Cinematic Rock and Hard Place:

One of my favorite questions to ask fellow cine-heads is "What movie did you dislike that everyone else loved and how did you deal with it?" Thankfully, I don't find myslef in this position very often, because when I do, it ties me in knots, like trying to explain fireworks to a blind man.

So it must have been my time last night when I went to a late show of The Constant Gardener at the 4-Star, propelled by a rave review from Dave, and then walked out in the middle.

Maybe I'm too literal but in a film billed as a thriller, I expect, well, thrills. Not the roller coaster kind but tension, something that welds me to my seat out of both fear and searing curiosity. The Constant Gardener has none. It's a story about a man whose wife is murdered while she's working to expose the immoral collusion of local government in Africa and western drug companies who use the continent and its citizens as one big testing lab. The man goes looking for who may have done such a horrible thing. Trouble is, we already know. We know the answer will be a corporate conspiracy with doors opened by corrupt governments and greed as the prime mover. We know all this by minute 20 so watching him figure it out isn't compelling. It's like hearing a joke repeated seven different ways. And then seven more.

Fernando Meirelles directed this movie along with the equated-with-the-second-coming City of God, which I liked ok and reviewed for Film Critic.com. But this man has a problem I see him not learning form: So far, he's 2-for-2 in choosing precisely the wrong directorial style for the story he's telling. City of God is a painful, violent, coming-of-age fable told with the slickness of an MTV Video. Gardener, based on spymaster John Le Carre' novel, has all the snap of wet rag. Pacing is casual, bordering on languid. The first plot point takes 40 minutes to drop and the investigation doesn't get moving until minute 90. Between them are two dozen scenes which say, in two dozen ways, that Things Are Not What They Seem.

It doesn't work. Not at all. I feel like Gardener is supposed to rivet me or at least move me to shake my fist in anger. I was too mystified then bored to do either.

Anybody else see this movie? What did I miss?

One Sentence Movie Reviews: "The Constant Gardener"

The Constant Gardener (2005): "Is a thriller still a thriller if it isn't thrilling?"

Thank you, Religious Right:

The New York Times reports that banned book challenges are up 25% since 2003. What a smart use of public resources.

Grandma Blog:

I, like much of blogland, thought it was a rare treat to meet Mena Trott's mom, at least virtually. If Mena is one of the early pioneers of the medium then that would make her mother one of the ancestors.

I'm calling her Grandma Blog should we ever meet.

Women will Save Reading:

So novelist Ian McEwan and his son decided to throw a bunch of books on a cart and peddle it through London giving away books. For free. In five minutes, he managed to give away 30 novels, nearly all to women. The men who approached his cart did so with suspicion. Only one bit and took a book. Mr. McEwan concluded in this article that "when women stop reading, the novel will be dead."

Okay, I can think of a few possible reasons for this disparity.

1) Are men naturally more suspicious of strangers giving stuff away than women?

2) Do men not like to carry stuff around with them when rushing from one place to the next?

3) Is Ian McEwan a scary looking fellow?

4) Are men simply not interested in books?

I'm only going to address #4 by saying, dudes, wtf? I've been hearing in more than a few places that men don't read. Organizations like Guys Read are in place to combat this problem in childhood and throw out the following reasons why the problem exists:

•Biologically, boys are slower to develop than girls and often struggle with reading and writing skills early on.

•The action-oriented, competitive learning style of many boys works against them learning to read and write

•Many books boys are asked to read don’t appeal to them. They aren’t motivated to want to read.
•As a society, we teach boys to suppress feelings. Boys aren’t practiced and often don’t feel comfortable exploring the emotions and feelings found in fiction.
•Boys don’t have enough positive male role models for literacy. Because the majority of adults involved in kids’ reading are women, boys might not see reading as a masculine activity.

I can see how a few of these play out. A lot of men I talk to don't read fiction because they equate reading with learning and they don't "learn anything" by reading fiction. They don't apply the same standard to television, movies or music which strikes me as a big PR problem for books. Second, reading, being an intimate, vulnerable activity, the human tendacny seems to be to read what confirms rather than challenges one's sense of identity. Which may explain, in only the most general way, why reading is a much more gendered activity than say, music listening. Few women I know read military fiction. Many women I know listen to Snoop Dogg and his "bitches and hoes" flow.

Third, men seem to assoicate reading with work, with labor instead of a relaxation activity. Which I simply don't get.

What are your thoughts (via Arts Journal)?

Housekeeping Notes:

You'll notice a few chances around these parts if you look to the left. If you're curious about where I'll be when, You can see my Upcoming.org events. If you're not that interested in what I write and just want a pile-a links, I'm posting my Del.icio.us links (RSS feed) too.

And if you.just.cant.get.enough of me, then you can now subscribe to my occcasional audio blatherings as a podcast. Take this url and drop it into iTunes, Odeo or however you get your podcasts and look for something called Smoke Trails. Because I really haven't beaten the smoke metaphor to death yet.

Practice Eulogy

A reading and practice podcast...


MP3 File

One Sentence Movie Reviews: "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room"

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room" "The bigger the lie, the more people will believe it." --Joseph Goebbles

Indie Rock Insanity:

So I'm not gonna get behind the Indie Rock Fantasy League. I have way too much Journey to listen to (via Waxy.org).

Blog Cluster Schtup:

Just in case you absolutely can't get enough new media, you should A) receive podcasts from Business Week whose latest one (the first in a ten part series) is all about super duper bloggers then B) spray all electrical outlets in your home with a fire house until you're sitting in total darkness, then venture out into the sun and don't return until your clothes are tattered and you've forgotten how to say your name without grunting (via Mircopersuasion).

Naked Librarians:

In order to raise funds for a budget-strapped library system, a group of Wisconsin librarians have decided to get naked and publish a calendar of themselves. Which I think is a splendid idea. I always thought porn movies had it all wrong. A librarian doesn't need to let loose her hair bun and hike up her sensible skirt to be sexy. I'd say the librarians I know are plenty sexy on their own. Maybe it's a bibliophile thing but I bet I could get a few more to agree with me.

Screw America's Top Model. I'm ready for America's Top Circulation Desk Manager (via Booksquare.)

Home Libraries:

So I too went ape poopey when Delicious Library came out last year, thinking at the very least it would be a fun, addictive way to develop a digital database for my book collection. Trouble is, that's about it's good for. You scan your books in, Delicious Library makes then look all pretty and they just sit there.

When Steve Rhodes tipped my off about Library Thing a few weeks ago, I didn't pay much attention. I wasn't that interested in rescanning my whole library just so I could have them on a web-based system instead of sitting on my hard drive. But the other day, I was in my converted closet of a library trying to remember what novel I had bought 10 years ago was a little like The Moviegoer but wasn't exactly The Moviegoer and but was in some anthology with another Walker Percy something and then it hit me.

Tags. If I could search my library using the tags "anthology, moviegoer, film" I could see how my books related to one another. Which is what I was missing and what Delicious Library is as well.

So long DL. It was nice sort of knowing you.

San Francisco: A Tummy Kinda Town

A great newly-discovered blog San Francisco Gourmet (suggested by the always excellent Lipstick and Magazines) has just alerted me to some fantastic news: Bon Appetit has just voted San Francsico the #2 restaurant town in America behind New York! Also the SFG lists 10 reasons why San Francisco is a great eating town. Which makes me want to go out and nosh right now.

Nothing like a little civic pride. I'm all over this blog and its foodie obsessions.

The Olds Says No:

So Laura Bush invites poet Sharon Olds to present at the National Book Festival in DC. Olds (winner of a National Book Critics Circle Award and professor of creative writing at New York University), thinks about and declines citing that "it would feel to me as if I were condoning what I see to be the wild, highhanded actions of the Bush Administration." The Nation runs her letter under the rather bombastic headline "No Place for a Poet at a Banquet of Shame."

I'm a few minds about this. First, good for Olds for sticking up for her convictions. Book festivals of that size mean mucho exposure particularly for poets whose work is not featured at festivals to nearly the same extent as novelists. By saying no, she's turning down at the very least some good bookselling opportunities. Second, while I don't think the First Lady nor the book festival represents the administration itself, nothing wrong with making your statement in the way you can, long as it doesn't step on innocent bystanders in the process.

Third, and this bothers me some, did she have to go ahead and publish it in The Nation? Nothing wrong with saying no but if it's such a personal decision, which it sounds like it was, did it need to be published in a national magazine?

What do you think?

One Sentence Movie Reviews: "Taps"

Taps: "Only in the 1980s are uniformed students at a centuries-old military academy the misunderstood rebels of cinema."

And the Buffy Goes to...

I didn't watch The Emmys last night (the NY Times as a half-decent summary) but did come across Salon's announcement of The Buffy, the award for most underappreciated TV Show. This is the second year of The Buffy. "The Wire", HBO's Baltimore crime drama which is sitting in wait in my Netflix queue, won last year.

This year, the award went to "Veronica Mars" which I couldn't be happier about. I don't know if I've done it here yet but you Must Watch Veronica Mars, easily the best new show on television. VM is a noir Encyclopedia Brown, set in a plastic Southern California town. Veronica, a former quen of her high school's whose best friend, Lilly Kane was murdered. Her father, the sherrif accused Lily's powerful parents of involvement which led to the's Mars's being ostrcized from the town.

Season #1 is Veronica's attempt to solve her friend's murder. Season #2, which begins next week, is something else entirely.

This is consistently great television, funny, smart, dark, creepy. I can't wait for this next season to start.

Season #2 begins Wednesday, Sept. 28 on UPN. See it, see it, see it. You will not be sorry.

And Now for 2 Annnoying Technical Questions:

1) Several utilities (Keychain, Disk Utility) on my iMacG5 refuse to open. Or rather they open and shut. I'm using Tiger. Anyone know why this is?

2) Does anyone know how to record a conversation in Skype without hearing the echo of both conversationalists on each other's computer speakers?

Answer in any order you like.

Sunday Morning Shards: The Tiny Edition

*My friend Keith Knight has illustrated a great new book called A Beginners Guide to Community-Based Arts. Their supporting organization The Crossroads Project create a network of community-based artists, educators researchers and organizers.

*The New York Observer profiles the relaunched Paris Review. The journal has redesigned its pages and overhauled its staff looking to maintain its position of literary esteem in the media-overloaded 21st century.

*Webzine 2005 is next week! Check out this great clip about the last Webzine in 1999.

I've got my ticket. Do you?

Word of the Day: "Mosaicist"

Mosaicist: Someone who practices the art of making mosiacs (as mentioned Friday night by my friend Keith Knight).

Read Recently: Beware of God

Backstory: Got sent to me by a publicist. Mr Auslander appeared at my local JCC (I was out of town) and got me curious. Needed a short book for my trip to Chicago.

Notes: Short story collection of little perverted fables about isues of faith and religion (Auslander is a recovering Orthodox Jew). Included is a talmudic debate from the point of view of two hamsters and a story about a young hasid who wakes up as a giant goy.

Verdict: Will be over before you know it but still a memorable ride. Funny, smart with a sing-songy arrogant cadence that works rather than puts off. You don't have to be Jewish to get "Beware of God." But it helps.

Quotes I Never Remember but Love:

“We shall not cease from searching. And the end of all our searching shall be to return to the place where we started and know it for the first time.”

--T.S. Elliot

Back From Chicago:

I'm home: The Midwest Literary Festival is a charming festival in its third year, clearly with a lot of community goodwill. I had a great time at it but when asked how was my trip, I have to say, as Sinatra would have "Two shots of happy. One shot of sad."

Sad:

*Hot: Had to be 95 degrees in Illinois that weekend. I come from a cold foggy part of the world now. Not used to this.

*Aurora: Way way further away from Chicago than I thought. Saturday night, I took the last train back and got stuck with a gang of Rolling Stones fans just out of a concert. I did not want to participate in the "You Can't Always Get What You Want" singalong at 2 AM. No, I did not.

*Laptop: My laptop hard drive decided to fail on the plane ride over. Justin and I wasted half of Saturday afternoon at the Apple Store on Michigan Avenue trying to get it fixed, only to find out it was toast.

*Timing: I couldn't have picked a worse weekend to come to town as almost all of my Chicagoland friends were either out of town, out of the country, or indisposed.

Happy:

*Festival. Much fun, nice people. Got to meet Melanie Lynn Hauser whom I know from Readerville and is lovely.

*Lunch with Julie Shapiro, director of the Third Coast Audio Festival, at the divine Lula Cafe. Julie is like a long lost cousin. We hit it of before we ever met.

*Seeing Justin, my college roommate and friend of 14 years.

*Benefiting from his theater expertise. Justin reviews theater for Chicagoist and is something of a local expert. Chicago being the greatest theater town in America, I try and take in a show when I'm town. Or 4.

This time around, we saw Daredevils, the new show by the Neo-Futurists. The Neo-Futurists are one of the most beloved troupes in town thanks to Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind, a show where they do 30 plays in sixty minutes as selected by the audience who yells out their names of a "Play Menu."

Daredevils is a loony meditation on why men do stupid things in the name of a rush. It's one of the few plays I've seen where the actors ride tricycles up steep ramps and walk barefoot across glass.

Joy good fun and highly recommended. One super entertaining night at the theater.

Also saw Soundtrack City Chicago, a solo show by beatbox artist Yuri Lane, who I had seen perform once in San Francisco. Yuri plays 10 characters, all through sounds created in his throat. Think Eric Bogosian meets Kid Beyond. Each character illustrates something about contemporary Chicago, a city still kinda affordable for artists and freaky people, but gentifying quickly, a city with generations of families in the same neighborhoods but being circles like sharks by developers.

Short, powerful and way entertaining. Unlike anything you've quite seen before. See it post haste.

Chicago-ward

Heading to the Midwest Literary Festival this weekend. Blogging may be light this weekend.

Local Business is not a Teddy Bear:

With Kepler's Books closing last week after 50 years in business and a spirited conversation at Readerville about the role of independent bookselling against the cold truths of capitalism, what it means to survive as an independent retailer in 2005 has been on my mind lately. So I was particularly annoyed when I saw this piece in SFGate about Mod Lang, an institution for record collectors and music geeks based in Berkeley. Mod Lang is an independent music retailer specializing in "European imports and indies, classic and rare re-issues, contemporary U.S. indies, the latest in electronica, and music memorabilia." According to the story, their top selling artists this week are The New Pornographers and The Lovemakers. They have an entire section devoted to 80s vinyl. Gives you an idea how much they care about catering to mass tastes.

That said, Mod Lang must still survive in perhaps the most brutal climate for music retailing in history. Tower Records has already filed for bankruptcy. Record labels are hemorrhaging money for reasons everybody knows. Downloading is not only rampant but painfully easy. The days when you needed to go to the "record store" to get music are long over.

So how does the scrappy Mod Lang stay afloat? The article says nothing. Not a word. Doesn't mention how they pay their bills in one of the most expensive regions in the country, doesn't mention what the store and its owners are doing to adapt, doesn't breathe the word "iPod" at all.

Instead we get how the store began and where it got its name, what cool jobs former employees have and what rock stars shop there. It overlooks how Mod Lang manages to stay in business because, obviously, that's a lot less sexy than the import Richard Hell bought there once.

I'm really tired of this, tired of this cloying, ignorant attitude towards the years of toil independent business people put into operations that are essentially labors of love. Small, local businesses are not teddy bears, not cute collectible baubles that will always be there when we need them. Most hang by the thinnest of threads, in a region, in an era, when they can vanish in an instant and all our loyalty, memories or good intentions don't make a bean's worth of difference. This can happen because they are businesses and this is capitalism and those are the rules. Business people know the rules and do their best to serve their customers, their community and assure themselves and their families some kind of future. They don't exist in a vaccuum of our misty-eyed sympathies.

Their work and their struggle deserves our respect. Writing about Mod Lang and leaving out how it stays open, how it exists it a world that says it shouldn't, is not just poor journalism. It reduces Mod Lang to a curiousity instead of the result of dedicated professionals. Must nuts and bolts always be postmordem like it was in the coverage of Kepler's closing? That's a deminution we who believe in local business can ill afford.

Post-Katrina Laughs:

The first seven minutes of "Everybody Hates Chris" looks pretty damn good.

Last Katrina post of the day:

My friend Sarah points out that these asshats have declared that the citizens of New Orleans brought the wrath of Katrina upon themselves and that some Haliburton related subsidiary has been given the contract (no bid? Is that a question?) to clean up Louisiana's naval bases. I'm going to scream.

Book Passage Benefit:

In related news, right here in Da Bay, Book Passage is holding a benefit for the victims and survivors of Hurricane Katrina. I quote from their blog...

The event is set for this Friday, Sept. 9, at 7:00 pm. The suggested donation is $20 (but the organizers will gladly take more).

As of this writing, Amy Tan, Robert Olen Butler, Elizabeth Dewberry, Paul Loeb, Isabel Allende, Lalita Tademy, Ayelet Waldman, Jane Ganahl, Armistead Maupin, and Susanne Pari are all confirmed participants. More are certain to be added to the list, since Amy says that she will be seeing some other important authors later in the day (It is not easy to say no Amy Tan!). Each author will be asked to read a brief piece about New Orleans, about the disaster, or just about the state of the world. It promises to be a memorable evening.

Book Passage, Corde Madera location. Get your lit on for a good cause.

Jason Speaks it:

My friend Jason just lays it out about New Orleans, race poverty, and several new bankruptcy laws I didn't know about which will make it twice as hard for the citizens of the devastation to get back on their financial feet.

Preach on, man. I can't wait to see what kind of reprocussion this has on the White House. They have a load of explaining to do.

Boys Read?

Fantastic and important Ask Metafilter discussion: What books to get for school-age boys who've caught the reading flu (via Lifehacker).

Book Passage Blog:

Book Passage, one of the Bay Area's (and the nayshuns!) most respected independent bookstores has a new blog going, a "baby blog" if you will. I cribbed the phrase from Written Road, a travel writing blog put together by my friend Jen Leo who is much smarter about such things than I.

Getting Organized, Round XXXIII

Getting Things Done is the closest I've ever come to getting organized and even that is a little to all consuming for me. Yes, I found it gave me piece of mind and time to think. Time to think about what else I should be worrying about getting done.

Let me said that the only reason I've even tried is 43 Folders and To-Done and that's only because I've hung out with their proprietors. Organization for me is a state best achieved by peer pressure.

It is that kind of lemming-like trust in friends and their recommendations that brought me to this organizational system which I'm going to give a shot. Wish me luck. Or look out below because the cliff edge is already over my shoulders.

Katrina: Small Acts of Heroism

Although the small acts of kindness and heroism in the face of Hurricane Katrina are too numerous to count, this week's episode of On The Media brought one to my attention I hadn't considered. The program interviewed New Orleans Times-Picayune editor Jim Amoss who discussed how, emotionally but mostly physically, the paper is still publishing despite its facilities, staff and their families being buried under the flooding. Although the TP couldn't produce a print issue during the first terrible days of the hurricane, it contintued publishing through its web site and via a PDF download. The editorial staff had left New Orleans crammed into a single news van and set up a ersatz office in Baton Rouge. In the meantine, reporters fanned out across the state to bring news of the disaster and its city's attempts at survival back to the citizenry. Most of them reported at great personal sacrifice to themselves, short of food and water, not knowing whether their families were alive or dead. The TP reporter covering the Gulf Coast has not been heard from and is presumed missing.

I know these men and women are just doing their job but with these obstacles, their job and their unwavering belief in their fellow citizens right to know have taken on a heroism I couldn't have imagined in my brief tenure working at a major daily newspaper. Now I can.

Listen to the program (mp3 file).

Judge William Renquist Dies:

Well if this doesn't make things interesting? Eager to see the President "lead" his way out of this one.

"My grandma said to your grandma..."

Where the song "Iko Iko" comes from. Who knew (via Torrez)?

August Wilson Not Well:

August Wilson, one of the shining stars of American dramatics has terminal liver cancer and reportedly, has 3-5 months to live. The two time Pultizer Prize winner has spend the last two decades on a ten play cycle, one for each decade, that chronicles the the African-American experience in the 20th century.

In honor of Wilson, the NY Times reported yesterday that the Virginia Theater will be renamed the August Wilson Theater this fall. It's the first Broadway theater to be named after an African-American. The honor puts wilson in a league with stage icons like Eugene O-Neil, Helen Hayes and George Gershwin.

I've been lucky enough to see several of August Wilson's plays including Two Trains Running (1960s), The Piano Lesson (1930s) and Seven Guitars (1940s). He and his work were a gift to American Theater. They both will be deeply missed.

Update on Kepler's Closing:

The closing of Kepler's Books which I posted about a few days ago, has elicited a NY Times story, as well as a community effort to Save Keplers.

One Sentence Movie Reviews: "Lords of Dogtown"

Lords of Dogtown (2005): "Documentaries do not require fictional remakes."

Bandnews Bad News:

Bandnews.org proports to be a customized news aggregator for info about your favorite band. Which is a great idea except

1) The database of bands is rather skimpy (Couldn't they just license one from the AMG or hire a kid for $8 an hour to type in names?)

2) After creating my list of bands, I tried to create an RSS feed of my list. It didn't work (I'm using NetNewsWire).

What up guys (via Waxy.org)?

Mayor of New Orleans Un-cut:

My friend Julie posted this radio interview with the Mayor of New Orleans C. Ray Nagin. It'll break your heart. Then when you are done weeping, as I just did, read this moronic column by David Brooks, who does everything but say out loud that citizens of New Orleans deserved what they got. Then go punch somebody.

Podcast Palozza!

Our prayers have been answered...a little. NPR has begun offering podcasts of some of it's specialty programming and features including Book and Technology roundups, The World's Geo Quiz and a snippet (grrr) of the web-only music show "All Songs Considered" (which won't let me play whole shows on a Quicktime Player).

It's a start.

CD Hilarity:

I just bought Fooled by April's new album from CD Baby and got this email.

Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with
sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow.

A team of 50 employees inspected your CD and polished it to make sure
it was in the best possible condition before mailing.

Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over
the crowd as he put your CD into the finest gold-lined box that money
can buy.

We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party
marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of
Portland waved 'Bon Voyage!' to your package, on its way to you, in
our private CD Baby jet on this day, Thursday, September 1st.

I hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. We sure did.
Your picture is on our wall as 'Customer of the Year'. We're all
exhausted but can't wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!!

That's friggin hilarious.

Kepler's Closes:

SFGate reports this morning that Kepler's Books, a 50 year-old institution in Menlo Park (south of San Francisco) has closed its doors. I'm battling between sympathy and anger. More soon.

UPDATE: Placed a call to the NCIBA who reported in that Clark Kepler labored long and hard over this decision, not have it dawn on him sometime last night like the SFgate story makes it sound. Best I can surmise, he elected to close down now instead of watching the store bleed to death under high rents, a Silicon Valley audience who probably swears by Amazon and thhe desire to keep paing his employes a living wage. I can't I would have done it this way but I can see the logic to his methods.