« October 2004 | Main | December 2004 »
November 17, 2004
The United States of Leland, 11/12/04
Ok, so maybe, just maybe I'm doing some other things besides writing a novel. LOL.
This is one of those movies that's striving to be meaningful, but just ends up messy. A teenage boy who seems weirdly disconnected from his world is arrested for killing a handicapped kid. The movie shows us why he did it while his teacher in prison whose also a writer tries to find out why he did it. It turns out that his father is a famous novelist.
So why didn't I like it? Well, the subplot with the famous writer father amounts to very little. His dad buys the kid plane tickets to go visit the world. His mom thinks he's with his dad. Dad has him visiting all of these places without any adult supervision. The kid ends up sleeping with some divorced woman. We're asked to believe that her endless sadness is somehow the cause for this psychic disconnect because he's so sensitive. His girlfriend back at home breaks up with him and then he murders her handicapped brother. Mostly, the plot asks us to accept a lot without much care for logic or characterization. There's all of these scenes with people explaining what the movie "means". They all seem to be moralizing rather lazily about everything, but no one seems to be doing much anything. People lose the loves of their lives in this movie which causes the adolescent boys to behave in irrational murderous ways. I don't quite get it. I suspect the script must have interested the players, but it just seems heavy-handed and awkward.
No, don't see this one. Not even Don Cheadle, Chris Stein and Ryan Gosling can save this jerry-built plot. Too bad. I'd think about sleeping with all of them.
Posted by deaconmf at 11:28 AM | Comments (1)
"'I think I'm going to be sick,' said Nina." Vile Bodies, Evelyn Waugh, 11/13/04
There's some novels that are about the deliberate slow burn of details and intricate plotting, like "Jonathan Strange". Then there's this book which seems to be about speed. The characters are not so much drawn as driven from one plot point to another. Conversations seem overheard and no one really seems to be expounding on anything particularly significant. The cast of improbably named characters whizz by in a mad rush and no one seems to connect with anyone fully and no topic, money, marriage or death seems to cause anyone the slightest bit of difficulty. An engagement gets broken in a conversation that lasts about 50 words, yet the disengaged end up sleeping together a few pages later. Money seems to be a huge problem for those who don't have it and so much piety seems to go flying out the window. Maybe everybody gets nauseous from moving around so much. It's not a great novel, but it is a funny one.
Posted by deaconmf at 11:16 AM | Comments (0)
November 12, 2004
Writing and Whining
Yup. It's NaNoWriMo again, so I'm again trying to write a novel in a month. So, this means I don't get to do much for the month of November. I miss live music. I miss the bar scene. Hell, I even miss the sun and wind. Sigh.
Anyhow, the book is going pretty badly. I keep hitting plots that don't fit the characters well, so I've taken up dropping the narrative at those points and going back to a part of the plot I do like. So far, the abandoned plots include:
A San Francisco earthquake (The Big One!)
Cancer
Extended stay in a mental hospital
Gas explosion
Baby
I alternately feel like I'm writing bad soap opera or bad Hollywood script. I figure the main thing is to keep writing, but bad writing is still bad writing. Maybe I'll have something I like when this is done, who knows?
Thanks for reading the blog while I'm noveling, but don't expect much in the way of new entries.
Posted by deaconmf at 08:33 AM | Comments (1)
November 05, 2004
Brian Wilson Smiles, Davies Symphony Hall, 11/4/04
Some works of art sound impossible by their description. Take Calder sculptures. I'm sure the description of a mobile seemed ridiculous when they first appeared. That Billy Bragg/Wilco record of Woody Guthrie lyrics seemed like it would never work either. Then I heard about Brian Wilson's plan to complete Smile 30+ years later. This sounded like folly. He couldn't make it work the first time. How could it work with his sound and attitude after all those years of mental illness and age?
Well, goddamn, I was wrong. So wrong. The performance at Davies gave me the opportunity to think about it too. Brian sat there for the most part without playing his keyboard. The concert started off with the band mostly standing around harmonizing to old Beach Boys tunes. Come to think of it, saying that was pretty redundant. LOL. They did sound amazing. "Sloop John B" still sounds like the saddest way of saying "I want to go home." Then they played their instruments, including Paul McCartney's favorite tune, "God Only Knows". It's still the one song that sounds like a middle aged man could sing it without being embarassed. I've been going to shows in cheap venues for so long that I forgot you could see a band and actually hear every instrument at once. I guess you do get what you pay for.
Miss C and I walked around a bit during the intermission. She overheard some old woman saying "So the Beach Boys simply performed the work of this composer..." That one wins for the most ridiculous thing anyone's said about pop music in awhile.
After the intermission, they did "Smile" in its entirety. It begins with "Our Prayer" and ends with "Good Vibrations". A lot of other Beach Boys material gets reworked. Some of the lyrics and arrangements to very famous tunes gets altered as well. Brian's voice is nowhere near what it once was.
And it all doesn't matter. Smile is playful, optimistic and whimsical without seeming awkward, unthinking or Pollyanna-ish. Brian's vocal limitations help make Smile sound like a graceful acknowledgement of the limitations of this project. The album itself is constructed from smaller parts that often repeat themselves and lend an otherwise patchy work needed cohesion. For example, the voices that start off the album in "Our Prayer" repeat themselves at the beginning of "Good Vibrations". I finally understood that "Good Vibrations" is his version of gospel music.
The band later returned for an encore. They mentioned that they've been doing this since January and they sound great playing these old tunes. Where I'm from, you can't get away from these songs, but it took this performance to remind me why I need to hear them again.
Posted by deaconmf at 10:15 AM | Comments (4)
November 03, 2004
Now in the Lower Haight, 10/30/04
After a good month of bitching, hemming, hawing and packing, I'm finally there. I forgot a couple of things at the old place and I'll miss Jasper (the world's biggest cat) and little Travis (the cat who thinks he's a dog). But I'm moved and much happier. Except for the shower which seems to run in two temperatures, scalding and freezing. Morning stressors up my already high blood pressure. LOL.
Thanks to my friends for putting up with me during this time. Special thanks to Roger for giving me some much needed boxes.
Posted by deaconmf at 10:05 AM | Comments (0)
The Future, 11/3/04
It's the next morning. The sun isn't up yet. The bodies haven't been counted and yet I know we've lost. All I hear is Leonard Cohen intoning
Destroy another fetus now
We don't like children anyhow
I've seen the future, baby:
it is murder.
Welcome to another America, the one that isn't mine anymore.
Posted by deaconmf at 06:07 AM | Comments (0)
November 01, 2004
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke, 10/30/04
So you've got these two characters. One is a semi-reclusive, egotistic, yet insecure magician determined on bringing magic back to England as well as useful to his government. He owns every book on magic in England and fancies himself the best . The other is charismatic, married, tall, but not handsome. He seems to be somewhat of a magical prodigy. They're destined to work against each other.
That's the set-up in this strange cross between Dickens, historical and fantasy novels. It's so much fun that it's one of the few novels I really did wish it didn't end. It begins with singing saint statues in York and ends with these two sorcerors coming to terms with the circumstances of the rebirth of English magic. Along the way, the two of them deal with the Napoleonic Wars and the insanity of King George III. Footnotes make it seem researched and, better yet, allow Susanna Clarke to add in stories that don't quite fit into the rest of the novel. And she's got a million very inventive ideas about how magic and eccentric characters work. It's not a very deep novel, but it is quite satisfying, partly because the decision characters make in this novel are never entirely escaped. But it's a perfect escape for the rest of us.
Posted by deaconmf at 12:17 PM | Comments (0)
Smashing Pumpkins at the Haunted Barn, 10/29/04
Thanks Roddy for taking me!
We went all the way out to Hunters Point to see this haunted house and it was a great time. The first thing we saw there was tent revival meeting for Satan. Too bad it was too hard to hear because they were so soft. The last thing we did there was to go through the haunted house itself where we got to see creepy displays (including art by some guy who "works completely in the medium of squirrel"), watch a guy put his head under a guillotine and Joan of Arc get burned at the stake. The best thing was the giant Rube Goldberg mouse trap. They used all these things from the game, like the crank at the beginning, the descending stair/ramp (they used a bowling ball), the bathtub and a safe. What was the safe for? To pound the pumpkin and the giant Red Bull can flat, of course. No mice were harmed during this demonstration. The scariest thing was the bus ride back from Hunters Point with all those riders. Halloweens can still be scary if you know where to hang out.
Posted by deaconmf at 11:55 AM | Comments (0)
Curse Broken Under a Lunar Eclipse, 10/27/04
There was something about last night. Moon slowly turning red then brown and back again. Red Sox winning the World Series. It's like possibilities are multiplying again. A couple of random thoughts came to mind.
1) Now we know how long a curse lasts. In earlier times, most people didn't make it to their 86th year, so curses looked eternal. (Am I counting right?)
2) I have a good friend whose a die-hard Sox fan whose is father was born the last time the Red Sox won the series. He kept screaming that the victory was for his dad, Big Andy, and I kept thinking he was less happy and more relieved than anything else. Hard-suffering doesn't begin to describe what Bostonians have dealt with for almost a century.
Congratulations to Andy and all those other Sox fans out there.
Posted by deaconmf at 11:44 AM | Comments (0)