Judson Knight's Epic World

Half-Time in the Writing Game--Or Is It Just a Clever Excuse?

2006-11-25T21:37:00.000-08:00

[I wrote this back in August, when I really was stalled out on my novel. Now I’m in a totally different place, but thought these words might be of interest or encouragement to the many writers—and procrastinators—out there.]

For three months earlier this year, I wrote furiously on my novel, The Sleep Diaries; then, as has happened so many times before, I reached half-time or the seventh-inning stretch. In other words, I stalled out.

Deidre says that the first half of a novel is much more difficult than the second half, and I know what she means about the first part, but I haven’t written many second halves.

The fact is—and I’m hardly alone in this—I’m at least as talented at not writing as I am at writing. Or, to quote a great line from a song by the Jayhawks, “I’m perfecting the finest art of wasting hours.”

Yet as I’ve watched Deidre work relentlessly on Parallel Seduction, the third book in her series, I’ve felt convicted in my procrastination.

She debuted Parallel Attraction in April, and Parallel Heat came out in October (also her deadline for delivery of the third manuscript), and did all this on top of her other responsibilities as a mommy, business owner, and so forth. The tight schedule, and the fact that she actually has a publishing contract, certainly explains a great deal of her dedication, but she wrote with the same sense of purpose five years ago, when she was just doing it for pleasure.

In that same period, I’ve begun three novels, each of which would be great if I’d just finish them. The first, There’s This Girl, is a thinly veiled chronicle of my own experiences in college. Much further removed from personal experience is Sol Invictus, in which an Indiana Jones–like figure battles the demonic incarnation of a Roman deity.

If that sounds farfetched, then consider the premise of The Sleep Diaries: a man in his early forties, with an extremely dynamic wife and two beautiful little girls, lives in a giant house and tries to write a novel even as he confronts his own demons. Imagine that! (Anybody who knows me will get the joke here. But seriously, all fiction is autobiography.)

The story is essentially written, or at least heavily outlined; now I just have to sharpen it, and that requires typing up the handwritten pages so that I can begin editing. One of the big discoveries for me in writing this book is the fact that, for my first draft at least, writing by hand in a bound journal works much better than typing my thoughts directly into a computer. There are several reasons for this.

At the most obvious level, writing by hand affords an organic, intimate connection with the text that’s difficult if not impossible to achieve with modern technology. There’s also the sense that when you compose by hand, you’re working within more or less the same physical parameters as Tolstoy or Proust—though it should be noted that the writing instruments available to them were far less user-friendly than my beloved (yet disposable) fine-point Pilot™ Precise V7 Rolling Ball® pen.

And because this novel is loosely built around the idea of a journal, it seemed all the more appropriate to compose it as though it were. It’s almost as though I’m acting out the role of the protagonist, which brings out some freaky thoughts about the relationship of author to narrator.

Finally, writing by hand has somehow made it easier to jump around: whenever one part wasn’t working, I would simply begin work on another part. Eventually, though, I realized I could go on scribbling indefinitely—my handwriting is unreadable to anyone, sometimes even me—and needed to switch to the computer to get it organized.

So maybe it really is just half-time. Or maybe I’m afraid to finish because I told myself at the outset that I didn’t care if I ever wrote another novel, so I would pack everything into this one. Maybe it’s because I’ve always had this erroneous belief that a novel is supposed to take years and years, and this one just flowed out of me in a few months. Or maybe I’m just lazy.

These are some things this writer thinks about—especially when he's not exactly writing.

Mama Said There'd Be Days Like This: My Personal September 11

2006-09-02T19:54:00.000-07:00

For more than twenty years, every time September 11 rolled around, my mother reminded me to be careful. Not that she was being morbid; I appreciated the fact that she remembered—and helped me remember—what happened on that day in 1974.

My parents gave me a bicycle on my seventh birthday, an occasion marred only slightly by a sign of the times. Earlier that day, when a neighbor looked out her back window and saw two hippies—my brothers Tom and Jon—carrying a kid’s bike across an open field, she assumed they’d stolen it to buy drugs, and called the police. (She wasn’t wrong about their behavior in general, but certainly wrong in that instance—not to mention the matter of being a busybody.)

But I got my bike anyway, and learned to ride on a hill with a lot of trial and error and skinned-up knees. Training wheels, in my mind, were for girls, and I prided myself on never crying at physical pain, no matter how severe.

Despite, or rather because of, a fairly strict home life, I ran wild whenever I got the chance, and that little yellow bike was my vehicle of escape. I couldn’t wait for them to unpack it from the shipping crate in Manila.

This was a different time, a different world, when parents didn’t worry as much about their children—partly because they didn’t have to, and partly because most weren’t as involved in their kids’ lives as parents are today. So I roamed more or less free.

Some other American kids and I formed a gang and rode around “spying” on people, throwing eggs, and generally causing mayhem. We got really out of hand when showing off in front of older kids. One time a couple of high schoolers dared us to climb up on a roof and toss a big porcelain toilet-bowl cover onto the tile beside some hapless guy’s swimming pool. Guess who took the dare? Hearing it shatter scared us all—even the big kids—and we fled like chickens. (Yes, it’s regrettable that we represented our country so poorly. But we were just kids.)

That’s how I spent my time outside of school, when I wasn’t busy being a Cub Scout and publicly upholding virtues belied by my extracurricular activities. But my days as a hellion on a bike came to an end on September 11, just a few weeks before my tenth birthday.

As I prepared to cross the busy street that afternoon, I looked to the left and saw the cement truck speeding toward me, which is a good thing, because otherwise I wouldn’t be sitting here writing this. Then again, if I hadn’t been hurrying to avoid it, I might have noticed the Jeep coming from the right.

Next thing I knew, I was crawling out from under the hood with my head bleeding. I kept calm as the couple who had hit me scooped me up, along with the crumpled bike, and put us in the back seat. I told them our phone number (999-142—I still remember that, and yes, it was only six digits), so they could call my parents from the hospital. I looked down at my white shirt and saw drops of blood, felt the pain starting to emerge from under the shock, and still my lip didn’t tremble.
But then they started talking.

They belonged to Iglesia ne Cristo, a semi-cultish group known for their elaborate church buildings. The man told me I was lucky it wasn’t a member of a rival sect who had hit me, because they would have just driven on and left me to bleed on the pavement. The woman chimed in: members of that other church were scum.

That’s when I burst into tears. I didn’t care about theological grudge matches; I just wanted my mommy.

The doctor put a couple stitches in my head, and that was that. The entire bill was 40 pesos, about five dollars at the time: this was, after all, the third world. And, being the third world, nobody thought about taking X-rays, thus leaving me with permanent back problems.

That physical pain has always been there to remind me of September 11, 1974, and for a long time, my mother remembered. She had an excellent memory, but by the time 9/11 became a bad day on an infinitely greater scale, Alzheimer’s had robbed her of it. She probably never even knew what happened on that day in 2001, nor did she remember what had happened in Manila long before. She didn’t remember me at all, and though she went on living for fifteen months, she had died in my mind much earlier. But her love remained alive in me, along with her warning to be just a little extra-careful on September 11.

Returning with a Vengeance

2006-08-11T05:50:00.000-07:00

Many thanks to all of you who reminded me of what a sluggard I've been with regard to updating this blog: Michele, Robin, Mel, and of course my wonderful wife Deidre. I won't even try to use the excuse of being busy and distracted, because that's true of just about anyone in this age. But I have had a pretty full schedule, what with my responsibilities as a father and a partner in The Knight Agency, along with two "hobbies" that have taken a lot of time that might otherwise have gone to blogging: playing guitar and writing for the hometown paper. Some of those newspaper columns are about purely local issues, but a number of them are appropriate for posting here, and I plan to include a number of them on this blog in the next few weeks. But first....

A million thanks to my good friend Beth Holley, who converted a set of old family slides from the 1960s to digital format. Below you'll find a number of these, along with notes to explain what you're seeing.

Mom feeding me. This would have been some time in the fall of 1964 in West Chicago, where my family was living at the time I was born.

Herewith I join the ranks of those who can proudly say, "I've posted nude pictures of myself on the Internet." That's Tom, my oldest sibling (he was fifteen at the time), giving me a bath. Isn't it funny how a baby can look like an old person?

Engaged in a favorite activity--even today, though I have no idea what became of the teddy bear.

The five Knight kids on their first Christmas together. That's Joe, Tom, Jon, me, and Anne.

First birthday, Manila, 1965. This and the two pictures that follow constitute a short biography--a sort of portrait of the artist as a young man. So much of what was to follow for me is encapsulated here.

Enticed by beauty and wonder...

...But now a little older and wiser, a postlapsarian self.

Second birthday--proof that I'm capable of learning from past mistakes!

The end, as it were, or at least my (rear) end. Will post more pictures soon. And again, to all of my friends out there in blogland, thanks for giving me a swift kick in said rear end!

Cheesecake Factory

2006-05-27T20:26:00.000-07:00

[To first-time visitors--and may your numbers increase!--what follows is not my typical post. Not that there is a typical post as such, but in any case, if there were such a thing, this would not be it.]

In honor of both my wife Deidre and my ever-faithful reader Michele, I'm posting a gallery of my favorite celebrity women. I say "in honor of" those two because both of them have what D and I call "beefcake blogs"--shots of hunky men in various stages of dress and undress. You can find Deidre's here, and Michele's here. (And I'll have to say that I'm pretty partial to D's choice for a "hunk" to feature in her Mother's Day post.)

So anyway, here are a few of my faves--women I think set the standard for loveliness. As you'll see, it's not exactly your typical American male's gallery of beauty. There are a number of conventional hotties here, but quite a few that I chose as much for non-physical qualities as for anything else. Also, you'll notice a preponderance of brunettes--good thing, because I'm married to one. In fact, scarce are the images here of skinny blondes, not because I have anything against them, but I'm more inclined toward the darker, voluptuous type, and I figure that SBs have no shortage of admirers anyway.

Then again, wit and intelligence count for a great deal, which is why Laura Ingraham, a definite SB, makes the list. (In the interests of equal time, a counterpoint to the nation's leading right-wing blonde--I'm no big fan of Ann Coulter, thank you very much--is a less well-known left-wing brunette, Katrina Vanden Heuvel.) You'll also see comediennes well-represented here: in fact, as I've admitted to Deidre on more than one occasion, my dream girl (other than her, of course, in case she's reading this!) is Mo Collins of Mad TV.

And speaking of the Laura Ingraham-Ann Coulter dichotomy, I tried to avoid repetition: who needs Maggie Gyllenhaal, for instance, when there's Mandy Moore--who didn't blame America for 9/11? Nor is Salma Hayek a necessary addition when you have the more compelling Sarah Shahi. (And if you think the photos I chose for Ms. Shahi and Katherine Heigl are a bit racy, then just click over to Michele's blog and take a look--my choices seem pretty tame, and Michele herself assured me that my mostly female readership would not be offended by a little skin here and there.)

Mary Tyler Moore, c. 1970, was always more of a crush for me as a kid than Marlo Thomas, though they looked a great deal alike. On the other hand, Barbara Feldon from Get Smart--be still, my first-grade heart! I used to love that show, and she was no small part of that; in fact, one of the proudest moments of my life, years later, came when somebody said that my wife looked like Agent 99. These and others appear in their own special category, of youthful faves. These include Dawn Wells, a.k.a. Mary Ann from Gilligan's Island. Terrible show, but a great premise--and even though they always presented Ginger as the hottie, anybody with intelligence recognized that the little chick from Kansas was far more compelling. Less well-known is Audrey Landers, who was on a few shows in the early 1980s (hence the hair), and whose picture on the IMDB shows that she is still gorgeous.

Patricia Arquette. Okay, so after that disclaimer/apology about the paucity of blondes, what do I start with? Well, she's not a skinny blonde, anyway. And besides, she is Patricia Freakin' Arquette--the usual rules don't apply. Never cared for her sister at all, but I've loved PA ever since Ed Wood, one of my very favorite movies.

Mo Collins, formerly of Mad TV, who manages to be beautiful even when she's playing ridiculous characers.

Irish pop singer Andrea Corr, who I first noticed in The Commitments.

Roma Downey (obviously.) As with Andrea Corr, even if she weren't gorgeous, that Irish accent is a killer.

Jennifer Ehle, best known for her role opposite Colin Firth in Pride and Prejudice.

Tina Fey

Jodie Foster: Forget about John Hinckley, forget about the rumors (who cares anyway?)--she comes across as sexy-smart, always a great combo.

Teri Hatcher. Long before Desparate Housewives, a show I've never bothered to watch, I loved the way she delivered that memorable line in Seinfeld: "Yes, they're real, and they're fantastic!"

Katherine Heigl. This one's a little embarrassing, because she's young enough to be my daughter by a long shot--a consideration that kept Lindsay Lohan and Christina Ricci off this list--but Katherine here is obviously no child. I loved her as Isabelle Evans, the super-sexy alien, during the first two seasons of Roswell--before they decided to "dowdify" her by cutting her hair short and coloring it a mousy brown that didn't suit her.

Faith Hill. I realize she might seem like a rather "ordinary" choice, but I like her style, her husband (Tim McGraw is one of the few country singers whose music I genuinely enjoy), and her backstory (poor girl from Mississippi makes good.)

Elizabeth Hurley. With that perpetual look of devilment in her eyes--which is what makes her so alluring, more even than her sheer beauty or that accent--she was a great choice to play the great tempter himself in that one movie with Brendan Fraser.

Laura Ingraham

Crime writer Aphrodite Jones. She's a little over the top, as her name suggests, but as far as I'm concerned, she can get away with it.

Norah Jones

Catherine Keener

Jayne Kennedy. Never much cared for watching sports, but I always made an exception when she was serving as commentator.

Debra Messing. The fact that Will can spend all that time around Grace and still prefer men tells us that he's not kidding about being truly gay.

Mandy Moore, who, despite the bubblegum image she's been working to shake, has a great presence.

Thandie Newton

Kelly Preston. Almost makes you willing to give Scientology a listen. As noted below with regard to Sigourney Weaver, though she played the bad girl in Jerry Maguire, I still found her irresistible. (One of my favorite movie lines--which I will not reproduce here--is the first thing we hear her say in that film.)

Lisa Rinna--one of my very faves, in terms of sheer looks. The image of feminine loveliness IMHO. (And btw, "lovely," for a straight man, is a term reserved exclusively for describing women. Neither a plan to meet for lunch, for instance, nor the table setting, nor the lunch itself can be described as lovely, usages available to women and out gay men. But for a straight guy, the only possible lovely thing about a lunch meeting might be the person sitting across from him.)

Lynne Russell of CNN, who made the Nineties just a little more bearable.

Jeri Ryan. She was a killer as "Seven of Nine" on Star Trek: Voyager. Her husband, who had to withdraw his candidacy for the Senate due to sex scandals, is proof that some guys just never choose to be satisfied.

Greta Scacchi. I had a hard time finding any picture that did her justice--even this one is a bit blurry--because let's just say that she doesn't now look much like she did in The Player, The Browning Version, or Jefferson in Paris. But thanks for the memories, GS!

Sarah Shahi. Ditto for what I said above about Lisa Rinna. Or in the words of Frank Ockenfels of Men's Fitness, who took this picture, "She's truly one of the most amazing women I've ever shot." Ms. Shahi, who is Iranian American, exemplifies the beauty of women from a part of the world that is currently not very high on our nation's Hit Parade of Love.

Ione Skye. Her star has faded, but she was slammin' in Say Anything and even Wayne's World.

Madeline Stowe. I especially liked her opposite Daniel Day Lewis in Last of the Mohicans.

Charlize Theron. Aside from her obvious charms, she really impressed me with the risks she took in Monster.

Janine Turner. Loved her character in Northern Exposure.

Katrina Vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation. Though I disagree with her on a lot of things, she's impressively level-headed--and I can't imagine getting bored arguing with her!

Sela Ward. I suppose one could call it redundant to include both her and Teri Hatcher, but this kind of redundancy I find perfectly acceptable. The quintessential MILF.

Sigourney Weaver. She hasn't been seen much lately, but in the late 1980s she was the bomb. Even though she was Melanie Griffith's wicked boss in Working Girl, I found her ten times more appealing than MG. I even thought she was way hot in Aliens, where she spent most of the time running around in a dirty, sweat-soaked wife-beater with alien slime all over her.

Renee Zellweger--last in the alphabet, but certainly not last in the hearts of her countrymen. An underappreciated hottie, perhaps because she's never been afraid to take roles that deemphasize that aspect of her--e.g., Jerry Maguire or the Bridget Jones movies. As I've noted several times, a great accent makes a major difference, and RZ's natural southern drawl (she's from Texas, as is Janine Turner) is extremely charming.

Some Favorites of My Youth

Jennifer Beals, who, though she's still quite attractive, was positively smokin' in Flashdance--so much so that it took me several viewings before I realized what a stupid movie it was. And as noted below with regard to Audrey Landers, for guys born in the mid-1960s, there's something special about the now long outdated look associated with women who were hot around the time we were nineteen or so. Someday, perhaps those leggings she wore in the movie will come back into style.

Barbara Feldon. Though I never cared much for Toto, I could certainly understand the sentiments behind their song "99."

Mary Tyler Moore. Back when she played the sweet girl roles--as opposed to portraying her actual self in later work--she was a major babe. I always sympathized with Murray's crush on his coworker.

Glynnis O'Connor. Hardly a household name now, but as a seventh grader I became so enamored of her character in The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (opposite a very young John Travolta in an unusual role) that I developed a crush on a girl in my class simply because she looked like her.

Dawn Wells, a.k.a. Mary Ann. Had I been the Professor, I would have ditched all the other losers and left the island with her. (Well, okay, I would have sent back a boat for them later.)

Historical Faves: There's something a little strange about admiring the beauty of a woman who's long dead, but this list wouldn't be complete without these six.

Josephine Baker. As someone who's always had a "thing" for women of darker complexion, it's odd that I have relatively few African American women on my list. Angela Bassett, however, is a bit too angular and severe-looking for my tastes; Tyra Banks and Iman look too much like they came from another planet; and after her blubbering Oscar speech, I lost all respect for Halle Berry, who I once regarded as perhaps the most beautiful woman in the world. Josephine Baker, on the other hand, was a figure as admirable for her courage as for her beauty. Not only did she build a career for herself in France at a time when black women in America faced extremely limited opportunies, but she was a heroine of the Resistance.

Dorothy Dandridge, who paved the way for the modern African American actresses mentioned above.

Katharine Hepburn--every smart guy's dream girl from the 1930s. She was smokin' in The Philadelphia Story, and you always got a sense that her offscreen persona wasn't so different from the acerbic characters she played in her youth.

Marilyn Monroe. Okay, she's on everybody's list, but for a good reason: what the Beatles were to music, she was to loveliness.

Elizabeth Montgomery. Though Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie were both relentlessly stupid shows built around similar themes, Samantha Stevens was a far more appealing character than the always-idiotic Jeannie. Further, the creators of Jeannie tried much too hard, laughing into the backs of their hands just a bit too much over the obvious fantasy appeal of the show's setup. Sam, on the other hand, was a practical woman, or at least she tried to be one, and the fact that she went around dressed like everybody else--while being both extraordinary and level-headed--made her altogether superior to Barbara Eden's character in the other show.

Jessica Savitch. As an adolescent, she was my favorite part of NBC Nightly News, and her troubled story only makes her all the more a romantic figure.

Favorite Women for Whom I Had to Supply All the Visual Images In other words, the hotties of great literature. If you're not a reader and just want pictures, skip this one.

Any number of women from the Old Testament, especially Delilah (the story of her and Samson was my favorite as a child) and Esther.

Athena. It shows what a fool Paris was that he chose Aphrodite (whose charms, of course, I can only imagine were all but irresistible) over the goddess of wisdom. Then again, Athena is usually depicted as a virgin--Parthenos, the maiden--but that isn't a bad thing, considering the bad fate that awaited those suckers lucky/unlucky enough to wind up in a goddess's bed.

Guinevere. Naturally. And of course, in thinking of any figure prior to the twentieth century, you just have to mentally airbrush out the bad teeth, bad skin, etc. that would have been the reality.

Beatrice of Dante's Divine Comedy and La vita nuova. Though based on a real person, Dante's version was so removed from any possible reality that she might as well have been purely fictional. Fittingly, given the fact that she was more idea than person, I find the idea of beatific love she represented far more appealing than Dante's extremely static, quite-literally-too-perfect-for-this-world version of her.

The woman addressed in Shakespeare's sonnets. Okay, okay, I know some people with a lot of time on their hands have a lot of theories--e.g., she wasn't really a woman, he wasn't really Shakespeare, blah blah blah. To which I say, forget all that nonsense and just read the ones that begin "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" or "Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments."

Elizabeth Bennett in Pride and Prejudice. Note the inclusion of Jennifer Ehle above, and I certainly could have included Keira Knightley, both of whom have played this most appealing of literary figures.

Mathilde de la Mole in Stendhal's The Red and the Black. A real firecracker, this one. Julien Sorel more than met his match in her.

Estella in Dickens's Pride and Prejudice. I find that in a literary context, at least, I'm more drawn to the bad girls, or at least the ones who were major pains in the you-know-what. When Dickens ended the book with the equivalent of choirs of angels singing around Pip and Estella, I wondered who he thought he was kidding: this chick would have been nothing but trouble--and yet oh so difficult to forget.

Natasha Rostov in War and Peace. Let's just say that in an American film version of the story, I would pick Natalie Portman--who, by the way, certainly could have made the cheesecake gallery above--to play her. I also fondly remember Princess Bolkonskaya, though she was a ditz (I just loved that name, though) and the ultra-bad girl Helene.

Liza Tischin in Dostoyevsky's The Devils. I wrote my undergraduate honors thesis on this book, also known as The Possessed, and wished that Liza had possessed the good sense to see through a cad like Stavrogin.

Emma Bovary in Madame Bovary. To have become entangled in her world would have been like jumping headlong in front of a train, but I can see how a young man would have been drawn to her.

Jo in Little Women. I still think she should have wound up with Laurie and not that dirty old man professor guy.

Scarlett O'Hara. What she needed, as Rhett fully understood, was not flattery and coddling, but a swift kick in the rear end. She would have been a royal pain to have in your life, and yet it's not difficult to understand why he put up with her as he did.

Several women in One Hundred Years of Solitude. Especially Remedios the Beauty and the last woman, whose name I believe was Amarantha Ursula.

Ada in Cold Mountain. Can you believe I never even saw the movie? Nicole Kidman is way hot, but I wouldn't have really picked her for this role. Don't know who I would have cast, but it would have had to be someone who looked like she could better survive the hardships Ada endured.

...And Last But Most of All: My personal dream girl, who has borne my name, my children, and all of my peculiarities over the years. A talented writer, an exceptional agent, a superb mommy, and the best friend I've ever had.

Florida Is Like the Internet, and Other Ruminations from the Deeper South

2006-05-22T14:07:00.000-07:00

[To Michele and all my other wonderful readers: another reason, besides the guitar, that I haven't posted as much lately--not that I've ever been all that great about doing so--is that I'm writing a weekly column for our local newspaper, the Morgan County Citizen. Where it makes sense to do so, I'll post those columns here--perhaps with a little editing, inasmuch as they usually make reference to people and places here in Madison. The following, on our experience at RT last week, is an obvious candidate, and I present it in its entirety. Will post some pictures as soon as Deidre emails them to me. And Dana, I'm so sorry to have missed you, but by all means we plan to be in Houston next year.]

It was a working vacation—honest. I suppose if we’d gone to Dayton rather than Daytona, it would have been easier to believe the “working” part, but it so happened that the Romantic Times (RT) Convention took place at the Hilton right smack on Daytona Beach. And since our literary agency focuses primarily on romance and women’s fiction—not to mention the fact that my wife Deidre is a romance writer—we had to be there. A sacrifice, yes, but we were willing.

Every year, RT draws several thousand romance writers, editors, agents, fans, and assorted others affiliated with the world of clinch covers and bodice-rippers. When attendees weren’t signing books, networking, or taking in workshops such as “How to Create Realistic Fight Scenes” and “Psychic Authors on Psychic Fiction,” they were partying at the Faery Court Ball or the Vampires of the Caribbean Ball. And then there was the Mr. Romance Pageant, at which the male cover models strutted their stuff—no doubt a most memorable event.

One scene pretty much sums up RT for me. As I was wheeling a suitcase full of wet, sandy swimsuits and towels through the lobby on my way to the laundromat, I found myself behind a woman in a purple belly-dancer costume, complete with jingling castanets. She passed a man wearing kilts, and the fact that neither of them seemed to regard the other's apparel as remotely unusual says a great deal about the whimsical spirit that prevailed.

The vast majority of attendees were women, of course, because that’s who primarily reads, writes, and sells romance. Then there were the cover models, easily identified by their tanned, muscular frames and their eyes scanning the onlookers to see who was looking at them. A few doors down from us at the hotel was a couple, the female half of which had appeared on the cover of a client’s book. She was beautiful, of course, but her man almost had her beat in that department, or anyway he seemed to think so, judging from the amount of time he spent fussing over his long black hair while she sat around smoking and looking bored.

One afternoon I watched a hulking figure posing in a black pair of Speedos, holding a giant golden sword that looked like he’d swiped it from Captain Hook. He was standing out front of the fountain between the hotel and the beach, with a group of women snapping shots—not just the official photographers taking his picture for a future paperback cover, but also various admirers collecting visual souvenirs. I watched, too, observing his abs and thinking about how hard he’d worked to acquire and maintain them.

The rest of the men in attendance—aside from editors, conference personnel, and those very rare male romance writers—were husbands/companions. It wasn’t difficult to tell them apart from the cover models, though thanks to an aggressive workout program over the past six months, I presented something of an anomaly. I could almost hear people thinking, “He’s not good-looking enough to be a cover model, but he doesn’t look like he swallowed a basketball either, so he can’t be one of the husbands. Maybe he’s a romance writer.... Wait, maybe he’s gay!”

In addition to providing behind-the-scenes assistance while Deidre met with clients, editors, and fellow writers, my job was to represent her and The Knight Agency in as favorable a light as possible, and though I had a couple of run-ins with officious service personnel, punky teenagers, and a vagrant who reminded me of Charles Manson, I generally remained on my best behavior. We had a room on the cabana level, with just fifty feet of grass and concrete separating us from the beach, and every morning and night, I sat out there and played my guitar. People often stopped to listen, and at one point a security guard asked me, “Sir, are you a guest at this hotel?” I didn’t think I was that badly dressed.

My brief experience as a street musician gave me an idea I fully expected Deidre to veto: “Maybe one of these days,” I said to her with a devilish glint, “I’ll just stroll up to the square back home and start playing.” Amazingly, she had no problem with that—probably using reverse psychology—so I just might do it, assuming the police wouldn’t arrest me for disturbing the peace. If just one person told me they’d come listen, I could probably overcome my admittedly low levels of stage fright.

Back from our trip now on Monday morning, we’re all suffering from vacation nostalgia. But I at least am going back to Florida next month, though not to sit in the sun: Jeopardy is holding auditions in Orlando for people who passed their online test, which I took in March. (I’ve already gone through this one time, in 2002, so we’ll see if it goes anywhere.)

The Jeopardy saga is another story, as is something else, quite at odds with the upbeat spirit of the trip: the commemoration of my single greatest personal tragedy, which occurred in Daytona twenty-five years ago last month. That, too, will have to wait for another column. But this brings me back to my title: Florida is indeed just like the Internet—whatever it is you’re looking for, be it good, bad, or indifferent, you’ll find plenty of it there. Then again, one could say the same thing about life in general on this strange little planet.

Just a Quickie

2006-05-15T13:51:00.000-07:00

Many thanks to my oh-so-kind readers and posters, and sorry I'm always so far behind the curve. Dana, I think that a seasoned guitarist like EVH would actually have highly distinctive fingerprints, because playing doesn't really affect the main part of the print, but rather the very top, which would show a deep ridge and muted fingerprints. Beth, how kind of you to suggest that I post some sound files, Coz. Maybe by the time I figure out how to do that, I'll be good enough to air my playing here. And Michele, you're always the best--and congrats yourself for getting out there on the bike!

I tried doing a post today that involved a lot of photos, and problems with Blogger forced me to set that aside, especially because Deidre and the kids and I are headed out of town tomorrow. We're going to the Romantic Times Booklovers Convention in Daytona, which ought to be very interesting! I certainly plan to do a post on it at some point. Anyway, thanks for reading and sticking with my blog, ladies! I'll be sure to visit, and leave comments on, all of yours in the next few days.

Girl, I Want to Be with You All of the Time--All Day and All of the Night

2006-04-28T13:04:00.000-07:00

Okay, ladies, time for me to fess up as to what I've been doing this past month. I say "ladies" because I seem to have a predominantly female readership--a fact that, to quote Martin Short's character in The Big Picture, "gives me a yuge amount of satisfaction." So--well, I'll get right to the point (how uncharacteristic of me!) Imagine a man making the shape of an hourglass with his fingers and saying, without any hint of remorse, "I've been spending a lot of time with one of these." The fact is, see, I'm in love, and in this particular instance I'm not talking about my wife.

But it's okay: Deidre knows all about this. In fact, she's the one who led me right into this love affair, and she takes great pleasure in seeing me with this new girl in my arms.

She's pretty easy to hold, this new girl, seeing as she is smaller than my four-year-old and quite a bit lighter--about five pounds. She's less than a year old, I'd guess, though I don't know for sure: I've only had her since December, and we've really only begun getting acquainted in the past couple of months.

B. B. King calls his special girl Lucille, but I'm no B. B. King, and this girl of mine doesn't have a name other than the one stamped on her head: Yamaha. She's classical, quite literally, though I have no intention of learning classical guitar. I just like her wide neck, which readily accommodates my thick fingers.

* * *

All my life I've loved music, loved to sing, and--as I've come to discover my inner ham--loved to perform. I always wanted to learn guitar, but as everyone who's ever tried to pick up that instrument knows, there are massive barriers to entry. Principal among these are the six strings themselves, which, in order to produce something approximating music, must be pressed firmly in very specific ways, some of which involve hand contortions seemingly so impossible they would have gotten a person condemned for witchcraft in old Salem.

And the pain in the fingertips! There's a reason why guitarists lovingly call the strings "cheese slicers." A couple of weeks ago, I accidentally bumped the tender fingertips of my left hand into a doorframe, an act that produced a sensation akin to severe electric shock. Uttering a few time-honored expletives, I doubled over in agony, and yet there was something satisfying in that pain, because it told me that I was truly paying my dues.

If you were to compare the fingertips of my right hand to those of my left, you would find on the one hand (literally) a set of four perfectly normal prints, whereas each fingertip on the left hand now bears a semi-permanent indentation about a quarter of an inch in length, the surfaces growing rougher and more calloused with each day.

Given the fact that I've only been taking lessons since the beginning of February, I'm sure you're wondering how well I could possibly be playing. And that goes double when I admit that I remained rather perfunctory about the whole thing, far from enamored, until just three weeks ago. On the day after Deidre's big book launch here in our hometown (April 7), we had a pre-Easter family gathering at our house, and that afternoon her sister (and Knight Agency superstar) Pamela asked me if I knew any songs beyond the handful I'd learned to that point. Her request for "Me and My Bobby McGee" led me to start searching for chord charts, and I soon began printing out information on literally hundreds of songs. Thus began an explosion of enthusiasm, a learning process that has seen me devoting countless hours to compositions by artists ranging from Elvis Presley to Elvis Costello.

* * *

Thank God for the age in which we live, when a guitar initiate has at his access conveniences unknown to the great minstrels of the past. I count among these not only digital tuners (thirty-five years ago, when my guitar teacher was learning, everyone had to tune by ear) and web sites such as AZChords, which offers (free of charge) information on songs by thousands upon thousands of artists. That has given me the opportunity to pursue a wildly eclectic song list that suits my personality.

I find that I generally go for two types of songs. First there are the moody, painful ones such as "Bobby McGee" (which I can now practically perform in my sleep), the Rolling Stones' "Dead Flowers," or Tom Petty's "Free Fallin'." Contrasted with these are a variety of upbeat or hard-rocking tunes, usually presented in a slowed-down (because I can't play fast), ironic tone: "Viva Las Vegas," for instance, or a number of Sex Pistols tracks. I also love the kinds of songs, such as Hot Chocolate's "You Sexy Thang," that no one would ever expect to hear on an acoustic guitar. Recently my seven-year-old asked me to learn "Hot Stuff" by Donna Summer, which I think would be a nice addition to my repertoire. Oh, and I do a killer bluegrass/mariachi version of KISS's "Rock and Roll All Nite."

But just how well does the kid play? Well, Jimmy Page doesn't have anything to fear. I don't aspire to play at the level of my teacher, or even of some of his middle-school students, who already have lightning-fast hands that run all over the frets and the strings. (And by the way, as hard as the job of the left hand is, the right hand is still more difficult: that's the one that strums or plucks, producing distinctive rhythms and sounds.)

But I've been blessed with a good singing voice, and all I ever set out to do was to accompany myself while singing. For that task--the style of Bob Dylan, Cat Stevens, or Elvis Costello as opposed to that of Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, and Eddie Van Halen--I'm plenty adequate. Getting better every day, too, as is almost inevitable when you practice constantly and even do fingertip pushups so as to increase hand strength--though mastery of the basic but physically challenging F chord still eludes me. Soon this pursuit is going to kick into a new level as I begin performing for people other than my wife and daughters, starting next Thursday, when I'll be doing a few songs for my younger daughter's preschool class.

* * *

Learning the guitar has proven to be one of those great before-and-after experiences. It has literally changed just about everything about how I see life and conduct myself, a fact nowhere more evident than in my profession.

Charlton Heston once said that he loved to draw because he did it only for fun, and that whereas he would evaluate his own dramatic performances with the utmost of rigor, he could find complete satisfaction in producing a drawing that looked remotely like the thing it was supposed to represent. Substitute writing for acting, and guitar for drawing, and you have my situation. This new pursuit, which I undertook simply because I was interested and not because I ever hope to make a dime doing it, has in turn revolutionized my work as a writer, a craft I have pursued with varying degrees of commitment for more than thirty years now.

Oh, yeah, that's another thing that's kept me busy: thanks to this artistic renascence engendered by the guitar, I've begun writing again. And I mean seriously writing, crafting the book I've been trying to write for years and years and years--in fact, for most of my life. Perhaps my experience can help another frustrated writer out there: if you suspect that your well has run dry, perhaps you can prime it by pursuing something entirely different, something in which there is no pressure and little expectation. That's what happened to me, and it's made all the difference.

Putting Myself in Jeopardy

2006-03-31T10:50:00.000-08:00

Back when our by now almost four-year-old was brand-new—not even four days old—I went someplace in downtown Atlanta to audition, as it were, for the Jeopardy! game show. (Note to copyeditors: technically the title is rendered with the exclamation point, though I’ll drop that from here on—and incidentally, before I became interested in becoming a contestant, I didn’t even know for sure how to spell “jeapordy.”) The group I was with, which consisted of well over a hundred people, was just one among many taking the quiz in Atlanta and other magnet-type cities. I think they had about a dozen testing sessions scheduled for my own city, and probably a dozen other cities with testing locations during that spring of 2002 as Alex Trebek and Company sought to round up some new blood for the game show.

I ended up being one of two people in my group who passed. I felt pretty good about that, naturally, but I’d also done my homework. There are a lot of web pages out there, for instance, by people who’ve competed on the show and have chosen, for whatever reason, to pass on some of their wisdom. For example, with Jeopardy you should always think in terms of the most obvious, commonly known thing within a given category: if the question is about English writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, for instance, it’s more likely to involve William Shakespeare than Ben Jonson or Edmund Spenser. That kind of thing—oh, and you don’t need to waste time saying Shakespeare’s full name, because last names are sufficient, provided of course that you’ve phrased the answer in the form of a question.

So with the help of that research, along with a few quiz books I’d bought in the weeks leading up the test, I managed to get enough answers right that they didn’t disqualify me. Actually, now that I think of it, even getting to take the test was a matter of winning some kind of lottery, because out of the thousands and thousands of people who’d answered their call for new contestants, the show’s producers could only get around to reviewing just a few. Some time earlier, Deidre—who was the one behind this whole thing, as anybody who knows her can imagine—had signed me up for the chance to take the test, but I hadn’t “won.”

Now I had not only won a slot in the testing room, to which people from as far away as North Carolina had traveled, but I had won a chance to go up front, along with the other winner out of that room, and compete in a mock Jeopardy game to test our skills with spoken responses. I thought I did okay, though I’m not sure. At one point there was a question to which the answer (or should I say the answer to which the question) was Babe Ruth, and I got it right, but the tester noted that I didn’t need to bother to say “George Herman Ruth,” as I had done.

***

Beyond the ordinary degree to which we humans are just frail little pieces of dust with a jumble of easily hurt or inflated feelings housed inside, I didn’t gloat too much over my triumph. Some people can juggle, some people (I was never one of them) are good at basketball, some have bodies that others would supposedly die for—and I have this great ability to retain information and call it up when needed. Not that I have anything like the truly photographic memory of such exceptional figures as Truman Capote, whose brain was basically like a Xerox machine.

Here I have to digress for a moment (what? Me? Digress?) to say that Capote was a spectacular movie, and that Philip Seymour Hoffman absolutely deserved the Oscar. Heath Ledger was fabulous in Brokeback Mountain, too, but he’ll have other chances, and D and I have loved PHS from the first time we laid eyes on him as the ultra-jerky snobby rich kid in Scent of a Woman. Don’t let the name Capote fool you, as it did us initially, into thinking that this is just a yawning biopic covering the man’s whole life (though now that I’m reading the book on which it’s based, I can tell you that such a film would have been fascinating); rather, it covers the period from the murder of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas, in 1959 until the execution of the killers, and the publication of Capote’s groundbreaking In Cold Blood, six years later.

But now where was I? Oh, yes, Alex, I’ll take “Killers from the Black-and-White Era, Which Made Everything Especially Scary Because the World Seemed So… Well, So Basic Back Then” for eight hundred dollars. The answer: “Of these two, Capote took an interest in the shorter, swarthier one, with whose painful past he developed an almost codependent sense of identification.” The question: “Who were Dick Hickok and Perry Smith?”

So about Jeopardy, the long and the short of it is that I passed the audition, or at least I supposed I did, but I never heard anything more from them. I suspected that this was in part because white males are the least attractive potential contestants, since they comprise the bulk of the pool from which those contestants are drawn. (And I’m not just a white male, but a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Male, who happens to be living in the first era in history when—thankfully—that doesn’t give me an instant advantage over everybody else.) But my theory about the contestant pool may be wrong anyway, because the other person who passed the test was a woman, and last I checked in with her—maybe nine months or a year after the test—they hadn’t called her either.

***

Because I had put myself on Jeopardy’s emailing list back then, I got things periodically that I disposed of without reading them—until I learned about testing scheduled to take place at 8:00 p.m. Eastern this past Tuesday. So I signed up to take the test again.

It was nerve-wracking the way they had it set up on their web site, with usernames and passwords and warnings to turn off pop-up blockers and not to try to log in prior to 7:45. When I did sign in, it spawned a little tiny window with Alex Trebek’s face and a countdown to the test.

This time around, I hadn’t done anything to prepare, but while I was waiting for the countdown, I had to do something. I didn’t dare leave my desk—Deidre had ensured that no kids would be bursting in to show me a purse full of found objects or to get me to sharpen a pencil that had gone dull—but I had to have something to while away those excruciating minutes, so I did the first part of the Mensa workout. You’re supposed to time yourself on that one, and I had never found the opportunity to clear all the decks in order to do the test properly (mainly because to me its purpose is recreation and nothing more), but I managed to while away a few minutes trying to find number patterns and the like. If you peek at the test, I’ll tell you that I answered about half a dozen of the questions, but the one about months and numbers completely stumped me, whereas the ones asking to explain the meaning behind common sayings seemed ridiculously easy.

And then, finally, the clock counted down and the test was on, by which time I’d closed all other windows and focused myself entirely on the questions. Again there were fifty of them, and (again) unlike a regular Jeopardy game, there were fifty different topics, with fifteen seconds allotted for each answer. How did I do? I don’t know, really, because the test just flew by so quickly, though I do recall a few where I felt quite pleased to whip out the answer long before my fifteen seconds were up: The mentally imbalanced Roman emperor whose name meant “little boots”? Caligula. The branch of chemistry dealing with carbon-containing compounds? Organic. And the team Ray Lewis led to Superbowl victory? I said the Ravens, though with what I know about football, I could easily have been wrong; I just remembered an Atlanta scandal involving Lewis from ages ago.

But I know I missed plenty. Afterward, when I was telling Deidre about some of the stumpers, which I remembered better at that moment than I do now, it seemed like she had the answer to everything. It was almost comical: “And another one,” I said, “under the category ‘Ten-Letter Words’: an assembly of lawmakers, based on the French word for talk”: “Parliament,” she shot back, and I did one of those “I coulda had a V-8” gestures.

As for Jeopardy’s policy on letting you know how you did, they’ll only tell you if you passed, and then only after they’ve tabulated the results. Supposing I did pass, they’ve now chosen not to do testing in Atlanta anymore, so I’d have to go down to Orlando (on my own steam, of course), do another test, and then have a chance to compete in a mock game—which would put me back where I was four years ago, a little like a lovelorn highschooler waiting for the phone to ring.

Compared to that, actually working for a living seems easy!

Why We Fight

2006-03-22T12:31:00.000-08:00

During World War II, Frank Capra made a series of films for the War Department--as they called the Department of Defense in those much more plainspoken times--called Why We Fight. The purpose was to remind Americans of what was at stake in Europe and the Pacific, and why the sacrifices of their sons and brothers and husbands were not in vain. More recently, in a film by the same name, documentarian Eugene Jarecki provides his own answer to the question implicit in the title. As Capra's answer was in keeping with his times and his war, so is Jarecki's.

Ours is a cynical age, and Jarecki's film fits right in. His vision, which ought to be familiar to anyone reasonably acquainted with the popular culture of the past three or four decades, goes like this: our country is run by corrupt ideologues in the service of greedy corporations, who together collude with a war-loving military to expand the American empire overseas. America's prosperity exists at the expense of other nations, as well as the disadvantaged on these shores, and America, while presenting itself as a beacon of freedom and preserver of the peace, is in fact the world's number-one aggressor and exploiter.

As I say, these are familiar sounds, a refrain heard in one way or another over the years from far and wide. No wonder such a view is a popular one, because it offers ready answers and instantaneous elevation to intellectual esteem in the eyes of others. It's a compelling and, even more important, a comforting way to view the world. And, for some celebrities and pundits, it's a nice way to make a tidy income while feeling very, very good about oneself.

Cynicism provides a razor to cut through the knots of facts, information, opinions, and statistics that circumscribe the modern consciousness. In place of foolish, unquestioning belief, absolute non-belief offers a form of transcendence, catapulting the proponent to a place beyond question or argument. Whatever anyone else asserts, one need only say, "Oh yeah? Prove it!" Or offer a counterexample, no matter how specific, as a means of refuting any attempt at generalization. Or simply chuckle--or sneer. Thus the argument is ended, at least for the cynic of the Internet age, who can walk away content that nothing has been proven.

No wonder, then, that this distinctly modern and American brand of cynicism pervades not only among Hollywood's beautiful minds, few of whom had the time to finish college (or in some cases, even high school), but also in the most distinguished educational institutions, graduates of which go on to become our nation's opinion-makers in media, business, and government. In a world of uncertainty, here is certainty. The war in Iraq, for instance, need not be a complex struggle with mixed and uncertain results; a conflict that will require perhaps decades of perspective to fully analyze and understand; a quest whose reasons have never been sufficiently articulated by the nation's leaders, yet one for which a case can be made. Instead, it can simply be a war for Halliburton, a war for oil, a war to feed the military-industrial complex, a war to satisfy the darkest desires in the heart of George W. Bush.

And that brings me back to the comforting quality of fashionable cynicism, which is perhaps the best reason to subscribe to it. If the United States is the ultimate source of all the world's ills, the world is not so frightening, because the American system allows even its fiercest critics a voice. And if George W. Bush represents the cynosure of evil, then evil is not so powerful after all: in two years, he will again be a private citizen, and we can keep his kind out of Washington with our votes. If the Adolf Hitler of our time is George W. Bush, then we can all rest in the knowledge that the hardest international struggle took place in Frank Capra's time.

Many people would say that the stakes were more clearly defined in the 1940s than in the 2000s, and for this at least I would blame the president. He has never had a great talent for articulating his visions, nor has he done much since 9/11 to rally the citizenry to participate in a struggle against a form of barbarism that exceeds its Nazi or Communist forebears. One wishes for a John F. Kennedy, whose words could turn every aspect of public life into part of a larger adventure involving the entire nation. And even with his rhetorical shortcomings, President Bush has no excuse for his failure to deputize others to the task of providing the public with a rationale for this war and other efforts in the fight against terrorism. In true laissez-faire fashion, he left it up to the American public to figure out why we are fighting. For this shortcoming, I think he should be censured; in fact, I think he should not be reelected.

But if you're wondering "Why We Fight," since nobody else has stepped up to explain, I'll try. Three years ago, Washington sent out a nice, big, engraved invitation to all the world's sociopaths and political serial killers, saying in effect, "If you want to kill Americans, meet us in Iraq." And they have killed more than two thousand; in fact, by the end of the year, they will probably have killed as many as they did on a single day in 2001. Every single death is a loss of a precious life, but it is the life of someone who swore to defend the nation, and it's no accident that no further attacks have occurred on American soil. True, Osama bin Laden remains at large, but one would have to be pretty obtuse to miss the desparation in his latter-day utterances: like a cartoon character, he seems to be saying, "You just wait--we'll really get you next time!" As I recall, in the months leading up to 9/11, he issued no such warning.

More than a century ago, in a letter to Theodore Roosevelt, the U.S. ambassador to Britain characterized our short conflict with Spain as "a splendid little war," but no one in these times would characterize either this war or this president in any such terms. War is anything but splendid, yet sometimes it is necessary. And unless one is content to enjoy the easy cynicism I have described, it is incumbent on us all to live out the words of Kennedy himself, from his inaugural address: "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty."

When There's Nothing Else to Do...

2006-03-04T17:02:00.000-08:00

Somewhere around the age of nine or ten, I figured out that reading the Bible was one of the best ways to while away time in church. You could get in trouble for doodling, as I often did, or for acting up in one way or another, as I was especially likely to do when I was sitting in the balcony away from adult authority. But if I was sitting next to my mother and happened to open up the Bible and start reading, what was she really going to say? It was hardly a practice she'd want to discourage. And my Bible-reading wasn't entirely just an act: during those long hours in the sanctuary of Capital City Baptist Church in Manila (well, technically Quezon City), during the early 1970s, I discovered the "good parts" of the Bible. And the parts that interested me then remain the ones that interest me now, with just a few additions of books I couldn't really appreciate at eight or ten years old.

I always loved Genesis and the story of Moses, but it gets very, very boring after about the twentieth chapter of Exodus--almost as though you're going through the wilderness with the Israelites. I've since learned that other parts of the Pentateuch contain some really cool stories, but you have to pull these out from among a lot of mind-numbingly tedious passages.

The books from Joshua to Job have long continued to fascinate. Still, I didn't then know how to find the really intriguing details beneath the surface of Nehemiah's deceptively bland-sounding account, or to appreciate the tenderness and sensitivity in the story of Ruth, which at the time I would have dismissed as being a little too girly for me. By contrast, the story of Esther always appealed to me, especially because I got to play the part of Haman, the bad guy, in a fifth-grade play. There was enough action there to offset any girly elements--a great concern for a ten-year-old boy, who hasn't yet become comfortable with confessing the fact that he actually likes girls, and everything about them, a great deal. As a boy, especially at a very young age, I was all about Samson. In fact, my mother used to con me into eating my vegetables because Samson had done so, or so she alleged, but she went too far when she told me that he had gotten strong by eating sayote (I'm not sure of the spelling here), which was sort of like a light-green hybrid of a turnip, parsnip, and squash.

Here I could go off on a tangent about all the fruits and vegetables from the Philippines that few people in North America have ever even heard of, but if I'm going to digress concerning the country where I lived for nine years as a missionary kid, it would be to mention how funny it is to think now that so few public buildings there at that time were air-conditioned. Instead of using air conditioners, the sanctuary was cooled by cross-drafts through windows low and high, the high ones very high to pull out the heated air that would otherwise have gathered along the ceiling. To my eyes then, as you can imagine, those windows up to God made the interior of the church seem as immense as Westminster Abbey. And after looking up at that high ceiling and becoming vaguely aware of words from the pulpit, I would finally go back to hiding myself in the Bible.

Oh, yeah. Back to the Bible, to quote the name of a show with a cheesy theme song that Mom used to listen to on DZAS, a radio station run by Moody Broadcasting. The six books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles contained an overall story that intrigued me endlessly. I especially loved David and his exploits--which, I became convinced years later when writing an ancient history reference series for middle-school kids, provided the substance for the tales of King Arthur. I identified with David, not just because his name is my middle name, but because he started out as a little runt and went on to do great things.

Despite this love for David, though, I couldn't get into the Psalms then, but of course later (especially during army basic training and immediately thereafter) , I found a great deal there. As for Proverbs, that's what I originally started out this post to discuss--how no book intrigued me more. Same with Ecclesiastes, though the interest there came a little later in life, in part because of reading Jack London's The Sea Wolf at age thirteen. Before I was a teenager, the only passage of "The Preacher," as Wolf Larson described the Solomon of Ecclesiastes, I could really wrap my mind around was the "To everything, there is a season" section, subsequently ingrained in popular culture as a result of adult classic radio stations overplaying the Byrds' "Turn! Turn! Turn!" Song of Solomon, of course, was too much for a ten-year-old, but once I was a little more mature....

As for the Prophets who make up the remainder of the Old Testament, I loved some of them then--especially Daniel--and discovered others later. The story of Jonah, as Herman Melville later helped me to appreciate, actually has even more meaning when you're an adult than it does in childhood. On the other hand, as a ten-year-old Jeremiah and his Lamentations appealed to me more than they do now. Maybe by the time you're in your forties, you're just sick of hearing people complain all the time....

I tended to stick to the Old Testament for the most part then, and when I did venture into the New Testament, I focused primarily on the beginning and the end: the Gospels and Revelation. The Gospels have remained a source of fascination, always yielding new wisdom, and as an adult I have come to appreciate the Book of Acts as a series of dramatic episodes that collectively tell a powerful tale. Then there's Revelation, which I read over and over and over, especially in church. Long before the "Left Behind" phenomenon, before the fiction series or any movies (unless of course you count a cheap, badly acted 16-mm film called Thief in the Night, usually shown during Sunday night services), I went through the whole rapture-obsession thing.

Back then, I'd skip over the letters to the seven churches, but now I think they're the best part of Revelation. But as for the other letters that make up the New Testament, for the most part I never could get into them as a kid, and I never have as an adult either, though I've acquired a lot more fondness for the more "spooky" Epistles (the letters of Peter, Jude, and John) that come toward the end. But considering the fact that the Pauline Epistles contain the blueprint for Christianity as a doctrine, some people would regard this as a major gap in my wisdom.

[As I mentioned above, I started out to write something else, but instead found myself discussing the Bible and my childhood reading of it. Fitting it should go this way, since I began this post during church prime time, 11 to 12 on a Sunday morning. Even in periods of my life when I haven't been inclined to observe the kinds of formalities with which I was raised, I've always tended to regard that as a sacred hour. A shout-out here, by the way, to my cousin Beth, who was also raised as a missionary kid in east Asia.]

A Swift Kick (In Honor of Robin and Michele)

2006-02-23T21:48:00.000-08:00

My thanks to you two, and to Mel and other readers like you. You have kept me blogging--which for me these days means writing period--when I might otherwise have let my thoughts trail off into the ether.

Note what I said about blogging being the full extent of writing for me these days. On the one hand, that's fine: my most important responsibilities are my family, followed by The Knight Agency and all that it represents. If either role requires much of my literary talent, it's the first of these: children need stories, both in the relatively easy nonfiction form ("Daddy, will you talk about when I/you/Mommy were little?") or the more challenging realm of fiction ("Daddy, will you tell us a story?")

Otherwise, nothing necessarily compels me to write fiction nowadays as I was "compelled" during the almost nine years that I spent as a professional, publishing writer. Though a lot of what I wrote about during that time was interesting to me, the driving factor was income. Then, about two and a half years ago, we reached the point at which it made far more sense to devote my energies to the two priorities mentioned above, and I quit writing for a living.

Writing for me is now no longer a job, but something much more appealing: an avocation, like it is for most people who write. I used to think about writing fiction the way I imagined a professional athlete would view the prospect of recreational sports after a day of hard training, but now I don't come to the playing field, as it were, all worn out from a job that looks very much like the same thing. And yet, for the most part since the fall of 2004, I haven't been writing. The reasons for this are complicated, but in the end I know I have to follow the advice I give everyone else: if you really want to write, then write, but if writing turns out not to be that important to you, don't sweat it, because there are other things in life far more important.

My friend Stephan in Germany (about whom I plan to blog soon) has also helped me keep my dream alive, and of course there's the number-one person who has always enabled me to discover what matters most: my wife. But y'all have also helped me sustain my vision, and for that I am greatly thankful.

The other night I sat down and wrote about a half-dozen pages of notes for future blog posts--shorthand to myself that nobody else would understand--that, if developed, would amount to a pretty good-sized book. It's true what many another professional writer has said in the past: that finding ideas isn't difficult--what's challenging is to winnow those ideas down and turn them into thoughts that others will read.

Recently our seven-year-old, on our encouragement, sat down and started writing a story, but after just a couple sentences, she looked up in frustration. "This is hard!" she complained, and Deidre and I both laughed and said, practically in unison, "Well, yeah!" Welcome to the world of words, kiddo. Fortunately, though, you--like your father--are blessed to have readers in your corner.

The Burden of Being Cool

2006-02-08T06:14:00.000-08:00

When I upgraded from my old iPod to my new one, I had to give the latter a name on my computer. Whereas the old one bore the title "Judson Knight's iPod" (you can praise my creativity later), I chose for the new one the whimsical appellation "Cornucopia of Cool." And after all, what else could you call an iPod that, when placed in the random song-playing mode, yields a back-to-back list of cool songs like this, as it did this morning:

"Ether" by Gang of Four (okay, I selected that one to start with, but the rest were truly random)
"Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana
"Me and My Bobby McGee" by Janis Joplin
"Green Plastic Trees" by Radiohead
"Under Pressure" by Queen with David Bowie

(For the last of these, I have to thank my good friend Harry Joiner. My four-year-old especially adores the CD he gave me recently--"I just love Mr. Harry's song!"--and yesterday in the car, while "Under Pressure" was playing, I looked in the rearview mirror to see her bobbing her head back and forth, a serene look of unabashed pleasure on her face. Just this moment, she was playing in my study, trying to distract me for the thousandth time this morning, and I said, "I'm writing about you here--you have to let me concentrate." She gave me a big grin, eyes wide, and went back to playing on the floor.)

Now where was I? Oh, yes--in choosing the name "Cornucopia of Cool," I was partly poking fun at myself, because as I've admitted many times here on this blog, one weakness of mine is that I take a little too much pride in being perceived as cool. And even if I didn't recognize this, every happily married man in the world will tell you that one person can always bring you back down to earth if you're getting a little too uppity: the wife. In my case, Deidre punctured all my pretensions long ago by observing, with a chuckle, "It's very important to you to be cool"--which of course ruins the whole thing, because someone who was really cool wouldn't care about being cool.

The idea of being cool, of course, is an affectation, a component of our popular culture with roots far older than the 1960s, when that particular meaning of the word first came into the general vocabulary. Far older even than the late 1940s and 1950s, when jazz musicians and beatniks first started using "cool" to refer to something other than temperature or an aloof demeanor. I think it goes all the way back to Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), who, though his name is hardly a household word, may have had more influence on modern society than all but a handful of thinkers. In his brilliant and delightfully gossipy book Intellectuals, British historian Paul Johnson presents Rousseau as the first modern figure, who--among many other things--popularized the idea of the outsider as being superior to the rule-following mass.

As in so many other things, Rousseau turned traditional ideas upside down, and in so doing provided a badge of pride for all those who colored outside the lines thereafter: Shelley, Wagner, Tolstoy, Picasso, James Baldwin, Rainer Werner Fassbinder (Johnson profiles most of these in his book), and so on up to the present day. Many of these individuals--Shelley the Bonapartist, Wagner the anti-Semite, Tolstoy the socialist radical--supported rotten ideas that led to the death and enslavement of millions, which is hardly cool by any honest standard. Yet what mattered more, in their presentation of themselves and their work, was the beauty in their art and not the truth (or lack of it) in their beliefs.

And of course that's the ultimate flaw in coolness: it's more about form than function, style than substance. And even when a given artist didn't adopt particular political or social positions, the burden of being cool took a toll that was all too obvious. Look at one of the coolest figures of my own generation, an extreme outsider who turned his painful past into some of the most powerful rock 'n' roll since the 1970s: Kurt Cobain. Where did his coolness get him, ultimately? Dead of a gunshot wound, sitting on top of 30 million dollars and a body of work that could have been much greater if he'd chosen to set aside the heroin and truly engage in life.

What I'm saying here is that being cool is often a defense. I know it was for me, growing up as I did always seemingly on the outside: a mama's boy in a family of macho men, a white kid in a country of dark-skinned people (the Philippines), a semi-foreigner in his own country, a boy who would rather make up his own games than play sports, a student who never studied what was required but chose instead texts far afield from his grade level. Too law-abiding to fit in with the bad kids, too rebellious to fit in with the good kids; too working-class to fit in with the rich kids, too middle-class to fit in with the poor kids; altogether dissatisfied with crowds, and so determined to make his own crowd.

Of course, I got past most of those demons, or I wouldn't be sitting here writing about this so casually. And I figured out a long time ago that the truly cool person, if there is such a thing, is one who puts himself on the line for something that really matters. I happen to think that the coolest individual of all time was a crazy-sounding rabbi in Judea during the reign of Tiberius Caesar, but I'm not asking anybody else to agree with that. Besides, we've got plenty of contemporary rebels to admire, like Rubin Ghandarba.

He's a fourteen-year-old minstrel in Nepal, a member of a very low caste in that Hindu nation, which is in the midst of turmoil that pits savage Maoist rebels against a dictatorial king who rose to power literally over the bodies of his family members. In contrast to the traditional songs of Himalayan bards, Ghandarba's concern current events. There may be little subtlety in lines such as "The people must rule, the king must go," but you've got to admire the kid's spunk. We're not talking about America, where protesters can speak out against the government with virtually no fear of reprisal--and a guaranteed spot on Larry King if any such reprisal occurs. "One day," another member of Rubin's caste told Matthew Rosenberg of the Associated Press, "he is going to get in a lot of trouble--or he will get killed."

If he were to meet such a fate, it's uncertain what he would be dying for, other than the right to speak his mind, because Rubin doesn't support any particular faction in Nepal, which held elections under extremely tense circumstances yesterday. I found one sentence in Rosenberg's piece particularly haunting: "It is hard to tell how much of his anti-king sentiment is heartfelt and how much is simply the desire of a young boy, who left home as a child, to be accepted."

The "Official" Knight Agency CD

2006-02-01T16:59:00.000-08:00

As I noted some time back, during the annual visit to Georgia by our California agent, Nephele Tempest, I put together and distributed to all members of The Knight Agency a CD whose songs each reflected some aspect of the company's overall vision. In doing so, I was thinking not only of Nephele, who regularly faces the challenges associated with working a continent away from her comrades in the home office; but also of Pamela Harty, whose considerable abilities as a literary agent are matched by her expertise as a manager and co-administrator of the office; and of our three young employees, financial wiz Samantha Jenkins, marketing maven Julie Ramsey, and manuscript coordinator extraordinaire Elaine Spencer. Actually, I often refer to the three youngsters (they were all born the year I got out of the army and entered college) by the nickname "Charlie's Angels". This is not so much because they're all attractive, intelligent young women--see for yourself--but because each is quite different from the other, possessing skills and experiences that, though they might have been undervalued in some other business context, constitute a unique and prized contribution to the company. (The girls have in turn nicknamed my wife Deidre Knight, president and chief visionary of The Knight Agency, "Charlie.")

So here's the song list for our "official" CD (Deidre and I are already planning a second one), along with an explanation of what each song means to me, and why I selected it for inclusion in our company soundtrack.

Short Skirt/Long Jacket—Cake (2002): Besides being a very fun song, “Short Skirt” portrays an image of success, of confidence, of a young woman moving forward in life. She’s changing her name from Kittie to Karen, and her MG for a white Chrysler Le Baron, because she’s starting to see what she really wants, and she’s willing to work hard for that uninterrupted prosperity, getting up early and staying up late. My personal favorite metaphors are “fingernails that shine like justice” and “eyes that burn like cigarettes.”

Burning Down the House—The Cardigans with Tom Jones (mid-1990s): One of the best and most unusual combinations—a Swedish alternative band backing a Welsh lounge singer covering an old Talking Heads hit. Though people don’t usually notice the lyrics, a friend of mine in sales pointed out long ago how motivational the song is, with its call to “jump overboard” and seek something beyond the expectations of most people sitting in front of their TV sets or on their way to work every day.

Time Has Come Today—The Chambers Brothers (1967): A classic that sends the same message that Deidre did in announcing the Agency's word for 2006: NOW.

Something’s Comin’—Vic Damone (1950s): Though the song is originally from West Side Story, this version comes from Vegas, Baby! in Capitol's outstanding Ultra-Lounge series. As with the more well-known "Viva Las Vegas" (Deidre and I are particularly fond of Shawn Colvin's ironic-sounding version of that one), the optimism of a would-be high roller trusting his luck on a roulette wheel seems more than a little hollow. Yet the sentiments expressed here acquire a new meaning when viewed from the standpoint of someone investing their energies in an enterprise capable of helping them reach many of their goals.

Sunday in New York—Bobby Darin (1950s): A reminder of a future reward for “the girls of TKA.” Deidre had promised them that if we hit our sales goal in 2005, she would take all of them to New York--not just Pamela and Nephele, who go there regularly on business, but "Charlie's Angels," two of whom have never even been to The Big Apple. And though we can’t promise they will actually be there over a Sunday, we did hit our goal, and they are going this fall.

Feets Don’t Fail Me Now—Little Feat (early 1970s): Another reference to New York here, along with the message to keep on rolling forward.

Are You Sure—The Staple Singers (1960s): A powerful gospel song whose message is hard to miss.

The Ballad of El Goodo—Big Star (1971): This is one of my favorite songs by one of my favorite groups, a call to persevere against strong odds and stick by your guns. It sounds like the reflections of a person who’s lived a lot of life, yet the man who wrote it, Alex Chilton, was younger than the three members of TKA’s younger generation.

Rudie Can’t Fail—The Clash (1979): Another personal favorite by a personal favorite. This is from London Calling, an album that had a huge influence on me in high school, not just musically but also with its underlying theme of optimism tempered by experience.

One for Me—The Pierces (2000): I discovered these two talented young sisters through Deidre, who brought home their first CD years ago. Besides being a passionate, heartfelt song, “One for Me” seems like a powerful expression of a woman’s desire to achieve fulfillment in all parts of her life and to have something for herself that is uniquely her own.

In the Aeroplane over the Sea—Neutral Milk Hotel (1998): The title track from a critically acclaimed but obscure album. The words express thoughts that never become trite: that one day we will all die, and that until then, our job is to bring as much beauty and love into the world as we can. Listen to this one some time on headphones so you can hear all the cool sounds that make this song musically more interesting than another with a similar theme, “Flowers in the Window” by Travis.

You Get What You Give—New Radicals (1998): This is an old fave of Pamela’s, dating back to a time when Deidre and I were brand-new parents--I remember first seeing the video on VH1 during a 2:00 a.m. feeding. As for the message, as with many of these songs, it’s pretty hard to miss.

Seven Nation Army—The White Stripes (2003): Nearly four minutes of solid adrenaline. Sometimes I put this on when I want to psych myself up for something: “I’m gonna fight 'em off / A seven-nation army couldn’t hold me back.”

Spirit in the Sky—Norman Greenbaum (early 1970s): One of the great one-hit wonders of all time, a song made all the more delightful by the fact that its spiritual lyrics are likely to offend atheists and fundamentalists alike. As I write this, it occurs to me how many songs on this CD make some reference to death. Obviously I’m not trying to be morbid or maudlin, but maybe there is an underlying message here: we live our lives against the backdrop of eternity, and it’s important to make every day count.

All Down the Line—The Rolling Stones (1972): Pure fun, from the last of the Stones’ truly great albums, Exile on Main Street. One afternoon when a couple of our employees were feeling a little droopy, I put on this song and asked them if they still felt tired after hearing it. They didn't; if this tune doesn't make you want to get up and dance, you're probably already asleep.

Everybody Got Their Somethin’—Nikka Costa (early 2000s): Another fun song, this one from the soundtrack of a great female-empowerment movie, Blue Crush. When Deidre and the kids and I were going to the beach in 2003, we had to take both cars because we didn’t yet have an SUV and couldn’t fit everything into one. Somewhere in the vicinity of the interchange between I-75 and I-10 in northern Florida, I looked to the left to see my wife and daughters driving by, all three of them bobbing their heads to this song.

Add Some Music to Your Day—The Beach Boys (1970): From the group’s woefully underappreciated Sunflower album. Some people might dismiss this song as overly sweet, but I think the lyrics are pretty cheeky, with their references to music at the dentist’s office and so on. And anyway, who can really argue with the premise that the world could be a better place if we’d all add some music to our day?

You Set the Scene—Love (1967): The last song on this CD is also the last and finest from Love's Forever Changes, a record that critics and hardcore music fans routinely place on a level with the best work of the Beatles, Dylan, and the Stones. Seldom has a rock song ever put forth such profound ideas, both in the first portion, with its searching questions, and in the powerful affirmations of the second half: “This is the only life that I am living / and I’ll face each day with a smile / For the time that I’ve been given’s such a little while / And the things that I must do consist of more than style…. / There are places that I am going….”

How I Spent My Winter Vacation

2006-01-26T09:51:00.000-08:00

Well, in the realm of the blindingly obvious, when I took note of the fact that much of The Knight Agency was going to be out west last week, it didn't even occur to me to mention that our own Julie Ramsey was attending the Sundance festival. You can read all about it on the agency blog.

As for how I spent my winter vacation, let's just say that the Snake River Lodge is truly the bomb. No wonder a Conde Nast poll showed it among the top ten resorts in America--yet there's nothing snooty about the place, which is very laid-back and, well, lodge-like.

Here's a picture I took out front of the hotel, with Rendezvous Mountain (I think that's the one) in the background:

When I went to Wyoming with Deidre last year, my very first time out there, I saw far more snow than I had in my entire life. Of course that's not really saying much, when you consider that, aside from a few very short stints in Chicago (the first and longest of which was the first year of my life, 1964-65), I've lived mainly in very warm climates: the Philippines as a child, Georgia growing up and as an adult, and the Carolinas for two years in the army. That said, I think somebody from much farther north could visit Wyoming and come away saying "I've never seen so much snow in my life." And on this second trip, there was far more snow than the last time; in fact, for much of our stay, it was actively snowing. Here's a shot I took through the opened window of our hotel room--opened not merely to get the picture, but because the room was overly hot, as were most of the shops in Jackson Hole. I guess when it's this cold outside, it's understandable that people would go overboard on heating.

But if you really want to experience cold, try snowmobiling through Yellowstone at forty-five miles per hour--which, by the way, feels about the way it would to be going 120 in a car. Wind whipping onto your face, inevitably finding that one little spot that you've failed to cover with balaklavas, caps, scarves, and visors. No wonder I came back with a sore throat. Then again, as I was driving through that otherwordly landscape (the setting, I should note, for much of the action in my wife's Parallel series books), it gave me some idea of what it's like to really be cold. Yellowstone, after all, sustains abundant plant life; so just imagine how cold it must be in Antarctica.

I'll sign off with this last picture, taken from an overlook near Old Faithful. (We timed our lunch so we could see it go off, though the kids started getting impatient. Finally I said out loud, "Ready when you are, O.F.," and whaddayou know, the thing finally blew.) But anyway, there's a waterfall in behind those trees, and you view it from a wooden deck layered in razor-thin sheets of ice. The picture doesn't really convey what it's like to be there, of course, and yet there's a hint of that "terrible beauty," to use Yeats's phrase--the splendor of virtually unadulterated nature, which does not exist to provide us with a warm fuzzy, but which rather reminds us of how small and frail we really are. Apparently I must have conveyed something of this to my three-year-old daughter (who stayed behind with her grandparents, precisely because Wyoming in January is no place for a rambunctious little rascal who's never learned not to trust), because she told her preschool teacher today, "Wymoming [note pronunciation] is beautiful but dangerous."

[As it turned out, for some reason I couldn't get that other picture uploaded, and it hardly matters anyway, because as I said, no photograph could really convey what I saw there. Also, a shout-out to Dana, who asked us to drop off some snow on the way over Oklahoma: in your original post, you actually requested "a planeload of now," a great example of how typos and verbal slips--to which I am as prone as anyone--can contain hidden truths. In fact, NOW is the word for The Knight Agency in 2006, a topic I'll discuss more when I post the song list for our "official" CD.]

Knight Agency Center of Gravity Shifts Westward--Temporarily

2006-01-18T08:18:00.000-08:00

For a few days, more than half of The Knight Agency is going to be located west of the Mississippi River, but except for Nepehele, who lives in L.A., that condition is only temporary. Deidre, Pamela, their spouses, and their kids will be traveling to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, which happens to be the setting for much of Deidre's Parallel series--and a darn good vacation spot as well.

Deidre and I first visited there last year, when she was doing research for the series--books that, at that time, had not yet even been sold. Now, a year later, with the first volume slated for April publication and Deidre hard at work on her second book, it's nice to go back to Wyoming and glimpse the world in which most of the series' events take place. When I went there last year, I had never seen so much snow in my life--not by a long shot--nor had I ever walked on a frozen lake or glimpsed buffalo, elk, and other majestic creatures at close range. Visiting a place like America's least populous state, a land of beauty so dramatic it almost makes you ache, is an experience that greatly expands one's perspective on nature and the role of the human being within it.

I have jokingly called this a retreat for The Knight Agency board of directors--Deidre, me, and Pamela--and in a sense, it is. There's nothing like "touching the dream," in this case experiencing not only the wonder outdoors, but the pleasures of the Snake River Lodge & Spa, one of the finest (and least pretentious) resorts in the world. (That's it in the picture above.) We'll be going snowmobiling, skiing, and sleigh-riding, but most important is the fact that we'll be doing all this in the company of the people we love most. (All except for three-year-old "Pink Bear," who, if she went with us, would likely think she'd been set down in a giant snowy playground--without any idea of just how dangerous that beautiful land can be. In any case, she's thrilled about staying with her grandparents, and thinks she's getting a better deal than her older sister.)

Because of our trip, which starts very early Thursday, I'll have to wait to post the thing I promised last time around, the "official Knight Agency CD" song list with annotations. Also, I changed my mind: rather than post that item on the Agency blog, where it would use up far too much space, I'll ask Julie to mention it on the blog and link to the actual post, which I'll put up on my own blog. I'm sure that no one who reads this will even be able to fathom how they'll while away the desperate hours waiting for me to return and post, but as the protagonist in Camus's The Stranger said regarding hell, "one can get used to anything after a long enough time."

Oh, and one other piece of news. One of these days soon, I'm going to change out my picture, which Deidre hates. She says it makes me look like a mean old man, with my scowl and my wash of gray hair--someone who would pride himself on being nobody's fool, and on extinguishing the slightest trace of sentimentality on the part of his listeners. Not me, as anyone who's read this blog knows, so I'm going to follow my wife's advice (almost always a good move for a husband!) and post a new pic.

Brilliant Management, Brother Rabbitte--Will They Be Wearing Black?

2006-01-13T11:26:00.000-08:00

Some time back, I came up with the idea of The Commitments as the "official" Knight Agency movie. An old favorite of Deidre's and mine--we saw it brand-new in the theatre in 1991, and many times thereafter--it's the story of a group of young people who, as one ad put it, "had absolutely nothing, but they were willing to risk it all." Except for Colm Meaney, who plays the father of protagonist Jimmy Rabbitte, few of the performers ever went on to become substantial screen actors, and a number of them had no professional acting experience before director Alan Parker chose them for the film. What they did have was musical talent and the ability to realistically portray characters very much like themselves: working-class kids from the depressed north side of Dublin. ("We'd be working class if there was any work," one of them says.) Led by Jimmy, a manager and promoter with a strongly entrepreneurial sensibility--a dreamer, moreover, who continually conducts pretend interviews with a big-time reporter asking about the secrets behind his success--they form a ten-piece soul band and begin booking local gigs.

Because of its setting, the dialogue in The Commitments is more than a little salty. (Skip this part if you're easily offended, though it's not likely anyone who fits that description would read my blog.) Every third word, it seems, is "foke," "shoit," or some more local form of obscenity: bollocks, bleedin', tosser, and so forth. Yet the effect is not like that of a Martin Scorcese gangster movie, in which the poverty in the characters' vocabularies reflects the emptiness of their spiritual landscape. These kids are all heart, all fire and excitement: thus Jimmy Rabbitt, for instance, when explaining to the others the true significance of soul music, says that "It grabs you by the balls and lifts you above the shite."

The film is full of memorable lines, primarily about the importance of striving to transcend one's past and become something greater: for example, "It feels a lot better being an unemployed musician than an unemployed pipe-fitter." Deidre and I quote it all the time. Some lines fit a varietey of purposes, an example being Jimmy's excuse for his inability to find a job after two years on the dole: "We're a Third-World country--what can you do?" And when one of us wants to praise the other for thinking creatively in a business situation, we'll say, "Brilliant management, Brother Rabbitte." That's what Joey "The Lips" Fagan says to Jimmy when he realizes that the latter, in a clever bid to attract young men to the group, has recruited three young female singers. But what's really interesting is the second part of that quote, when Joey says, "Will they be wearing black?" From the look in Jimmy's eyes--he has piercing light-blue ones that add greatly to his charm--you can tell that he hadn't even thought of this idea, which, when put into action, greatly heightens the group's presence on stage.

Along with Jerry Maguire, Jimmy Rabbitte is one of the film protagonists with whom we, as literary agents, most identify. He gets his queries, in the form of kids coming to his parents' house to audition for the band, and not surprisingly, he ends up rejecting most of these candidates. He has to negotiate the vicissitudes of handling talented but sometimes unpredictable individuals, smoothe over interpersonal conflict, and soothe tender egos while leaving his own ego completely out of consideration. Throughout, he maintains his good humor by continually touching on his dream of achieving musical greatness.

Deidre, by the way, doesn't think The Commitments should be THE official Knight Agency movie. Just last night, we happened to catch the second half of The Muse on TV, and she pointed out that it could just as easily hold the "official" title. And there's no question that it's a great story, one that almost made me weep the first time I saw it because it helped me to appreciate the fact that "you don't shortchange the muse." And there are other good candidates as well, but I have a soft spot for The Commitments. To see those kids come from nothing, and each in their own way make something of the opportunity set before them, is as compelling for me on the twelfth (at least!) viewing as it was on the first--more, in fact, because I could hardly understand a word they were saying the first two or three times.

[In a felicitous confluence of events, it so happens that I also recently put together an "official" Knight Agency soundtrack in honor of Nephele's visit earlier this week. Each person in the company got a copy of the CD, and today I sent out a note explaining the significance of each song choice. Look for a further discussion of that topic next week.]

"What Color Bear Are You?"

2006-01-10T21:23:00.000-08:00

Okay, to Robin, Michele, Dineen, and Mel, many thanks for reminding me that I'm not, to quote Shelley (? I think?), "an abstract demon beating his wings in a void." Or to put it less opaquely, thanks for the shout-outs, ladies! And don't think I've failed to notice the fact that "Robin, Michele, Dineen, and Mel" sounds like a very marketable name for a singing group. Do any of you have any pressing engagements in the next six months? Kids, family, jobs, books, etc.? If not, and supposing I could induce my wife to make a lateral move into music management, I'll bet we could make a mint.

More about the Agency (and the reason for my title here) in a minute, but first, to Bad Alice--thanks for coming back and posting and responding so nicely to my comment. No, I don't think anybody today thinks that terrorism is just an illusion; unlike Communism, it's too in-your-face for that. And I do believe that the vast majority of Americans who oppose the current Administration's approach to the war on terror are doing so in good faith. As for the matter of Communism, I started to write some comments and these quickly morphed into many paragraphs, so I figured I'd better save it for another post. In the meantime, thanks for reading, everybody!

I've been wanting to get back here and post for a couple of days now, but we've had a guest: Nephele Tempest, who in addition to being our L.A. agent is also a friend. It's been great for her to have an opportunity to work at the "home office" and enjoy all the great support Deidre, Pamela, and I get from our fabulous staff--Samantha Jenkins, Julie Ramsey, and Elaine Spencer--but it's not been all work: on Monday, the six of them went for a spa day at the Ritz-Carlton as a reward for hitting our sales goal in '05.

And Nephele is also staying with Deidre and me and our two daughters. Upon seeing her for the first time in a year, our three-year-old--who refers to herself as "pink bear" when she's wearing a cute little bathrobe she got for Christmas, one that is indeed pink with a bear design--informed us that Ms. Nephele was "a purple bear." Pink Bear has this talent for deciding what color bear someone is, a gift I discovered one night when she informed me that Daddy was both a red bear and a brown bear. Mommy, as I recall, is a white bear, and Big Sister is a blue bear.

I'm thinking that maybe this ability to identify people's bear color may indicate a future for her as a killer literary agent. Often we dream with our kids of a day when they and their cousins will take over the company from Deidre and Pamela, and though she's the youngest of the group, Pink Bear has the kind of tenacious spirit that might bring her to the forefront. If she can one day identify future bestsellers with the same ease that she does bear colors, Deidre and I need not worry about our retirement plan.

Lost at Sea

2006-01-03T11:27:00.000-08:00

No, I haven't actually been anywhere--not physically, anyway, but were it not for two extremely kind, gracious, and supportive readers, Michele and Robin, I probably wouldn't even be posting here right now. Not for any lack of things to say: I've come up with, and in some cases have written all or most of, half a dozen blog entries. It's just that nothing ever got completed, and time went by, and you know how reality is. Especially in the holiday season, and especially when you've got kids and Santa to think about.

One of the first things I had planned to write, and actually did write, was a response to all the interesting comments on my previous post. I wanted to make it clear to those who had served in the armed forces that I absolutely respect the sacrifices of those in uniform during that time--it just so happens that my own tour of military duty in the early 1980s was exceedingly uneventful.

And I also wanted to address Bad Alice's comments on the aforementioned post, comments that reflect an opinion all too prevalent among those of us born after World War II--the idea that Communism was never more than a phantasm, a boogeyman. In fact Communism was probably worse than Nazism, both in simple numbers--if you added up all the deaths of the Holocaust and the war Hitler started, it still wouldn't approach the death toll left behind by Stalin, Mao, and others--and in its insidious appeal. It's pretty hard to imagine a decent, sane, rational human being embracing race-hatred, whereas the precepts underlying Communism are still routinely described as "a beautiful idea." (For some concrete stats on death tolls, see my friend Rudy Rummel's site. Rummel is a retired professor whose work on the subject of democide--his term--has earned him a number of accolades, including a Nobel Peace Prize nomination.)

Oh, and I do have to mention another subject about which I wrote pages and pages and pages before realizing that I had far exceeded the purview of a blog entry. The impetus was the film Grey Gardens, a 1975 documentary depicting two down-and-out relatives of Jacqueline Bouvier living in gilded squalor among the mansions of East Hampton, Long Island. There is so much to say about that story--about madness and missed opportunities and codependence and the aristocratic mindset--that all I can do is heartily recommend the film to anyone who's interested in experiencing a certain type of beauty-in-ugliness.

Actually, I had started out the Grey Gardens post not so much to write about the film itself as about the last thing in the preceding paragraph: the beauty to be found in stained, marred things. It's an idea that underlies many a great piece of writing, music, and visual art. In that vein, I might have discussed the story of Big Star, one of my all-time favorite groups, whose first-ever book-length bio came out in late September. Or if you don't have the time or interest for that, listen to a couple of the sweetest songs on their strange and unforgettable third album: "For You," for instance, is impossible not to like, and remains one of my children's favorite good-night songs. Or "Blue Moon"--not the "Blue Moon," but a song every bit as memorable as the more famous one.

Well, I could certainly write more, but that's the thing about blogging: sometimes you have to stop writing and post the dang thing. So--many, many thanks to Michele and Robin, and I promise I won't let a year go by before I post again. That's a promise I'm sure I could keep, though I don't suppose I would have retained any readers at all by then--even those two exceptionally supportive ones I've mentioned. Okay, I won't let a whole season go by... or a month. Maybe, then again, I'll post next week. Who knows? That's one of the interesting things about life. As Indiana Jones says at one of the most desparate, adrenaline-pounding moments in Raiders of the Lost Ark--at least, it was very exciting the first dozen or so times I saw that movie--"I'm making this up as I go along."

To Come of Age in Interesting Times

2005-11-22T06:39:00.000-08:00

Often in the past four years, I've thought of that old saying that goes something like this: "May you never have the misfortune of living in interesting times." Something like that--anyway, the point being that "interesting times" are usually ones of upheaval.

I was born in the last year of the Baby Boom (1964), but I'm more properly a member of Generation X--though by the time the latter came into its identity, I was already married and living in a world more concerned with Eddie Bauer than Eddie Vedder. I remember a friend once saying, "It seems as though history stopped happening about the time I came along"--a sentiment to which I very much related. Looking back on it, the close of the 1960s--i.e., about the time I started school and first became aware of world events--brought with it a number of phenomena that seemed to indicate an end to history (the latter was even the title of a book published in the late 1980s), most notably the retreat of the United States from the world stage in the aftermath of Vietnam.

At seventeen years of age, I joined the Army--not because I had always had that ambition, but because I had no direction in life and no possible way of paying for college otherwise. It remains one of the best decisions I've ever made, and even now I think often with gratitude of the many great lessons I learned during those two years. This was the early 1980s, remember, and at that time joining the military seemed to be about little more than what Uncle Sam could do for you, not what you could do for Uncle Sam.

One night in the fall of 1983, I was out at a movie (don't remember the flick, but I remember the girl I was with ;-) in downtown Fayetteville, NC, when suddenly the projector stopped and someone in uniform stepped out front with orders for all members of certain units to return to their posts at Fort Bragg immediately. By that point, their comrades in the 82nd Airborne had already launched the invasion of Grenada, the first significant U.S. military action in a decade.

I had just turned nineteen, and I wanted to go to Grenada myself. Not being airborne or infantry, I would never have been part of the fighting, but in a combat situation, even support personnel are in danger. Still, I didn't care: I was young, I had no wife or girlfriend or children. I would have welcomed the adventure--the chance to feel not only that history was happening, but that I was part of it.

Since that time, of course, we've all become very accustomed to history happening, though as we've all found out, the actual outworking of historical events is often highly uncomfortable. History resumed on November 9, 1989--9/11 in the European system of rendering dates--and the end of the Cold War ultimately set the stage, as we have seen, for what some people call World War IV (the Cold War itself having been World War III). Though we call the events taking place right now on the other side of the world "The Iraq War," in fact Iraq is simply a major theatre of operations in a larger, ongoing worldwide conflict whose outcome is far from certain--interesting times indeed.

Would I want to actively participate in that war now, at forty-one, with a wife and children and a business and a million other little threads tying me down to this life and the here and now? Absolutely not. And yet I can say with complete sincerity that if I had been born a couple of decades later, and found myself coming of age now, with the same level of commitments I had in 1983, I would be volunteering to go to Iraq. In any case, the young people in our armed forces during these interesting times deserve respect, admiration, and gratitude--particularly from those of us who served in a sleepier age, when history had not yet resumed. Because of what they're doing, let's hope that the next generation--my own children and their cohorts--will again get to live in uninteresting times.

In Praise of Really Bad Movies

2005-10-01T11:13:00.000-07:00

Some time back, I commented here on the joys of watching schlock movies, and Michele, my ever-faithful reader (I wish I could clone you, Michele!) asked me to recommend a few choice titles. The fact that it's taken me so long to get around to doing so is not so much a function of being busy (though of course that's a factor) as it is of the challenge inherent in trying to provide such a list. To an extent, bad movies are not so much individual items as they are a kind of product. But the really good bad stuff, of course, is truly great, and as worthy of viewing (if you're so inclined) as Citizen Kane or The 400 Blows.

One of the best ways to enjoy bad movies is through anthology-type films such as It Came from Hollywood (1982), which provided my introduction to the joys of schlock when I first viewed it many years ago. Another good title in this vein is Schlock!: The Secret History of American Movies (2001). And then there's that most notable ongoing guided tour of schlock provided by the old Comedy Central show Mystery Science Theater 3000.

The makers of MST3K, many episodes of which are available on DVD, more than delivered on their stated promise to (quoting loosely here) "sift out the really bad stuff so you get to see the really bad stuff." For the unitiated, the premise of that great contribution to popular culture was this: our protagonist, Joel (later replaced by Mike) runs afoul of some mad scientists, who force him to wander endlessly in his space capsule, watching bad movies they've downloaded to his personal theatre. To ease the pain, Joel creates a coterie of robot friends who watch the movies with him and make wisecracks, much the way we have all done with our friends at some time or another in our lives..

The show we see, then, is an edited version of the schlock movie, viewed from a position just behind our hero and his buddies (their silhouetted heads appear in the foreground), who comment on such greats as Touch of Satan, The Girl in Gold Boots, and Eegah! At one point, Mike wins a bet against his captors, and as payoff demands to see a really, really good story. So they oblige him, serving up a dubbed German black-and-white TV version of Hamlet from the 1960s. Another favorite of mine is their viewing of Manos: Hands of Fate (1966), recently celebrated in Entertainment Weekly as the Worst Film of All Time.

When superlatives of bad filmmaking are discussed, however, it is impossible not to mention schlock's greatest auteur, the figure celebrated in Tim Burton's 1994 film Ed Wood. (Warning: Ed Wood, which featured prominently at that year's Academy Awards, is a good movie--inspiring, even. My wife and I have seen it a dozen times, and will happily purchase it if and when it ever comes out on DVD.) Edward D. Wood, Jr., is most famous for Glen or Glenda (1953) and Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959) , but his ouevre is far more extensive, and impressive overall.

If you're a Netflix member (those guys should pay me for all the promotion I've done for them over the years!), all you have to do is select a choice schlock title, then look down at the "Enjoyed By Members Who Enjoyed..." listing and start clicking links, you'll find enough schlock to fill many a day with joy. Apparently I'm not the only one afflicted with this perverse affinity for dreck: go to Netflix and view custom lists such as "Something Weird discs." Something Weird is the name of a distribution company that has undertaken the re-release, on DVD, of all-but-orgotten schlock classics from the golden age of the "genre," c. 1955-1975.

Finally, no overview of schlock would be complete without mentioning those works of contemporary Hollywood or independent filmmakers, as opposed to small-time exploitation studios of the past, that qualify for the title. I'm not talking about senseless action fluff that's just plain bad--as someone reviewing Ed Wood years ago noted, if you want to see a really lousy movie, see Demolition Man. (Or Judge Dredd, or Die Hard 2, or Lethal Weapon 4, or.... and the list goes on.)

No, I'm talking about something that aims much higher, because after all, the essence of schlock is unintentional humor. For that, one can hardly do better than to see a film that all the "important" people take seriously, when anyone with a working brain can see that the Emperor is naked: Thirteen, for instance, or In the Bedroom. (Actually, the latter was just plain boring and lacking in surprises--not really schlock, I suppose.) Such a film might include a really good actor, like Bridget Fonda in Point of No Return. Or maybe many good (or at least, notable) figures--and here I come to my favorite of all bad mainstream movies, one I never miss when I catch in on cable: St. Elmo's Fire. (If you don't believe me, see some of the memorable quotes at the IMDb.)

[For more great titles, see the Wikipedia list of films "nominated" for the title of Worst Ever. Also, here's a superb MST3K tribute site with tons of artwork and details, etc.]

Beware of Phishing Phools Swimming Sharkily Around the Amazon Basin

2005-10-01T10:42:00.000-07:00

Normally I wouldn't bother to write about an email scam, because I figure that readers of this blog (all, oh, seven or eight of you) are savvy enough to spot them on their own. Some of these are so ridiculously transparent that I'm genuinely amazed to learn that people fall for them, but this one was so cleverly disguised that I puzzled over it for some time before reporting it.

Yesterday morning I got an email purportedly from Amazon.com, with a very convincing-looking return address. (I started to include it here, but decided against because I couldn't figure out how to keep it from appearing as a hot link, and I certainly don't want anybody to click on it.) Anyway, the note concerned a billing issue: supposedly somebody had been trying to use my account or something, and they needed me to contact them using a Web address they provided. That URL was VERY convincing-looking--no "amazon @ hotmail.com" or whatever. It looked so much like the real thing, and the matter seemed plausible enough--I order a lot of stuff from Amazon regularly, and one of my assistants also uses my account to order things for Deidre and me--that I clicked on the link. And the site it brought me to looked SO much like Amazon that I very nearly took the bait.

Had it not been for something about the subject line of the original email that looked a little strange--it just didn't exactly correspond to anything I'd ever received from Amazon before--combined with something in the wording of the email that didn't sound quite like it applied to me (there was a reference to an Amazon credit card, which I don't have), I might very well have fallen for this clever scam. Instead, I went to Amazon--not using the URL from the email, but the one stored in my Favorites on Internet Explorer--and reported the matter to them. Sure enough, they sent back a boilerplate response indicating that the email I received was not from them, and thanking me for reporting the matter to them.

So if you get something from Amazon that doesn't look right, don't respond to it. Just go to Amazon--the real Amazon--and let them know about it. You don't have anything to lose by doing so, and if you fall for a scam (as yours truly, who prides himself for his wisdom in these matters, very nearly did), you could lose a lot.

Darn Close to a Perfect Story

2005-09-22T05:48:00.000-07:00

"Show, don't tell": writers are dogged by this one, as I noted in an earlier post, and not only because showing rather than telling is critical to the creation of a good story, but also because it's so hard to do. We all want to fall back on the crutch of explaining things, which is both easy and somehow comforting. I'm reminded of a simple and beautifully played gesture by Robert Duvall in his role as an over-the-hill newspaper editor in The Paper: he's a heavy smoker, and we've already seen him hacking, but in passing he makes a point of gently patting his lighter and pack of cigarettes where they sit beside him on the desk--just making sure the fix is still handy when he needs it.

There are a lot of really good books out there that challenge writers' addiction to telling and explaining too much: not only Robert McKee's Story, noted earlier, but Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and David King. (This one is famous for the helpful acronym RUE--Resist the Urge to Explain. Romance writer Kathleen Nance has a good, quick discussion of this and related topics on her Web page.) As good as those books are, though, it stands to reason--given the subject at hand--that the best possible guide would be, not a work of nonfiction that tells us not to tell, but a work of fiction that shows us how to show.

For this I can find no more nearly perfect example than "The Swimmer," a short story by John Cheever published in the New Yorker in 1964 and four years later released as a motion picture starring Burt Lancaster and directed by Frank Perry and Sydney Pollack. I read the story when I was about eighteen or so, and, having just finished watching the film now nearly twenty-three years later, I wonder just what I really understood of Cheever's tale back then. This is a story for grown-ups if there ever was one, and yet I saw something there that has stayed with me all these years.

I first became attracted to Cheever's work when I was fresh out of Basic Training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, and any contact with the outside world seemed an enormous privilege. I happened to pick up a copy of Time magazine containing his obituary, and something the reporter said--about a world of neatly trimmed suburban lawns and glasses of gin and tonic over shaved ice--immediately hooked me. As a southerner, I've tended to feel an antipathy toward the fact that the preponderance of American fiction centers on the northeastern part of the nation. That's where most American writers come from, of course, but I'll confess to having been left cold by many a prep-school tale or yet another story of a middle-aged northeastern suburbanite confronting his mortality/sexuality/blah-blah-blah-ality. And on the surface, "The Swimmer" is just another entrant on that long gray line. But it's not: this is literature in the greatest of traditions, harkening back to James Joyce and Huckleberry Finn, to Dante and Odysseus--all the way back to Genesis and the Gilgamesh.

Overblown comparisons? I don't think so; after all, "The Swimmer"--the story of one man's quixotic quest to swim across his neighborhood, from pool to pool--is, though some might call it a mock epic, an epic in the more true sense. As with Joyce's Ulysses, the fact that the stakes are deceptively trivial should not prevent the discerning reader/viewer from understanding that what we are witnessing here is hardly less than a literal life and death struggle. If it's an epic, then that makes Ned Merrill, our titular athlete/explorer, a hero. Many would call him an antihero, but I think you'd have to have a pretty hard heart not to root for Neddy all the way--even when you find out some things I'm not going to reveal here.

I haven't gone back and read the story in all these years, but can only imagine how powerful it would be now if it has stayed with me all this time. (This doesn't always work, of course: when I was thirteen, I thought Jack London's Martin Eden was a masterpiece, but only a few years later I made the mistake of reading it again and realized it was little more than whiny drivel--specifically, whiny tough-guy drivel.) But seeing the movie at forty-one gave me an entirely different appreciation for what Ned confronts--those very real terrors that we all know, the ones far more frightening than giant anacondas or serial killers in hockey masks. On that basis, I'd say this is the scariest film I've seen other than Glengarry Glen Ross. Imagine if Twilight Zone had been on HBO (which of course didn't exist back then, but which would have allowed Rod Serling much greater creative elbow room), and that's The Swimmer.

A few caveats. Because the movie was made in 1968, it has more than a few of the cheesy gimmicks to which filmmakers of that time were given: dreamy dissolves, a little bit of heavy-handed imagery here and there, and a score by Marvin Hamlisch that, while beautiful, ventures into the realm of the lachrymose. Some of the supporting actors are a bit wooden, and you do have to put up with about three minutes of a very young Joan Rivers, who admittedly does a good job with her role. But the ladies (and some of the men) won't mind watching Burt Lancaster run around in a Speedo all movie long. The guy was fifty-five at the time, believe it or not, and in an era long before working out was a standard habit, he still looked good enough to walk around barely dressed--and in one scene, daring for the time, almost entirely undressed.

It's no mistake, of course, that Neddy Merrill is all but naked for the entire film, which takes place virtually in real time. (Incidentally, it was a box-office flop, because audiences at the time weren't ready for something like this.) But I've already said more than enough here, and anyway my point was that this tale--both the short story and the movie--is a classic illustration of showing rather than telling. If you're a writer, watch the film, and next time you're working on something and you have an urge to explain a bunch of backstory, remember The Swimmer: had Cheever (shown left) not doggedly resisted the urge to explain, cutting down what was originally a novella of some 150 pages, he literally would have had no story at all. If he'd chosen to introduce us to Ned, emerging from that first swimming pool to the offer of a gin and tonic with a twist of lemon, in such a way that we already knew everything about him, then there would have been no point in going on. Click on the image (right side) for a link to this book.

Sweetheart of the Rodeo; or, When the Country Rocked and Raged

2005-09-21T06:03:00.000-07:00

Recently I've rediscovered the music of The Flying Burrito Brothers, a little-known but highly influential band formed by Gram Parsons after he left the Byrds in 1968. Parsons, more than any other figure in music, was responsible for the rise of country-rock in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and with it the growth of the singer-songwriter movement in the years that followed. This move in turn helped bring about the blurring between country and rock that we see today, but it wasn't always that way.

Back in the day, country and rock didn't just symbolize two different tastes, but two whole different worlds. Never mind that rock 'n roll owes almost as much to country as it does to R 'n B--in fact, it's not too much of a stretch to say that the entire medium emerged from an amalgam of the various styles employed by poor blacks and poor whites in the southern United States during the first half of the twentieth century. But whereas the rockers of the 1960s saw themselves as philosophically aligned with the music of Detroit (despite the fact that that music was far more unabashedly commercial), they could not have been more removed from Nashville.

People think our nation is divided now, but we have only to look at other eras--a certain conflict in the 1860s, for instance--to put today's mood into a proper context. The divisions of the 1960s were arguably as strong, leading as they did to outbursts of violence that, while mild compared to the passions that raged in the years leading up to and including the Civil War era, were far beyond anything we're experiencing now. Perhaps it's in the nature of America to be divided, because we're a nation founded on the principle of individual thought, but that's another discussion.

What's important here is the cultural importance of the marriage between country and rock, an idea we take for granted today, but one that seemed truly revolutionary (or counterrevolutionary, depending on who was talking) four decades ago. Rock 'n roll was the music of hippies, anarchists, communists, practitioners of free love and experimenters with substances virtually unknown to the wider culture only a few years before. Producers and consumers of rock were mostly young kids from privileged or relatively privileged backgrounds, the beneficiaries of an unprecented prosperity that made possible for the first time in history the opening up of university doors to a solid plurality--if not a majority--of the youth population.
Country, on the other hand, was--to an even greater extent than today--the music of the workin' man, the salt of the earth. It represented a world of people who believed in God and the flag, who relied more on common sense than education, a segment of the nation (far larger than the hippies, by the way) who had nothing but disdain for everything the hippies represented. Therein lay a great irony, in that hippie revolutionaries claimed to speak for the proletariat, yet the proletariat by and large wanted nothing to do with them.

When President Nixon spoke of the "Silent Majority"--the hardworking, conservative populace that believed in a strong military, law and order, and a host of ideas antithetical to those coming out of Greenwich Village, Harvard Yard, Haight-Asbury, and Hollywood--these were the people he meant. True, many of them were, in musical terms, truly silent, because most represented a generation for which music had nothing like the kind of power it possessed for those of us born after World War II, but if the Silent Majority had a sound, it was that of the acoustic guitar, the standup bass, and the dulcimer. Theirs was an ethic embodied in the words of Merle Haggard's smash 1969 country hit, "Okie from Muskogee":

We don't make a party out of lovin'
We like holdin' hands and pitchin' woo
We don't let our hair grow long and shaggy,
Like the hippies out in San Francisco do.

The song is a scathing dismissal of the hippie lifestyle and all its facets--not just free love and long hair, but drugs, anarchism, opposition to the military--all the behaviors glorified in rock 'n roll but despised by the denizens of Nashville and their cohorts around the nation.

Hence the boldness of the statement made by Parsons, whose International Submarine Band (1965-67) first introduced the idea of country rock. That idea gained far greater exposure after he joined the Byrds, who had already been moving in that direction but whose 1968 album Sweetheart of the Rodeo served to introduce country rock to the world. And the introduction was not well received: David Fricke, in the liner notes to a 1997 reissue of Sweetheart, called it "career suicide" for the Byrds.

Though some of the songs on this album (most were covers) fit in with the zeitgeist--for example, Woody Guthrie's "Pretty Boy Floyd," well-timed for an era when outlaws had newly reemerged as heroes thanks in large part to the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde--one can only imagine what progressives made of the group's unironic cover of "The Christian Life" by Ira and Charlie Louvin. The very fact that the album consists almost entirely of covers is a reflection of Columbia Records' hesitatancy about the career move: the label forced the group to pack in a great deal of more typical Byrds material, and left out several original Parsons compositions later included on the reissue. As for the reaction of the country world, this too isn't hard to imagine: later, when Parsons--setting out on a solo career when he left the Flying Burrito Brothers--sought to work with Haggard, the latter dismissed him as an acid-head who didn't understand country.

Acid-head he may have been--Parsons lived fast and died young in 1973 at a mere twenty-six years of age--but there's no denying that Gram Parsons was a visionary and a great interpreter of American folk idioms. The very fact that his achievement doesn't immediately seem so remarkable today is the greatest evidence of his ideas' triumph.

Spam Spasm

2005-09-17T05:59:00.000-07:00

Would you believe it? Minutes after posting late last night (actually, early this morning), I already had a comment. I opened it with excitement--this on the Blackberry, the laptop having been put away--only to find something like this: "Great post. You made some really good points. I have a blog, too. It's about finding legitimate home-based business opportunities. Check it out at" and the URL followed.

(Imagine the following words in the nutty voice of the late Sam Kinison or some early Bill Murray character): Will the madness ever cease? Spam in emails doesn't bother me that much, primarily because most spam filters are likely to keep out real mail. Rather than run the risk of losing one legitimate note, I'll put up with a hundred promoting cheap bathtub Viagra, opportunities to make $20,000 a week surfing web sites, or invitations to "Watch Britney Spears Masturbating Live!" (No kidding--that's a real subject line from several years ago, before she was married and a mom and supposedly "all growns up," to quote Vince Vaughn in Swingers.) But spam on a blog, where each post is valuable--representing as it does someone, often a person you don't even know, who took the time to publicly respond to your words? Nah, that ain't gonna cut it.

Note to spammers: your nefarious avocation is purely a numbers game, based on the sadly accurate notion that for every 10,000 or so of these stinkbombs you lay out, there's bound to be a couple of suckers. However, this particular blog--due in part to its often-elevated tone (okay, I'm being a little facetious here) and even more so to its auteur's sporadic posting habits--is hardly a high-volume location. In other words, you're wasting your time, and I'll only erase your posts. Better yet, Blogger/Blogspot has a spam-filtering feature, so there will be a lock on the door to those whose intentions are less than honorable. Thank you, and have a good day sending out 419 scam letters that begin something like this: "My father, the Honorable Joseph M. Undugu, was, until the recent coup, finance minister of Burkina Faso...."

No Time to Post Anything!

2005-09-16T22:58:00.000-07:00

I'm at the American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW--they've got a great web site) conference in Nashville, and it's been tiring but fun. Back to back to back to back appointments all day with writers who represent a variety of levels of experience and maturity in their work, from those who are multipublished or about to be, to those who need to go back and address some of the fundamentals that bedevil all writers to some degree.

Chief among those challenges is the age-old problem called "show, don't tell"--so easy to say, so hard to teach, and yet we all know the difference when we read. As a great literary agent once said (no names here, but let's just say she and I have had children together!), one way to know whether you're telling rather than showing is to ask yourself whose POV a particular passage is in. If you can't find a point of view there--and that means the POV of a character you've established as a POV figure--then chances are very strong that you're telling rather than showing. Deidre used to gig me about that all the time where my own writing was concerned, because I had this tendency to fall into what she called "The Voice in the Clouds". Usually the writing in such passages was beautiful, but even the most gorgeous use of language is usually not enough to hold the reader's attention if he or she has a sense that the narrator has somehow left the building.

One of the few times a writer has successfully (though some would debate this) used the "Voice in the Clouds" is in Moby Dick. Even though Ishmael is ostensibly your narrator, there are places where the narration seems to come from a god-like figure above the action. And some of what Melville does there is as good as gold: for instance, the chapter on "The Winding-Line" or something like that--a line of rope carefully traced around the perimeter of a whaling boat, prepared to unwind when a whale pulls on the hook far below--is absolute poetry. But most of us aren't Herman Melvilles, and anyway, it must be remembered that his inestimable classic was a flop at the time of its publication in 1851, the author all but forgotten for the next three-quarters of a century. So as I like to say to writers when taking note of those who successfully evade the rules, "Do not try this at home!"

At the conference, I've been heavily promoting three books: Story by Robert McKee, Writing Well by Donald Hall, and Dare to Be a Great Writer by Leonad Bishop. The first of these, which I've only begun reading recently, is nothing short of a revelation. It's about screenwriting, and has little to say with regard to the novel, but novelists would do well to gain some understanding of the screenwriter's discipline, which is indeed a discipline in all senses of the word. Even more important, McKee forces the honest reader/writer to ask hard questions as to the core story he or she is trying to tell, and makes it clear that anything that doesn't serve the purpose of that story must be cut out.

I'm reminded of how awed I was by the writing of the original Die Hard movie. It's hard to see it afresh now, because that sort of plot has been done so many times since then--and usually quite poorly, as in the two sequels--but when it came out, that movie was one of the freshest, most original things I'd ever seen. There's not an ounce of fat on that script, which is as close to perfection as just about any piece of writing I've ever encountered.

In typical fashion, I've had plenty to say--probably too much--at a time when I thought I was just about talked out for the day. And the ridiculous thing is that I could write more still, only I need to get some rest for another long series of appointments tomorrow. One last thing, though, about this conference: if you think the Christian element equates to boring, stodgy, or any of the other qualities that might naturally come to mind when that word is mentioned, you're actually behind the curve. There's an amazing amount of diversity within the CBA (Christian Booksellers' Association), and even more so in the realm of Christian writers whose work is being published in the larger ABA (American Booksellers' Association) market. And while there's still plenty of CBA fiction that your ninety-eight-year-old great aunt Irma could read without batting an eye, a number of writers are pushing the boundaries where portrayals of such touchy subjects as spirituality and sexuality are concerned. As with many another arena of creative expression, it's great to know the parameters--and then to challenge them.

A Little Learning Is a Dangerous Thing

2005-08-26T23:32:00.000-07:00

Just on the off chance that anybody's wondering why yours truly has waxed so silent over the month of August, I can claim only the vicissitudes of business ownership and of course parenthood. That and a tendency to write putative blog postings that read more like entries for the Catholic Encyclopedia or some other such ponderous and all-encompassing work. I've scrapped a number of entries that started with a simple theme and just grew and grew. As I love to tell other writers (do as I say, not as I do!), any fool can make something complex of something simple, but it takes a true genius to make something simple out of something complex.

The subject of encylcopedias brings to mind out an interesting little tiff between two writers that I happened to read about recently. It started with Joe Queenan's review, in the New York Times, of The Know-It-All: A Little Learning Is a Dangerous Thing by A. J. Jacobs. Queenan savaged Jacobs's book, in which the latter set out (clearly with tongue in cheek) to read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica and then present the great knowledge he had thus obtained.

Queenan castigates Jacobs for a variety of sins, some of which I personally consider almost castigation-worthy: as JQ writes, "the premise of the book is completely wrong. The animating idea of this misguided endeavor is that corralling a vast array of unrelated facts will, in and of itself, make a person more interesting.... [But f]acts absorbed without context merely magnify the intellectual deficiencies of the autodidact, because a poorly educated person does not know which facts are important."

Besides his praiseworthy use of the word animating, one of my favorite terms (thanks to a book I basically inhaled as a voracious twenty-one-year-old, Contemporary Radical Ideologies by A. James Gregor), I agree with Queenan's antipathy for the superstition that acquiring what CNN used to annoyingly called "factoids"--useless information presented without context--constitutes some form of real knowledge. Long before the present media age, Hermann Hesse (pictured right) basically ripped such mentality a new one in his rather curious Magister Ludi. And I've long been a believer in the idea that wisdom and knowledge are far from the same thing.

One thing I found interesting about Queenan's article, though, is something he wouldn't necessarily care to point out: that at earlier points in his career, he too could be described in the same terms by which he paints Jacobs: "corny, juvenile, smug, tired." That was my impression of him years ago, when I first read him in the American Spectator (this was long before that publication began making headlines, by which point I had long since moved on.) Queenan seemed to me to embody the more base aspects of P. J. O'Rourke, without the latter's redeeming wit and deep common sense. And while I'm glad to see that Queenan has matured a great deal over the years, I still think he was a little "rough on the Beave."

Jacobs thought the same thing, obviously; hence his equally witty rebuttal in the same publication. It's always a tricky thing when writers respond to critics in print or otherwise, but Jacobs comported himself well, dealing out plenty of self-deprecating wit to balance the abundant Queenan-deprecating responses. And when it comes to authors vs. critics, I'm sorry, but I'm almost always going to be on the side of the authors, having experienced my own share of nasty reviews, either public or private (i.e., in the form of comments by advisors on scholarly publications for which I was writing.) For instance, there was this one... uh, person who gave my Beatles book such a blistering review that I decided he was simply setting out to find fault--and I confirmed this when a little research revealed that he'd written his own poorly received Beatles book years before. I sat down to write a withering response to the publication in which his review appeared, but thought better of it, and here these many years later it's still buried somewhere deep on my hard drive.

But Jacobs, on the other hand, did manage to write a rebuttal that makes his case effectively. In the process, he and Queenan together managed to put together the most entertaining literary pissing match (excuse my French) since V. S. Naipaul's dispute with Paul Theroux a few years back. And after all, isn't it much easier to argue about writing than it is to actually write?

Why I Like The Aristocrats--At Least Until I've Seen It

2005-08-07T08:47:00.000-07:00

No, I'm not talking about the cartoon from the 1960s, The Aristocats. That one shouldn't be a matter of controversy at all: anyone who wouldn't like The Aristocats (at least once, as opposed to the hundreds of times kids want to see it) must be a misanthrope. I'm talking here about The Aristocrats, a film set for limited nationwide release August 12. Why limited, when it's one of the most talked-about movies of the year? Well, AMC Theatres, for instance, which controls 3,500 screens, rejected it on the basis of "limited audience appeal." The real reason, though, is that, as several critics have suggested, The Aristocrats--which features neither nudity nor violence--may be the most obscene movie ever released to mainstream America.

Late one night five years ago, standup comic Paul Provenza and magician Penn Gillette (of Penn & Teller) were discussing the idea of improvization in comedy and its relation to improvization in music, particularly jazz. Gradually they began to formulate an idea: find as many comedians as they could, some of them superstars but many more of them journeymen and -women of the comedy circuit, and film each one of them telling the same joke. Actually, "story" might be a better word, because this joke couldn't be a one-liner, but rather an open-ended routine that would allow the teller considerable leeway in fashioning his or her own unique tale. For this they chose "The Aristocrats," described thus by Gregory Kirschling in Entertainment Weekly:

"The Aristocrats" is an ancient dirty joke out of vaudeville days.... Audiences rarely get to hear it. Rather, old-school standups crack each other up with it, usually after sets, while hanging out next to the beer kegs in the dank back rooms of comedy clubs, or at coffee shops till dawn. It's an inside joke, a comic's secret handshake, and it's always dirty.

The joke itself revolves around a would-be comic's pitch to a talent agent for a
new routine. The agent asks him to describe the routine, and here is where the
improvization begins. Quoting again from Kirschling's excellent article, which
unfortunately isn't available online:

"The Aristocrats," as the movie points out, is a bad joke. Its skeleton is this: A guy walks into a talent agency and announces he's got a family act. Let's see it, says the agent. Here it's up to the comic to make up a family show so sick and debased, it's gold. At the end of the disgusting pitch, the agent asks for the name of the act. The answer is the punchline: "The Aristocrats!" In the movie, Drew Carey recommends spicing up the delivery by forming your arms at a right angle and dashing off a stylish Spanish-dancer finger snap.

Carey is just one among an array of comedic stars who tell their own version of the joke in the course of the film; others include Jon Stewart, Whoopi Goldberg, Robin Williams, Jason Alexander, Andy Dick, Paul Reiser, Fred Willard, George Carlin, Don Rickles, Phyllis Diller, and many, many others. Kirschling singled out the performance of Bob Saget, best known as Danny on the sitcom Full House in the 1980s, as "the most galvanizing display of vulgarity" in the film.

There has been a big build-up to this release in terms of touting the excessive grossness of the stories contained therein, and there have been the almost inevitable protests by Christian groups and others--protests that of course only serve to give the movie tons of free publicity. And Michael Elliott of ChristianCritic.com, who wrote a blistering critique of the film in terms of morality and aesthetics, nevertheless admitted to Kirschling that he laughed when he watched it: "It's undeniably funny."

I have no doubt that much of it will be hilarious, as well as an intriguing exploration of the storyteller's art. And I have no doubt that there are things in there so disgusting and offensive as to make one angry, defensive for loved ones and friends and fellow human beings who might be construed as targets of humor that goes just slightly over the edge. (In any case, being a parent of small children I probably won't see it until it comes out on DVD, especially because, even if my wife and I did have a "date night" at the movies, I can't imagine using it for this film.)

At heart The Aristocrats is, as Provenza told Kirschling, "about creativity, about individuality, about freedom." It is an entirely different class of creation from the infamous Piss Christ of Andres Serrano or the virgin in elephant dung that caused such a flap in New York City a few years ago. Although all sorts of right-thinking people would no doubt have lots of reasons why these are works of art, it seems pretty obvious to me that they're really little more than attempts to provoke as a means of getting publicity. I remember reading one earnest defense of Serrano back in 1992, in which the critic attempted to equate his "experiments with biological materials" to Leonardo's detailed anatomical drawings. That got a big chuckle out of me.

As for the desire to provoke on the part of these "artists," Jesus and the Virgin Mary are pretty easy targets, as would be Uncle Sam or any number of other traditional Western symbols or personalities--Ronald Reagan, for instance, or Margaret Thatcher. Speaking purely from the standpoint of desiring to offend, if these artists had really possessed any cojones, they would have shown Martin Luther King in urine, or depicted a mosque smeared in dung. But of course the first of these would have gotten their work consigned to oblivion so quickly that their names would be forgotten now, and as for the second--well, ask Salman Rushdie how cool it feels when you offend a constituency who does not take offense lightly.

Compared to these lame works of "art," The Aristocrats sounds like something that genuinely possesses value. An equally important distinction is that the makers of the movie are not trying to help themselves to your tax dollars so as to promote a message you might not like. Theirs is a commercial venture, one in which they are free to succeed or fail--but from what I've read about The Aristocrats, I think they're bound to succeed.

[Check out the listing for The Aristocrats on the IMDb, as well as the film's official Web site and an Entertainment Weekly review.]

The Greatest Salesman Documentary in the World

2005-07-29T07:07:00.000-07:00

Some of my favorite films are documentaries. By documentary, I don't mean propaganda, in which footage depicting real events is spliced together in a misleading way. (Not that there's anything wrong with a good, solidly made exposé: I loved Super Size Me and the less substantiated, but highly entertaining, Kurt and Courtney.)

Nor am I referring to the kind of scripted "reality" that has become prevalent in the last decade, though I will admit to having greatly enjoyed a movie called Sex with Strangers even as I recognized the contrivance of a neat storyline in its tale of five "swingers". (I rewrote the last sentence, which originally included the dubious-sounding phrase, "I enjoyed Sex with Strangers"--a great example of how"factual" material can be manipulated to say something else entirely.)

An example of a great documentary on politics and historic events is the Occult History of the Third Reich series: though I've watched literally hundreds of hours about the Nazis and World War II (okay, I'm a little sick), these three discs stand out above all the rest. But most notable documentaries of the past few decades are concerned not with the grand sweep of things, but rather with portraying a very small, unusual corner of society: for example, skateboarding misfits (Dog Town and Z-Boys, basis for the feature Lords of Dogtown); trash-talking and sometimes truly frightening street hustlers (American Pimp); Texas fundamentalists with a rather twisted take on Halloween (Hell House); or a gaggle of moviegoing geeks (Cinemania).

Add to this list--at the top of this list--the amazing Salesman (1968), about Irish Catholic door-to-door Bible peddlers in Boston and Florida in 1967. If you loved Tin Men, and loved/hated Glengarry Glen Ross (to me, perhaps the most truly terrifying film ever made), then Salesman is one to see. I repeatedly petitioned Netflix to add it to their list, and though they've been pretty responsive about some things, they never acquired this one. So I finally bought it from Amazon, and though it's on the expensive side, it's definitely worth it. Or as the guys in the movie might say (putting on an exaggerated brogue), "How much do you think you'd be able to set aside on a monthly basis for this beautiful bound edition of the sacred texts, Mrs. O'Connor? For the security of knowing that your children are being raised in the traditions of the saints and the sacraments? What if I told you that you could have this peace of mind for just $7.95 a month?"

To anybody who's ever worked in door-to-door or in-home sales, been involved in a multilevel, or otherwise tried to proselytize in some uphill situation, Salesman will elicit many a heartfelt guffaw or frisson or sheer horror. And yet that's only part of the authenticity that makes this film so remarkable. Too many directors today, if given these same materials, would try to carve out a storyline around some boring, shopworn critique of Christianity and capitalism, but filmmakers Albert Maysles, David Maysles, and Charlotte Zwerin did something much more difficult. Simply by sticking close to their subjects--including the unforgettable Paul "the Badger" Brennan, who has to have been David Mamet's model for the Jack Lemmon character in Glengarry--they allow the personalities and events to express themselves in a way that speaks to timeless issues of honor, achievement, and sheer survival.

This undoubtedly necessitated the shooting of hundreds and hundreds of hours of footage, just to get the very best stuff--for instance, the scene where an oblivious husband cranks a sickly-sounding string version of "Yesterday" while the Bible dude tries to close his sale with the curler-wearing wife. It was an astonishing scene, precisely because it was the mid-1960s, before the average Joe had discovered irony, postmodernism, or self-reference. In other words, it's a safe bet that these people weren't encouraged to ham it up ala The Osbournes; they were just being themselves, and that was more than entertaining enough.

Though by far the greatest "salesman" I have ever personally known is a woman--my wife Deidre, founder of The Knight Agency--both Salesman and Glengarry Glen Ross are dominated by male figures. (Except perhaps in the background of the restaurant where the characters hang out for half the movie, you don't even see a woman in Glengarry.) In both movies, the role of the male is reduced to the most fundamental demands and expectations placed on him by millions of years of evolution and thousands of years of tradition. In both, men compete with varying degrees of success for key positions at the head of the pack, while an older man is forced to ask himself if he still has what it takes to survive. Without apparent contrivance, the film develops a powerful storyline, and the dialogue that spills from the mouths of Paul and his comrades along the way is better than most writers could ever hope to create.

[Maysles Productions has a Web site that includes a list by Albert Maysles of his own professional guidelines as a documentary maker. In pulling up all the links above, most of which go to Netflix listings, I ended up adding about fifty new documentaries to my personal film queue. One that's apparently no longer available, though I saw it about ten years ago, is Chickenhawk, which concerns the North American Man-Boy Love Association or NAMBLA. Apparently the film has been withdrawn from circulation, though I can't imagine how anyone could construe it as treating NAMBLA favorably. ]

As Schwarzenegger said in Terminator 2...

2005-07-19T00:05:00.000-07:00

..."I need a vacation"--something often said by parents of small children when they return from what others would call a vacation. Actually, in my case at least I'm just kidding: we had a great time in Florida with our young'uns, and though there were occasional moments of near-havoc, I wouldn't have traded a moment of it.

I wanted to draw attention to content on two other blogs, both of which are linked from mine. First, there's our own Knight Agency blog, where we're offering a special promotion that will be of interest to authors who are attending the Romance Writers of America (RWA) annual convention in Reno later this month. Also, my old friend Harry Joiner , an executive recruiter specializing in Multi-Channel Marketing, has moved his blog to www.MarketingHeadhunter.com. Harry is always witty and insightful, and I greatly enjoy reading his dispatches.

Speaking of business gurus, I think James Surowiecki (I had to check that spelling three times) ought to have a blog. Surowiecki, who writes "The Financial Page" for the New Yorker, is brilliant: until seeing his picture, I would have figured he was a silver-haired old seer, sharing wisdom that dates back to the days of Univacs and switchboards. Other New Yorker talents whose work I never miss are Anthony Lane and Louis Menand.

I sound like somebody who must have spent a lot of time sitting around the pool reading magazines, but in fact the reading material that took the greatest part of my attention was Love: Behind the Scenes on the Pegasus Carousel with the Legendary Rock Group Love by Michael Stuart-Ware. Most people have never heard of Love, but their 1967 album Forever Changes is routinely listed among the all-time greats. Stuart's book is an inside view of L.A.'s Sunset Strip at the height of the 1960s, by the drummer for a band whose members' drug addictions, internal conflicts, and other flaws outweighed their considerable talents. At one time much bigger than the Doors, Love is now known primarily to music enthusiasts; yet a listen to Forever Changes provides a startling reminder of just how good they were. And the revelations in Stuart's book only make their achievement all the more impressive in light of the odds against which it took place.

Our recent televiewing has been all over the map: from the two-DVD set The Elegant Universe, which explores unified field theory, curvature of space-time, string theory, the eleven possible dimensions, and similarly challenging ideas, to the season premiere of The Surreal Life. As conoisseurs of that show for several years now, I'll have to say that their present lineup might be the best yet. And check this out: though Omarosa is part of the show, she's not playing the role of bitch. That job has been assigned to former supermodel Janice Dickinson, who does a suspiciously convincing job with it.

The Scale of the Human within the Framework

2005-07-08T07:47:00.000-07:00

The pictures below show current living conditions in China, the closest thing to another superpower in the world today--the country, that is, that would most likely be at the forefront of global affairs if there were no United States. It might be argued, of course, that this would never happen due to China's traditional isolationism, but all of that is changing as China emerges in the role of a massive importer and exporter. Nor does Russia, for all its bluster in military and political terms, possess anything like the economic clout of the People's Republic, a force with the potential to rival the European Union and Japan--only with much greater military power.

Now look at these pictures and think about what they might tell us concerning the view of humanity under the Chinese state--or indeed under any of the governments that have ruled that great land for the past three thousand years. There is a certain almost whimsical quality, for those of us with an eye for the grotesque, in the way that these photographs present human living spaces as pure geometric shape and color. Replicated over and over, these images might make a good backdrop for a dystopian future world as depicted in Fritz Lang's Metropolis.

But this is not pure geometry, pure image; this is where people live. Can you, as a westerner, imagine life as an ant with two legs and a conscience--an ant potentially capable of solving complex mathematical problems or writing music, but an ant nevertheless? Probably you can't; I don't really think I can. In America, we know about regimentation and blandness in the form of cookie-cutter strip malls and one-size-fits-all servings of pablum through the popular culture, but honestly, is anything we know even remotely as dehumanizing as this?

As for the poverty depicted in some of the middle pictures, ones that look like scenes from the New York City slums of the 1880s but projected many decades into the future, do we know anything like this? I'm always amused when an American, in response to a discussion of poverty overseas, gets almost defensive and says, "We have poverty here, too!" Yeah, I've seen it: I've been to the projects, I've been to rural Mississippi, I've been to the forgotten places on the West Virginia-Kentucky line, and I still say that we don't know anything about how poor people really live.

And yet the poverty in other parts of the world--in many cases far, far worse even than we see in these pictures, the poverty of people who live in corrugated tin shacks without running water or electricity, of people whose children are unclothed, of people who don't have enough to eat--is nothing compared to the much greater evil depicted in these scenes: dehumanization. Let's face it, folks, our western idea that each human being is unique and important is a minority view in the world.

The mentality of the pigs who set off those bombs on the London Underground yesterday may represent an extreme, but it's a lot closer to the world norm than our own liberal western view. Yes, it's true that the Ohio National Guard fired on and killed four demonstrators at Kent State in 1970, and that the CIA probably has conducted all kinds of ghastly experiments with LSD and other chemicals, and that governments in this country have acted with unconscionable brutality against minorities. But if you think that the cruelty people have known here is even on the same scale with the cruelty people have experienced elsewhere, then you are dangerously ignorant.

And sadly, there are many people who don't simply think this country is as bad as others, they claim it's much worse: the likes of Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky, and Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois have made whole careers on such fantasies, and yet deep down I suspect they all know the truth. All of us do; but sometimes it's easier to go along with the comforting myth that George Bush (or, if you like, Bill Clinton) represents the summit of human evil. Sometimes it's necessary to look beyond our little world here and its problems, and see how the rest of the world treats itself. You don't have to think about the Holocaust or the murders carried out by the Koran-thumping modern descendants of the Nazis. All you have to do is look at these photographs, and imagine what it must be like to be treated as an ant with two legs and a brain capable of higher reasoning.

(Many thanks to Nino Spahic , an architect who works with my brother, for providing these incredible pictures. The views expressed here, of course, are entirely my own.)

2005-07-07T19:22:00.000-07:00

Two Great Americans

2005-07-02T08:52:00.000-07:00

In honor of Independence Day, I'd like to salute two gentlemen who proved that it's possible to be cool and love America. Sadly, because both were self-destructive figures, they have long since gone on.

The first of these was Jack Kerouac,

who, despite his association with the Beat movement--many of whose members disdained America--was an unabashed patriot. Kerouac had nothing but contempt for flag-burners, and one of the many points of contention at his infamous meeting with Ken Kesey (depicted in Tom Wolfe's Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test) was the fact that one of Kesey's Merry Pranksters had draped an American flag ingloriously over a chair. Kerouac quietly folded the flag and handed it to Kesey.

I've done enough research to confirm what I said about Kerouac's patriotism, but on this next one I'm on more shaky ground. This was something I once heard, but for which I've not found any corroboration; anyway, it's a great story. Supposedly, when Jimi Hendrix
played "The Star-Spangled Banner" at Woodstock, he received a chorus of boos because at that time (even more so than now) nothing could be more un-hip than even appearing to celebrate America. Whether or not it's true that Hendrix played his inspired version of the national anthem against such strong popular opposition, there's no denying the fact that he was sending a strong message with his choice of "The Star-Spangled Banner" for that particular performance. While the America of Jimi Hendrix might have been different from the America of the "Establishment" in those times, it seems to me that with his funked-out, heavy-metal version of the anthem, he was saying that this country belongs to everyone who loves it and the freedom which is its basis.

The First Sentence of a Book

2005-06-29T17:32:00.000-07:00

Recently I visited our local bookstore--Dog Ear Books in Madison, Georgia, an actual independent bookseller--and asked the sales clerk to suggest a good book to me. She recommended one, by a major author of military fiction and nonfiction, so I gave it the test I always apply to every new book: I read the first sentence.

If the first sentence of a book is no good, forget it. That's like going on a first date with someone and observing that person engaging in one variety or another of unattractive activity: you gotta figure that if he or she puts that kind of foot forward, it's only going to get worse from there. In the case of this particular novel, I found the first sentence bland and wordy. The author even used the phrase "rather vague," or something similar. If his first sentence--which he presumably worked on longer than any other in the book (or at least should have)--was that dull, I could just imagine how much more boring it would get as I went along.

So I said no thanks to that one, whereupon she showed me The Amber Room by Steve Berry. Now that was a good opening sentence (to the prologue, not chapter 1, which is what Amazon features): "The prisoners called him ears because he was the only Russian in Hut 8 who understood German." Good, simple language, with a minimum of window dressing, only being the "only" adjective I can pick out of the entire statement. No adverbs, no passive verbs, and though there's a verb of being in there, I think it works just fine; in fact, in some situations it actually sounds more flat to substitute an action verb for a verb of being. More important than the actual phrasing of the sentence, though, is what it achieves: It makes the reader want to know more.

When critics discuss strong first sentences, they often cite the opening lines of Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms: "In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and blue in the channels. Troops went by the house and down the road and the dust they raised powdered the leaves of the trees."

No doubt about it, this is great stuff, a veritable model for the literature of the next century and beyond: lean, muscular prose, virtually bereft of unnecessary detail. Hemingway is famous for stating that nouns and verbs should do the work that writers usually assign to adjectives and adverbs, and few passages better exemplify his adherence to this aesthetic. However, for best single opening sentences, my two personal favorites are these:

Fiction: Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude: "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."

Nonfiction: Paul Johnson, Modern Times: "The modern world began on 29 May 1919 when photographs of a solar eclipse, taken on the island of Principe off West Africa and at Sobral in Brazil, confirmed the truth of a new theory of the universe."

Copies of both books were given to me, the first in high school and the second in college, and in both cases I had no real intention of reading the entire book. I would read the first sentence, I told myself, and if it didn't interest me--as I was certain it wouldn't--then I would set the book aside and forget all about it. But that's not how it happened; in both cases, the first sentence acted as a lure to pull me headlong into the book, and these rank among my favorite books of all time.

As a partner in, and occasional first reader for, a literary agency, one of the things I look for in a manuscript sample--or, for that matter, even a query letter--is a strong first sentence. Again, I figure that if the writer hasn't worked hard on that one, the rest of the book will be weak as well. Obviously people can get away with a lousy first sentence: the writer to whom I referred above certainly did, but he's also well-established. For the rest of us, it's better to hedge our bets by putting our best foot forward--and by the way, I just used two cliches, either one of which would be a virtual death knell (oop--there's another!) in an opening sentence.

(And then of course there's the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, for which the objective is to write the worst possible opening sentence--an act that requires at least as much talent as a good opener.)

What's the Good Word?

2005-06-24T18:43:00.000-07:00

Here are a few that I have enjoyed over the years:

Basilisk--a legendary reptile with fatal breath and glance.

Callipygian--having nicely formed buttocks.

Espiègle (es-PYOG[l])--frolicsome, roguish. (To paraphrase an observation by a character in a skit from Mad TV, "Richard Simmons performing rhythmic aerobics while dancing with a rainbow flag would not be as gay as that word.")

Mundungus--foul-smelling tobacco.

Oogamous--a form of gamete reproduction wherein a small mobile male impregnates a large immobile female. (I've known some couples like this.)

Sir-reverence--An archaic term that could mean either "an expression of apology before a statement that might be considered offensive" or "a lump of human feces".

Perhaps the Most Thought-Provoking Words of All Time

2005-06-21T19:48:00.000-07:00

No, these don't come from the Bible or the Bhagavad-Gita, nor from any figure commonly recognized as a teacher or thinker. Rather, the source is The Flying Deuces, a 1939 Laurel and Hardy pic in which the two play a pair of fish-packers from Des Moines on vacation in Paris.

It's been a long, long time since I actually saw it, so I may have a couple of details wrong, but essentially the scene is this. Heartbroken at the discovery that the woman he loves is already married, Ollie determines to throw himself into a canal of the Seine that happens to contain a shark escaped from the city zoo. Ever the faithful friend, Laurel has decided that he too will end it all, and they are just preparing to jump when a legionnaire stops and tells them that instead of committing suicide, they should join the French Foreign Legion. To which Laurel (as I recall) answers thus:

The French Foreign Legion?

I can't join the French Foreign Legion.

I've got to be in Des Moines on Monday!

Get it? I once tried to share this with someone in her early twenties and got a blank stare, whereas I've noticed that the older the person who hears this, the more likely he or she is to understand. Anyway, here's what I get out of that line: we may think we have priorities in life, urgent things that simply have to be done, but in truth our lives could end at any moment, and then those alleged priorities will be revealed as meaningless. Put in terms of the movie, it may seem important to get back to our fish-packing job in Des Moines, but if life itself is so conditional that one could choose to end it in the shark-infested waters of the Seine, then nothing is really mandatory--certainly nothing as unimportant as a fish-packing job in Des Moines.

Sometimes when I've gotten really wigged out about a deadline or a debt or some other such millstone, I've thought of those lines and drawn great comfort from them. Most of what we are forced to spend our time and energy on, simply as a matter of survival, doesn't ultimately matter. Whatever happens when we die, it's not likely we'll be thinking about those things. The ones we have loved, yes; the most treasured of our dreams and ambitions, yes; the sweetness of life itself, yes; but not the job packing fish back in Des Moines.

A few interesting links: an essay on the movie, which ends with Ollie's death and reincarnation (I'm not kidding); the official Web site of the French Foreign Legion; and finally, a historical marker honoring Hardy's brief residence in my own adopted hometown of Madison, Georgia.

Why Rome Failed--Part 3 or 3

2005-06-17T19:22:00.000-07:00

In a couple of earlier posts, I discussed the subject of why Roman civilization--and with it, of course, the entire civilization of western Europe in ancient times--came to an end. This is a subject of more than passing interest to yours truly, as someone who has read and even published on the matter. And though of course I'm far from an expert, I do think I've gained a little insight from thinking about all this for some time.

Nothing that took place in Rome was really new from an intellectual standpoint: in terms of organization, engineering, and the military, of course, the Romans far exceeded the Greeks, but the underpinnings of their worldview were almost entirely borrowed from a much earlier generation of Athenians. Not only was the Roman economy, like that of the Greeks, completely dependent on slavery, but more important, the Romans subscribed to basic ideas about the universe that were common to Greek thinkers.

Though Plato and Aristotle differed on many points, they agreed on the idea that some are born to lead and the vast majority are born to follow. Plato's Republic develops this theme at great length, and Aristotle, in his Politics, maintains that the slave's physical work is a badge of his inferior condition. To these men, the most esteemed form of labor was mental; by contrast, the idea of actually working with one's hands--of getting one's hands dirty--was almost shameful. This is particularly ironic in Aristotle's case, since he was one of the first biological scientists to study the natural world at first hand, dissecting numerous animals with the help of his students. But there was a limit to his empirical commitment: like everyone else who's ever lived, Aristotle was still a man of his time and place.

To the classical mind, the work of the artisan was altogether inferior to that of the thinker, and thus when Hero of Alexandria invented the first steam engine, he saw it merely as a toy, and the potentially world-changing idea lay virtually unexplored for the next sixteen centuries. Even the great Archimedes, a fascinating character with a penetrating scientific mind on a par with that of Einstein or at least Edison, saw his inventions primarily as tools to serve the king and the military--not as a means to increase productivity.

Productivity: the ancients bore a deep suspicion of the very concept, because they tended to see life on earth as provisional, something carved out at the mercy of the gods, and not as something that the human mind could potentially improve. With its wariness of attempting to shape nature for fear of offending the gods, its disdain of invention as a mere form of tinkering not suited to great minds, and its lack of interest in finding ways to minimize labor for slaves, the classical world was doomed to die out. In fact, the really amazing things is not that it collapsed, but that it lasted as long as it did.

(In making these observations, which imply a high valuation of technological and economic progress, I am well aware that such a view is not fashionable--that the very use of the term "progress" is as outmoded as the idea of gentlemen regularly wearing hats in public. But when it comes to the rudiments of life, I prefer the old school; besides, I believe that people who claim they wish we were all living in mud huts without cars or planes aren't fooling anybody but themselves. Nevertheless, I still claim Fight Club among my all-time favorite movies.)

Finally, as mentioned in earlier posts, a brilliant article by a Professor Haskell at Southwestern University discusses in greater depth the reasons behind the ancients' failure to develop machinery. Particularly fascinating is Haskell's identification of an unlikely hero in the history of civilization: the humble, hardworking medieval monk, in almost every way opposite to the artistocratic geniuses of an earlier age. The essay will give you a new appreciation of those little bald-headed men who got up every day when it was still dark, spent their days crushing grapes and such, and quite possibly saved the West somewhere along the way.

The Education of a Three-Year-Old

2005-06-17T19:03:00.000-07:00

Joining countless young women before her--including one particular young woman who's been very much in the news lately--my three-year-old daughter has become intrigued with Tom Cruise. This all started because she was sitting on my lap when I was checking my AOL email account, and when a picture of him (related to all the current brouhaha about Katie, etc.) popped up, she said, "Daddy, who's that?" So I told her, and she kept asking me so many questions about him that finally I Googled his image and we looked at several of them. (Though none of the steamy stuff with Nicole from Eyes Wide Shut, of course.)

Anyway, she just kept on talking about Tom Cruise, and later on when she was sitting on the potty, she happened to look down and see a copy of Entertainment Weekly with his picture on it. With a very serious expression on her face, she asked me, "What color is Tom Cruise's dirt, Daddy?" To which I said, of course, "Tom Cruise's dirt is the same color as everyone else's, sweetheart." Let's just hope that she retains that lesson, one of the most valuable that life has to offer, as she grows up and begins to encounter the images, illusions, and falsehoods that surround us all in this world.

Real Food of an Aural Kind

2005-06-17T18:34:00.000-07:00

I keep planning to make a post on something other than music--for example, the discussion about Rome begun below--but currently I'm at a high point of interest in music, so I'm just going to run with that.

(Record companies, take note: some of us were saying, five or six years ago, that if y'all would just make it easy for people to download music legally, and to sample music before buying, it would actually increase people's interest in your back catalogue. Good thing you finally started to catch on--after spending millions on legal fees, and losing millions more through illegal downloads. I, ahem, of course don't know anybody who ever downloaded anything illegally--just talkin' here.)

Anyway, I recommend a visit to the Alan Lomax Archive. Lomax was an American musicologist heavily active in the mid-twentieth century, and recorded hundreds of hours' worth of traditional songs by African Americans, southern whites, and members of other ethnic groups. It's an incredible thing that he did, a massive act of preservation, like saving a Victorian building or a hundred-year-old oak tree, and without his work, treasures of inestimable worth would simply be gone.

The Lomax site enables visitors to hear samples of all kinds of amazing material: for example, I was listening to work songs recorded at Mississippi's state prison, Parchman, in 1959. You can also hear old African folk songs sung by descendants of slaves living in coastal Georgia, as well as traditional ballads by mountain people in West Virginia, Cajun music sung by people for whom English was barely a first language, and so on. An amazing experience!

Recently I was thinking about the fact that the great rock musicians of the 1950s and 1960s grew up listening to the kind of music that took more than a little thought and effort to get into: for example, the haunted blues of Robert Johnson. And there are still artists today who dig deep into the roots of American music, but many more of them grew up with nothing beyond what was available in the popular culture of radio and MTV--songs that were second-, third-, or fifteenth-hand copies of much more authentic originals. It's as though the original rock icons such as John Lennon or Bob Dylan grew up on a diet of whole, natural foods, whereas a later generation sustained themselves on processed materials leached of most of their vitamins.

By that analogy, listening to the music at the Alan Lomax site is like eating fresh vegetables: sure it would be easier to consume junk food, and junk is always easier to appreciate, but in the end, you'll feel much better--and your body and soul will thank you--if you eat something that's good for you.

So stop by and establish an account--it's free. Samples come through iTunes, where a lot of the Alan Lomax recordings are for sale.

Some of the Great Covers of All Time

2005-06-14T18:47:00.000-07:00

Just in case there's any confusion on the subject, when an artist performs a song written by someone else, it's not necessarily a cover: the song has to have already been made famous by another artist. Thus when the Monkees performed songs by Neil Diamond (e.g., "I'm a Believer"), those weren't necessarily covers because, if I'm not mistaken, ND hadn't already performed them; or at the very least, we think of the Monkees' version of "Believer," not Diamond's, as the definitive one. By contrast, UB40's 1983 version of Diamond's "Red Red Wine" would most certainly be considered a cover.

Anyway, on iTunes I saw another user's list of what he considered the greatest covers of all time, and was immediately struck by how much my own list would differ from his. For example, he didn't list what I consider to be, hands-down, the single greatest cover of all time: Bob Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower," as performed by Jimi Hendrix. Another great fave of mine is a cover of Hendrix, the Cure's "Purple Haze" (1993). Also high on my list is another Dylan cover: "It's All Over Now Baby Blue" as performed by Them, the group that featured Van Morrison before he went solo.

Several of the early Beatles' covers of 1950s classics--e.g., Chuck Berry's "Roll over Beethoven"--deserve to be on the all-time best list, as does MC5's cover of Berry's "Back in the U.S.A." (Incidentally, it's easy to see that both "Back in the U.S.S.R." by the Beatles and "The American Ruse" by MC5 are conscious tributes to Berry without actually being covers.) On the other hand--and here my wife will disagree with me hugely, because it so happens that ELO and Linda Ronstadt are on her current playlist--I don't think that ELO's "Roll over Beethoven" or Linda Ronstadt's "Back in the U.S.A." really add anything interesting to the originals.

The same can be said of "All Along the Watchtower" as performed by Dave Mason, as well as Mahogany Rush's 1979 cover of Hendrix's cover of "Watchtower." Ditto for "Killer Queen," first performed by Queen in the 1970s and replicated almost note-for-note (but without the same passion) by Travis c. 2000. On the other hand, Ted Nugent's 1979 version of "I Want to Tell You," a George Harrison Beatles song, preserves the energy of the original, yet Nugent manages to make the song his own. And I personally think Siouxsie and the Banshee's 1984 version of "Dear Prudence" is almost as good as the original.

My current favorite cover is Tim Buckley performing "Sally Go Round the Roses," an adaptation of an old Irish song made famous in 1961 by the Jaynettes. The fact that the original was rather mysterious-sounding, and seemed to contain lesbian overtones highly unusual for that time, and that Buckley's version is imbued with his own tragic character--illuminated in the chorus about going downtown and drinking oneself blind--only adds to the intensity of the experience. Also notable, though not nearly as much so, is a version of "Sally" recorded by Grace Slick with the Great Society, the band she fronted before leaving to join Jefferson Airplane.

2005-06-13T12:09:00.000-07:00

This was the picture I had been going to put up before, to go with the post just below this one--itself reconstructed from one accidentally destroyed earlier. (Are you following this?) Actually, at one time, there was a real purpose for my including the picture from Gladiator--i.e., other than pleasing those readers who might want to look at the volatile Mr. Crowe--and that was to say that as someone who had just finished writing a three-volume ancient history not long before seeing the movie, I was impressed by its historical accuracy.

Yes, the filmmakers seemed to imply that printing existed in Roman times when they showed what looks like a printed flyer promoting gladiatorial games, and worse, the movie is built around the idea that Roman civilization was somehow restored in c. A.D. 200, when in fact that's when it began its terminal decline. But there were no stirrups on the horses (these did not appear until c. 450), and the story fit plausibly with real events (e.g., that Commodus really did want to be a gladiator.) Furthermore, when you compare it to a piece of pure cheese like ABC's Empire is likely to be, then you can really appreciate how great Gladiator was.

Dirty Hands, Lead Pipe, Chinese Walls, and the End of Civilizations (Followup to Post on June 9 Below)

2005-06-13T11:14:00.000-07:00

As I was saying before I managed to delete my own post last week, in a fascinating but unfortunately out-of-print book, Enemies of Society, British historian Paul Johnson discusses the reasons why civilizations go into decline, and naturally this involves a great deal of discussion regarding Rome.

Of course there is really no one reason for the fall of Rome, but rather many. Some of these are at the material level, a couple of my favorites being the matter of the lead piping and the building of the Great Wall. In their celebrated plumbing systems, the Romans used lead, which they called plumbum--hence the chemical symbol Pb, as well as the words plumbing, plumber, etc. They had no idea, as we do now, that they were poisoning themselves. It has even been suggested that the inordinate propensity for madness among Roman leaders (Caligula and Nero are just the most well-known, but there were many others) may have partially been a result of lead poisoning.

An even more intriguing material cause for the empire's downfall was an event begun hundreds of years earlier and thousands of miles away: the building of the Great Wall of China. Though the Chinese continued building the wall sporadically for some fifteen hundred years, they began its construction in c. 200 B.C. under the leadership of the nation's unifier and first emperor, whose family name became the name of the country as a whole: Ch'in Shih-huang-ti. (Who, by the way, was such a tyrant that Nero and Caligula seem like sweethearts by comparison.) Though the building of the wall involved millions of slave laborers working literally to death under almost unbelievably brutal conditions, the wall itself was successful in its original purpose: to drive out the ferocious Hsiung-Nu people from the northern frontiers. The nomadic Hsiung-Nu gradually moved westward, and by the time they arrived in eastern Europe in about A.D. 300, they had come to be known as the Huns. Notably more aggressive than the other tribal peoples at Rome's doorstep, the Huns pushed the Ostrogoths westward and started a domino movement that marked the beginning of the end for the Western Roman Empire.

Fascinating as these explanations are, though, they only relate to physical causes for Rome's downfall. Rome had always been surrounded by tribal peoples eager to invade, but for many centuries Roman civilization had been strong enough to push the invaders back. Clearly what really killed Rome was something at the spiritual level, a loss of animation at the heart of the Roman psyche.

Johnson identifies this sickness as the same one that once prevailed over my part of the United States: slavery. Though the Greeks and Romans respectively created the democratic and republican forms of government, their own societies were far from free, and in fact depended completely on slave labor. As Johnson notes memorably, Rome's triumphs were buoyed on "oceans of human sweat." Not only was slavery morally wrong; it was economically inefficient. In such an environment, as in the American South centuries later, there was little incentive to develop labor-saving technology, and when the Roman Empire ceased to expand by conquest, so did its "wealth" in the form of slaves.

But the use of slave labor in Greece and Rome was one (albeit particularly significant) factor in a larger picture that, I think, really explains why the classical world ran out of mental power. Though Johnson rightly notes that the Greeks and Romans created the first middle classes the world has ever known, and that these middle classes helped bring about their societies' greatest cultural and scientific advances, the idea of a middle class went only so far in classical times. In a non-capitalistic economic system (that is, in a system whose principal economic activity is not the production or distribution of goods and services), it is impossible to have a very large middle class. Further, in the absence of economic freedom, ultimately societies devolve to the two poles that seemed at one time to constitute the natural state of humankind: a tiny knot of aristocratic rulers and scholars surrounded by a vast sea of dirt-poor subjects.

Basically, as I hope to discuss in a later post, I believe that what destroyed the ancient world was a combination of an aristocratic mindset--by which I mean a belief that some men are naturally better than others, and that physical labor, practical employment, and generally getting one's hands dirty are demeaning--as well as a devotion to maintaining established conditions in nature and the world. These ideas of mine are heavily influenced by a fascinating essay I first read ages ago, "Why Did the Ancients Not Develop Machinery?" by Halford Haskell of Southwestern University. If you're interested, you can find the essay here. (Or you can read my own far less informed version later.)

This Is Hilarious!

2005-06-12T16:16:00.000-07:00

Check out Conan O'Brien's Walker: Texas Ranger clips:

First segment

Second segment

Third segment

Fourth segment

And be sure to see the fifth segment, in which Chuck Norris himself shows up on the set of Conan's show, as well as this inspired collaborative video.

Jane Fonda Talks to Tom Hayden--But Not That Tom Hayden

2005-06-11T09:00:00.000-07:00

Unlike my beloved father-in-law and many others of my elders for whom I have enormous respect as veterans and men, I'm not taken much to fulminating about "Hanoi Jane" Fonda. Over the years, I've been more than willing to believe that, like a lot of other former admirers of totalitarian regimes, she grew up and realized that America, with all its gross commercialism and support for right-wing dictators overseas, was a heck of a lot better than a system of barbed wire, machine guns, concentration camps, and the constant drone of pep-rally propaganda.

Yet as I think about it now, the sort of mental growth transition I'm describing is not all that common. Most "useful idiots" (Lenin's term for western leftists who uncritically praised his regime) never grow beyond that stage; otherwise they wouldn't have been "useful idiots" in the first place.

Susan Sontag, a former admirer of Castro's Cuba, seemed to have made that transition in the 1980s, when she denounced her former stance; but she lost all the respect she'd regained from thinking people when, immediately after 9/11, she published a savage piece in the New Yorker that blamed America for the attacks and extolled the terrorists as heroes. Then again, there was no real moment of realization and repentance on the part of George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, or most of the other "useful idiots" depicted in Paul Hollander's Political Pilgrims: Western Intellectuals in Search of the Good Society (an amazing book about how otherwise intelligent people returned from visits to Stalin's Russia, Mao's China, and other such slaughterhouses with glowing reports of freedom and prosperity). Generally, "useful idiots" either die unrepentant or, like Noam Chomsky , they just keep on babbling and presumably feeling good about themselves.

Actually, has any "useful idiot" ever grown up? I thought that this rubric described Joan Baez--i.e., that she had been a supporter of North Vietnam who later recanted--but discovered that from the beginning, she (unlike Fonda) was a true anti-war (as opposed to anti-U.S.) activist who refused to denounce America itself and even openly expressed support for American POWs held in Vietnam. A far cry from Jane Fonda, as this article notes. Still, there have been these examples of growth, but they usually occur before the individual entered the limelight: for example, long before writing 1984, George Orwell lost whatever Communist sympathies he might have had when he encountered Stalinism close-up while fighting for the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War. In the famous words of Lloyd George, "If you're sixteen and you're not a socialist, you don't have any heart; if you're sixty and you're still a socialist, you don't have any brain."

Anyway, back to Jane Fonda. Every few years, the subject of her support for North Vietnam comes back up, and she manages to somehow half-heartedly apologize without really apologizing, and then the same debate rages, and so on. Hence a recent article I read in U.S. News and World Report, where she was interviewed by Thomas Hayden--who, as he himself noted humorously, is not to be confused with Fonda's former husband Tom Hayden. In the piece, Fonda blames "the right wing" and "the men who lied to them [the soldiers] and sent them" to Vietnam. She may or may not have a point there, but none of that exonerates her for her support of a system that, both before and after it triumphed, used torture and imprisonment on a mass scale, prohibited free movement of its citizens, and generally imposed a degree of repression far beyond anything experienced under your run-of-the-mill U.S.-supported right-wing military dictatorship.

Ironically, the only time communist Vietnam was ever subjected to broad censure in the West was when it did one of the best things it ever did: invade Cambodia in 1979, bringing an end to the far more repressive regime of the Khmer Rouge (of whom Chomsky was a leading admirer.) But Fonda never denounced the Vietnamese regime in any meaningful way, nor has she subjected her own actions to any kind of honest scrutiny. In fact, what struck me most in her responses to Hayden (and in other interviews of the kind) is her arrogance and sense of entitlement or privilege as a member of America's uncrowned elite.

So perhaps the best understanding of Jane Fonda goes far beyond ideology, politics, war, etc., to matters of the psyche, the conscience (or lack of it), and so forth. In attempting to illustrate for the uninitiated just what it was she did back in the day, I went searching for web pages cataloging her offenses. Most of what I found was far too tendentious to post--even if the anger of the veterans who wrote such pieces is perfectly understandable. But then I found a more neutral, but still critical, piece here, and it helped me understand "Hanoi Jane" much better. Turns out that in an earlier incarnation, she was, in the words of Hank Holzer (Aid and Comfort: Jane Fonda in North Vietnam) "the poster girl for the U.S. Army Recruiting Command." The little-known fact that she had once promoted the U.S. war effort, then made a 180-degree shift without a great deal of apparent soul-searching, only illustrated that, as Holzer said, "there really was nobody home in the values sense."

Introduction to what lies below

2005-06-09T19:37:00.000-07:00

[Okay, this is a bit long and erudite, but I believe you'll find plenty of interest here. More posts in the future, no doubt, about the Partridge Family, gross TV commercials, and other topics that fit more properly within the confines of the typical blog.]

Actually, that was the beginning of my original post tonight, part of which is preserved below, before I screwed up and accidentally erased most of the entry. Turns out that when you publish a post and then decide to un-publish it, even though you've previously saved it as a draft, the entire post--draft and all--disappears. Thank God for the "Recover Post" button, which brought back at least part of what I'd written.

And by the way, ladies, this all happened because, in making a shameless pop-culture reference to the movie Gladiator, I was trying to figure out how to include a picture from the movie in my post--figuring a shot of Russell Crowe would always go over well with a mostly female audience. Then again, in view of his recent troubles, perhaps it's better to leave him out of the picture. (BTW, the Mercer, where he did his little stunt, is a fabulous watering hole and a favorite hangout of my wife Deidre when she's in NYC.)

The bottom line is that, whereas I originally set out to post on the subject--ironically enough--of how societies collapse as a result of failure to progress in technology, I've ended up with a truncated post that just stops in mid-sentence. Maybe I'll rewrite it at some point, if anybody cares about subjects such as the role of lead piping and the Great Wall of China in bringing an end to the Roman Empire.

Dirty Hands and the Collapse of Societies (Well, Part of It)

2005-06-09T19:36:00.000-07:00

[Okay, this is a bit long and erudite, but I believe you'll find plenty of interest here. More posts in the future, no doubt, about the Partridge Family, gross TV commercials, and other topics that fit more properly within the confines of the typical blog.]

Right now I'm re-reading a fascinating book by Paul Johnson, Enemies of Society, which unfortunately is out of print. I've never much liked the title, which is a little sensationalistic and also deceptive, because the book is really not about a conspiracy against civilization (as its title suggests), but rather about the reasons why societies fail. This is also the subject of the much more recent Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond, who ranks among our greatest living thinkers on issues of knowledge, technology, society and progress or regress.

In discussing how societies fail, inevitably scholars look to Rome, whose downfall has been the subject of thousands of works. Among these was Augustine's City of God, written in the aftermath of the Visigoths' sack of Rome in 410. (This event, a three-day rampage that left the city devastated, is what many historians cite as the true "fall of Rome"; by contrast, the actual collapse of the western empire sixty-six years later was a relative non-event.) At the time, many Romans blamed the tragic events of August 410 on the fact that they had foresaken the pagan gods of their forebears, whereas Augustine maintained that the opposite was true: they were being punished because they had been slow to fully embrace the Christian god.

More than a thousand years after Augustine, Edward Gibbon took exactly the opposite approach in his epochal Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, blaming Christianity for Rome's collapse. Despite Gibbons' achievements as a historian, his thesis regarding Christianity does not hold up to scrutiny; if anything, Christianity helped reinvigorate what had long since become a dying society.

Since Gibbon, scholars have put forward a number of explanations for Rome's collapse, almost all of them plausible as contributing factors. For example, the Romans' choice of material... [for why this post runs out, please see above.]

The Reverse Gerund: Should It Be a Capital Offense?

2005-06-08T19:46:00.000-07:00

Deidre and I were talking today about gerunds (verbs turned into nouns; e.g., swimming), and that soon got me onto one of my favorite soapboxes: what I call--for want of a better term--the reverse gerund. By this I mean a noun turned into a verb, a particularly heinous example of which is "to gift". There was also a commercial some time back that referred to "a better way to office," while more common examples are "to message," "to text," etc.

I don't know if it's just me, but for reasons I can't quite identify, I think the reverse gerund is a horrifying abuse of the language. Perhaps it's because it has an immediate sound of jargon, of insider talk; or perhaps it's just cutesy. Of course, reverse gerunds have been with us for a long time, probably as long as gerunds themselves--I think nothing, for instance, of saying that I'm "posting" to my blog--but they seem to have undergone an almost virus-like proliferation in recent years.

Okay, so maybe the use of the reverse gerund is not the worst offense out there in this world, but it's still one that makes my flesh crawl. Now that I've ranted, I'm going to go off and television, then bed. When I wake up, I'll breakfast... and so on, I suppose, until I afterlife.

The New Big Star Album

2005-06-08T19:31:00.000-07:00

Deidre pointed out that I was a little blase regarding the very interesting news from the Divine Miss Angela (please see below) regarding a new album by Big Star. For those who don't know anything about them, here's a good article from the Austin Chronicle prior to the group's appearance at the South by Southwest Festival (another entry in the Rock Snob's Dictionary, btw) last year.

The new album is supposed to come out in August, and will feature original members Alex Chilton (vocals, guitar) and Jody Stephens (drums). Chilton first made a name for himself in the 1960s as singer for the Box Tops ("The Letter"), but much more significant is his work with one of the most influential (if unknown) American bands of the 1970s. After Big Star folded in 1974, he went on to a rather strange solo career, shades of which were--IMHO--prefigured in Big Star's third and last album (Third/Sisters Lovers), which is filled with haunting sounds and images and unusual instrumentation.

The version of Big Star that recorded #1 Record in 1971 also included singer/guitarist Chris Bell, whose songwriting talents rivaled Chilton's, and bassist Andy Hummel. Due to differences with Chilton, Bell quit the group after the first album, and later died in a car crash, and Hummel left after the second album, Radio City, when it was clear that the band members' dreams of fame and fortune would never come to fruition.

The upcoming album was recorded at Ardent Studios in Memphis, where the group cut their seminal (a big Rock Snob term!) albums in the early 1970s. Chilton and Stephens are joined by Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow of the Posies, who have performed with them off and on since the first Big Star "reunion" at the University of Missouri in 1992. As for what the album's going to sound like, we'll see: I've tended to be a little skeptical of comebacks, though I always love to believe in the idea. Who knows? Maybe this time around, the world is ready for Big Star.

The Homeless Mannequins Hoax

2005-06-04T20:40:00.000-07:00

My wife Deidre won't remember this until she reads it here, but this happened when we were in London a few months ago. She had lived there before, but it was my first time in the city, and she was acting as tour guide. At the moment we first came in view of the houses of Parliament, she wanted my full attention on what we were seeing, but I had turned my attention elsewhere: to a homeless guy sleeping on the pavement. "Do you think he's real?" I asked, to which she replied with a look both of annoyance and of concern that her travelling companion might have gone 'round the bend.

I may have spoiled the moment, but I wasn't insane. I was thinking of something really strange that I had read on the Net a few weeks before. It's from the lovely people at Rotten.com, purveyors of all sorts of nefarities, and it concerns a guy who supposedly developed a huge moneymaking enterprise based on using mannequins as homeless people. If you want to read it, you have to go about halfway down the page, to the place where it says:

"I'd rather give my money to homeless people," she chuckles.

The page, and the tale it tells, could elicit all sorts of fulminations about modernity and postmodernity, alienation, desensitization, etc., but those are pretty obvious, so I'll just leave them off. I will say, though, that all moralization aside, it was a pretty creative idea--right up there with ManBeef.com. (This link is to an About.com Urban Legends piece that allows viewers to see the original, now-defunct, Man Beef site. If one simply types in www.manbeef.com, as I did initially, one enters a sort of porn clearinghouse--not, surprisingly enough, a gay porn clearinghouse, as the name might suggest.)

As I am always fond of saying, "Whatever you're looking for, you'll find plenty of it on the Net." And of course you'll find plenty you're not looking for--like the aforementioned.

Shaun Cassidy: Surprising "Indie Cred"

2005-06-02T15:09:00.000-07:00

This is a followup to those readers--all female and more or less my contemporaries--who posted hear mentioning their former (?) adoration of Shaun Cassidy. Turns out he has a surprisingly high standing with true "rock snobs," judging by the entry on him in Musichound Rock: The Essential Album Guide, which begins thus: "Oh, quit your damn snickering. His teenybopper status notwithstanding, Keith Partridge's younger brother was actually a pretty good singer, and he had good taste in material as well." Turns out no less a figure of awe than Todd Rundgren worked with him as a producer.

For that matter, Shaun's older brother David has accrued far more respect than most of us (males) would have guessed in the early 1970s, when my own older brothers used to ridicule him in some pretty choice terms. He won my heart a long time ago, with his inherently self-deprecating role as host of VH1's 8-Track Flashback, and now I discover--again, thanks to MusicHound--that he has played with Mick Ronson, known for his work with Lou Reed and other luminaries. (And Ronson has an entry in the Rock Snob Encyclopedia [see below]. Need I say more?)

What Were They Thinking? Two Revolting Commercials

2005-05-27T18:49:00.000-07:00

There are two rather bizarre commercials, both by major advertisers, making the rounds of prime-time TV. Both use disgusting, dehumanizing images for ostensibly humorous effect, and in both cases I found myself wondering what the advertisers were thinking.

The first of these is for Fed Ex, and shows a group of chimney sweeps discussing ways that the company can help them. As each man talks, black smoke emanates from his mouth. To find this revolting, one need hardly be aware of the brutal history surrounding the use of children as chimney sweeps in England during the early part of the industrial age, or of studies by Percival Pott, a physician of that time, who noted the heavy incidence of cancer in young men who had served as “climbing boys”. Anybody with a functioning brain can infer that people who constantly breathe black smoke—even standing around in the relatively fresh air, as the men in the commercial are—will not live to see a ripe old age. Yet in the Fed Ex commercial, this fact is presented as an amusing sidelight to their profession.

The other spot is even more clearly grotesque. This one is for Burger King, and involves a plastic-surgery patient preparing to receive a hand transplant, presumably so that he can have hands large enough to handle Burger King’s burgers. Now what were they thinking? It would seem to me a fairly obvious rule of advertising, but maybe it needs to be spelled out: When promoting a food product, do not show or suggest surgical operations, scalpels, sutures, transplanted body parts, or anything similar. I would have thought that was a no-brainer, particularly for a company whose product involves the flesh of mammals. Or maybe I’m the only person who, next time he sees a Burger King, is likely to think about somebody’s hand being cut off.

Ages ago, there was a 7-Up commercial that revolved around people drooling, and it too seemed to defy a more general version of the aforementioned rule—namely, don’t show anything disgusting while advertising something that you want people to put into their bodies. Apparently the 7-Up spot struck others much as it did me, because I never saw it again. What’s surprising about the Burger King commercial and the Fed Ex one (which seems almost sensitive by comparison) is the fact that these are running at the same time, and both apparently have been judged successes. The Fed Ex commercial has even won recognition in the industry.

Oh, and lest these comments seem to suggest that I’m easily grossed out, let me state for the record that I’m the guy who has movies such as Helter Skelter, Hated—G.G. Allin & the Murder Junkies, and The Curious Dr. Humpp on his Netflix movie queue. I love schlock, violent movies, true-crime shows, etc. But when dehumanizing images are used to promote products—both of which are, in this case, geared toward the mass buying public—it seems like something’s wrong. But maybe I’m in the minority on this.

The Accidental Rock Snob

2005-05-26T06:53:00.000-07:00

A few months back, I saw something in Entertainment Weekly about a book I knew I had to have: The Rock Snob’s Dictionary: An Essential Lexicon of Rockological Knowledge by David Kamp and Steven Daly. It just arrived the other day, and my only complaint is that it’s too short. Yet I can hardly fault a book that includes many beloved artists, such as Big Star, MC5, Gram Parsons, Crazy Horse, the Small Faces, Wilco, the Last Poets, Gang of Four—even Ennio Morricone, composer of the soundtrack to Once Upon a Time in the West.

If none of the aforementioned number among your faves—if, as is likely with most normal people, none or all but a few of them are completely unknown to you—then you don’t inhabit the weird world of the rock snob. And ever since buying this book, I’ve begun calling myself that, though with enormous reservations.

I’ve always despised true snobbery of the “you can’t belong to our club” kind, yet I’ve certainly been one for reverse snobbery along the lines of “my childhood was more underprivileged than yours.” Yet my identity as a rock snob comes quite by accident. I don’t look down on people who enjoy pop; in fact, I have a soft spot for some of the most sappy pop songs of my younger years in the 1970s: “Shannon” by Henry Gross, for instance, for “Just When I Needed You Most” by Randy VanWarmer. (BTW, when I went looking for the spelling of this guy’s name, I discovered that he had died early last year.) And—admittedly, thanks to my wife, though with little protest from me—our CD rack includes greatest-hits packages for such icons of the 1970s pop pantheon as Abba, the Babys, and the Bee Gees. (In the addition to the disco-era Bee Gees hits, I recently added a collection that features their hits of an earlier incarnation more favored by rock fans: “Massachusetts,” “Lonely Days,” etc.)

Anyway, the fact that I’m a rock “snob”—personally, I would feel more comfortable with afficiando or connoisseur—ultimately arises from that I have already gone through all the classics, and need something more. For people who have already “done” the Beatles and all the other major bands (and I even wrote a book about them, as well as a three-volume reference set profiling rock, pop, and R&B stars of a more recent vintage), there’s really nowhere else to go. Album-oriented radio is hopelessly boring, being confined to essentially the same song list they had when Jimmy Carter was president. Oh, they’ll throw in an occasional Nirvana track just to try to let you know they’re with it—apparently not knowing that Kurt Cobain has been dead for well over a decade. And if you try to listen to only current music, it’s almost inevitable that you’ll ultimately be drawn back to the classics—to a time when rock n’ roll still seemed fresh and open to virtually limitless experimentation.

So it’s into the realm of the rock snob that I have gone, always looking for the “new” thrill from some previously undiscovered closet classic. On my playlist currently, for instance, are Jeff Beck’s Truth and greatest hits packages by Savoy Brown, the Staple Singers, and Curtis Mayfield. I don’t belong among the ranks of the true haute rock snobs: Forever Changes by Love is still only on my Amazon wish list, as yet unheard by me, and I don’t own anything (yet) by Van Dyke Parks, the Stooges, or the Meters. But I will eventually, if only because I’ve heard all the classics one time—or more like a thousand times—too many.

P.S. In addition to the artists on my current playlist, none of which are included in this book, I would humbly submit the following as some suggestions for a future edition of this extremely entertaining reference work:

Bauhaus
John Cage
Stanley Clarke
Rick Derringer
Robert Johnson
The Mystery of Bulgarian Voices
NRBQ
John Prine
Dakota Staton
Status Quo
The Strawbs
United States of America
Tom Waits (too mainstream, perhaps? The fact that one would even have to ask such a question about Mr. Gravel Voice says a great deal about the difficulty of maintaining one’s rock snob credentials.)

Choosing a Good Title

2005-05-19T16:52:00.000-07:00

There's something about a really great title--something compelling that extends beyond the work itself. It's especially powerful when the work so titled is as great as the appellation applied to it--One Hundred Years of Solitude comes to mind, as do several albums from the Beatles' middle period, or any number of French films from the mid-twentieth century (The Grand Illusion, The 400 Blows, Breathless, etc.)

This connection between the power of a title and the power of the work itself can be equal for the lowbrow as for the highbrow. I think of a book we have on the bookshelf in our downstairs bathroom (yes, we have one--a bookshelf in our bathroom, that is) called Dig That Crazy Grave, a 1960s pulp detective novel by Richard S. Prather. Or a book my older brother Jon supposedly brought home when we were kids (I was too young to know about this at the time) allegedly titled Kids Who Love to F____. KISS songs from the classic era often had extremely compelling titles ("God of Thunder," "Shock Me"), and then there's one of my all-time favorite horror film titles: Make Them Die Slowly. (That was the title for U.S. audiences, anyway, where people are less literate; in Europe, it was the much less visceral Cannibal Ferox.

But what if a work doesn't live up to its title? I'll never forget my disappointment when I discovered that I'd already read the best part of Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land before I cracked the cover. (And the title itself came from the Bible.) Or The Bridges of Madison County: with that title, I expected to be awed, and I was, well, rather less so. Or the movie Strange Days (in contrast to the Doors album after which it's named, which completely lives up to its title.) Yet if a title of a bad work is entirely original--for instance, Ed Wood's I Woke Up Early the Day I Died--doesn't that count as a form of art in itself? And though the Bridget Fonda movie Point of No Return was laughably horrible, should somebody get kudos for the cool title and poster art?

I don't know; I only know that I have a hard time coming up with titles that don't sound stupid, and I'm always impressed with those people who go out on a limb for something really fresh that ultimately sticks in the mind: The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, say, or Tuesday the Rabbi Saw Red. I never figured I had that kind of ability, so I've tended to swim a little closer to shore. Mostly I rely on my wife, agent, and muse, who's titled many a book for our clients, and helped me come up with character names, etc.

So when she set me up with a blog and asked me what I wanted to call it, I shrugged and said, "What do you want to call it?" And she came up with this crazy title, which I liked immediately because I took its sheer grandiosity as an inherent form of self-deprecation. Probably won't have much of an epic nature to offer in this little world, but at least I hope it will be entertaining.

Judson's Epic Posts

2005-05-19T16:02:00.000-07:00

This is a test and will undoubtedly be deleted later. For now, it is our effort to see what this blog will look like.

Jud is now a blogger. :)