very simple

I’m slowly working my way back through pop culture this weekend, in between running errands and going to work for a few more hours today. One thing that will help me catch up more quickly? My cable went out some time over the middle weekend that I was gone – so TiVO recorded dead air for my second week of vacation. Sure it sucks, but it also means one less week of shows to try and catch up on.

First, I totally forgot one of my other favorite pictures – oooh, barracuda! Earlier in the week, we actually saw one that was enormous – 4 or 5 feet long, but it was too far away to get a good shot (ah, photography, the new venue for "one that got away" stories).

I finished a few books on the trip, including Smartest Guys in the Room, the Know-It-All, and The Family (Kitty Kelley’s book – I know, it should be beneath me, but first, I always like reading fairly mindless stuff when I fly, and second, it was a loaner – I wouldn’t actually pay for the thing). I may be compelled to write something longer about them later, but I’m lazy right now.

I actually tried to avoid much news while I was away, giving my brain a vacation as well. Once in a while politics would come up on the boat, but I tried to avoid taking part. Actually, it was largely because this one woman, who was actually a lefty, was driving me absolutely up a friggin’ wall with the never shutting up and the passing judgment on everyone else. I have strongly held political beliefs, but part of the reason that I keep this blog is that it enables me to vent – to be as shrill as I want without driving even the friends of mine who agree with me absolutely nuts (I can’t even count the number of times I’ve been in conversations with both friends and family where we would get so heated about a topic that, even when we all agreed, it would turn into something resembling an argument). Call me crazy, but I generally think it’s a good idea to not completely alienate the NRA member from North Carolina who may be my only lifeline if something happens to my O2 supply 70 feet below the surface. I’m smart enough to know that I’m not going to change his mind with my brilliant rhetoric, and at that point we’d both clearly rather talk about the giant puffer fish that seemed to know exactly how to avoid being photographed.

Actually, crazy lady was just annoying and loud and nosy about everything. I have a LiveStrong bracelet, and after asking me what it was (which was fine), by grabbing my wrist (which was not), I explained (along with the other folks on the boat who knew what it was) that it was part of a charity. Her next statement? "And clearly you wear it so that people will ask you about it" (in a tone that was pretty much "and clearly you just want attention"). Well no, given that not only are they the trendiest thing in NY right now and four other people on the boat helped explain exactly what it was (not to mention the fact that the nike advertising juggernaut helps to market it, they’ve sold millions of the things, and even her favored Presidential candidate has been wearing one for months) I’m pretty comfortable with the fact that most people who I don’t know won’t grab my wrist in an accusing fashion to ask me about my "jewelry". Ugh. She was just annoying. And then she sat behind me on the plane ride home (She was that person who kept laughing uproariously at the in-flight movie – the only one. y’all have been on a plane with that person, right? The one that everyone else keeps shooting dirty looks at because she doesn’t understand that headphones don’t muffle her voice?).

See? venting.

The only "news" channel we got down there was a bad feed of CNN Headline News, which frankly, makes Sesame Street look like trenchant political analysis. They didn’t show the debate, and the mindless airheads that they have speaking the headlines kept annoying me with their incessant grammatical mistakes (Hint: Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania? the "e" in Barre isn’t silent – I’m sure one of the thousands of locals who showed up to this Philadelphia suburb to see a presidential candidate speak could have clued y’all in. Instead of actually listening to the news the only thing I could think was "thank god Kerry’s not in Bala Cynwyd"). I basically checked in for a few minutes a day to make sure there wasn’t any earth-shattering election news.

Anyway, I’m currently suffering from a nasty head cold, as is everyone else in my office – of course, since I caught mine several thousand miles away, we all spent yesterday trying to have conversations from 15 feet apart and using tissues to hand things to each so that we don’t cross-contaminate. I imagine this will last for about three more hours before we all resign ourselves to just being incessantly sick for the next month.

Just took my trip to the Union Square Barnes & Noble in order to pick up a few books in anticipation of my two week vacation (only one week to go!) – I got:

One more book down. Finished reading Brick Lane yesterday. Good book. The last page made me cry (but I don’t want to spoil it for anyone else). I did find myself skimming over some of the letters from Nazneen’s sister, Hasina. I understand why they needed to be written in only semi-literate prose, but it just made it more difficult for me to concentrate on the content. Otherwise, I was engrossed.

Of the new books I mentioned the other day, I’ve already finished reading A Home at the End of the World. The story was really fantastic and touching, but I do agree with some of the criticisms on Amazon – namely, that the four "narrators" all spoke in essentially the same voice. Cunningham wrote the book from the perspective of four characters – Bobby, Jonathan, Alice (Jonathan’s mother), and Clare, but for four individuals who came from divergent backgrounds, they all seemed to have the same vocabulary. I think it might have worked better if written in third person (still keeping the device of the four points of view, but having the invisible narrator, with a singular voice, explain what’s going on).

The story was phenomenal though – and now I’ve got my usual dilemma about the movie coming out. Do I see it and potentially get annoyed at all the changes from the book? I’ve heard really good things so it may be worth the risk. And because of the movie, I’ve already got the actors’ images in my head as the characters, so I’m less worried about feeling like the movie was miscast. I suppose it’ll ultimately depend on how easy it is to see the film.

I picked up a few more books at the store today, as follows:

• Brick Lane, by Monica Ali: I keep seeing this in the store and thinking, "that looks interesting, maybe I’ll pick it up one of these days," so I did.

• A Home at the End of the World, by Michael Cunningham: I hadn’t actually heard of this before I started hearing about the movie version with Colin Farrell, Dallas Roberts, and Robin Wright Penn, but I was intrigued enough by the movie’s press to want to read the book before seeing it. The only unfortunate thing is that with the movie coming out, they’ve changed the cover of the book to something from the movie. So now I’m stuck walking around giving the impression that I’m some sort of Colin Farrell junkie.

• What Liberal Media? by Eric Alterman: One of my favorite pastimes is listening to and reading about the media’s dissection of itself. I started reading FAIR‘s EXTRA in college, and I’m pretty sure that I’m the only person who had a continuous subscription to Brill’s Content before it went bankrupt. Not to mention that I actually keep my alarm set for 7 am on Saturday’s just so I don’t miss NPR’s On the Media. So I thought this would be something I’d enjoy reading, particularly since I always enjoy Altercation.

I’m currently also struggling to read Ron Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton. Don’t get me wrong – it’s fantastic, but the hardcover version of it is just so physically heavy that it’s become what I like to call "destination reading" – I only pick it up when I know I’ve got a few hours to kill in the park or something, but I can’t be dragging it back and forth to work every day, so it’s going to take me a while to get through. Plus, even if I was willing to carry it everywhere, I’ve been finding that it doesn’t read as well when I’m only reading 2-3 pages at a time (the walk to and from the subway actually takes longer than the ride for me) – I need long stretches of time to fully enjoy the color provided.

A few weeks ago, I wrote an entry to encourage people to donate to Pamie’s second annual book drive, and mentioned that I donated two books myself – well, yesterday, I received the following note from the Youth Services Librarian at the Spring Valley Branch of the San Diego County Library:

It made me happy – not to be thanked, per se, but to have concrete feedback that others would have the opportunity to benefit from the donation. There’s just something about that feeling, that vibe, that stays with you for at least a little while.

With all the political stuff going on, I totally spaced on doing an entry when I finished this book. If you haven’t read every book by David Sedaris yet, you need to go out and buy (or borrow) copies and start right now. Dude is funny.

I will say that I was a little disappointed, but only because I realized that I had read many of these stories before – either in the New Yorker or Esquire, or heard them on This American Life, where Sedaris is a frequent contributor. Reading one of his stories for the first time is always a revelatory experience, because you just have no concept of how crazy his life (or his mind) can get. The familiarity with some of the stories didn’t make them any less funny, but just a little less shocking.

Pamie is having her second annual book drive, this time for the San Diego library system. I’ve just donated The Outsiders and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to the Spring Valley branch (I picked the branch because it shares the same name as one of the towns I lived in as a kid – on the other side of the country, of course, but it seemed like as good a method as any!). These were two books that truly affected me growing up, and I wanted to be able to share them with some other kids. Even if you don’t want to donate through Pamie, it’s always a great idea to bring your used books to your local library.

Finished reading The Rule of Four, which I actually picked up on a whim after it pretty much invaded my local Barnes & Noble. I did think the style of writing was on a higher level than The Da Vinci Code, but then again, DVC read like it was written by a 12-year old in places (particularly whenever Brown attempted to write something resembling romance). I do agree with some of the other criticisms, in particular that it ended too early. I like the possibilities that it left open, but at the same time, like The Quincunx, it’s somewhat annoying to read through an entire book, actually invest yourself in the characters’ quests, and then be left hanging, not sure what step they’re going to take next, and not knowing if they ultimately reach the goal they’ve been striving for over several hundred pages. I personally think that kind of ending is a cop-out. It’s like the writers don’t want the cliche "happy/resolved ending", and they don’t trust themselves to be able to write something that overcomes the cliche, so they don’t give us an ending at all.

And to be honest? sometimes people like the cliche. That’s pretty much why it’s become cliche in the first place.

I just finished reading The Quincunx, and I was a bit disappointed with the ending [spoiler alert – don’t read the rest if you don’t want to know what happens]. I mean, this kid spends 700 pages trying to right centuries of injustice in order to reclaim his inheritance, and then at the end, the author doesn’t tell us what he’s going to do? That’s cheating. I get that now John is in a position to genuinely make that choice, without threats from any of the other interested/competing parties, but still. And the character, who was supposed to have matured over a decade over the course of the book, suffering immense hardship, still seemed at times like the petulant, petty little boy that he started out being. Anyway, I’ve moved on and am currently reading the biography of Alexander Hamilton, because I haven’t read some good New York City history, my favorite subject, in a while.