BlackChampagne -- no longer new; improvement also in question.
Friday, May 16, 2008
Middle Class?
Troubling article on Salon about a new book examining the actual financial state of "middle class" Americans. Turns out that quite a few people with college degrees, working in white collar jobs, earning what would seem to be good incomes (up to $70k a year) are actually in fairly dire financial straits. College costs and debts have risen, healthcare costs are skyrocketing and being steadily moved from business to employees, retirement planning is following the same path. This bit caught my eye, given my ongoing dalliance with the idea of grad school.
In the '70s, we were barely taking out student loans. In 1977, collectively students were borrowing about $6 billion. By now, they're borrowing over $85 billion. That's a remarkable number. The number of students enrolled in college grew 44 percent between 1977 and 2003, but student loan volume rose 833 percent in that same time period.
There are fewer grants and scholarships available. If students go through graduate school, they can end up taking out over $100,000 of student loans. And if you go into a field that's not high-paying that can be a real burden on you for 20, 30, 40 years.
We are seeing more people going to college, which is definitely a positive move, but they're getting into a lot of debt to do it. The college degree now is what the high school degree used to be. You really need a basic bachelor's degree in order to be eligible for a lot of jobs.
You can see the math fairly easily there: 4-5 years more time in school = 4-5 years less earning money and 4-5 years more racking up debt. And if the white collar job at the end of that is no better paying (adjusted for inflation) than jobs in industry and manufacturing that were formerly available without college, and that have now been largely moved overseas in the name of higher corporate profits, today's college grad is materially far worse off than his father or grandfather. No wonder people were treating their houses like ATMs during the last few years when "real estate values always went up." At least they're better off then people who bought during that period, and are now sitting on hundreds of thousands of dollars in negative equity.
This issue of being middle class ties into a larger sociological topic I've had sitting on my notes file for a couple of weeks. The nut of the matter is that almost all Americans consider themselves to be "middle class," almost regardless of their actual income or financial situation. I can imagine people who are poor, or are living without much income/expenses (like myself) who tell themselves they're middle class in order to boost their ego or salve their pride. Or who just do it reflexively, without considering actual numbers, or who don't really think about it since their income isn't their priority in life (like me). The interesting thing is that this goes both ways. People who are clearly rich, or at least have an income that puts them well above the median, also claim to be "middle class," even when that's demonstrably false.
Sunday I learned that I am insensitive after I wrote a column arguing that families who earn as much as $200,000 to $250,000 are "rich."
A San Francisco couple earning $205,000 informed me they "shouldn't be considered anything but working middle class." A $215,000 couple told me, "Families making $200,000 a year are not rich. They're not even close to rich." A San Francisco lawyer explained that a $200,000 salary cannot make one rich because a "a 'rich' person does not need to work."
...Clinton promised not to raise "a single tax on middle-class Americans, people making less than $250,000 a year." Obama made a similar pledge for incomes up to between $200,000 and $250,000.
These figures are clearly etched into the national consciousness, as shown by both Democratic contenders adopting them into their tax plans. Americans do not think earning $200k a year makes you anything but middle class. What's the reality? Rather different.
As the cited columnist shows, earning $200k a year puts you into the 93rd percentile in the Bay Area, and the 97th percentile nationally. By what reasonable definition of "middle class" does earning more than 93%, or 97% of people, slot you into it?
I think this goes to the widely (though inconsistently applied) views Americans have of themselves (ourselves?) as "the common man," imbued with a "Protestant work ethic" and all striving to become (or remain) "middle class." They're psychological buzz words, ones that set off a resonance in our national psyche, and how well, if at all, they describe is us irrelevant to the satisfaction we get at their usage. Furthermore, people tend to generalize by their own standards, so most people earning $200k a year think they're middle class, and think that other people live lives somewhat like their own. They're largely ignorant of what sort of life is lived by people who actually are "middle class," and they confuse their "we just vacation in Hawaii, we don't own a second house there" situation for the actual "working a second job on weekends to pay off medical bills" middle class reality.
On the other hand, there is a point to people making $200k who think they're not upper class. And that point comes about from the (almost) historically unprecedented level income inequality in modern day America. If you're earning $200k a year, and the CEO of your company is earning $50m a year, you can't possibly see himself and yourself as of the same class. And you're not. You're earning 3x what an actual middle class family does, "$77,076 -- less if the family does not have to buy its own health care or pay for child care." according to the California Budget, as cited by the afore-linked SF Game columnist. But if your CEO earns 250x what you do, and 750x what a middle class worker does, and he's "upper class," you are indeed nowhere near that class.
Still, I do find it interesting that for most Americans, you need to be Bill Gates, or Tom Cruise, to actually be rich. You need to have several homes, servants, several vehicles you use simply for fun rather than transportation, etc. It's an interesting definition of rich, where a person must have an income not tens or dozens of times your own, but hundreds, or even thousands of times greater, to qualify.
That leads to my second digression, in which I quote part of an email I wrote Malaya on this issue a couple of weeks ago. I'll present it without further comment, and edit it simply to fix some typos:
America, where everyone wants to be rich but no one admits when they are.
This ties into something I was thinking in the shower this morning. How people normalize everything to their own standards, and assume that the rest of the world is moving inexorably towards it. Quite noticeable amongst atheists, who believe everyone else will gradually shed their religion and become secular (Worldwide evidence of this... ?). But capitalists and libertarians and even democracy-ists fall into the same trap. 1) We think our economic/political systems are the best, and 2) that everyone will gradually move into them. (And we're sure there's evidence to back this up.)
The first might be true, but #2 is far less clear. Most of the world is now moving towards capitalism, but Europe has far more central control and economic planning, as does Japan, the Asian tigers, etc. And then you get China with limited capitalism controlled by a semi-tyrannical bureaucracy, India is similar, though more democratic in the selection of the bureaucrats. And the rest of the world is more of a chaotic scramble, with a plutocrat class raking in the pesos/rubles, while most people struggle to survive.
Americans tend to assume that more freedom and democracy is best, but the evidence for this is spotty, and the evidence that it will ever be the majority opinion worldwide is nonexistent. Truth (arguable as that definition is) is largely irrelevant; how well is non-superstition doing in winning the battle amongst competing mental/philosophical memes?
There's a grand unified theory here somewhere, incorporating the fact that people think they're the heroes of their own story, and that their (usually inherited) beliefs about freedom or not, democracy or not, capitalism (to what degree), etc, all factor in. Westerners are full of conceit and hubris and lack objectivity. We're always saying that those poor women born and raised in backwards Islamic/tribal countries would want freedom and want to take off their burkas if they were only given the chance, and that if they don't it's only because they grew up in those societies and are brainwashed by them.
I happen to agree with that, but how is that any different than my inculcated beliefs? Americans only believe what we believe since we grew up believing it. We're just granting our inherited positions higher moral authority since that's a convenient reason for us to perpetuate them for everyone's own good. It's convenient to say freedom and capitalism are better and everyone should aspire to them, but if we only believe that since that's what we grew up believing, how is it any different than arguing that the Bible is the inerrant word of God because the Bible says its the inerrant word of God? (An argument atheists and rationalists rightly find laughable.)
What if it could be "proved" that people live happier, more content lives in largely egalitarian, politically controlling, centrally-planned theocracies? Would that convert Libertarians? Or Communists? Or democracy advocates? Of course not. They'd continue to believe their world view would be better if only everyone would convert to it.
Saw this on Balloon Juice while still groggy from a heat-driven afternoon nap, and watched most of it with my mouth hanging open in amazement. Highly recommend watching when you've got 5 minutes to spare and want to see something amazing.
MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo. It's a cartoon, but one painted on the walls and sometimes sidewalks of a busy city. It's basically graffiti, but while doing it they painted hundreds (thousands?) of images, and took endless still photos, then pasted them all together into this movie. Just the animation would be worth watching, since it's very creative and bizarre, but the way it's presented is what makes it amazing. The images, of stylized humans, weird bug things, and much more, are constantly moving and the camera follows as they crawl around the sides of walls, ducking under windows, tear loose weeds or papers, etc.
If this is the sort of thing people see when they're on real drugs, I'll stick to vodka! Kthx.
My college graduation ceremony is this weekend, and I'm looking forward to it. I actually graduated after the Fall '07 semester, thanks to cramming in 20 units and earning 6 more units of competency exams before Xmas, but I wanted to "walk" in the actual ceremony, and that's what's going down Saturday. Dad and mom/stepdad are coming up to see, and Malaya and the IG will be in attendance as well, so that should be interesting. My parents haven't seen Malaya since we broke up 1.5 years ago, and she and the IG have never met, and my mom and dad have been divorced for nearly 30 years and though they're not fighting, they only see each other about twice a year (during my Xmas visits, usually) despite living just a few miles apart. I might be the only student there with 5 guests sitting in 4 different places?
Adding fuel to the fire (almost literally) is the crazy weather. It hadn't been over 80 here more than a few days all year, despite being a very sunny and dry spring. Suddenly, just in time for graduation and this mini-family reunion, El Sol has erupted directly overhead, and it's supposed to be (fucking) 97 today. The average high for May in San Rafael? 73. The all time record for May is 100, so with some "luck" we might break that this afternoon. I'd be perfectly happy to never feel weather over 70 at any point during the rest of my life, so you can imagine my happiness at this development.
It's supposed to be cooler (as the frying pan is to the fire) over the weekend, with the mercury plummeting to 92 by Saturday. At least I won't be standing around for hours in the sun in a long black robe and hat. Oh wait...
The last time it was this hot was the summer of 2006, when weeks of a humid heat wave eventually drove Malaya and me to spend the best $349 ever. (That $349 has been sitting, unused, on her back patio ever since that summer ended, but I still say it was worth it. I'd bring it over here to replace the puny a/c unit in my apt, but the hole in my apt wall is way too small, and I don't plan on living here so much longer that I'm willing to go home carpentry style and thereby entirely give up my $1200 damage deposit.)
It's far from that miserably-hot now, and it's only supposed to be this hot for a few days, but here's the irony. Around the time it was so super hot in 2006 was just before Malaya's graduation. She was getting her PhD then, so she's still a couple of degrees ahead of me, but my parents were impressed enough to want to come see the festivities. So the last time they were up here was 2 years ago, for a college graduation, and it was hella hot. Now they're returning, for a college graduation... and it's hella hot. That's almost enough to put me off of my thoughts of grad school.
Speaking of grad school, that won't be starting any time soon. If at all. Like about 90% of the applicants, I was not accepted to the writing program I applied to. No idea why not, they don't explain their decisions, but since I never seriously expected to be accepted, I wasn't surprised. I was disappointed, but not terribly, and one benefit of them taking so long to notify me is that I've largely forgotten why I wanted to go. When I applied I was just finished with my 18 month return to college, and thought more of it, in a school that was actually challenging, would be fun. I'd improve my writing craft, I'd make connections in the publishing industry, I'd gain education in areas I'm interested in, and I might even meet some intelligent young women who shared my interest in the written word.
I still think that would be kind of cool, but is it worth delaying the start of my real career another two years? At $22k a year? Not so sure. I could, in theory, manage the graduate writing program course load while also working on my novels and outside writing at the same time, but in reality I think it would lead to brain burn out. There's only so much time I can spend reading, writing, and writing about what I'm reading without needing to spend some time and some brain cycles on non-literary pursuits. I could write novels at night while attending business or law school (I'd probably need to to clear my head of the technical stuff), but I'm not sure the streams wouldn't get hopelessly crossed and snarled if I were trying that while working my way through a "2 novels a week" writing program.
So sure, working on and publishing fantasy novels while doing a writing grad program focused on non-fiction, great books, classics, the publishing industry, etc, is possible, but likely? I've got some time to think it over now, at least, and I'm planning to spend this summer getting really serious about editing my fantasy novel and contacting literary agents while I start working on the sequel. Come the fall, depending on how that's going, I'll decide if I'm still interested in graduate writing programs.
The deadline for applying to most schools is around January 1st. Since I didn't think seriously about grad writing programs until Xmas, I missed the cutoff for several programs that sounded good. If they still appeal to me in 6 months I might try my luck again, but by applying to several this time, instead of just one very selective one in my immediate vicinity. Perhaps I'll have something more impressive to put on my resume by then?
(Though honestly, I have no idea if published mainstream fiction is a good thing on a grad writing program resume. The prestigious grad school writing programs have a reputation as being fiercely and defiantly artsy-fartsy, which is why I never really thought I had a chance. My stated goal was to write high quality work, but high quality commercial fantasy/horror novels -- not nuanced poetry that will never be read by more than fifty people, a dozen of whom might actually understand it. Poetry is a noble goal, but it's not my goal, since 1) I don't get it, and 2) I'd like to do this for a living.)
A friend of the IG's has been rebuffing the advances of one of her exes, and through a complicated chain of events, she imposed upon the IG to create a largely-fictitious persona through an online dating service, expressly for the purpose of checking out the exes' own personal ad. There wasn't much to report from that, and it wouldn't be my place to talk about it if there had been. What was more noteworthy was that the IG hadn't had her profile up for a day before she started getting male attention.
The first one came in while she was on the phone with me, and I received a gasping-for-air, laughing-in-pain play by play of her investigation of her admirer's profile. I shan't link to the poor soul, but the salient details were as follows. He's a 42 y/o white male, who lives with his parents in Oakland, is unemployed, has some college, likes watching sports and playing video games, is of average build and height. He's seeking... an 18-27 y/o female who is pretty, slender, and adventurous. Seems like a likely match there, eh? Better yet, for his luck and the IG's amusement, he had posted some photos. Her narration of that discovery went something like this. "A picture!" *in a high, excited voice* "Oh my god Eric..." *peals of laughter* "He's so fat! His beady little eyes!" *much more semi-breathless laughter*
His profile had more info than that, and I'm writing this from memory of tonight's phone call, but I assure you, it only got worse. More hobbies women aren't interested in, more unrealistic expectations of his future soul mate, etc. He didn't actually talk about his Night Elf rogue, or list the names and classes of his lvl 70 Alts, but possessions of that nature were strongly hinted at.
Mercifully, the IG closed her browser at that point to get back to not studying for her finals, and after our conversation ended I found myself thinking about that guy's ad, and the whole scenario. I guess we've got to give him some credit for being honest about what he wants? Perhaps needless to say, every man wants an slim, beautiful, adventurous 18-27 y/o. It's just that most of us realize such a catch is out of our league, and that such women don't spend time on personal ads since they have negative trouble meeting men in real life. Even if we overlook those two realities, most men have enough sense not to advertise their delusions of glandular quite so openly. For those who do, the imagined worst case scenario is being ignored by women and annoyed by scammers and spammers. That a girl who actually qualifies for his wet dream-esque profile preferences might one day come along, read the ad, and laugh so hard she gets hiccups is not something many guys consider. Luckily for the shriveled, blackened, last-year's-orange of a husk that is their ego.
It takes some nerve to post an honest personal ad. It's putting yourself out there, where you can, and probably will, be rejected. Perhaps painfully. It reminds me of a junior high dance, where the girls cluster together along one side of the gym and the boys have to find the nerve to walk across the desert of the basketball court, the three point line unreeling beneath their shined shoes like road lines leading over a cliff. Boys tend to suspect that the pretty girls only go to dances to tease and laugh at us, and men might think the same thing about posting a personal ad.
Fortunately, we all know that's just paranoia and foolishness, and that women never look over the ads just to laugh at how lame the guys are... oh wait.
In vaguely-related news, I saw a link to this description of the legendary debacle that was Australia's Naughtiest Home Videos, and had to share.
After being informed by friends at a dinner, Kerry Packer, owner of the broadcaster Nine Network tuned in to watch the show on TCN-9 and was so offended by its content that he phoned the studio operators and ordered them to "Get that shit off the air!" The studio operators complied, and the show immediately pulled the plug and went to a black screen saying the network had "technical difficulties" In Melbourne, the show went to a commercial and never came back, with two reruns of Cheers filling the show's remaining air time. The same happened in Brisbane, with the exception that it was succeeded by three episodes of Cheers.
The show ran for just 34 minutes of a 90-minute premiere (minus the advertisements, an effective 24 minutes of the show was aired); Mulray was immediately fired and banned for life from the network.
Some clips from the show can be seen on YouTube, though they're terrible quality, very short, and show nothing but quick snippets of non-explicit interspecies animal porn. Dogs with cats, bunnies with chickens, monkeys with goats, etc. For example:
Finally, when I went to the gym after Kali on Tuesday night, I got there early enough that the place was still slightly crowded, and with women as well as men. (There are very seldom any ladies there after 11pm, when I'm usually working out.) I was forcibly informed of this fact when I entered, had my badge scanned, and walked around the front desk only to come face to face (so to speak) with a young, slim, tall, tights and jog bra-wearing Asian woman who was walking on one of the stepmill machines, placing her most delightful asset directly at my eye level.
For an instant I considered turning around and leaving. After all, there was no possible way any subsequent events at the gym could improve upon that opening. Sure enough, I walked from there into the locker room and was greeted by the usual rogue's gallery of all-too-naked 60 y/o while males, most of whom carried more weight, and fat, in a single thigh than that scrumptious stepmilling woman had in her entire body.
I didn't talk to her there... wonder if she's got a personal ad?
For my "listen while cooking" entertainment of late, I've been going through the various audio and video files news'ed about on Richard Dawkins' website, and I found one tonight I thought worth a blog entry. It's long (2+ hour) debate featuring skeptic and paranormal investigator Sue Blackmore vs. theologian Alister McGrath. I'd never previously heard of Blackmore, but she's quite a good speaker, a clever mind boltered by a strong voice and a precise English accent. Such a vocal accompaniment does go quite a way towards elevating one's discourse.
It's not just a magic accent though; the voice has to be good also. McGrath has quite an accent of his own, but his voice is snively and he sounds smugly nasal to me. Of course I disagree with his arguments and think he's frequently deceptive in his presentation of them (more so in other debates I've heard than in this one), so I'm far from objective about that. Still, I feel secure in stating that he's got an annoying voice, English accent or not. (And yes, I realize that saying "English accent" is an almost pointless description, since accents vary tremendously throughout the country, and besides, McGrath's is Irish, modified by decades living in England. But for most of the world outside of the UK, and especially for most in the US, they all just sound so, so... English. Like the audible version of Worcestershire sauce.)
Anyway, what I thought worth recommending from this debate was Blackmore's opening statement. I don't think she's very good on the audience questions, and her rebuttal to McGrath's opening was particularly flaccid, given that I've heard him give that exact speech in earlier debates, so she should have been able to prepare for it. I also don't think she relates her main speech to the theme of the event very well either; she's talking about how religions form and whey they exist, when the debate was formally about whether religious belief is a good or bad thing in society. (A question directly in McGrath's wheelhouse, since he debates primarily to demonstrate that religion is useful and beneficial, and has little or nothing to say about whether it's true outside of wishful thinking, which is why he's essentially unarmed when he debates Dawkins or Harris or Hitchens.)
Put all that aside, since I'm not recommending you listen to the whole 2 hours. Just check out Blackmore's opening remarks. They run about 20 minutes, starting maybe 3 minutes in, and provide as succinct and informative a rundown of the evolutionary origins of religion as I've ever heard. Why do humans invent faiths? What purposes do they serve? What needs do they fulfill? What do the various religions tell us about the societies that created and nurtured them?
Blackmore doesn't get into many details or specifics, but even her overview is very interesting, since she neatly outlines the concept of anthropological analysis of religion, one I think is fairly revelatory to most people, since they've never thought about the issue in that light. In the debate format Blackmore's coverage is necessarily superficial, but she provides a nutshell description of how human societies create religions (every historical and modern society ever studied has done so, with estimates running past 100,000 such instances) what functions these memes and memeplexes serve, how they evolve and mutate over time, and how and why they persist. Or not.
That last point is my current area of interest, and it's something I've been trying to find some scholarly writing about. How do religions and other comparable philosophies compete in the marketplace of ideas? Which elements from them are the most adaptive, which are the most sticky, and why do some religions persist and grow and adapt, while others get out-competed and vanish into the dustbin of mythology?
Answers, or anything approaching dispassionate analysis is hard to come by, since it's a very complicated subject, and sorting the causes from the overlapping issues is especially tricky. Humans don't grow up with clear minds and objectivity, and then at age 20 make an informed decision as to which (if any) religion they're going to join. Quite the opposite. Most people are indoctrinated from birth into their parents' faith (and stick with or reject it as adults), almost all of us were raised in societies where religion or religions were omnipresent, and religions are actively promoted by individuals, groups, and the world's culture at large. Belief in them is fairly fluid; many people switch sects or even religions entirely when they get married, but once humans have the religious concepts implanted in their minds, they are extremely difficult to eradicate. You think getting a catchy jingle out of your brain is hard? Try it with a major monotheism.
For one example of the overlap between meme strength and other issues, consider the fact that religions were historically spread by the sword. Religious wars have been fought throughout history with the winners usually doing their damndest to evangelize their faith to the defeated tribe/country/culture. Religion has always traveled with explorers, too. Missionaries work side by side with soldiers and keep busy infecting the conquered with the conqueror's religion. Examples of religion being used as a societal control and a moderating force on an oppressed people are legion. As are counter-examples of small groups using their own unique flavor of religion to give themselves a stronger identity which powered their drive for autonomy. Which is, of course, why wise conquerors worked to wipe out native religions and to impose a common faith.
Unfortunately for my purposes, this makes it impossible to compare, for instance, the relevant strengths and weaknesses (in a meme sense) between the Catholicism of the Spanish Conquistadors, and the indigenous religion of the Aztecs they conquered. Catholicism obviously won out, and the Americas south of California is almost entirely Catholic to this day, but why did it win out? Was the religion irresistible since it was part and parcel of the Spanish's (and subsequent European invaders') overall cultural dominance? The South Americans (and Central Americans, and Mexicans, and North Americans they conquered in the following centuries) all had their own religions, but when the technologically superior Spaniards rolled over them it must have seemed ridiculous to continue believing in the local faiths when their principle exponents, the rulers and priests, were crushed by the invaders and forced to convert to their cult of Christos. Catholicism spread rapidly through the new world since it was connected to the all-powerful conquering armies, and belief in it was required for the locals to receive education or metal tools, to work in the missions and forts, to obtain leadership positions in their own society, etc. Was the religion itself more mentally catchy? What about the Christian mythology makes it so easy to learn and so satisfying for those who believe in it? Why is it the most popular religion in the world today? (I'm not entertaining the notion that it's actually the one true faith, and that God is making people accept it now, or that He created humans with some inherent traits that make us suceptible to becoming Christians, though if that's your opinion you are free to cherish it.)
The spread of Christianity throughout the New World is historical fact (if open to debate on the details and nuances); what I'm curious about is why did/does the monotheism of Christianity (in its myriad forms, also including its Old Testament offshoot Islam), work so strongly as a meme? How much is just its (modern day) association with the culturally dominant Western civilization? Coca-Cola, Mickey Mouse, Levi's, and Jesus? How much is centuries-long association with conquering armies? And how much is purely the strength of the religion's memes winning the war in the ideological battleground, with its powerful concepts of afterlife rewards and punishment, various motivations to reproduce and build orderly societies, the concept of one all-powerful god instead of numerous local spirits living beneath fractious elder gods, etc? Which improvements and upgrades has Islam made to the basic Christian model to spread so widely and so quickly, without the cultural/entertainment benefits of Western Christianity? Why is Judaism so (comparatively) tiny and non-evangelical, given that it's the source from which both the expanding monotheisms sprung? How can polytheisms compete with such ambitious monotheisms?
I'm not sure how empirically those questions can be answered, but if anyone's made a scholarly effort to do so, I've not seen evidence of it.
Malaya's well-read on the issue, but she couldn't think of any books addressing that particular issue either. She did recommend this one, which is interesting and informative in some ways, but is not an easy read and isn't quite addressing the issue I'm interested in. Boyer's book is more about how religious concepts form and stick in the human brain, and why we are moved by and attracted to some types of imagery and metaphor, (which are, naturally, found in every successful religion).
At any rate, if you want some good introductory information on the concept of the anthropological and psychological formation and evolution of religion, Sue Blackmore's opening remarks in this debate provide it, and with fewer digressions than this blog post. Listen from about 3-23 minutes, and enjoy.
Update: Interesting book recommendations in the comments. One for Neal Stevenson's Snow Crash, which I read and reviewed several years ago, and the other for Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell, which is the only one of the recent bestsellers by "the four horsemen" I have not yet gotten my hands on. Even though I haven't read it, I've watched or listened to at least a dozen interviews/presentations by Dennett, so I'm pretty familiar with his recent work. In fact, my first post mentioning him does a far better job of summarizing my questions about the formation of religion than this post did.
I came down with a sore throat on Friday. A bit of a dry cough, but mostly a tickling sort of sensation I couldn't seem to scratch. (Thoughts of a bottle brush entered my head, it was so itchy.) In seeming response to this, my nose started dripping down the back of my throat, so I constantly felt like I had to clear it, to no avail. I slept uncomfortably all Friday night; felt like I was drowning, and when I woke up Saturday I had to admit I was actually sick. Hadn't been sick for some time; not since I moved into this apt early last year, at least, but there it was.
Sunday I felt worse, dry cough, head all stuffy, and no energy. Constant napping all weekend, and it was odd to be just so happy to lie in bed. Usually I'm very restless when lying down, and if I'm not asleep, or reading, or making out, I can't remain there. I gotta get up and do something. Yet this weekend, just lying there and doing nothing more than petting the Jinxers was the best thing ever. Jinx certainly agreed; she's happiest when I'm in bed, since she loves to lie there, usually using one of my legs or hips for a backrest. She almost never sleeps in the bed otherwise, but if I'm in there, she's beside me before I know it. Pity that trick doesn't work as well on the IG.
As a result of my illness, Jinx had about the best weekend of her life, since I was in bed for most of it, and was still dragging and napping a lot on Monday. Tuesday I felt a bit better, but still had a cough that felt like a fish bone in my throat, and it wasn't until Wednesday that I felt back to normal. In fact, I had that post-sickness burst of energy and felt great. The best feelings in life are not so much about how good you feel then; they're more about how you were previously. It's easy to feel great after you've been laid low, since you notice the change, even if you just went from "awful" to "non-suicidal." To take your normal state up enough that you really notice it, you generally need a lottery win or a beautiful new boy/girlfriend in your bed, but to feel great after a cold it takes nothing more than the surcease of your hacking. Keep that eventual silver lining in mind next time you're on death's door.
As a result of feeling good (better) and eating too much (I hadn't had much of an appetite since Friday), I had a ton of energy and stayed awake all day Thursday, and then all night too. When I finally got to bed early Thursday morning, I'd been up for nearly a full day, when sleep descended upon me, it wasn't fooling around. I woke up after 6 hours, peed and drank some water, and laid back down to get a bit more sleep. Next thing I knew it was after 5 hours later, I spent a minute in confused, closed-eye calculations, trying to add up the hours and figure out if I'd really slept for 11 straight hours.
Far as I can tell, I did. I've not felt all that rested today despite that head start, but I am not feeling sick, so I guess that was the price I had to pay. It was a bit inconvenient for my work schedule, since last week I was behind on the hours I'm indebted to put in, and planned to catch up on the weekend. Then I got sick and wasn't up to working, so I entered this week about 10 hours in the hole, and got very little done Mon-Wed, what with my busy schedule of coughing, blowing my nose, napping, and informing the purring apostrophe on my bed how like shit I felt. I'd planned to get several hours in Thursday afternoon, reward myself (for working and for remaining alive) with a bike ride, and then getting another 6-8 hours in Thursday evening.
Instead I slept all day, had to run errands since I'd not been shopping in a week, and got distracted catching up on surfing and email when I got home. My reward for that was a nice hour-long chat with the IG, and then dinner, and first thing I knew it was (technically) Friday, and I hadn't done a damn bit of work all day. A state of affairs I quickly set to righting by typing out a typically-overlong and pointless blog post.
In other news, I saw this ad today on one of those ubiquitous funny video sites, and found it funnier than the actual videos I was wasting my life by watching. It's one of those "get laid tonight" ads that are just fronts for porn sites. They have a bunch of photos of hot young girls they found somewhere, random names and ages get applied to them, and by coupling that with a simple ap that customizes them to your area by tracing your IP# to find your location, it's almost like a one click singles site. Except that by clicking them you'll never, ever, meet any of the girls pictured, and greatly lower your odds of meeting any girls at all.
I didn't click it, but I did laugh at the one photo appearing twice, with different ages. You'd think they would put something into their random image/name/age generator to prevent duplicate photos. I doubt anyone actually believes those girls are those ages and available through the service running the ads, but it's a lot easier to pretend if you don't need to believe your date for the evening was cloned. Twice. Or perhaps more times than that, at bi-yearly intervals.
I've long lamented my inability to check off very many literary classics on those "100 books you must read" lists, but rather than simply ignoring the pangs of guilt, I've decided to do something about it. That's what libraries are for, after all. In preparation for this long term wrong reading rectification project, I've been looking at various top 100 classics/modern book lists, and assembling an essential list of books from them. It's all weighty stuff, Brothers Karamazov, War and Piece, In the Name of the Rose, Ulysses, etc. I'll write reviews as I go, so you can either wish me luck or delete this bookmark now, depending on your taste for such literature.
One such list I found worthy of comment was on the Random House site. Their top 100 novels seem a fairly representative selection, though I'd assume they only list ones they publish in their Classics line. Perhaps some authors or titles are exclusively affiliated with other publishers, and are thusly, unjustly, ignored? It matters little, since there are plenty of other lists to compare and contrast with, and I haven't even looked over the RH one that closely.
What I found interesting there was not their official list, but the one compiled from reader votes. It's an odd selection, with quality classics here and there, but the top of the list dominated by trash by Ann Rand and L. Ron Hubbard. Those two have 7 out of the top 10, and I feel fairly confident in saying you will never find a book by either of them in any top 100 list of books ranked by anyone other than acolytes of the religion-esque ideologies those authors created and promulgated.
The very top of the list of the readers' choices for 100 Best Non-Fiction is similarly blighted, and by the same two "authors." In fact, the top of the non-fiction list is pretty revealing of the mindset of the people who voted. It's not a healthy one either, since their book choices reveal them as gun-nut, anarchist, survivalist, libertarian sorts. Makes me wonder how The Turner Diaries didn't make the best 100 novels, and if there's an overlap between the non-fiction voters and Scientologists?
It's also odd how the Hubbard and Rand books are only in the top 10, or not at all. Hubbard wrote dozens of trashy sci-fi novels, but he's got #3, #9, and #10, and no others. If there had been some general swell of Scientologist voters, you'd expect a bunch of Hubbard's books to be scattered all up and down the top 100. Instead it's just those 3, and no others, so the voting had to have been very targeted. Some site popular with the Xenuvians must have promoted vote flooding, and picked just 3 of the master's books to flog. They got the job done, though their efforts pale beside the work of the Randroids. Better keep leaping on those couches, Tommy boy.
Turning my attention back to the task at hand, I'm not sure how I'll present my classic reviews. I read a number of so-called literary classics during my recent, breakneck, degree-finishing dash through a university of higher learning, but I didn't take many English classes, and didn't have much time to reflect on the works I read, since I had so many other classes and so much else to read and write about. I didn't exactly read them for pleasure or completeness either; more like 150 pages of Plato here and an act of Shakespeare there, with a paper due on each Monday evening.
When I read some classic novels though, I'll be reading the whole books, and reviewing them... but by what criteria? It seems silly to review Faulker or Hemingway on the same point scale I've used for oh... Christopher Piolini. And yet... books are books, and it's not fair to hold them to different standards, or to be too forgiving, just because something slow, boring, and overwritten is venerable? I also have some measure of pride in my judgments, and try to limit the idiotic comments in reviews to my abandoned Band Names section, where most of the mistakes are intentional. I'm happy to admit that I can not appreciate or tolerate Anne Rice's floridly cheesy prose and soap opera plots/characters, but will I be able to make the same admission after slogging through 500 pages of something taught in every Great Books seminar course in the Western World? I guess we'll find out.
I'll probably have to do some extra, critical reading along with the books. Classics of world literature aren't known for being easily-digested or discussed. The whole point is that such books are deep and weighty; that's why they've been studied for decades. Reviewing them based on one quick read is almost guaranteed to be a superficial exercise. Furthermore, the anointed classics haven't become classics because they're fun reads, or full of suspenseful twisting plots. Books become classics because they make brilliant societal analysis via metaphor, or express deeper truths about the human condition. That sort of thing is invaluable, and can be uplifting and enlightening, but it doesn't fit neatly into my starkly-delineating review categories.
So yeah, reviewing them will be a challenge. I'm almost more eager to write the reviews than I am to read the books, now.
I have a clock in my bedroom and another in my living room that, when the power goes out, reset to 12:00. They keep time from that point, but they display it blinking, under the theory that you want to know just how long it's been since the power went out, and you want that discovery to induce epilepsy. The odd part is that power must have gone out here around 11:55 today, since when I noticed the clocks later, both were blinking, and 5 minutes fast. If not for the blinking, I could have just left them both like that.
Of course the method to stop the blinking is to reset the time, and since both clocks only go forward on that, I had to either leave them 6-7 minutes fast, or else hold down the button through an entire hour.
I received an overdue envelope full of unwanted news from a major educational institution yesterday, and apparently they slipped a little something extra in for me, since last night around the time I laid down to sleep my throat started to itch and tickle. It felt like my nose was dripping slightly, but it hadn't been running at all during the day. I dozed fitfully, waking up and clearing my throat constantly, and now today I've got very little voice, I feel shitty from non-rest, and my throat is sore. I haven't been sick in memory, at least not since I moved into this apt last January, and I'm not sure I am now, but my throat is definitely troubling me.
I blame the envelope since I didn't engage in any face to face human interactions yesterday. I stayed inside and worked all day, only venturing forth to ride my bike. I did talk to the IG for an hour in the evening, but I'm pretty sure she did not send us up the plague via Verizon's cell phone network. And I was fine the day before, after running various errands and speaking to a cashier or two.
Campaigners on the Greek island of Lesbos are to go to court in an attempt to stop a gay rights organisation from using the term "lesbian". The islanders say that if they are successful they may then start to fight the word lesbian internationally. The issue boils down to who has the right to call themselves Lesbians.
...
The term lesbian originated from the poet Sappho, who was a native of Lesbos. Sappho expressed her love of other women in poetry written during the 7th Century BC. But according to Mr Lambrou, new historical research has discovered that Sappho had a family, and committed suicide for the love of a man.
I'm not even sure how to react to this. I mean, okay, I guess they've got kind of a point, but they can't seriously hope to change the use of a term that originated centuries ago, and has become universal common parlance? On the other hand, the various worldwide Olympics™ committees are copyright Nazis about this issue, and have successfully sued hundreds of small, harmless, vermin-infested, amateur organizations who tried to run any kind of event with the term "Olympics" in it, even though everyone uses that term as a vernacular, non-proper noun to describe any sort of athletic competition. So with that precedent set, who knows if the Lesbos'ians will gain some traction with their efforts?
Like most people, even more NBA fans, even those in Atlanta, I didn't pay any attention to the Atlanta Hawks this season, and didn't give them much chance of winning even one game in their best-of-7 against the #1 seed Boston Celtics. After all, Atlanta only eeked into the playoffs as the 8th seed because the East was so lame this year; at 37-45 they would have been in 12th place in the West, 13 games behind the 8th seeded Denver Nuggets. And it's safe to say Atlanta would have won even fewer games in the West, since they'd have played tougher competition. The experts all agreed; of the 10 cited on the ESPN series page, all 10 picked Atlanta, with just 2 giving the Hawks a chance to win even a single game. The other 8 all picked a Celtics sweep.
The series certainly started out that way; Boston won the first two at home by 23 and 21. And they won game 5 at home by 25. However, to everyone's surprise, Atlanta won games 3 and 4 at home, and they won game 6 at home tonight, to force a game 7 in Boston on Sunday. The Celtics have to be heavily favored; they've won all 3 home games thus far in the series by an average of 23 points, and they won almost twice as many games this year as Atlanta. They'll probably wipe the floor with them in game seven, but those of us without any real rooting interest in the series can always hope the underdogs will come through. Plus it's fun to root against Boston; they've had the best all around football and baseball teams this decade, they don't need a good basketball team too. What's anyone ever won in Atlanta?
However the series turns out, Atlanta's game four win contained the single best play of the entire post season (thus far), when Joe Johnson broke the ankles of some clumsy Celtic defender, paused to watch him flop around on the ground, and then dropped a trey right over his corpse, as part of his team's huge fourth quarter comeback. I've seen this shot at least a dozen times thus far, and given the disparity between the teams, the crucial time of the game, and the frantic roar of the bandwagon-hopping home crowd, I'm enjoying it more every time I see it.
I'm doing a bit more fiction reading of late; trying to get back into the mood and mindset of that form after the many months of non-fiction and essays and articles and reviews and all that came with finishing my degree and comes with blogging, reading about news and politics, building computer game websites, etc. I know I can do fiction and non-fiction at the same time, I've done so many times in the past, but I've been away from fiction and creative writing for a while, and I need to kick start my muse a bit to get into that sort of thought process.
Writing where you can (and must) make stuff up, where your aim may not be clear and cogent prose, where you may want to be artistic, by license or not -- that's a shooting a different potted black kettle of another colored fish. Metaphorically speaking.
In addition to being out or practice at fiction, I've gone years without reading or thinking much about horror, and since I find a level of visceral frisson and intensity in that genre that's seldom found in mainstream fiction, or even in most fantasy, I'm going to get back into it by reading some classics in the genre. I'll probably review them as I go, since writing helps me think about an analyze the work, but not to the point that I'll lose the creative inspiration I'm reading it to acquire. Also, my reviews section is sadly lacking in coverage of the books and authors that have most influenced and pleased me. I've reviewed tons of crap I've read or watched over the past few years, but have never, or seldom, looped back to discourse on some of the more seminal works I consumed again and again during my formative years.
This first one isn't quite a classic, but it's a book I read several times during the late 80s and early 90s when I was a committed horror fiction fan, and today it's an interesting book to analyze in terms of what came before it, and what it led to. The author is Clive Barker, and the book is his first novel, The Damnation Game. I've mentioned Barker a few times previously, but never in much detail. I'll get to more of my thoughts on his work in this review and others to come, but first, the scores:
The Damnation Game, by Clive Barker, 1985. Plot: 6 Concept: 8 Writing Quality/Flow: 9/7 Characters: 9 Horror: 8 Humor: NA Fun Factor: 3 Page Turner: 5 Re-readability: 6 Overall: 7
These scores are my current opinion, with the full benefit of hindsight and deliberation. My overall score is in terms of the whole horror genre; not in terms of Clive Barker's novels, or else it would be more like a 4. I don't know what I would have given it in 1986 when I first read it, but it certainly would have been less than a 7. Back then, I found the plot slow and not very exciting, the characters interesting but not very involving, and the whole story far less visceral and exciting than the better stories from the Books of Blood. This novel also pales in comparison to the next half dozen novels Barker wrote, two of which are nearly direct descendants of this novel. I'll discuss those books, and how this book led to them, in a bit. But first...
I hesitate to even mention the plot, since it's not what concerns me about this book, nor where the lasting value lies, nor where the analysis should be targeted. But just to momentarily pretend like I'm a real book reviewer, here goes. I'd copy from Wikipedia, but the summary there hardly goes deeper than the blurb on the jacket, and the Amazon.com editorial review is nearly as short, and has some inaccuracies. So:
The book is set in modern day London (circa 1985, when it was written), and while there are four or five main characters, and several important supporting players, the central protagonist (perhaps unjustly) is Martin Strauss. He's in prison when the book opens, and has been for six years, though he's nearing the end of his term. He's 30 years old and wound up in prison after getting deeply into gambling debt and taking part in a failed and unsuccessful robbery to try and pay off those debts. Marty's drawn down deeply into himself in prison, no longer thinking about hope or freedom, but that shell is cracked by the intrusion of Bill Toy, the confidant and bodyguard for Joseph Whitehead, a business mogul. Whitehead is looking to hire a new bodyguard, and has Toy searching the prisons for a likely candidate, figuring a man who owes him his early release, and who will be sent back to prison if he proves unsatisfactory, will work harder and show more loyalty than mere money can buy.
Marty is chosen for the task, and spends a few pleasant months on Whitehead's private estate, getting back into shape and adjusting to his limited freedom. He only gradually comes to know Whitehead and his even more reclusive, heroin-addicted 20 y/o daughter, and also gradually begins to realize that Whitehead fears something more than physical harm, from any common human attackers.
He's got cause to, since as the reader learns through the multiple POV narration, Whitehead's old friend/enemy Mamoulian is hunting him, to repay past injustices. Whitehead and Mamoulian met in the anarchic months after WW2, when Europe was in chaos and Whitehead the thief and gambler sought out Mamoulian, the legendary, magical, and undefeatable card player, in the festering ruins of bombed out Prague. Mamoulian has powers, hypnotic and mind controlling, and can work magic a well, weaving overpowering telepathic illusions, and even raising and compelling the dead. He and Whitehead became friends and Whitehead used what he learned of Mamoulian's powers build a vast empire, an effort he largely completed after a violent break with Mamoulian, some twenty years before the novel's time.
The bulk of The Damnation Game details Whitehead's fear of his old friend, Mamoulian's efforts towards and plans for revenge, and Marty's struggle to protect his savior and Whitehead's physically frail but psychically-strong junkie daughter. There are a few twists and turns in the plot, but it's not a thriller or a straight out horror story. Barker doesn't write those, at least not very often. His novels and worlds are always far more layered and nuanced and subtle, and The Damnation Game is a good example of this, though in a very early, rough, unpolished way.
The novel really isn't about the plot; if it were I'd find no reason to reread it, or write about it. The take away value here comes from the characters and the themes and the level of intelligence and maturity conveyed by the writing. Barker's imagination is justly famed, largely in a pop culture, movie-friendly, "Pinhead the Cenobite" way, but I think his greatest strength is as a writer. His ability to work words and describe things blends perfectly with the maturity of his fictional worldview and the dynamic characters he crafts. This novel is far from his masterpiece, but it's a good start in the novel form.
Lineage
Looking retrospectively, there's a direct line between the themes, plot events, and especially the type of characters in this book, Weaveworld (1987), and Imajica (1991). Barker did not write those novels back to back, they are not set in the same "world," nor do they feature any of the same characters. Nevertheless, there's a clear progression through these books, with the same plot elements and character types, but growing larger, more complicated, and more inventive in each. I don't think Barker's done anything near the quality of Imajica since then, and I think that's the best novel I've ever read, in any genre.
Just going by dimensions, The Damnation Game is about 430 pages, Weaveworld is around 700, and Imajica is upwards of 1000, depending on the edition. It's commonly sold in two volumes these days, not something you often see for a single, stand-alone novel not featuring filthy hobbitses. The Damnation Game is a bit soggy too, in places. It could easily be cut down under 350 pages without losing anything essential, an editing option I would not advise for Weaveworld or Imajica, since it would do them grave harm.
So, Weaveworld featured much bigger ideas, bigger plots, more characters, more substance, and Imajica continued that progression, easily doubling the size of The Damnation Game, while vastly expanding upon it in scope and gravitas of subject. And in books, as in life, size does matter. What are these themes and concepts that were so expanded and improved through this non-trilogy? Familiar themes to those of you who have read a fair amount of Barker, and themes difficult to succinctly explain to those of you who have not (yet).
In these books and in most everything Barker has written, there's a sense of a magical, mystical, demon-infested world within, or beneath, our world. Most people have no inkling of it, but here amidst us are demons and humans possessed of rare magical powers. No one is ever a simple comic book character, though. Barker's characters are invariably possessed of strong personalities and drives, and usually devoted to some great goal. One reason Barker's never sold as well as King and others in the genre, despite being clearly the best writer of the bunch, is that he doesn't do easy, crowd-pleasing, black and white plots or characters. There aren't good guys or bad guys, or clear struggles where the readers is sure to root for one side. In most of Barker's books the good guys have some bad traits, but most interestingly (and influentially to me) are the bad guys, who are never just "bad." They're often evil, or destructive, but for perfectly valid reasons. And while they usually appear to be horrible demons when initially introduced, as the novels progress they are humanized, and often revealed to be flawed, vulnerable, or entirely justified in their actions.
Mamoulian certainly is in The Damnation Game, and so are his various minions. Perhaps the most memorable character in the book is Breer, the razor-eater. Breer is a corpulent, psychopathic pedophile, who swallows razors, engages in self-mutilation, and is fond of murdering young children, then posing them like living dolls in carefully-arranged scenarios. He also tends to lovingly butcher them, slicing the tender meat of their bodies into a paper-thin delicacy which he reverently offers to others like the precious gift it is. Perfectly horrible, of course, but Breer is actually a sympathetic character in the book. Filled with self-loathing, disgusted by what he does, desperate for a purpose or goal in life, and always just wanting to be loved. Whitehead's daughter earns his undying devotion upon their first meeting, when she doesn't recoil in horror at the sight of his grotesque, blood-splattered form. Ultimately, Breer becomes a sort of good guy, when he turns against Mamoulian after being betrayed and by the magician. Oh, and did I mention that Breer commits suicide shortly before Mamoulian returns for him at the start of the book, and spends the entire novel slowly rotting and being consumed by flies, while never quite realizing he's already dead? Nice touch there, eh?
As for Mamoulian, he first seems to be a monster, but as we get to know more about him, from his pathetic origin to his empty existence to his desire to simply lie down and die, he becomes one of the most interesting characters in the book. He's never quite sympathetic, but he's clearly a better man than Whitehead, and more honest too. Both work malign deeds and destroy the lives of others, but Mamoulian has the courtesy to do it one on one, face to face, in a very personal fashion. He only destroys what and who he must. Whitehead has less blood on his hands, but through his ruthless business ambitions he has ruined the lives of countless people, both personally and professionally. Mamoulian is the more honest man as well; he doesn't resort to trickery or deception to obtain his ends, at least not very often, unlike the scheming, manipulating, stoop-to-anything Whitehead.
Honestly, neither character is a tenth as interesting as the leads in Weaveworld, Imajica, or various other later works by Barker, but the basic character templates; the depth and dynamic nature of them, are repeated and reused through Barker's work. The only other author I've read (besides myself, on a thus far limited nature) who does this sort of work with characters is George R. R. Martin in his ongoing Song of Ice and Fire series. And that's one of the things I like best about Martin's work, that characters who initially seem like pure villains are eventually revealed to be very human and, (like everyone you meet in real life), the heroes of their own story. Sometimes even of the book's story. It's a clear mark of bad fiction (which is to say, most fiction) when the "bad guys" are simply that. Bad, evil, uncomplicated and one-dimensional. If the enemies in a book or film exist merely to serve as hurdles for the good guys on their victory lap, it's generally a sign of a lazy or uninspired author.
It's possible to have a compelling villain who is just bad, bad, bad, but far more often the most entertaining bad guys are multi-dimensional, even to the point of becoming anti-heroes. Hannibal Lecter, for instance. Even someone like Darth Vader, despite being a principle in the cartoonishly childish Star Wars saga, is eventually revealed to be layered and complicated, and that makes his actions, and the plot of Return of the Jedi far more interesting than it would have been if he'd simply remained a horrible murderous villain in black plastic. Barker clearly had the idea for multi-layered bad guys and complicated world mythologies in place early on, since they show up in lots of his early short stories. They are nascent in The Damnation Game, but fully emerge from their cocoon in his later works.
The good guys in Barker novels have more up their sleeves, too. Marty Strauss in The Damnation Game isn't a great example of that, since Barker hadn't really come into his inventive prime yet. Marty is just your usual everyman protagonist, swept up in a world of magic and mystery far beyond his ability to comprehend or battle against. The fact that he's only the main character by default, and that he brings very little to the tale, is one of the main reasons I don't score this book higher. The main character in Weaveworld starts out as an everyman, but soon gains a far more important role in things than merely a pawn in the buffeting winds of chaos, and the main character in Imajica is an unimportant painter making a living off of forgeries and a parade of beautiful women, who grows to hold almost god-like status as that fantastically complicated book unfolds.
Incidentally, the depth of Barker's characterization is clearly demonstrated in The Damnation Game by the fact that a good dozen disposable characters are given full 3D profiles, with strengths, weaknesses, ambiguities, and ambitions having nothing to do with those of the main storyline, even if they're only "on screen" for a few minutes. The first and most obvious example is the warden of the prison Marty's in when the book opens. He has two short scenes, but in them he's portrayed as a hard man who is rapidly falling apart after the untimely death of his wife. There's no real reason to give the warden a personality, or to have him be more than a man in a suit during Marty's interview with Whitehead's agent. But the fact that he's a memorable character, despite his irrelevance to the larger novel, adds to the realism and detail of the world. Numerous other such characters are found in The Damnation Game, from Whitehead's chauffeur, to Marty's cellmate, to a fruit merchant, to Marty's ex-wife's new lover, etc. All seem fully-formed and real, and could easily be the stars of their own stories; that much is clear even if they only appear on half a dozen pages.
For all the great things Barker does, and did even in the early effort that is The Damnation Game, his weaknesses are displayed as well. I've heard from other horror fans that Barker's work never really involves them. They enjoy his writing talent, and some elements of his work, but on the whole it doesn't engaging them. Malaya always said she found Barker's writing "too cold." Technically brilliant, but to her they were books to read almost as an intellectual exercise, rather than great stories to lose herself in.
That never occurred to me in my teens when I was first devouring his work and horror fiction in general, but reading it now I can see the point. I didn't quite feel that way about Barker's more recent novels, even ones like Galilee that I disliked, but I get enough enjoyment from the craftsmanship and writing quality and overall excellence that the fact that some of the books are entirely populated by unlikable, largely emotionless characters, engaged in struggles the outcome of which I am indifferent to, doesn't weigh too heavily on me. (This is a further point to George R. R. Martin's credit; that he can do the dynamic characters, make his villains interesting and compelling, de-villainize them as the reader learns more about them, and still keep the overall story churning along.)
In that light, The Damnation Game is a far better novel than it is a good read. I enjoyed reading it last week, but not in the same way I would have enjoyed a good early Stephen King story. I was pulled along through The Damnation Game since I was analyzing the style and form and approach Barker took, and making notes on how he structured the book. His skills as a novelist were profound, even in this early work, and the way he introduced characters, worked exposition into conversation and events, kept the story moving, relayed information to the reader through multiple POVs, occasional flashbacks, juggled multiple characters and storylines without abandoning any for so long they cooled in the reader's memory, etc, were all very well done.
If the book had a more interesting plot, had more sympathetic characters, more building conflict, was a page turner, bridged the personal struggles to larger societal themes (something Barker does very well in later works), etc, it would be a great novel. As it is it's a very well written book powered by a story that would have been unreadably dull and boring in the hands of a lesser writer. I remember Weaveworld being somewhat better, and Imajica being a masterpiece, and since I've got both books sitting out to work my way through in the weeks to come, I guess I'll find out soon enough.
I saw Street Kings the weekend it opened, but didn't get around to writing my review until two weeks later. Today I'm posting a review of a film I saw Sunday evening, but it's a movie that opened last week... thus rendering this my second review in two days that's being posted two weeks late. Not that anyone reads this site for my views/recommendations on the newest offerings at the local $7 popcorn emporium.
You might read this for my take on really bad movie trailers though, so I feel duty bound to mention a couple that we saw before the movie. That bafflingly unpleasantLakeview Heightstrailer was again featured, to a theater full of WTF silence. We also got the not-especially-growing-on-me Hellboy 2, and a couple of other forgettable efforts. The one I thought worth comment was a new Nicholas Cage film, with the LOL-able title, Bangkok Dangerous. I mean that literally; the trailer unspooled in mediocre fashion; Cage, looking Indiana Jones old, wearing a wet cat of a wig, plays a professional assassin sent to kill a popular leader in some Thailand-like country, where he discovers his conscience with the help of a scrumptious young Asian girl, and balks at his assignment. The trailer wasn't good or bad, the story looked recycled, Cage looked exhausted when the role seemed to require some of that Tom Cruise mania, but the best moment was near the end, when the title finally came up.
"Bangkok Dangerous!" shouted Mr. Voice, a declaration that was greeted with roars of laughter from at least half the patrons in the sparsely-populated theater. When the only notable thing about the trailer for your $60m movie, other than the fact that Nicholas Cage appears to have aged 20 years since National Treasure and taken a can of black paint and Tom Hanks' hair from The DaVinci Code, is the audible derision the painfully-bad title earns, it might be time to head back to that focus group and come up with something different. All publicity is not good publicity, nor are all reasons for potential customers to remember your film good ones.
As for the feature event, today's review victim is Forbidden Kingdom, a martial arts adventure starring Jet Li, Jackie Chan, and lots of disposable Chinese guys in matching suits of ineffective armor. Jet and Jackie are both supporting actors in the film, since the ostensible lead/protagonist is a side kick-esque (pun semi-intended) white teenager from Boston, who takes hold of an ancient war staff while running for his life, and finds himself tumbling through time and space, Wizard of Oz style, into ancient, mythological China. There he quickly finds that he is a figure of prophecy, destined to return the staff to the statue-ified Monkey King and end the reign of the cruel warlord.
It's not an awful premise for a film, there's plenty of martial arts action, the budget is sufficient to ensure quality production values, it's got martial arts legends Jackie Chan and Jet Li, a scowling bad guy, and even a couple of hot Chinese girl warriors. Despite all this, it basically sucks, and I'm not entirely sure why, though I'll try to get at that in the review.
It wasn't an awful film, and the bumbling Massachusetts Red Sox in King Mandrin's Court didn't ruin things, as I feared he would after I first saw the trailer for this film. My complaint then was about the white kid, since that first trailer had him making a lot of screeching Bruce Lee sound effects and clumsily knocking things over in his room, before the inevitable "down the rabbit hole" magic took him into the martial arts movie world. I envisioned him running around the countryside like some sort of Inspector Clouseau goes to China, bumbling from one wacky adventure to the next while Jackie Chan and Jet Li constantly saved him from enemy soldiers and himself.
I don't know if that was the original plan of the film, but my reaction to the first trailer was probably a common one, since the opening of the movie, before he gets sucked into mythology land, was as short and to the point as it could reasonably have been, and the scene of him knocking things over in his room is gone entirely. The kid isn't a wacky, comedic character either; he's basically playing his role like Ralph Macchio did in the Karate Kid; scared but defiant. It helped that Ralph actually looked like a teenager in those movies, unlike this guy, who looks like an undernourished grad student. He's actually twenty-one, and while his age isn't made clear in the film, it appears that he's supposed to be a high school student.
Age issues aside, the white kid was not the problem with the movie, much to my surprise. In fact, I'm not sure what the problem was. Nothing in the film was laugh out loud awful, or sigh in pain dreadful. The acting wasn't good, but it was serviceable. The martial arts weren't exciting or vital, but they weren't terrible. The plot was archetypal and somewhat video game-esque, but I've sat through worse. On the whole, nothing stood out like a sore thumb, but at the same time, nothing could be singled out for excellence either, and I think that's what really sunk it. Plenty of good, or at least enjoyable, movies have some bad parts, or even some awful parts, but they make it up with great, exciting sections that your brain remembers while ignoring the bad stuff. This one didn't. It's just a long film full of mediocrity, in writing, acting, fighting, scenery, plot, etc.
It's got elements of Jackie Chan style comedy, but only a few. It's got elements of the scrappy underdog training to take on the bad guy, but they're fleeting. It's got pretensions of grand, mythic, LotR-style saga, but they fall flat. And it's got some martial arts scenes that are realistic and interesting, and a few that are flying wuxia style magic, but most of them are a hodgepodge of actual fighting with wire-fu leaps and flips, and all seem relentlessly choreographed.
At this point in their careers, Jackie Chan and Jet Li can't do what they did when they were younger. Jackie can still move pretty well and he's a good comedic actor, but he doesn't have the amazing body and tumbling grace to turn simple fight scenes into masterpieces of body language. Jet Li can still be a hardass, but he doesn't have the speed and precision he once did. Propeller Li? They could both still be effective in martial arts scenes, but they need to modify how they do them.
Jackie's old style worked since he was so flexible and bouncy that he could hit people fifty times, get hit twenty times himself, and keep bouncing up for more. It was funny, and you rooted for him, and wanted the scene to go on and on. Now he's old and not so fast, and you wince when you see him get pounded and hope he wins before he breaks something. His scenes now need to be more madcap and choreographed and processed with camera angles, since he's not good enough anymore for the director to simply point the camera at him from a distance and marvel at his grace.
Jet Li can still pull off the kickass stuff pretty well; he was awesome at that in Unleashed, and that was only four years ago, but his character in this film didn't have that sort of animalistic rage, so he had to fight in a more non-lethal style, and it didn't suit him, since he looks tired after a minute or two of sparring. They should have had him use a more lethal, crushing style, where he floated back from attackers, fending off their ineffectual jabs, until he had an opening and killed with one punch.
Unfortunately for the styles these two would be best at these days, this movie was written with the combat inspired by a Saturday morning cartoon. Endless bad guys storm in, yelling and swinging their swords/spears/polearms, and Jackie and Jet beat them down with their bare hands and fists. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. There are endless bad guys, but they're anonymous and ineffectual, so the action scenes are video game like, but not satisfying since the movie is PG and therefore lacks blood, pain, emotion, and breaking of arms or legs. Instead there are hundreds of scenes of, "guy gets punched/kicked and falls down." If anyone is hurt by these hits, or killed, it's impossible to tell. They don’t seem to be dead, but they all vanish like bodies in an RTS, and after five minutes of battle in a royal court there's not one body to be seen on the floor, much less any dazed victims staggering off, or soldiers writhing in pain.
That would all be fine, if the whole movie had that non-serious, non-realistic tone. What makes it so jarring is that other scenes are full of deep gravity and sincere importance, all of it unearned. We don't care that much about anyone in the movie, or their quest to kill the warlord, or if the white kid gets back to Boston, etc. But at times it appears that we are supposed to, while at other times it's just a lighthearted romp. With lame fight scenes.
Let's be honest; no one is going to this movie expecting good acting, an involving story, interesting characters, etc. People are buying a ticket for good martial arts, and hoping the rest of the film won't be so bad that it ruins the fight sequences. The rest of the film didn't, but the fight sequences weren't very good of themselves, and most of them went on way too long. The movie felt like a rough draft for a much better film that would be 30 minutes shorter. That improved version would have to be an outright comedy, Jackie Chan style, or a more serious, darker, action movie. As it is the movie has a lighthearted vibe, but wants to be serious and epic at the same time, and as a result... it's neither.
