Yeah, I've Been Slacking Off

Daily Express
As GW would say (if he were a blogger) blogging is hard work. I've been putting my time and energy into other projects lately; thus the blogging has suffered. 'Cept for today; I'm home with a miserable cold so I've been wandering around the internet for kicks.

So, there will be considerable less posting on this site for the foreseeable future. Other than the blogroll to the right, here are a few other blogs you may enjoy.

Buttered Noodles This woman can really write, and not just about food.

The Consumerist Originally one of the Gawker blogs, it didn't make enough money for Nick Denton and is now part of Consumers Union. They have a post Monday-Friday called "Morning Deals" where they review good deals on consumer products on the web. I got my new TV for a great price with free shipping from one of their posts. Of course, you have to know what you're looking for and scrutinize them carefully. Often the sales are of reconditioned products, which in the real world we call "used".

Hey, It's Free Everyone can use a bargain these days!

I also recommend looking into the Google Reader to follow all the blogs you read. Here's a video tutorial on how to use the Google Reader

Sad News

** This is an undated file photo provided by HarperCollins of author Tony Hillerman. Hillerman, author of the acclaimed Navajo Tribal Police mystery novels, died Sunday, Oct. 26, 2008, of pulmonary failure. (AP Photo/HarperCollins/Kelly Campbell/FILE) (Kelly Campbell - AP)

No more Jim Chee or Joe Leaphorn novels; their creator, Tony Hillerman, has died.

WaPo: Acclaimed author Tony Hillerman dies at 83

International Herald-Tribune: Tony Hillerman, novelist, dies at 83

Biography of Tony Hillerman

wikipedia: Tony Hillerman

Ode to Sean Hannity

HannityIsAMoron.com

By John Cleese, the Minister of Silly Walks:

Ode to Sean Hannity

by John Cleese

Aping urbanity
Oozing with vanity
Plump as a manatee
Faking humanity
Journalistic calamity
Intellectual inanity
Fox Noise insanity
You’re a profanity
Hannity

Stan The Man

Great essay by the one -- the only -- Joe Posnanski, about The One -- The Only -- Stan the Man Musial.

Musial

Richard Russo on Eliot Spitzer

One of my favorite authors opines on the Eliot Spitzer saga.

WaPo: Imagining Eliot

Before everything begins to unravel, Eliot confides to [Russo's fictional character who is surely himself] Rick that he's made a mess of things, betrayed everyone he loves, that he isn't even sure who he is anymore. But Rick will tell him not to be melodramatic. It's true he's made mistakes, big ones, Rick explains, but they aren't what Eliot thinks they are. Rick admits he's outraged that Eliot has spent $80,000 on prostitutes, because it shouldn't cost that much to get laid in America. It's like one of those $500 Pentagon hammers. Downright wasteful. And why order a hammer from New Jersey and pay the shipping? There are perfectly good hammers in Washington -- it's a damned city of hammers when you think about it. Where on earth did Eliot get the idea that New Jersey hammers were superior? All he wanted to do was nail something, right?

Don't joke, Eliot tells Rick. This isn't funny; he could go to jail. But to Rick's way of thinking, that's the biggest joke of all. Your average CEO can claim millions in salary and stock options in the same year his company is going down the tubes, and it's all perfectly legal. You want to know what you're really guilty of, Eliot? Cluelessness. You didn't forget who you are, you forgot where you are. This is America, pal, where you can lead the nation into war on false pretenses and be rewarded with a second term in office, but where illicit sex is and has always been an impeachable offense. (Note to self: A little of this Rick character goes a long way.)

Good Reads

NYTimes: Pete Hamill Downtown, on Downtown

I just finished (I say "finished", not "read", because I listened to the book on tape) Pete Hamill's novel North River, set in New York City in 1934. It's a love story set within Pete Hamill's love of New York City and the people he grew up with. Recommended.

Read This

Library of Congress
Excellent article in the Chicago Tribune by Melissa Isaacson about the heartbreak of caring for her parents through their years of decline, and eventual deaths, from Alzheimer's disease.

Chicago Tribune: 'Something's not right with Mom . . . and now, Dad.'
Watching one parent die by inches is painful enough. When Alzheimer's takes both, your pain is more than the sum of the parts.

Nick Hornby's New Audience

The British author of such bestsellers as "High Fidelity" and "About a Boy" -- whose main characters resist the conventions of grown-up life -- has now turned to the young adult literature market.
Photo Credit: By Gerald Martineau -- The Washington Post
Teens, with his new novel Slam marketed to the so-called 'young adult' market. I'm a big fan of Hornby, starting with High Fidelity, and of course Fever Pitch. The Arsenal fanatic is missing three games to do his US book tour.

WaPo: A New Shelf Life Begins
To Find Nick Hornby's Latest Novel, 'Slam,' You Have to Think Young

Married in Massachusetts

Patricia Cornwell, author.

Who knew? (Well, I knew, but that was because of my law school friend who had gone to Davidson.) I like these "now I can finally be happy" gay marriage stories. Heartwarming! Wingnuts, go grind your teeth elsewhere.

I Wish I Wrote This

Esquire: TheSide: Blog
Why You Should Root for the Boston Red Sox
Because they represent everything that is good about America. (Of course, not everyone agrees with this.)

Read the whole thing; it's hilarious. For this:

I've left out some people, I'm sure, but that's basically your 2007 Boston Red Sox: two Japanese exchange students, a feisty runt, a tough-looking Jew, a Navajo Indian, an idiot-savant, a right-wing asshole, the human embodiment of charisma, and a man named after a breakfast cereal. That's America, right there. And, ain't that something worth cheering for?

And this:

Eric Gillin: The Colorado Rockies? Seriously? How can anyone cheer for the Colorado Rockies? They're like a bag of Wonder Bread with a jar of Miracle Whip -- a bland collection of forgettable ballplayers with candy-ass names like "Taylor" and "Jamey." If you could buy the Colorado Rockies in the grocery store, they'd come in a white box with giant black letters across the front saying BASEBALL TEAM. Their lineup looks like it came off a Mattel production line, a ball-free collection of multicultural Kens with the occasional goatee and the underwear already stamped in.

I know this is unfair, but I still consider the Rockies a bush league marketing ploy that allowed baseball to sell more black merchandise when all the pro sports leagues overexpanded in the 1990s. I know I'm going to regret this later, but right now I have trouble taking the franchise seriously. They play 5,000 feet above sea level. They've never won their own division. Their Website crashed when World Series tickets went on sale. Their uniforms don't have sleeves.

And this immortal video of Manny Ramirez petting Julian Tavares' head:

Manny pets Tavarez
Uploaded by bjs1234

Hat tip to Cursed to First.

RIP David Halberstam

Horst Faas/Associated Press

His reporting for The New York Times from Vietnam left little doubt that a corrupt South Vietnamese government supported by the United States was no match for Communist guerrillas and their North Vietnamese allies. For that work, Mr. Halberstam shared a Pulitzer Prize in 1964.

David Halberstam wrote three of my favorite books: The Best and the Brightest, The Breaks of the Game, and The Teammates, about my favorite topies: politics and sports. He died yesterday in a car accident in California, on his way to interview Y.A. Tittle, the former quarterback of the New York Giants. I would have liked to read that book. When I was a kid I had the famous picture of Y.A. Tittle's last game, bloodied and bowed, on the door of my closet:


David Halberstam books are books I passed around, or bought to give as gifts. In my mind, reading The Breaks of the Game is inextricably tied with the 1980s Larry Bird Celtics. All my Celtics fan friends read the book, and we marveled at the writing and at the insider's view. I listened to The Teammates a few years ago as a book-on-tape and was brought to tears several times (always dangerous while driving!) as he described the life-long devoted friendship between Ted Williams, Johnny Pesky, Bobby Doerr, and Dom DiMaggio. I will miss his writing. Here's a piece he wrote for the Boston Globe about Red Sox Nation (hat tip, A Red Sox Fan in Pinstripe Territory):

David Halberstam, Boston Globe, 8/29/03: Facing the Nation
Up-close look at the Red Sox fan base finds it is as passionate as ever

For a Citizen of the Nation, beating the Mariners or A's is merely winning a baseball game, while beating the Yankees is the very essence of life itself....

[]

It's a condition, being a Red Sox fan, not a cult, nor a religious affiliation, although there are on occasion certain religious experiences. (Think Yaz in '67, and Fisk in the World Series in '75.) Most Americans are relatively indifferent to the past, believing that America is so powerful that history does not matter, that our nation is so strong and energetic, that we can mold the present to our needs, despite the burdens of the past. Not Red Sox fans: They know the past matters, and they know as well that you are, more than you realize, a prisoner of it. In a country where there has been an amazing run of material affluence for almost 60 years with the expectation built into the larger culture that things are supposed to get better every year, citizens of RSN know better. They know that things do not always get better. They know that the guys in the white hats do not always win in the last five minutes of the movie. They know the guys in the black hats have plenty of last-minute tricks, and that they can pick up just the right player off the waiver list in the waning days of a season (think Johnny Mize, 1949).

The Red Sox fan knows that the fates can be cruel. Never mind the Babe. Just think a mere 31 years ago -- why it was like yesterday: Sparky Lyle for Danny Cater. A 27-year-old lefthanded reliever, who had pitched in 184 games in the previous three years, and had saved 16 that year (and would save a league-leading 35 the next year) for a 32-year-old first baseman with up to then 52 career home runs. Oh dear.

David Halberstam, ESPN Page 2: One Splendid day [with Ted Williams]

David Halberstam, ESPN Page 2: Sports can distract, but they don't heal

David Halberstam, ESPN Page 2: Thanks, soccer, see you in four years

salon.com: David Halberstam, 1934-2007
In a host of Salon interviews, the great journalist talks about the depths of his work and passions, from Vietnam to Michael Jordan.

WaPo: David Halberstam, 1934-2007
Author Uncloaked Vietnam Blunders

NYTimes: David Halberstam, 73, Reporter and Author, Dies

San Francisco Chronicle: DAVID HALBERSTAM: 1934-2007
Author was on his way to an interview
He was to meet with Y.A. Tittle to talk about football

San Francisco Chronicle: DAVID HALBERSTAM: 1934-2007
Car crash ends award-winning writer's life

SFGate.com: Friends and former colleagues remember David Halberstam

Academy of Achievement: The David Halberstam Interview

wikipedia: David Halberstam

RIP Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut was the first author that after I read a book (Cat's Cradle, I think) I bought all his other books and read them, too. He hated assholes. Of course, that means he hated Bush.

NYTimes: Kurt Vonnegut, Writer of Classics of the American Counterculture, Dies at 84


In These Times: Kurt Vonnegut vs. the !&#*!@ (2003 interview)

Q: Based on what you’ve read and seen in the media, what is not being said in the mainstream press about President Bush’s policies and the impending war in Iraq?

A: That they are nonsense.

Q: My feeling from talking to readers and friends is that many people are beginning to despair. Do you think that we’ve lost reason to hope?

A: I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened, though, is that it has been taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d’etat imaginable. And those now in charge of the federal government are upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka “Christians,” and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or “PPs.”

To say somebody is a PP is to make a perfectly respectable medical diagnosis, like saying he or she has appendicitis or athlete’s foot. The classic medical text on PPs is The Mask of Sanity by Dr. Hervey Cleckley. Read it! PPs are presentable, they know full well the suffering their actions may cause others, but they do not care. They cannot care because they are nuts. They have a screw loose!

And what syndrome better describes so many executives at Enron and WorldCom and on and on, who have enriched themselves while ruining their employees and investors and country, and who still feel as pure as the driven snow, no matter what anybody may say to or about them? And so many of these heartless PPs now hold big jobs in our federal government, as though they were leaders instead of sick.

What has allowed so many PPs to rise so high in corporations, and now in government, is that they are so decisive. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they cannot care what happens next. Simply can’t. Do this! Do that! Mobilize the reserves! Privatize the public schools! Attack Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody’s telephone! Cut taxes on the rich! Build a trillion-dollar missile shield! Fuck habeas corpus and the Sierra Club and In These Times, and kiss my ass!

The Salon Interview: Kurt Vonnegut (1999)

Vacation Book Report #10

The Bright Forever (2005) by Lee Martin


**** out of five

Coach Mom received this book from my sister for Christmas and it is just not her cup of tea. She told me she couldn't read it because it was "all over the place, a different chapter for each character, and the first chapter is just two sentences. What kind of writing is that?" While all these statements are true, the cover also said it was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for fiction, so I gave it a go.

The story: In a small midwest town, a nine-year girl disappears after riding her bike to the library after dinner to return her overdue books. Her math tutor and his down-on-his-luck neighbor are suspects. The suspects and the girl's family tell their stories of what happened, as do many others in the community.
The book got me through our flight from the Bahamas to Ft. Lauderdale, a two-hour layover, and most of our flight to Boston. I felt warmly towards the book while I was reading it, but it seems less substantial as I think about it today. Partly I liked it because it was set in a small town in 1971, and I knew all the references, from pop culture to the security of small town life. I had pretty much figured out whodunit 3/4 of the way through, but wanting to know exactly what happened kept me reading. The prose is a lot leaner than the last two lush fiction writers I read.

Final stats:

10 books read;

2 nonfiction, 7 fiction, 1 falsely labeled nonfiction but mostly made up;

authors: 4 female, 6 male;

rankings: one 5-star, two 4 1/2 star, two 4 star, one 3 1/2 star, two 3 star, one 2 1/2 star, one no star.

Vacation Book Report #9

The Lady and the Unicorn (2004) by Tracy Chevalier

*** out of five

Did you read Girl With a Pearl Earring? Then you've read The Lady and the Unicorn. The artwork in question is a tapestry, not a painting; the setting is France and Belgium, not Holland; the guilds are the weavers and the dyers, not the painters; but other than that, this is the same novel. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it; but having read the earlier novel, this is a rewrite, wonderfully elegant, but disappointing for its sameness.

Vacation Book Report #8

The Memory Keeper's Daughter (2005) by Kim Edwards

**** 1/2 out of five

I didn't think I'd like this book because the premise is so bizarre. A young doctor's wife goes into labor during a freak snowstorm in Kentucky, and he is forced to deliver his own baby with the help of a nurse. His son is born healthy, but a second child is delivered; a daughter with Down Syndrome. The doctor's own sister died of Down Syndrome when she was a teenager, and to save his wife the pain his own mother suffered he hands the baby to the nurse with instructions to take the child to an institution. The nurse, who is secretly in love with the doctor, takes the child, moves away, and raises her as her own. The doctor tells his wife her second child was born dead.

Completely implausible, but according to the author's notes, this is based on a true story told to her by a minister. The writing is beautiful, lush and lyrical. Even the doctor who gave away his own child becomes a sympathetic figure. It's the second book I've read here that reduced me to tears.

I return to the frigid north tomorrow, so only one more book to be read here on the pink sand beach.

Vacation Book Report #7

Friday Night Lights (1990) by H. G. Bissinger

**** 1/2 out of five.

Friday Night Lights was approached from my low expectations. I had seen both the movie and the TV show, and felt that they glorified racism, sexism, and football as religion. Turns out that is because the film and the television version stripped the book's exploration of those factors and reduced this fine complex book to the simple story of Permian High School's 1988 football season. If you've seen the celluloid versions, you must read the book.

Racism? From the book I learned that Odessa, Texas public schools were not integrated until 1982. 1982! 28 years after Brown v. Bd. of Education was decided. 19 years after George Wallace blocked black students from entering the University of Alabama, and John F. Kennedy sent in the National Guard. In 1982 I was 25 and had graduated from integrated public schools and college. I couldn't have imagined that segregated schools still existed in the USA.

Sexism? Pressure on girls at Permian High School to conform was so intense that girls scored on average 75 points below the boys on scholastic aptitude tests.

Football as religion? It's the whole book, but especially the chapter near the end about how Permian's foe in the state semi-final game changed their entire grading system to ensure that no football player would be suspended for failing to maintain a 70 average. And woe to those who challenged the orthodoxy. A 35-year teacher, Will Bates, who refuses to give a star football player a grade he didn't earn, is drummed out of the school.

And as a bonus, I enjoyed the chapter about the great oil bust of the 1980s, which led an anonymous Texas oilman to say: "After all, we're just another Middle East war away from another boom." (p. 230)

Odessa is just 15 miles from Midland, Texas, where Chimpy McFlightsuit grew up.

On to the next tome!

Vacation Book Report #6

A Gesture Life (1999) by Chang-rae Lee

**** out of five

I was a little unsure of this book given that all the endorsements on the back cover were for Lee's first book, Native Speaker (1995), although that is not surprising when I find that Native Speaker won the PEN/Hemingway Award, QPB's New Voices Award, the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award, the Oregon Book Award, and the American Book Award.

A Gesture Life started slowly, introducing the main character, 'Doc' Hata, and his exemplary life in his bland surburban community on the outskirts of New York City. The book slowly opens up as Doc describes his distant past as a medic in the Japanese army during WWII (where he fell in love with a comfort girl), to his more recent difficulties with his adopted daughter Sunny. He is a great storyteller.

The prose is lovely, clean and lyrical, and I was not surprised to learn on the Penguin website that Lee is the director of the MFA program at Hunter College in New York City.

I look forward to reading Native Speaker.

Vacation Book Report #5

The Dog of the South (1979) by Charles Portis

*** out of five

I picked up this book because of Roy Blount, Jr.'s blurb on the back cover: "No one should die without having read The Dog of the South." Now I can die a happy woman.

It's a funny meandering story about Ray Midge who journeys to find his wife, Norma, who has run off with her first husband in Ray's beloved Ford Torino. The trail leads him to Mexico and Honduras and he meets many lost souls and crackpots along the way. As I read the book I thought of the movie "The Player" and decided that The Dog of the South is Fannie Flagg meets Hunter S. Thompson. It's definitely a period piece, of a time when border crossings were routine and casual drug use more mainstream.

I read some of the book in the middle of the night because on Friday night, I was awakened to hear my brother's name being shouted over and over. I finally realized that I was not dreaming and hurried to dress (although I was still asleep enough that I dressed without ever turning on a light, stumbling around trying to locate my shoes with my feet.) Someone had rattled the locked door of guests at the hotel, and they were trying to rouse my brother the manager to tell him. I hurried to his quarters and woke him. He sleeps with a sleep machine due to sleep apnea and had slept through all the commotion. After we checked the premises and called the police I went back to bed at 2:00 a.m. but of course was too wired up to sleep. So I joined Ray Midge on his mad trip and read for an hour before I could relax and sleep. (We have decided, on reflection, that the marauder was actually another set of guests, a young couple who appear to have gotten quite drunk and apparently couldn't find their room in their condition. The following morning they required bloody mary's for breakfast and reeked of stale alcohol.) It fit in perfectly with this crazy book.

Vacation Book Report #4

Mistler's Exit by Louis Begley

*** 1/2 out of five

I read Louis Begley's Wartime Lies when it first came out but hadn't read any of his later novels. I did not know that he wrote About Schmidt (later made into a memorable film with Jack Nicholson and Kathy Bates).

Mistler's Exit is a short book, about a powerful New York adman who had just learned he has terminal cancer. Rather than tell his wife and son, he takes a solo trip to Venice where he is somewhat surprised to find he is never alone. It's beautifully written. Definitely the point of view of a rich powerful man, which is interesting to me because it's so other. Enjoyable.

Vacation Book Report #3

A Million Little Pieces (2003) by James Frey

0 (nil, nada, nothing, zero, zilch) out of five

I was aware of the controversy about this book, that the author sold it as a nonfiction account of his six weeks in rehab, but much of it was either totally aggrandized or completely made up. It was on the shelf here in the library so I read it. What a piece of crap. The guy makes himself the hero of his own rehab. Despite having succumbed to the terror of what he calls "The Fury", the rage that rules his life and sends him careening down the road of addiction from age 10 to age 23, suddenly in rehab he becomes all Mr. New-age, Tao-Te-Ching-reading, stand-up tough guy who irrevocably quits drugs and alcohol by sheer willpower alone, eschewing AA. Right. The conceit became larger as the book went on and he went from vomiting scumbag to righteous saviour of others.

Frey writes in a very stylized way. Every paragraph (many of which contain only a word, or a sentence) is left-adjusted. There is no punctuation other than periods, and many sentences would be marked as "run-on" by a sixth-grade teacher. There is a breathless quality to the whole book which makes me see how Oprah could have been conned. Read The Smoking Gun's take-down for the truth of Frey's little memoir.

Now that I've read it, I want my six hours back.

On to the next book.