Syntax of Things

I think this is really about something else...

Although I'm not a NASCAR fan, I grew up in Bristol. I appreciate the good things the races bring as well as the bad, and I've gone through the Speedway Fantasy in Lights for charity during the Christmas season.  This is my favorite display:

I think everyone laughs at this.

They're embracing the movie, broad as it is.

So let me say...

Dude...

You'll only attract what you fear. 

Don't get mad at Junebug, for example. Get mad at the people who presume to defend us.

/dev/Wild_Things

And it was still hot...

I've been following the stories about the film adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are here and there, but I've either fallen behind or nothing new's really been happening. But there's one thing I think people could be missing - there's a Delpy/Hawke/Linklater-like sequel already in print, although  film rights are something I have no insight on.

Follow me:

A room (with a wall missing for viewers) begins to become overgrown with vegetation, turning into a forest.  A young man (albeit different young man) confined to a room for (perceived) misbehavior adapts using his imagination to create a separate living space.

Max + 30 years = Plowing the Dark by Richard Powers.

I think Sendak writes better dialogue, but still...

My finder's fee is pretty reasonable, I think.  Spike Jonze, Tom Hanks, call me.

This first hit me while watching a classmate at my low-res MFA program give his grad lecture on Sendak.  I don't know if it's *because* I was attending art school late in my 30s but these kind of links/epiphanies that occur 30 years beyond have become one of the things I treasure *about* my MFA.

I had similar thing happen when I rented Bunuel's That Obscure Object of Desire - during the Fernando-Rey-cries-over-the-girdle scene, it hit me I had tried to watch it on scrambled  Showtime 2 decades before - a frustrated* adolescent got an amplified experience of the film, physical insight into Bunuel via Mathieu, despite thinking I was getting soft-porn.  And it only took 20-some years to realize it.

*to say the least.

My microwave jonnycakes are ready...

Over at GalleyCat, Mr. Hogan points out the latest round of "I think it would go something...like this."

In the wrong hands, it *is* a bit hard to stomach.  But in the right hands, it can produce my favorite TV commercial of the past year - the bottom one, although I enjoy them both.

[Don't] Talk English to me

I'm not sure how many of you actually plan on seeing The DaVinci Code in theaters this weekend - after all, some of our great movies come from airport fiction.  But, if you're like me, there's one big reason to avoid it.

Audrey Tautou will be speaking English.

Whoever wrote her biography says she speaks excellent English and I have no reason to doubt that, but having seen the trailers (and, to be fair, not having seen Dirty Pretty Things), I worry that those of us with gut-wrenching crushes could be in for a big letdown. 

I'm talking on the Irene Jacob scale.

Many ESL actresses have made the jump just fine as far as I'm concerned. Binoche, Delpy, Deneuve, Moreau.  But we've also seen Huppert and, to a lesser extent, Parillaud and, if you want to extend out to Spanish, Cruz.

No one provoked more tunnel vision and irrational fantasies for me in the early '90s than Irene Jacob.  Au Revoir Les Enfants, Veronique, and Red - the latter still makes my heart thump my chest like an angry neighbor.  But then there was Othello and U.S. Marshalls and even more examples since.

Is it the director? Do the subtitles add to a performance? Do they have an approach to acting that butts up against language? Does all acting butt up against language like this? What do you think?

Let me ask in another, more positive way - can some actors move beyond language to the point it really isn't an issue?

Is Dirty Pretty Things gonna be okay for me?  Can Audrey pull it off?

And You who is responsible for releasing La Double vie de Veronique on DVD, lets get on that. 

I guess today can be movie day...

From Nerve:

Which character from Strangers with Candy are you?

I'm Tammy Littlenut.  I think I'll go stare at my naked self in the mirror for a while.

The former DuPonter in me...

feels the need to address a safety issue.  Even though I never thought two of these posts would include both hockey and David Foster Wallace, I guess now's a good a time to address the Dippin' Dots issue - the MIRV of concessions.

This is DFW from "Getting Away From Already Pretty Much Being Away From It All"

"The countergirl sits on a tall stool shrouded in dry-ice steam and is at most thirteen years old, and my Press Credentials for the first time make someone's eyes widen, and we get free samples, little cups of what seem to be tiny little ice-cream pellets, fluorescent BB's that are kept, the countergirl swears to God, at 55 degrees below 0 -- Oh God she doesn't know whether its 0 C or 0 F; that wasn't in the DIPPIN DOTS training video.  The pellets melt in your mouth, after a fashion.  More like evaporate in your mouth.  The taste is vivid, but the Dot's texture's weird, abstract. Futuristic.  The stuff's intriguing but too Jetsonian to really catch on.  The countergirl spells her last name for us and wants to say Hey to someone named Jody in return for the samples."

This is Jimmy Beck, from Game 2 - Montreal vs Carolina

"Freezer burn."

I'm not really complaining about people's tastes in industrial sweets. After all, I'm one of those people who like Circus Peanuts.  If you like eating what looks like Play-Doh shat out of a rabbit, then follow your bliss.  And I'm also someone with dog hair tumbleweeds all over the house -- not a neat freak.  But I have to think these things pose something of a safety hazard.

Normal ice cream, when dropped by a small child negotiating a steep arena staircase, will normally splat and sit politely on its one stair, maybe melting and dripping a bit.  The dots however, because they're very cold and very round, will roll *E  v ER  Y  w H E r e*!  Like edible marbles.  Many of them will go as far as gravity and the conservation of momentum will allow.  Beer doesn't travel this far.

*THEN* they melt.  The poor maintenance people have 10 stairs and associated sticky under-the-seat floors to mop, often while the puck's in play.  All from what looks like an 8 oz cup.

These things have been the ice cream of the future for at least 15 years. Surely we can come up with some sort of containment vessel of the future.  I propose the ubiquitous latte sippy-cup plastic top.  Take a lesson from Pez or Pixie Stix. A styrofoam tube. Something. Besides, the little spoon looks downright frustrating to me.

Am I missing the point? Were these things designed to bounce off people and clothes to avoid staining?

monkeys typing

When someone accused of plagiarism responds with explanations involving unintentional copying or "internalizing" or even just coincidence, I usually don't believe them, mostly because of the number of instances per offender.  However, I thought I'd share an experience with you, just to keep in the back of your head.

Early in my attempts at fiction, I was paired with a Generous Writer at a conference and had submitted, among other things, a little two-pager thing that included a paragraph describing a mom driving in the evening with two young boys in the back seat. They hit a swarm of lightning bugs. Bugs smeared under the wipers and the windshield glowed and everyone gasped, of course.  I'd been inspired by a similar thing with a single lightning bug one evening.

The Generous Writer explained patiently that a lot of writers had used lightning bugs. I nodded and took note.

Some of you, at this point, may know where this is going.

A few months later, GW happened to be in town for an extended period and we'd kept in touch.  One evening I asked about the lightning bugs again. "I know about Mark Richard," I said. "But who are some of the others?"

GW replied, "I can't think of them right now, but they're out there."  Since I was more curious than disappointed, that answer was just fine by me. I'd keep an eye out.

A month or so later, an out-of-print book by GW arrived and I began to read. 

I came across a section describing an elderly woman driving two young boys through a swarm of lightning bugs. One hits and smears on the windshield under the wipers.

I. Was. Mortified.

So I shot off a midnight email apologizing for the awkward positon I must've put the GW in.  The email was likely more cringe-inducing than the event that provoked it.

A few weeks later, I went to a GW reading. Afterward, I calmly apologized for the email.  GW claimed the email never arrived. *

So last spring I'm reading a new GW collection and suddenly I come across a character with my name who gets struck and killed by a car.

Yes, that last sentence is waaayyy oversimplified but I'm just doing it for fun and to help make a point.  I know at least part of that story was written before we ever met. And even if my name *is* borrowed, it'd be hard to find a more flattering character to share a name with.**

What I'm saying is - sometimes this stuff happens.  Just not repeatedly. To the same person.  In the same piece.  Although I'm open to the idea that I'd read the story somewhere, I really don't know where that could've happened - the book was out of print since I'd started writing and even reading more seriously.  Maybe it was reprinted somewhere. Still, I'm chalking it up to summer evenings with lots of insects.

Needless to say, that story is dust. Even without the embarrassing part, it'd be gone.

*GW - I don't believe a word of that (in the nicest way) but I appreciate your ability and desire to rid me of the discomfort. And the recommendations that came after.

**Actually, I *am* mentioned on page 168 (if memory serves) of Dawn of the Vampire by William Hill. Not flattering or unflattering - just gratuitous. But appreciated, especially since many of my other high school friends-as-characters in that book end up dying or turning undead in unsavory ways.  It's the kind of one-line thing that would give me a headache if I were an editor.

Fantasy Novel

Back in '98, I tried fantasy hockey with a team named Les Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents (AFR). Well, they might as well have been in wheelchairs, the way they played.

But since I'm glutton for punishment, I thought I'd try another fantasy hockey team, this time manned with namesakes of my favorite writers.

Thank god I'm 10 years too late for Jim (Peter) Carey.

Let's see:

Evgeni (Vladimir) Nabokov
Johan (Jonathan) Franzen
Anson (Angela) Carter
Ryan (Arthur) Miller
Chris (Tom) Drury
Tom (Scott) Fitzgerald
Dominic (Lorrie) Moore
Greg (Denis) Johnson
Brent (Denis) Johnson

uh...
Doug (Tim) O'Brien  (7 minutes career ice time)

hmm...

Sidney (Norm?) Crosby

The league is crawling with Czechs and not one Kundera.

So I need some help.  Anybody?

Be gentle...

I just wanted to say thanks to Jeff for having the confidence to invite me into your lives.  Even though my paying job has involved routers and little pieces of the Internet for over 15 years, the actual coding of content is something new to me.  I'm like the guy who builds roads but can't drive a car. If such a guy exists.

So I appreciate your patience.

I met Jeff when he asked to borrow an unused chair showed up at my Storm Squad fan fiction group at the Barnes and Noble.

The Storm Squad - trailblazing *and* controversial.

Substitute

I have to mosey on up to the Garden State for the rest of the week to take part in a little training for my new job.  I've asked regular reader and all around good guy George Kaplan to step in while I'm away.  I'll leave it to him to introduce himself, but I do know that he hates Dippin' Dots, especially in the hands of young kids. 

I'll be back by Monday at the latest.

Gifted

If any of you are waiting for recommentations on what to get for the baby, I'd like to point this out as a possibility:

The interplay is part of eight hours of audiotapes of Kerouac, considered one of the main literary voices of the Beat movement, that will be up for auction June 3 by a Greenwich autograph dealer.

In addition to the tapes, Kerouac's treasured 1911 set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, as well as correspondence from Kerouac and his wife, Stella, to Ginsberg and friend and psychiatrist, Dr. Daniel De Sole, said Bill Panagopulos, president of Alexander Autographs Inc.

Okay, so maybe not the best baby present, but I'm thinking that it might be a good "pull present" for the father-to-be during delivery. 

That Was Then

I thought about writing one of those classic five-paragraph essays highlighting the adventures of my six weeks of unemployment now that my period of being unemployed is coming to an end but I've forgotten all about the placement of the thesis statement and probably couldn't come up with a good concluding paragraph seeing as anything that concludes with going back to work could never be good.  And who needs structure like that when I have bullet points?  Oh, and I can't remember much beyond last Friday so I'm only going back that far.  Thus, the highlights of my last weekend of freedom:

• Elaine and I spent a few hours at the Raleigh Farmers Market sampling strawberries and tomatoes and absorbing the deep and true North Carolina flavors--people and produce.  But the real find for us was the NC Seafood Market and Restaurant, where I chose from the menu a large, three-piece sample platter (fried oysters, shrimp, and catfish) and what I got for the $8.99 I paid was so much food that I might be eating seafood for the next two weeks.
• Saturday afternoon, I watched Samone, the laziest cat in the world who until last week spent 23 hours of every day on the end of our bed, become a fearless backyard hunter.  At first, I thought she was crouching low in the high grass going after a bird, but then when she took off, cat quick, and charged a third of the way up a tree I realized that she was going after a squirrel.  She didn't catch it, but she looked quite nimble going after it.
• I bought Elaine her first Mother's Day card.  Ok, a little premature, but I figured I should get in the habit.  Plus, I heard rumor (from Elaine) that a father-to-be these days is expected to buy their wives a "push present" to give to the laboring wife on the day of delivery.  Seriously, what the hell?  Who came up with that absurdity?
• I'd planned on driving the thirty or so miles to Zebulon to take in a Carolina Mudcats baseball game.  But thanks to Richard Grayson and his new collection of short stories I couldn't leave my reading chair.  More about this book tomorrow I hope.
• Thanks to a proud citizen of the Caryon Nation, the true highlight may just come tonight (Sunday) in the form of a ticket to game five between Carolina and New Jersey.  My first NHL game and it's playoff hockey to boot. 

Chop Suey

This is my brother Scott's first contribution to Syntax of Things.  He's now living in Portland, OR, where his pursuit of the perfectly absurd continues unabated.  And I'd like to congratulate him on making me an uncle to a new dog, a pug/pomeranian mix that I'm still having a hard time picturing.  Can't wait to see real pictures.  Thanks Scott.

Big Gay Read

I'm sure you've heard the news that Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City was named Britain's favorite lesbian/gay novel.  For me, the news brought about an interesting question to which I can't find an answer.  Maupin grew up in Raleigh, (yep, North Carolina) so I've spent the last day trying to figure out what to call a citizen of Raleigh.  I thought maybe a Raleighan, but that sounds too much like these guys. I've given up.

Anyone out there know?

Seven Words Too Many Movie Review

Some inanity not even Malkovich can save.

From Elaine:  "Worst movie I have ever seen, ever."

Behind

With all of the talk about publicist and their tactics with litbloggers, I'm reminded that I have a stack of books that have been sent to me by some pretty good and fair publicists and by a couple of writers and these books have been sitting unreviewed in my stack of unreviewed books for too long now.  I'm going to spend the day sorting through everything and the weekend trying to get around to these reviews.  I can't promise anything as this is my last weekend before returning to the full-time work world, but I'll do what I can to at least have some nice, organized stacks lining my room.

A Matt Dillon Nightmare

In my nightmare last night, Officer Matt Dillon arrested me for not liking rap.  Actually, I'm not sure what Matt Dillon was doing in my dream but I think he was there because I spent a few minutes before going to bed looking for information on when Factotum will finally be out in theaters.   For those of you also waiting and wondering, the movie will see limited U.S. release on August 18th, two days after Buk's birthday.  If you can't wait that long, you actually can order the DVD from Amazon UK.  In fact, any readers across the pond willing to send me a copy please let me know.

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As someone who worked in the scientific publishing industry until recently, I'm going to be paying close attention to the Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006, a bill making its way through the U.S. Senate which mandates that federally funded research be made freely available to the tax payers.  Of course, the big journal publishers, including my former employer, are up in arms, but they've already faced down similar challenges and I'm sure they'll throw a lot of lobbying dollars around to make sure that their monopoly on information remains wholly in tact.

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Gwenda points to a NY Times piece on Fairhope, Alabama.  It's a nice article about one of my favorite cities in Alabama.  Fairhope can best be described as an oasis of sanity surrounded by the vast redneck desert.  It's a small town on the eastern shore of Mobile Bay with a couple of really fine bookstores, home to some good very good writers and artists, and they throw one of the best 4th of July fireworks extravaganzas I've ever seen. 

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A UK survey of publishers, booksellers, agents and librarians found that the British book trade is missing out by not paying more attention to the publishing of black and ethnic minorities.

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Pete Lit has finished up the first round of his Tournament of Tunes.  You can see the brackets and read the first round recaps here.  I'm eager to see who will with the Replacements/Camper Van matchup in round two.

In/Out

Two quickies:

First, congratulations to the Virginia Quarterly Review for taking home two National Magazine Awards: the General Excellence and Fiction awards.  The two awards tied them with Time, Esquire, Harper's, Rolling Stone, New York and the New Yorker for most at this year's ceremony.  {Cue Nelson's Haha.}

Second, be sure to check out Gina Frangello's great blogging about her novel My Sister's Continent over at the LBC.  I'm really glad she wasn't upset that I said that the bowels of one of her characters seemed to be the most reliable character in the novel.

Finest Worksong

It's been a while since I shared any music with you, mostly because I seem to always go beyond my bandwidth limit without even trying.  But while I wait for the neurons to adjust to their nicotine starvation, I'm going to rely on music to do the speaking for me.  The other day my wife bought me another copy of R.E.M.'s Document.  While listening to it yesterday I had the realization that I'm getting old.  Can you believe that come September 1st, this album turns nineteen years old?  That means that seniors in high school today were not born when Document was released.  Crikey.

Listening to it again, I'm reminded why I think this is R.E.M.'s best.  It seems to me that Stipe was still searching for his voice as a songwriter until this album, and Berry, Buck, Mills hadn't yet hit their stride as musicians.  It all came together nicely on Document and the boys from Athens, GA, gave IRS a few radio songs while still delivering some classic R.E.M. for their real fans, songs that when listened to again some twenty years later sound as if they could have been written yesterday.  Don't I wish.  And don't we long for those days when an R.E.M. album meant something?

Anyway, if any R.E.M. album had "King of Birds" on it, it would be a good album.  I love this song.  Not only is it my favorite R.E.M. song but it's one of my favorite songs of all-time.  That's why I'm sharing it with you today.

+ R.E.M.-- "King of Birds"

Lyrics below the cut.

Without Merit

For the record, I too dislike rap music.  But I really like Prince's new song about working up a black sweat.  Does that count?

Readfast

Thanks to this helpful site, I now may make my goal of 200 books read in 2006.* Here's tip number seven for how to learn speed reading:

Stop reading to yourself.  As you read you probably subvocalise, or pronounce the words to yourself. Almost everybody does it, although to different degrees: some people actually move their lips or say the words under their breath, while others simply say each word in their heads. Regardless of how you subvocalise, it slows you down. To break the habit, try to be conscious of it. When you notice yourself pronouncing words to yourself, try to stop doing it. It may help to focus on key words and skip over others, or you may want to try humming to yourself in order to prevent subvocalising. One exercise to stop your lips from moving is to hold a pencil in your mouth while you read.

*Kidding.

Clearing the Smoke Screen

I'm going to be off my game for the next few days.  Once again, for the second time in less than a year, I'm attempting to quit smoking.  Most of you will remember the first attempt last November which lasted until Christmas when I fell off the tobacco wagon and landed in a pile of nicotine addiction.  I wish I had a story as good as my pal Ed who smoked his first cigarette in some time and ended up in jail.  But nothing that romantic happened to me.  Actually, it was just a night at a bar in a state that still allows smoking in bars and I couldn't resist the urge.  I promised myself that as soon as I got back to San Diego I would stop again, but on the way home, I found out about the baby.  Soon after, we started planning the move away from San Diego.  It was too much stress for a guy who uses smoking for stress relief. 

Now here I am a few months away from the birth of my baby and I need to make good on my promise to Elaine, to myself, and to my baby that I will give up this habit that's killing me slowly and robbing me of diaper money.  That's why e-mail may go unanswered for the next few days, blog posting will be hit and miss, and if you see me in the streets make sure not to give me that look.  Actually, there's no fear of seeing me around town because I'll be under covers hiding from the baby that keeps crawling across my ceiling. 

And sucking on nicotine lozenges.

No Celebration of Chaos

From Chris Bachelder's U.S.!, a book I absolutely loved.  This is part of the Policies and Guidelines section of a syllabus for an Advance Fiction Writing class taught by a re-resurrected Upton Sinclair:

No romance novels. No fantasy novels. No coming-of-age novels. No father-son hunting trips. No literal vampires (metaphorical blood-sucking is fine). No beach houses. No divorces or affairs. No suburban malaise. No point-of-view stunts. No fragmentation. No gentle fading of the light. No ice cubes rattling in cocktail glasses. No coitus against walls. No ambiguous narrative stances. No subtle shifts. No celebration of chaos. No rhythmic evocations. No irrelevant beauty.

Liquid Inspiration

I've written a lot lately, probably too much, about Monroeville, Alabama, which calls itself the "Literary Capital of Alabama" thanks to its being home to Harper Lee and, for a time, Truman Capote.  Well, it seems they're taking their title a little too seriously:

The idea of "something in the water" in Monroeville that nourishes writing took hold years back. Now, organizers sell "Inspiration" bottled water at the [Alabama Writers Symposium] at $2 a pop. Most people at the conference were amused by the idea of the bottled water, but not convinced the water had much to do with the people linked to the official Literary Capital of Alabama.

According the Alabama Center for Literary Arts (based in Monroeville):

Of course, no trip to Monroeville , Alabama would be complete without picking up a souvenir bottle of Inspiration: Monroeville Writers Water, because with all the talent bubbling forth from Monroeville, “it must be in the water,” as many have said. Even Rick Bragg calls our little town the “cradle of Southern literature.” You, too, might find your muse with a drink from the fountain of literary inspiration, or you might send some bottled  inspiration to your literary friends around the world. It's refreshing, inspiring and 100% naturally Southern.

Good lord...

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The Sunday Times (UK) examines the ever-spreading plague of celebrity books:

The figures are astonishing. Of the top 50 bestselling titles last year in the biography and autobiography category, half were by or about celebrities (broadly defined as anyone whose fame is TV-based). Sharon Osbourne’s book Extreme has become the bestselling hardback autobiography since records began, with more than 600,000 copies sold, followed by David Beckham’s My Side, with more than half a million sales. Sales of celebrity books are growing at an estimated 15 per cent a year....

Celebrity fiction is also booming. A novel is the must-have item for every serious celebrity. Pamela Anderson, Naomi Campbell, Kirk Douglas, Joan Collins, Dolly Parton and Martina Navratilova have all written fiction. Marlon Brando recently published his first novel even though he was, in fact, dead.

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Just how bad has American writing become?  This might give you some idea:

Surveys conducted by the National Commission on Writing, established by the College Board, has found that a third of employees in America's blue-chip companies and a third of state government workers have below-standard writing skills. Remedial writing training costs state governments about $250 million a year and corporations $3.1 billion.

It's not just spelling; it's grammar, punctuation and overall clarity, or lack thereof, combined with the decline of proofreading.

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Literature's classic opening lines vs. a computer grammar-check program:

"Call me Ishmael." -- Herman Melville, "Moby Dick."

Flagged: Ishmael. Not in dictionary. Change to "Fishmeal."

"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect." -- Franz Kafka, "The Metamorphosis"

Flagged: Gregor. Not in dictionary. Change to "Groggier."

More here.

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The Katherine Anne Porter stamp, the twenty-second in the Postal Service's Literary Arts series, will be officially unveiled next Monday during a ceremony in her childhood home of Kyle, Texas.

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Saturday was Freud's 150th birthday and to celebrate The Independent examines his legacy:

It was Nabokov who called Freud "the Viennese quack", and he was just the tip of a vast critical iceberg. Since the great break with Carl Jung, there has been a significant body of dissenters, all vying with each other to question Freud's theories and his methods. The philosopher Karl Popper, who believed that all scientific theories could be falsified by empirical tests, concluded that Freud's work could not be classified as science. The German philosopher Adolf Grünbaum believed that Freud did make falsifiable predictions and that they were indeed proved false. Freud's theories were therefore not just mistaken but scientifically wrong.

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I was told the other day that my blog was doing some strange things, so after reading about a crafts website being hacked by al Qaeda I'm wondering if maybe those hits from Saudi Arabia might be a sign of something fishy going on.

Saturday Morning Madonna Hatin'

Thank you, Ed!  Remember, it takes a village of many to slay a dragon this size:

Honestly, what is Madonna’s purpose these days? How is shallow pout constructive? There were kids at the show climbing up the scaffolding. Yes, I can tell any grandkids I might have that I saw Madonna live. But I’d rather tell them how good Damian Marley was (who I URGE you to see live): a performer who really wanted to entertain the crowd, a band with a fantastic rhythm section, and an act unafraid to shake a political stick.

For these and many other reasons too numerous to dwell upon, it must be averred that Madonna is pretty much useless to American society. One hopes that she will go away, but she can’t and she won’t. What is particularly criminal is that Madonna isn’t even capable of appealing to base instincts anymore. (And that’s saying something, because this assertion comes from a fool who thought he had the stamina of a 22-year-old and was, as a result, found in a supine position, sore and nearly incapable of walking, just before Tool came on. Apparently, twelve hours of live music and almost continuous dancing will do that to you.)

Therefore, it is up to contemporary audiences to reject Madonna in all her myriad forms. Only then can the true musicians begin to rock the planet.