although, the promise of the $500, and more importantly, a definable goal, a time limit of three months made it oddly easy not to smoke. I think on like the night of day 3 or 4, I got pretty drunk in a bar and never once reached for a cigarette. I thought the next morning if I could make it through that, the next three months would fly by.

The months flew by. I was running again, mitigating the inevitable weight gain. At three months, my grandparents came up to school and took my girlfriend and me out to dinner. They presented me with a check and made a big speech about how proud they were that I'd done it. They believed that I'd been honest about it over the three months and I had. I thanked them for helping me, for making it so easy to quit. I told them how glad I was I had quit smoking and it was true.

Two weeks after the cashing of the $500 check and I still hadn't smoked. I had quit. But my girlfriend at the time had never stopped smoking. She was one of those social puffers, not a believer like so many of us are, but not just a "only when I drink" type, either. This hadn't bothered me over the three months, hadn't been a problem.

One warm spring Iowa evening after a big meal, more than three months since a cigarette had come anywhere near me, I was walking her back over to her dorm when I asked her for a cigarette. "These are the times," I said, "that I miss it most. When I'm at my most comfortable and content. The perfect cap. It's like a way to recognize the moment."

She didn't give a shit, not much for the poetic or the philosophical. She handed me a Marlboro Light and her lighter. "Are you sure about this?" she asked, after putting it in my hand. A weak attempt at finding absolution, I suppose now.

"Yep." I was so cocky. "I've quit. It's been three months." And then I repeated the lie that Nic O'Teen whispers in your ear so quietly that you believe you thought it up yourself: "I can have one." And that one? I didn't really even enjoy it. It tasted cloudy, like stuffing my mouth with dirty cotton. Nothing of the old pleasures were in it except the familiarity of the motions. But the one I had three days later was a little better, and the five I had at the bar a couple days after that were great. Habitual. Permitted.

Two weeks after that, I bought my first pack of Marlboro Reds in four months, deeply disappointing myself, my grandparents, and the rest of my family who now thought I'd lied about the season I'd quit, as well, just for the money.

It was another eight years--and how many years off my life--before I'd seriously try to quit again.

The moral is clear and serious: You're never safe. You're always a smoker who doesn't smoke. My grandmother told me once that if she found out she had 6 months to live the first thing she'd do is buy a pack of cigarettes. She hasn't smoked since Reagan's first term. The desire never goes away. The trick is to always say no and let those no's pile up so that any future yes is a thumb in the eye of all the previous no's.

You know, some clown can give you all the advice in the world. You can read brochures, look at pictures of black lungs, men holding microphones to holes in their throats, join support groups like Quitnet. But those are all rationalizations and it's just as easy to rationalize smoking.

I'm not a very Zen person, but I believe this little koan: To not smoke you have to not smoke. Every time.

It Really Does Make One Feel Inadequate

Flying back tomorrow, quitting smoking tomorrow also.  And have I mentioned that tomorrow is my birthday? 

{Note: the Washington Mall is nice, but couldn't they have a trolley or something that goes around it.  Damn, all that walking nearly killed me.  And one loses all sense of perspective.  The Capital looks so close to the Wash Monument until you start walking toward it.  Then it seems to retreat.  Next thing you know, it's in Delaware.}

Link Punching

Howdy, y'all. This here's TJ with your link roundup. Yeehah.

Okay, no more of the voice. I used it in honor of the Cowboys who had a lot of luck on their side last night. The Eagles played a superior game throughout and with one late-in-the-game interception, they gave those bearers of a historically inaccurate stereotype for a team name a chance to win.

A confession that will shock most readers: I've never really liked the Cowboys.

Another confession: When I was way older than I should have been to be confused about this, my frustrated older brother tried to explain first downs to me. "So if it's the second play, why don't they just call that the second down?" "So they don't run out. They only get four." "But these guys have made at least half a dozen plays just on this possession." "That's because they keep getting first downs." "But it's their sixth down."

That was the first and only time my brother tried to explain that to me. I'd like to offer this public apology now to my brother. When I learned why I was so frustrating on this issue, I felt pretty bad. Sorry, Todd.

Okay, on with the links:

I've been going to Chicago resident Robert Duffy's Donewaiting for a couple weeks now. A good tip on some relatively local music news. (It's a sad day when I consider a four-hour drive on a good traffic day to be "local." But there it is, a sad day.) He pointed out that Pitchfork's got ten pages of awful album covers. Absolutely worth a quick spin. Go for the pictures, leave before you actually read some overwrought writing about music.

You think Fark has good photoshop contests? Check this one out. Today's famous photoshopped into ads and pictures from other eras. There are some people out there with way too much time on their hands. But their obsessiveness is our reward. Here's Scarlett J hawking some Lady Clairol. There's another one far down the page with the Kennedy family all around the same age. Creepy.

It's kind of an old link, but one I'm still digging through. Harmonium came up with a decent set of music blogs. Some you probably already hit, some you might not. Bust out your bookmarkin' skeelz. One of my new favorites is Gorilla vs. Bear. I'm liking this Travis Hopper fellow. He's almost got a pretty good first name. That's a start.

And unfortunately, since Madonna causes cancer and all, I won't be posting any links to all the GREAT reviews I'm sure her new album's going to get. No one's going to use words like "over-produced," "washed-up" or "sad, pathetic attempt at one last self-reinvention before the chemicals holding her body parts together dissolve and leave her a shell of a former '80s pop icon." I'm sure no one will say that. Good luck, Madge. At least you don't get arrested for touching little boys and subjecting us all to a long legal battle. For that we can be thankful.

Be careful out there everybody. Do some good. Yeehah.

Numb

A brief post from a man with no feeling in his feet, and without being able to feel my feet, how am I going to dance to the new Madonna album which hits iTunes today and U.S. music stores tomorrow?  I wish I had time to download it (I also rubberneck at car wrecks, by the way), but I've barely had a spare minute in between meetings and gorging myself on the delectable finger foods provided by the hotel where the meetings are being held.  If it were just one or two meetings, that would be one thing, but six meetings yesterday with the same finger foods in each, gasp.  If you are what you eat, I'm a big middle finger right now. 

Speaking of middle fingers, Dubya was attending church a block away from where my meetings were being held.  I didn't know it at the time, so the presence of all of those police cars and secret service people and all of it within sight of the White House was a little disconcerting. 

That's it for now.  Hope you're enjoying the TJ posts as much as I am.  Before TJ, I always thought that Iowa was a county in Illinois.  Now, it seems so much more than that. 

It Beats for You

(TJ again, in for the traveling Jeff, who informs me is working 14 days right now but is eagerly anticipating flying home on Wednesday, his birthday . . .)

I think one of the most revolutionary changes the internet has effected hasn't been in what books I read or what movies I see (though its influence is still felt there--Netflix, anyone?), but in the music I listen to and buy, and even the way I listen to music.

Of course, burns and mixes being physically passed has made exposure to new stuff much easier. But it's that all my music sits on a hard drive makes moving from artist to artist, album to album, so simple.

All this and more

ends up here:

I don't know why I felt like I needed to graphically represent this. I'm just having a renewed appreciation for my camera, I guess.

Anyway, having hundreds of hours worth of music a mouse-click away and more to grab from the hundreds of bloggers, streaming tracks on the MySpace pages, band sites, live show downloads, etc. at worst makes me schizophrenic, at best lets me grow an inch deep and a mile wide on what I've missed over the last years and what's coming up. I say schizophrenic because while I love "shuffle," it can make me very impatient with an album--even the ones I love. In the car, I can cycle through three or four CD's in one errand-running session. It's much harder for one artist's album to get regular repeats.

I can't be alone in this.

That's why recommendations in music, I think, carry so much more weight with me than they used to. If someone is so taken with an album that they're compelled to tell me about it and they remember to make a point of it, I'm way more likely to give something a shot these days. Same goes for a music blogger or mp3-J (I geekily call them): They've gone to the trouble of making a post, I've liked their other choices, I'll give them a shot.

All this is the long way around to pointing out something Jeff mentioned a few days ago. My Morning Jacket's new album Z has been in constant rotation for me from front to back. This is my introduction to this band, but I understand they have a jam band reputation coming into this album which is being hailed as a departure/growth for the band. At this point, their sound is both unlike anything I've ever heard and reminiscent of strange and not quite apt associations: I hear everything from Steely Dan to the Allman Brothers to the Cure and the Smiths in here.

I'm a hack when it comes to trying to describe music. And so are a lot of other people. Music writing is tough. And this is my point. If someone tries to tell you to check a band out you used to have to remember until the next time you were in a record shop, now you can just right-click and save-as and decide for yourself. My MBA-having friends call it a point-of-sale decision, I think. Far more effective at getting someone to buy. Picture the batteries and candle lighters and mints and candy bars stacked up around the checkout aisle at Target. Hope you like:

My Morning Jacket - "Knot Comes Loose"

. . . And as far as the Come to Iowa! link goes, first I'll say MMJ is coming nowhere near here, which is bad, but if you have a dog and you live in Iowa City, he or she can spend the day at Lucky Pawz and hang out with other dogs, which is good. Each day the staff posts pictures on the site of your dog and the other dogs having fun. They even celebrate Halloween there. Hilarious. (via IC blogger Grendel at Earthgoat, since I don't have a dog and had no idea this place existed)

From Books to Movies

Still TJ:

No pictures of cats today. Sorry to befoul your front page with a non-dog, Jeff. I'm sure Homer will reclaim his rightful place soon enough.

Since there was a little book talk yesterday, I thought I'd focus on movies today. First, a confession: I have to consciously use the word "movies" instead of "films" in an effort not to sound pretentious. This is the Midwest, you know.

Most of the time I'm talking about big studio stuff (little makes its way this far in from the coasts past Chicago or Denver or down from Minneapolis) that is either the guiltiest of pleasures like Saw II or a movie that has the cachet of edginess or independence but still gets major distribution like Serenity or A History of Violence. Did you know there's now a production studio called the Warner Independent Group? It's like Bob's McDonald's. Weird. I like to wash down my cognitive dissonance with a shamrock shake.

Anyway, on with the shoe.

You think publishers are tied to the rack by Ingram and Barnes & Noble? Check this aside in a story about the financial woes of those poor big movie studios: "More than a third of all DVD's (and more than 50 percent of some titles) are sold at Wal-Mart stores." Wow. And another third gets split by Amazon, Target, and Best Buy, I'll wager.

Also from the Times a good piece on the growth of experimentation in storytelling, the fracturing of narrative from traditional third-person limited, in a sense, to a greater omniscience. The piece mostly reminds me that I really want to see Syriana. It's Traffic, but oil instead of drugs, ran the studio pitch, I'm sure. Should be terrific.

I used to try and play Filmbrain's movie quiz, but the stills he puts up are like questions on the English lit GRE subject test, if you hadn't read the book, you could never answer the question. That's why I like Cinephiliac's weekly quiz. You need to have a pretty solid base of movies and sometimes you're hosed, but there's always a thread that binds the stills that can give you a clue to the one you don't know. There's also usually some kind of play on the movie's title, too. Check this one out, scroll down to Round 1, Game 4. The answers are "The Blot" for "The Blob," "Last Horse on the Left" for "Last House on the Left," and "Blood and Black Face" for Bava's "Blood and Black Lace." The other thing that's cool about his quiz is that it's not a race to get your answer in. You've always got a week. New quiz and answers to last week go up on Mondays.

And the requisite Come to Iowa! link: Football games are dangerous for fans, too!

What You Never Get Here: A Picture of a Cat

Another TJ post:

Is there anything better than an aimless surf and link grab on an early Saturday morning? The house is quiet, the coffee is strong, the cat is stalking squirrels who just--don't--care:

In anticipation of driving Syntax, I've been trying to grab some links of interest to share. Of course I haven't remembered where I found them, so sorry for the lack of attribution.

A couple years ago, a friend introduced me to a website that mapped connections between bands and each band's particular sphere of influence on other bands. A really gorgeous site that had an unmemorable name/address and, of course, has now vanished down the memory hole. But, I've found one that's not nearly so graphic-intensive for literature. Check out the Literature Map. For instance, do a search on a name like Tom Robbins and you get some interesting associations you may or may not agree with and some you do: Vonnegut, yes--Bukowski, not so much. Italo Calvino gets you your requisite Marquez and Joyce, but also a surprise that makes sense if you think about it: Don DeLillo. Fun stuff.

Another fun literature site to fill in some gaps in your classics quickly. Well, maybe not fill in so much as increase your ability to know the general arc of some classics. Well, maybe just a chance to laugh at someone's condensation (condensing?) of literary giants: Book-A-Minute Classics. My favorites are Calvino's Winter's Night, "The Yellow Wallpaper," Gravity's Rainbow, and the collected works of e.e. cummings.

Pearl Jam--remember them?--is close to releasing a new album. Just don't ask what the title is. A friend brought this argument up again the other day and it may be part of a much longer post--or a doctoral dissertation--on whether the bands of our (okay, my) early to mid-20s can still bring the rock. That is, have money and middle age slowed them down or is it the listener and taste that's changed? Soundgarden (i.e., Chris Cornell, Audioslave), Pearl Jam, Foo Fighters, Chili Peppers . . . They're still releasing albums but are they bringing the A-game like they used to bring? Thoughts? What other bands am I forgetting?

And, in my quest to expose you all to all-things-Iowa, Anamosa elects a city council member in a squeaker: 3 votes to 2 votes.