Several of you have mentioned that I don't talk politics much on this blog. That's because I find Bush and his cronies utterly depressing and despicable. Furthermore, I think that anybody who can't see that by now--we've had three-plus years to see very clearly what the man is about--is either willfully blind, manifesting learned helplessness, or cynically convinced that what's good for GWB will be good for him/herself personally. Nobody likes taxes, knuckleheads; it's just that some of us think that returning to the Gilded Age is worse. And that cynicism is the opposite of patriotism--that's why the Bushies wave the flag so HARD.
If you feel like I do, even a little, I wanted to bring the following to your attention. MoveOn.org has created an anti-Bush ad; CBS has refused to run it. With "The Reagans," Les Moonves has shown that programming decisions are responsive to outside pressure. Push him to play fair by signing this petition.
Barry Trotter (Book 1)
The Hogwash School for Wizards was the most famous school in the wizarding world, and Barry Trotter was its most famous student. His mere presence made sure that every year twenty candidates applied for every open spot, no matter how rapacious Hogwash's tuition became. As a result, Barry and the school had come to an unspoken agreement: regardless of his grades, Barry could remain at Hogwash for as long as he wished. He had just begun his eleventh year...Freshman
Sleepy with boredom and gassy from lunch, Hart Fox sat in the hard plastic chair outside his dean's office. A kid walked in the door, pink detention slip in hand, bobbing his head a little so that the purple spikes of his mohawk didn't get bent on the transom. He slumped down next to Hart. Hart nodded--he remembered tis joker from sophomore American History, constantly arguing in favor of anarcho-syndicalism. Was his name Henry?...Sophomore
Arcing lazily through the air, the Frisbee smacked against the window. “Ooo-oo!” a chiseled and shirtless boy teased as it wobbleplummeted to the ground. “Sarah's in troub-le!”The beauty-boy was righter than he knew: Of all the windows on campus to hit, this one was the worst. It belonged to Stutts’ Professor of Clandestine Affairs, Glenbard North, who had destroyed more students than there were blades of grass on the freshly resodded Old Quad below...Coming Soon!
All you really gotta know is, I'm writing new things constantly and the more I write, the better my books get. So if you've read my earlier work--and millions of you have--we should keep in touch. This fall, at least one and maybe two new books will be available: a Dickens parody AND a comic mystery loosely based on The Beatles. Drop me an email at mikesnewbooks[at]gmail[dot]com, and I'll be sure to let you know release dates, special deals, etc.Tuesday, January 27, 2004
30 Days of Mickey D's
The NY Post reported yesterday that a documentary filmmaker ate McDonald's for 30 days straight as part of his film excoriating the fast-food industry. Result: his body broke down. Boy, talk about suffering for your art!
Monday, January 26, 2004
As a once (and future, I hope) resident of Greenwich Village...
...I was sad to read of the closing of The Bottom Line, a 29-year-old cabaret on West 3rd St. (I think). How dare the Village change while I'm not there!
NY mag on Spaulding Gray
Monologuist Spaulding Gray has been missing for several weeks; many believe that the performer, who long battled depression, has committed suicide.Here's a depressing, but comprehensive, article about where things stand.
Also, the Guardian has an excellent profile of the NY Review of Books' excellent editor, Robert Silvers.
Also, the Guardian has an excellent profile of the NY Review of Books' excellent editor, Robert Silvers.
Saturday, January 17, 2004
Reply re Wodehouse...
After my post earlier this week about British humorist PG Wodehouse, a frighteningly well-informed friend, Dave Gibbons, wrote a really interesting reply. He's given me permission to blog it:
"Howdy, Mike,
Glad to see you're enjoying the show [the "Jeeves and Wooster" series]. Seeing them all at once, as it were, you'll get some weird shocks. For example, the brunette who plays spacey Madeline Bassett in the first few shows is re-cast as the bone-crunching Florence Craye in later shows. I think she handles the latter best.
You'll also see the wonderfully bizarre Barmy somethingorother playing in black-face, a potentially interesting nod to Wodehouse's original story ("Thank You, Jeeves"), in which he seeks to meet up with what he calls "nigger minstrels" to get banjo-playing tips. The term "nigger minstrel" was popular in the UK for about a hundred years (Maugham used it in "The Moon and Sixpence"), falling into disfavo(u)r only recently. In fact, in a mid-50s BBC censorship policy prohibited the word "nigger" but specifically excepted "nigger minstrels" as inoffensive. Their minstrels, like ours, were usually pink folks in black makeup, and they comprised respectable, light-hearted outdoor entertainment for holidaymakers. (All the references to "nigger minstrels" I find, including Wodehouse, use them as a shorthand for "stuff you'd find in a place where you're supposed to have fun whether you want to or not." On this side of the Atlantic we might use "sno-cone" in a similar fashion.) The style was trampled by other American imports mid-century (jazz, rock, and blues), on roughly the same arc as Americans' taste for Hawaiian music, which was flipping insatiable well into the 40s. Now, happily, both are forgotten except by pedants and research addicts comme moi.
All that said, "Thank You, Jeeves" is one of Wodehouse's best. For the uninitiated, I'd be a little more specific than "read some Wodehouse." Add "with the word 'Jeeves' in the title" and/or "between 1925 and 1950." A lot of Wodehouse's early stuff is available free online in respectable places like gutenberg.net, but you won't find much of the really good stuff until mid-career. "Psmith," Wodehouse's first popular character, is like a Stephen Fry character -- particularly the "mostly autobiographical" hero from Fry's novel "The Liar." Young, snobbish, rich, attractive, fey, and way too bright. You can read all of the Psmith books and not get a real sense of Wodehouse at all. It's excellent writing -- don't get me wrong -- but it's not standard-setting like the Wooster series. Psmith is afflicted with contrived interactions that are always plausible, and it doesn't quite work. Wooster, however, juggles monumentally contrived interactions that are nowhere near plausible, and it works.
Douglas Adams, in an intro to the unfinished "Sunset at Blandings" reprinted in "The Salmon of Doubt," gives some wonderful insights into the Great Master's writing style -- particularly his editing style, which seems a vast improvement over Dean Koontz's "22 passes per page" approach. But more important for the Wodehouse fan is Adams's encapsulation of the joy of reading Wodehouse. If you don't already have The Salmon of Doubt, run out and buy it -- or search it on Amazon and just read the Wodehouse piece (starting on page 63). :-)
Before I wrap this up and continue my own authorship odyssey, I'll put in a plug for a somewhat rare Wodehouse video. "The Wodehouse Playhouse," a British series from the early 70s, is out on DVD. Plum himself, then in his 90s, introduces each episode. It's worth getting the series just for the 30-second spots of a gleam-in-his-eye Wodehouse setting the stage, and the 30-minute plays show off Wodehouse at his farcical best.
Sometimes you must look at yourself in the shaving mirror and wonder, "What kind of life have I built for myself where friends and colleagues send me essays in personal notes?" I know I do."
"Howdy, Mike,
Glad to see you're enjoying the show [the "Jeeves and Wooster" series]. Seeing them all at once, as it were, you'll get some weird shocks. For example, the brunette who plays spacey Madeline Bassett in the first few shows is re-cast as the bone-crunching Florence Craye in later shows. I think she handles the latter best.
You'll also see the wonderfully bizarre Barmy somethingorother playing in black-face, a potentially interesting nod to Wodehouse's original story ("Thank You, Jeeves"), in which he seeks to meet up with what he calls "nigger minstrels" to get banjo-playing tips. The term "nigger minstrel" was popular in the UK for about a hundred years (Maugham used it in "The Moon and Sixpence"), falling into disfavo(u)r only recently. In fact, in a mid-50s BBC censorship policy prohibited the word "nigger" but specifically excepted "nigger minstrels" as inoffensive. Their minstrels, like ours, were usually pink folks in black makeup, and they comprised respectable, light-hearted outdoor entertainment for holidaymakers. (All the references to "nigger minstrels" I find, including Wodehouse, use them as a shorthand for "stuff you'd find in a place where you're supposed to have fun whether you want to or not." On this side of the Atlantic we might use "sno-cone" in a similar fashion.) The style was trampled by other American imports mid-century (jazz, rock, and blues), on roughly the same arc as Americans' taste for Hawaiian music, which was flipping insatiable well into the 40s. Now, happily, both are forgotten except by pedants and research addicts comme moi.
All that said, "Thank You, Jeeves" is one of Wodehouse's best. For the uninitiated, I'd be a little more specific than "read some Wodehouse." Add "with the word 'Jeeves' in the title" and/or "between 1925 and 1950." A lot of Wodehouse's early stuff is available free online in respectable places like gutenberg.net, but you won't find much of the really good stuff until mid-career. "Psmith," Wodehouse's first popular character, is like a Stephen Fry character -- particularly the "mostly autobiographical" hero from Fry's novel "The Liar." Young, snobbish, rich, attractive, fey, and way too bright. You can read all of the Psmith books and not get a real sense of Wodehouse at all. It's excellent writing -- don't get me wrong -- but it's not standard-setting like the Wooster series. Psmith is afflicted with contrived interactions that are always plausible, and it doesn't quite work. Wooster, however, juggles monumentally contrived interactions that are nowhere near plausible, and it works.
Douglas Adams, in an intro to the unfinished "Sunset at Blandings" reprinted in "The Salmon of Doubt," gives some wonderful insights into the Great Master's writing style -- particularly his editing style, which seems a vast improvement over Dean Koontz's "22 passes per page" approach. But more important for the Wodehouse fan is Adams's encapsulation of the joy of reading Wodehouse. If you don't already have The Salmon of Doubt, run out and buy it -- or search it on Amazon and just read the Wodehouse piece (starting on page 63). :-)
Before I wrap this up and continue my own authorship odyssey, I'll put in a plug for a somewhat rare Wodehouse video. "The Wodehouse Playhouse," a British series from the early 70s, is out on DVD. Plum himself, then in his 90s, introduces each episode. It's worth getting the series just for the 30-second spots of a gleam-in-his-eye Wodehouse setting the stage, and the 30-minute plays show off Wodehouse at his farcical best.
Sometimes you must look at yourself in the shaving mirror and wonder, "What kind of life have I built for myself where friends and colleagues send me essays in personal notes?" I know I do."
Thursday, January 15, 2004
Stephen Fry on PG Wodehouse
Kate got me the complete Jeeves and Wooster on DVD for Christmas, and we've been chomping through them at a steady clip. Both Hugh Laurie as Bertie Wooster and Stephen Fry as Jeeves are pitch-perfect. Meanwhile, Ed Page pointed me to this appreciation of PGW by Fry in the Independent.
Have you read any Wodehouse? Read some. My somewhat-considered opinion is that the English culture of understatement and oblique expression (taken to its extreme in the upper classes prior to WWII) is a great advantage for Wodehouse as a humorist. There are no gags--or everything is a gag; the humor in Wodehouse is like an invisible gas that builds over time until it breaks down the hardest reader. Furthermore, choosing to write about the insulated monied classes gives Wodehouse the ability to write in a nearly consequence-free world. Seirous consequences--as opposed to the problems that drive any plot--engage the reader's emotion, and you can't have that, unless you're reading satire. Wodehouse is, above all, sunny.
Anyway, that's just what I think at the moment, and reserve the right to call myself an idiot at some future date. Read some Wodehouse.
Have you read any Wodehouse? Read some. My somewhat-considered opinion is that the English culture of understatement and oblique expression (taken to its extreme in the upper classes prior to WWII) is a great advantage for Wodehouse as a humorist. There are no gags--or everything is a gag; the humor in Wodehouse is like an invisible gas that builds over time until it breaks down the hardest reader. Furthermore, choosing to write about the insulated monied classes gives Wodehouse the ability to write in a nearly consequence-free world. Seirous consequences--as opposed to the problems that drive any plot--engage the reader's emotion, and you can't have that, unless you're reading satire. Wodehouse is, above all, sunny.
Anyway, that's just what I think at the moment, and reserve the right to call myself an idiot at some future date. Read some Wodehouse.
Monday, January 12, 2004
Wednesday, January 7, 2004
Rowan Atkinson as Voldemort?
UK actor (and ex-Cambridge Footlight) Rowan Atkinson is rumored to be playing the dread Lord Voldemort (yes, I almost typed "Valumart") in the next HP film. I was sorry to read that RA had been in a clinic for depression, particularly given that it was related to the poor performance of "Johnny English." If that's authentic and not flack-speak, it's a shame. "Johnny English" was funny, and the fickleness of any audience is axiomatic.
Also, footage from the Beatles' first trip to the US in February 1964 is going to be released. I've read somewhere that the Neilsen ratings for their first appearance on Ed Sullivan was the highest ever recorded. Apparently even crime went down!
Also, footage from the Beatles' first trip to the US in February 1964 is going to be released. I've read somewhere that the Neilsen ratings for their first appearance on Ed Sullivan was the highest ever recorded. Apparently even crime went down!
Tuesday, January 6, 2004
American civilization began to decline...
...with the publication of NatLamp's high school yearbook parody, says this article in Slate. Actually quite informative--though it backs off at the end. Here's the last paragraph:
"What's being satirized above all is the relentless tedium and mediocrity of suburban life, at least as seen through the eyes of a clever and irritable adolescent, along with the totalitarian cheerfulness that its boosters employ to make it tolerable. The yearbook parody is a pitiless critique of life in these United States—every bit as forlorn as Winesburg, Ohio or Spoon River Anthology. But it is even more insidious because you can't stop laughing. Since its publication 30 years ago, the ironic detachment with which affluent baby boomers have saturated the culture has become old news, of course, and a bit tedious itself. Yet it has seldom enjoyed so exquisite an expression as in the Lampoon yearbook. And the country has never recovered from it."
Well, shoot--up until that last sentence, I couldn't have said it better than myself. But the problem isn't that the country has never "recovered from it." It's that the country has never adequately addressed the wrongs that caused the satire! That's why Reagan was--and remains--such a foolish, poisonous travesty. Since then, so much of American politics has been about returning to a mythical past; as the writer puts it, " what America looked like when the Beatles stepped off the plane."
It's a giveaway that this guy is a writer for the Weekly Standard (and a pal of PJ O'Rourke's); if satire exposes something nasty or inadequate, the proper response isn't to "recover from it"--ie, pretend like it wasn't exposed. The proper response is to try to fix it. That's why PJO isn't, in the final analysis, a first-class satirist; he's altogether too comfortable with the folly he exposes. There's no outrage, and as uncomfortable as that emotion is (especially over the long-haul--ask Twain or Thurber), it's necessary equipment. "Affluent Baby Boomers" despise discomfort, and so we get "ironic detachment"--that is, detachment in the face of something that demands positive attention, and improvement.
Also, Ed forwarded this excellent story of election tampering.
"What's being satirized above all is the relentless tedium and mediocrity of suburban life, at least as seen through the eyes of a clever and irritable adolescent, along with the totalitarian cheerfulness that its boosters employ to make it tolerable. The yearbook parody is a pitiless critique of life in these United States—every bit as forlorn as Winesburg, Ohio or Spoon River Anthology. But it is even more insidious because you can't stop laughing. Since its publication 30 years ago, the ironic detachment with which affluent baby boomers have saturated the culture has become old news, of course, and a bit tedious itself. Yet it has seldom enjoyed so exquisite an expression as in the Lampoon yearbook. And the country has never recovered from it."
Well, shoot--up until that last sentence, I couldn't have said it better than myself. But the problem isn't that the country has never "recovered from it." It's that the country has never adequately addressed the wrongs that caused the satire! That's why Reagan was--and remains--such a foolish, poisonous travesty. Since then, so much of American politics has been about returning to a mythical past; as the writer puts it, " what America looked like when the Beatles stepped off the plane."
It's a giveaway that this guy is a writer for the Weekly Standard (and a pal of PJ O'Rourke's); if satire exposes something nasty or inadequate, the proper response isn't to "recover from it"--ie, pretend like it wasn't exposed. The proper response is to try to fix it. That's why PJO isn't, in the final analysis, a first-class satirist; he's altogether too comfortable with the folly he exposes. There's no outrage, and as uncomfortable as that emotion is (especially over the long-haul--ask Twain or Thurber), it's necessary equipment. "Affluent Baby Boomers" despise discomfort, and so we get "ironic detachment"--that is, detachment in the face of something that demands positive attention, and improvement.
Also, Ed forwarded this excellent story of election tampering.
Thursday, January 1, 2004
Happy New Year!
As the world endured its usual eruptions of bubbly and gunfire, Kate and I spent yesterday evening enjoying one of my Christmas presents, a set of the BBC program I, Claudius on DVD.
This 13-part series, which appeared in 1976 (and yours truly first watched as an impressionable 7-year-old), traces the lives and dirty doings of the first four Emperors of Rome, as seen through the eyes of number four, the lame, stuttering Claudius. Claudius' gambit was to appear the fool--and in doing so, he survived when many others succumbed in the fight for the throne.
It's a fascinating show, the best recreation of Imperial Rome I know of (if a bit stagey at times). And the books, by Robert Graves, are even better. Definitely worth seeking out.
This morning, while hunting a Rickenbacker guitar on the 'net, I found an excellent site: students at Saint Anselm College have gone through both Graves' books and the TV series, showing what is supported by ancient historians and what is not. As one might expect, the students are sometimes a little too "it's-just-the-Net-so-who-cares" offhanded in their analysis--which makes them appear to sneer a bit--but that's a quibble. What's not a quibble is that the second half of the series seems to be given short shrift, compared to the exhaustive treatment of the first several. (I mean, it's only AFTER Caligula shows up that the whole 'what's true/what's not' issue gets interesting.) In any event, the I, Claudius project is an excellent resource, fascinating and much needed. Kudos to the students--check it out after you watch the series. Generally speaking, I think I, Claudius is a tremendously compelling vision of how power corrupts--20 centuries later, what is true and what is not is impossible to define, but it rings true.
This 13-part series, which appeared in 1976 (and yours truly first watched as an impressionable 7-year-old), traces the lives and dirty doings of the first four Emperors of Rome, as seen through the eyes of number four, the lame, stuttering Claudius. Claudius' gambit was to appear the fool--and in doing so, he survived when many others succumbed in the fight for the throne.
It's a fascinating show, the best recreation of Imperial Rome I know of (if a bit stagey at times). And the books, by Robert Graves, are even better. Definitely worth seeking out.
This morning, while hunting a Rickenbacker guitar on the 'net, I found an excellent site: students at Saint Anselm College have gone through both Graves' books and the TV series, showing what is supported by ancient historians and what is not. As one might expect, the students are sometimes a little too "it's-just-the-Net-so-who-cares" offhanded in their analysis--which makes them appear to sneer a bit--but that's a quibble. What's not a quibble is that the second half of the series seems to be given short shrift, compared to the exhaustive treatment of the first several. (I mean, it's only AFTER Caligula shows up that the whole 'what's true/what's not' issue gets interesting.) In any event, the I, Claudius project is an excellent resource, fascinating and much needed. Kudos to the students--check it out after you watch the series. Generally speaking, I think I, Claudius is a tremendously compelling vision of how power corrupts--20 centuries later, what is true and what is not is impossible to define, but it rings true.
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