Month: September 2010

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What It Is: 9/27/10

What I’m reading: The Iliad, more Jaime Hernandez comics, and The Fall of the House of Usher. I didn’t have much time to read this week.

What I’m listening to: Sir Lucious Left Foot, We Are Born, and Boxer

What I’m watching: Local Hero, the last hour of Spike Lee’s new New Orleans documentary, the debut of Boardwalk Empire, and the finale of The Rachel Zoe Project.

What I’m drinking: Dry Fly gin and & Q-Tonic

What Rufus & Otis are up to: Going on a LONG-ass hike (5+ miles) at Wawayanda on Sunday. Here’s the Google map & specs and here are some pix.

Where I’m going: Nowhere! Deal with it!

What I’m happy about: Our Contracting & Outsourcing conference & exhibition was a big success. This year’s edition was less stressful than last year’s, mainly because I wasn’t worried about speakers failing to show up. Last year, one of the FDA’s speakers told me he’d be “honored” to speak at the event in a March e-mail, and failed to return a single call or e-mail from me until 24 hours before his speech. This time, everyone was on board, and both panels I set up — panels are a much dicier proposition than single-speaker presentations — went off well. Between the attendees and the exhibitors, we had somewhere between 700 and 800 people at the hotel; at least half of them stopped me to compliment us for the event while I was trying to get back to my room to rest at the end of the first day. But that’s a lot better than everyone wanting to kill me, so hey. I mean, beyond all my self-deprecating behavior, the reality is that all those people spent money and/or time to come out to our show because they trusted us to deliver a good conference and great opportunities to do business, and I’m proud of what we’ve been able to build over the course of 9 years. (“Us” is my way of saying, “Don’t think this is just me; we have a great team that puts this event together.”)

What I’m sad about:? The minute-to-minute stresses of the event (we’re a pretty small staff) keep me from enjoying much of it. I rarely got to spend more than a few minutes in any of the conference sessions, and I never did get to meet the FDA speaker.

What I’m worried about: Getting the October issue of my magazine together and out the door in the next 5 days. And how I’m going to top this year’s slate of speakers at the 10th anniversary gig next September.

What I’m pondering: Something the rabbi said before Yizkor the previous weekend, about how the fast of Yom Kippur (and the wearing of kittels) is meant to make us like angels. His homily was a little more . . . trite than in previous years, but I was intrigued by the concept of afflicting ourselves to reflect a higher, not-humand state. Also, an old friend who converted to Judaism said her son wants to know why he has to learn Hebrew, and asked me to write her some sorta answer. I wrote an off-the-cuff one, but I’m still thinking of a fuller answer.

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What It Is: 9/20/10

What I’m reading: The Iliad and about 500 pages of Jaime Hernandez’ Locas comics.

What I’m listening to: Not much of anything, sad to say.

What I’m watching: Not much of anything, sad to say.

What I’m drinking: Bluecoat & Q-Tonic

What Rufus & Otis are up to: A Sunday grey-hike, demolishing new squeaky-toys, and not getting used to their new beds.

Where I’m going: New Brunswick, for Contracting & Outsourcing 2010!

What I’m happy about: Getting called up for an aliya during Yom Kippur services and not embarrassing myself. Although I can’t remember if I started the blessing with “barchoo” or “baruch” . . .

What I’m sad about: Not being able to cajole my dad into coming along for any of the high holiday services besides his annual prayer for his departed parents’ souls. Also, that I’ll never dress as well as Brad.

What I’m worried about: Getting most of my October issue together before our conference starts Wednesday night. Gotta transcribe two interviews, start writing another story, and lay out the rest of the articles and columns in the next two-and-a-half days.

What I’m pondering: Whether Jaime Hernandez’ comics had a downturn or “treading water” phase in his career. I’m not in love with the Ti-Girls story he recently did, but I respect it as a working-through of his longtime love for superhero comics. Reading his stuff from 1984-1999, as I did this weekend, I’m inclined to think that he’s been on an upward trajectory pretty much since Love & Rockets debuted in 1981, which means he’s been getting better for nearly 30 consecutive years. The most recent issue, as I mentioned last week, was mind-blowingly good. I was worried that the melodrama qualities of some of the story, with their native emotional hooks, were magnifying the overall intensity of his work, but there was so much more going on in those stories, so much economy in the writing and art, and so much intelligence expected of the reader, that I’m still floored by it.

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Who am I?

I’m the guy who had four magazines waiting in his mailbox when he got home from work today — Monocle, Sports Illustrated, The Paris Review, and Esquire. I’m the guy who looked at the cover of the latter, muttered, “Lousy better-looking-than-everyone Javier Bardem,” then noticed the words, “PHILIP ROTH PG. 146,” and smiled.

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I’ll have the Bordeaux

Two years ago, I wrote about Montaigne’s library tower, which he describes in one of my favorite essays, Of Three Kinds of Association. I keep a vision of that room in mind anytime I think about knocking down our house and rebuilding, although I’m pretty sure local zoning laws won’t permit a tower like the one in Bordeaux. The place has been a sort of Library of Babel to me, the non-existent room that holds everything I can’t wait to read.

Imagine my surprise when I found out the tower is still standing and open to tours! Looks like I know where my next overseas vacation will be! (It’ll likely be a better trip than the one I wanted to take to the isle of Jura to see Orwell’s last home.)

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You, Sir, Are Badass: Ajax Cleans Up edition

This edition of hardcore badassery comes from Book 13 of The Iliad. Pushed back to their boats by the Trojans and their leader, Hektor, the despairing Achaians are inspired by the god Poseidon to stave off the attack. An exchange of spear-thrusts has left Amphimachos (an Achaian) and Imbrios (a Trojan) dead. Each side tries to claim the fallen bodies during the combat. The Aiantes (two Achaian champions both named Aias/Ajax) snatch the Trojan body away and . . . oh, why don’t I let Homer tell it (translated by Richmond Lattimore)?

But the two Aiantes in the fury of their fierce war strength,
as two lions catch up a goat from the guard of the rip-fanged
hounds, and carry it in to the density of the underbrush,
holding it high from the ground in the crook of their jaws, so the lordly
two Aiantes lifted Imbrios high and stripped him
of his armour, and the son of Oïleus [the larger Aias], in anger
for Amphimachos, hewed away Imbrios’ head from the soft neck
and threw it spinning like a ball through the throng of fighters
until it came to rest in the dust at the feet of Hektor.

Sure, the gods would later drive Aias batshit-crazy and lead him to suicide, but sawing the head off a Trojan and throwing it like a bowling ball at the enemy general? B-A-D-A-S-S.

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What I Love and What I Don’t Like

I had a sort of crappy end-of-day at work. I tend to internalize my frustration and play out phantom conversations endlessly. This tendency gets exacerbated by the fact that I don’t talk to friends very much. I drive home from work, IM with my wife for a few minutes to find out how she’s doing and see when she expects to get home from work, then take the dogs for a walk usually about half an hour or so.

Rufus & Otis are great, but their conversation skills are lacking, so I tend to keep talking silently to myself and letting these frustrations fester. The weather’s so lovely this evening that I it would sooth my soul, but I kept slipping back into little tirades. I should’ve called one of my old pals, but it’s just not in my nature anymore. Don’t know when that changed.

got in and fed them, checked work e-mail and some other work-related stuff, which only fuels my nonsense. Then I decided to go downstairs to my library sprawl out on the couch, and read the new issue of Love & Rockets. And that’s when I got out of myself. Jaime Hernandez’ stories in the new book flat-out transported me. The moment young Perla saw the girl-mechanic on the parade float, I had a grin from ear to ear. My heart was broken after the story of her brother. I lost myself in his amazing storytelling, and I’m thankful for that.

Love and Rockets: New Stories #3 by The Hernandez Brothers - Jaime detail
(I also may be the last reader of theirs to realize that Beto Hernandez is this generation’s Russ Meyer.)

In other news, Barking, a new Underworld record, came out yesterday. I love a lot of their music, but I’m just befuddled by this new stuff. I gather they used outside producers for the first time, and the result is really . . . pedestrian. Which is a funny term to apply to dance music, but there it is. It’s almost like reading a serial comic book with a new creative team that fails to Get It.

To me, Underworld’s best music is like having drug-crazed nanobots devouring the language and motion sections of your brain, so that words don’t really make sense and you’re possessed with an urge to dance/thrash. This new record, on the other hand, has a lot of shimmery keys, banal disco beats and sensical lyrics.

Worst of all, the decision was made to have Karl Hyde sing, despite the fact that he doesn’t have much of a singing voice. Oh, and there’s a ballad. Except it’s not absurd/surreal, like Good Morning Cockerel, a song from their previous album, Oblivion With Bells, about which I’m rather ambivalent. I’ll give this one another try or two, but it’s a very disappointing record.

So that’s a little of what’s going on. I also spend a lot of time thinking about Achilles and Odysseus in The Iliad.

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What It Is: 9/13/10

What I’m reading: The Iliad

What I’m listening to: Early Springsteen, in honor of late summer.

What I’m watching: The last few episodes of the first season of Louie, along with bits and pieces of A Serious Man, Go and A Life Less Ordinary. Also, I caught The American at a matinee after the shofar services on Thursday.

What I’m drinking: Bluecoat and Q-Tonic

What Rufus & Otis are up to: Going on their first grey-hike in a few weeks, getting accustomed to new beds, and just enjoying the cooler weather.

Where I’m going: Nowhere in particular.

What I’m happy about: The new year.

What I’m sad about: This growing feeling that I just can’t keep up with The World At Large, and that I’d be better served cutting off all those RSS feeds and Facebook views and Twitter updates.

What I’m worried about: My lack of worry over this year’s conference. Last year was really debilitating, in large part because one of my key speakers went into radio silence mode for a full six months, until one day prior to the conference. No such hassles this year, and all the other aspects seem to be running smoothly.

What I’m pondering: Fate and destiny, through the lens of Achilles’ rejection of the envoy in book 9 of the Iliad. Also, whether I’ll have a heart attack if I try P90X.