What It Is: 11/30/09

What I’m reading: I took last week off so’s I could keep our new dog, Otis B. Driftwood, from getting into trouble. To that end, I spent a lot of time on the loveseat, trying to give affection to both doggies (I didn’t want Rufus to feel like he’s being ignored/replaced). So I had some reading time on my hands.

I read Stephen King’s On Writing this week. One of my author-acquaintances asked me, “Why would you read a book about writing by an author whose writing you’ve never read?” I’d heard the memoir section was good and, even if I have no other experience with his prose, I was curious as to what he’d offer about the practice of writing. So it was illuminating, although I don’t know when I’ll get around to reading his fiction.

I continued to slog through Bill Simmons’ Book of Basketball, which has some good points but is poorly written in a way that the author would likely contend is its strength. He’d be wrong about that; huge swathes of it are just extended columns with overwritten jokes. He once described writing the book out of sequence and eventually figuring out the overall structure for it. After 250 pages, I can see the incoherence but not to emergent order.

And I read Jeff Lemire’s Essex County trilogy. This is a collection of comics by Lemire about a small farm-town in western Ontario, and several families whose lives have intertwined over generations. While his artwork is expressionist, the stories themselves aren’t filled with any formal trickery, outside of extensive use of flashback in the second book (about a guy with Alzheimer’s, so hey). I enjoyed the collection overall. It’s no George Sprott, which continues to subtly blow my mind, but I thought it was a good, solid collection by a young cartoonist.

And I started Walter Kirn’s Up in the Air, after reading the sample chapter on my Kindle. I know I don’t really travel too much for work, but an awful lot of the narrator’s Airworld observations resonated with me. Apparently, the movie is All That. I’m kinda jarred by how so many of the airport scenes are pre-9/11.

What I’m listening to: Not a lot. I didn’t drive much this week, and the dogs & I mainly hung out in the living room, away from my iTunes liberry.

What I’m watching: Chandni Chowk to China, a Bollywood movie about a poor potato-slicer who gets mistaken as the reincarnation of an ancient Chinese warrior and has to go save a small village. I was aghast when our Netflix DVD showed up and the movie turned out to be 2 hours and 30 minutes long (!). But it’s actually pretty darn entertaining (we split it up into two viewings), even if the Indian lead looked like John Turturro’s handsomer brother. We also watched The Third Man, which I’d never seen before. Loved it, and returned the next day to Ron Rosenbaum’s essay on Kim Philby.

And there was Unforgiven, some NFL, and Role Models again, because I’m a mark for Paul Rudd and The State guys.

What I’m drinking: Desert Juniper gin and Q-Tonic.

What Rufus & Otis are up to: Ru is just taking things as they come. He and Otis are getting along fine in the house. Otis, however, is still pretty hyper when we go for walks. He doesn’t bark, but he pulls pretty powerfully when he gets his prey-drive on.

Where I’m going: Nowhere. (Well, maybe a dinner or two in NYC next weekend.)

What I’m happy about: Having a nice Thanksgiving meal at the home of my neighbors across the street.

What I’m sad about: Being too on-the-verge-of-sick to make it to my 20-year reunion in Philadelphia over the weekend. And discovering that our water heater was leaking and needs replacing, an hour before I was supposed to get together with old friends in NYC on Sunday.

What I’m worried about: Not a lot. I mean, I’m a little burned out on my low-level anxiety of trying to train Otis to walk without going after everything he perceives as prey (squirrels, chipmunks, other dogs, deer, crows, etc.). I guess the draining aspect of this is that I have to exert power in a way that I can’t just “explain” to the dog. It’s tough on me, Having to be the Big Boss and pull him along when he starts going into his statue mode. So I guess there’s a worrisome aspect to that: my discomfort at the exercise of force. Boy, this has been one long What It Is post, huh?

What I’m pondering: The eschatological significance of my father’s decision to shave his beard, which he’s been sporting since before I was born.