Adapt This

My latest random book read was The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean (1998). This is the book that was loosely adapted by Charlie Kaufman into the 2002 Spike Jonze film Adaptation. I really liked Adaptation, and I was curious to read the book that had inspired such an unusual, well... adaptation.

Orlean's book serves as a excellent mirror of the movie, although the two only intersect in a small sub-section. While the movie focuses on Orlean's relationship with John Laroche, the titular orchid thief, and a fictionalized Kaufman's struggle to adapt their story to film, the book uses Laroche as a jumping off point to explore the world of orchid collecting, passion, Florida, and Orlean herself.

Orlean does an excellent job of turning what started as an article for the New Yorker into a book-length piece of journalism without stretching the story too thin or straying too far from the focus of the book. Plus I learned a lot about that strange state that is Florida, and the odd world of the orchid.

Something odd about me

This kind of palm tree makes me really sad. Every time I see one. This is why I cannot live in California. If one were in my front yard, I would cry every day.

[photo by Stefanie Schneider - found here in a Google Image search for 'palm trees.' Usually I don't like to steal an artists photo when I'm trolling for images to illustrate my posts, but I really like this one. Hopefully she won't mind.]

The Road to Oz

The Road to Oz (1909) is the fifth book in L Frank Baum's Oz series, and this is where things start to get a little weird. Dorothy is playing in the front yard of Uncle Henry and Aunt Em's house in Kansas when a shaggy man comes up and asks for directions. The Shaggy Man is apparently some kind of nice hobo guy. Dorothy decides to walk with him part of the way to his destination, because its easier than explaining it, and on the way all the roads start to become unfamiliar and then they find themselves at an intersection of seven roads that they had never seen before. Hmmm. Perhaps we are on our way to Oz?

The two (plus Toto) come across a little boy named Button Bright who answers "Don't know" to pretty much anything you ask him, as well as Polychrome, the daughter of the rainbow who accidentally fell off and now has to dance all the time to stay warm and is constantly searching for dewdrops and mist cakes to eat.

The group goes through many adventures on their way to Oz, including a land of foxes where the king turns Button Bright's head into a fox head, and a land of donkey's where the king turns the Shaggy Man's head into a donkey head.

Luckily the Shaggy Man has a gizmo called the Love Magnet which makes all creatures love him instantly. This Love Magnet (however disturbingly named) gets the gang out of several scrapes.

The creepiest adventure by far, though (and which I'm going to quote in length, so get ready for it), is their meet-up with The Scoodlers.

They moved forward a little faster to see what the dog was barking at, and found perched upon a point of rock by the roadside a curious creature. It had the form of a man, middle-sized and rather slender and graceful; but as it sat silent and motionless upon the peak they could see that its face was black as ink, and it wore a black cloth costume made like a union suit and fitting tight to its skin. Its hands were black, too, and its toes curled down, like a bird's. The creature was black all over except its hair, which was fine, and yellow, banged in front across the black forehead and cut close at the sides. The eyes, which were fixed steadily upon the barking dog, were small and sparkling and looked like the eyes of a weasel.

"What in the world do you s'pose that is?" asked Dorothy in a hushed voice, as the little group of travelers stood watching the strange creature.

"Don't know," said Button-Bright.

The thing gave a jump and turned half around, sitting in the same place but with the other side of its body facing them. Instead of being black, it was now pure white, with a face like that of a clown in a circus and hair of a brilliant purple. The creature could bend either way, and its white toes now curled the same way the black ones on the other side had done.

"It has a face both front and back," whispered Dorothy, wonderingly; "only there's no back at all, but two fronts."
...
"Wonder if this works with strings," said Dorothy; but Polychrome cried "Look!" for another creature just like the first had suddenly appeared sitting on another rock, its black side toward them. The two twisted their heads around and showed a black face on the white side of one and a white face on the black side of the other.

"How curious," said Polychrome; "and how loose their heads seem to be! Are they friendly to us, do you think?"

[dozens more of the creatures appear and surround the group]

"Ask 'em who they are, and what they want," whispered Dorothy; so the shaggy man called out in a loud voice:

"Who are you?"

"Scoodlers!" they yelled in chorus, their voices sharp and shrill.

"What do you want?" called the shaggy man.

"You!" they yelled, pointing their thin fingers at the group; and they all flopped around, so they were white, and then all flopped back again, so they were black.

"But what do you want us for?" asked the shaggy man, uneasily.

"Soup!" they all shouted, as if with one voice.
...
Happening just then to feel the Love Magnet in his pocket, [The Shaggy Man] said to the creatures, with more confidence:

"Don't you love me?"

"Yes!" they shouted, all together.

"Then you mustn't harm me, or my friends," said the shaggy man, firmly.

"We love you in soup!" they yelled, and in a flash turned their white sides to the front.

"How dreadful!" said Dorothy. "This is a time, Shaggy Man, when you get loved too much."

[they start walking away, the The Shaggy Man throws a rock at the Scoodlers]

At this the Scoodlers raised a howl. Two of them picked their heads from their shoulders and hurled them at the shaggy man with such force that he fell over in a heap, greatly astonished. The two now ran forward with swift leaps, caught up their heads, and put them on again, after which they sprang back to their positions on the rocks.

I love those creepy Scoodlers. Their queen is even better, but I think I've probably quoted enough. The gang eventually makes its way to Oz (of course) for Ozma's big birthday celebration where they are reunited with all their friends from the other books, as well as characters from some of Baum's non-Oz children's books. A good time is had by all.

And now, since you've read this much, don't you want to go and read the whole thing? Of course you do.

SBW: The Eye-patch Mystery

I've got no problem with Kurt Russell -- in fact, I find him to be a very fun and likable actor -- but he is usually not really an SB (although I learned the other week after watching Grindhouse with my parents that he is one of my mother's SBs...). Similarly, I have no particular love or hate for the eye-patch. I certainly never found them to be a SB-enhancing accessory.

But that is before we watched Escape From New York (1981) where Kurt Russell and the eye-patch were combined into one unstoppable SB super machine!

I think I'll have to do some scientific analysis of this phenomenon.

The Earthquake Zone!

We all know I mostly buy my science fiction books based on their covers. Usually that actually works out well and I actually end up really liking the story inside. Sometimes, however, the cover is probably the only worthwhile part of the book. But when the cover is as great as the one on The Second Atlantis by Robert Moore Williams (1965), it is impossible to be disappointed. [And since you know you want to, why not check out the back cover, and a super awesome drawing from page one!]

This book tells the story of the much anticipated disaster that will occur when a series of powerful earthquakes break California off from the rest of the country and sink it into the sea (well, actually its only the Los Angeles Basin, but that would still be pretty significant). The book shifts back and forth between a rather preachy overview of the disaster and a chronological look at how select individuals (a young family, a prophet, a gangster, and a rich playboy) are coping with the crisis. Mostly it just isn't written very well, although towards the end the plot does become a little more compelling.

Here is an example:

Mary Uller was a good woman. She had been a good woman all her life. If being a good woman -- as she meant the words -- had never seemed short of a perfect life, she carefully hid this thought from the world and from herself. She smiled at the world. She smiled on the way to church, in church, and on the way home from church. If she ever had a bad thought, a sexual thought, she buried it under a smile, confident that no one would find it hidden there. At work, where she was a secretary, if she made a mistake, she smiled as she corrected the error.

When the quake began, the smile faltered, slipped, and fell away. A scream was under it. Under the scream was panic. Feeling from the very proper apartment building where she lived, she had lost her smile.

A piece of stone from the edge of the roof struck her on the head. It splashed brains all over the sidewalk.

Okay, I will concede that that last sentence is pretty awesome.

Driskill Hotel

I'd like to stay at a hotel that is on the American Plan for once, but it better have Artesian Water throughout the hotel or I'm leaving.

The Smartest Kid on Earth

The lovely Julia recently lent me Jimmy Corrigan : the smartest kid on earth by Chris Ware (2003). I'd always wanted to get into Chris Ware's work, but since I didn't own any and since his art is a little too detailed to really absorb while standing in a bookstore, I never really had. Now I want my own copy of this book so I can look at it again and again.

This is a rough and quiet story of multi-generational awkwardness, regret and abandonment. The drawings seem simple at first glance, but the detail and the movement through the panes is engrossing and complex. This is one of the only graphic novels I've read that really seems like a novel. It made me melancholy for days after reading it, and I think I'll keep flipping through it and re-reading certain sections until I have to give it back.

Aw shit, we got Ikeaed

I have been known to make slightly snarky comments about Ikea in the past. It has been placed in the same category of my brain as those ubiquitous condos, south congress, modern-design houses, yuppie coffee shops, and the like. And there is some justification to that placement. But somewhere in the back of my head, I always kind of wanted to see what the big deal was. Plus no one can deny that the furniture and all is nicely priced. So I caved, and I made the trek to Ikea. And God help me, I liked it.

What really sealed the deal was that my parents were visiting, they drove down here in a van, and my dad is uncomplaining about assembling things. If your dad would drive you to Ikea, load all your purchases in his van, and then spend an hour and a half putting them together, I think you'd decide to go there too.

So, I got a Poang chair and ottoman (how the hell do you pronounce that anyway?). It is majorly comfy, although I think it could be the only Ikea chair that is made to fit a lengthy gal. Most of those chairs are weird things that only smaller people could fit in, and even then they wouldn't be all that comfy.

And I got two "Billy" bookcase thingies (at least I can pronounce that) in which to store the extensive movie collection of Dr. M.

In addition, I scored two antique Danish chairs from my aunt at Easter, and I bought this awesome green, be-skulled loteria plate from the HEB for $6! It was a very materialistic weekend, but I hadn't bought much of anything all year so I think its okay. Now I need to go on an acquisition fast for a few months and calm this buying urge down.

SB Wednesday: Modine Mania

Oh, Matthew Modine. You are such a nice actor (although often in rather crappy movies, and honestly I haven't seen you in anything since Abel Ferrara's The Blackout in 1997, which was really horrifically spectacularly bad in the way that only Ferrara can be.

Other people will insist that your master work, Cutthroat Island (1995) was also spectacularly bad, but I really liked it. Was it just the combination of your SB-self and Geena Davis who I like because she is tall (6 feet - still shorter than me) in a role-reversal adventure pirate flick? Perhaps. I still think those naysayers are missing the greatness of this film.

But you have tons of movies out that I haven't even seen. And in this one (Hotel New Hampshire), you even have a mustache! And it makes you even more cute. Pulling off a mustache is a true sign of SB power.

And finally, it appears you played Jesus in a movie with Juliette Binoche where she plays Mary? Huh. Still looking good there, messiah SB.

[Oooh, and now that I look at that Mary movie, I see that it too was directed by Abel Ferrara. I think I'll watch it sometime, after making sure that I'm ready for something either super great or stinkingly bad...]

Easter-times

I'm totally behind on posting about my books and still a little overwhelmed from recently departed visitors combined with new furniture acquisitions. So feel free to amuse yourself with Easter 2007 photo documentation including Nebraska shaped cookies, birthday cakes wearing bunny masks and Josh's melting face.

Savage

I've finally gotten around to reading Savage Inequalities: Children in American Schools by Jonathan Kozol (1992). My sister loaned this book to me over two years ago, and somehow it got buried in another pile of books (imagine that). Since my parents are coming for a visit, I thought that now would be the perfect time to read the book so they could return it to her when they get back home.

This book is a well-written and powerful commentary on the way public education is set up to perpetuate the class system and pay lip-service to the American dream while actually doing little beyond maintaining the status quo. Really pretty depressing, and even though this book was written almost fifteen years ago, basically nothing has really changed in the ways most communities fund public education and the importance the government gives to educating all children, not just their own. If anything, I would guess it has probably gotten worse.

Ick.

Reading this book got me riled up about education, but also made me feel really helpless. Because public schools are so tied up in this institutionalized racism and the black and white world of haves vs. have-nots, I can't see any real way to change it. At least not any way that would work.

Do you have any ideas?

If nothing else, read this book so you can get riled up too (although I feel like this is one of those books that everyone on earth has read except me, so you probably already have).

[And, as mentioned above, we will have visitors for the next few days, so posting will probably be kept to a minimum. Dig.]

Secret Boyfriend Wednesday: Favorite Actor Edition

Ah, Harvey Keitel. Not just an SB, but also a Favorite Actor. What can't this guy do?






Well, he can't really pull off this hair in Taxi Driver (okay, he can, and luckily he is so much of an SB that his SBness shines through). And he is great in Taxi Driver, isn't he?



Another nice thing about Keitel is that the guy has no problems getting naked on screen. Chalk up another point in the super SB column.




And thanks to YouTube, we can all watch Keitel in a scene from Fingers (1978) -- just one of the many movies he is in that I totally love. It isn't the doublesuck scene (which, if you've seen it, you know what I mean, and if you haven't, you really should), but it's still pretty great. In it, he plays a slightly disturbed piano virtuoso who spends much of his time collecting debts for his small-time mobster dad. Soooo good.

Lookalikies

Don't you think that WWE World Champion, John Cena, looks an awful lot like...







A-list actor, Matt Damon?

[And I'd also like to note that it is really hard to find a picture of Matt Damon where he isn't either 19 or smiling a goofy smile that makes him look not as much like John Cena. It is also hard to find a picture of John Cena where he is smiling and/or fully clothed.]

[They are also both from the Boston area, but I don't think they are actually related.]

[Lastly -- did you know John Cena has recorded a hip hop CD? In addition, one of his nicknames is The Doctor of Thugonomics; one of his "signature taunts" (according to Wikipedia) is waving his hand in front of his face, horizontally, to symbolize that "You can't see me!"; his father is a wrestling announcer who goes by the nickname "Johnny Fabulous;" and since he starred in the movie The Marine, he has taken to wearing camouflage and saluting the audience, although from what I can tell he never was actually in the service. Wrestling!]

Blog! List! Horror! Movies! Blog!

I know you will want to check out Dr. Mystery's newest project, Decapitated Zombie Vampire Bloodbath, the blog that traces our journey through all the horror movies in the book Fangoria's 101 Best Horror Movies You've Never Seen: A Celebration of the World's Most Unheralded Fright Flicks. A good time shall be had by all!

Ozquakes

It's time for another Oz book! The fourth book in the series brings back the humbug Wizard from the first book and reunites him with Dorothy in Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz (1908) (go ahead and read the whole thing here. You know you want to. Or just read the plot summary here if you are lazy. Or read this post, which does quite a bit of plot summarizing itself).

By this time, Baum has realized that his Oz books are way more popular than anything else he has written, and commits to writing one at least every two years. As he notes in his introduction:

It's no use; no use at all. The children won't let me stop telling tales of the Land of Oz. I know lots of other stories, and I hope to tell them, some time or another; but just now my loving tyrants won't allow me. They cry: "Oz--Oz! more about Oz, Mr. Baum!" and what can I do but obey their commands?

Freaking tyrants. Let the man write his stories!

The most interesting thing about the Oz books for me is figuring out how we are going to get from Earth to Oz (or another fairy land) at the beginning of the book. In this case, Dorothy and her Uncle Henry are in California after their long trip to Australia. Uncle Henry has gone ahead to his brother's ranch, and Dorothy follows by train after spending some time with friends in San Francisco. When she and her cousin are riding out to the ranch on a horse cart, a big earthquake hits and they all fall way down into the earth. After awhile they notice they are falling pretty slowly, and they also notice that the horse and Dorothy's cat (Eureka -- who proceeds to get into a lot of trouble) can talk. This clues Dorothy in to the fact that she is about to have another adventure, so she isn't scared at all.

When they land, they find themselves in the land of the Mangaboos, who look kind of like short people but are actually vegetables. The Mangaboos are pretty mad at Dorothy and her friends because a bunch of rocks fell down with them during the earthquake and knocked holes in their houses. They are about to kill the visitors when something else comes down from the sky -- why it's our old friend the Wizard! He had been traveling with the circus and going up and down in his balloon when he had the bad luck to get sucked down into a crack in the earth during an earthquake. Luckily he has some tricks to scare the Mangaboos into thinking he was a real wizard and not just a humbug, including a rather fun trick involving nine tiny pigs that live in his pockets (pictured on the freaky bookcover above).

Okay, more adventures happen, including an escape up through a mountain into the Valley of the Voe where everyone eats plants that make them invisible so that the savage bears that live in the valley can't see them to eat them. Of course, the bears eat the plants too so they are also invisible. And scary. And they try to kill our heroes. Then they climb higher and end up in the land of the Gargoyles where everything is made out of wood and mean wooden Gargoyles can fly around and try to kill our heroes (there is a lot of attempted murder in this one). Finally we spend a bit of time with the Dragonettes -- some baby dragons who also try to kill our heroes, but aren't quite able to. And finally, when all hope is lost, everything works out okay and they get to spend a little time in Oz getting reunited with all our old friends like Ozma, the Scarecrow, and the Tin Man. They love big reunions in Oz.

And did you ever wonder why the Wizard of Oz called himself the Wizard of Oz? Well:

"Please tell me, Mr. Wizard, whether you called yourself Oz after this great country, or whether you believe my country is called Oz after you. It is a matter that I have long wished to enquire about, because you are of a strange race and my own name is Ozma. No, one, I am sure, is better able to explain this mystery than you."

"That is true," answered the little Wizard; "therefore it will give me pleasure to explain my connection with your country. In the first place, I must tell you that I was born in Omaha, and my father, who was a politician, named me Oscar Zoroaster Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkle Emmannuel Ambroise Diggs, Diggs being the last name because he could think of no more to go before it. Taken altogether, it was a dreadfully long name to weigh down a poor innocent child, and one of the hardest lessons I ever learned was to remember my own name. When I grew up I just called myself O. Z., because the other initials were P-I-N-H-E-A-D; and that spelled 'pinhead,' which was a reflection on my intelligence."

No one wants to be a pinhead. Not even the Wizard of Oz.

Bringing it to the table

Something is going on in this ad for Cuisinart (click to make it a little bigger). Let's go clockwise:

Girl A and Guy B are both looking at Girl H. She looks really uncomfortable.

Woman C ("Mom"?) is looking at A and B, and she also has a pink sweater tied around her shoulders.

Boy D and Old Man E are looking at each other intently, but Old Man should probably be looking at the roast he is in the process of carving. Boy D also has very strange hair.

Girl F is looking at Man G, but he refuses to look at her.

Again, Girl H is uncomfortable. Probably because of the staredown.

How this is supposed to sell food processors is unclear....

SB Wednesday: Turkish Edition

Sometimes I find a new SB when I'm not even looking for one. In this case, Turkish director and actor Nuri Bilge Ceylan (I also like that his second name is Bilge). We saw the AFS screening of Ceylan's film Climates (2006) last night, and now I have a crush on the director (who is also the film's lead actor). [In addition, this film is amazing. Watch it as soon as you can.]





And who wouldn't get a little SB crush on this guy? His character in Climates is kind of a clueless (yet somehow sympathetic) jerk, but his face is like Robert Downey, Jr. X Clive Owen + Daniel Craig.






And since many of my SBs also have attractive wives, its nice to see that Ceylan fits into the same character. The lead actress in Climates is Ceylan's wife, Ebru Ceylan, and she is not so bad herself.

Congratulations on becoming my first Turkish SB!

Zombified

What is even scarier than Phyllis Diller's zombie dog in The Boneyard?








Phyllis Diller's zombie! [Which I couldn't actually find a picture of on the Internet even though I searched for ten minutes and I know it must be there. Go rent this movie and take a picture of the screen when the zombie shows up. It will be worth it, I swear. She is actually a little scary even in non-zombie form.]

Elsewhen-y

My latest science fiction read is the nicely covered and weirdly titled The Jewels of Elsewhen by Ted White (1967). I love the couples' outfits on the cover, but they really don't reflect the costumes of the book which are regular cop and young woman clothes ca. 1967. Still, isn't it better to be running around in alternate realities wearing some futuristic leotards? Probably.

Because that is what this surprisingly great book is all about -- our heroes, Arthur Ficarra, the cop coming off a 20 hour shift and heading home for some sleep and Kim Nemzek, young woman coming home from a really long day of getting fired, robbed, and raped (although you don't find that out until later in a somewhat disturbingly blase scene), are about to get off at their stop on the subway. But the doors don't open. And everyone else in their car has turned into a mannequin. And so has everyone in the next car up. And in the third car they are all 2-dimensional cardboard cutouts. And in the front car they are just tags with people's names on them. But finally a door opens, and they go outside to find a perfect model of New York City with no people and nothing in the buildings. Everything is very strange. And it gets even stranger when the sky rips apart and starts falling down on Arthur and Kim.

They run into the subway and find a old-timey trolley car waiting. They jump in and when it stops they find themselves in a strange 1945 where New York City is Italian and everyone seems kind of beaten down and oppressed. More realities and more NYCs follow. They are stuck in elsewhen. What is going on? How do they get back to regular New York City?

The answer is pretty neat, although it would be even neater if it didn't involve Leonardo Da Vinci. If you want, I'll tell you about it sometime, but it would really ruin the book to let it out here. And don't you want to read it for yourself? I'll even loan you my copy...

[And how could you resist checking out the back cover here.]

Everybody Loves a Good Hat

Come one, come all, and visit the Chrysler Hats Off to the Kentucky Derby design contest. The lovely Mary of Pretty Good Things has been selected as one of fifteen finalists (out of hundreds of entries! Yay Mary!). Look at all the hats, and I'm sure you will agree that number 11 is the best. Now vote for it. Don't you want Mary to make a hat out of convertible top fabric and win the car? Of course you do.

Vote!

SB Update

Okay, so I missed SB Wednesday -- but I'm busy being a hostess until tomorrow! I just thought you should all know that I saw Zodiac yesterday, and got to experience SB overload. Robert Downey, Jr. won the triple SB showdown by a mile. He is, in fact, the only thing about that movie that I really couldn't criticize. That dude can deliver any line you give him with pizazz and he looks mighty fine in an ascot.

The Big D

Our latest book club selection was Notes from the Underground by Dostoevsky, and since my copy of Notes is Dr. M's copy of Notes, and since it was sandwiched between two other selections (namely The Double and The Eternal Husband), I just read all three.

First, I have to say that this is one of the most awesome physical books ever. It was published in 1960, and it has a great faded greenish cover with pink type. Our copy got a bit waterlogged sometime in its past, but the paper is of very high quality, and the water stains are mostly on the outer edge. Plus the typography was done by Edward Gorey! Yay! (and the back cover is here)

The three novels are all quite good -- this was the first Dostoevsky I'd ever read, and I would like to read some more. Notes was probably my favorite of the three, although I don't want to say too much about it since our book club hasn't met yet.

The Double is one of D's earliest novels, and it tells the story of a man who, after a series of embarrassing and socially harmful mistakes, starts seeing a double of himself everywhere he goes. The double has his same name, and gets a job at his office. Everyone seems to like the double more than him, and he alternates between trying to suck up to the double (because he likes him more than himself) and to get revenge on him for ruining his life (because obviously the double made all those bonehead plays earlier, not our hero). Satisfying ending.

In The Eternal Husband, our hero is a bit of a playboy who has recently lost yet another fortune and is going through a period of depression. He meets the husband of his former lover in the street one day -- he hadn't seen either of them for nine years, and the husband tells him that his wife has died. The husband is distraught, and the man (who feels a little guilty for cuckolding the guy) takes him under his wing. It doesn't take long for him to notice that the man has a daughter who is just the right age to be our hero's daughter. A lot of weird psychological games are played between the two men as they try to second-guess each other's guilty actions and enact their revenge upon one another.

So: if you want some kind of misanthropic, internalized characters with a lot of guilt and big chips on their shoulders -- Dostoevsky is for you. He does it better than anyone else, and sometimes it really does the trick.

[And finally -- we are going to have some houseguests for the next few days, so posting may be spotty. Don't get too sad, please. I will not be at work and going out to eat a lot, and that should never be regretted.]

Buñuelrific

Last night Dr. M and I made some delicious Buñuelinis. What is a Buñuelini, you might ask? Why it is Luis Buñuel's signature martini recipe, and it is quite nice. I usually like my martinis dirty, but this was great even without the extra olive juice. Of course, I didn't have the right brand of vermouth, and I have no idea how big a demitasse spoon is, so I had to wing the measurements. Still turned out great. And made me feel all surreal...

Pussey!

I hadn't bought any comics in a long time, but when I got a gift certificate to Bookpeople from my secret santa at work, graphic novels seemed like the way to go. I'm very happy with my purchases (Pussey! by Daniel Clowes, and Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud), but the graphic novel section was lamely located right next to one of those information booths, and the bookseller working there was driving me crazy with his loud talking about how crazy his night before was to anyone that would walk by. I am more of a "hide in a little nook" bookshopper than a "stand in the middle of an open space with some guy talking really loudly about how much he likes to party right behind me" shopper. I think I might be overly sensitive to the shopping experience, which is why I usually just buy things on the internet...

So, anyway: Pussey! Which is the last name of our hero, Dan Pussey, and which is actually pronounced Poo-say and not the way you think it is. This is a reissue of the 1994 collection, with a new comic introduction by Clowes. This follows the story of upcoming comic artist, Dan Pussey, as he slowly crawls his way up the comic hierarchy, and then tragically falls to a younger upcoming comic artist before really getting to enjoy his success. In his introduction, Clowes notes that most of the Pussey comics were written to vent out his frustration with the comic industry, fan boys, comic conventions, publishers, other comics, and just the whole deal. But he notes that as he has gotten older, he has more sympathy for Pussey and the whole scene, and I think that sympathy comes through in the stories.

I Don't Lick Stranger's Faces, Unless....

Manny Coon tells it like it is. Let's go to art school!

Found at Work

Some really quite awesome City of Austin letterhead from the 1970s. Kind of crappily scanned, as I was in a hurry. Click to make it bigger and enjoy all its cityscape glory.

SB Wednesday: In Theaters Now!

Oh, Jake Gyllenhaal -- even though I have to look up your name every time I type it, and even then I still usually spell it wrong, you are still the SB of this Wednesday.





A big reason why I want to see Zodiac involves the SB-trifecta of Jake G., Mark Ruffalo, and Robert Downey, Jr. Look at Mark be all confrontational.

And look at Robert's cuteness hidden under the kind of unfortunate facial hair. You can't hide that cuteness completely!

Jake G. made for a pretty cute cowboy, even with the gay element (and possibly even cuter because of it...)



In this picture, the hair gets a thumbs down (to be honest, Jake G. has dumb hair about 53% of the time), but the rest is all thumbs up.

I'm Melting! Melting!

Yes, in retrospect, I probably shouldn't have walked to work today. I left work half an hour early after repeatedly refreshing the weather radar and watching this chunk of a storm slowly creep towards Austin, thinking I might be able to beat it. I mostly did -- I had to walk for ten minutes in light rain, ten minutes in moderate rain, and about ten minutes in rather heavy rain with some thunder all about. I had an umbrella, so I didn't get soaked, but the thunder makes me nervous. This is why people drive cars....

Beware the Wheelers!

It was totally fun to read the next book in the Oz series, Ozma of Oz (1907), because this one, in combination with the second book, make up most of the plot of one of my favorite childhood movies, the wonderfully creepy Return to Oz (1985).

In Ozma of Oz our old friend Dorothy gets swept off a boat on her way to Australia with Uncle Henry, who is going there to recoup from an illness. During a horrible storm at sea, Dorothy hides in a chicken coop on the deck and she and the resident chicken (Billina) find themselves floating out on the ocean. Luckily for Dorothy, the chicken can talk. Eventually Dorothy and Billina end up on dry land in the Land of Ev -- a kingdom just across the deadly desert from Oz.

The two first find a great little wind-up mechanical man named Tik-Tok. After they find his key and wind him up, he explains a bit about his former master, The King of Ev:

"Don't mention it," answered Dorothy. And then, being very curious, she asked: "How did you come to be locked up in this place?"

"It is a long sto-ry," replied the copper man; "but I will tell it to you brief-ly. I was pur-chased from Smith & Tin-ker, my man-u-fac-tur-ers, by a cru-el King of Ev, named Ev-ol-do, who used to beat all his serv-ants un-til they died. How-ev-er, he was not a-ble to kill me, be-cause I was not a-live, and one must first live in or-der to die. So that all his beat-ing did me no harm, and mere-ly kept my cop-per bod-y well pol-ished.

This crazy king got so mad at his wife and ten children one day that he sold them to the Nome King, who promptly turned them all into enchanted knick-knacks for his castle. The King of Ev was so sad that he had sold his family that he drowned himself in the ocean, leaving Ev without a ruler.

A bunch of other great stuff happens, including a reunion with Ozma, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion; a local princess who keeps dozens of beautiful heads in her dressing room and changes her head with her mood; an army with tons of officers and only one private; and a climactic guessing game that helps to save the day.

The best part of all, though, are the scary scary Wheelers that terrorize Dorothy and Billina at the beginning of the book. I think these guys are way scarier than the flying monkeys:

It had the form of a man, except that it walked, or rather rolled, upon all fours, and its legs were the same length as its arms, giving them the appearance of the four legs of a beast. Yet it was no beast that Dorothy had discovered, for the person was clothed most gorgeously in embroidered garments of many colors, and wore a straw hat perched jauntily upon the side of its head. But it differed from human beings in this respect, that instead of hands and feet there grew at the end of its arms and legs round wheels, and by means of these wheels it rolled very swiftly over the level ground. Afterward Dorothy found that these odd wheels were of the same hard substance that our finger-nails and toe-nails are composed of, and she also learned that creatures of this strange race were born in this queer fashion. But when our little girl first caught sight of the first individual of a race that was destined to cause her a lot of trouble, she had an idea that the brilliantly-clothed personage was on roller-skates, which were attached to his hands as well as to his feet.

Now go read the whole thing here, because you know you want to.

And get prepared to be totally freaked out by The Wheelers:

A Thrilling Journey

How does an author in 1895 who wants to write a book where a man travels into the future escape the eventual datedness of his book when someone reads it in 100 years and man hasn’t invented the jet-packs, Utopian society, or contact with alien life that he predicted? Why he sets the book in the year 802,701. Try to argue with those predictions, because you can’t.

This was just the tactic taken in my most recent sci-fi read: The Time Machine, by H. G. Wells (1895 – although my copy was printed around 1960, check out the back cover complete with movie stills here). I read The Invisible Man last year, and really enjoyed it. The Time Machine is the novel Wells wrote just before The Invisible Man, and it is equally as great.

This is one of the best explorations of the implications of evolution that I have ever read in a science fiction book. Our hero builds his machine and lands in the aforementioned year in the distant future where he comes across a race of rather small and androgynous humans who do nothing but eat fruit, grow beautiful flowers, and have sex all day long. Nice. He notes:

“Seeing the ease and security in which these people were living, I felt that this close resemblance of the sexes was after all what one would expect; for the strength of a man and the softness of a woman, the institution of the family, and the differentiation of occupations are mere militant necessities of an age of physical force; where population is balanced and abundant, much childbearing becomes an evil rather than a blessing to the State; where violence comes but rarely and off-spring are secure, there is less necessity—indeed there is no necessity—for an efficient family, and the specialization of the sexes with reference to their children’s needs disappears. We see some beginnings of this even in our own time, and in this future age it was complete. This, I must remind you, was my speculation at the time. Later, I was to appreciate how far it fell short of the reality.”

And why does it deviate from reality? Well, I think you should read it for yourself [and isn't weird that lately everything I've been reading is available in full-text for free on the Internet? I've got to check out some more recent stuff...], but the short version is that these little guys aren’t the only descendants of the human race on the planet, and the other ones aren’t quite so utopic and nice. Wells plays around with the class system, evolution, the environment, and all kinds of other things here. You should really check it out.

And to top it all off, I found this receipt in my book! I love that kind of thing.

Secret Boyfriend Wednesday: Spell it Out

Even though I always get his name mixed up with Robbie Coltrane, Rory Cochrane is the real SB of the pair. I just have trouble with names that start with the same letters -- I also get Clark Gable, Cary Grant, and Gary Cooper mixed up for the same reason (the names, not the actors).






Although CSI Miami is not my favorite arm of the CSI franchise, Rory Cochrane makes it quite watchable. [I also have a soft spot for David Caruso, even though his Horatio is completely goofy -- it has to do with the red hair].








He is equally cute animated in A Scanner Darkly [and nicely acting alongside another SB. You know who it is.]

Don't shoot, Rory! You're my SB of the week!

The Big Red A

My latest random book read has been floating around in my personal library since I bought it in junior high or high school. It always seemed like it would get assigned in a class, but it never did, and I never got around to reading it. Has everyone else on earth already read The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1850)? Well now, world, I have joined your illustrious ranks!

I really enjoyed this book, but what I liked best about it was not the story itself (although that has a lot of great guilt, morality, and revenge, and a surprisingly modern attitude towards women and men), but the introductory essay by Hawthorne titled "The Custom House" [which you can read here (and you should) -- or just go crazy and read the whole book]. In "The Custom House," the narrator (who is basically Hawthorne) discusses his job at a Custom House in Salem and how he found the source material that he turned into The Scarlet Letter. This essay is so fresh, applicable, and modern-seeming (not to mention occasionally really funny) that I found myself reading every other paragraph out loud to Josh. If you have ever been dissatisfied with your job, frustrated that you don't have enough energy to devote to your own projects, or irritated with your home town, you should read this. Even if you don't get to the rest of the book, it will be worth it.

This bit, for example, seemed the perfect advice for anyone writing a memoir (or a blog, for that matter):

The truth seems to be, however, that, when he casts his leaves forth upon the wind, the author addresses, not the many who will fling aside his volume, or never take it up, but the few who will understand him, better than most of his schoolmates or lifemates. Some authors, indeed, do far more than this, and indulge themselves in such confidential depths of revelation as could fittingly be addressed, only and exclusively, to the one heart and mind of perfect sympathy; as if the printed book, thrown at large on the wide world, were certain to find out the divided segment of the writer’s own nature, and complete his circle of existence by bringing him into communion with it. It is scarcely decorous, however, to speak all, even where we speak impersonally. But—as thoughts are frozen and utterance benumbed, unless the speaker stand in some true relation with his audience—it may be pardonable to imagine that a friend, a kind and apprehensive, though not the closest friend, is listening to our talk; and then, a native reserve being thawed by this genial consciousness, we may prate of the circumstances that lie around us, and even of ourself, but still keep the inmost Me behind its veil. To this extent and within these limits, an author, methinks, may be autobiographical, without violating either the reader’s rights or his own.

Time for a Serious Debate

Warning: a really long post with semi-graphic tampon talk follows. If you aren’t into the minutia of the tampon experience, perhaps you better just go read something else instead…

About a month ago I was at a meatloaf-eating dinner party when the question of tampons was raised: plastic or cardboard? A rousing and drunken (and really long, right?) debate ensued that culminated in a visitation from a tampon ghost, a tampon piñata standoff and plastic applicator anthromorphism.

Because I am budget-conscious and environmentally aware, I fall on the side of cardboard. I have a tendency to purchase Walgreens brand tampons (or “Walpons”), but sometimes I will buy cardboard Tampax instead (if they are on sale, or if Walgreens is sold out of the multipack that I like).

The lovely Joolie is a fan of plastic Tampax tampons all the way (and I tried to link to them on the tampax site, but they are oddly unpictured. But I bought them, so they are still available. Are they being discontinued as the Pearl Tampon takes over the entire non-cardboard market? Strange.) So we challenged one another to a tampon-off: I would try the plastic applicators during my next period, and Joolie would make a go of the cardboard applicators. The following are my conclusions.

Plastic pluses:

• Really quite a joy to insert.
• Plastic applicators are much better at withstanding the rigors of being stored in my bag and carried all over creation. I may make plastic my new “standby” tampon that gets to sit in my bag for months just waiting for an emergency use.
  

Plastic cons:

• I felt horrible every time I threw one of those perfect plastic missiles with accompanying shiny plastic wrapper away.
• A box of 36 plastic tampons cost $2 more than a box of 40 cardboard tampons at the HEB (both Tampax brands – you could save at least another $2 if you went to Walpons).
  

Cardboard pluses:

• Biodegradable (and flushable, if you need to, although I always feel like I will jam up the plumbing so I usually just throw them away). And here’s a little anecdote: when Dr. M and I were first dating, he lived in an apartment with his brother and those dudes had no garbage can in the bathroom. I guess they would just flush any trash they generated in there. Having flushable tampons allowed me to not have to carry my used tampon applicator and wrapper out into the living room to throw them away in the kitchen garbage. That probably saved our relationship right there.
• Cheaper (see above).
• Really just as comfortable to insert.
  

Cardboard cons:

• Not as durable for carrying around in a bag.

The result: I’m a cardboard gal. Although I won’t look down my nose at anyone who prefers to invest in plastic. It just doesn’t seem necessary to me – maybe the same way that it doesn’t seem necessary to spend twice as much for organic apples and I always order well drinks and house margaritas? I’m kind of cheap, I’ll admit it. But this is an area of my hygiene where I don’t feel the extra money makes that much of a difference.

Finally, some untried hypotheses:

The Pearl question – are these really that great? Their website says that they will provide “incredible comfort and extraordinary protection to help make you feel feminine, comfortable and vital every day of your period.” Vital? I don’t think I have a problem with that. Feminine? A tampon will not make me feel more or less feminine while I’m having my period. And their definition of a Pearl Girl is the weirdest bit of PR I have ever seen.

I feel that even though I can concede certain plastic applicator points, I can’t really justify the extra cost for some kind of super vagina pampering Pearl applicator. Plus those “upgrade” commercials bother me. Part of why I don’t like the plastic applicators is that they seem to be a gateway into caving in to the Pearl experience. A case in point: when I bought my test box of plastic Tampax, the HEB coupon generator spit out a $2 off coupon for discounted Pearl tampons. This is obviously a plot.

And finally: OBs? I have never tried these, and frankly, they kind of scare me. Although I admire those who are willing to insert without the aid of any applicator at all, I’m just not that comfortable crossing that boundary myself. It really seems just a step away from The Keeper, Glad Rags, or bleeding into a moss-covered glen as I commune with my womanhood. I toast those ladies that are comfortable rinsing their menstrual blood out in the sink at a bar, or wrapping up their used glad rag and putting it in their desk drawer to take home after work, but I am just not one of them.

Dear readers: do you have a tampon opinion? Please share it freely and show Joolie that I’m right and she is oh so wrong.

Banana Muffin

I have a tendency to make banana muffins at least every other weekend. By Sunday I usually have a couple super-ripe bananas around, and nothing makes Sunday morning better than a mountain of muffins and an extra pot of coffee. A couple weekends ago, I found the secret to the best muffins ever: replace the regular boring old milk in your favorite muffin recipe with vanilla soy milk. I swear these were the moistest, tastiest muffins ever. Also put cinnamon in them. Yum!