Thursday, November 29, 2007

Most Apropos Nickname Ever

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From a washingtonpost.com online chat yesterday:

"Daniel-yummy-with-a-spoon-Craig"
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Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Mythology at Macy's

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Pet theory #1027: The epic and tragic impulses that created the Iliad and Greek tragedy endure today in movies, some books, and even some lives. They manifest in unconventional forms as well. To wit:


Sports: Sports is soap opera for men (and many women). Baseball, for example, has narrative built into every level of play, from a single at-bat (a great pitcher-batter duel in which the batter fouls off pitch after pitch) to the 80+-year Curse of the Babe. Stories extend from an inning, to a game, to a season, to the lifetime of a club.

Shopping: Have you ever had a friend (probably a woman if it’s a high-end store, probably a man if it’s a bargain) tell the story of a great shopping moment? It has all the elements of a great quest: a journey, often with multiple waylays, taking the seeker farther and farther from home; seemingly insurmountable obstacles; urgent time constraints; a woman of steel whose own determination is combined with a miraculous (divine?) intervention to end in triumph---or whose near-victory is tragically thwarted by fate, leaving her empty-handed and attending the next day’s wedding in an old fuchsia prom dress.

Example, albeit a minor one: Last weekend Jay and I were on our way to see Beowulf at the mall cinema, but first had to stop inside the mall for a salad. Walking from the parking garage to the mall, we were extremely chilly, having underestimated the drop of temperature after sundown. We’re eating our salad when the resolution comes upon me: Why should we suffer? We’re in a MALL, damnit. We only have 20 minutes before we have to be at the theatre, but I think we can do it. My inner Odysseus (the smart, crafty one) grasps that JC Penney is the store of our dreams: not too far on the same floor, a wealth of choices, and cheap prices. We stride purposively down the hall, Ajax-like. Upon entering Penney’s I immediately spot a not-too-light, not-too-heavy argyle sweater for Jay for $19.95. Swoop. I send him to the men’s dept. register, with instructions to meet me at the store entrance in 10 minutes. For my part, I’ve been wanting a red peacoat for the winter. I go into the women’s department and head for the coats. I’m hurrying down the aisle, and there, straight ahead of me, is one single red peacoat. Surely, it can’t be my size, of all the possible sizes? But yes, it is! I grab it, run to the fitting room, and put it on. Perfect except for the sleeves, which are too long, as I’m a “Petite” and this is a “Regular.” Still, I can get that altered. So out I march off to the register, but on the way I see that there has miraculously appeared ANOTHER red peacoat on the same empty rack. Well, what the chances, but I have to check. Yes, it is in my size but PETITE! The gods are so favoring me today; I am totally Achilles. It’s bought, paid for, and we plop down in our seats at the cinema just as the previews begin.


What is it about these little triumphs, these little instances of things going Just Right, that are so thrilling? As we saunter down the sidewalk in our toasty new items, there’s a feeling that the world is good, we are bathed in serendipity, we are blessed, and all’s right with the world. Of course, we’re not blessed, there’s no serendipity, and the universe can come crashing down and smack us to the floor with no warning. All over, things are awful. But still, it’s not so wrong to indulge one’s sense of safety and luck. What do we wish for each other, for those we love and those we don’t even know, except the blessing of those very sensations of being safe, protected from on high, that someone has an eye on us and wants things to go well? So I say to myself: Enjoy your nice red coat, with its perfect hue and its woolly warmth. It’s cold outside.

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Sunday, November 25, 2007

Movie Reviews


We saw two good movies this weekend: Stephen King's The Mist and Beowulf. I am not a big Robert Zemeckis fan (he directed Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Forrest Gump), but I loved Beowulf. Great visuals on the 3D, just stunning to watch. I'm also reading the Seamus Heaney translation of the original, which, as it turns out, has a lot less sex.
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Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Blech.

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So I didn't get to sleep till 3 am last night, and didn't get up this morning til 11:30. Because, yes, today is a work day, I threw on some jeans and rushed out the door. Consequently am here sans shower, sans walking Rocky, sans breakfast, sans self-respect, with lanky hair pulled back into messy ponytail. Worse, I made the mistake of going to the restroom, where there are mirrors, and I see that I put on too much makeup this morning, and with my hair pulled back, there's a pronounced makeup line visible on my jaw. I look something like a mashup of these two looks:





Tuesday, November 20, 2007

On Chesil Beach, by Ian McEwan

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I just finished this novella by the author of Atonement, and I was quite impressed. I was prepared not to like it because his last novel, Saturday, although classic McEwan in most ways, was so distasteful to me. But On Chesil Beach was a well-crafted novel, almost more like a short story. It focused on a single night in a young couple's life in the early 1960s . . . just at that historical moment when 50s sensibilities were breathing their last but still in place, and sex was a taboo subject even between engaged couples. A short epilogue breezes through the next few decades as they and culture change.

What most amazes me about McEwan is how he writes about human consciousness in such incredible detail and accuracy. He's almost like Virginia Woolf, capturing the stream of consciousness; but his moments are more recondite and more intense. As he does a play-by-play of the wedding night of two nervous virgins, you have to believe that he's experienced this himself, else how could he be so precise and so convincing? But he did the same thing with the character of Briony in Atonement, and I'm pretty sure he's never been a 7-year-old girl in Edwardian England.

As they say on gofugyourself.com, well-played, Ian McEwan, well-played.
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Saturday, November 17, 2007

Angry Sky, by Gabor Peterdi

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Thursday, November 15, 2007

Neil Gaiman's American Gods

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I just finished reading this supernatural thriller/road-trip novel, and I was surprised I didn't like it more. I've heard of Neil Gaiman for years, both for his novels and his Sandman graphic novels. And I know he's buddies with Terry Pratchett, whom I really love. So I was all set for an amazing experience with this novel.

Part of the problem is just taste. The book is pretty episodic, and I'm not a big fan of episodic. Once the plot stage is set, the two main characters go on a road-trip across the country, meeting up with old-world gods working as janitors and funeral-home directors in town after town. This takes up a good 3/4 of the book and is too repetitive for me. Good premise, and it's well written; it's just too much of the same.

I did really like the premise. And I loved the ending, which wraps up a murder mystery with a philosophical revelation in one. And it explicitly does not embrace the romanticization of the old gods that one might expect. I just wish the middle had been tighter.
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Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Quote of the Day

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From Michael Dirda's chat today, in which several chatters mentioned the death this week of Norman Mailer:

"Mailer has said he thought he compromised his chances at winning a Nobel when he stabbed one of his wives."
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Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Bah Tuesbug

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Am inexplicably crabby today. Mary and Eve took me to tea at the Four Seasons yesterday, one of my favorite things to do, so I should be in fine fettle. Instead I couldn't stop sleeping this morning, got into work late, and now I'm unhappy with my blog entry name. Bah Tuesbug: it just doesn't roll off the tongue. Bah Humtues? Tues humbug? The world is just conspiring against me today.
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Saturday, November 10, 2007

Art from Africa

Maybe you were expecting stone sculpture or African headdresses? This is actually a drawing by Deginesh, one of the kids we sponsor through Compassion International. From the time she was little, she always included really good drawings on her letters, and this one is now on my desktop.


















One day I'll learn a little bit of Amharic and will figure out what she's written at the bottom.

In other news, I've just finished The Penguin Historical Atlas of the Vikings. These Penguin historical atlases are really good--just the right length for a busy person who doesn't want to commit to a 500-page tome on a subject. And now I'm reading Neil Gaiman's American Gods, in which my Viking knowledge is already coming in handy. American Gods is a cult classic, but it took me a while to get into it. Now I'm at that stage where, in the course of an evening, I find myself itching to get back to it.
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Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Updike on Books

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I've never read a word of Updike, but this quote from his essays (found on Michael Dirda's chat today) makes me want to read them all:

"If the worst comes true, and the paper book joins the papyrus scroll and parchment codex in extinction, we will miss, I predict, a number of things about it. The book as furniture. Shelved rows of books warm and brighten the starkest room, and scattered single volumes reveal mental processes in progress--books in the act of consumption, abandoned but readily resumable, tomorrow or next year . . . The book as sensual pleasure . . . it is the books of the 1920s and '30s that are most inviting with their handy size, generous margins, and sharp letterpress type . . . The book as souvenir. One's collection comes to symbolize the contents of one's mind . . . Books externalize our brains, and turn our homes into thinking bodies."
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Monday, November 5, 2007

The Carolinas

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This weekend I went to Charlotte, NC, with my brother and dad to visit my eldest sister, Mamie, in her new home south of Charlotte (in SC, technically). My brother-in-law Steve is in heaven with his house backing up to the golf course, his new fire pit, and no Cleveland winters. Lovely area. We also traveled to Asheville and saw the Biltmore and grounds on a lovely day. I also started in on Robert Harris's novel Archangel, which takes place in modern-day Russia and Stalinist USSR and I like even more than Enigma. Harris's books are like popular thrillers raised to their highest literary potential---really good.