A Darkly Animated Night of the Soul, or Siccing God on Santa

      OK, you know you have too much time on your hands when you spend about an hour and a half at (an admittedly very fun) website called Xtranormal.com creating an existential, text-based, minute-long "movie" about God and Santa. If you're a normal, busy, productive person, I beg you not to click the link. It's a total timesuck. Nevertheless, GretaPorter Productions proudly presents: "A Crisis of Faith: Santa vs. God."

"G" is for "Genuine"

gen•u•ine

--adjective

1) possessing the claimed or attributed character, quality, or origin; not counterfeit; authentic; real: genuine sympathy; a genuine antique.

2) properly so called: a genuine case of smallpox.

3) free from pretense, affectation, or hypocrisy; sincere: a genuine person.

--from Dictionary.com, emphasis mine

      As I continue my extremely intermittent alphabetical stroll through the music in my iPod, I now find myself at the songs that begin with the letter "G." There are 148 such songs on my iPod right now, and as has been true for most of the other letters, they represent a broad range of my musical interests and vary in quality from disposable to indispensable. As I searched through the titles for some kind of unifying theme to wrap this post around--good, goodbye, ghost, give?--I was instead struck by a word that didn't actually appear in the titles at all: "genuine."
      "Genuine" is a pretty slippery term to toss around in music criticism--or any other kind of criticism for that matter--because its evaluation depends upon purely subjective criteria, and its application doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the quality, good or bad, of the music being discussed. The pop songs of Miley Cyrus may be catchy, good pop songs (though not my thing), but few, I think, would apply the adjective "genuine" to what she does. She and her songs are mass market products, slickly produced, tested, and marketed to a very specific demographic by a powerful entertainment company that knows its business. The Sex Pistols, on the other hand (also not my thing), though they could barely play their instruments, were "genuine." Their music may have sounded like their instruments were being sawed to pieces by angry, tone-deaf sociopaths, but they were an organic product of--and reaction to--the musical and cultural scenes of their day.
      With that in mind, here is my list of the most "genuine" G-songs from my iPod, songs that seem to me to best fulfill the above definition in that they are free from pretense, affectation, or hypocrisy, and, like Linus's pumpkin patch, absolutely drip with sincerity.

"Good Work (If You Can Get It)" by BoDeans  The BoDeans were one of my favorite bands in my college and grad school days, and while I don't have them on "heavy rotation" anymore, I can still pull out their first few albums from time to time and marvel at the freshness they've maintained. They attracted a lot of critical attention for their straight-forward roots rock sound when they debuted with "Love & Hope & Sex & Dreams," but though they've always been a college radio mainstay, they never were able to make a big mark on the charts. The video here, terrible sound notwithstanding, shows them at the height of their powers in the late 80's, tearing through a Berry-esque raveup with David Letterman's band. Paul Shaffer even gets excited enough to put his foot to the keyboard á la The Killer. Genuine three chord rock and roll.


"Goddamn Lonely Love" by Drive-by Truckers  Drive-by Truckers is a country rock band that manages to avoid the worst excesses of a genre they share with the likes of .38 Special and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Song-writing duties are shared and the lineup changes, but their albums nevertheless maintain a signature sound and mood that make them something like Alabama's Bruce Springsteen--which, if you're not sure, is a good thing. If you can't get past the "goddamn," you'll miss a haunting song of yearning and regret that sounds like it was written on a beer-stained napkin at a really dingy bar at closing time. Occasionally, a profanity is just the best word for the job. "I could take a Greyhound home; when I got there it’d be gone, along with everything a home is made up of/ So I’ll take two of what you’re having, I’ll take all of what you've got to kill this goddamn lonely love."


"God Give Me Strength" by Elvis Costello  Now you might think that performing a song with a full orchestra and Burt Bacharach on piano could violate the "no affectation" clause of my "genuine" definition. But you'd be wrong. "God Give Me Strength" comes from Costello's collaborative album with Bacharach, "Painted From Memory," and while the arrangements may be lush, the songs are none the less genuine for it. Bacharach may have that whole schmaltzy vibe, but he's a talented artist (see my Neil Sedaka discussion), and there's no doubting the feeling behind Elvis's performance in the video here. "I want him to hurt!"


"Girl, You Have No Faith in Medicine" by The White Stripes  Once again my iPod discussions lead me back to The White Stripes. Rock doesn't get much more "genuine" than when it's stripped down to a guitar and a drum set, and unlike the songs on all of my local radio stations, Jack and Meg's creativity and originality keep me from feeling old. There's still great music being made out there, fellow 40-somethings, but unless you're in a huge market or have a good community-supported station, it's probably not being played on your radio. But look...here's some right here! Spank that high hat, Meg, it's been very naughty!

Meeting Cute: A Story Which, to an Extent Surprising Even to Myself, Is True

      OK, this might be a bit late for Valentine's, but not long ago I was going through some old writing files when I came across this piece that I first wrote in a slightly different form back in the 90's. It was for some kind of essay contest about "First Love" sponsored by Random House (didn't win, but got Honorable Mention). If you hate stories about couples "meeting cute," you should avert your eyes at this point.

      There are people who don’t believe in love at first sight, who simply can’t credit the notion that such a life-altering experience can happen in the same time it takes to decide between paper or plastic. Many of these same people are fully capable of forming an instant dislike of someone—God knows I can—but somehow that leap in the opposite direction seems too farfetched. These people are idiots. Here’s how I know.
      The first time we ever spoke, she ran up to me frantically, grabbed the front of my shirt, and said, “Make it work! You've got to make it work!” There are, I suppose, some situations in which this could be viewed as a downright promising way to begin a relationship. The truth, however, was far from romantic. Like me she was an English Lit graduate student, only she was hopped up on Diet Pepsi and M&M’s, staring a major paper deadline in the face. As she clutched a fistful of my shirt in despair we stood in the computer writing lab, where I tutored semi-literate freshmen and baby-sat the bank of computers and printers that were available for the students' use.
      I followed her glare to where one of the printers gloated in malevolent silence, refusing to spit out the last five pages of her research paper. Her eyes cut to the clock on the wall. Five minutes until class. Five minutes to get those five pages. Her tone shifted, uncomfortably, from supplication to menace: “Make. It. WORK!”
      Fortunately for me and my shirt, the problem proved easy enough to fix; soon she was gathering up her paper and running out the door. On the way out, however, she shot me The Smile--a loquacious smile, I thought, bursting with meaning. “Sorry I was so rude,” the smile said; “Thank you,” it said; “My hero,” it said. And I still maintain that, as a sort of coda, the smile even added, “You're kinda cute.” My spirit instantly grew to a ridiculous height, and I fell in love.
      A Happy Ending, however, proved unlikely. We had a mutual acquaintance whom I literally chased down that day. “So-oo-o... has she got a boyfriend?” I asked nonchalantly, pretending that my every hope for a happy future did not hang on the answer.
      Oh yes. Long time. Very serious. Expected to marry.
      My spirit fell from its enormous height and made a nasty mess on the sidewalk.
      But all was not lost. She was back in the writing lab the very next day. And, as a “thank you/I’m sorry” present, she brought me a little bag of gumballs tied up with a red ribbon. Gumballs! The most romantic token of affection one can give short of an outright proposal. Better than diamonds. She had noticed me! I was no longer just an anonymous computer geek. Suddenly, I existed in her world as someone to whom you might give gumballs. My broken spirit leapt back up from its heap on the sidewalk and danced a little happy dance. I had a chance!
      So go right on denouncing love at first sight, you sad, lonely, dateless cynics out there, but know this: we celebrate our eighteenth wedding anniversary this week, and the printer on our home computer works just fine.

The "American Scientist" to be Removed from Endangered List

      Update: This story has been picked up by The Science Creative Quarterly. Click the above link many times to increase my apparent popularity in their eyes. After a couple of days on the front page, it'll move to the archives, here.

100 Book Meme Leaves Me at 47*

      I picked up this book meme created by the BBC from my friend Ken at kenmorefield.blogspot.com. It's a strange list of books--some from the classic "Great White Canon," some from newer books that are popular with reading groups, and a few strays from somebody's head. You're supposed to mark which ones you've read and count the total. The BBC figures for some reason that most folks will have read just 6 of the 100. How will you stack up?

Instructions:

1. Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read. [Note; I've adopted Ken's modifications, to wit: I put a 'y' by those I have read in part but not in full. I put an 'xx' next to those I have read multiple times, though the number of x's is not equivalent to the number of reads.]
2. Add a '+' to the ones you LOVE.
3. Star (*) those you plan on reading.
4. Tally your total at the bottom.
5. Put in a note with your total in the subject.
6. Cut and paste to notes and link me in too please...

The BBC's list
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen x
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien xx+
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte x
4 The Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling y
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible y
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell x
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman x
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens x
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott x
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller y
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare yxx
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier x
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien xx
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks x
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot x
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald x
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams xx+
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky *
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll y
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame x
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens x
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis xx
34 Emma- Jane Austen x
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis xx
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres xx+
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne x
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell x
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez x+
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving x+
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding x
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan *
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel x
52 Dune - Frank Herbert xx+
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens x
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley x
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez x+
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck xx+
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas x
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie y
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville x
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker y
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce x
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt x
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens xx
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker x
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro x+
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White x
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle xx+
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad x
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery x
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams x
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole xx+
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas x
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare xx
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl x
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo y*+ (still reading unabridged a bit at a time)

* I think that's 47. I guess I don't get to count The Complete Shakespeare or The Bible because there are bits of both that I've never read. But who's read "Coriolanus" or "The Book of Numbers" anyway? Honestly.

Yankees Sign Designated Apologizer to 5-Year Deal Worth $35 Million

      Addressing what was long perceived to be a hole in their lineup, the Yankees today signed designated apologizer Miguel Culpa to a 5-year, $35 million contract. Culpa, a left-handed power apologizer from Venezuela, comes off a year in the minors during which his apologies to the fans and the press had an acceptance rate of .870, the best in the league.
      Culpa is aware, however, that apologizing in the major leagues--especially to the notoriously unforgiving fans and press of New York--will be a lot different from his work in the minors. "I'm really going to have to step up my sincerity to a whole new level," said Culpa. "In the minors, mostly you apologize for guys yelling at the ump or showing up drunk for the game. But in the bigs, man, these guys really know how to piss fans off. And the Yankees, wow! But I'm ready for this challenge, and let me say right now that if I ever let the fans or my teammates down, I'm very, very sorry."
      Although Culpa's contract guarantees him $7 million a year, he's likely to make a good deal more than that with bonuses. Successfully apologizing for a player's extramarital affair reportedly will earn Culpa an extra $50K, smoothing over reports of domestic abuse is worth $100K, and if the Yankees fail to make the playoffs and Culpa is forced to apologize for the entire team, he's scheduled to make another $500K. Apologies for each loss to the Red Sox earn him $10K, but Coach Girardi has already assured Culpa that he doesn't expect him ever to have those accepted. "The guy's an ace," explained Girardi, "but he's not a miracle-worker."
      Player reaction to Culpa's signing was overwhelmingly positive, with the most effusive praise coming from 3rd baseman Alex Rodriguez, who has yet to pull off his own successful apology as a Yankee. "I only wish Miguel had been on board earlier for all that Madonna business," said Rodriguez, "and now all of this steroid stuff has hit the fan. I've never been able to figure out what the hell Yankees fans expect me to do or say. It's going to be great knowing that Miguel's got my back, so I can feel free just to go out there and fuck up."

Other Baseball Notes:
Citi Field Ball Park Set for Opening Day: New York Mets look forward to first pitch, first homer, first late-season collapse in beautiful new stadium.
Pitchers and Catchers Report to Spring Training: Spring training officially opens on Friday when pitchers and catchers report; on Tuesday the Pittsburgh Pirates are mathematically eliminated from playoff contention.

A Huddle in Which Coach Wade Phillips Could Have Used Christian Bale

      Umm, guys. Yeah, huddle up please. No, you too please T.O. I want everyone in on this. Yes, I am serious. Please join us.
      Well, I don't want to name any names, but as a group, gosh darn it we're just not playing very well out there. Now I know everyone's tired and these guys are pretty good, but I'm asking you fellas to all pull together as a team and do a more professional job out there.
      Again, I don't want to pick on anybody, but Flozell that third holding call really hurt us. Remember what we talked about? No, not the ice cream pizza thing. Today. After the first two holding calls. Yeah, you kinda promised me that it wouldn't happen again. I know, I know, he is very big and fast, but golly that was a crucial ten yards there and, if you'll recall, he sacked Tony anyway. Yes he did, Flozell, he hit Tony very, very hard.
      Well T.O., I don't really think you should be chuckling at Flozell right now; this hasn't exactly been your greatest game either. What I'm "referring to," T.O. is that last first down pass you dropped over the middle there. Yes, I realize that you weren't going to be able to score on that particular play, but holy cow we really can't afford to throw the little fish back at this point. I agree that the safety did have a certain unpleasant gleam in his eye as he noticed you crossing the middle of the field, but you would have had a first down before he got there, and well, you know, we kind of pay you a lot of money to do that sort of thing. Well then, let's just agree to disagree.
      Now I know we're down 44-3, but I feel like, if we all pull together and do our jobs out there, we can still save this thing. OK, I'm not gonna ask who threw that. You know who you are, and I'm sure the shame that you're feeling right now is worse than any punishment I could come up with. C'mon now guys! Cowboy pride! Go out there and win one for...for somebody that you may have cared deeply about once.
      *sigh*
      Yes, T.O., it can be you if you want.

a tip o' the helmet to kenmorefield.blogspot.com for the inspiration.