Category: literature

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I Live in a Suitcase

Well, them’s the best-laid plans. I decided not to spend $200 just to get into the Magic game (I could’ve gone with a cheaper seat, but it would’ve been pretty high up in the O-rena), and the conference people called to say that they couldn’t sneak me into the Pleasure Island get-together, meaning I’d have to pony up the $120 fee to explore . . . Pleasure Island! (I make a dramatic pause whenever I say the name.)

Deciding drunkenness is the better part of valor, I elected to hit Shula’s for dinner, knock back a couple of Hendrick’s & tonics with my 20-oz. Kansas City strip, and head back to the room for some awkwardly confessional writing. Because I’m all about customer satisfaction.

Which brings us to my hotel room, where I’m sitting in my underwear (black socks, natch) and listening to I Live in a Suitcase, by Thomas Dolby. It came from his fourth album, which is terrible, but I’ve gained an affinity for this song, which is about getting stuck in Los Angeles. Funnily enough, it’s just about the only major city I haven’t been to for a conference or trade show.

It’s also the city I think is least likely to offer itself up over the course of a 3- or 4-day trip. I’ve always had this impression that LA is much more a state-of-mind city than just about any other in America, that it reveals itself over the course of day-to-day life, but not to the tourist. This probably stems from being as spread out as it is, and as devoted to its key industry (entertainment, of course) as it is.

And it probably stems from my mythologizing of it, but I’m really not trying to romanticize Hollywood by any means. It’s just that almost every other city puts me in mind of a particular set of landmarks, of lifestyles, of business, of history, and I find myself drawing a blank over LA. I don’t think “Chinatown” should stands in for the city. Maybe I’ll make an extended trip there someday, but I doubt it’ll happen. If any of you have some commentary/meta-thoughts on LA to share, comment away!

But we’re in Orlando (or, more precisely, Lake Buena Vista, FL): Living in a suitcase also puts me back in the world of USA Today, as I mentioned during last week’s travels.

Over breakfast this morning, I discovered that avian flu is a subject for the Life section, not News. It seems that Indonesia isn’t doing so well treating it because “Decentralized power weakens grip on outbreak.” If only that junta were still running things.

On the plus side, it appears that coffee helps against Alzheimer’s disease, and just about everything else. Is nothing beyond the reach of coffee achievers?

The lead News story is about how Fresno is the most insanely hard-ass city on drunk drivers in America:

Police sneak into the driveways of convicted drunk drivers to plant Global Positioning System tracking devices on their cars and search their homes for evidence they’ve been drinking.

The “problem,” it seems, is that drunk driving fatalities have leveled off since the mid-1990s, after dropping annually for nearly 20 years prior to that. Rather than credit the reduction in deaths to improved vehicle safety and greater awareness about drunk driving, the article implies that it’s only police & the courts that can reduce the number of deaths. Hence, bugging the cars of convicted drunk drivers.

I also discovered that the Second Amendment doesn’t seem to pertain if you’re drunk:

One officer observes a man walking unsteadily as he leaves the bar. When he gets in his SUV and starts to drive off, other officers swoop down on him. The officers find a loaded Glock handgun in the center console. The man’s friend, who owns the SUV, walks over to show the police his concealed weapons permit. But he has been drinking, too, and the permit is void if he’s intoxicated. They arrest him, too.

In the Money section, we learn the valuable art of spin with the lead story Prius finally available without a wait. In addition to increased production, it turns out that reduced demand is a factor.

The Sports section told me that Ricky Williams is some sorta zen master:

When it comes to the search for elevated self-awareness and a higher plane of existence, Ricky Williams may be the [most] introspective athlete of all time. He is a vegetarian, a yogi, a vertiable Buddhist philosopher in shoulder pads. Unfortunately for the enigmatic running back, pro football does not place a premium on the quest for eternal truth and personal fulfillment.

Also, he really likes weed.

And I found out that Doogie Howser, M.D. is gay. All this over breakfast!

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By lunch, I learned that there’s a staging of The Winter’s Tale that you might be interested in seeing, if you’re around NYC the next few weekends. It’s being directed by a guy who used to be my closest friend, but he’s been a douchebag to me for three-plus years now, so I figure I’ll skip out on this performance.

I do find it pretty funny that he can’t return a phone call or e-mail to me since 2003, but is quite content to send group e-mails asking for people to come out and see and/or promote his show. We’ve got different ideas of friendship, is what it boils down to.

Speaking of which, a bunch of my high school friends (Pennsylvania edition) have invited me to a mini-reunion next week down in Philadelphia, so I may come back with some entertaining anecdotes or photographs by Sunday. It’s one of those things where I realize how close so many of these friends have stayed in the 17 years since we graduated high school, and how close they stayed to me even though I only attended school for one year down there. Different ideas of friendship.

That said, I’m at a point in my life where I really don’t want to crash on someone’s sofa or air-mattress, so I’m trying to find an inexpensive hotel (sans bugs) that I can stay in Saturday night. I’m gonna get back to that right now, since I’ve given up on trying to figure out why my buddy Chip likes that Nightwood so darn much. It’s baroque; fix it.

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Reporting from Mauschwitz

Got into Orlando safe and sound. I didn’t think about the fact that a flight here on a Sunday morning would be filled with screaming kids traveling to Disney World. The stewardess didn’t even ask me to turn off my iPod for takeoff.

I took Nightwood with me. It’s the favorite book of one of the authors I used to publish. I read about 20 pages of it once before, but the floridity of the prose tired me out. So I figured I’d make it the only book I have with me, like I did with Foucault’s Pendulum a couple of summers ago.

Of course, I took a break to do the crossword puzzle in the Continental in-flight magazine, but that only took about 20 minutes.

Anyway, the conference/exhibition starts in a few minutes, and I’ve got ironing to do. This place sure is, um, pleasant.

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Unrequired Reading: Nov. 3, 2006

Official VM buddy Tom Spurgeon & his brother Whit sacrifice themselves to The Guiding Light in order to chronicle the soap opera’s tie-in episode with Marvel Comics.

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Two tax articles from Slate: the continuing phenomenon of Bushenfreude — those who benefit from the Republican tax cuts but contribute to Democrat politicians, and Bono/U2’s decision to reduce its tax burden by moving its music publishing company out of Ireland:

“Preventing the poorest of the poor from selling their products while we sing the virtues of the free market … that’s a justice issue,” Bono said at a prayer breakfast attended by President Bush, Jordan’s King Abdullah, and various members of Congress earlier this year. Preaching this sort of thing has made Bono a perennial candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize. He continued:

Holding children to ransom for the debts of their grandparents . . . that’s a justice issue. Withholding life-saving medicines out of deference to the Office of Patents . . . that’s a justice issue.

And relocating your business offshore in order to avoid paying taxes to the Republic of Ireland, where poverty is higher than in almost any other developed nation?

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Dan Drezner examines the importance of China in negotiations with North Korea. I believe I’ve said it before: When you manage to get the U.S., Russia, China and Japan on the same page against you, you have severely messed up.

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BLDGBLOG remains one of the most eerie/haunting sites out there. This post about offshore oil rigs proves my point.

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When we gaze into the Barack, does the Barack gaze back at us?

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In honor of the premiere of Borat, the UK press has been doing interest stories from Kazakhstan.

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Reason on misreading the Beats.

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I know enough small publicly-held company execs who would agree with this post: SOX sucks.

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It’s Ron-Ron’s world.

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And in honor of the NBA season kick-off (as it were): Kieran Darcy gives up on the Knicks, about 10 years after I did.

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Unrequired Reading: Oct. 20, 2006

Sorry for the lack of posts this week, dear readers. I’ve been kinda busy in the evenings, and a little outta sorts in the mornings. Fortunately, I’m still up for some Unrequired Reading if you are!

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When the official VM wife became the official VM fiancee, we had to go out ring-shopping. (Since I proposed a little sooner than I had planned, I didn’t actually have a ring for her.) She researched a bunch, and decided that the diamond trade was just too venal for us to get involved with it as a symbol of our love. So we went for a gorgeous aquamarine instead.

Here’s a piece (plus slide show) about shopping for the guilt-free diamond.

(Note that I’ve resisted making any comments about using the term ‘conflict-free’ as it relates to engagement rings.)

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Congrats to the state of Oregon, for upholding a law restricting asset forfeitures. I never really understood how cops were able to seize and sell a person’s assets even if the person isn’t convicted of a crime.

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I admit to letting the Darfur slaughter fall off the VM radar since I first wrote about it in May 2004. This is mainly because I believe the western world has failed to stop the Sudanese government and militia from killing the civilians and rebels in Darfur. By failed, I mean it’s gone past the point of no return. To make up for my lack of coverage, here’s an interview with Paul Salopek, the journalist who was imprisoned in Khartoum for a month on trumped-up charges:

FOREIGN POLICY: What is the biggest misconception about the crisis in Darfur as reported in the Western media?

Paul Salopek: Well, I think it’s been oversimplified as this Manichean struggle between ethnic Arab herders who are armed by Khartoum, and these helpless African farmers who are struggling for their rights in this very desolate, Western region of the Sudan. I think that has a fundamental truth to it, and that has been historically a problem that goes back for generations, if not centuries. But I think that perception has to be overlaid with much more complicated tribal rivalries that are then manipulated at the national level in Sudan. Even internationally, there’s a layer of interests that are tugging and pulling at that area of Sudan.

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Holy crap! Discs of Tron was on the Atari 2600?

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Playing it safe with the design for the NYTimes’ new HQ.

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If you have a Wall Street Journal account, you really oughtta read this article about how Holt & Co. blew more than a million bucks trying to engineer the next Da Vinci Code.

Historical thrillers in particular are hot. One theory says readers are seeking a certainty in these books that since the end of the Cold War they’re having trouble finding elsewhere.

“We’re seeing a return to the past because everything was in its place, and people were recognizably polarized in a way that gives us comfort,” says literary agent Richard Curtis. “In the post 9/11 world, we aren’t clear about our enemies. Is the military officer in an Iraqi uniform a friend, or is he a terrorist posing as one? We need to know who to root for and historical fiction provides us with that.”

So Holt went after a novel starring Freud & Jung. No, seriously. (In what may be a first, it looks like Amazon is actually charging more than a bricks & mortar store, since I saw this book with a 50% off sticker in Borders on Wednesday.)

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The new issue of Men’s Vogue (sue me) has an excerpt from the autobiography of art critic Robert Hughes, Things I Didn’t Know. It centers on Hughes’ awful car wreck in 1999 and the legal problems he had after. He was raked by the “meejah” for being an elitist expat.

For of course I am completely an elitist in the cultural but emphatically not the social sense. I prefer the good to the bad, the articulate to the mumbling, the aesthetically developed to the merely primitive, and ufll to partial consciousness. I love the spectacle of skill, whether it’s an expert gardener at work or a good carpenter chopping dovetails or someone trying a Bimini hitch that won’t slip. I don’t think stupid or ill-read people are as good to be iwth as wise and fully literate ones. I would rather watch a great tennis player than a mediocre one, unles the latter is a friend or relative. Consequently, most of the human race doesn’t matter much to me, outside the normal and necessary frame of courtesy and the obligation to respect human rights. I see no reason to squirm arond apologizing for this. I am, after all, a cultural critic, and my main job is to distinguish the good from the second-rate, pretentious, sentimental and boring stuff that saturates culture today, more (perhaps) than it ever has.

Here’s a review of the book in the Telegraph.

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Why is NYC losing financial jobs? Relocation, relocation, relocation.

The city and state bear some responsibility for the space shortage. A nearly ten-year effort to rezone Manhattan’s Far West Side for commercial development wound up getting bogged down in Mayor Bloomberg’s plans to build a stadium there and lure the Olympics to New York. Potential construction of office towers in the area is thus still years away. The city has now missed two real-estate expansions, going back to the late 1990s, in trying to rezone the Far West Side.

Meanwhile, state and city officials haggled for years over the plan to redevelop Ground Zero, with some observers, including Mayor Bloomberg, pessimistically calling for a reduction in the office space planned for the site, assuming that it would be unneeded. As a result of the delays, only one building, 7 World Trade, is nearing completion — developer Larry Silverstein could rebuild it quickly because it wasn’t part of the site that the government controlled. Other Ground Zero towers won’t be ready for years.

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VM bleg: Anybody know a gin snob who can tell me if Cadenhead’s Old Raj Gin is worth the $44 for a 750ml bottle they want at Wine Library?

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The official VM wife sends word that Cameron Diaz looks like crap.

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Whatcha really get’s a box of Newports and Puma sweats (damn!)

(I just felt like making a 3rd Bass ref; sue me)

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We should go to the Chihuly exhibit at the New York Botanical Gardens next Thursday night! Who’s with me?

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Congratulations to the Cardinals for pulling the upset on the Mets, earning the right to walk into a buzzsaw.

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This week’s non-web reading: Chronicles Vol. 1, by Bob Dylan. The first chapter, covering the period he first arrived in New York, is fantastic. The chapter discussing losing his mojo in the late ’80s, and rediscovering it while playing with the Grateful Dead? Not so much.

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More congrats!

First, Official VM just-about-closest-friend-in-the-world Ian gets his chief petty officer pin, and now he goes off and pops the question to his One True Love! Much congratulations are in order! Go, Ian!

In additional friends-of-VM news, my buddy Faiz reveals the true reason he couldn’t meet up with me & Amy in Paris: he and his wife are expecting their first kid! (And Paris is evidently inimical to developing life!) Also, I’ve been insanely remiss in not mentioning Faiz’s first children’s book, My Alien Penfriend! Go, Faiz!

That’s the extent of the super-wonderful news. In not-so-wonderful news, it looks like I’ve got an upper respiratory infection, so I’ve got some antibiotics working on that. Go, azithromycin!

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Unrequired Reading: Oct. 13, 2006

It’s the Friday the 13th edition of Unrequired Reading, dear readers!

Maxon Crumb’s not a hockey-mask-wearing serial killer, but he did come off as a weird bird in the great documentary about his brother, Robert Crumb. Here’s a good profile about him in the San Francisco Chronicle.

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Gunter Grass is actually creepier than Max Crumb. Still, he wasn’t a serial killer for the SS during World War II. Sez Tim Cavanaugh:

It’s not so much Grass’ hypocrisy as his self-satisfaction. In what fucked-up parallel universe is it considered persuasive to argue, at this late date, that postwar attacks on the West German establishment (and frequently more-than-tacit support for the East German terror state) in any way obviate, or mitigate, or do anything else but compound the error of supporting the Nazis during the war? Why is it the default assumption that Grass’ anti-capitalism was a rejection of National Socialism rather than a continuation of it? (I actually think it may be neither, but among Germans who are irate at Grass over the lifelong SS coverup there seems to some sense that he’s let down his core principles, so it’s worth asking what those core principles are.)

Enjoy.

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There was creepiness aplenty in HP Lovecraft’s stories. In NYROB, Luc Sante writes about the new Library of America edition of Lovecraft’s work, and Houellebecq’s book about the demented writer of Rhode Island (I visited Lovecraft’s grave once, which evidently is going to grant me invulnerability to harm from nerds):

That the work of H.P. Lovecraft has been selected for the Library of America would have surprised Edmund Wilson, whose idea the Library was. In a 1945 review he dismissed Lovecraft’s stories as “hackwork,” with a sneer at the magazines for which they were written, Weird Tales and Amazing Stories, “where. . .they ought to have been left.” Lovecraft had been dead for eight years by then, and although his memory was kept alive by a cult — there is no other word — that established a publishing house for the express purpose of collecting his work, his reputation was strictly marginal and did not seem likely to expand.

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Beck creeps some people out, but his Sea Change album helped me through some heartbreak a few years ago. Here’s an interview about his new record, work habits, and religion.

And here’s a piece about the unique packaging for that new record.

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Must be Friday the 13th if Gadaffi is making sense. It’s pretty much an article of faith in modern times that countries with great natural resources will fail to develop human capital on a par with countries that have little by way of natural resources. Or, as Kyle Baker put it, “If you can get an A without trying, why work for an A+?”

Give that man a laptop!

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A while back, I explained why I love Vegas: it’s like an alien theme park of planet Earth. Here’s a piece about architecture, engineering and culture in Sin City.

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Vegas is no Transgondwanan Supermountain.

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Congrats to Orhan Pamuk for winning that Nobel literature prize. I’ve got a couple of his books somewhere in the library downstairs, but I won’t even pretend I’m going to break one out in honor of his honor.

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On the other hand, I oughtta get around to reading Bernard-Henri Levy somedarntime. This profile’s got some neat passages, including:

So why has France been quite so vitriolic about America? “France and Germany,” he corrects in fluent English. “It has nothing to do with what America does and was long before Iraq. It is about the idea of America, Rousseau’s social contract, where you decide to join a society. Its people have no roots, no memory. This is seen as an insult to what a real community should be, which is about blood and the soil.”

and

So what browns him off about Blighty? “We, you and France, are the two most snobbish countries on earth — full of invisible keys to invisible doors.” Isn’t America just as excluding, but on grounds of materialism? “Not true,” he insists. “Wealth has to be earned. There is still a very puritanical view of wealth. Without philanthropy it is not respected. Money might be god, but it is a guilty god.”

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Rounding out this week’s Unrequired Reading: an obscure reference from the Simpsons!

Chief Wiggum: “All of our founding fathers, astronauts, and World Series heroes have been either drunk or on cocaine.”

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F-books

“The market for downloadable books will grow by 400 percent in each of the next two years, to over $25 billion by 2008,” predicted the keynote speaker at the 2001 Women’s National Book Association meeting. “Within a few years after the end of this decade, e-books will be the preponderant delivery format for book content.”

This NYTimes lede serves double duty: it sets up a review of Sony’s new e-book and provides more proof that women should never talk about technology.

(Sorry, Carly)

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Unrequired Reading

I promised some Unrequired Reading for a Friday morning, so here it is:

Jane Galt has a sad post about the economic destruction of Zimbabwae. There are some “interesting” comments after the post.

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Via Bookslut, a collection of covers from old Penguin and Pelican books.

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Ten YEARS of South Park?! Man, I’m getting old.

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It’s Ramadan. Don’t be a jerk.

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What’s organic?

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Mark Cuban talks balls.

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Ron Rosenbaum on William Kennedy, Hunter Thompson and the America’s Cup.

Bonus: Ron on the Dunkin Donuts Coffee Roll.