Take a few steps right

So today the world lost Coretta Scott King but gained Supreme Court Justice Alito (and thereby lost Sandra Day O'Connor from the bench).

I think everything just shifted a bit to the right.

I don't have anything particularly funny to say about that.

Job Hunting

I hate cover letters. I say that as though it's something unusual. I've never met anyone who likes them. But then, I never thought I'd meet anyone who liked working retail, then I did. In fact, I now know a few people who sincerely enjoy retail.

I hate retail. That's not unusual either. But I'm starting to come around to cover letters. It's all just a silly marketing campaign. I remember hiring djs for my college radio station. A big plus for those candidates was legibility. If they could fill out an application legibly, that might earn an interview. And the interview process was a bit like the whole snake/spider/puma story: he's more afraid of you than you are of him. We did the interviews in groups because no one wanted to lead it him- or herself. We always struggled for questions, trying to figure out how to not come across as bumbling idiots.

It wasn't until maybe my second year of doing that that I realized how intimidating that might be for the interviewee--a first-year, new on campus, walking into the bomb shelter that was the station (no, really, it was an actual bomb shelter), and then walking into an office full of awkward men throwing bizarre questions at you. We were all a bit like Vincent D'Onofrio on Law & Order, a bit off, possibly knowledgeable, definitely collectively creepy.

I'd rather be like D'Onofrio on L&O than in The Cell, with Jennifer Lopez. That was a bad movie. And he was a complete nutbar in it, with those rings in his back, suspending himself from the ceiling... that was just wrong.

But anyway, cover letters. I've started having more fun with them. If I was reading fifty of these things, all people trying to suck up and sound smart, I'd want something a bit different. I'm writing them in crayon now. Not something crazy like burnt sienna or cornflower, I usually use orange or green. I also put Thundercats stickers on the envelopes. That's a sure-fire hit. I included peanut butter in one, just a teaspoon, because honestly, who couldn't go for some peanut butter right about now? I sent one as a postcard. I just wrote on the back: "Having a great time in Nebraska, everything they said about corn is true, please hire me."

I'm sure the calls will start coming any time now.

Movie review: The 40-year-old Virgin

I liked it.

Book Report: Tony Hoagland's latest

Dear Abby:
My father is a businessman who travels.
Each time he returns from one of his trips,
his shoes and trousers
                                     are covered with blood--
but he never forgets to bring me a nice present;
Should I say something?
                                                                      Signed, America

This is from an otherwise mediocre poem called "Hard Rain," which is the title poem from Tony Hoagland's new chapbook. I'm always about to be done with Hoagland. I loved his second book, Donkey Gospel, when I was in college. His third book, What Narcissism Means to Me, was also quite good. But he'd always lacked form and discipline on the page. He seemed to be one of those poets more interested in content and subject matter than craft and style. But in this chapbook he's starting to show new life. He uses stanzas in most of the poems and dropped lines in several. This was starting to happen in Narcissism, and I'm glad to see it's continuing.

As for the content, he's typically smarmy a bit too often. There's a self-righteous sarcasm to his work. But he's also spot-on in several poems, where he writes with both sincerity and passion. Many of the poems, like the one quoted above, take on America. He's disgusted with America. The war, materialism, commercialism, all the usual stuff poets are pissed off about. And that's one challenge: how do you find new and interesting ways to comment on the stupidity of malls? He's working on it.

He's also still exploring women and sex (not that one ever really completes this exploration). There's a good poem about watching the strap on the little black dress of a party hostess slide down all night, and watching her fix it, then realizing that it's supposed to fall like that, that it's all part of the in-betweeness that also symbolizes a party. Then there's a clever poem called "Responsibility in Metaphor," in which he plays with a metaphor for how a woman was looking at him, and the metaphor slowly slips away. It's hard to describe. Check out the chapbook, it's inexpensive.

No more baseball

It was probably only a matter of time, but now the Red Sox games will only be available on cable in Boston. Last season, the local UPN station carried Friday night games, so there was one game a week people like me, without cable, could watch. But apparently the Sox are desperate for money, perhaps their food stamps this month are late, so they decided it was worth alienating even more of their fans.

This is on top of raising ticket prices every single year, to the point where they're not only the most expensive in baseball, but to take a family of three to sit in a cramped seat (especially if you're 6'3", but it is cramped for everyone), would cost about a minimum of $200.

When I lived in Denver, the Rockies offered $1 standing room only tickets. Of course, no one wanted to see the Rockies, but still...

This is just one more reason to leave Boston and resent the endless greed of the Sox ownership. I'm starting to hope they do finish third or fourth in the division this year.

Lazy Monday

I know I have too much time on my hands, but at least I'm not making a video reply to the Lazy Sunday SNL skit like these guys.

Love in the Neverending Time of Cholera

I began reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love In the Time of Cholera in mid-December. I usually get through a novel of 300 pages or so in a couple of days. It's now almost February, and I haven't finished this book. Ok, quite a bit has happened between when I started and now, but still, this is getting ridiculous.

I had to go to the library on Monday to re-check it out, because I'd run out of renewals. That morning, it had snowed badly, M-N got in a car accident, I spent the day shovelling, taking care of the baby, and trying to make sure M-N was ok. I finally got to the library, and it's lightly raining. I got the baby and book into the library, and the woman behind the desk was incredibly snotty.

Me: "Can I please check this book out again?"
Woman: "Oh, it's a bit wet, isn't it?"
(The book is a hardcover, wrapped-in-plastic, 15-year-old library copy. The plastic got misted on)
Me: "Mmm."
Woman: "I'll only give it back to you if you promise to keep it drier."
Me: "Mmm."

She doesn't offer me a bag or anything, just sent me back into the rain with the book. So I spit on it.

Ok, no, not really. But I hope to finish it today sometime.

This posting is a bit like a Calvin & Hobbes book report.

James Frey sentenced to Oprah Jail

James Frey, the author of A Million Little Pieces, was on a live Oprah show today. Yeah, that's right, I watched Oprah. She also had Nan Talese, his publisher, and some journalists like Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd.

Oprah was on the attack, accusing Frey of lying in his memoir, which he admitted, and accusing Talese of being a shoddy editor, which she seems to be. Talese made the good point, though, that there is a difference between memoir and autobiography. The former, by definition, is based in memory, while the latter is more exclusively based in fact. Still, Frey comes out of this looking like a lying bastard.

On Larry King (which I thankfully can't watch w/o cable), Frey admitted to lying on about 20 pages. On Oprah, it seemed like the majority of the book is fiction, at least in terms of, you know, facts and details and things. The most blatantly questionable part of the book, when he has two root canals without any form of painkiller, was brought up again. This time, he said that he's pretty sure he might have had those root canals and that he can't remember if there was or wasn't Novocain. In defending him, Nan Talese said that she'd had a root canal once without novocaine, so she didn't question his story.

Don't these publishing houses have fact checkers? Isn't that what the character in Bright Lights, Big City did for a living? Or was that for a magazine? I can't believe that no one at Doubleday thought to question any of that book. I'm glad Oprah went out and admitted she was wrong for supporting him, especially with her new selection, Night, which has been classified as fiction, incorrectly, by bookstores and schools.

Canada goes right, South American goes left, Palestine goes, well, somewhere else

I guess Canada isn't the place for liberals to flee to if the Republicans continue to dominate in the U.S. Someone tell Alec Baldwin. I think I may go to South America. It's warmer, there are lots of nice beaches, and much of the continent is shifting to the left.

Plus, as a perk, Newsweek had a silly article about how some world leaders, like Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and Evo Morales in Bolivia, are going casual, avoiding the suit and tie look. It sounds like casual Friday every day, which is my kind of place.

Of course, the same article mentioned Iran's Ahmadinejad and his "cheap cotton sports coat," and I'm not going to Iran. Also, the article juxtaposed these guys with Jacques Chirac and Bush, saying you naturally picture these guys in a suit and tie. I don't picture Bush in a suit and tie. I picture him on his ranch in Texas clearing brush. Every time I hear he's doing that, which is usually, what, 3 months out of each year, I think to myself, if you knew that ranch had such an excess of brush that needed clearing, why didn't you move somewhere else? Ok, ok, I guess brush grows quickly, but from the pictures I see, and from my brief stop in Texas once, isn't it a desert? Where's this brush coming from? Do they import it? Maybe his parents send it down from Maine. Maybe Cheney grows it in the greenhouse in his secret bunker. Maybe Karl Rove told the brush it had better grow or he'll tell the press it has an illegitimate black child.

Oh, I was intending to write about the Palestinian elections and how the U.S. pushed for these elections, then Press Secretary Scott McLellan said that since Hamas won, the U.S. won't work with them, b/c they're a terrorist organization. That may be true, but then shouldn't the U.S. have manipulated the election? If they didn't want Hamas to win, just say their supporters are felons so they can't vote. That worked in Florida. And Ohio.

Anyone can comment now

So I didn't realize that I had to change the settings so that anyone can make a comment on one of these blog entries. It's fixed now, so you don't have to be a member to comment.

Theo and the Sox

So Theo Epstein is back as the Red Sox GM, three months after leaving Fenway in a gorilla suit. I do think this changes the fact that the Sox are in trouble going into this season. They have a new centerfielder in Coco Crisp, who should be good, no Johnny Damon, but good. They still need a shortstop. They still have a platoon at 1st base. They still have an unhappy Manny Ramirez. And they still have a tenuous pitching staff. I think Schilling is done. Same with Foulke. I'd love for Foulke to come back and have a great year. I'm hoping Schilling flames out, though. Probably because of his right-wing politics.

I don't know how much credit you can give Theo for winning the 2004 World Series. He was popular with the team, and that certainly helps, and he made some fortuitous moves, but so much of baseball is chance. Several players had key moments and unusually strong years... They wouldn't have gotten there without a clutch homerun from Mark Bellhorn, then the next year they ran him out of town. Millar had a great second half, then they ran him out of town. I don't think anyone can ever give Tim Wakefield enough credit. I'm glad the Sox had enough sense to keep him around. And Theo had nothing to do with getting Wakefield.

So Theo's back, but I still think the Sox need some major work. Toronto's put together their best team in years. The Yankees will always be a contender (even though they don't seem to have the usual intimidating pitching rotation as of yet). The Orioles and Devil Rays... well, ok, worst case scenario, the Sox finish third.

President Bush's trip to Brokeback Mountain

I didn't vote for him.

Boy for sale

Ok, no, I'm not selling the boy. But I am completely addicted to eBay. Craigslist is good, too. I don't buy anything, just sell. I'm quickly whittling down my cd collection, the collection I spent maybe 15 years building, and then the iPod went and made them fairly useless.

I don't think it's the extra income that makes eBay so addictive. It's the auction, the process, the bidding. Having an item up for auction is a little like sending a team you coach onto the field. You can't do much for a while except watch and hope for the best, and you want to see it succeed. It's great to watch a bidding war, just as it's depressing to get that "Item did not sell" email.

At some point, I'm going to run out of things to sell. I'm already building a sizable pile of "Did not sell" cds that I can't integrate back into the collection. They're damaged goods, like an ex-con trying to shrug off his past. Ok, that analogy doesn't really work.

Me and my profile

When I was an undergrad, I had a Web page where I listed what I thought were the 100 best movies, the best music, etc. In starting up this blog, the profile section looks for favorite movies and books and music. It's weird to return to that type of classification of who I am and what I believe, but in looking over what's there now, compared to movies I used to love, I think it's a fairly accurate assessment. The biggest change since college is that I've lost interest in most of the violent movies I loved then, like the Godfather, Fight Club, and the Usual Suspects. They're good movies, I just don't want the violence anymore.

I feel the same way about "24." I got hooked on the first season, and watched some of the fourth. But it's like watching a Die Hard movie extended over 24 episodes, and it's internal morality is definitely questionable. The show is always resorting to torture and excessive, impulsive violence. I don't want that happening with our government, so then I don't particularly want to see it on TV.

Who is Torgo?

This is Torgo. The man, the myth, the knees. Go here: Torgo.org for more info. The short story is that he's a character from the worst movie ever made, "Manos, The Hands of Fate." It's the typical coming of age story in which a family stumbles upon a remote 1 story, 2 bedroom (presumably 1.5 bath) house in the desert that seems to be some sort of low-budget gateway to hell. Torgo is the caretaker while the "Master" is away. The Master looks like Frank Zappa and has a harem of undead wives who like to sit around the campfire and argue, sometimes wrestle.

Yeah, it's pretty bad. But Torgo holds the film together. He has his own theme music, his own monster trait (big knees), and was played by an actor who was reportedly on LSD the whole time. The website noted above has video clips and more pictures, so I won't bother with that here.

Enter the blogosphere

Neat.