Piss & Vinegar vs. The Secret & Oprah

Something about early spring weather brings out the former in me, so here's this morning's link, with a quote:

"If James Frey deserved to be raked over the coals for lying about how drunk he was, doesn't Oprah deserve some scrutiny for pitching the meretricious nonsense in 'The Secret'?"

Aah, thank you Peter Birkenhead — I'm feeling better already! h/t to Maude Newton, who'd rather we were reading Drown, by Junot Díaz.

Further balm can be found here. The entire slideshow is a winner, but this is the picture that seems to be calling out to my subconscious most nights.

Those Wacky 23rd Century Federation Types

Of course, anyone who's intent on properly whuppin' hordes of Ancient Persians would be better served sending Kirk through the Guardian of Forever.



My brother calls this The-Zippered-Boot-To-The-Torso-Kick, and I have it on good authority it was first put to use at Thermopylae. A surefire contest winner you can always fall back on (so long as you're wearing a gold velour tunic).

Those Wacky Spartans

Here's a movie I won't be bothering with. And it's not just because it looks like a tediously violent, third-rate stinker; it's because the source material was weak to begin with. Frank Miller has created works I'm crazy for, but 300 is not one of them.

I can understand why Miller was drawn to the Spartans and Thermopylae. No matter how what lens you view them through, the Spartans are difficult folks to love: arrogant, paranoid, antisocial in the extreme, ruthless on the battlefield and even moreso in the delivery room — if you love the Spartans, rest assured they won't return the favor. From Batman to Marv, Miller has made a fetish of loving the unloveable, and the Spartans get Miller's full fetish freak-on.

Despite the unusual page format, Miller's work never quite flies off the page. The shadows, the exaggerated faces, the languid drapery are all there. So is the animist spirit ("I shall become a bat!" becomes "I shall become a wolf!"). It might well be a matter of my having been overexposed to Miller's cranky solipsism, but this time his final product struck me as an overt "sell", very similar to Jack Chick's pamphlets.

I think I was also spoiled by Stephen Pressfield's Gates of Fire. His novel is a well-rendered pulp masterpiece that employs some standard narrative techniques to excellent effect. Pressfield solves the problem of how to get a modern reader onside with the Spartans by giving us a narrator, Xeo, who happily devotes himself to Spartan slavery after his town falls to a band of marauders. In Pressfield's hands, the Spartans aren't a bunch of fetishized freaks, but a rigorously maintained society built in response to the volatile environment that surrounds it. Someone in Tinseltown must have the rights to the book, and that's the sword-and-sandals movie I'll stand in line to see.

Final note: I've been on the fence when it comes to Slate's movie reviewer Dana Stevens, but she won me over with her evisceration of 300. Sez she, "(W)hat's maddening about 300 (besides the paralyzing monotony of watching chiseled white guys make shish kebabs from swarthy Persians for 116 indistinguishable minutes) is that no one involved — not Miller, not [director Zack] Snyder, not one of the army of screenwriters, art directors, and tech wizards who mounted this empty, gorgeous spectacle — seems to have noticed that we're in the middle of an actual war. With actual Persians." And that's just her warm-up.

The Act of Remembrance

I've got some thoughts on the topic, but haven't been able to marshal them in an orderly fashion. Happily, there are others picking up the slack:

Mary remembers her brother.

Searchie attends And I Still See Their Faces: The Vanished World of Polish Jews and recalls a visit to Tykocin — manifold remembrance.

Pattie serves up a pointed reminder.

And this excerpt from Danielle Trussoni's memoir Falling Through The Earth has lodged itself in my consciousness and disrupted many a predictable surge in its waters. Favorite quote: "I was grateful that my father had made the videotape. It was a record of my childhood free of the distortions of memory. The tape helped me to see that many of my recollections had been colored by love and anger — that I had often made my father in the image of my emotions." Emphasis mine, because boy-howdy: this father knows his soon-to-be-grown daughters will most certainly subject their childhoods to the distortions of memory.

Tommy Womack, There, I Said It

"So how you doin'?"

"I'm alright. Waiting for February to end."

"I hate to be the guy to tell you, but it's been March for a couple of days already."

"It only says that on the calendar."

Oof -- do I ever hear that. I, too, am waiting for February to end. In my case, I'm greasing the hold February has on my coattails by listening to Tommy Womack's There, I Said It.



I've mentioned Womack before. He's a Nashville singer-songwriter, who's got a firm grip on the Blues. It sounds like that arrangement was reversed for a stretch: the black dogs took up residence and fed on his soul. I wouldn't wish that hell on anyone, but he's taken the experience and knit together a musical skein of profound comfort. If you go here, you'll be treated to "Nice Day", which acts as the album's centrepiece. It's also moved me to tears with every spin. Last time I checked, the most-downloaded track on eMusic is "A Cockroach After The Bomb" -- a winner of a tune, no question. But my personal favourite off the album is "Alpha Male & The Canine Mystery Blood", a wide-ranging methodical stream - of - consciousness bit of talking blues that pulls out and lifts up the heart of desire.

There are tongue-in-cheek bits of fun, acidic observations, little pleas for help and more than a few "To hell with it all" declarations. Those of us who have followed him for a bit can view this as the latest follow-up to the giddy rock & roll reminiscences of his Cheese Chronicles. Newcomers can tuck in and savour this stew of hard-won insight.

Go on and make him a rock star. Amazon link here, eMusic link here.

Fave Thing #5

This posting promises to be a messy bit of bubble and squeak, but here goes:

While my wife has been away, I've spent the closing hours of the evening watching episodes of Star Trek: TOS. It's a pleasant way to cap off the day: a mixed diet of nostalgia, a few revelations (I'd forgotten that Shatner, particularly in the first season, was capable of subtlety), and plenty of cheese to stick to the ribs of my imagination before I lay me down to sleep.

However, I'm taken aback by the chatter surrounding the proposed Star Trek film: namely, a prequel that chronicles the early adventures of Kirk / Spock / McCoy. This skirts dangerously close to parody — but then that's what the franchise has always done best, so why can't I join the falderal? Placing the vertically-challenged Matt Damon as “Kirk” next to the military bearing of Gary Sinise (“McCoy”) and the willowy Adrien Brody (“Spock”) is visual comic genius. What's not to love?

Well ... the voices, for starters. This trio of characters has been lampooned by so many improv groups, it's impossible to consider anyone attempting to do a serious job of it. Then there's director J.J. Abrams, whose track record elicits a perpetual chorus of, “Not bad, but I expected it to be better.” No, the whole proposal prompts me to search the farther reaches of cinema for a viable alternative to the franchise's usual ham-fisted tactics.

So why not animation? The last attempt might have been flat-footed, but there's been so much technological progress since then that I honestly believe a decent script and the right director (Brad Bird, maybe) just might give this nigh-unto-dead franchise a set of legs that could carry it into the 22nd century, if not the 23rd.

Then again, maybe not. There's some indefinable quality in animation that tends to set audiences at an emotional remove. Has anyone shed a tear during an animated film? If so, which films are we talking about: Dumbo? Bambi? Hm. Dim prognosis, indeed.

Still, someone should take this concept to the drawing board, and I nominate Ken Steacy. His sketchbooks are cheerfully optimistic, sensuous and lush without being overindulgent, and he's got a Tom Swift sort of enthusiasm for big technology. He's the man to get this thing off the ground.

Which brings me to Favorite Thing #5: Artist's Sketchbooks. Particularly comic book artists. Going through a few hundred Flikr slides (here and here) inspires me. It gets me thinking, “Why can't I do that? Or something like it? Why don't I quit with the Googling, scrape an edge to my pencil and start scribbling? Eh? Why not?”

H/T to Drawn (I might as well come clean: this is the page that got me excited about Steacy's ST potential). Also to DP Blowhard for this link. (Frankly, I'd hesitate to call Will Eisner “mediocre”: if you wonder what a back alley in the Bronx smells like, just read one of his books — you will taste the stench in the back of your mouth.)

Fave Thing #4

"You weren't that fond of it when I first brought it home," said my wife.

No, I guess I wasn't. I thought my instructions had been clear. I was thinking about stir-frying. I'd read an article written by some guy who said American stoves weren't constructed to properly heat a wok. He said anyone with brains knew the best way to stir-fry vegetables or anything was to use a large, flat cast-iron frying pan. He sounded like he knew what he was talking about, so I described the article to my wife and asked if she'd look for one in the discount store on the way back from work.

We'd been married for a month or two.

She phoned me at work to say she'd found a cast-iron pan. It wasn't exactly like I'd described, but she thought we'd use it just the same. Besides, she could always take it back.

"Great," I said. "Buy it."

When we got home, I stared at the chicken-fryer. "That's not really what I had in mind," I said.

"But don't you think we'd use it for other dishes?"

"Well," I said, "it's not really what I had in mind."

"I can take it back," she said. "I just figured we'd use it for other dishes."

There didn't seem to be any good reason to abandon my passive-aggressive strategy just yet. "We probably will," I said. "Let's keep it."

It's become my favorite pot. It is one of two pots we own that gives a dish the sort of character you want in a dish. Two or three times a month I'll roast a chicken in it. When it's done, I'll remove the bird and stir up some schmaltz for the wild rice. Whatever is left on the carcass is used for chicken stock. The chicken stock is used for risotto, which I make in the self-same pan.

The pan is also good for Bourbon n' Beans, and a host of other dishes. It's a great pan. We use it all the time.

As for the stir-fry advice, Mr. Magazine Article Writer didn't know what he was talking about. If you want a good stir-fry, nothing beats the hefty cast-iron wok her sister gave us -- the other indispensible pan in our collection.