My wife and I watched To Live and Die in L.A. last night — it's streaming for free on Amazon Prime and I don't know how we missed this one in the theater; it's from 1985! — directed by William Friedkin (who also directed The French Connection and The Exorcist) it's a fast-paced noir thriller that begins with a rogue U.S. Secret Service agent going on a reckless, unsanctioned mission; Richard Chance — played by a young William Petersen of later CSI fame — lives up to his name, he's a base jumper who drinks and smokes constantly and instead of a G-man suit, he wears a football jersey, a scarf, and tight jeans-- very Don Johnson-- and between all the cigarettes, booze, and tight jeans, I don't know how he chases down the bad guys, but he does; right at the start, a master counterfeiter, played by a very young and unwrinkled Willem Dafoe, kills Chance's partner (with only three days left to retirement! so classic) and Chance pulls his new partner into a seedy underworld of morally bankrupt behavior that may or may not result in justice-- it’s worth watching this film for the credits font and the 80s fashion alone — and the excellent soundtrack by Wang Chung-- but there’s also an epic car chase that actually makes sense in terms of plot, character, and setting . . . I don't know how they pulled off this chase without digital effects — it's masterful; anyway, Roger Ebert gave this film four stars, and it deserves them, it’s cocaine-fueled, artsy violence in a grittier, seedier L.A. that doesn't exist anymore-- every scene is frenetic and full of interesting extras and you’ll half-recognize nearly every main actor, including Jane Leeves (she was "the virgin" in Seinfeld, but she's certainly not that in this film) but be warned — there's some hardcore 80s violence, nudity, profanity, and drinking of Miller High Life.
Good Ideas . . . What the Fuck?
Dry Bones (Longmire #11) by Craig johnson
I Hate Fucking Cars
The boys and I were having a lovely Orthodox Christmas-- we went to the Y and played some basketball and then hit La Catrina for lunch, but on the drive home, when we got to the intersection of Hamilton Street and George Street-- where Hamilton turns into Johnson Drive-- the Zimmerli Museum was on our left-- we got a sober reminder of the ephemerality of life . . . the light was green and I was just about to enter the intersection when a medium-sized red car came FLYING down George Street (and this is a street with college dorms on it) and this red car smashed into the back of a white car that had just proceeded into the intersection-- the very car in front of us, and this spun the white car into the concrete wall in front of the Johnson and Johnson property (thank god no one was standing at this intersection waiting to cross, a spot that my son Alex walks through every day on his way to work) and the airbags went off inside the white car and I got out and (carefully) crossed the intersection to see if the people were all right and Alex and Ian called 911 but luckily there happened to be a couple cops nearby who immediately took control of the scene-- maybe they were already in pursuit of this vehicle? which would explain the high speed on this road?-- and because the white car got clipped in the rear of the car, not the driver side door, the two women in the car looked like they were in decent shape-- the passenger was fine and the driver looked stunned but she responded to my voice and the side airbag probably kept her from hitting her head-- meanwhile the red car that ran the light doing 40 or 50 mph on this 25 mph street was up ahead on the side of the road-- it hit another car and came to a halt and the the police checking that out-- and the weird thing is this wasn't a yellow light turning red situation, the red car had a solid red light-- so Alex surmised that perhaps the red car driver panicked and hit the gas instead of the brake-- something that occurs all too frequently and is often blamed on "sudden uncontrollable acceleration" but is actually caused by someone stomping on the wrong pedal . . . whatever the reason, this crash scared the shit out of the three of us and we all agreed to take it slow through every intersection, whether driving a car, on foot, or riding a bike-- because of the existence of idiots and the half-assed manner in which our automotive based world is designed-- although honestly, this happened so fast and chaotically that it would have been difficult to avoid even if you were paying close attention nd driving defensively and all that and we were very lucky that we weren't in the intersection when this happened-- we were moments away-- and the last time I saw anything like this was over a decade ago, and I still remember it like it was yesterday.
All the Kids With Three Letter Names are Out Today
Our match got canceled today due to some fortuitous wind and rain-- fortuitous because one of our players (Kai) is at Model UN and the other (Udi) is "out of commission" because when he was riding his electric scooter in the rain yesterday, on his way home from our match in Johnson Park, he skidded out and hit the pavement, scraping up his hands and knees (but he's not completely injured-- he's my neighbor and I saw him today and he looked to be in decent shape-- although he was walking home from school, not riding his scooter) so we'll reset on Monday and hope for better weather (and not so fortuitously, we all had to evacuate my high school today during the rain storm because of an elevator malfunction-- the fire trucks had to come-- if the weather was decent it would have been the best delay of class ever, but because of the cold spitting drizzle and gusty winds, students and teachers alike wanted to get back to class and do some learning).
Everything, Everywhere, All at Once?
I've listened to several interesting podcasts lately-- and I also can't help connecting them to the non-fiction texts we read in my College Writing synthesis class . . . I suppose this is because we're constantly teaching the kids to make connections between the texts and to everything else in the world, to support some kind of argument-- eventually, you start to see connections between everything, like the conspiracy theorist with all the diagrams, pictures, symbols, pins, and strings on his study wall . . . anyway, the podcasts are good even if you haven't read this year's College Writing texts, here they are:
1) The Billionaires’ Secret Plan to Solve California’s Housing Crisis (The Daily) is a fascinating conundrum that connects to Stephen Johnson's writing about organized complexity and emergence--the question is: can a bunch of tech billionaires build a model city in California that feels like a European city? a city that feels like it emerged from a culture that values public transportation, locality, walking, biking, and mixed housing-- and does NOT value traffic and automobiles-- usually these kinds of places are built from the bottom up- they emerge from millions of tiny individual decisions of the city dwellers, over time-- and reflect the evolving core values of the city . . . but these dudes want to do it from the top down-- and they are meeting some resistance . . . an interesting investigative journalistic foray into an ongoing story;
2) Lean In (If Books Could Kill) tells the story of Sheryl Sandberg-- who was an upper-level manager at Facebook-- and wrote a book explaining how to move up in a man's world-- but her version of feminism doesn't address systemic issues, it's just very specific (and often lousy or useless) advice for upper-middle-class women trying to make it in a hyper-accelerated capitalist culture . . . and this really connects to Anand Girdharadas's description of Amy Cuddy's journey from academic to thought leader and Jia Tolentino's chapter "Always Be Optimizing," which discusses how she grapples with the unending expectations of modern feminism;
3) How Do We Survive the Media Apocalypse (Search Engine) is Ezra Klein's generally depressing take on the direction journalism, the internet, and the media are heading-- this episode gets into the costs of market-based competition, the unbundling of advertisements and your local newspaper, the benefits of inefficiency and local media monopolies and the idea that news worked much better when car ads and movie ads were paying for war reporting-- these ideas really complement Anand Giridhaardas's book "Winners Takes All" and Steven Johnson's ideas in "Emergence"-- we've collectively created a system that is incredibly and perfectly competitive-- the online world-- where Netflix competes with the best journalism and Pitchfork and Buzzfeed and YouTube videos about losing your belly fat-- and the result is that a bunch of social media companies make money; AI might cannibalize journalistic sources and therefore destroy the ecosystem that it relies on for information; ideas that are bite-sized, palatable, and digestible win out over the truth; and whatever you direct your attention to on the internet-- and in media in general-- is going to survive and what you neglect will die . . . so read some real books, magazines, and local news-- get off those social media sites, support longform investigative journalism, and recognize that the only reason that many of the fun sites that are now going extinct-- Gawker, Pitchfork, Vox, Buzzfeed-- were often supported by venture capitalists and had no real model to make money in this awful media environment . . . what is slowly emerging on the internet is exactly what we asked for and deserve, a bunch of bullshit.
Good Students = Actually Having to Teach
We Defy Augury Episode Fifty!
The universe did NOT want me to finish the fiftieth episode of We Defy Augury: I had to re-record audio because an unshielded XLR cable allowed electromagnetic radiation to produce an unbearable hum and then a bunch of inexplicable five-second "holes" appeared in this audio when I was nearly done mixing things down, so I had to patch in little bits and pieces of my voice-- I was also a bit ambitious and wove in audio clips and clips of me playing the guitar-- and it was hard to record simultaneous vocal audio and guitar audio . . . basically, this one was a nightmare but I patiently pieced it together and I think it turned out pretty well, despite all the weird obstacles . . . the episode is called "Let's Talk About Celine Dion: Does Your Taste Stand on Solid Ground?" and my thoughts and ruminations are (loosely) based on Carl Wilson's music criticism masterpiece Let's Talk About Love: Why Other People Have Such Bad Taste . . . and there are plenty of special guests: Celine Dion, Huey Lewis and the News, New Found Glory, Robert Johnson, Greensky Bluegrass, The Easy Star All Stars, Bas Gaakeer & Mireille Bittar, Joey Satriani, David Berman, Pavement, Beavis and Butthead, David St. Hubbins, Nigel Tufnel, greasetruck, and Pythagoras.
Book List 2022
Here are the books I finished (possibly with some skimming) this year . . . I started plenty of others and quit them because . . . well because I wanted to . . . that's what's great about reading-- if you've got access to a library, you aren't beholden to any particular book:
1) Depth of Winter by Craig Johnson
2) Lazarus Volumes 1-6
3) Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law by Mary Roach
4) Kindness Goes Unpunished by Craig Johnson
5) The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain by Annie Murphy Paul
6) The Given Day by Dennis LeHane
7) Live by Night by Dennis LeHane
8) A Little History of the World by Ernst Gombrich
9) Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey
10) Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr
11) Caliban's War by James A. Corey
12) Batman: The Long Halloween by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale
13) The Nineties by Chuck Klosterman
14) Tochi Onyebuchi's Goliath
15) We Are Never Meeting in Real Life by Samantha Irby
16) Abbadon's Gate by James S.A. Corey
17) The Paradox Hotel by Rob Hart
18) The Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
19) One-Shot Harry by Gary Philips
20) The Last Days of Roger Federer and Other Endings by Geoff Dyer
21) The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow
22) Cibola Burn by James S.A. Corey
23) The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West by David McCullough
24) Harrow by Joy Williams
25) The Quick and the Dead by Joy Williams
26) Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead
27) The Foundling by Ann Leary
28) Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America by Jill Leovy
29) Fugitive Telemetry: The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells
30) Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen
31) Last Orgy of the Divine Hermit by Mark Leyner
32) The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era by Gary Gerstle
33) Tracy Flick Can't Win by Tom Perrotta
34) Dark Matter by Blake Crouch
35) Nemesis Games by James S.A. Corey
36) The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
37) The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells
38) City on Fire by Don Winslow
39) Happy-Go-Lucky by David Sedaris
40) what if? SERIOUS SCIENTIFIC ANSWERS to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Monroe
41) Enemy of All Mankind: A True Story of Piracy, Power, and History's First Global Manhunt by Stephen Johnson
42) The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music by Dave Grohl
43) The Tomorrow Game: Rival Teenagers, Their Race For a Gun, and The Community United to Save Them by Sudhir Venkatesh
44) Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon
45) A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller
46) Blacktop Wasteland by S.A. Cosby
47) Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cosby
48) Liberation Day by George Saunders
49) Upgrade by Blake Crouch
50) Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid
51) Adrift: America in 100 Charts by Scott Galloway
52) Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World by Cal Newport
53) Pines by Blake Crouch
54) The Rise and Reign of the Mammals by Steve Brusatte
55) Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh
56) Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization by Neil deGrasse Tyson
57) Fantastic Four: Full Circle by Alex Ross
Got the Podcast Done Just in Time
First of all, I managed to finish another episode of my podcast We Defy Augury . . . this one is about Steven Johnson's new book and it's called "Revising Our Notion About Pirates" and I got it done just in time-- because I'm going to sound like I have marbles in my mouth for a day or two-- this afternoon, I underwent two hours of clanking and poking and pulling and drilling, and casting and impressing-- and now my old bridge is gone, as is all the decay under my old bridge-- and my dentist, Dr. David, is "cautiously optimistic" that I won't have to endure a root canal before they can put in my permanent bridge (and there's going to be a bit of gold on my permanent bridge! not quite a grill, but it's something) and right now I'm sipping some Olmeca Altos tequila, waiting for the lidocaine to wear off, which it most certainly will-- and then, apparently, my mouth is going to hurt some (I should also point out that the hygienist was pretty weird and nerdy in a fun way, we were talking about how long a day it had been and she started postulating about the possibilities of time dilation . . . and I couldn't really chime in much because I was biting down on some weird goopy stuff in order to make a mold for my temporary bridge).
Pirates? Not the Disney Version
Great non-fiction writers can make any topic interesting and Steven Johnson is one of the great ones, he's done it over and over with various topics-- innovations and ideas, cholera, the history of air, organized complexity, decision-making, video games and TV, etcetera-- and in his new book, he astounded me by taking a topic that I always thought was kind played out and juvenile: pirates-- but Johnson's take on pirates is different . . . he puts them in global context, but I should warn you, Enemy of All Mankind: A True Story of Piracy, Power, and History's First Global Manhunt is not a book that focuses on swashbuckling and sword-fighting-- although that stuff comes up-- instead it portrays pirates (specifically Henry Every) as a bundle of contradictions: democratic rapists; multi-cultural xenophobes; contract abiding torturers; free-spirited slave traders . . . it's a lot to take in, but Johnson does it in a fast breezy style and the history of the Mughal Dynasty and the East India Company goes down fairly easy.
Graduation Wine
Action-packed Saturday: I took a long bike ride on the tow road (and with the cross country coach, who I ran into on his bike in Johnson Park) and then I drove to Clark with Ian and we bought a used bike because he keeps growing and then I installed some basement window well covers-- I should have done that a long time ago-- and Catherine bought a new coach and chair and then we went to Flounder Brewing for a beer and now we're getting dinner ready and drinking the bottle of wine that the kids and I got many years ago, which was specifically for once Alex graduated and went to college-- and it actually tastes quite good.
Altercation at the Tennis Court!
My buddy Cob and I went to play tennis this morning at Johnson Park, and the girl's tennis team was practicing-- taking up a few courts-- and then some older ladies were playing doubles on two of the four remaining courts . . . so we walked over to the far court and one of the older ladies ran onto it and said, "we have this court reserved-- some of our friends are coming at 10" and it was ten after nine and so I told her:
1) this is a public park and the courts are first come first serve;
2) you can't "reserve" courts unless you have a park permit . . . like the tennis team;
and she got very sassy with me and said that she was going to stand on the court and play singles with her friend-- even though all these people do is play very bad old people doubles and I dismissed her and told her to stop being absurd and that I was the varsity tennis coach and knew how the courts worked-- and she said, "well you don't know who I am!" and I said, "No I don't, but I'm telling you who I am" and I told her my name and my position with the school and told her this wasn't like a parking space where you could stand in it for fifty-minutes to hold it for some friends (though I doubt the legality of that move as well) and then Cob and I started warming up and the ladies went back to their doubles game, this lady muttering stuff, and it turned out that more people never showed up and the three courts were plenty for them and then she came over and apologized and told me that I was right and she was wrong and that she was a territorial old bitch . . . NOT . . . despite the fact that they didn't need the court and they all stopped playing before Cob and I because it was hot, she did NOT apologize for her juvenile behavior . . . so obnoxious.
Happy Mother's Day?
Mother's Day did not start off so well this year-- Catherine's shoulder pain was so intense she couldn't sleep, despite various muscle relaxants, painkillers, and some wine-- so we went to the emergency room at Robert Wood Johnson this morning, and while Cat was in serious pain, the emergency room experience was as good as it gets-- everyone was super-kind and the procedures were fast and efficient, and she was able to get x-rays, a lidocaine patch, some kind of painkiller shot in her other arm, a prescription for anti-inflammatories and a diagnosis: calcific tendonitis, which is painful but better than a torn rotator cuff . . . and while i was picking up her prescription at the pharmacy, the pharmacist recognized me-- I taught him many years ago (he's 27 now) and he remembered the social experiment I did during Orwell's Shooting an Elephant," because he was my confidant in the ruse-- I kicked him out of class to demonstrate some elements of the narrative-- and he fondly remembered this, so that was a fun moment in an otherwise lousy day (but at least Lola is on the mend, and hopefully Cat will be better once she gets a steady does of naproxen in her system).
Keeping On Keeping On
I worked a full day today, and I mean a full day-- not one minute off-- I covered a class and had a duty and finished Henry IV and started Hamlet . . . and then I raced home to prepare for what I believed was going to be a disastrous tennis match-- we were playing Edison, a huge school with a decent tennis program, and we were missing three starters-- Boyang and Jakob were on the DECA trip and Sapir was still in Italy-- but, as we know from Henry V:
"The fewer men, the greater share of honor"
and so our very depleted team took to the courts at Johnson Park and quickly fell behind; Ian was playing an athletic pusher at first singles and he couldn't figure him out; Alex was playing a hard-hitting second singles player who was nailing every shot; Ethan the freshman was playing an experienced senior at third singles; then our first doubles lost the first set in a tie-breaker, Alex got slaughtered in the first set; Ian was having a terrible time; Ethan was down but our wacky second doubles team came through and won a set; Alex decided he could run his kid to death-- not a fun way to play but a possibility-- Ethan battled back, and our first doubles won the second set . . . and then pretty much everything went our way (although it wasn't Ian's day, he couldn't figure out how to beat his kid) but everyone else battled back and won, so we managed a 4-1 victory in a match I thought was a throwaway loss, and it was all gutsy pressure-filled come-from-behind wins . . . really awesome, and after Alex won the second set in a tiebreaker and then-- with a strained hamstring-- basically ran his kid until he couldn't run any more-- he finished up, victorious, and his girlfriend Izzy did a little proposal poster with tennis puns on it (and some cupcakes that looked liked tennis balls) and it was an epic and excellent Friday afternoon, and-- in David vs. Goliath fashion-- a great win over a Group IV school . . . so we're now 6 - 0 and hanging on for dear life until everyone gets back from their various trips.
Longmire Does Philly?
In the third Longmire novel, Kindness Goes Unpunished, Craig Johnson inserts Sheriff Longmire, Henry Standing Bear, and Dog into Vic Moretti's world-- downtown Philadelphia; the usual violence, debilitating injuries, and Western-style detective work ensue-- with a healthy dose of Native American lore and trickery-- and, despite the urban setting, there will be some horses.
Longmire Heads South of the Border
In Craig Johnson's fifteenth Longmire novel, Depth of Winter, Sheriff Longmire's moral compass spins all out of whack when he heads south from his normal milieu of Wyoming deep into narco territory of Mexico, in order to rescue his kidnapped daughter-- this is more of an action novel, with a ragtag band of folks-- including a Tarahumara runner/sniper-- heading into very dangerous territory on an impossible mission and while Longmire uses the stock of his M-16 to knock out a fair number of bad guys, he's eventually got to do some shooting and killing, and it ain't pretty (and neither is he . . . like every Longmire book, by the end of the novel, he's a complete disaster).
A Wonderful Boxing Day
Some people love the holidays and some people love the day after the holidays-- and I fall into the latter category; I went to the dog park early this morning, then Cat and I headed to Hacklebarney Park for a hike-- but we left the dog home so we could stop for a leisurely lunch . . . and we left the kids at home as well, because they were sleeping late (Alex went to Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve and then stayed up very late last night building his Lego Seinfeld set) and so after our hike, we stopped in Somerville at the Village Brewery for a beer-- and I had the fried chicken banh mi sandwich and it was absurdly good and then we stopped and watched the boys playing tennis-- they were at Johnson Park-- and I was very happy that they were playing together without fighting and then I turned on the Giants-- bad idea-- and then Ian called me and asked if I wanted to play tennis because they DID end up fighting-- which always happens-- but I took a nap first and then I went out and hit with Ian under the lights-- it was still fifty degrees and when we were leaving, Alex and his buddy were pulling up to the courts to play and we have leftovers from Xmas Eve for dinner so no one has to cook so it's a very successful Boxing Day.
And Now For Something Completely Different
I made a vet appointment for my dog weeks ago, and I thought I scheduled it during a "B-Day" of remote school-- because on B-Days I have a free period before lunch . . . but I didn't realize that we started back from break on a B-Day rather than the more logical A-Day so my math was thrown off . . . long story short, I had to take my College Writing class on the road today, I ran my Team meeting on my phone while I drove to the vet . . . and as I was driving, a snow squall blew in-- so I was conferencing with a girl about her thesis, discussing Anand Giridharadas's explanation of the plutocratic tendency to "Pinker" things-- to take the long view of history and claim that because the human condition is improving, individual inequalities are not important-- and how this connects to the unfettered emergence that Steven Johnson is mesmerized by (but is Johnson a thought leader or a public intellectual? who knows? I was trying not to veer off the road) and I'm happy to say that I helped the girl through a rough patch of writing, I made it through the blizzard intact, and Lola had a successful visit at the vet . . . who knew I would be able to do all these things simultaneously?
2020: A Good Year For Reading Books
1) The Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story by Douglas Preston
3) Our Kind of Traitor by John le Carré
4) Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
5) This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
6) Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley
7) Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy by David Zucchino
8) A Red Death by Walter Mosley
9) White Butterfly by Walter Mosley
10) Death Without Company by Craig Johnson
11) Best Movie Year Ever: How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen by Brian Rafferty
12) The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
13) Dead Men's Trousers by Irvine Welsh
14) The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling by Henry Fielding
15) The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey
16) A Shilling for Candles by Josephine Tey
17) The Secret History by Donna Tartt