Movie Review: The Princess Bride - Buttercup Edition

The Princess Bride - Buttercup Edition: Torgo approves

Of course I do. This is a great movie. I've seen it probably a dozen times, at least.

We were at the library yesterday, and I saw this 2006 2-disc set, so I got it mostly for the extras, but we watched the movie again anyway.

There's a nice assortment of short documentaries on the second disc. Since the original movie is from 1987, I didn't expect deleted scenes or outtakes (though, with this movie, that would've been cool).

One of the highlights is a section within a doc. that acts as an Andre the Giant remembrance. Billy Crystal talks about how Andre had a farm in North Carolina, and he used to walk through the fields with the animals. Crystal asked him why he liked that. Andre said, "Because they don't look twice at me."

In a similar story, Mandy Patinkin says his favorite moment from filming the movie was when he and Andre were sitting on the boat with a crew member. The crew member asked Andre if this, his first movie, was fun. He said it was. When asked why, he said, "Because people don't stare at me."

Also, someone notes that when he was growing up in France, he was too big to go on the school bus, so his next door neighbor, who owned a car, drove him. The neighbor was Samuel Beckett.

There's other good stuff among the extras. There's an interesting story behind the sword fight scene early on between Inigo and Westley. It's noted that both actors had no prior fencing experience, but were trained to duel expertly with both hands.

Movie Review: Finding Neverland

Finding Neverland: Torgo approves

This was our second consecutive night watching a great actor play an author writing his major work. This movie has Johnny Depp as JM Barrie, author of Peter Pan. He has to pull off a Scottish accent, and I think he does it fairly well. A note on accents: I'm always interested in which regional inflection British actors choose when trying American roles. I'm also impressed when an actor, like Depp here, is able to do an accent not his own in a movie with actors who don't also have that accent. Here, mostly everyone else is English, but Depp sticks with the Scottish throughout the movie.

There's a very interesting article here from the New Yorker, which discusses the true story of Barrie and defends the film. If you've seen the movie, I recommend reading it.

Whereas Capote felt too condensed, Finding Neverland condenses far longer of a time period, cutting major characters, and feels much smoother. Most notably, Kate Winslet's character is Sylvia Llewellyn Davies, a widow in the movie. But in real life, her husband was alive until several years after Peter Pan debuted. But they needed to simplify things and I think it works (they also lopped off one of her five boys).

Dustin Hoffman has a small role, but is, again, terrific. In the extras, he fawns over Depp, calling him one of the greatest actors of Depp's generation. I agree. I also think it's notable how many roles Depp has played where it's difficult to imagine anyone else being as effective. Here, he has to be a 40-something man with a child's heart, but still very much an adult. That's much like Willy Wonka, where Gene Wilder was brilliant before him, but if Gene Wilder hadn't played the role, I think Depp would have defined it. There's also Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, Hunter Thompson (in Fear & Loathing), and his Pirates role. I also thought he was excellent in Dead Man, a movie not enough people have seen.

(He's been fine in mediocre movies, too, like Ninth Gate, Cry-Baby and Sleepy Hollow.)

Back to this movie, Depp carries it, as he needs to, but aside from Dustin Hoffman, most of the other actors are quite good. The children, 4 boys, are all good. Barrie's wife, played by Radha Mitchell, gives a strong performance as well.

Menu Page Note: Something I've been noticing lately is how dvd's now often have little clips or specially-produced collages that lead into the menu screen. With X-Men 3, it was an annoying animation bit that just meant it took that much longer to navigate the menu. With Capote, it was a scene of the killings of the Clutter family. That bugged me, because while it happens before the movie starts, that scene isn't shown until the very end. So I spent the whole movie waiting for them to show it. With Finding Neverland, the opening includes Barrie dancing with his dog, then transforming into him dancing with a bear. This led M-N to expect that it would be a far weirder movie than it was. But fortunately, that scene is very close to the beginning, so we weren't left waiting for the point in the movie when it gets crazy.

My opinion is that dvd's don't need these tedious teasers, but if they must have them, don't pull a Capote and show a clip from the end, and definitely don't pull an X-Men 3 and just make us wait so we can hit play (and then it's more annoying when trying to navigate to other features).

One final note on this topic, I have the Simpsons season 4 box set (one of their best seasons, I think), and as you hit select on each episode, or each feature, a little animation plays. It's cute at first, but then you realize there are only about 5 or 6 different animations, and you have to endure them each time you select anything.

Movie Review: Capote

Capote: Torgo approves

I am disappointed in how they condensed the story in this movie. Things feel rushed. The relationship between Capote and Perry Smith doesn't have time to develop. Aside from that, I think this is a very good movie.

Philip Seymour Hoffman is always fun to watch, and he nails Capote, based on what little footage of the actual author I've seen. (shameless sidenote: it's also very cool to see him now, because I met him at Bennington a year or two ago. He seemed like a nice guy.)

Catherine Keener is also good as Harper Lee. And the actor playing Perry Smith does a good job with a difficult role. I don't think enough credit is given to that role. Perry Smith is, I would say, more difficult to play than Capote. He's many things in one, and while the actor in this movie doesn't bring as much to the part as Hoffman to his, he still does a solid job.

The dvd extras pointed to the color scheme, among other things, as being very deliberate. I noticed that (not to the extent that they discuss in the extras) and thought it was well done. The movie is in color, but very limited color. All the images are very drab, muted, and dreary. It works.

I also enjoyed the movie because I read In Cold Blood about a year ago and that is one of the best novels I've read in many years. I highly recommend the book. I'm not sure if it's better to read the book before seeing the movie (it's unique in that it's not a movie of the book, but rather of how Capote wrote the book, but in this case, that's critical, because Capote and the book became so intertwined).

Movie Review: Mad Hot Ballroom

Mad Hot Ballroom: Torgo disapproves

I'm not saying it's a bad movie. But I think "reality" television has reached a critical mass in which documentaries, particularly ones centered around competitions, suffer and lose resonance.

The concept is interesting: mostly poor kids in NYC public schools participate in free dance programs, then go on to a city-wide competition. These kids are as young as 10 or 11, so not only is their coordination not developed, but the opposite sex is still icky.

Perhaps partly because of "reality" show fatigue, the competition element of this movie seemed inappropriate. It's great that the kids are getting into dancing, learning the tango, merengue, swing, etc. Yet the moment they learn it, they're pushed into this battle to be the best. As the movie notes, everyone who doesn't come in first is a loser.

It's still fun to watch the kids learn to dance. My favorite scenes were outside the lessons, usually involving the kids in 'confessional' style clips talking about dancing, girls, boys, the teachers, etc. In one great moment, a boy and girl launch into a tango on top of a large rock in a park as their classmates look on. In that moment, you can see their enjoyment of dance.

Or their drive to succeed. I prefer to see the former.

Gift Baskets: the latest in terrorism

I was on the phone yesterday in the office when the FedEx guy dropped off a package. He left it by the door, and I quickly forgot it arrived. An hour or so later, I looked over and said, "Hey, a big box, neat." (That's a direct quote.)

So I opened it. It was a gift basket from a local winery (Napa or somewhere), but it didn't have any wine. There's Ghiradelli chocolate, which is nice, plus the usual gift basket fare: crackers, heavily processed meat-like-product, mustard, wicker, plastic grass, peeps, a golden ticket, an elf, etc.

But I couldn't figure out where it came from. The mail in my building is spotty at best. I often get mail that goes to other offices or even other buildings. Last summer, I kept hearing that people sent me stuff that was getting returned to sender, address unknown (continue singing at your discretion).

Google has solved many of life's mysteries, so I googled the name on the card. No luck. Google let me down. I IM'd the director of our D.C. office, figuring maybe it was a corporate gift of some kind. But no, it wasn't.

None of this, mind you, was going to stop me from eating anything in the gift basket. Although I haven't yet. Gift baskets with mediocre food (except the chocolate) shouldn't arrive at this time of year. There's too much good food going around. It should come in some holiday wasteland, like May. What does May have? Mother's Day? That doesn't do much for me.

So an hour or two later, I go into the hallway, and see 4 other boxes outside 4 other offices. Turns out, it's from the landlord. Take that, Google.

A Christmas Treat

Here's a Christmas treat. (You may need to retry loading the page a couple of times.)

Happy Birthday, M-N!

Sure, we're married and I see her in person, but I'd like to acknowledge M-N's birthday with a post on a blog I'm pretty sure she doesn't read, too.

This is a lousy time of year to have a birthday. Everyone's all caught up with Christmas and holiday parties and drunk on spiked eggnog and ... hmm, eggnog would be good right about now. Back in our college days, it was the end of finals. So she spent many birthdays riding a bus all day.

And today, we couldn't get a babysitter, but we got one last night, so we went out to a barbecue place in the Haight that's supposedly the best in the city. It was good. The had a hot sauce that was labelled "stupid hot" and, in fact, it was. I don't know what part of "stupid hot" didn't register any signals of warning or caution in my brain. M-N wisely cut that sauce with a milder one.

She gets smarter with age.

Book Report: Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem

Motherless Brooklyn: Torgo disapproves

There are things to like here. But first, there are things to not like. This is the first Lethem book I've read. Looking at the synopses of other books included with this one makes me think I wouldn't like them, though. He seems to be gimmick-driven and a genre-exploiter.

That's my main problem with Motherless Brooklyn.

First, the gimmick. Lionel Essrog is a wannabe private detective. Specifically, he wants to be Phillip Marlowe, from The Big Sleep. But he has Tourette's syndrome, so he's apt to burst out in profanity and have compulsive, debilitating tics. That's the gimmick, and it wears thin after a while.

I've only known one person with Tourette's, but Lethem's character appears to me to indicate that the author just read one book on the subject and decided he knew enough.

Worse is the genre-exploiting. Lethem tries to occupy some post-modern space in which early 90's Brooklyn stands in for the great detective era from over 50 years ago. He never fully commits to the inconsistencies and anachronisms, though, so we get entirely incompatible references and characters.

And it's sloppy. It's not enough to evoke Marlowe, he needs to quote him several times, as well as mention other, better detectives he's stealing (badly) from. And he can't even get the modern era right. Boyz II Men is mentioned as Boyz 2 Men. It's a little error, but points to Lethem's cultural superficiality and ignorance.

There's a Newsweek blurb on the jacket that says "Marlowe would tip his fedora." I think Marlowe would sue for defamation. Speaking of blurbs, there are pages and pages of accolades before the story begins. I always hate this. A few blurbs are great to see. I can be encouraged to read a book if sources I like endorse it. But Lethem's publisher lays it on far too thick. It's like they're saying, "You need to like this book -- look, everyone does. If you don't, you're dumb."

But I promised the good things.

The book is a page-turner. That being said, despite all of the story taking place in NYC, the final act takes us abruptly to Maine. I hate when stories are defined by a location they then abandon at the climax.

Ok, I'm apparently not in the mood to highlight the good things.

Justin Timberlake's gift to the world

Little Dude wields fork, villagers flee

M-N began giving the boy a fork or spoon to feed himself last week. She's ambitious, that one. There was cereal, yogurt, even peas offered up and, despite what seemed likely to happen, he actually mastered the utensils quickly.

That's not to say there hasn't been a lot of food on our floors, but yesterday we went out to brunch at a local diner and he was offered a plate of scrambled eggs with cheese and a fork, and he cleaned it.

The motions are still unsteady, though perhaps hunger just takes over, allowing even the most tenuously held scrap of food to somehow cling to the fork until it reaches his mouth.

Now if we could just get him out of diapers...

Movie Review: I Heart Huckabees

I Heart Huckabees: Torgo approves

M-N wants to note that this is a good movie to knit to. Lily Tomlin is actually seen knitting in the movie, though it was noted that she's an avid knitter.

Anyway, Huckabees is one of those movies where it looks like the actors are having lots of fun. Dustin Hoffman has looked this way in most of his movies since "Wag the Dog." Lily Tomlin usually looks like she's in on a joke, regardless of whether there is one or not. Mark Wahlberg finally looks comfortable and is very funny (I hear he's good in the Departed, too). Naomi Watts is a pretty face and, well, a pretty everything, but she's good as well.

Jude Law I just don't get. He's well cast, but he still can't hold an American accent. Worse, he's supposed to be from Ohio. A slight British inflection is one thing if you're from New England, NYC, etc, but not Ohio.

(Oh, and the lead, Jason Schwartzman, well, his whole thing is to look miserable, and he does that well.)

The plot, like the actors, has a lot of fun. Aside from the 'existential detectives,' there's an open space coalition that has meetings eerily like coalition mtgs I remember: chaotic free-for-alls. There's the corporate giant Huckabees, something akin to Wal-Mart, that's evil, sure, but its evilness is wisely underplayed.

What ties the movie together are the bits and pieces all working. There are many fine actors in very small roles. There are also many great little details, like the poetry, the bike riding, and Shania Twain.

It's odd fun, but definitely fun.

Dear SF Dept. of Parking and Traffic

You suck.

I apparently got a phantom $40 parking ticket on June 19th. That was the day we arrived in SF. I didn't get a ticket that day.

But I got a notice from a collections agency months later about it, now at $100. So I wrote a letter of protest. They called to say I can't protest to them, I needed to protest to the DPT, but it's too late now.

"So what can I do?"
"Pay the fine"
"But I didn't get a ticket"
"Yes you did"
"No, I didn't"
"Yes you did"
"Mom!!!"

I did know enough to ask for his supervisor, who gave me the same line before we got cut off. But I couldn't get her back on the phone, and she never called me.

Then, a month or so later, another notice from the collections agency. So I wrote a letter describing what happened. A week or so later, they send my letter back to me with a copy of the citation I never got on a car I no longer have for a date I didn't get a ticket.

Realizing they're just a middle man, I wrote to the DPT.

I'm not paying $100 for a $40 ticket I never got.

Book Report: My Noiseless Entourage by Charles Simic

My Noiseless Entourage: Torgo disapproves

Ah, the 64-page collection of short poems. On just the ride home from the library, then half of the ride in to work the next day, I can finish the book and have time to reread the poems I liked.

That being said, I've become increasingly disappointed with Charles Simic. He was one of the poets who made me want to be a poet. His poems are short, silly, bizarre, dark, yet perfectly clear. Non-poets tend to like him, too.

But as he's grown older (or, as I have), it seems more and more of his poems just tread water in a murky, threatening ocean that never reveals its monsters. What's worse, it promises great monsters, terrible things, incredible, lively, astounding things. But they're always just lurking.

In "My Noiseless Entourage," from 2005, Simic still manages some of his brilliant images:

"At the funeral, I thought I had much to say,
When in truth I had nothing.
I was just one more crow
Trailing after the pallbearers"
(from "Slurred Words")

and this:
"One chair
That can't help creak at night
As if a spider
Let itself down
By a thread
To hang over it
With the chair quaking
At the outcome."
("One Chair")

There's also a clever poem called "Used Clothing Store" in which the clothes of presumably deceased former owners act as guides and ghosts:
"Dead men's hats are rolling
On the floor, hurrying
To escort you out the door."

But over the course of the book, it's just not enough to engage me as a reader. The language is tired, devoid of spark. Simic seems less like a macabre storyteller and more like a man tired by the world's hauntings.

I won't take the time to quote the uninteresting poems -- what's the point? Perhaps the best way of appreciating Simic is in small bits, a poem in the New Yorker here and there, so his dark vision stands apart, not weighed down by its own drudgery.

I have been there, the palace of dreams

Our local branch library has been closed since we moved here for renovations. I haven't minded. They park a bookmobile out front several times a week and I can browse the minimal selection there or special order from the vast SF network.

One great thing about moving around frequently is experiencing local libraries. Denver had a great one. Colby had several, all of which were cool in their own ways. The backwoods Maine town we lived in for a year had a library out of a Norman Rockwell painting.

And in Canton, MA, they renovated the library while we were there, turning it into something amazing, despite the town's small size.

So I've patiently waited. But yesterday, b/c M-N wanted a book, I went to the main, downtown branch of the SF library. I'm not sure why I didn't go before. I pass by it whether I'm riding or on the train. But now I've been.

It's amazing. It's huge. Best of all, it has the promised stacks for which I've searched high and low: a great poetry collection.

Poetry is made for libraries. Poets are poor. Bookstores only carry titles that sell, Shakespeare, Maya Angelou, Billy Collins. Libraries can house old titles, obscure titles, everything.

But until SF, I've never seen a library with such a vast and diverse collection of poetry books. I didn't want to take the time to search title by title. I wanted to leave something for next time. So I quickly picked three books I've been meaning to read and left, secure in the knowledge that the wonderland of poetry exists.

The Food Poisoning/Visual Stimuli Post

I remember trying to get off the school bus in junior high one day when a kid a couple rows in front of me leaned into the aisle and just spewed all over the floor. I remember it vividly.

There's a sensible debate over whether the movies should rate violence more harshly and sex less harshly (I think so), but I think there should be a moratorium on showing people hurl.

On Monday, I was riding to work, coming down a big hill where I always hit 3 consecutive lights and build up some speed. At the bottom, where it levels out and I'm just cruising, a car door opens, out leans a woman, and she just lets go right in front of me. I had to swerve to avoid hitting it.

I had a pretty good vomit-free streak going, maybe 9 or 10 years, until Monday. Ok, so apparently I had food poisoning. We think it was either a bad can of black beans or a bad batch of rice (both of which I ate Sunday, while M-N didn't, then she ate Monday, and became sick like me). Either way, I think watching someone blow chunks is incentive enough.

I won't watch "Stand By Me" because of the pie-eating scene.

Fortunately, whatever the culprit, the plague passed quickly, but now I'm going to associate that spot on my ride with Monday morning.

Somewhere in high school, I went to see Live in concert at SUNY Albany. (The Throwing Copper tour, during their 15 minutes of being awesome.) It was January, I think, I remember it being dangerously cold. It was a general admission show, so everybody was waiting in line outside the arena. These SUNY kids were in front of us, and there was a drunk girl. She spewed on the sidewalk, and then it froze, and people were slipping on the frozen spew.

That's just nasty.

Our Amazing Race vs. the Really Annoying Race

One of the adventures of being Zipcar users is trying to get the car back in time. You reserve cars by the hour or half hour and, in the interest of spending as little as possible (or sometimes because it's the only available window), you find yourself sometimes frantically trying to get across San Francisco as the clock ticks towards the deadline.

Yesterday, we went to see a photographer who is putting together an exhibit on pregnant women. M-N is thinking about getting involved. Anyway, his studio was way the hell over by AT&T park, which is right on the bay, near Cesar Chavez Drive, in a converted cannery. It took us half an hour to get there, though we were following a suspect Google Maps plan.

With under 30 minutes left in our reservation (and, it should be noted, you can call and add on time to your reservation if no one has booked the car right after you, but yesterday, someone had), we had to move. Now, SF has some funny streets. It's not as bad as Boston, as there are signs everywhere, but it adds the element of vertical roads, which can be daunting.

We were driving a Prius, which is a sporty little hybrid, but I'm never fully convinced it'll make it up the hills. But because I don't feel like dragging this story out, we made it, with 3 minutes to spare.

Then there was race 2: It had rained since Friday, but on Sunday afternoon, the sun came out. So we decided to walk to Safeway to get some things for dinner (jalapenos and cheese for my quesadillas, fresh dungeness crab for M-N--$3.99/lb., that seems like a good deal). The Safeway is about a mile away, through Golden Gate Park, mostly.

When we got there, finished our shopping, managed to get everything tucked under or over the stroller, we looked up and saw the clouds had returned. And felt a light sprinkle. Ok, this would've made a good segment on an episode of The Amazing Race.

Which brings me to my real point: last night's season finale of The Amazing Race sucked hard. We haven't watched this show from the beginning, just since the Simpsons went on MLB hiatus. But the last episode began badly.

First of all, of the three teams left, the first was Rob and Kimberly (pictured). Rob is a horrible human being, and I'm not just referring to the strange growth on his face. What you can't tell in this picture is that he's currently yelling at Kim, probably using profanity, and that the cross on his arm isn't a tatoo but the mark of a failed exorcism.

Then there was Tyler and James, former addicts and current models. I think one's real name is "dude" and the other's is "bro," but I'm not sure which is which. They've overcome adversity. Now they're models. I know this because they mention it every time they're on screen.

Finally, there was 'Bama, Lyn and Karlyn, two single moms who could've legitimately benefited from winning. The hard luck story. The actual deserving contestants. The ones with absolutely no chance of winning.

Not only did 'Bama not have a shot, they weren't even shown in the last 15 minutes of the show. Unlike other episodes, where the challenges revolve around skill, perseverance, and ingenuity, the final episode was decided by luck. The first two teams lucked onto an early flight from Paris to NYC, thereby eliminating 'Bama. Then, in NYC, it came down to who had a faster cab driver.

The one other season finale of this show I've seen ended with teams trying to complete a puzzle of the world, all teams fairly close together, a challenge that symbolized their journey and rewarded quick-thinking skills.

Oh well, that's one less hour of tv each week.

Movie Review: Lackawanna Blues

Lackawanna Blues: Torgo approves

As the opening credits were rolling for this movie, M-N said she didn't need to watch, because it's basically one of those movies that every black actor is in. That's pretty much true: S. Epatha Merkerson, Terrence Howard, Mos Def, Lou Gossett Jr., Macy Gray, Ernie Hudson, Delroy Lindo, Jeffrey Wright, Saul Williams... Halle Berry is a producer, Me'Shell NdegeOcello did the music.

Then, there's Jimmy Smits, Rosie Perez, and Liev Schrieber to round things out.

So it's an ensemble movie. It's not blazingly original or captivating, but the script is decent and the actors, as often seems to happen in ensemble movies, raise each other's performances, as though everyone wants to have his or her big moment.

As usual, Terrence Howard is terrific. He's just casually authoritative, as though it's not big effort. Macy Gray was better than I'd expect her to be, but then, I don't really know much about her. I wanted more of Mos Def, but he's just a singer in a band. Ernie Hudson's agent at least found him a better role than the scene he had (that I saw) on Desperate Housewives, also better than his role in Congo, but not better than Ghostbusters (That's a big Twinkie).

Suzanne Vega, where are you?

Back in the late 80's, when I was all of 9 years old or so, I got incredibly passionate about a couple of songs. One was "Veronica" by Elvis Costello. The other was "My Brave Face" by Paul McCartney (actually, "Veronica" and "My Brave Face" were written by both Costello and McCartney, though I didn't know that then). "My Brave Face" was the first song I ever called in to request on a radio station.

Actually, I think it's the only one. Until my WMHB days, when I called in to shows of people I liked, but it was partially my radio station, so that doesn't count.

Then there was "Tom's Diner," the DNA remix of the Suzanne Vega song. I loved that song. She also had a hit with "Luka," but I didn't get into it then. I didn't buy the album, just the cassette single. Cassette singles were a strange invention.

Anyway, years went by, and then I got into Suzanne Vega again. "Nine Objects of Desire," out in 1996, is amazing. "Songs in Red and Gray," from 2001, is also amazing. "99.9F" is ok, not as amazing, but worthwhile.

Vega is one of the few songwriters whom I've seen legitimized as poets in anthologies (others being Tracy Chapman--always Fast Car; Lou Reed, Leonard Cohen and Dylan--though I don't think Dylan's much of a poet). But unlike those others, Vega can sing. I mean, sing melodically and gracefully.

The problem is that she doesn't release albums very often. It was 4 yrs from 99.9F to Nine Objects, then 5 yrs until Songs in Red and Gray. It's been 5 years, almost 6, since then. I'm ready for more.

Book Report: Carried Away by Alice Munro

Carried Away: Torgo approves

I've always been a fast reader. With novels, if I get caught up in the narrative, I'll just keep reading, foregoing sleep, food, the desperate cries of my bladder, my thriving social life, etc. Yet I've always struggled to complete short story collections. There always seems to be such a dreadful shock in transitioning from one story to the next that I get unsettled, unable to let go. I get attached to stories. I develop emotional attachments to plotlines and minor characters. And I take solace in knowing how many pages are left in a book, something I can calculate by numbers, see physically, and feel in my hand.

Short story collections mess with my head. I can look ahead and know there are 20 more pages until the next story, but it's less tangible when other stories follow. I want those other stories to continue on, to be related, to at least feel like descendants of the one I'm reading.

The only memorable exception to my frustrations with short story collections is "And the God Laughed," by Frederic Brown, a sci-fi writer who died in 1972. He was big on the short short story, irony (in the Twilight Zone model, pre-dating Rod Serling), and humor. I read the book in junior high or so, captivated first by the great title, then by the consistency and feeling of oneness in the book (ironic itself, as the book was posthumously compiled).

And now there's Alice Munro.

Carried Away begins with an introduction I didn't initially read by Margaret Atwood (earlier disparaged on this blog). I hate introductions, prefaces, forewards, generally speaking. They always tell you how great what you're about to read is, as though you need someone to encourage you to keep reading what you've already decided to read by reading something far less good by someone other than the author you want to read. (I later went back and skimmed it, finding nothing enlightening, though I was confounded by the 'chronology,' which parallels events in Munro's life with both a literary and historical context, the former mentioning not just the giants like Faulkner, Hemingway, Woolfe, Baldwin and Salinger, but seemingly far too many Atwood books, including The (specifically disparaged on this blog) Tents.)

Then, at long last, the stories. Munro sucked me in by beginning with two stories from "The Beggar Maid" featuring the same main character, "Royal Beatings" and the title story. Crafty, that Canadian, thereby giving the book the 'novel' feel and forcing me onward. Is it Edwidge Danticat, throwing me around in time with linked stories? No, the third story, "The Turkey Season," moves on, but it's such a strong story, one I remember vividly weeks and hundreds of pages later, that I had to keep going. "The Moons of Jupiter" I skipped. I had to. It starts off with a woman visiting her father in the heart wing of a hospital. At the time, it was a little close to home and not something I wanted to read. "The Progress of Love" came next. This is an excellently crafted story, one that does jump around in time, and has enough clever stories in it that it could've been perhaps 3 decent short shorts, but collectively it makes a solid long short.

"Miles City, Montana" followed. This is a story I know I had a reaction to that I wouldn't have had before becoming a parent. It's about a family of four making a long road trip, stopping for a break from the heat in the title town, where one of the little girls almost drowns in a swimming pool. It almost exploits the emotions of parents who read it, but the writing is strong, so I forgive it.

"Friend of My Youth" reminds me of Steinbeck. It covers generations swiftly, noting how the oddest mistakes and poor choices oppress people's lives.

I think I talked about "Meneseteung" before. A story about a poet, it can do no wrong.

"Differently" is a turning point. Here, Munro is shifting into 'adult contemporary,' writing about affairs among the highly educated, the type of story creative writing professors write, stories that may be competent and proficient, but aren't inherently interesting. At least not to me.

"Carried Away" feels like an attempt to reclaim the fading magic of the earlier stories. There's a violent decapitation, some repressed desire, and things never quite seem to live up to what they might.

"The Albanian Virgin" is a funny one. I want to believe that Munro got a grant to go to Albania and study folklore, then had to produce a paper, but she couldn't just write about folkloric Albanians, so she throws in a story about a bookstore-owning Canadian. It's ok. Not great.

Then we get to "A Wilderness Station." I guess I like frontier stuff. I mean, I know I'm fascinated by exploration stories, like Shackleton, Captain Cook, Robinson Crusoe, etc. And so much of Steinbeck involves people going west, setting out as pioneers, even "Travels with Charley," the n/f book, has him traversing the unseen corners of America. This Munro story plays as a Rashomon story, with multiple narrators, a central murder, and an ambiguous conclusion. It's excellent.

"Vandals" goes on and on and feels like it wants to be a novella, but there just isn't enough conflict. It's engaging, though.

"Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage" has a wretched title. Really. It's just awful. Then the story is ok. Not a highlight. Sloppy in ways the other stories aren't. I'm not sure why it was included.

"Save the Reaper" reminds me of Paul Auster. There's a central character taking a completely random detour into what clearly will lead to trouble, and that trouble is a messed-up card game (as in Auster's "Music of Chance"). Then, also like Auster, nothing much comes of it.

"Runaway" feels like a story written by someone who started it without being sure where it was going but then didn't feel like going back to revise it, being guided only by the principle that tension and crying make good stories. There's also a gaping plot hole (of sorts, more of an apparent narrative error) in the final part -- sloppy writing.

Lastly, "The Bear Came Over the Mountain." A total downer way to end the book. This reads like Philip Roth without quite as much "I'm Philip Roth. Be in awe."

Ok, so, looking back, the book really took a downhill turn about midway. But the beginning was so strong that I had to keep going. And the style was consistent, even when the quality wasn't, so that the individual stories fit together neatly. I don't know enough about Munro (and Atwood, frankly, doesn't help) to know if she was financially successful enough to get a teaching gig or just write for a living, but it seems so. Though I'd love to sell a chapbook of poems for a million dollars, there are so few writers who seem able to produce anything with the creative intensity and passion for the written word once they enter academia or have a big seller. The lesson? Wallow in obscurity, get discovered posthumously, appreciate your accolades from beyond the grave.

This report took almost as long to write as it did to read the book. To reward you for getting this far, I give you this.

Geek Alert: Water on Mars

This article talks about evidence of active water on Mars as recently as a few years ago -- far and away the most compelling news story ever in the history of humans.

If you're geeky like me and think we could've been to Mars and back half a dozen times on the money wasted on Iraq.

Seriously, though, I no longer read sci-fi like I did as a kid, but the search for life on other planets continues to amaze me. National Geographic's latest issue focuses Saturn, where a couple of the moons are good candidates for life (as well as other moons in the solar system).

Aside from the national park in Hawai'i, one of the only positive things I can think of that Bush has done is give Nasa a kickstart to go back into space exploration, build a base on the moon, and see where we can go from there.

Happy Day of the Ninja!

Your Xmas present from me

Hurry, though, supplies are low.

Get it here.

Think I'm In Love

Though I've grown up and come a long way from my rabid record-collecting days, I actually bought an album recently. Ok, it was a couple of months ago, but I wasn't sure it'd take.

I bought Beck's new album, "The Information." I actually didn't buy the album, I downloaded it from itunes. I know I could've gotten it for free, but I had a gift card (ok, actually, I've had the gift card for almost 2 years, but how often do you feel compelled to buy music online? and besides, my goal over the last 5 years has been to get rid of the music I already have).

I bought the album for one reason: this song. It's an awesome song. The video is simple and a little off, but it was partially the video that made me want to own it (the album came with similar home-made videos for every song on the album).

I've listened to the whole album about half a dozen times now, and that one song is still the main reason to get it (so why not just buy the single song? I'm not sure. I like Beck. Over the years, I've realized I'm a slowburn Beck fan. I've managed to own most of his albums, though I've since sold three of them. He's often great, but even when he's just mediocre, the music is still good listenin'. He can also be terrible, but sometimes it's nice to have those awful tracks to balance out the strong ones).