While channel-surfing I happened on that Seventy-Five Years of NBC special, only tuning in long enough to hear a comedy bit by Mr. T, of all people. And to my amazement, it was hilarious. He presented a list of "Fools I've Pitied", in keeping with his trademark line "I pity the fool". He mentioned how he pitied the guy who cancelled Baywatch; he mentioned Jennifer Aniston who -- like Mr. T -- had her talent overlooked in favor of her haircut; and he pitied Screech from Saved By The Bell, because "We all pitied Screech". The line that got the biggest laugh from me, though, was "I pity the East Wing. I mean, does anybody know what they do in the East Wing?"
The personal blog of author Kelly Sedinger, chronicling the adventures of one overalls-clad wanderer.
Sunday, May 05, 2002
I've been watching The X-Files the last few weeks out of some sense of obligation. I've loved the show since I got hooked, midway through the third season, but this year has been one dull and boring episode after another. The feeling that the show was definitely moving toward some specific plot resolution, that The Truth really was Out There, seemed to dissipate entirely after the birth of Scully's child and Mulder's exit. The mytharc just seemed to grind on in lifeless fashion, and the Monster-Of-The-Week episodes were dull primarily because of the show's new dynamic. The X-Files didn't necessarily fall apart merely because David Duchovny left, but the resulting lack of chemistry between Agents Doggett and Reyes coupled with the lack of a clearly defined new role for Scully only made the dificiencies in the increasingly-lukewarm scripts all the more glaring. Had the show been announced for a tenth season, I likely would have abandoned ship entirely. But since the series is ending, I'm watching all of the remaining episodes (two left, as of this writing). And even still, with the clear knowledge that the show will soon be over, the recent episodes have not been very good. There was a wrap-up episode to the cancelled Lone Gunmen spinoff, which contrived an amazingly unbelievable scenario in which the paranoid trio give their lives for the world, or some such thing. Then there was an episode revolving around Scully's baby and its supernatural powers which ended with the child's powers being neutralized forever -- but then Scully, realizing that her child will always be a target, gives the child up for adoption. This was so stunningly out of character for Scully that when it was over I stared at the end credits in disbelief, made doubly strong by the fact that the episode was written by Chris Carter, the one person who should know Scully better than this. My expectations for the show have fallen incredibly low, so imagine my surprise when tonight's episode proved to be one of the best the series has done in the last few years.
The episode involved the nine-year-old murder of Agent Doggett's son, a crime which has (until now) gone unsolved. A young FBI cadet who apparently has some kind of ability to see things in case files (and autopsies) that are missed provides Doggett with some uncannily accurate information on another case, the success of which prompts Doggett to show his case information on his son's murder to the seemingly clairvoyant cadet. But the cadet already knows of the Doggett case -- he wallpapers his apartment with photographs of unsolved crimes, Doggett's son being one of the ones on the wall -- and in a fairly spooky moment he tells Doggett that the two cases are not unrelated.
This episode was remarkably well crafted, with nicely building suspense and a final resolution that is moving and sad. The story kept me guessing -- is the cadet what he claims to be? is there more to the mobster who keeps avoiding prosecution? is the Assistant Director on the take? -- and the story's supernatural element is very muted, much more so than usual for an X-Files episode. The unbelievable plot developments that have been the mainstay of X-Files scripts for this entire season were nowhere in evidence. It's nice to see that the folks at Ten Thirteen have not completely forgotten how to construct a story.
The episode is carried, though, on the strength of Robert Patrick's acting. John Doggett's cynicism, the way he can't allow himself to believe in anything, is well established by Patrick, so as the episode progresses and Doggett goes more and more out on that limb we can strongly sense his strong emotions and his powerful desire to keep them in check. Patrick gets a lot in this episode to really sink his teeth into, and he does so beautifully. I wonder if it was frustrating for Patrick to get this script, read it, and realize that only now that there are a handful of episodes left before he's back on the Hollywood unemployment line does he get some material that he can really use to delve into his character. I never disliked the John Doggett character; he was sufficiently different from Mulder and the chemistry was sufficiently different between him and Scully that I was always fine with him. But there was still a sense that Doggett wasn't entirely thought out, as if he were thrown together by Chris Carter and the Ten Thirteen writers after it became clear that Duchovny was really leaving the show. This episode dispelled all that, and as such it should have been done last year.
So, as The X-Files prepares to end at last, a little hope is renewed. Maybe, just maybe, The Truth really is Out There. We'll know for sure in two weeks.
The episode involved the nine-year-old murder of Agent Doggett's son, a crime which has (until now) gone unsolved. A young FBI cadet who apparently has some kind of ability to see things in case files (and autopsies) that are missed provides Doggett with some uncannily accurate information on another case, the success of which prompts Doggett to show his case information on his son's murder to the seemingly clairvoyant cadet. But the cadet already knows of the Doggett case -- he wallpapers his apartment with photographs of unsolved crimes, Doggett's son being one of the ones on the wall -- and in a fairly spooky moment he tells Doggett that the two cases are not unrelated.
This episode was remarkably well crafted, with nicely building suspense and a final resolution that is moving and sad. The story kept me guessing -- is the cadet what he claims to be? is there more to the mobster who keeps avoiding prosecution? is the Assistant Director on the take? -- and the story's supernatural element is very muted, much more so than usual for an X-Files episode. The unbelievable plot developments that have been the mainstay of X-Files scripts for this entire season were nowhere in evidence. It's nice to see that the folks at Ten Thirteen have not completely forgotten how to construct a story.
The episode is carried, though, on the strength of Robert Patrick's acting. John Doggett's cynicism, the way he can't allow himself to believe in anything, is well established by Patrick, so as the episode progresses and Doggett goes more and more out on that limb we can strongly sense his strong emotions and his powerful desire to keep them in check. Patrick gets a lot in this episode to really sink his teeth into, and he does so beautifully. I wonder if it was frustrating for Patrick to get this script, read it, and realize that only now that there are a handful of episodes left before he's back on the Hollywood unemployment line does he get some material that he can really use to delve into his character. I never disliked the John Doggett character; he was sufficiently different from Mulder and the chemistry was sufficiently different between him and Scully that I was always fine with him. But there was still a sense that Doggett wasn't entirely thought out, as if he were thrown together by Chris Carter and the Ten Thirteen writers after it became clear that Duchovny was really leaving the show. This episode dispelled all that, and as such it should have been done last year.
So, as The X-Files prepares to end at last, a little hope is renewed. Maybe, just maybe, The Truth really is Out There. We'll know for sure in two weeks.
Saturday, May 04, 2002
I've added a permanent link at left to ScoreLand, a film music review site maintained by a man whose thoughts I enjoy greatly. (Just don't stare for too long at those spinning CDs that are at the bottom of each review. Trust me on this point.)
Good news for anyone who loves (or is at least interested in) the Golden Age of Science Fiction: the third volume of The SFWA Grand Masters is out in paperback. The SFWA began awarding its Grand Master award in the 1970s as a "lifetime achievement" award for the greatest of SF writers. (Additional stipulations were that the award could be given no more than six times in any decade, and it could only be given to writers who were alive at the time of the award.)
Each of these books collects a representative handful of stories by five of the Grand Masters. Those presented in the new volume are Lester Del Rey, Frederik Pohl (Pohl is also the series editor), Damon Knight (who sadly passed away just last month), A. E. Van Vogt, and Jack Vance. This is a terriffic series of books, well-conceived and lovingly assembled by editor Pohl.
Each of these books collects a representative handful of stories by five of the Grand Masters. Those presented in the new volume are Lester Del Rey, Frederik Pohl (Pohl is also the series editor), Damon Knight (who sadly passed away just last month), A. E. Van Vogt, and Jack Vance. This is a terriffic series of books, well-conceived and lovingly assembled by editor Pohl.
Evaluating a new John Williams filmscore is always fairly difficult, even for one where there is so much familiarity as there is with his already-extant Star Wars scores. Even with four previous films and filmscores to go on, it's still somewhat hard to judge Williams's score to Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones. This is not purely due to the film having not been released yet; my strongly held belief (which is only getting stronger as the years go by) is that one should not hesitate to listen to film music even for films one has not seen. Good film music must be good music first, and good music by definition can stand alone.
The difficulty with a Williams score comes in its presentation. Williams has always tended to rearrange his score albums, taking cues apart and pairing them with other cues to form single tracks that (theoretically) are more listenable than the cues as originally written. Williams has continued to do this, even as the trend in filmscore releases in recent years has trended very strongly toward presenting the music purely in film order. Williams even did it with his initial score CD to The Phantom Menace -- for example, the track entitled "Qui Gon's Noble End" starts with the "dark fanfare" when the landing bay doors part, revealing Darth Maul; then the track presents the action music that accompanied the escape from Naboo, about an hour earlier in the film, before finally returning to the music that accompanies, well, Qui Gon's noble end. Good listening? Yes, but not exactly conducive to really judging Williams's effort. That CD was then supplanted a year and a half later by the release of a 2-CD set of the same score, which was labeled "The Ultimate Edition" and did present the entire score in film order. (Actually, it presented the score exactly in film order, which caused some consternation amongst filmscore afficionados because George Lucas had re-edited the film's final act after Williams had completed scoring, resulting in a few odd-sounding edits in the music.) Further, the Phantom Menace album -- while a delight -- also omitted a number of the score's best cues, including the entirety of the delicate music from the scene where young Anakin gains his freedom and says goodbye to his mother. Assuming that Attack of the Clones has roughly as much music as The Phantom Menace did (just about every scene in the earlier film was scored), and assuming that reports of the new film's running time -- roughly 130-140 minutes -- are accurate, then the new CD has probably omitted at least 45 minutes of score. It will be interesting to see what, exactly, has been left out.
What to make, then, of what we have been presented of Williams's Attack of the Clones score? I have read a number of reviews of it, some positive and some not. The dividing line seems to be how the reviewer in question responds to the score's "Love Theme", since it is by far the most dominant theme on the CD -- we hear it, either in part or in whole, on nearly every track. Critics who find the "Love Theme" gorgeous tend to give the score high marks; those who find it lacking (especially in comparison to the great "Love Themes" from the classic Episodes IV, V and VI) tend to rank this score lower. And me? I fall, quite solidly, in the former camp.
The "Love Theme from Attack of the Clones" is, to my ears, absolutely and utterly gorgeous. It is passionate, lyrical, and sad. It is perhaps the darkest Love Theme that Williams has ever created, which is certainly fitting given what we know of how the romance of Anakin and Amidala eventually plays out. The earlier Love Themes in the series -- most notably, that from The Empire Strikes Back -- are made to sound at times sweet and romantic (Han and Leia's first kiss, for example) or sweeping and desperate (the carbon-freezing scene, frex). By contrast, the Clones theme is almost unremittingly desperate, even when it is played in fairly innocent fashion. Williams seems to be pointing the way to the story's inevitable turn toward ever darker events. Particularly notable is how, in the concert version of the Love Theme, Williams incorporates a central section where the theme is interpolated with more rhythmic and darkly martial-sounding music. This treatment seems to note how, even as Anakin pursues his love, he is moving toward becoming what Obi Wan will later call "more machine than man". I find this treatment fascinating. The Love Theme, as noted earlier, crops up very often throughout this CD, never more remarkably than in the final track, when Williams segues from a full-bore statement of his famous "Imperial March" to the Love Theme before going to the End Credits music. It's impossible to ignore the dramatic implications of juxtaposing Vader's Theme (even though Vader doesn't really exist yet) and Anakin's Love Theme. And Williams does it once more, at the very end of the End Credits, when as the Love Theme fades away he quotes his theme for Anakin from The Phantom Menace before giving a very haunting last statement of the Imperial March.
After the Love Theme, the music that will likely make or break a person's opinion of this score is the third track, "Zam the Assassin and the Chase Through Coruscant". This is a pure action track, eleven minutes long, and it is almost entirely a study in rhythm with just about no melodic material whatsoever. It's a fascinating sound, especially a central portion that contains nothing but percussion (which sounds like some of the more frenetic percussion stuff one would encounter at a Drum and Bugle Corps competition). It is in this track that Williams employs an electric guitar, which riffs on a very brief motif two or three times for about twenty seconds altogether. This use of guitar -- an instrument that almost no one would expect in a Star Wars score -- has been the basis of a large amount of the discussion of this score around the Web, but hate it or love it the guitar isn't very loud (in fact, it's almost a background instrument) and it's only heard for a total of twenty seconds or so, out of an eleven-minute cue. What interests me more about "Zam the Assassin" is that it marks a point that Williams has reached that is about as far away from the action writing that he used to do, action writing that -- while always incredibly exciting -- was always melodically based. My heart still races when I listen to his "Battle of Yavin" track from A New Hope, especially the part toward the end when Luke's Theme is heard over steadily thumbing timpani and ever rising chords (as Luke is all alone in the Death Star trench, with Vader closing in on him). Williams also wrote melodically-based action cues for The Phantom Menace, so perhaps this is experimental on his part given that the chase in question is in a very urban setting, something which we haven't seen in a Star Wars film yet. I'm undecided as to whether or not I like "Zam the Assassin and the Chase Through Coruscant". But I'm certainly getting to know it well as I consider it.
Of course, a Star Wars score should contain a number of the earlier themes from the series, and Attack of the Clones doesn't disappoint. The "Force Theme" is quite prominent, and we also hear "Yoda's Theme" (mostly in a beautiful track called "Yoda and the Younglings"). There is also a big quote from "Duel of the Fates" (from The Phantom Menace), and in the final track we hear -- as noted above -- a big statement of the Imperial March, probably to signal that the Republic has irrevocably turned the corner toward becoming the Empire. The score opens with the Star Wars Main Title, in the same incarnation in which it has been heard in the other four films. Some commentators have complained about this; some think that the instrumentation should be changed to reflect the darker tone of Episode II (and Episode III to come); and some have even suggested that the Main Title be eliminated from the CD entirely to make room for another "new" track or two. Personally, I can't fathom a Star Wars score CD not starting with that theme, but that's only my opinion.
So, here we have a score that is in my estimation worthy of the tradition in which it stands. Time will tell if it will become as classic a work as its forebears. But then, that's the case with everything, isn't it?
(A couple of extra points: First, the versions of the Attack of the Clones score CD that are being sold at Target stores contain a bonus hidden track, an action cue apparently called "The Conveyor Belt". Secondly, the documentation annoyingly does not include track times. Finally -- and this is a piddling complaint, but it's my blog -- the picture on the CD itself is terrible. It's a muddy shot of Slave One flying through an asteroid field, firing its blasters. If I hadn't seen the film's previews, though, I would have absolutely no idea just what the picture is. I liked the picture of Naboo from the Phantom Menace CD a lot more than this one.)
The difficulty with a Williams score comes in its presentation. Williams has always tended to rearrange his score albums, taking cues apart and pairing them with other cues to form single tracks that (theoretically) are more listenable than the cues as originally written. Williams has continued to do this, even as the trend in filmscore releases in recent years has trended very strongly toward presenting the music purely in film order. Williams even did it with his initial score CD to The Phantom Menace -- for example, the track entitled "Qui Gon's Noble End" starts with the "dark fanfare" when the landing bay doors part, revealing Darth Maul; then the track presents the action music that accompanied the escape from Naboo, about an hour earlier in the film, before finally returning to the music that accompanies, well, Qui Gon's noble end. Good listening? Yes, but not exactly conducive to really judging Williams's effort. That CD was then supplanted a year and a half later by the release of a 2-CD set of the same score, which was labeled "The Ultimate Edition" and did present the entire score in film order. (Actually, it presented the score exactly in film order, which caused some consternation amongst filmscore afficionados because George Lucas had re-edited the film's final act after Williams had completed scoring, resulting in a few odd-sounding edits in the music.) Further, the Phantom Menace album -- while a delight -- also omitted a number of the score's best cues, including the entirety of the delicate music from the scene where young Anakin gains his freedom and says goodbye to his mother. Assuming that Attack of the Clones has roughly as much music as The Phantom Menace did (just about every scene in the earlier film was scored), and assuming that reports of the new film's running time -- roughly 130-140 minutes -- are accurate, then the new CD has probably omitted at least 45 minutes of score. It will be interesting to see what, exactly, has been left out.
What to make, then, of what we have been presented of Williams's Attack of the Clones score? I have read a number of reviews of it, some positive and some not. The dividing line seems to be how the reviewer in question responds to the score's "Love Theme", since it is by far the most dominant theme on the CD -- we hear it, either in part or in whole, on nearly every track. Critics who find the "Love Theme" gorgeous tend to give the score high marks; those who find it lacking (especially in comparison to the great "Love Themes" from the classic Episodes IV, V and VI) tend to rank this score lower. And me? I fall, quite solidly, in the former camp.
The "Love Theme from Attack of the Clones" is, to my ears, absolutely and utterly gorgeous. It is passionate, lyrical, and sad. It is perhaps the darkest Love Theme that Williams has ever created, which is certainly fitting given what we know of how the romance of Anakin and Amidala eventually plays out. The earlier Love Themes in the series -- most notably, that from The Empire Strikes Back -- are made to sound at times sweet and romantic (Han and Leia's first kiss, for example) or sweeping and desperate (the carbon-freezing scene, frex). By contrast, the Clones theme is almost unremittingly desperate, even when it is played in fairly innocent fashion. Williams seems to be pointing the way to the story's inevitable turn toward ever darker events. Particularly notable is how, in the concert version of the Love Theme, Williams incorporates a central section where the theme is interpolated with more rhythmic and darkly martial-sounding music. This treatment seems to note how, even as Anakin pursues his love, he is moving toward becoming what Obi Wan will later call "more machine than man". I find this treatment fascinating. The Love Theme, as noted earlier, crops up very often throughout this CD, never more remarkably than in the final track, when Williams segues from a full-bore statement of his famous "Imperial March" to the Love Theme before going to the End Credits music. It's impossible to ignore the dramatic implications of juxtaposing Vader's Theme (even though Vader doesn't really exist yet) and Anakin's Love Theme. And Williams does it once more, at the very end of the End Credits, when as the Love Theme fades away he quotes his theme for Anakin from The Phantom Menace before giving a very haunting last statement of the Imperial March.
After the Love Theme, the music that will likely make or break a person's opinion of this score is the third track, "Zam the Assassin and the Chase Through Coruscant". This is a pure action track, eleven minutes long, and it is almost entirely a study in rhythm with just about no melodic material whatsoever. It's a fascinating sound, especially a central portion that contains nothing but percussion (which sounds like some of the more frenetic percussion stuff one would encounter at a Drum and Bugle Corps competition). It is in this track that Williams employs an electric guitar, which riffs on a very brief motif two or three times for about twenty seconds altogether. This use of guitar -- an instrument that almost no one would expect in a Star Wars score -- has been the basis of a large amount of the discussion of this score around the Web, but hate it or love it the guitar isn't very loud (in fact, it's almost a background instrument) and it's only heard for a total of twenty seconds or so, out of an eleven-minute cue. What interests me more about "Zam the Assassin" is that it marks a point that Williams has reached that is about as far away from the action writing that he used to do, action writing that -- while always incredibly exciting -- was always melodically based. My heart still races when I listen to his "Battle of Yavin" track from A New Hope, especially the part toward the end when Luke's Theme is heard over steadily thumbing timpani and ever rising chords (as Luke is all alone in the Death Star trench, with Vader closing in on him). Williams also wrote melodically-based action cues for The Phantom Menace, so perhaps this is experimental on his part given that the chase in question is in a very urban setting, something which we haven't seen in a Star Wars film yet. I'm undecided as to whether or not I like "Zam the Assassin and the Chase Through Coruscant". But I'm certainly getting to know it well as I consider it.
Of course, a Star Wars score should contain a number of the earlier themes from the series, and Attack of the Clones doesn't disappoint. The "Force Theme" is quite prominent, and we also hear "Yoda's Theme" (mostly in a beautiful track called "Yoda and the Younglings"). There is also a big quote from "Duel of the Fates" (from The Phantom Menace), and in the final track we hear -- as noted above -- a big statement of the Imperial March, probably to signal that the Republic has irrevocably turned the corner toward becoming the Empire. The score opens with the Star Wars Main Title, in the same incarnation in which it has been heard in the other four films. Some commentators have complained about this; some think that the instrumentation should be changed to reflect the darker tone of Episode II (and Episode III to come); and some have even suggested that the Main Title be eliminated from the CD entirely to make room for another "new" track or two. Personally, I can't fathom a Star Wars score CD not starting with that theme, but that's only my opinion.
So, here we have a score that is in my estimation worthy of the tradition in which it stands. Time will tell if it will become as classic a work as its forebears. But then, that's the case with everything, isn't it?
(A couple of extra points: First, the versions of the Attack of the Clones score CD that are being sold at Target stores contain a bonus hidden track, an action cue apparently called "The Conveyor Belt". Secondly, the documentation annoyingly does not include track times. Finally -- and this is a piddling complaint, but it's my blog -- the picture on the CD itself is terrible. It's a muddy shot of Slave One flying through an asteroid field, firing its blasters. If I hadn't seen the film's previews, though, I would have absolutely no idea just what the picture is. I liked the picture of Naboo from the Phantom Menace CD a lot more than this one.)
Thursday, May 02, 2002
Ugh. Due to a posting mishap that I haven't yet figured out how to correct, my attribution on the Image of the Week was snipped. Anyway, I found the image on the Daily Bleat at lileks.com. Click on the image to read the well-written article.
Wednesday, May 01, 2002
The May update at SFSite is up. Check it out. (This is one of the finest general-SF websites in existence.)
The PBS show American Masters just did a documentary on one of my personal heroes, dancer-actor-director-choreographer Gene Kelly. Any discussion of American dance in the 20th century must include Gene Kelly, whose athletic style formed a perfect counterpoint to the graceful moves of the other giant of his time, Fred Astaire. Kelly was involved in many fine, fine films, and Singin' In The Rain is generally considered to be the greatest of all American musicals. Gene Kelly is one of the few celebrities whose passing I truly mourned.
Tuesday, April 30, 2002
Some researchers are casting more doubt upon the Big Bang theory, in favor of a kind of cyclical universe not unlike that envisioned by some Eastern cosmologies. Read the MSN article here.
I have added a new permanent link to lileks.com, a fun site that is an interesting grab-bag of pop culture musings. The Daily Bleats there are particularly fun reading.
Saturday, April 27, 2002
I finished Dean Koontz's novel Watchers yesterday. This is the first Koontz novel I've read, and he seems to have a definite grasp on how to manipulate emotions in the reader so as to heighten the suspense. His characters are well-drawn; the central two -- Travis and Nora -- are people we care about, and thus as they move into situations of increasing danger our involvement in the story grows.
The plot could be described, very loosely, as "ET: The Extra-Terrestrial meets The X-Files". It is not purely a horror novel, nor is it science fiction; it is really an interstitial work that contains elements of both. While hiking in the woods, Travis encounters a golden retriever that seems to be fleeing....something. Travis helps the dog (and the dog helps Travis, a reciprocity that really fuels the novel) and the two escape whatever is in the woods. The book is really a series of escapes and pursuits, with Travis and the dog rescuing Nora from a sexual assailant, all three fleeing the something in the woods, the something in the woods fleeing the NSA agents assigned to find it, and everyone being unaware of the psychotic hit-man who is tracking everyone. Add to all this government labs that are dabbling in things they shouldn't, peripheral Mafia involvement, and even a dash of Soviet intrigue (apparently the book is set pre-1989), and you have quite the potboiler.
The book's main flaws are that the love story between Travis and Nora take over, relegating a lot of the interesting side action to secondary importance. Also, the book's ending comes as a bit of a let-down; the confrontation that one expects between all of the story's participants is over surprisingly quickly (and, quite frankly, I expected matters to be settled rather differently -- one shouldn't put down a book like this and immediately say to oneself, "It should have ended this way...."). These faults aside, Watchers is an impressive page-turner.
The plot could be described, very loosely, as "ET: The Extra-Terrestrial meets The X-Files". It is not purely a horror novel, nor is it science fiction; it is really an interstitial work that contains elements of both. While hiking in the woods, Travis encounters a golden retriever that seems to be fleeing....something. Travis helps the dog (and the dog helps Travis, a reciprocity that really fuels the novel) and the two escape whatever is in the woods. The book is really a series of escapes and pursuits, with Travis and the dog rescuing Nora from a sexual assailant, all three fleeing the something in the woods, the something in the woods fleeing the NSA agents assigned to find it, and everyone being unaware of the psychotic hit-man who is tracking everyone. Add to all this government labs that are dabbling in things they shouldn't, peripheral Mafia involvement, and even a dash of Soviet intrigue (apparently the book is set pre-1989), and you have quite the potboiler.
The book's main flaws are that the love story between Travis and Nora take over, relegating a lot of the interesting side action to secondary importance. Also, the book's ending comes as a bit of a let-down; the confrontation that one expects between all of the story's participants is over surprisingly quickly (and, quite frankly, I expected matters to be settled rather differently -- one shouldn't put down a book like this and immediately say to oneself, "It should have ended this way...."). These faults aside, Watchers is an impressive page-turner.
Friday, April 26, 2002
IMAGE OF THE WEEK
Noblemen and their servants playing chess -- Miniature, Al Andalus, 13th century.
I don't have any information about this image other than the title. I selected it because it reminded me of one of my favorite books, The Lions of Al-Rassan by the brilliant Canadian fantasist Guy Gavriel Kay. (See the permanent link at left for more on Kay.) The book is set in a fantasy realm based on medieval Espana during the period when the Moors were pushed out of their main European stronghold, and it is a magnificent and heartbreaking novel.
When the Lion at his pleasure comes
To the watering place to drink, ah see!
See the lesser beasts of Al-Rassan
Scatter like blown leaves in autumn,
Like air-borne seedlings in the spring,
Like grey clouds that part to let the first star
Of the god shine down upon the earth.
-Guy Gavriel Kay, The Lions of Al-Rassan
(The picture links to a site of historical artworks.)
Noblemen and their servants playing chess -- Miniature, Al Andalus, 13th century.
I don't have any information about this image other than the title. I selected it because it reminded me of one of my favorite books, The Lions of Al-Rassan by the brilliant Canadian fantasist Guy Gavriel Kay. (See the permanent link at left for more on Kay.) The book is set in a fantasy realm based on medieval Espana during the period when the Moors were pushed out of their main European stronghold, and it is a magnificent and heartbreaking novel.
When the Lion at his pleasure comes
To the watering place to drink, ah see!
See the lesser beasts of Al-Rassan
Scatter like blown leaves in autumn,
Like air-borne seedlings in the spring,
Like grey clouds that part to let the first star
Of the god shine down upon the earth.
-Guy Gavriel Kay, The Lions of Al-Rassan
(The picture links to a site of historical artworks.)
Tuesday, April 23, 2002
Political books II: Jeff Greenfield's Oh Waiter! One Order of Crow! is a highly entertaining read about a political event that seems so incredibly distant now: the disputed election of 2000. I actually read this book last fall, immediately after the attacks -- a bit of timing that made the book's subject matter seem shallower, less consequential, than perhaps it should. Greenfield's book is a description of how all of our election day systems came crashing to a halt on November 7, 2000 -- the media included. I remember sitting up until three o'clock that morning, watching Tim Russert scrawling electoral scenarios on a greaseboard; I remember all the machinations in Florida with all the hypocrisy on both sides; and most of all I remember a dull fall campaign that year between (as Greenfield puts it) "a candidate who spoke English to us as if it were our second language and a candidate who spoke English as if it were his second language." Political junkies should definitely read this one.
I just finished reading Joe Klein's book The Natural: The Misunderstood Presidency of Bill Clinton. The book is billed as an important work of political history, being the primary chronicle of Clinton's eight years in the White House, but in reality it is neither. It is a slight volume -- barely 220 pages of primary material -- and many topics are glossed over. The book is really an expansion of several magazine articles Klein wrote (primarily for The New Yorker) about the Clinton Administration, and it reads as such -- not a whole lot of corroboration, little rigorous journalism, a lot of breezy narrative. Still, the book serves a purpose well: it at least provides the outlines, in broad strokes, of the 42nd President. Klein's take is that Clinton is a man of extraordinary gifts and talents who, while accomplishing a great deal, never was able to really mold his achievements into greatness and who allowed his own personal failings to nearly derail him completely. Klein tells us a lot about the President, but ultimately the book still leaves Clinton as a somewhat foggy figure. A criticism that dogged Clinton from the time he entered the 1992 Presidential campaign is that one never could be sure just what he really believed, and after reading Klein's book that charge still stands as fairly accurate. (Particularly frightening is the fact Klein cites that the Clinton Administration spent more on polling than every previous administration combined. Many conservatives used to complain that Clinton governed by the public opinion poll, a charge that was not entirely without merit.) Those interested in the political history of the 1990s will find a good starting point here; but the truly definitive work on that decade is still in the offing.
The Buffalo Bills had a superb draft this year, grabbing a likely superstar for their long-underachieving offensive line in Mike Williams as their headliner. They also helped themselves in a number of other positions, but the biggest splash was their trade for former Patriots star quarterback Drew Bledsoe. When I heard of the trade rumors last week, I was ambivalent; for all the movement the Bills have made this offseason (they will go into the 2002 season much improved, on paper, over the 2001 edition), they are still in my estimation a year or two away from being truly competitive at a high level. It seemed odd to me for them to try to land a star quarterback who is in the final three years of a long-term contract -- precisely the years which are the most expensive, because that is how NFL teams structure their contracts these days. (The idea being, of course, to unload the player or get him to renegotiate before the team actually finds itself in the position of having to pay those huge dollars on the back end of the contracts.) Also, Bledsoe comes to the team having suffered a fairly serious injury last year (delivered by Jets mercenary-LB Mo Lewis, of course), making his acquisition at least slightly nerve-wracking. But the Bledsoe deal is done, and he's the quarterback, so of course I will now root strongly for his success here. (For the record, my take on the mercifully-completed Rob Johnson-Doug Flutie saga is this: They both stunk.)
(The paranoid conspiracy theorist in me -- my inner Oliver Stone, if you will -- wonders just how much connection exists between the Bills' desire to get the Bledsoe trade done and the fact that the initial five-year leases of the four-year old "club seats" at Ralph Wilson Stadium are due to expire at the end of next year. News of the Bledsoe deal brought about the spike in Bills season-ticket orders that the team brass were no doubt praying for.)
(The paranoid conspiracy theorist in me -- my inner Oliver Stone, if you will -- wonders just how much connection exists between the Bills' desire to get the Bledsoe trade done and the fact that the initial five-year leases of the four-year old "club seats" at Ralph Wilson Stadium are due to expire at the end of next year. News of the Bledsoe deal brought about the spike in Bills season-ticket orders that the team brass were no doubt praying for.)
Saturday, April 20, 2002
Anyone who thinks that comics are a lightweight medium, best left to adolescent tales of absurdly-muscular heroes battling mutants or giant robots bent on destroying Earth or bald archvillains, need only look to Pedro and Me: Friendship, Loss, and What I Learned by Judd Winick to have that belief shattered. Winick, of course, first entered the public eye as a cast member on the third season of MTV's The Real World. This was the season set in San Francisco, and while it is mostly remembered for the fireworks involving that horrid roommate Puck, this book instead focuses on the friendship that developed between Winick and roommate Pedro Zamora, who already had AIDS during the show's filming and died from that disease's complications a short time after filming.
Winick writes about how, being a "bed-wetting liberal", he tried to put a brave face on the fact that he would be living with a person who was HIV-positive; and yet, when the time came he was still fearful of the prospect: "When I thought of living with someone who had HIV, I envisioned living with the AIDS virus walking around on two legs." This frank admission contains the theme of Winick's book: how he confronted those fears, dealt with those all-too-common stereotypes, and at the same time formed a deep and rewarding friendship. The book is not a collection of Real World anecdotes (although there are some of those), so those looking for an extension of the show's voyeuristic qualities will be disappointed. Winick's story begins before the show (and, he wisely informs us, so does Pedro's) and the story of their friendship goes on after the show was over -- and even well after Pedro Zamora's death. Pedro and Me is funny, sad, and moving. It is a testament to the potential of comics as a medium.
(Judd Winick is currently a writer and artist for DC Comics.)
Winick writes about how, being a "bed-wetting liberal", he tried to put a brave face on the fact that he would be living with a person who was HIV-positive; and yet, when the time came he was still fearful of the prospect: "When I thought of living with someone who had HIV, I envisioned living with the AIDS virus walking around on two legs." This frank admission contains the theme of Winick's book: how he confronted those fears, dealt with those all-too-common stereotypes, and at the same time formed a deep and rewarding friendship. The book is not a collection of Real World anecdotes (although there are some of those), so those looking for an extension of the show's voyeuristic qualities will be disappointed. Winick's story begins before the show (and, he wisely informs us, so does Pedro's) and the story of their friendship goes on after the show was over -- and even well after Pedro Zamora's death. Pedro and Me is funny, sad, and moving. It is a testament to the potential of comics as a medium.
(Judd Winick is currently a writer and artist for DC Comics.)
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