Musings on Marketing

If I ever open a drinking and/or dining establishment I don't think think I'll name said establishment after the street it's located on. It will just lead to confusion and headaches among my clientele if I am successful and branch out.
The King Street Grille downtown on -- what else -- King Street is a nice little bar/restaurant. My daughter Leah and I have been there a couple times and I really like their burgers on those pretzel buns. Umm, carbolicious. But now the owners have opened a couple new locations on Kiawah Island and in Mount Pleasant. These new locations are both called King Street Grille too, even though they're on Freshfields Drive and Hungryneck Blvd. (And really don't you think the Hungryneck Grille is a better name anyway?)
The Market Street Saloon has scantily-clad women dancing on the bar. Not surprisingly this has become a popular nightspot, so popular they've opened up a new location on Northwoods Boulevard. No, it's not called the Northwoods Boulevard Saloon, but the Market Street Saloon.
And now there's an East Bay Deli now on Dorchester Road across from my church, despite the fact that it's a long way from East Bay Street. (And I realize it's not called the East Bay Street Deli, but it's in North Charleston; I don't know what bay it's supposed to be east of.)

More Books I've read in 2009

It's rare that I stay up late enough to watch Craig Ferguson's show, but when I do I'm always impressed not just by how funny he is -- lots of guys on television are funny -- but by how genuine and honest he seems. Honesty is a rare commodity in show business and especially on television, and it shines like a beacon. I do believe this is the second most amazing thing I've ever seen on a talk show. Watch how at first people are laughing nervously because they don't know how to take a guy speaking to them from his heart. Keep listening. You can hear the audience change.

Anyway, I didn't have to stay up late to read Craig's book, and like his TV show, it's funny and honest. Honesty is pretty rare in the world of autobiographies too. He doesn't gloss over or glamorize what a wastrel he was, and his love for America is genuine.

I also read Nick Hornby's Juliet, Naked. I've read all of Hornby's fiction and it's interesting to watch him grow. Here he returns to the world of music-obsessives moving from the mix-tapes of High Fidelity to the Internet, which may as well have been custom-made for obsessive types. Hornby is often credited with inventing "lad-lit" the yang alternative to chick-lit, so it's interesting that his most fully-realized character in this book is Annie, the female lead.

More movies I've seen in 2009

I heard so much about Twilight I felt like I had to see it. (Well actually at first I felt like I had to read the book, but a brief sample of Stephanie Meyer's writing style convinced me that the movie was probably a better bet.) Everything I heard was either praising it for being a great romantic work or damning it for being ridiculous and corny. Nothing was lukewarm.
Well, I didn't love it, but I didn't hate it either. So I guess here is Twilight's first tepid review. I had no problem with the unusual habits of Twilight's vamps -- the lack of fangs, the ability to go out in sunlight and suffer nothing more than a mild case of sparklies. I figured this was just some weird northwestern mutation of the vampire virus. As a matter of fact, I'm not sure Edward ever called himself or anyone his family the V word, so maybe they were just sparkly, fangless, immortal monster weirdos. My problem was the chemistry -- or lack thereof -- between Bella and Edward. I just didn't feel it. How could any girl actually fall for a guy who looks like the Joker in the old Batman TV show?
Minus the painted-over moustache of course. I mean that was one fugly fella. And why the hell was a girl from Arizona as pale as a Washington state vampire? Was that explained in the book? It sure wasn't in the movie. The only "suspense" in the film when the bad vampire was after Bella was not very suspenseful.
But in the absence of romantic chemistry or cinematic suspense, I did enjoy seeing how vampires play baseball. Although even then the fact that they could only play during a thunderstorm because the crack of their bats sounded like thunder did not ring true. I mean you may be stronger than a roided-up A-Rod but your bat's not.

Baseball and brewski

Everybody who knows me knows at least two things about me: 1. I love baseball. 2. I hate the New York Yankees. (I think those two facts are related, by the way. In other words, because I love baseball I hate the New York Yankees, as there are so many ways the Bronx Bummers are bad for the game, but that's another post for another time.)
So it may surprise you to learn that I won a case of Guinness betting on the World Series. Of course I didn't bet on NY to win, nor did I bet on some side issue such as how many buckets of Brylcreem Chase Utley would go through or how many times Derek Jeter would make some easy routine play at short and the announcers (who've been bought off as surely as the officials) would just go nuts praising him. What happened was a Yankee lover at work bet me that the Yankees would sweep -- win the series in four straight games. I'm not a big gamber but even I can't pass up a sucker bet like that, especially when Guinness is at stake.
Now maybe I should feel bad taking advantage of someone suffering from a man-crush on Derek Jeter. Here's a quote from my betting partner: I'm not a Yankee fan! However I do believe that Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez are larger-than-life beings who transcend athletics. We are fortunate to be alive today to see them play. How about this: Jeter/Rodriguez 2016? (What that last sentence means BTW is he'd like to see those two run for president in 7 years.) But I don't feel bad cuz I don't like most Yankee fans either.
So stop by the house for a glass of Arthur Guinness's pride, we'll toast the great American pastime and count the days till Spring training.

There must be something like 9 million different kinds of calendars available at this time of year, including several for popular TV shows both past and current. But the calendar I want evidently doesn't exist. At least I've looked everywhere for a Bones calendar and been unable to find one. So I make my own each month. Here's November.

Rob keeps on rereading

(Continuing my revisitation of one of my favorite literary relics from my misspent youth -- Old Glory and the Real-Time Freaks by Ralph Blum.)


All right, well, QED is really starting to get on my nerves. It's not just the fact that he's rich, but that's certainly one strike against him. This dude is so rich he has somebody who types up his scribbled diary or letter to his unborn grandson or whatever it is. He's also a snob:

We ate Laura's bread with lots of margarine, and I thought how Mommy never even buys margarine. Probably divorced ladies have to compromise, even with alimony.

The only thing I can think as to why I identified so much with QED was because I figured I was going to be rich too and I was looking for some pointers as to how to behave. I have no such illusions today and it's just as well. If I had been rich and followed in QED's footsteps I'd have been just another rich, snobby arsehole and the world doesn't need any more of them, for sure.

I didn't like him having sex with the diary-typist either, a married woman. But his girlfriend thinks it's great. She's the real hippie, not this spoiled rich poser QED.

But it's impossible to completely dislike the guy. Even if he does say things that leave you scratching your head, things like "Worrying about the wrong problem is like jacking off with sandpaper." I mean, does that make any sense?

Well, I've finished the book now, and the main feeling it leaves me with is bewilderment. Why did this book mean so much to me when I was a lad? Nothing happens in it -- this spoiled, rich 17-year old smokes a ton of grass and that's about it. The action -- such as it is -- do not present the protagonist in a positive light. He steals his best friend's girlfriend, loses his virginity to a married pregnant woman -- who works for him, typing up his diary, because even though he has no job and no responsibilities he can't type up his own scribblings. It's not at all romantic or erotic, so I hope it was meant to be comedic. It fails at that too, but it's less creepy considered that way.

The one part that should have been comedic -- QED's GF's father railroads him into participating in a sailboat race -- fizzles out when our hero overturns the craft before he gets to the starting line. This event makes him sexually climax but only because the author wants to use the pun "Nautical emission."

Oh, and his grandfather dies, but this is not dramatic or poignant. The old man is ready to go. I can see how most people who had to spend their days with Quintus Ells might long for death's embrace.

So the book stands or falls on QED's personality. If you like him you'll like the book. I don't like him very much. He's selfish, ignorant, racist and, as previously noted, spoiled, rich, snobby and immoral.

I must have liked him when I was 15 though. Maybe because back then I believed that rich people could still be decent and down-to-earth. I labor under no such delusions nowadays.

But, I would still say that this reread was success. It was good getting in touch with my 15-year-old self (and good saying good-bye to that knucklehead too). Some books are only great at certain times in your life. I loved Thomas Wolfe as a young man. Now I found him pompous, flowery and verbose. When they made me read "The Great Gatsby" in high school I thought it was putrid. When I reread it in my 40's it blew me away. So let's just say that "Old Glory and the Real-Time Freaks" is not a bad book, but for me it's past its expiration date.

Rob Rereads, part 4

(in which I revisit one of my favorite literary relics from my misspent youth -- Old Glory and the Real-Time Freaks by Ralph Blum.)



Wow, QED is this weird combination of stoner and preppie. His family is mega-rich, old Connecticut money, there are these massive family croquet games going on the south lawn of the estate. He calls his parents "Mommy" and "Father". But he smokes dope constantly.



And he's kind of a racist too (discussing Vietnam and his older brother who recently returned from there):

"Well, I'd rather get burned buying dope in Seattle than be picked off by a dink in Nam."

Tunis goes, "You mean a gook?"

Ells shakes his head; the dust from marijuana makes him sneeze. (QED also sometimes refers to himself in the third person) "Naw, everyone's a gook, friend or foe. Dinks are a sub-set, being all gooks after your ass."

Rob Rereads, part 3

(in which I revisit one of my favorite literary relics from my misspent youth -- Old Glory and the Real-Time Freaks by Ralph Blum.)

Well, I'm only on page one, and I see where my memory has failed me once again. His name is not Quentin Ells, as I remembered -- it's Quintus Ells. I'd also forgotten his nickname -- Fiver -- not sure how he got it since he's 6'6''. I was right about how much he loves his grandfather.

"If you don't have a grandfather, go adopt yourself. Almost any old man who has really lived a life will do. But every kid should have a grandfather, and preferably one like mine."

And here are some words of wisdom from Quintus's grandfather: "I am all but convinced, Quintus, that our life is actually the container in which we keep our death."

Obviously, I remember the format very well. Here's how Old Glory and the Real-Time Freaks begins: I'm 17, fighting a case of the munchies, and trying to crank out an opening page to someone who won't read it for a hundred years.

And here is how my first novel A Bridge to the Moon Begins: Dear Son,

Happy Birthday!
I wish I could be there with you at your party and all, but I'm afraid I won't be able to make it. You see, I'm trapped here at 2:27 in the morning twenty-five or thirty years ago.
About the only thing I can do is send a senile old buzzard with my name there in my place. It won't be the same, I know, but I'll try to make sure he brings you a nice present - like a new Porsche or something. A Porsche and this letter.
You can go for a ride later. You can even do us both a favor and run over the senile old buzzard wearing my name if you want to. But first you gotta read this letter. It's important.

pg, 18 -- OMG, I'm even more of a plagiarist than I thought. QED gives himself a deadline to finish this letter -- his 18th birthday 38 days away. My protagonist Todd Burwell gives himself a birthday deadline too -- his 15th coming up in a few days.

I had also forgotten that QED was rich -- although if I'd thought about it, I might have wondered what he was doing on Air Force One. (Actually I'm still wondering about that -- haven't got to that part yet.)

And QED -- one lasting impression that the book left me with. I had never heard of QED in its original Quad Erat Demonstrandum sense -- Hey, I went to school in South Carolina, we don't cotton to a lot of Latin and suchlike. The first time I did see it that way, I totally thought the ancient Romans were ripping off Ralph Blum. And to this day, every time I see QED, I think of Quintus Ells and hope he's not deceased.

Almost all of my literary heroes are romantics and QED is no exception: I love Laura a lot, Grandson. I do that best. It's the only thing I do half right. (That last statement is false modesty, by the way, Quintus is a very self-confident young man.)

Later he says, I walk behind Laura whenever I can. Her hips kill me. She has this sway to her walk, a kind of stately way of moving her ass that practically puts me in Zone 99.

And, Kim, if you've ever wondered why I usually let you go up the stairs first, it's not because I'm a gentleman. I just love how you send me to Zone 99.

pg. 25. Now I know why he was on Air Force One. His father is some sort of diplomat and they were headed out to San Clemente for a meeting with President Nixon. You don't see many books with protagonists as wealthy as QED -- I mean, this guy is loaded, his family's been in the banking biz for a long time. But I don't think there many in 1972 either. Rich folks are so rarely heroic.

More later

Rob Rereads, part 2

No, I still haven't begun my reread of "Old Glory and the Real-Time Freaks", haven't even opened it yet. But I will soon. For one thing, I want to give the book every chance to be what I remember it as, and I know that too much anticipation can make even the world's greatest book something of a letdown.

While preparing for the big reread, I have been researching the author Ralph Blum. All I knew about him was that he quit writing fiction to write books about runes -- self-discovery and divination with, well, with rocks. And that's about all the Internet knows too. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard University with a degree in Russian Studies. He's written several books about runes, and co-authored books about UFOs and zen and other new-age subjects. Most of his books are out of print. He evidently only wrote one other novel "The Simultaneous Man" a science-fiction work that predates "Old Glory" and is even harder to find. He is 77 years old and he has a new book coming out in early 2010, called Invasion of the Prostate Snatchers: No More Unnecessary Biopsies, Radical Treatment or Loss of Sexual Potency. According to the co-author bio, Mr. Blum has been living with prostate cancer for 20 years without radical treatment, which makes me think he must know something.

Then there's this quote from quotationsbook.com that makes me think maybe he doesn't:

"Know thyself. Nothing in excess. The Self is required to balance the Self."

Okay, yeah, whatever you say; no, I don't want to buy a flower.

I also found a 1972 review in the New York Times "In Old Glory and the Real Time Freaks, Ralph Blum. . . maps the self-guidance, self-adjustment and self-landing of a 6-foot-6 17-year old. . . He is a funny writer, his jokes expose hypocrisy, shorten social distance, suggest a more decent order of values in our society. . . his novel is likely to elicit a complicated set of responses. For me, the range goes from amusement and delight to compassion and anger."

This is the cover to the hardback version, not the paperback. The PB cover was better, if you ask me.

Rob Rereads, part 1

I read a lot when I was a kid, started before I began school because I just didn't want to wait that long. My first literary love was biographies and I plowed through every one that Jackson Davis Elementary School Library had --- which pissed off my Elmira Gulch-esque librarian, but that's another story for another time -- but somewhere along the line I graduated to fiction and it's still by far my favorite genre. Most novels I just plowed through on my way to the next one, but some of them made a bigger impression on me. Some of them I had to go back and reread, either because I missed something or because I wanted to go on living in that world with those people. One of the first books I remember that sort of blew me away was "If I Loved You, Am I Trapped Forever?" by M.E. Kerr, which is about this boy in high school who seems to have everything going for him -- he's popular, he's got a hot girlfriend -- and this new kid (Duncan Stein, nicknamed "Doomed") who starts school. He is a weirdo and a misfit, but he and his philosophy of unrequited love being the only kind of love that's real become a phenomenon at that school, much to our hero's chagrin. I think the reason I had to keep going back and rereading it was because it may have been the first book I ever read that did not have a happy ending and that fascinated me.
I reread this book a couple years ago and I'm happy to say it was just as good as I remembered it. I wrote to M.E. Kerr to tell her how much I liked that book and I received a very nice letter from her in return. Kerr never attained the status of her contemporary Judy Blume, but all her books -- and she was quite prolific -- are worth seeking out.

On the other hand, I also used to just devour Carter Brown books. Part of the reason was the great covers by the incomparable Robert McGinnis, but I also thought the books were funny, sexy and exciting. My favorite of his protagonists was Danny Boyd, who was always talking about how irresistible his profile was. But when I try to reread these, I can't get even halfway through. Carter Brown uses so many damned adverbs -- several per page, nobody ever whispers, they state "softly" -- that I find myself tensed up waiting for the next one like a prisoner expecting another lash from the whip. Not a pleasant experience.
Although the McGinnis covers are still breathtaking.

So, my results with rereading favorites from my youth have been mixed. So maybe you'll understand why I'm feeling a little trepidation about revisiting "Old Glory and the Real-Time Freaks" by Ralph Blum. You want to talk about being blown away by a book, this is the one that did for me. It's about a guy named Quentin Ells. (And isn't it interesting that I can't remember the names of the characters in the book I read last week -- not to mention the names of many of my co-workers -- but I cannot forget Duncan Stein, Danny Boyd and Quentin Ells?) Quentin is a teenager, but the book is a letter to his unborn son (or grandson maybe, I forget) and spends most of the book high; he tokes up on Air Force One, drops acid with his grandfather. He refers to himself as QED (Quentin Ells Deceased) because he expects he'll be gone by the time his grandson reads the letter.
How much did this book affect me? It made me decide I wanted nothing more than to be a hippie, and for better or worse, I've pretty much stuck with that career plan. When I decided I wanted to write a book I basically stole the letter to unborn progeny format.
I've been looking for this book a long time -- and by looking I mean looking for a cheap copy -- thanks anyway, Alibris) -- and I've finally found it and ordered it. Now I'm a little nervous. So much so that I haven't even opened the package and it arrived last Thursday and that is not like me at all. I usually rip open packages while standing in front of the mailbox. Will it be as good as I remember like "If I Love You. . . " or will it be adverb-addled crap like Carter Brown? Or will it be somewhere in between, just your typical mediocre novel? I'm going to find out soon, but for now I'm enjoying the anticipation. While we're waiting here's some more Robert McGinnis art. Is this guy good or what?

How did I do at the Library book sale?

Great, actually; thanks for asking. This year I decided that going to the pre-opening Thursday night party was not good enough. To really get first crack at the books you've got to volunteer to help with the set-up on Thursday morning, which is what I did. It's very exciting opening up those boxes and not knowing what kind of treasure -- or Grisham-Patterson-Brown crapola -- you might find therein. (Well, it's exciting if you're a book nerd.)

The best thing I got this year was the book "Baseball" the companion to Ken Burns's magnificent documentary. This thing is gorgeous, truly a thing of beauty and a joy forever. A 60 dollar book in great condition for four dollars.

I also picked up "Excelsior" Stan Lee's autobiography, which I have read before but did not own

"Mad Cover to Cover" cuz I just can't get enough Norman Mingo:This beautiful oversized poster book

I also got the Buddy Chronicles from Peter Bagge, I can't find an online copy of the cover, and I'm too lazy to scan it, and it's not that impressive, so here's a shot of Buddy Bradley with some other comic immortals. For those of you not in the know, Buddy is the one with bones made of rubbber.

Evidently this a Quality Paperback Book Club edition, which collects "The Bradleys" "Hey Buddy" and "Buddy the Dreamer." I already possess all three of those books, which collect issues of the comic series "The Bradleys" and "Hate". I also possess all of those comics too. I might have a problem.

What else did I get? "Powerhouse Pepper" from Basil Wolverton. Wolverton's frenetic, nonsensical, punny style of humor is currently out of vogue, but not with me. Wolverton did a lot of comics work, but he's probably best known for winning the contest sponsored by Al Cappp and "Li'l Abner" to draw Lena the Hyena, the ugliest women in the world. A celebrity jury panel consisting of Salvador Dali, Boris Karloff and Frank Sinatra picked Wolverton's entry over thousands of others. I think you can see why.

I also got "Bufffy the Vapire Slayer: The Watcher's Guide, Volume 2".
I bow to no one in my appreciation of Whedon's slayer, and I will fight anybody who says the show ever jumped the shark. All seven seasons were great -- the eighth season in Dark Horse comics is great too. That being said, I have to say that as a shipper, the show was never as compelling for me after Angel left at the end of the third season. This will give me yet another way to relive season three.

I got this book cuz I used to love those celebrity roasts, and I want to see if a certain portion of Milton Berle's anatomy is actually mentioned at every roast.

And this book, which is nothing but pictures of naked people, cuz you know I love art:

I also love A.J. Jacobs, and I'm looking forward to reading about him reading the entire Encyclopedia Brittanica. (I did mention that I'm a book nerd, did I not?)

And the Marx Brothers Scrapbook, which looks great if you love Groucho, Chico and (especially) Harpo as much as I do.I've been reading "Bizarre Books" which is just what it sounds like, a bunch of books with weird titles, subjects or authors. My favorite so far is "How to Put Constipation and Hemorrhoids Behind You" so if you ever find that book pick it up I'll reimburse you.
So when I saw a book entitled "Through the Alimentary Canal With Gun and Camera" I had to get it, to add to my fledgling bizarre books collection:

And it seems like at every book sale, there's always one book that I come home with and wonder what I was thinking. This time it "The Guru's Guide to Serenity" which seems to be about how celebrities relax. The only thing I can figure is that I was getting a little stressed from digging through all those books and at that knuckleheaded guy in the Games and Humor section who insisted on displaying the books upside-down.

Also at every book sale there's one that gets away. This time it was Tom Robbins's "Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates" which I hid but forgot to go back and retrieve.

So anyway, not bad, eh? Oh, and with the volunteer gift certificate and the newby cashier who rang all my paperbacks up at a dollar even though all of them were priced higher than that, these books set me back only 14 bucks.

I went back on Friday of course. I'll tell you about that later.

More Books I've read in 2009

"Slouching Towards Kalamazoo" by Peter DeVries

Peter Devries is a writer once hugely popular, now largely forgotten -- though not completely, I still read his stuff. I'm afraid his books are no longer popular because we as a people have gotten too fat and stupid to understand them. This is highbrow humor, y'all, and it requires some cultural literacy. On page 179, a guy is talking about native Americans destroying their possessions to show off to their neighbors how much they have:

"This is conspicuous consumption. Like you ain't seen since -- since -- "

"Garbo in Camille?" I piped up.

"What? Oh, I see what you mean. All those expensive gowns, box at the opera, holidays in country houses."

"And somebody having to cough up for it?"

That cracked me up. But if you haven't seen the Divine Garbo waste away in the movie Camille you won't get it. And a lot of it I don't have the cultural wherewithal to get either, but when it works I think he's hilarious.

I must have read this book before although I don't remember much about it, because this passage is highlighted, and I was a militant vegetarian for many years:

"The idea of a Supreme Being who creates a world in which one creature is designed to eat another in order to subsist, and then passes a law saying "Thou Shalt not kill" is so monstruously, immeasurably, bottomlessly absurd that I am at a loss to understand how mankind has entertained or given it house room all this long."

And since it was already marked up anyway, I highlighted this too. The protagonist considers it the "Most Beautiful Sentence in the English Language":

"Though my grave be England, my dying place was Paradise, and Eve miscarried of me before she had conceived of Cain."

I consider it interesting.

DeVries books make good palette cleaners for me. Most of the books I read take place mostly in the emotional realm. Devries's characters are witty and urbane, but they are not warm and cuddly.

More Books I've read in 2009

I've read all of Nick Hornby's books -- well, that's not entirely true, I don't know enough about soccer to get through "Fever Pitch" (although I loved the switched-to-baseball American version movie). I've read all of his novels. I loved "High Fidelity" and "About a Boy". I loved "How to Be Good" until the last sentence, and I liked "A Long Way Down" a lot. He's got a new one coming out September 29th called "Juliet, Naked" which as much as I can't wait to read is only my second most-anticipated book coming out that day. (I'm referring of course to Audrey Niffenegger's "Her Fearful Symmetry") .

Anyway, while I'm waiting for Juliet to disrobe I picked up "Slam" Hornby's YA book that I passed up when it first came out. And I thought it was great, not written any differently than his other novels. The only thing that makes it a YA is the protagonist's age -- 15 when the book begins. He's just a kid obsessed with skateboarding -- to the point that he talks to his Tony Hawke poster -- who manages to get his ex-girlfriend pregnant. In addition to all the drama that situation presents, there are also aspects of the fantastic in this book as the kid occasionally time travels into the future.

Good stuff.

More books I've finished reading today

The last Alan Moore book I read was nigh incomprehensible (even with extensive annotations), so it was kinda nice to go back to a time before he got so smart even Einstein couldn't comprehend one of his comics. There's actually a lot going on Captain Britain -- parallel worlds, an unstoppable superhero killing machine, the outlawing of superheroes, and a villain who can alter reality at will, but these stories were originally published in 8-page segments and they're pretty easy to follow. Alan Davis's art starts out horrible, gets tolerable but is nowhere near the mastery level he is at today.

More Books I've read in 2009

While I was wallowing in the overwrought romanticism of Four Letters of Love I told my wife Kim that I was probably going to have to watch an action-adventure movie to cleanse my palette. But of course things weren't actually that dire. All it took was a book of the "lad lit" (or more vulgarly "dick lit") which deals with emotions from a male perspective and of which Nick Hornby is probably the most well-known practitioner. I chose "The Book of Joe" cuz I read something somewhere about its author Jonathan Tropper, and the story about a writer returning for the first time to the old hometown he savaged in his first novel sounded interesting. And that turned out to be an excellent choice. I found this book compelling for several reasons. It's laugh out funny; the protagonist has no sense of self-preservation and cannot resist smarting off even when he knows it's going to result in an ass-cutting -- or maybe even death. But there was some depth there too, as it slowly dawns on Joe Goffman that, although he may have legitimate beefs with his family and classmates, they might be right in their opinion that he is an asshole. After all, he wasn't a great brother, friend or son either. Here he is after the funural of a friend. Dugan is the high school basketball coach in a town where high school basketball is the only thing that matters:

"I thought the book was a load of horseshit," Dugan continues without missing a beat. "The malicious work of one miserable son of a bitch looking for someone to blame."
I nod again. . . "You'll understand if I don't ask you for a blurb on my next book jacket."
"You're an asshole, Goffman."
"Well, it's always a pleasure to hear from one of my readers," I say. . .
"I'm an asshole too," Dugan says. . . "Nothing wrong with being an asshole as long as you do it responsibly."
"So I'm doing it wrong?"

Now that I think about it, that may be the theme of the novel: Joe learns how to be a responsible asshole.
P.S. One of the characters in this book makes the case that Bruce Springsteen's "Backstreets" is some sort of gay anthem, and I'd never thought of it that way, but looking over the lyrics it sure could be:

One soft infested summer me and terry became friends
Trying in vain to breathe the fire we was born in
Catching rides to the outskirts tying faith between our teeth
Sleeping in that old abandoned beach house getting wasted in the heat
And hiding on the backstreets, hiding on the backstreets
With a love so hard and filled with defeat
Running for our lives at night on them backstreets

Slow dancing in the dark on the beach at stocktons wing
Where desperate lovers park we sat with the last of the duke street kings
Huddled in our cars waiting for the bells that ring
In the deep heart of the night to set us loose from everything
To go running on the backstreets, running on the backstreets
We swore wed live forever on the backstreets we take it together

Endless juke joints and valentino drag where dancers scraped the tears
Up off the street dressed down in rags running into the darkness
Some hurt bad some really dying at night sometimes it seemed
You could hear the whole damn city crying blame it on the lies that killed us
Blame it on the truth that ran us down you can blame it all on me terry
It don't matter to me now when the breakdown hit at midnight
There was nothing left to say but I hated him and I hated you when you went
Away

Laying here in the dark you're like an angel on my chest
Just another tramp of hearts crying tears of faithlessness
Remember all the movies, terry, wed go see
Trying to learn how to walk like heroes we thought we had to be
And after all this time to find were just like all the rest
Stranded in the park and forced to confess
To hiding on the backstreets, hiding on the backstreets
We swore forever friends on the backstreets until the end
Hiding on the backstreets, hiding on the backstreets

More Books I've read in 2009

Is it possible for a book to be too romantic? Before I read Four Letters of Love by Niall Williams I would have at least hesitated for a moment before reluctantly admitting the possibility. But now I answer with a resounding "Yea, verily, forsooth, it can indeed."
Four Letters comes with blurbs singing its praises, blurbs from the likes of The New York Times, Redbook, Men's Journal, The Boston Globe and Marianne Faithful. And they're right, it is "lush" "lyrical" "delicate" "graceful" and "sparkling." In spots. But then it gets ridiculously over the top. On page 202 the protagonist is spending the night with some people he just met. He is sleeping in the room of their daughter who hasn't lived there for some time:

"He turned in the covers and stirred up the perfume of the young girl's dreams. He thumped the pillow and let out without realising the tortured half-sleep of all the nights she had lain there blaming herself for what happened to her brother. Her guilt swirled in the air like a fine dust; it caught in his throat and he began a coughing fit."
You read that right; he can't sleep because he's choking on a big pile of old stale guilt. Believe it or not it gets better. The coughing leads to crying:
"He hushed himself and tried to swallow the gasps in case others heard him, not yet knowing that . . . the island air was glassy and sharp with sorrow. Men coming home from Coman's bowed and were struck by flying shards of it."
Don't you just hate it when you're walking home from the pub and get struck by a shard of sorrow?
I guess it goes to show what a glutton for punishment I am that I didn't fling this book into the fire but kept reading to the bitter end. Judging by the paucity of dialogue in this book I'll bet Mr. Williams has trouble writing it. And since we never ever see how the lovers meet -- heck, we never even see them together -- he evidently doubts his ability to write a convincing love scene. As do I. Those moments that should have been the heart of this novel are only recalled after the fact in long, overwrought letters that the boy writes to the girl and the girl's mother --- who obviously knows more about literature than the New York Times and Marianne Faithful -- burns. A young man who hasn't walked or spoken in many years is miraculously healed and starts hiking all over Ireland immediately as though there were no such thing as muscle atropy. Everything is resolved in one hurried paragraph on the last page, and it left me with a feeling in the pit of my stomach that I'd been cheated.
Either that or a shard of sorrow just cut into me.

Peace Supplies

I've always loved bumper stickers; I guess it's because I grew up in the 60s and 70s when bumper stickers were first becoming popular. I remember in the days before I got my driver's license how I spent more time daydreaming about what bumper stickers I would put on the car I eventually hoped to have than I did about what kind of car that might be. The bumper sticker that I had that got the most attention was one that said "Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft: The Real Axis of Evil." Hoo boy, that got me some attention here in red state South Carolina, let me tell you -- everything from thumbs up to middle fingers up to threats of physical violence. The bumper sticker on my car right now is less confrontational. It says "Power to the Peaceful" and I got it at a Michael Franti concert.

I have another bumper sticker and I'm hesitant to put it on my car -- only because my wife will probably refuse to ride in the car with me. (I think she thinks President Obama can do no wrong.) But when I read stories like this in the New York Times today, I have to speak out and here's what I want to say:

I just can't understand why we can't have a president who learns from the past. When we leave Afghanistan and Iraq those countries are probably going to begin an era of chaos, but that will happen whether we pull out today or ten years from now. Let's pull out now before any more Americans die. Hey, even conservative columnist George Will agrees with me.
If you're interested in peace and free speech you should check out PeaceSupplies.org. Not just bumper stickers, they also have patches, buttons, t-shirts and fair trade goods like soap and coffee. Definitely a cool place and a business worthy of your support.

More Books I've read in 2009

Religion. Art. Sex. The Arab-Israeil conflict. Politics. Marriage. Terrorism. And - oh yeah -- the end of the world. Tom Robbins had some heavy stuff on his mind when he wrote "Skinny Legs and All" and that's good cuz, unlike most people who get either depressed or confused when pondering such weighty matters, TR loves thinking about that stuff. So deep and palpable is that joy he felt writing that you can literally feel it when you read his words. I think I had a smile on my face the entire time I was reading this book. I was certainly in no hurry for it to end when his asides are as enjoyable as they are -- I mean Tom Robbins throws away lines that other writers would kill for. All along I thought the book was headed for a big showdown in the Promised Land, but that was an illusion. Where Robbins was actually going was so much better than that. And speaking of illusion, the ending where Salome does the dance of the seven veils -- removing one by one the misperceptions that keep us blind, broken and bound is just an astonishing 13 pages. The removal of the religion veil by itself was worth the price of admission:

Religion was an attempt to pin down the Divine. The Divine was eternally in flux, forever moving, shifting shape. That was its nature. It was absolute, true enough: absolutely mobile. Absolutely transcendent. Absolutely flexible. Absolutely impersonal. It had its god and goddess aspects, but it was ultimately no more male or female that it was star or screwdriver. It was the sum of all those things, but that sum could never be chalked on a slate. The Divine was beyond description, beyond knowing, beyond comprehension. To say that the Divine was Creation divided by Destruction was as close as one could come to definition. . . The Divine was expansive, but religion was reductive. Religion attempted to reduce the Divine to a knowable quantity with which mortals might efficiently deal, to pigeonhole it once and for all so that we never had to reevaluate it. With hammers of cant and spikes of dogma, we crucified and crucified again, trying to nail to our stationary altars the migratory light of the world.
Thus, since religion bore false witness to the Divine, religion was blasphemy. And once it entered into its unholy alliance with politics, it became the most dangerous and repressive force that the world has ever known.

Read this book. Now. Then read it again.

I am so happy that I live on the same planet as Tom Robbins.

Total eclipse of logic

I mentioned how much I enjoyed the literalism of seeing Mick Jagger sing "I'm just standing in a doorway" while he's just standing in a doorway, and that has led me to the discovery of literal videos. If you've never heard of literal videos check this out. Hilarious:

Stuff I've saved.

When I was weaning myself off of diet sodas, I drank a lot of Honest Tea. I liked them because they taste like real fresh-brewed tea, and they're "barely sweetened" which is the way I like my tea. (And yes, I'm sure you're wondering what I'm doing in the South, the land of disgustingly-sweet tea, but there you go.) I also like that their bottle caps always had an interesting quote to ponder while you were enjoying one 0f their delicious beverages. One of these caps I saved and keep it in my desk. It's a quote from Henry James:
"Three things in life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind."
I love this quote because I think if you distilled my beliefs that I've gathered from 51 years of living on earth down to their bare-bones essence, this just might be it.
Sadly, I have at least as much logician in me as poet, and I can't help thinking, "You know, Henry, that's really only one thing."