Best comment ever

Blake on the Disgrace debate from further down the blog:

"i didnt give a shit about disgrace but waiting for the barbarians jumped my ass like ten dudes with billy clubs. plus its short."

Thanks, Blake. I'm gonna check out Waiting for the Barbarians. Not now, though, Blindness is too good so far.

Read my Oracle

I had a poem accepted yesterday in a journal called Oracle. It's a small journal put out by a college in Georgia. I'm not sure how I found out about it. I might have seen an ad or seen a credit for them in a book I read.

It's funny, though, because I got a rejection slip from them on Tuesday, with the poems I sent (one of which had a nice sticky note on it saying she liked the poem but it was too 'risque' for them). I didn't think much about it, but then I got an acceptance email last night. I went back and looked at the poems they sent me, and the poem that was accepted wasn't sent back. This raises a good point about getting my SASE back in the mail: those are pretty much always rejections. I've found that acceptances come by email. Of my last 5 or 6 published poems, I think I was told by email for 4.

But also, of those poems, probably 4 were ones I considered weak. What that means, I'm not sure.

As for Oracle, though it's a small journal, it sounds like a big one, doesn't it? There's a business journal called Oracle, and I'm pretty sure they don't publish poetry. But saying I was published in Oracle sounds better than saying I was published in Craptastic Poetry Bi-Perennially, so I'll take it.

Napping with the Fishes

M-N's on vacation this week, and yesterday it was in the mid-60s and unusually pleasant, so we decided to visit our friend Meg at the New England Aquarium downtown. Little Dude began the afternoon by thoroughly enjoying the subway ride. He even knew to hold on to the pole. However, even though it was the Red Line (probably the cleanest), we had to advise him against trying to eat the pole.

Then, in a miracle of Boston ingenuity, we realized the aquarium is more or less located on the rarely used and difficult to get to Blue Line, and to get there we'd have to change from the Red to the Orange then to the Blue. With a stroller and the MBTA's pee-rific elevators, that adventure might take 20-30 minutes. Or, we could get off the Red at Downtown Crossing, walk 10 minutes through the financial district, and be there quick and easy.

Meg gave us a tour of the jellyfish exhibit, but Little Dude was more interested in the throngs of screaming kids running around. Jellyfish are ok, but they're quiet killers (like radon?). He was also quick to point out the flagrant violations of the "no strollers among the jellyfish" rule, though Meg didn't seem interested in booting any families from the aquarium.

Later, we got up close and personal with a huge catfish (pictured), some mean-looking penguins, and lots of, well, fish and stuff. As the boy has become increasingly mobile, we have to be careful about him lunging from our arms into an open tank. There's a huge circular tank in the middle of the aquarium, with sharks and sting rays and, well, other fish, and on the top floor it's open where divers jump in to feed them. I was worried for a minute about Little Dude jumping in there, but then I saw that there were a bunch of sea turtles, and I know from a documentary I once saw that sea turtles are like Australian surfers riding the ocean's current, eager to help out a wayward soul.

Our last visit was to the sea lions (pictured). Meg said she got a kiss from one recently, but he didn't seem all that interested in her yesterday. But then, he was with his sea lion woman, so you know, you have to act cool.

After a stopover at Fajitas & 'Ritas for burritos and not 'ritas, we headed home, and this time the boy had a whole rush hour train full of people to show off for. As it turns out, people have trouble keeping their mean subway faces on when presented with a smiling baby. Fish, they don't seem to care.

Book report: Disgrace

Nothing feels less appropriate to be reading when going to interview for a job at a girls' high school than reading a book on the plane about an old teacher who seduces his student without remorse (combine that with the Kim Basinger "Door in the Floor" stuff, and it just gets plain wrong).

But there I was, with J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace. It's set in post-Apartheid South Africa, and Coetzee writes with candor and misery about the state of race relations there.

The prose is simple. It reminds me a bit of Hemingway, but also of what little I know of the way sub-Saharan Africans speak. The sentences are short and direct, like Hemingway, but more rich and weighted. It's a style that permeates both the dialogue and narration of the book.

As for the plot, it's rather ordinary: old fogey teacher with lust problem seduces student, lacks guilt, ends up being punished in unexpected (to him) ways. The simplicity of the prose may work against the minimalist simplicity of the plot, where everything that happens serves as a lesson. The teacher must leave the university, so he goes to live with his hippie daughter on her farm. There, they are attacked, she is raped, and he is disfigured (let symbolism rain down upon us).

The use of dogs--the daughter runs a kennel, the teacher "lowers" himself to volunteer at an animal clinic, only to end up having an affair with the woman there and then befriend a disfigured (symbolism? maybe? perhaps?) dog, then he lets the dog be killed--is a bit more nuanced than Old Yeller, but Coetzee doesn't seem to be putting in much effort.

This book won the Booker Prize, and Coetzee has since won a Nobel Prize. I may read more of his stuff to see if people don't just get these awards for writing about "important" topics, like the Oscars for foreign films going to unoriginal stories set in "exotic" and "troubled" places. Here's a white man telling it like it is for white and blacks in South Africa, let's give him a million dollar prize. That seems fair.

God bless America

Sometimes, you click on a headline for reasons you couldn't necessarily explain, or at least wouldn't want to, only to find an article that just makes you feel confused. As somebody once said, if you aren't confused, you aren't well informed.

Case in point:
Naked Britney sculpture going on view

(and, purely for the purpose of this blog, I further researched the story, only to find that CBS, home of "60 Minutes," published a picture along with their story: Why the hell not?)

Mr. Ear

Turns out, Little Dude returned from Baltimore with a Little Ear Infection. Suckfest 2006. I'd hate to know what a major ear infection is. He's been, shall we say, unpleasant today. But I think he's asleep for a bit now, hopefully, maybe.

The doctor prescribed ibuprofen first, then amoxicillin if that fails (I guess they're trying to avoid making every child in America a penicillin junkie, or something about the infections of the world uniting to overtake the 'cillin family and destroy us all, anyway, we're supposed to hold off on that and stick to OTC drugs for now). This was the first time I'd purchased ibuprofen in years, as I'm allergic to it. The last time I took Advil, my eyes swelled shut. So far, so good with Little Dude, though.

Gone Baltimorin'

Last night we returned from a quick trip to Baltimore, for a double job interview. It was a bit like doubles tennis: too much to coordinate, a little standing around, and crab cakes.

Actually, one of the highlights of the trip was some good crab cakes at a local restaurant.

Little Dude enjoyed some french fries, not yet being much into sea spiders. He soundly rejected Cheerios today, perhaps having grown too fond of the fries. I offered to toss the cereal in the fryer, but M-N said no.

One of the other notable moments came during M-N's interview, where she had to teach a class. Normally, that might be a low point, as it's a bit of a silly thing to do on an interview, but she had Cal Ripken's daughter in the class.

Ok, truth be known, she didn't really care who Ripken was (and I have some doubts about his greatness myself), but still that was kind of cool. I think this was a legitimate daughter, with his last name and everything.

That pretty much sums up our trip to Baltimore. Although there was also some tandoori chicken pizza of note. That was excellent. (Neither the crab cakes or the pizza were school food, incidentally.)

Movie review: The Door in the Floor

John Irving's a curious writer. I've read a few of his novels, and then last night we watched "The Door in the Floor," based on his novel "A Widow for One Year." There are frustrating commonalities in all of his stories I know:

There's the "young John Irving" character, usually a teenager, who ends up having his first sexual experience, usually with an older woman (here, Kim Basinger), and it always ends with him being screwed up (as though a 17-year-old could have an affair with Kim Basinger whose mourning the deaths of her two boys, one of whom looks just like the "young John Irving" kid, and it all ends well...).

Then there's the "old John Irving" character. Always a writer. A Garp. He's wise and over-sexed and clearly represents how wonderful it is to be John Irving. Here, it's Jeff Bridges (aka, the Dude).

The story is necessarily set in New Hampshire (or something very close to it), and there's a mixture of sentimentalism, humor, melodrama, and depression.

What bugs me most, perhaps, is that there's plenty of good stuff going on, too. In the books, Irving's a strong writer. His prose is engaging and interesting. On the screen, the storylines, though predictable, have some good twists and at least have fun with boring ideas.

So I can't just outright not like Irving. "The Door in the Floor" is ok, not great, not bad. Jeff Bridges is typically good, typically Dude-like. Kim Basinger plays traumatized well. The symbolism is heavy-handed and obvious, but that's sometimes overcome by the funnier moments, like Mimi Rogers' tirade near the end.

To sum it up: eh.

I don't want to be Dick Cheney

There's a famous old story about Van Halen's bizarre request written into their contract for M&M's backstage at their shows. They either wanted all brown ones, or all the brown ones picked out. I'm not sure. The story is often used to show how silly and pampered rock stars are. But I think the point of their request was to make sure people followed all the details of their contract, and that was a minor detail they could use to judge.

So now The Smoking Gun website has published Dick Cheney's hotel demand sheet. It's a bit sad. I mean, here he is, dark lord of the universe, and he has to make a written request for a container for ice? And a private bathroom? Not just a desk, but a desk with a chair? I've stayed in some cheap, sketchy hotels, and I'm pretty sure that anywhere the VP is plugged in for the night will have an ice bucket.

There's also the request for all tv's turned to Fox News. Obviously, this isn't surprising. I'm more surprised that they have to request this. Doesn't he have someone on his staff who can get there a bit early, find the remote, and flip around till he or she finds Fox?

At least Van Halen got M&M's. Cheney just gets caffeine-free Diet Sprite and bottled water for the Mrs.

Book Report: Stanislaw Baranczak

Here's a poem for the President:
"Some Day, Years from Now"

"Some day, years from now, History will prove us to be right."
But History will prove nothing, will plead nothing, will confess
nothing, History will never say another word, History
lies under five feet of sand or dirt,
the blood underneath History's skin, thickened into bruises,
slowly moves downwards, in accordance with the law of gravity,
History's eyes are empty, and over its knocked-out teeth
there is no movement in its forever-set,
forever-silenced, forever-eighteen-year-old lips.


That's from The Weight of the Body: Selected Poems by Stanislaw Baranczak, (bio: here). This book won TriQuarterly's Terrence Des Pres Prize for Poetry about 20 years ago, and somehow found its way onto my bookshelf (I think it was via Jim, unloading his school library's "useless" poetry books on me).

Baranczak's work has a curious mix of political outrage and linguistic playfulness. This seems to be a popular style among a few other eastern European poets like Simic and Milosz. Try this, "The Three Magi," a poem about the secret police coming:

They will probably come just after the New Year.
As usual, early in the morning.
The forceps of the doorbell will pull you out by the head
from under the bedclothes; dazed as a newborn baby,
you'll open the door. The star of an ID
will flash before your eyes.
Three men. In one of them you'll recognize
with sheepish amazement (isn't this a small
world) your schoolmate of years ago.
Since that time he'll hardly have changed,
only grown a mustache,
perhaps gained a little weight.
They'll enter. The gold of their watches will glitter (isn't
this a gray dawn), the smoke from their cigarettes
will fill the room with a fragrance like incense.
All that's missing is myrrh, you'll think half-conciously--
while with your heel you're shoving under the couch the book they mustn't find--
what is this myrrh, anyway,
you'd have to finally look it up
someday. You'll come
with us, sir. You'll go
with them. Isn't this a white snow.
Isn't this a black Fiat.
Wasn't this a vast world.

The metaphor of the title, the Magi, is only slightly alluded to. There's the rather tangential mention of the newborn baby early on, and then the talk of myrrh. The myrrh comes up almost light-heartedly. There's a dream-like quality to the voice, like these things are happening and it's ok and these things just happen. But in truth, it's quite awful what's going on.

Here's one that's more fun with language:

"A Special Time"

We live at a special time (clears throat) and that
we must, isn't that the truth, be clearly.
Aware of. We live at (splashes water
into his glass) a special, isn't that the truth,
time, at a time of
continuous efforts on behalf of, at a
time of increasing and sharpening
and so on (slurps water), isn't that the truth. Conflicts.
We live at a s-s-s-special (sets down glass
with a clink) time and I'd like to here underline,
isn't that the truth, that it's along those lines
that guidelines will be outlined, sentences
lined through which don't adequately underline and
calculations out of line, isn't that the truth, thwarted
(coughs) of those who. Any questions? I don't see any.
Since I don't see, I see I express the
expressing, in conclusion, the conviction that
we live at a special time, such
is the truth, isn't that the truth,
and that's the only truth.

That sounds a bit like a Bush press conference. He might have fit in among the late Soviets. In fact, I was most surprised at how many of the topics originally written about oppression in Poland in the 60's and 70's are relevant here today. The idiotic but bullying government, the common sense void, the collective apathy of the populace... at least in the U.S. today all the barbaric things the government is doing can be changed by our fair and reliable elections, and we know the criminals will be appropriately punished.

Right, ok.

Drunken (or at least mostly inebriated) Noodles

In today's installment of "Now You're Cooking with Torgo!" we made Drunken Noodles, a simple Thai(?) stir fry dish.

I consider it noteworthy when I use one or more new ingredients, particularly when they're major components. For this, I needed rice noodles. That was really no major accomplishment. And the other ingredients: ground chicken, bell pepper, onion, garlic, sugar, soy sauce, fresh basil... these were basic.

The big problem was something called kaffir lime leaves. The section of the supermarket where they display the "Leaves" is always a bit odd to me. There's stuff like parsley, flat leaf parsley, mid-tempo parsley, parsley, parsley, and spam. It's like looking at the plants you're walking through in the woods and trying to pick out the poison ivy (or oak? I can never remember. Three leaves, something about three leaves).

We found basil quickly enough, but the lime leaves eluded us. They may not be rare, but we were at a fairly limited market. How limited? No fresh green chiles. How do you maintain self-respect as a supermarket and not carry a wide variety of chili peppers? Apparently, too easily. I had to opt for canned chiles this time, sad as that was.

As for the lime leaves, I'm sorry, kaffir lime leaves (incidentally, my computer defines "kaffir" as a noun, chiefly S. African, offensive: an insulting and contemptuous term for a black African), I just used lime juice.

The results were mixed. The dish was good, but frankly, I don't think a shortage of leafage was the problem. Next time, I'm going to throw in some hot peppers, hotter than the green chiles. Hot is good.

Reading List

Currently on my list of books to read:

• Blindness by Jose Saramago
  
• Don Quixote (the second book) by Cervantes (Edith Grossman translation)
  
• The Good Thief by Marie Howe
  
• Tape for the Turn of the Year by A.R. Ammons
  
• Excellent Women by Barbara Pym
  
• Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee (hey, we have the same 3 initials. Me, Coetzee, and Jesus M'F'n Christ.)
  
• Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  

I just began "The Weight of the Body: Selected Poems" by Stanislaw Baranczak. I've loved other Polish poets like Milosz and Szymborska. Something about those eastern Europeans...

It's been a good run for poetry lately, but there are quite a few novels I want to get to. I always write suggestions down on scraps of paper and then lose those scraps. That short list represents three scraps I knew I was about to lose.

That's the main purpose of this post. I guess I'm also open to suggestions or reminders of suggestions. For the record, I also recently read "Mr. Messy," "Fiddle-i-fee," "Rusty's Bone," "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs," and selections from "Winnie-the-Pooh."

Book Report: Billy Collins

The Trouble with Poetry and Other Poems -- what a great title for a book. Billy Collins is a strange figure in poetry, but I have to give him credit for a wonderful name for his newest book.

I say he's strange for this reason: he's the most popular poet in the country. Creative writing programs start up in his wake, in many places he does readings. He gets people who aren't otherwise interested in poetry interested in poetry. He's funny, perhaps more so during readings than on the page, but occasionally the poems are funny. He's very accessible. If I wanted to, I could recommend a Collins book to my semi-literate librarian friend in Chicago. These are all admirable things.

But then there's this: Collins seems to be a poet almost entirely uninterested in language, line and form. I'm not a neo-formalist, but I believe a poet should at least show a passion for words and verse, if not a mastery of the form. A Collins poem exists on the page in lines, but there never seems to be any reason for his stanzas, line breaks, or line lengths. And he shows a frustrating lack of zeal for words.

What is a poet without language? I could forgive this if his ideas and thoughts were exceptional. Reading some poets in translation, like Rilke, Neruda, or many Russians, the power of thought comes through even when what may have been beautiful language is lost in clunky English. If Collins was writing Russian I don't think he'd be worth translating.

That's not to say this is a waste of a book. First of all, I read a copy for free on loan from BN. It took me maybe an hour to finish it. Compare this to the weeks I spent with Don Quixote, The Odyssey, or The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (still in progress). I could read the collected works of Collins over a pleasant meal.

That gets me to another problem with Collins. He never seems to be doing anything interesting in his poems. He's too often getting up in the morning, watching the sun rise, letting water boil or loitering in his kitchen. Again, this could be forgiven if the poems were more interesting in other ways, but they're not.

I keep going back and forth with this response to the book. That's how I felt reading it: torn between hating it and liking it a bit. There are some clever poems in there: "The Lanyard" is good. And "The Introduction" is a great rant against snobby poets (all of whom collectively loathe Mr. Collins). "The Student," a poem about a book full of rules about what to avoid in writing poetry has a good line for all my fellow Bennies: "Avoid the word vortex.

The good news from the bad is that Collins does inspire me to write, if only to try to write stronger poems than you'll find in The Trouble with Poetry.

Running commentary

I went running this morning and as I wasn't what you might specifically label "awake and fully cognitive" (e.g., I almost went face down in some pre-run cheerios), all I really thought about were these thoughts on some of the songs that popped up on my ipod running mix:

"Between You and I" - Big Wreck -- this band disappeared fast, but their one minor hit of an album is very good. Modestly intelligent aggressive rock

"One Foot Out the Door" - Van Halen -- obscure Roth-era track. The mix is all short, up tempo tunes. This song has a great rhythm and Roth sounds very pissed off -- it's weird hearing this song after hearing his radio talk show (but that could be a posting unto itself).

"I Don't Have the Map" - Idlewild -- this Scottish (?) band is apparently getting quite big in Britain. I have two of their cds, and both are great. "100 Broken Windows" is surprisingly literate and poetically clever.

"Know That" - Mos Def w/Talib Kweli -- This one opens with a great Star Wars reference. I'd quote it here but it looks silly in print. Hear the song, if you can.

"Never Named" - Soundgarden -- Chris Cornell used to be so cool. And Tom Morello was awesome in Rage Against the Machine, even though Zach de la Rocha was hard to take sometimes. How'd they get together and suck so hard? Anyway, this is a great tune off Soundgarden's final album.

"Surprise! You're Dead!" - Faith No More -- I've been running to this song since high school. Short, fast angry, and hard to understand. It's perfect.

Ok, I ran for longer than that, but I guess I blacked out during the other songs.

The pony hidden in slavery

Here's a heart-warming tale. A columnist in the Kitsap Peninsula Business Journal named Adele Ferguson wrote an article a few days ago bout the problem with black people. (Read a scanned version here -- the paper pulled the article from their site).

She recalls a story from that fun-loving Ronald Reagan about a boy happily shoveling a huge pile of manure. When asked why he was enjoying it so much, he said it was such a big pile, there had to be a pony hidden inside. That Reagan, I'm sorry he's dead.

In her article, Ms. Ferguson goes on to say:

"The pony hidden in slavery is the fact that it was the ticket to America for black people. I have long urged blacks to consider their presence here as the work of God, who wanted to bring them to this raw, new country and used slavery to achieve it. A harsh life, to be sure, but many immigrants suffered hardships and indignations as indentured servants. Their descendants rose above it. You don't hear them bemoaning their forebears' life the way some blacks can't rise above the fact theirs were slaves.

Besides freedom, a job and a roof over their heads, they all sought respect. But even after all these years, too many have yet to realize that to get respect, you have to give it."

She uses this metaphor as a basis for criticizing the lack of support among black people for President Bush (maybe they'd support him if he had more Reagan-esque folksy stories). This, then, runs into an argument against teachers' unions. Awesome. So, here's the message to black America: Stop your whining. Slavery was your "ticket to America." Be thankful, support Bush, destroy the unions.

If you're so inclined, the phone number of the newspaper is 360-876-7900, and the editor’s email address is biznews@wetapple.com. Ms. Ferguson's address is: Adele Ferguson, P.O. Box 69, Hansville, WA, 98340.

Jessica Simpson proves me wrong

Despite everything I know about Jessica Simpson, today this story was great to see.

Swat that baby down

Last night, I got back late from tutoring, so M-N was elbow-deep in a new sesame chicken recipe when I arrived. (Tangent: It was not bad for a recipe I found in a supermarket flyer. She innovated a bit, adding a much-needed sauce.).

So I fed Little Dude some mangos and snozzleberries and salami (honestly, the food combinations they come up with for the jars of baby food are a bit curious). Then M-N suggested I give him some Cheerios, in our quest to move him onto more solid foods. I've been hesitant about this since the first time we tried and he choked on a Cheerio.

Fortunately, M-N is trained in knitting, yoga, teaching/hand-to-hand combat, and infant CPR. She swooped him up and swatted that Cheerio out. I've taken CPR training twice, but like my training as Batman, I'd rather not have to use it. But I guess he shouldn't be eating only mashed peas with bacon and wood chips until he's 15.

Someone told us to soak the Cheerios in formula. This makes them soggy and less choketastic. You might be thinking that's common sense, but sometimes common sense is hard to find (think: Elvin and Sondra on the Cosby Show).

While M-N soaked and battered and baked the chicken (yeah, I know, you don't bake sesame chicken -- that's probably why this recipe was "healthy" and "less good" -- but that wasn't her idea), I offered Little Dude some soggy Cheerios.He was very eager to pick them up and see how many he could hold and squish in his fists. I tried explaining to him the process of taking in food through the mouth, and how there isn't a pathway from the palm to the stomach, but that just got the blank stare. I eventually started hand-feeding him, and by hand-feeding, I mean putting a Cheerio on my finger, then putting my finger in his mouth, then pulling it back before those two buzzsaws he's sporting lop off my index finger and cut short my guitar playing and astronaut-ambitions.

Long/rambling story short, this was a success, repeated during lunch today (after some Bananas/Scrapple/Paperclips). He even put a few in his mouth on his own. No choking, no CPR, no need to dust off the Batmobile. The boy can learn.

Stand very still

Technically speaking, the boy may not actually be a velociraptor, despite his ability to quickly figure out the weakness in any fortified room-of-fun we set up, seek out danger, and shoot straight for peril.

I should add that he's also not a tyrannosaurus rex. This was the topic of discussion last night. I put him down to sleep at about 8 p.m. Around 9, I went to check that he was, indeed, sleeping and not, in fact, tunneling out with Steve McQueen and Charles Bronson.

As I opened the door, his eyes opened, and he stared right at me. My first instinct was to begin backing slowly out. Had he been a t-rex, I'd be dead now. Fortunately, he's not, and he went back to sleep.

Two hours later, M-N went to check on him, and he opened his eyes again. She froze, remembering the important Jurassic Park rule about the monsters not being able to see you if you stand still (unless they're raptors, b/c then you're screwed either way, I think). But again, he's just a little boy, a tired little boy, so the night ended smoothly and without carnage.

Happy Pi Day

Today is Pi Day -- March 14th (3.14). It's also Albert Einstein's birthday.

We should all celebrate by eating pie and watching Pi, the messed up but cool Daren Aronofsky movie.

I don't have any pie, and though I own the movie on VHS, I think I'm gonna watch Scrubs instead. Scrubs is like Pi, but funny and not messed up.

Unfinished Book Report: Ill Lit by Franz Wright

Franz Wright won the Pulitzer Prize in poetry a couple of years ago for his book Walking to Martha's Vineyard. Wright has a backstory more suited to a memoirist these days: a long history of alcohol and drug abuse, poverty and general misery. But I read that book and thought about half of the poems were pretty good. I then picked up The Beforelife and thought that was ok, too.

His father is James Wright, perhaps the best American poet of the 20th century. That's a good reason, perhaps, why Franz Wright shouldn't be a poet. But apparently if you're related to a great poet, you can get 5 or 6 books of poetry published without displaying anything resembling talent.

Ill Lit is a selected poems covering Wright's work in the 80s and 90s, mostly from books that are thankfully out of print now. I read over half the book before giving up. The poems have that feeling of self-importance and seriousness that seems to spring from knowing whatever you put on the page will get published.

The worst example of this are a couple of poems that are notated as being fragments of ideas he never fully made into poems. He thought enough of them to put them in the original books, then still thought they were good enough to put in a selected poems. Here's an example from "Winter Entries": "Hazel wind of dusk, I have lived so much." Ok, one more: "Friendless eeriness of the new street--" These are the pinnacle moments of 20 years of writing? This gets published and republished?

Don't read this book.

Goth goes pop

Ok, not goth, more like trenchcoat mafia.

This kid came into the BN music dept. last night (as I was working one of my 17 jobs) with a black trenchcoat, black shirt and pants, and a black Metallica hat. I have trouble finding anyone in a Metallica hat to be tough, but I think he was going for that look.

I didn't think this kid was going to steal anything. It's usually not the teenagers, anyway. Although, there is this group of about 4 wannabe gangsta rich suburban white boys who hang out there sometime trying to draw attention to themselves as hardened criminals I should be wary of. Ok, sure. If you're a big time retail thief, are you going to steal from Barnes & Noble? Only if your mom won't drive you to Best Buy.

Anyway, the boy in black, I did expect he'd buy something dark and tormented. There's a recovering/not recovering addict who works/doesn't work at the store, and he listens mostly to Swedish death metal. That stuff is dark and not well translated into English. There are song title like "I Smell like Death" (that's a real one) and "Mouth Licking What You've Bled" (also real).

Anyway, the boy in black, he comes to the register and buys "That Thing You Do" on dvd, the Tom Hanks pop boy band movie.

It turns out, instead of spending his night plotting the deaths of his enemies, he works the overnight shift at Kohl's, restocking shelves.

Who cares What Lies Beneath?

I wasted three hours of my life last night watching What Lies Beneath, a terrible movie that was on tv. TV, how could you steer me so wrong?

Robert Zemeckis directed it in the time it took Tom Hanks to lose all that weight for Castaway, a movie that sucked in the end but was at least not a suckfest all the way through. He also directed the Back to the Future movies, which rock. He's currently ruining Beowulf, making it as a computer-generated movie like The Polar Express, possibly with Tom Hanks voicing all the characters again.

But let's focus on What Lies Beneath. First, there's Harrison Ford, who seems to make the same basic movie over and over again. He had such success as Indiana Jones and Han Solo, he must have decided that being a boring doctor/scientist/businessman was his niche. Ok. He seems bored through most of the movie, then just pissed off that he's in it.

Then there's Michelle Pfeipfpfer (aka, Catwoman). She's decent. She actually is a pretty good actress. But still, I kept wanting Chewbacca to show up and save the day.

This movie rips off a bunch of better movies, like Rear Window, Psycho, Fatal Attraction, and Star Wars (or at least it would have ripped off SW if they took my advice and threw in Chewbacca).

It did remind me for a bit of The Others, with Nicole Kidman. That is a terrific movie. I highly recommend that one, if you haven't seen it. It's clever, scary, and not at all ridiculous and stupid and pointless. There's no wookie, but it's still good.

Back to fire

Today it was in the mid-60's, sunny, and just all around pleasant. Despite my intentions last fall to keep my newfound grilling habit going throughout the winter, that never happened. The unanticipated drawback, aside from it being really really cold, was that it got dark at approximately 10 in the morning, thereby making grilling for dinner only possible by artificial light, which can be done, but is less fun.

But today the grill came out. We began with the simplest stuff: hot dogs and italian sausages. But oh, it was good. The season begins anew...

Real life Simpsons

This is cute.

Book report: Dean Young

I just finished Dean Young’s latest, elegy on toy piano (2005). It follows in the spirit of Skid, a book I highly recommend to anyone and everyone.

Tony Hoagland (DY’s close friend) has an essay in the March issue of Poetry about experimental poets, the struggle against the confines of a narrative, and how today’s poets are trying to reflect the world by being elusive and cryptic.

He doesn’t mean difficult, because the examples he cites are funny, enjoyable, though opaque and non-narrative. And so, I kept thinking of Young while reading the essay. You’d be hard pressed to summarize the dramatic situation in a Young poem. They seldom have things like place and story. But that’s not to say they’re avant garde, snobbish, convoluted messes (though they are, sometimes, messes).

Young is majestically cowering from the world. In one poem, he writes, “What if everyone’s combined into one big poem / and I’m stuck with a preposition?”

He follows metaphors into new situations like he has severe ADHD. Take this: “Your lover love another, your father / thinks he’s still a flyer, no one likes / your novel and even you don’t like / your novel. So farewell, / or should that be hello? I can’t say / I’m afraid of death but I can’t say / I’m less afraid of living, / both go on whatever we do like fungus, / which, I must admit, gives me pause.”

or this: “First I will learn the polysyllabic latinate term / so my job can be immediately impressive / for being un-understandable.”

or this: “I can’t find the anvil / but then “I can’t find the anvil” / turns out to be some kind of joke / at the peach farm ... Walking through the trees -- / how different from looking for a Ph.D. / Yet also not. One good thing about / being unable to sit beside you / is seeing the back of your head in the leaves. / How far we are from kissing / our damage deposit goodbye.”

There’s a clever poem called “True/False” which is a numbered list of statements. Some of the highlights are: “12. There are too many stars.” and “14. I intentionally miss belt loops so no one thinks I’m too involved in appearances.” and “43. Everyone should study history because the present is too complicated and no one knows a fucking thing about the future.”

Young clearly falls into the school of poets Hoagland is discussing. His speaker remains aloof and distant, then jumps back in with something honest and powerful. He avoids linear storytelling in all its forms, and instead his poems are composed of fragments that indicate story, but never stick with a topic long enough to develop a narrative.

This could be incredibly frustrating, as a reader, but fortunately, Young’s poems are fun. He combines a childish temperament with a maturity of thought that ends up being stimulating and a good time.

A good rub down

On Tuesday, we ventured back to roasting chickens. M-N had made a great one a few weeks ago, using a recipe from Real Simple, which turns out to be a great resource for recipes.

This time, I used one of their ideas for a Moroccan spice rub. The recipe says: "Use your fingers to carefully loosen the skin from the breasts, thighs, and drumsticks. Spread the spice mixture evenly under the skin. Place the cilantro inside the cavity." So while we'd cooked a whole bird before, this was my first venture into "loosening the skin" and spreading something under it. That was strange.

I anticipated the most difficult part being anything involving the "cavity." But all I had to do was toss some cilantro in there.

The recipe didn't mention how I was supposed to get under the skin of the drumsticks. If you've never done this before, the "cavity" section of the bird affords easy access to the underskin of the breasts, but to get to the drumsticks (or legs, as I believe they were known in life), you have to take a left turn, go through a couple of stop signs, pass where old man Crane's barn used to be before those hooligans burned it down, make an incision below the upper metacarpal, and then you're still not there.

But once we figured it out (more or less), the results were terrific. Tonight we'll take what was left of the meat and make chicken quesadillas, and there will be much rejoicing.

ITMFA: One thing I like about Vermont

This story from the Boston Globe.

(ITMFA)

A touch of chaos

The last few days have been busy. Little Dude's been struggling with what we think are more teeth coming in, though none have poked through. He hasn't been napping much, despite his obvious need for sleep.

I've had a few follow-up phone interviews with schools since the big job fair last week. I have three scheduled trips to schools, which is great, though one is tomorrow in Maine, and I'm planning to bail on them. No offense to Maine, but it's a 45-minute interview over 2 hours away. Usually the school visit interviews are all-day affairs. I don't want to have to get an all-day babysitter, and spend 5 hours in the car to talk for 45 minutes.

The other two are in Maryland and Pennsylvania, and I plan to go for those. Both sound great.

I also successfully went on a long run on Saturday without any internal organs exploding. That's always a plus.

Then, on Sunday, we went to the Natick Mall to watch Filene's slowly die. Despite my negative feelings about rampant capitalism and consumerism, it's sad to watch a store go out like that. Particularly b/c all those employees are losing their jobs, and you know retail doesn't take care of its people.

That being said, we had some gift cards to the store, and we decided to take advantage of the sales. The atmosphere in the store was a bit like how I imagine the Disney version of the looting of Baghdad. We spent a chunk of time in the bedding section, where sheets and comforters were strewn about like a shock and awe had come through and left ugly patterns and slightly uncomfortable throw pillows in its wake. We managed to find an awesome comforter and sheet set for about $75, down from about $250.

In the sun

A week or so ago, I heard the new Michael Stipe version of the song "In the Sun" on the radio. The R.E.M. singer recorded the song as a benefit for Katrina victims. It's available on itunes and was first heard, I believe, on an episode of "Grey's Anatomy."

I first heard this song on a tribute to Princess Diana, performed by Peter Gabriel. That version is great. For a long time, I thought that was the original version. In the movie "Saved," there's another version, and I thought that was some guy covering Peter Gabriel. Then I found out that was Joseph Arthur, the guy who actually wrote it. His version is very good, too.

The funny thing is, I remember the Joseph Arthur version appearing on an episode of "Scrubs," which is basically "Grey's Anatomy" but funnier (they even noted this on a recent "Scrubs" when one character said, "Can't we just go home and watch 'Grey's Anatomy'?" and the other said "It's like they're just watching our lives.")

Anyway, my point is this: it's a great song that keeps popping up everywhere, several years after it was first made and then covered and I heard it. So I guess I deserve credit for it or royalties. No, wait, that's not my point. My original thought was that Michael Stipe, whom I normally like, went and changed the vocal arrangement and his version is lousy. Meanwhile, a great Peter Gabriel version was lost on a Di tribute (as though she needed a tribute) alongside stuff like the Spice Girls and possibly Meat Loaf. And Michael Stipe's version is now widely downloaded (included the itunes' mandated 15 variations which include a duet with Joseph Arthur and possibly a version featuring the Black-Eyed Peas, a group I was sick of before I heard any of their music -- they just remind me of a commercial for a product I don't want or need).

So if you've just heard the Michael Stipe version, go watch "Scrubs." Or see "Saved." Or find the Peter Gabriel version without actually investing in the Di tribute.

Colby grads, read this (i.e., shameless gossip)

Go here, select "Upper School," and scroll down to the H's. See if that's familiar, and a bit creepy (it's a boarding high school).

All job fairs must come to an end

Actually, the job fair continues tomorrow, but not for me. Today was a great day. I didn't get a job, but there were several schools very interested and looking into bringing me or us down in the coming weeks for full day interviews. So that's cool.

M-N came with today, so at first I thought we'd be 'those people' at our table, but then we ran into Amina, from Colby, and we met some cool people with weird connections to us, including a statistician who was interested in M-N's current school; a guy who currently teaches at a school I interviewed for last time, didn't want, and they didn't want me; his girlfriend, who has a sister at Colby; a woman from Virginia (ok, no connection there, but she was cool); and a guy who is finishing up at Holy Cross (where my brother went) who watched all four seasons of "24" with his brother over Christmas vacation -- that just connects b/c I watched season one in a marathon while M-N was busy giving birth and stuff and we were also big "Lost" fans, an obscure show few people have heard of.

So we had a whole table who talked to each other and were friendly and cool. That's definitely nice between interviews, though M-N didn't have "between interview" time so much as "between job offer" time. She has those intangible qualities that they look for like qualifications, intelligence, and personality, things they notice after first offering her an interview based largely on race.

It's funny to see the folks from VT, NH, and ME schools (and elsewhere, I guess) pounce on the candidates of color. I swear I had a couple of interviews last time around where they thought I was black b/c M-N is and decided not to hire me upon seeing me, then I had to sit through a 30 minute waste interview. Amina had someone leave a note requesting an interview, saying they saw her talking to another school, so they wanted to interview her. Sure, ok. "What made you think Amina would be a great candidate to teach history at your school?" "Well, I saw her talking to someone, and she was definitely black. She'd look great in our brochures and viewbook. I actually added her to some pictures just to see how it looked. Yeah, I sent those out to potential students."

But anyway, even though a bunch of the people at our table were English-seekers, it was still ok and not bitter or angry. At least not with each other. At least for me, b/c I wasn't looking in the Northeast. The schools I liked today are in California, Maryland, Pennsylvania and North Carolina. M-N has standing offers from about 84 schools. Some in Guam, I think.

People-watching (response to comment on sheraton post that got too long)

As for people-watching, all the interviewees look the same, clearly dressed a level above what they're comfortable in (plus one or two trying to be different -- today there was a guy in bright blue pants). The interviewers are older and in older clothes, many with strange hair. Some clearly work at rural boarding schools and don't get out much to "society" or "culture" or "the barbershop."

Oh, the other thing I did a lot of was listen to the conversations of people at my tables in the "candidates' lounge" (a ballroom with 8-people tables and lots of competitive b.s.). The worst are those people who meet someone they know, and then are attached at the hip (imagine Colby accent "Should we make this table home base?" "I'm going to the loo, can you watch my stuff?" [yes, she said 'loo' - that was followed by "Oh, how cute, 'loo'" and "I know, right? But even though I live in London now I totally said 'loo' since I was, like, six."] and, most often: "Omigod, It's, like, so great to know someone here. If I was here alone, I'd definitely stab a pen into my eye just to be done with my horrible existence.")


I first thought those things were being said a foot away from me because I had my ipod on. But no, same crap when I'm sitting there sans pod.

I went out into the mall for a bit to get away, but the mall was full of them, too. Plus, lots of suits. I really don't like people in suits. I mean, I don't mind wearing one. But large spaces full of suits freaks me out a bit.

video clip

If you haven't seen this yet, you should: click here

Sheraton blog

I'm between interviews at this job fair, day 2. It's much busier today, but still there are open computers. Cool.

Job fairs suck, by the way. The commuter train I took in this morning was so packed I had to stand just inside the car, and I could raise my hands because we were so packed (I wanted to 'raise the roof,' of course, but my dance moves were thwarted). It was a bit too much like a cattle car on its way to a meat market.

Fortunately, my styling new orange shirt and orange tie (thank you gift cards) were too cool to be flustered.

My first interview was with a school that had a one-year fellowship for new teachers. I'm not a new teacher. He read my resume and didn't realize the part where it said "I TAUGHT FOR ONE YEAR YOU IDIOT FROM A SUPPOSEDLY HIGHLY PRESITGIOUS SCHOOL." I should have used bold or Palatino.

Then I had a great interview with a school I'd like to work at in Maryland. I have a second interview with them tomorrow with the Mrs. (my Mrs.) and the head honcho (their head honcho).

I just came from an int. with a very cool school that I think had just all but offered the position to the person before me. Suckfest.

I have three more scheduled this afternoon and a few tomorrow. I still have about 75 schools who haven't responded to my notes from yesterday. And the good MD interview was one who sought me out (using their own special note paper). Go figure. I also got a note: "I'm meeting with Michelle tomorrow. Would you like to sit in with us?" No name, no school, not even a wax seal.

Ok, I realized yesterday that there's a BN adjacent to this hotel (in the Pru mall, a mall for rich people and homeless people, together at last). I'm going to use my discount on some hot chocolate.

Picture a graph

The amount of things I have worth posting here could be represented as an ascending line matched up with a descending line representing the amount of time I have to post things.

Not that short version: all day at a job fair. It was the first day, most schools not there yet, so I was posting notes to schools hoping they had English jobs. (It'd be too hard, apparently, for the agency I work through to provide a LIST of openings.) There are supposedly 400 schools at this thing. I wrote notes to 90. The same damn sentence over and over again: "If you anticipate an opening in English, I'd love to speak with you." sometimes I mixed it up with "If you expect an opening" or "If you anticipate an English opening" ... Fortunately, it was in a sweet hotel, the Sheraton attached to the Pru, with free internet access, lots of restaurants, an attached mall, etc., not that I could leave the conference area much, as I was supposed to check for messages back from schools every 30 minutes. (I'd also hate to have, say, 30 schools give response notes without me grabbing them, so the 30th person sees 29 notes in my little mail-slot-sleeve thing.)

But I left an hour before the official end because I ran out of school to write to, where I am willing to work. (The list kept expanding as I tried to get to 100.) I'll go back in tomorrow morning and hopefully I will have lots of notes back, but not so much that my little sleeve thing is packed and people said, "Screw that, this guy has enough rejection slips, I don't need to put my lucrative job offer in there."

For all those notes I submitted, I got about 5 back, all saying they didn't have English openings. One of the ones I got back was from a school I didn't leave a note for. I thought that was strange. Albany Academy. The thing is, they leave notes back to us on the same slips we give them, so the person had to use a whole new note. I don't get it.