gotta love faux 70s

Look Around You

–this is a quirky British thing that’s showing on Adult Swim on Cartoon Network. They’re showing two episodes tonight and hopefully they’ll show more. Basically, the show is a parody of those awful films you used to have to watch in middle school about various subjects, but with that British . . . something.

The Simpsons–duh (review of said new episode will be forthcoming tomorrow)

Flight of the Conchords–even if you’ve never seen one, you’ll be fine. One of the best shows ever. Even the minds behind Spaced say so (you’d know this if you’d watch their q&a on the dvd, like I did).

PBS has a documentary on Haiti. Unless you’re Tiffany, you don’t know enough about Haiti, but you really should. This is especially true if you want to know anything about the U.S., because we have shaped Haiti in almost unimaginable ways. If you want to see a piece of that, watch this.

this pic works on so many levels for me

MacHomer, my absolute favorite blending of Shakespeare and Simpsons, is getting a New York run. I’ve seen the play twice (and it’s amazing–pee in your pants funny). It’s postmodern, fun, cultural, and political (some of the jokes change each week).
Readers: have you seen it, do you want to see it, if you’re in New York, how are you going to thank me for telling you to go see it?

Check out the website here:  http://machomer.com/news/56  If you go to the main page, you can see clips of the show!

I read Dead Until Dark before HBO made the fabulous True Blood series.  When the series ended its season, I had a Sookie Stackhouse orgy.  I consumed too much, I admit, but when you bite into something you like, it’s hard to stop.

I recommend the novels if you want some light reading.  I recommend the series more (think about that–I’m arguing for a tv adaptation over a book original–that means they’re doing something right).  As the show is not limited to Sookie’s point of view, you get to see a fuller world and more fleshed out characters–there’s blood in all of them.  Also, I don’t always like Sookie’s point of view.  She tries a bit too hard to be a small town girl.  And I certainly don’t share her opinion that a real man is one who keeps duct tape in his truck (yes–it has to be a truck–Charlene Harris has a type.)

Recommendation aside, here are reasons why you shouldn’t read them all at once:

1.  The books will give you the false impression that all men, once you get to see them naked, are perfectly formed and well endowed, which will lead to disappointment in real life.

2.  Harris has to work a certain amount of exposition into her texts.  As the number of the novels increases, the amount of necessary exposition increases (as we must assume that not all readers will have read or remembered the previous novels).  If you read quickly, you will be annoyed by the clumsy and repetitive moves.

3.  You will also start to resent the fact that Harris constantly has Sookie taking a shower or brushing her teeth after a particularly grueling and gruesome day and always remarks that she feels “almost human” after cleaning up a bit.  It’s not that funny the first time, and definitely not funny any time thereafter.

4.  At one point, the novels start to lose coherence, which is why Harris (or her publisher) finally hired a continuity specialist.  If you read them sparingly, you may just think that you’ve forgotten something (as opposed to realizing Harris has).

5.  The books are light weight reads.  They are for vampire/fantasy fans, not for mystery fans.  Harris does, however, write mystery novels (I haven’t read them).  She includes at least one murder mystery per novel, but the mystery genre is not upheld (nor cleverly subverted) here, and thus, the attempts at it prove frustrating.  The mysteries seem unimportant, unresolved, and unsolvable in some cases.  The “discovery” scenes are merely set up as confessions, often without the pleasure of having any “clues” dropped beforehand for the careful reader to pick up on.  I mean, you can still guess who did it (it’s not the butler, but close), but you can’t deduce/induce it.

There are a few things the books show us, though.

First, we are attracted to the idea that there is something more than we can see in our world.  Even though it may be dangerous, we want to be a part of it.

Second, any exchange of body fluids, be they vaginal, seminal, or arterial (I’m not sure that that’s a word, but respect the parallelism), involves a power play–so be careful (but take a few chances).

My friend Afzal asked me yesterday what I thought Cheney might do now.  Here are my top five ideas:

1. He will retire to an undisclosed location to ponder whether his nickname is unfortunate, if fitting.

2. He will start construction on the third Death Star.

3. He will hide in his man-size safe to wait out the racial civil war my mother assures me is coming.

4. He will wait for someone to ask him who to hire for a powerful job and then nominate himself.

5. After taking off his human camouflage, he will return to his planet of Predators a failure.  While he hunted the most dangerous game–man–he did not get a kill shot.

1. I was not impressed when Wolf Blitzer told me that they could show me what the Mall would look like if I were watching the inaugeration from a plane overhead. Methinks CNN believes random technology is a replacement for coverage.

2. I was happy that they did not have that stupid crawl on today. The crawl started right after 9/11, when there was news other than 9/11, but we couldn’t talk about anything else. 9/11 is over and there isn’t usually enough news in the day (that the American press will cover), so they need to get rid of the words at the bottom of the screen. I get distracted from what they’re saying because I see ” . . . Madonna’s elbow” and then I have to wait until it comes around again.

3. I can’t help but think that Justice Roberts was trying to ruin Obama’s mojo on purpose.

4. Great music, which is why Wolf Blitzer needed to shut up about the “president at noon” thing. He said that about every fifteen minutes.

5. The preachers did a great job. And I say that as a woman who doesn’t generally believe what they do.

6. I liked Obama’s nomination acceptance speech better than this one–the former was longer and more specific.

7. Obama said “forebearers” instead of “forefathers.” Right on!

8. Am glad that Obama mentioned that some people didn’t have faith (a shout out to the atheists), but he only mentioned a couple of the “major” religions. Would be pissed if I were Hindu.

9. Atheists need to come out of the closet. When Julia Sweeney “lost” her faith, her father said he wishes she’d come out as lesbian instead, because that was “socially acceptable.” We need to fight for the right to be a humanist/naturalist (even if we aren’t–we need to fight for the rights of others in the land of the free.)

10. Bush looked a little pissed when Obama said some things that went against Bush’s policies.

11. Obama is President! Woohoo!

A parent in Canada has asked a school board to take The Handmaid’s Tale off the reading list for seventeen year olds. He doesn’t like the bad language, the brutality (esp against women), and its anti-Christian-ness.

Never mind that the book won The Governor’s General Award (Canada’s Pulitzer) or the fact that it remains one of the most taught books in the world. Let’s think through the three objections.

Bad language: if we took books with “bad” language out of the curriculum, we’d have to lose most of the curriculum. Even Shakespeare makes “cunt” jokes. (P.S.–you’d have to take the Bible out of Sunday School curriculum, too–it also contains “bad” words.) And if this guy thinks his kid hasn’t heard or said the word “fuck” before, he’s a moron.

Brutality: This guy can try to pass himself off as a sympathizer to women all he wants, but there is brutality against women in the world. This book talks about some of that. I’ve had students get upset at Oryx and Crake for similar reasons. One student said that because Atwood had a character who’d been victimized by being forced into prostitution as a child, Atwood was a pornographer. There is a difference between kiddie porn and a work that criticizes those who perpetuate it. (Unless reading about that poor girl gets you hard–and in that case, you shouldn’t be mad at the book, you should be thinking about yourself.) When I read The Handmaid’s Tale in high school (an event I consider one of the most important in my life), I remember a girl coming in and saying she didn’t like the book because it was disturbing. The teacher said it was supposed to be. There are bad things out there. How are we going to stop them and prevent them if we don’t know about them?

Anti-Christian: I am so sick of this argument. First, the rulers of Gilead are not Christian. Though they quote (and intentionally misquote) the Bible, there is no Jesus here. Salvation in this society comes not through Christ, but through accepting the new status quo of the theocracy. The “brutality” against women here all comes from the Old Testament (and is, by the way, sanctioned through a literal reading of that text–Old Testament “family values” leave much to be desired).  Even if you view the rulers as Christian, none of the rulers actually follow the rules–this is a critique of hypocrisy as much as anything else. Finally, it should not escape notice that all of the “good guys” in the book who are fighting this regime are Christian–they are Catholics and Quakers and Baptists–they are Christians.

Oh, and book banning is wrong, even if this guy’s claims were true.

By popular demand (see Courtney, you’re popular!), my blog is here at last.

We’ll see whose reading and see how it goes. I do respond to peer pressure, so comment often! (Just don’t try to get me to smoke.)

It occurs to me that this slightly more public site (more public than facebook and myspace) may get new faces, so maybe we should have a glossary.

“at school/work”–I teach writing and literature at a university.

“Du”–my best friend & co-author

“the book”–current writing project by famous Simpsonologists, Du & Dr. Karma

“Ken”–due to Ken’s work putting this site together, I won’t call him btp (boyfriend-type-person) here. (He probably doesn’t like that name because he wants to be htp.)

“the boy”–my teenager

“book club”–my weekly group of book lovers and friends. Formally, we are the Margaret Atwood Book Club of Davis (as made famous in the credits of the film, Julie, Julie), though we read other authors, too.

“Isis,” “Osiris,” “Mahahes”–the cats

“The Monkey”–the monkey

Well, finally! Ken, the lazy man, has made it possible for me to blog!

Thanks Ken. 🙂

Ken (on the left) and Karma