Omar Comin’, Yo.

My roommate Amelia has been trying to get me to start watching The Wire for as long as I’ve lived with her. I’ve always demurred; after all, my old TV show DVD-watching dance card was terrifically full with both Deadwood and True Blood. Finally, I gave in and CJ and I rented the first season from the library.

Sheeeeet, yo. The Wire is basically the best show ever.

So why is it the best? Basically, it has all the characteristics that make HBO dramas so great: smart writing, characters you care about, skilled actors who can play characters who are both deeply flawed and empathetic.  But isn’t that true of Deadwood, you say?

True, yes. But The Wire has Omar.

Omar, Omar, Omar. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love that he is one of the more defiantly uncategorizable characters in television, a hustler, a gay man, a self-serving Robin Hood, a good guy, a bad guy, totally brutal but noble when the occasion calls for it. However, my words alone serve as paltry praise for Mr. Little. Check out this AMAZING and lovingly detailed Dickensian Wire spoof, complete with pen and ink illustrations.

It Is Sad That Diana Wynne Jones Died

Witch Week

Diana Wynne Jones died last week.  I hadn’t read all that much by her, but “Witch Week” was my favorite book when I was about 11, and it’s a really amazing read.

The story is about an alternate UK where the Gunpowder Plot succeeded, and witches are not only real, but still burned at the stake — all taking place in a boarding school for “witch orphans.” When it starts becoming clear that one of the kids at the school IS a witch, teachers, other kids, and the government start hunting for who it is.

Apart from being well-written, “Witch Week” is EXTREMELY dark for what is essentially a young adult novel.  The whole idea is that there are people ready and willing to kill children for who and what they are.  The protagonist (or one of them)  burns his hand on a candle to the point of blistering and bleeding to remind himself what the stakes are.  And it was written in the early eighties, when it was rarer than now for any kind of kids lit to be that dark, I think.

This is neither here or there, but the book is also an interesting corollary to the (overrated, I think) comic and movie V for Vendetta, where Guy Fawkes is essentially reborn as an anarchic hero.  In “Witch Week,” the Gunpowder Plot is presented as an act so evil that it would have basically blown apart the universe and the timeline if it succeeded.

But it’s a great book, and everybody should read it.  I should also read the rest of the Chrestomanci series, which it is (sort of) a part of, and I’ve never gotten around to.

Abusing Literature with Marjorie Garber

MarjGarb

CJ and I had the pleasure of seeing Marjorie Garber speak at the Harvard Bookstore last week. This was our second reading in five days–my, aren’t we cultured?

Total disclosure here: Professor Garber is one of my nerd-girl heroes. Girlfriend can arch an eyebrow during a lecture and it can speak volumes. However, what I’ve always appreciated about MargGarb is the way she handles difficult questions and textual frustrations from students with a firm sort of practicality that would make Mary Poppins proud. She always manages to make the questioner feel empowered yet accountable.

This sense of patience and confidence translated well from the lecture hall to the bookstore. Rather than read directly from her new book on literary criticism and reappropriation, The Use and Abuse of Literature, she told us the story of when she first knew she was interested in literary criticism as a teen. Her description of  hearing TS Eliot speak wove nicely in and out with her reflections on academia, her favorite types of literature, and some specifics from her new work. She was immensely personable and smart during the Q&A as well, ably shouldering some pretty sigh-worthy questions about Deconstructionism from an over-zealous audience member (only in Cambridge are we overzealous about Deconstructionism, I guess).

This reading made me even more of a MargGarb fangirl. It was nice to experience a writer whose literary persona and whose physical presence nicely match up.

The Merchant of Venice: What’s the Deal?

F. Murray Abraham as Shylock

The Merchant of Venice

is a play that is about jerks. Much like The Great Gatsby (or better yet, Seinfeld) it peopled with pretty unpleasant characters. Personally, it’s hard to watch a play or to read a novel without finding at least one sympathetic character to experience the story with, so with this play in particular, the audience feels the need to ally themselves with *the least* awful of the people presented.

Most productions try to achieve this measure of empathy and audience engagement by making Shylock this sympathetic vessel; however, this does not work well for several reasons. Shylock, in the play text, is not a pleasant character. To play him as entirely sympathetic or vulnerable would be to create a character that doesn’t exist in the world of the script. The problem I’ve had with most productions of  The Merchant of Venice (esp. the very nice recent production done by the Public Theatre last summer with Al Pacino in the role) is that Shylock has been softened or rendered pathetic to the extent that I have no sympathy for him—he becomes a wuss without spirit. He also become untrue as a character: I have trouble believing the totally victimized Shylock as a strong man or as a capable businessman , both of which are clearly implied by  the language given to him in the play. He’s unpleasant, but at least he’s open about his unpleasantness.

In the very smart production currently playing at the Cutler Theatre starring F. Murray Abraham, director Darko Tresnjak chose to make Portia and her Venetian posse more loathsome rather than make Shylock more sympathetic. Dressed as if Armani Exchange exploded all over them, it’s not hard to see Bassanio and Antonio as heirs to Gordon Gekko or any slimy downtown i-banker. It’s a complicated choice textually—there are several scenes remaining after Portia’s vicious takedown of Shylock at Antonio’s trial, and I couldn’t bring myself to care about her or even like her after this point in the play. She was not only nasty, but she was clearly reveling in her nasty wittiness. This brings me back to Jim’s entry on Sarah Vowell and the alienation of snark. While we laugh with Portia and her pals at points, I left the theatre feeling relieved I wasn’t on the receiving end of her verbal salvos; it made me question: when and where would should use words to sting and to what ends?

Oh Yeah… Blog. Plus, Sarah Vowell and Snark.

Sarah Vowell

Hi everyone, starting this blog up again if anyone out there still cares. Huzzah!

Anyway, so on Friday CJ and I went to see Sarah Vowell read from her new book — “Unfamiliar Fishes,” about the history of Hawaii — at First Parish Church.

It was a very mixed experience. The bits of the book she read seemed great, really interesting and well researched and very funny. And she has a great presence when she’s reading, mostly because I picture Violet from “The Incredibles,” (whom she did the voice for) whenever she talks. I’ve never read her books, only heard her pieces on This American Life and read her various op-eds in the papers.

But the question and answer session afterwards was sort of creepy and unpleasant. She has this very snarky affect — I don’t know whether it’s her real personality or a kind of act — when she interacts with people. She shuts people down and sort of insults them and tries to score easy points off of the audience. It is very funny, for what it’s worth, but it’s also kind of insulting and cheap-seeming.

I don’t know what exactly she’s going for. I know that this kind of snark is a part of the whole McSweeney’s, This American Life oeuvre. But it bugs me. You can, after all, be very smart and funny and not also be a total dick to people. And someone like John Stewart — who Vowell called a peer of hers at one point during the reading — can pull off a certain amount of snark but also seems to have some actual compassion with whatever person he’s interacting with, even if that person is someone like Bill Kristol.

And what CJ pointed out is that the voice Vowell adopts in her books is quite different than the tone she took in the Q+A. She’s funny and snarky, but also someone who is interested in sharing information with her readers, which she seems completely uninterested in doing in person.

Vowell also made a couple offhand references to how she’s bummed that her op-eds never seem to have any effect on the world, making some joke about, oh, I might as well fax them to my wastebasket next to the desk etc. etc.

But from what I remember, her columns generally take the “oh, everyone is such an ass,” tone that she seems wont to fall into. As such, complaining about how nobody ever decides to revise his or her worldview based on her writing seems kind of lame.

And yet, I still want to read her book. Go figure.

A Few More Words on “War and Peace” From RNC Chairman Michael Steele

I’m sure many of you have already seen this, but it was relevant, so I had to post.

Make sure you wait until Steele “quotes” “War and Peace” for the full effect. I like when Tucker Carlson looks frantically at Grover Norquist to confirm that he hasn’t lost his mind.

Besides that though, I actually think Ann Wagner’s answer to this was kind of awesome (disregarding the book/bar misapprehension).  I don’t know that I would be ballsy enough to talk about drinking alone at my kitchen table at a political debate.

I’m Reading “War and Peace,” What Are You Doing?

Yeah I am.  So far it’s going well.  I tried once before a year before and gave up after a while.  I’m reading a different translation this time — Louise and Alymer Maude, apparently the old favorites whom I should have went with the first time around –  and it’s both a lot more pleasant and a lot easier to keep track of which characters are which.  Of course, ALL the characters are  referred to much of the time as “the Prince” or “the Princess,” which makes it harder.  If they are ALL princes and princesses, perhaps that is not the most helpful way to identify them.  Sigh.

But, I’m enjoying it quite a bit.  Pierre is a great character, and I like the part where he ties a policeman to a bear.  And Dolokhov is very cool and creepy.  And I haven’t even gotten to any actual war; everyone is still just going to parties in Saint Petersburg and Moscow.  I think it would all make a great HBO miniseries, but I’m thinking that about most things I read lately, and not everything can be made into an HBO miniseries.

It is still dauntingly long (and alarmingly, my copy is on hold back at the library on the 18th).  But if it keeps going along at this clip, I think I’ll be okay for the long haul.  I will keep ya’ll updated as things develop.  Spoiler: I predict that the bastard Pierre is going to be legitimized by the Emperor and inherit his father the Count Bezukhov’s vast fortune!

Guilty Pleasures

These are the top 5 things I am most ashamed to love, but love so hard anyway

 

5. McDonald’s Berry Smoothies- I once had two of these in a Texas airport. They were THAT good. I like to convince myself they are healthy, too (ed. They are 210 calories…guess they aren’t that healthy). On the upside: they are much less expensive than the typical, pretentious $6 Cantabridgian smoothie.

4. Target line of Anna Sui Gossip Girl clothing- I fought a lady to get my hand on a sparkly Blair dress at Target. Blair is my favorite! I love her headbands and kilts! I know that I am a good twelve years older than the characters in the show, but if I want to wear sparkly boho Anna Sui, I will wear it without shame and pick through the Juniors racks in a hideous fluorescent building with pride. Downside: I might be seen wearing the same outfits as one of my students.

3. Sookie Stackhouse novels- these novels feature lines like this: “What kind of weretiger are you?” or “Crystal can never birth a full panther”

Yet they are so fun! I love reading the unnecessary—yet strangely fascinating–details the about all the sun chairs and undies and Disney character t-shirts that Sookie gets on clearance at Walmart. I have determined I love them because they make me nostalgically yearn for the serial books of my youth. The Sookie Stackhouse novels are a natural outlet for women in their late twenties who have grown up in Sweet Valley, California and Stonybrook, Connecticut and who long to return to familiar literary waters. I love that Charlaine Harris goes full-on Babysitter’s Club and describes all of Sookie’s outfits and feels the need to include the backstory of Bubba in Every. Installment. Of. The. Series.

2. Teen Mom- I wept- WEPT–profusely on the elliptical  machine when Caitlin and Tyler put their baby up for adoption. I will stare, plant-like, at the television for hours if MTV airs a Teen Mom marathon, finally  triumphing over my heretofore unchallenged affection for Top Model and Real Housewives marathons on Bravo.

1. Katy Perry-This is truly embarrassing, but I secretly love Katy Perry. I wasn’t on her jiggly bandwagon when One of the Boys dropped, but after listening to “California Gurls” about 2500 times this summer, it soaked into me like some sort of peppermint and fructose coated crack. The takeover was so visceral that my friend Jen and I danced around my kitchen for two hours to the video on repeat while ostensibly “crafting.” I believe Katy Perry represents my desire to shoot rivulets of whipped cream out of cannons on my amble bosom—an experience that would be incomplete without Snoop Dogg. Even my mom likes Katy Perry and leaves me detailed voicemails about how she is glad that “that nice girl found such a funny husband” (??!!). I think that this universal appeal, rather than boob cannons, is Perry’s secret weapon. This transparency and likeability differentiates her from Britney, Xtina, and Gaga, who can all be a bit predatory at times, or who can try too hard to take themselves too seriously. Katy Perry knows she’s all about manufactured pop, lots of makeup, boobs, and fun and she refuses to apologize for that. She’s a lady who knows who she is and I can appreciate her winking sense of self-knowledge (plus her CD is doctored to smell like cotton candy, making it hard to resist the urge to sniff it and slam it up to my face every time I go to Starbucks).

Houdini Exhibit at the Jewish Museum

CJ and I went to see the Houdini exhibit at the Jewish Museum in New York City on Wednesday.  Apart from a horrific crush of people getting into the museum — made a lot worse by the metal detector and mandatory coat check — it was a pretty great experience.

I’ve never known much about Houdini, or fixated on him specifically — to the extent that I had no idea that he was Jewish until I heard about this exhibit — but he’s an interesting and impressive guy.  The exhibit was a mixture of contemporaneous memorabilia, footage, and some modern art interpreting Houdini.  In general, the actual artifacts were the coolest part.  They had Houdini’s handcuffs, straitjacket, crate, milk can and so on.  And lots of posters and photos from his early career.

The more modern art was mostly either uninteresting or just bizarre.  That definitely includes the room full of jacobin pigeons pooping on a fake glass coffin, which was apparently one of the big draws for a lot of people.  The one piece we did both like a lot was a painting by Joe Coleman (pictured here), which was great, and looked sort of like a carnival poster combined with lots of crazy Kabbalistic symbols.

But mostly the exhibit did a good job in examining and analyzing the reasons for Houdini’s appeal — most of which have to do with the basic Kavalier and Clay thesis that the immigrant’s story is already a kind of “escape.”  And Houdini comes off really impressively, especially in his later career as one of the first public skeptics, debunking spiritualism and so on.

The Jewish Museum itself was also cool — lots of neat artifacts, and the building itself was interesting at least on the outside.  It’s apparently an old converted mansion.  I kind of wish more of the building had been preserved on the inside though.  It seems like it was pretty much gutted and only the exterior shell was left.

If you are trying to fall asleep….

…try this one:

“Name your favorite Italian Renaissance artist who is NOT also a Ninja Turtle.”

I found one with minimal hesitation, but tricked Calamity Jim along the way by naming dishes from the Olive Garden. Fra Diavolo painted a beautiful Last Supper (with unlimited salad).

Enjoy!

(Mine was Artemisia Gentilechi, Calamity Jim’s was Botticelli)

CJ