This is totally sick, and utterly hilarious: How Superman II should have ended. This will appeal to those who never liked how Superman is able to erase Lois Lane’s memory by somehow “magically” kissing her.
Page One: Macbeth
I’d love to be able to say that I loved Shakespeare right from the first time I read him, but I can’t. Sorry, but I was a typical ninth-grade kid, and I thought that Shakespeare sucked. Despite my teacher’s desperate attempts to force us to see the beauty in Shakespeare’s poetry and drama, I saw none of it. All I saw was a guy who used twenty words when six would do, a guy who insisted on repeatedly stopping the action so someone could stop and babble at the audience, and a guy whose stage directions consisted of things like “They fight” and “Exeunt”. Yeah, I hated the experience of reading Shakespeare.
In ninth grade, the play was Romeo and Juliet. Hated it. (At the time.) In tenth grade, our Shakespeare of the Year was Julius Caesar, which was, I had to grant, a bit more interesting than Romeo, because it had nifty political stuff and brutal murders and whatnot. And then, in eleventh grade, there was Macbeth. I suppose the third time was the charm, because this time, I thought, Wow, this is pretty awesome.
It wasn’t just the fantastic elements of the story, although yes, that did help. But I think that by this point, I was getting to the point as a reader where I could understand a lot more readily what Shakespeare was doing. I didn’t have to have the teacher explain just what Lady Macbeth was doing when she said “Out, damned spot! Out, I say!” I didn’t have to have it explained to me what Macbeth’s “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” speech. I thrilled to the way the witches’ prophecies were fulfilled. I did have to have some stuff explained, but a lot of it was falling into place.
The next year we would read Hamlet and The Tempest. I’ve read more since then. Not all of it, but…someday.
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A Very Public Service Message
At some point in the last week or two, Blogger has decided to change things so that by default, images on Blogger blogs open in a “lightbox” thingie when you click them, as opposed to just opening the way they used to. If you, like me, dislike the “lightbox”, you can get rid of it thusly, if you are using the newest version of Blogger:
1. Log into Blogger, and go to your blog’s main Blogger page.
2. Look at the options over on the left. Click “Settings”.
3. In the “Settings” menu, click “Posts and Comments”.
4. In the first section of the resulting menu, there’s an option for opening images in the “Lightbox”. Uncheck that box, and presto! Your images open the way they used to.
And now, having done that, pour yourself a glass of your preferred sparkling beverage and enjoy the show!
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Unfictional Bookage
Time to briefly talk up some nonfiction I’ve read recently:
:: Lots of times, people try to reduce the world to two kinds of people. One such method, common to people in my age group, reduces the world to people who either like David Lee Roth as lead singer of Van Halen, and those who prefer Sammy Hagar. (Reasonably enough, no one ever admits the possibility of a third group, those who might prefer Gary Cherrone. Because there weren’t any.)
However, I refuse to be pigeonholed in my Van Halen allegiance. I always liked both equally. I became aware of Van Halen in the days following the 1984 album, and I liked them almost immediately (seriously, how anyone could dislike “Hot For Teacher” after seeing that video is beyond me), but I didn’t really start getting into their music until after 5150 came out, which was Sammy Hagar’s first appearance with them. Maybe it’s one of those “Your favorite James Bond is the first one you saw” kind of things, but I’ve just never felt more strongly about the DLR era or the Sammy era, one way or the other. The DLR years probably produced the harder rock music, marked by blazing guitar work and blistering drums and DLR’s constant tongue-in-cheek front-manning, but the Sammy years produced more refined music-making, with the band trying a lot of new things and producing some of the most deeply infectious songs of the band’s run.
Anyway, I recently read two books dealing with Van Halen. First was Sammy Hagar’s own autobiography, Red: My Uncensored Life in Rock. Hagar writes a pretty engaging book, as fast-paced as the life he has apparently led. Hagar doesn’t really pull punches when he describes the lifestyle he led for many years; he writes matter-of-factly about things like his own sexual escapades, his casual drug use, and the many excesses of his life as a rock musician.
Of course, the parts of the book that are of most interest are probably the chapters dealing with his arrival in, life with, and later departure from, Van Halen. What’s interesting about all this is that apparently Sammy really wanted to maintain his own identity apart from Van Halen, which was ultimately at the heart of his final break with the band…well, that, and the fact that apparently Edward Van Halen’s own years of excesses seemingly made him into something of a lunatic by the time the mid-1990s rolled around.
Hagar writes fairly bluntly about all this, but there’s a tone of regret to it all, not just that it all ended, but that it ended in the way that it ended. I got the sense that Hagar really didn’t want to write this part of the book, but he knew that there was no way anyone would publish it without this part of the book, so he seems to get through it as quickly as possible. Hagar certainly does not write with the tone of someone with any kind of axe to grind.
I remember reading an interview years ago when Sammy Hagar had first left Van Halen (he would return to the group some years later for one last tour, before leaving again permanently). It was a marked difference in tone between his reaction and David Lee Roth’s media tantrums when he had left Van Halen, ten years or so earlier. In that interview, Hagar said something along the lines of, “I’ll never again make music as good as I did when I was with those guys.” Not that he’s wallowing in self-pity, though; Sammy Hagar still plays music with his own band, and he runs a club in Mexico and has his own brand of tequila which is apparently quite good.
The other book is a general history of Van Halen, Everybody Wants Some, by Ian Christe. I got a little ways into the book before I realized that I’d read another book by Christe before, years ago, which stuck in my memory because of his purple prose. And yes, the prose here is purple too. At times, it’s almost obnoxiously so. But it, too, is a fast read, and it was interesting to read it and see a different perspective on the things that Sammy Hagar wrote about. Of the two, Sammy’s is the better book, but his book is about Sammy, where Christe’s is about Van Halen, from the early days to the breakthroughs to the strife with Dave to the Sammy era to the strife with Sammy to the return of Dave to the return of Sammy to the arrival of Gary Cheronne and almost to the present after that.
I was surprised that in neither of these books does Edward Van Halen come off particularly well. The general picture in each volume is of an astonishingly talented musician who lacked the discipline and self-control to keep his lesser appetites from taking control. Alcoholism and addiction aren’t really mentioned, but it’s hard not to see that spectre looming over everything.
:: Part of what makes Ben Mezrich’s Sex on the Moon: The Amazing Story Behind the Most Audacious Heist in History a compelling reader is the motivation behind the heist it describes. At its heart, this book tells the story of a young, intelligent man who decides that the best use of his intelligence is to plan and execute something stupid in order to impress a girl. His plan? To break into a laboratory at NASA and steal a bunch of moon rocks so he can, quite literally, give his girlfriend the moon.
A bare few minutes later, they came to the last traffic light – and again, of course, it was red. Even worse, Thad quickly made out a security kiosk just a few yards to the left of the light. He could see at least two uniformed guards inside. Thad held his breath as he slowed the Jeep to a stop at the light; he kept his head facing forward, willing Sandra to do the same. He didn’t want to have to explain why he was at the compound, past midnight on a Saturday. That was counting on the fact that neither of the guards would be eager to step out into the rain to interrogate him. Even so, if one of the guards had looked carefully, he might have noticed that the Jeep was sagging in the back. In fact, the vehicle’s rear axle was bent so low that the chassis almost scraped the ground as they idled at the traffic stop.
The sag of the Jeep was one of the few things that Thad and his two accomplices hadn’t planned. A miscalculation, actually: the safe that Thad and the two girls had hoisted into the back of the Jeep – less than ten minutes ago – weighed much more than Thad had expected, probably close to six hundred pounds. It had taken all three of them and a levered dolly to perform the feat, and even so Thad had strained every muscle in his back and legs getting the damn thing situated properly. That was just thankful that the Jeep’s axle hadn’t collapsed under the weight. As it was, he was pretty sure that even a cursory inspection of the vehicle would be enough to blow the entire operation.
Thad is Thad Roberts, our larcenous “hero”, who ends up being shunned by his family of extremely devout Mormons when he sleeps with his high school girlfriend, and later decides that his life’s goal is to become an astronaut. Once accepted into NASA, Thad finds himself engaged in acts of ever-increasing daring or stupidity, depending on your point of view. Sex on the Moon is a worthy entry in the “con man with a heart of gold” genre; it reads like a space-age variant on the film Catch Me If You Can. Mezrich keeps the story moving very quickly, even as he manages to make Thad both sympathetic and annoying at the same time – which is what he needs to be.
:: There is a comedian named Demetri Martin, of whom I have never heard, but who has written a book called This Is A Book By Demetri Martin. It’s the kind of collection of humor pieces you’d expect to find in a book by a stand-up comedian. If you like such things, and you find the following excerpts funny, give the book a whirl. On the other hand, if neither of those things is true, then avoid the book.
Neil aimed and fired. As the duck exploded into tiny bits, the men stared in stunned silence. Then Walt said, “That’s the third decoy you’ve shot today, you idiot.”
*When the stripped jumped out of the giant cake, everyone got excited. But then when she jumped into the regular-size cake, everyone got confused.*The shepherd fell asleep again. But who could blame him? He had been counting sheep all day.*Fortune cookies: “Your mind is like a sponge, in the sense that it would come in handy when cleaning off a countertop or something like that.”“It is easy to want what another man had; what is harder is to sneak into his house and take it without him seeing you.”“If you were tiny, this could be a banner.”*Palindromes for Specific Occasions:Gently informing a DJ that there is a problem with the sound system: No music is, um, on.A scientist’s reaction to what he finds in a Petri dish: P.U.! Organisms in a group.A guy explaining to his friend how he feels about operas as he accidentally runs into a beehive: See, bro, operas are poor – Bees!
Yeah, your mileage may vary….
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Something for Thursday
And at center, number sixty-seven, Kent Hull
Kent Hull, who played center for the Buffalo Bills from 1986 to 1996, died yesterday. He was only 50 years old. The first indications of a cause of death that I saw cited a heart attack, the coroner’s report blames intestinal bleeding.
As a member of the offensive line, Hull was not one of the “glory” players for the Bills during his time on the team. That’s the nature of the position. If you’re only a casual football fan, centers are part of that group of guys on each team whom you know are there and have a job to do but whose names aren’t terribly important, because they’re rarely the ones handling the ball, running it or catching it or scoring with it. But for football fans who know something about the game, they are incredibly important, and fans of any team can as readily discuss the performance of individual offensive linemen as that of the quarterback.
And Kent Hull was one of the greats.
It is no coincidence at all that Hull’s time in Buffalo was also the Bills’ heyday as a franchise. While he played, the Bills made the playoffs eight times, won the AFC East seven times, and made the Super Bowl four times. That kind of success is impossible in the NFL if you don’t have a great offensive line…and the Bills did. Kent Hull was its leader, and not only that, he was one of the main leaders of the entire team.
I never met Kent Hull, but he was part of a football team that meant a great deal to me. The Bills’ era of greatness mainly coincided with my four years of college, at Wartburg, in Iowa. I was 800 miles away from home, and even though I had a lot of great friends — many of whom are still friends of mine to this day, and one of whom is now married to me — I would still get homesick from time to time. The Buffalo Bills were my main touchstone from home during those years. Being that far away, I was, of course, nowhere near the Bills’ broadcasting region, so I didn’t get to see many of their games at all. In Iowa at the time, the teams I could always count on seeing on teevee were the Bears and Vikings from the NFC, and the Chiefs from the AFC (hence the fact that I’ve always rather liked the Chiefs since then). Bills games tended to only be on if they were nationally televised, or if the Chiefs weren’t on, or if the Bills were on Monday night. (And of course, the playoffs.)
So I didn’t get to see the Bills all that often. But when I did, I was watching home. Those were my hometown fans there, on the teevee. I’ve driven by that stadium more times than I can remember. I was going to college in a place where very few folks knew where in New York Buffalo even was; more than a few thought it was one of the five boroughs of NYC, or that it was just up the road, maybe where Yonkers actually resides. (Folks who worry about Buffalo’s national reputation might consider the possibility that Buffalo doesn’t even have a national reputation, as “snow capital of the world” or anything else. In my experience, Buffalo’s a place that people have heard of, and…that’s about it.) But several times a year, I got to see my team, my hometown team, play some of the best football that anybody was playing at the time. And Kent Hull was a part of that. You can be damned sure I knew who my team’s center was, even if his name was never said on teevee.
As to that: there’s a saying about offensive linemen that you know they’re doing a good job if you don’t hear their name mentioned by the teevee guys. That’s pretty much true. Commentators almost never point out good blocking when it happens; they only mention the offensive lineman by name when they want to indicate which guy just missed a block, causing a sack or a tackle for a loss or whatever. Kent Hull’s was not a name you heard much at all when you watched Bills games. And I think he’d be proud of that.
Thanks for the memories, #67. You’re still missed, in many ways.
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A Random Wednesday Conversation Starter
The Loneliest Monk
The birthday of jazz great Thelonius Monk was just last week, on the 10th; Monk would be 94 now. I learned this when I saw this on Facebook. It’s a couple of pages of advice Monk gave to a fellow musician.
This kind of thing always makes me terribly happy — getting a glimpse into the mind of a great musician is wonderful, because the real record of what was in their minds is in their music, obviously, but music doesn’t always tell you concrete things about the world. In fact, music rarely tells you concrete things about the world.
I’ve noted before that I’m not the best jazz listener out there. I enjoy good jazz, but I’ve always found that jazz exists for me at a bit of a distance. My relationship to jazz is not unlike my relationship with early classical music of the music of the Baroque era — often I can’t deny its quality, but I find it difficult to get to the emotional center of it. This isn’t always the case, though, as with this piece of Monk’s.
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So why do I see Bob Balaban?
The Big Dog speaks
If I could have one hour to spend one-on-one with any single living person, I think I would choose Bill Clinton. This piece, relating a discussion the former President had with British historian Simon Schama, is fascinating. A taste:
“So, Mr President,” I say, “Do you really think America has what it takes to get out of this deep hole?” He shifts his chair closer to me. “I’ll give you an honest answer. I’m absolutely confident we have what it takes. But I’m more worried now than I have been for many many years … because we have both a short-term crisis of horrible unemployment and long-term issues about education, healthcare and tilting the economy a little more to production. But here’s what I know … People have been betting against America for 200 years – it’s a maddening country – and they all wound up losing money. They said Washington was a mediocre surveyor with a set of false teeth; on the way to his inauguration an Illinois newspaper said that Abraham Lincoln was a baboon, he’ll ruin the country … Khrushchev said he’d bury us, the Japanese in the 1980s were going to bury us too.”
But, and something like a sigh escapes the optimist – “this is a different sort of challenge. It’s short-term and long-term, it’s complicated and we need a narrative that allows people to buy into America. The best I can do is tell you that what works in the modern world is different from what works in politics. When I’m asked what’s the one thing I’m proudest of, it was moving a hundred times as many people from poverty into the middle class as in the previous 12 years, because that was clearly the product of economic policy. That’s what this country is all about; the idea that if you work hard and you’re an honourable person you get a chance to live your dream and give your children a chance to chase it.”
God, I wish he was still President.