Beloved Stranger

If you listened to my shows on KRCC way back when, you might remember hearing the songs of Cindy Lee Berryhill. I've never heard anyone else play her songs on the air, but she's a musical hero of mine--and I've only just discovered her as a Facebook friend and gotten to know a sliver of what she's been up to in recent years. A couple nights ago in San Francisco, there was a benefit concert to help pay for the care of her husband, Paul Williams. Here's a video from that concert, featuring her beautiful song "Beloved Stranger":



And here's the link to a biographical/donation site. Check it out.

Paul Williams

How do you like your blue eyed girl now, Mister Death?

Is it possible to overstate the crush I had on Farrah Fawcett when I was ten? No. It is not.

If I could pluck that little boy from the late seventies and plop him into the seat across from me now, I would not tell him Farah had just died after a long and valiant struggle against cancer, because I wouldn't have the heart. I couldn't bear to see his eyes just then, the crushed look on his face.

I also would not tell him his beautiful Farrah would, in later decades, go on to prove herself both a gifted actress and an inspiration to many. This news would simply bore him.

Instead, I would tell Little Me that, in 1995 or so, Farrah will generously pose for a feature in Playboy Magazine.

For a moment, I'd take in the grin on that little boy's face. Then I'd send him right back where he came from.

Don't Shoot Shoot Shoot That Thing at Me

Dan Savage sets his sights on that scourge of society...

Dicks in Bars: A Growing Public Menace

Still kicking around ideas for this blog.

It's been a long, long time (nearly two years), and I have no illusions that anyone but me even thinks about this blog anymore--yet I find myself imagining new directions for it, from time to time. Maybe I'll write more about my own writing. Maybe I'll jot down some thoughts on the state of satire in the aftermath of the Bush administration. Or maybe I'll focus on the novel.

Anyway, hi.

Once Upon a Time

I used to blog. I will again. New job, new baby, no time.

Reid No Longer Beats Wife

It frustrates me that so many people--some of my students, included--regard CNN and the New York Times as something like the "liberal" equivalents of Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, as though all that falls within the political spectrum must have an exact opposite situated prominently in our media landscape. This isn't breaking news, but CNN and the New York Times are, for all intents and purposes, fundamentally conservative news outlets--perhaps less so than Fox and WSJ, but only by a smidgen. OK, two smidgens. But why is it that those who pay only casual attention to politics almost invariably swallow conservative talking points hook, line and sinker?

In any case, there's something deeply disingenuous in this article posted online by CNN today, covering MoveOn's "Petraeus/Betray Us" ad in the Times:

A liberal advocacy group's print ad attacking Gen. David Petraeus drew a firestorm of criticism from both sides of the aisle on Monday.

The ad, running in Monday's edition of the New York Times, shows a picture of Petraeus. Bold letters spell out "General Petraeus or General Betray us?"

Moveon.org Political Action, which paid for the ad, accuses Petraeus of "cooking the books for the White House" on progress being made in Iraq and calls him "a military man constantly at war with the facts."

White House spokesman Tony Snow called the ad, running the same day the general testified before Congress about Iraq, a "boorish, childish, unworthy attack."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid expressed frustration Monday with the ad.

When asked early Monday if this was the right message for his party to send, the Nevada Democrat curtly answered, "No."

I emphasize that last line because it implies, quite bluntly, that the MoveOn ad is a message sent by the Democratic party. The distinction is more than academic: MoveOn's membership is no doubt made up primarily of those whose party affiliation is Democratic; yet the group is no more an official organ of the Democratic party than Focus on the Family is for the Republican Party. To imply otherwise is irresponsible and misleading--and it perpetuates an association that the G.O.P. relentlessly advances.

Personally, I'd be thrilled to see MoveOn set the agenda for Reid and the Democrats. And I can't blame him for distancing himself from MoveOn when he disagrees with MoveOn's message: they don't speak for him. But framing the question that way ("Is this the right message for your party to send?") amounts to the same, tired rhetorical trick as "Are you now or have you ever been a member of the communist party?" or "Do you still beat your wife?"

Now There's an Idea

The headline at CNN:

"Job opening for attorney general with credibility"

Sigh...

Accidental Gay Sex in Public Restrooms Reaches Epidemic Proportions

First there was State Rep. Bob Allen (R) of Florida, now U.S. Senator Larry Craig (R) of Idaho. But I've got to admit, it was the show Little Britain that saw all this coming:



(So to speak.)

Bomb Iran

Ready for war, kids?

Someone's throwing down the gauntlet again.

Cutest Video of the Nineties

This morning, while digging through some of Billy Bragg's political songs in search of satire to share with my students, I came upon the most adorable video of the nineties*:



* It's worth noting I stopped watching MTV on even an infrequent basis right around 1988.

UPDATE: Speaking of Billy Bragg and politics, here he is pulling a Zelig:

Siouxsie's Back (and So Am I)

Here's the rollicking video for the new single from Siouxsie (sans Banshees or Creatures), with an album due out next month:



It kicks.

Speaking of kicking, I'm alive and well in Oklahoma. It was a hard move, but it's great to be here, starting the new job, and basically carrying on. Should resume blogging on a semi-regular basis this week.

No word yet, but I'm looking forward to new albums from New Model Army and Theo Hakola.

Moving

Things have been dead around here for a while, and will for another while, because I'm packing up to move the family to Oklahoma in a week. Will resume blogging soon after.

I Just Want Your Half

Nice review from Rob Mitchum at Pitchfork, of the new They Might Be Giants album, Else:

...[E]arly singles "Don't Let's Start" and "Ana Ng" could almost pass for the twitchy, catchy work of crit-faves like the dB's or the Feelies, bands too high on dork factor to have fit into the more fashionable environs of post-punk's cool cousin new-wave. No, really, listen to them again.

Fortunately, as Johns Linnell and Flansburgh go somewhat gracefully into their middle ages, they seem to be recalling some of those tighter, tauter early days, when they were closer to Devo than Elmo. The creepy Marcel Dzama art of The Else would suggest so, as would the wonderfully stiff beat of "I'm Impressed", an anthem for beta-males with music as nervous as its message, not jokingly wrapped in big rock production like so much latter-day TMBG....

Perhaps TMBG are just happier making kid's music-- even when they try to grapple with adult situations on "Upside Down Frown" or "Climbing Up the Walls" it still comes out G-rated. Or maybe they just like being in a child's ideal of a rock band, with their addictions to needless guitar solos and brass parts, long overdue for an intervention. But if they could just concentrate on what it was like to be young, but not that young, for longer than the 2:39 of "I'm Impressed", they could remind people that they were once more than just licensing geniuses and rugrat headliners, they were nervy, high-strung, geek-rock kings. I don't want the world, I just want that half.

This is a band that could have had a piece of my heart forever, but they broke that piece long, long ago. Long story short: they were goofing off, got careless, and splat!

The Decline of New Orleans

Apparently New Orleans was falling apart long before it was flooded--or so Pia Ehrhardt attests, in fictional form, with her new story collection Famous Fathers & Other Stories, which just garnered a largely glowing review in the New York Times. Here's an excerpt from the review:

Her stories are heavily populated with characters engaging in empty, adulterous affairs that largely lead nowhere. The implicit sadness of these broken relationships resonates further with Ms. Ehrhardt’s choice of setting: New Orleans, before the city itself became broken. The reader follows Ms. Ehrhardt’s dispirited characters through the lively streets of the French Quarter. The scalloped rooftop of the Superdome perforates the horizon. Sisters jog along the scenic trails of the Tammany Trace....

The collection’s most successful story, “The Longest Part of the Day,” moves between the point of view of 15-year-old Jilly, who goes missing when she takes a ride with Jimmy, the grocery bagger from Piggly Wiggly, and her mother, who is having an affair with her ex-husband’s brother. Ms. Ehrhardt deftly captures the repercussions of a narcissistic mother caught in the undertow of her own desires, and the unexpected tenderness that surfaces between Jimmy and Jilly. It’s quite amazing what Ms. Ehrhardt accomplishes in a mere 24 pages. It is, in short, a great story.

Readers familiar with The God Particle may recall Ehrhardt’s brief, keenly felt memoir, "A World of Paper."

As an aside, have you found goodreads yet? Careful. It's addictive.

"The world has become absurd."

More good reviews for Ron Currie Jr.'s God Is Dead (mentioned here yesterday):

Tod Goldberg of the L.A. Times says, "Currie's strength rests in his ability to focus humanity's conundrums on the smallest physical particles.... The impression may be that Currie handles these issues with a light touch, but the truth he presents is that the world has become absurd; he is merely delivering a steady-cam view."

Also, Entertainment Weekly (which, I'm told, is stingy with high grades) gives God Is Dead a B+, but calls the book "a downer." I couldn't disagree more. Great art, even at it's most grim, is much more than a downer--and Currie's book explores a world more emphatically absurd than grim. When George Saunders conjures a world filled with absurdly themed amusement parks and capitalism run amok, or when Vonnegut yanks the reader back and forth through time to (in part) show the madness and silliness of the lives we lead, is that "a downer"? This book puts Currie squarely in the league of those two giants of satirical fiction. Sure, he's a rookie--but this home-run of a book shows he's playing with the same ball and in the same parks as those guys.

I interviewed Currie recently (and I'm trying to make time to shop this interview around, but teaching and the move have utterly dominated my schedule), and here's what he had to say when I asked him whther the book's characters have anything to live for in a world without God:

I don't think [they] have any less to live for than they did before. I think they may feel that way, but that doesn’t make it so. Because really, once the initial madness following God’s death dies down, nothing has changed in any fundamental way. People still need to figure out how to get out of bed every morning. There is drudge work to do, mortgages to pay and funerals to attend. Parents and children still eyeball one another across great chasms. People still engage in wholesale slaughter over dubious ideologies. I guess what I’m saying is that, God or no, we most often have to find our own motivation for getting on with it every day, even in the face of intense pain, or sadness, or boredom. Most of the time we succeed. Occasionally, we do not, and we’re never heard from again.

Is that a downer? I find the outlook liberating. Refreshing. Honest.

It's a great book, one which strikes a teetering balance between stark realism, rich satire, and a playful sense of the absurd. Don't miss it.

UPDATE: God Is Dead passes the Page 69 Test.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I have never met in person nor spoken on the phone with Ron Currie, Jr. I have known him for about five years, though, via an online ficiton workshop at Zoetrope.com, and I nearly published an excerpt from his second novel in my online journal, The God Particle. I consider him a friend, which is precisely why I've refrained from writing and attempting to publish a review of the novel. Though you may want to weigh this if you're considering buying the book on my word alone, I feel confident that the book is truly excellent. I wouldn't stick my neck out like this if I felt otherwise. Friends read this blog now and again, occasionally students and colleagues--people I have a vested interest in steering right. And I place great value on critical honesty. Besides, as reviews roll in, the evidence will mount: God Is Dead is great.

Mexico City

I dreamt last night that Mexico City collapsed into the empty subterranean lake bed beneath it, killing millions.

And I didn't dream it just once, but several times, and from several perspectives. In the final istance, I was hovering over the city in a helicopter, watching it crumble into itself, watching the dust rise.

In another, I was a woman who had jumped from a building, only to watch the ground fall away from me as I fell toward it.

In another, I was swallowed by dust almost instantly.

God Is Dead is Great

Ron Currie Jr.'s God is Dead hits bookstore shelves this week. Don't miss it. I'd call it the best book of short stories that I've read since Jesus' Son, but (like Jesus' Son) it's more accurate to call it a novel. Whatever we call it, God Is Dead is great. If you buy it, it will very likely be the best book you buy this year.

But don't take my word for it:

"A bleak dystopian future is tempered with moments of possibility in story writer Currie's debut novel, in which a sick and wounded Dinka woman arrives at a refugee camp in Darfur, searching for her lost brother. The woman is God, come to Earth in human form to make apologies to the Sudanese, over whose fate He is, 'due to an implacable polytheistic bureaucracy, completely powerless.' When God is gunned down, news of His death spreads quickly around the globe and provides the jumping-off point for the subsequent short story — like chapters that reveal what happens in a post-God world: suicide rates skyrocket (especially among clergy members), riots and mass looting erupt and the pack of feral dogs that feasted on God's corpse begin 'speaking a mishmash of Greek and Hebrew' and inspiring worship among Africans. (Meanwhile, in America, the masses, seeking a deity to fill the void, begin worshipping children.) Looking at humanity through a warped lens allows the various narrators unusual insight; while sometimes overwrought, these observations are often striking, as when an enlightened dog describes the strange new experience of emotion. This novel-in-stories is unsettling and strange, but still easily accessible; despite the ways in which his world has changed, Currie's altered humanity has one foot in ours. (July)" Publishers Weekly