Friday, October 20, 2006

“Hm. How About ‘Tickle Rod’?”

Got a new dictionary today and immediately looked up the word “dildo.”

How’s that for the start of an entry? The lookup was unintentional, I swear. My place of work finally ordered the 11th edition of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary for everyone in my department, and because I’m the kind of person who will even flip through a phonebook as long as it’s new, I started flipping through the dictionary.

The first page I landed on was page 350, and there it was in the second column, four words down, between “dilatory” and “dilemma.” Did you know “dildo” was coined in 1598? Its origins are unknown, though. Very disappointing.

So while Ben Jonson was being charged with killing Gabriel Spencer and the Seven Year War between Korea and Japan was winding down, someone somewhere said, “Hey, that thing needs a name.... What should we call it?” But we’ll never know who.

Not to revisit the whole movie quotation blitz or anything, but what made me smile about this little incident was that it reminded me of Otis’s line in Kicking and Screaming when Chet gives the boys a dictionary as a housewarming gift: “Cool! A dictionary! I’m gonna look up ‘blowjob.’ ” One of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen. As well as one of the most authentic and wistful (relationships-wise).

(P.S. “Blowjob” was coined in 1942, just in case you wanted to know.)


A Brief List of Books to Be Found in My Father’s Winter Library

(Or, “Wow, that dude Torrey sure could write a page-turner!”)

Balme and Lawall: Athenaze: An Introduction to Ancient Greek, Books I and II
J. T. Hooker: Linear B: An Introduction
Autenrieth: A Homeric Dictionary
Ventris & Chadwick: Documents in Mycenaean Greek: 300 Tablets from Knosos, Pylos & Mycenae
Herodotus (in ancient Greek)
Plato: Apology (in ancient Greek)
Plato: The Last Days of Socrates (in ancient Greek)
Lehmann: Historical Linguistics
Herbert J. Muller: The Loom of History
Georges Roux: Ancient Iraq
Turnbaugh, Jurmain, Nelson, and Kilgore: Understanding Physical Anthropology and Archaeology
Walton: Elementary Quantitative Analysis
Frankel: Gravitational Curvature
Goldstein, Lay, Schneider: Calculus and Its Applications
Goodwin Quimby Morgan: Physical Foundations of Radiology
DeGown: Bedside Diagnostic Examination
DiFiore: Atlas of Human Histology
Artwright: Disease and History
Torrey: Morphogenesis of the Vertebrates
Brock: Biology of Microorganisms
Bold: Morphology of Plants
Besey Dexter Dyer: A Field Guide to Bacteria
Coma: Preparing the Thoroughbred: A Trainer’s Guide
Lungwitz and Adams: The Complete Guide to Blacksmithing
Lasley: Genetic Principles in Horse Breeding, Revised
Adams: Lameness in Horses
Henry Bromze: Treasury of American Turf
James Gill: Bloodstock
The Duke of Beaufort: Fox Hunting

If one were so inclined, one could deduce from this list (a) my father’s occupation, (b) a current hobby of his, (c) a past hobby of his, and (d) a field of study he’d wanted to pursue before he settled on his course of action in college. Then there are a few that don’t fit comfortably in any of those four molds, but which lend further evidence that my father is more of a Renaissance man that I will ever be.

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Answers to the Last Annual Movie Quotation Matchup Game

Although I tend to let a week or two pass between my diary entries, I realized I had to follow up my last few posts within a few days because I know it would really piss me off good if someone else had concocted a quiz that I bothered to take, and then left me hanging, answerwise, for weeks on end. So here are the answers to the quiz (and to make it slightly more interesting than just a plain ol’ list, I’ll mention the context of the quotations—if the context matters):

1K. Bring that shit to me, man! / Cerrano (Major League) Yelled after Rick “Wild Thing” Vaughn (or maybe it was Jake—I haven’t seen this movie in years) got a little “chin music” from the asshole Yankees pitcher.

2PP. Cheerleaders are dancers who have gone retarded. / Sparky Polastri (Bring It On) To Torrance and her pals (natch) right before he teaches them how to make “poetry with the human body.”

3G. Not bad for a human. / Bishop (Aliens) To Ripley, who just kicked the Queen Alien’s ass and blew her out of “the god-damned airlock!”

4I. Learn it. Know it. Live it. / Brad Hamilton (Fast Times at Ridgemont High) To Spicoli and his stoner pals in reference to the sign, “No Shirt, No Shoes, No Dice.”

5JJ. Shit! Fucking limey cement. / Otto (A Fish Called Wanda) Right before he gets steamrolled at Heathrow Airport.

6C. I have no response to that. / Angelica (Joe versus the Volcano) She said this a lot in the movie. And thus it’s a great thing to say when you can’t think of anything to say.

7E. Some days you just can’t get rid of a bomb! / Batman (Batman: The Movie) Said straight to the camera (in the 1966 Batman movie) when Adam West runs around with a lit bomb for at least three minutes of screen time, but can’t get rid of it because everywhere he goes there are either nuns, Boy Scouts, or ladies pushing baby carriages around, etc.

8M. What are the odds of the Russians attacking on a Thursday night? / Cooper (The Man with One Red Shoe) Exclaimed when Cooper decides to use the U.S. government’s nuclear missile-tracking machinery to track Richard Drew (Tom Hanks), a man he suspects of being a spy who is, in actual fact, merely a concert violinist.

9Y. Sorry about the mess. / Han Solo (Star Wars) To the cantina bartender, right after he shoots Greedo.

10Z. Ugh. I thought they smelled bad on the outside. / Han Solo (The Empire Strikes Back) When he puts Luke inside the Tauntan he just sliced open with a lightsaber.

11OO. I want more life, fucker. / Roy Batty (Blade Runner) To Tyrell, just before he pokes the old bastard’s eyes out.

12O. Help! Help! I’m being repressed! / Dennis (Monty Python and the Holy Grail) Cried by the anarcho-syndicalist communist peasant whom King Arthur mistakes for an old woman (Dennis is neither a woman, nor is he old—he’s 37).

13BB. You fool! I could have killed you with a karate chop! / Inspector Clouseau (A Shot in the Dark) Said to his assistant, Hercule, after bumping into him and thus scaring the shit out of himself.

14S. Anybody want a peanut? / Fezzik (The Princess Bride) The rhyme to Vizzini’s pissed-off demand, “No more rhyming, I mean it!”

15X. I'll be taking these Huggies and whatever cash you got. / H. I. (Raising Arizona) When H. I. robs the convenience store while his unsuspecting wife and their kidnapped baby sit in a car outside.

16NN. I can't think of anything original! I'm only good in support. / Rosencrantz (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead) As with Angelica’s line in Joe versus the Volcano, this line is great when you can’t think of anything else to say.

17N. It's such a fine line between stupid and clever. / David St. Hubbins (This Is Spinal Tap) Ditto on this one.

18SS. Ray, when someone asks if you're a god, you say yes! / Winston (Ghostbusters) Right after Gozer nearly sends the Ghostbusters off the roof of the Dana’s apartment building.

19KK. Ned, I would love to stay here and talk with you...but I'm not going to. / Phil Conners (Groundhog Day) When Phil and Rita want some alone time in the penultimate scene of the movie.

20R. You killed the car. / Ferris Bueller (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off) His answer to Cameron’s horrified question, “What did I do?” after he kicks his dad’s 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California into the trees.

21GG. Haven't you seen Boyz N The Hood? Now one of us is going to get shot! / Mike (Swingers) After Sue pulls a gun on the House of Pain guys (as Trent facetiously calls them).

22P. A life without cause is a life without effect. / Dildano (Barbarella) Perhaps the one line in the movie that actually means something, since the rest of the movie is preoccupied with Jane Fonda’s naked body (in a “rated PG” kind of way).

23T. Can I borrow your towel for a sec? My car just hit a water buffalo. / Fletch (Fletch) When he walks in on Gail Stanwyck wearing nothing but a towel.

24CC. Chaos was what killed the dinosaurs, darling. / J. D. (Heathers) Said while he and Veronica discuss their fellow high school students banding together in the cafeteria for the sake of the camera crews.

25TT. Girls have no sense of adventure. / Xavier (The Doom Generation) It’s a sex thing. Der.

26MM. Ugh, I can actually hear you getting fatter. / Richard (Tommy Boy) When Tommy squirts some sauce packets directly into his mouth.

27Q. If he's so weird, why is he wearing Nikes? / Enid (Ghost World) Sagely reacting to a stand-up comic who is billed as “the weirdest man in America” (or something like that).

28AA. I refuse to discriminate between modes of knowing. / Henry (Henry Fool) Explaining to the convenience store clerk why he insists on reading pornographic magazines in the store.

29W. I'm a teacher, not a Holiday Inn. / Grady Tripp (Wonder Boys) Reacting to the possibility that the trashed James Leer might need to crash in his house for the night.

30DD. Your looks have become a problem! / Jeff (Almost Famous) Revealing the least of Stillwater’s infighting gripes with lead singer Russell.

31D. Do we look like the kind of store that sells “I Just Called to Say I Love You”? Go to the mall. / Barry (High Fidelity) Chewing out a businessman trying to buy Stevie Wonder’s “sellout” record for his daughter.

32B. If you're just operating by habit, then you're not really living. / Andre (My Dinner with Andre) Trite, but true.

33L. If Plato is a fine red wine, then Aristotle is a dry martini. / Chet (Kicking and Screaming) Preceded by Chet saying, “I’m paraphrasing myself here...” Chet is the bartender and chronic college student.

34LL. No, I don't feel lucky to be alive! I feel lucky I'm not dead. There's a difference. / Raymond Stoller (Breaking Away) Stated after his heart attack when his son allowed a customer to return a used car to their dealership (the other classic Ray Stoller line from the movie is “Refund? REfund?! REFUND?”).

35HH. On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero. / The Narrator (Fight Club) Also trite, but also true. So go ahead and punch the guy sitting next to you.

36J. Sorry, baby, but I had to crash that Honda. / Butch (Pulp Fiction) Explaining to his girlfriend why he returned to the motel on a motorcycle (“It’s a chopper, baby.”) instead of in her Honda.

37A. I'll shove that bat up your ass and turn you into a popsicle. / Ajax (The Warriors) Taunting one of the Baseball Furies (who swing like the Yankees but connect like the Mets).

38RR. We all have it coming, kid. / William Munny (Unforgiven) Reminding the Schofield Kid of the truth when the Kid says, “Well, I guess he had it coming” (regarding the man in the outhouse that the Kid shot point blank).

39EE. I’m making my lunch! / Jingle Dell (Wild at Heart) His response when his terrified mother finds him in the kitchen at 3 a.m. surrounded by hundreds of baloney sandwiches and asks him what he’s doing.

40H. At least she had good taste. / Blood (A Boy and His Dog) The double-entendre that ends the movie.

41II. I’m a fuel-injected suicide machine! / The Night Rider (Mad Max) Part of the Night Rider’s rant, just before Max plows him into a tanker truck coming the opposite direction.

42FF. Whatever it is, it’s warm. / Logan 5 (Logan’s Run) Said while he and Jessica try to puzzle out what the big yellow ball in the sky is (i.e., the sun).

43U. I shouldn’t have written all those tank programs. / Flynn (Tron) What the hotshot programmer said while trying to outrun a bunch of tanks on his lightcycle.

44QQ. We have all become God’s madmen. All of us. / Dr. Van Helsing (Bram Stoker’s Dracula) Response to the carnage at the end of the movie.

45V. Dick Laurent is dead. / Fred Madison (Lost Highway) The mysterious phrase that begins and ends the movie, connecting it into a Moebius strip.

46F. Goddammit, I'd piss on a spark plug if I thought it'd do any good! / General Beringer (WarGames) In exasperation, while everyone else tries to figure out how to shut down the computer program, Joshua (a.k.a., WOPR).

Monday, October 9, 2006

Better than Pig Latin

One of the things I miss about hanging out with my brother all the time is being able to quote movies endlessly and for no reason whatsoever. For a while there, while he and I were in our early teens, we’d practically devised a new mode of communication that no one else in our family could decipher. In the course of any given day we heard the phrase “What the hell are you talking about?” more than once from bewildered family members. Ahh, good times.

Over the weekend, I was relaxing on the couch and watching Pulp Fiction on AMC. I would’ve just taken my DVD off my shelf and watched it sans commercials but it’s always fun to see what kind of voice-over insertions a “family friendly” station like AMC will add to a movie that uses the word “fuck” every six seconds. (FYI, in AMCland Vincent Vega resolves to go home after his dinner date with Mia and “cool off” instead of...well, if you love the movie as much as I do, you know what he’d really said instead.)

Anyway, as I found myself talking along with Jules and the rest of the characters I got to thinking about all the movie quotations my brother and I used to use back in the day, as well as some more recent quotations I’m fond of, and an informal list began forming in my head. But merely listing quotations on a diary page is no fun at all, and virtually guarantees no one will read them. Turn it into a game, though....

So below you will find a list of unattributed quotations (on the left) and a list of attributions (on the right). Believe it or not, my brother and I were capable of using these quotations (or at least the ones from movies pre-1995) in everyday conversation (one of my favorite quotation-related recollections is when my brother caught his foot up in a stray comforter on the floor of the living room and muttered, “Shit! Fucking limey cement.”). I’ll post the answers list in the next day or two. In the meantime you can email me or post your answers in Haloscan if you want. But it’s not necessary. After all, winners will receive absolutely nothing. Enjoy!

Last Annual Movie Quotation Matchup Game
1. Bring that shit to me, man! A. Ajax (The Warriors)
2. Cheerleaders are dancers who have gone retarded. B. Andre (My Dinner with Andre)
3. Not bad for a human. C. Angelica (Joe versus the Volcano)
4. Learn it. Know it. Live it. D. Barry (High Fidelity)
5. Shit! Fucking limey cement. E. Batman (Batman: The Movie)
6. I have no response to that. F. General Beringer (WarGames)
7. Some days you just can’t get rid of a bomb! G. Bishop (Aliens)
8. What are the odds of the Russians attacking on a Thursday night? H. Blood (A Boy and His Dog)
9. Sorry about the mess. I. Brad Hamilton (Fast Times at Ridgemont High)
10. Ugh. I thought they smelled bad on the outside. J. Butch (Pulp Fiction)
11. I want more life, fucker. K. Cerrano (Major League)
12. Help! Help! I’m being repressed! L. Chet (Kicking and Screaming)
13. You fool! I could have killed you with a karate chop! M. Cooper (The Man with One Red Shoe)
14. Anybody want a peanut? N. David St. Hubbins (This Is Spinal Tap)
15. I'll be taking these Huggies and whatever cash you got. O. Dennis (Monty Python and the Holy Grail)
16. I can't think of anything original! I'm only good in support. P. Dildano (Barbarella)
17. It's such a fine line between stupid and clever. Q. Enid (Ghost World)
18. Ray, when someone asks if you're a god, you say yes! R. Ferris Bueller (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off)
19. Ned, I would love to stay here and talk with you...but I'm not going to. S. Fezzik (The Princess Bride)
20. You killed the car. T. Fletch (Fletch)
21. Haven't you seen Boyz N The Hood? Now one of us is going to get shot! U. Flynn (Tron)
22. A life without cause is a life without effect. V. Fred Madison (Lost Highway)
23. Can I borrow your towel for a sec? My car just hit a water buffalo. W. Grady Tripp (Wonder Boys)
24. Chaos was what killed the dinosaurs, darling. X. H. I. (Raising Arizona)
25. Girls have no sense of adventure. Y. Han Solo (Star Wars)
26. Ugh, I can actually hear you getting fatter. Z. Han Solo (The Empire Strikes Back)
27. If he's so weird, why is he wearing Nikes? AA. Henry (Henry Fool)
28. I refuse to discriminate between modes of knowing. BB. Inspector Clouseau (A Shot in the Dark)
29. I'm a teacher, not a Holiday Inn. CC. J. D. (Heathers)
30. Your looks have become a problem! DD. Jeff (Almost Famous)
31. Do we look like the kind of store that sells “I Just Called to Say I Love You”? Go to the mall. EE. Jingle Dell (Wild at Heart)
32. If you're just operating by habit, then you're not really living. FF. Logan 5 (Logan’s Run)
33. If Plato is a fine red wine, then Aristotle is a dry martini. GG. Mike (Swingers)
34. No, I don't feel lucky to be alive! I feel lucky I'm not dead. There's a difference. HH. The Narrator (Fight Club)
35. On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero. II. The Night Rider (Mad Max)
36. Sorry, baby, but I had to crash that Honda. JJ. Otto (A Fish Called Wanda)
37. I'll shove that bat up your ass and turn you into a popsicle. KK. Phil Conners (Groundhog Day)
38. We all have it coming, kid. LL. Raymond Stoller (Breaking Away)
39. I’m making my lunch! MM. Richard (Tommy Boy)
40. At least she had good taste. NN. Rosencrantz (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead)
41. I’m a fuel-injected suicide machine! OO. Roy Batty (Blade Runner)
42. Whatever it is, it’s warm. PP. Sparky Polastri (Bring It On)
43. I shouldn’t have written all those tank programs. QQ. Dr. Van Helsing (Bram Stoker’s Dracula)
44. We have all become God’s madmen. All of us. RR. William Munny (Unforgiven)
45. Dick Laurent is dead. SS. Winston (Ghostbusters)
46. Goddammit, I'd piss on a spark plug if I thought it'd do any good! TT. Xavier (The Doom Generation)

Tuesday, August 1, 2006

“Why in Pluperfect Hell Did You Pee on the Corpse?”

Look at me! I’m updating like a freakin’ madman! Don’t pretend you didn’t notice....

Julie attended a wedding shower this past weekend, and since it was near her parents’ house she stayed there Saturday night. This left me alone in my apartment with nothing much to do except either (a) invite some strippers over and throw a party or (b) watch some movies.

I was really pulling for (a) to happen but (b) triumphed because, unfortunately, I don’t know any strippers. So here’s what I watched:

The Interpreter Entirely indistinguishable from every other quasi-Hitchcock thriller of the “person who’s in the wrong place at the wrong time and subsequently knows too much, then spends the rest of the film trying to outsmart the badguys” variety. Other attempts to match Hitchcock’s mastery of the genre were much more successful in my eyes, particularly The Fugitive (1993), Enemy of the State (1998), and my personal favorite, Sneakers (1992). But this movie wasn’t exactly terrible, I just tend to expect more from Sean Penn.

Immortal (or Immortel if you prefer) Based on the Nikopol Trilogy graphic novel(s) by Enki Bilal, this movie was a little bit Blade Runner, a little bit Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, and a little bit The Fifth Element (which was, of course, swiped from the comics of Bilal’s Heavy Metal colleague Moebius, as was the set design for much of Blade Runner, natch)—and I’m still not sure what to think of it. I suspect that it will grow on me if I watch it a few more times, but much like Blade Runner it seemed a bit slow and fragmentary (which is to say that a larger story was present but implicit rather than explicit). Blade Runner is my favorite movie of all time, though, so Immortal will probably gain some ground. But for now I remain mostly undecided.

Who’s Your Daddy? I’m a big fan of the farce genre in film and television. Three’s Company was essentially the same story every episode but I loved each and every one. Every farce from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night to American Pie has been enjoyable to me, as long as they’re well done. So even without knowing too much about it I was looking forward to Who’s Your Daddy? Sad to say it’s the worst movie I’ve seen since Public Enemies.

Havoc America’s (latest) Hollywood sweetheart, Anne Hathaway—of Ella Enchanted and The Princess Diaries fame—took a deliberate turn toward darker roles when she agreed to make Havoc. The problem is that this movie tried to tackle the issues dealt with in movies like Kids and Thirteen (a very good and very frightening movie, in an “I’m glad I’m not a parent” kind of way) and the issues dealt with in movies such as Crash and Grand Canyon, among countless others. In the end, it didn’t succeed in either attempt. The problem is that it was just too “clean.” Unfortunately, this was mostly the fault of Anne Hathaway, I think. Her performance felt like an act—and to a certain degree, if I interpreted the film correctly, it was supposed to feel like an act—but at no point did I believe that her character, Allison, really wanted to be the person she spent the movie trying to be (which is to say a gangsta). At no point in the film was I worried that she really enjoyed doing the things she was doing in order to be “cool.” (Unlike Tracy in Thirteen who rode that crazy train right off the cliff’s edge, and enjoyed every single minute of it.)

Kill Bill, vol. 1 I put off seeing the Kill Bill movies for a long time. Pulp Fiction is one of my favorite movies, but Quentin Tarantino’s output since then has not done much to dazzle me. So all the hype behind Kill Bill concerned me. What were the chances I’d end up hating Tarantino’s latest? Ahem. Allow me to invoke the spirit of Truman Capote’s infamous response to Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road (“That’s not writing, that’s typing”) by pointing out that revenge isn’t a plot, it’s a word. This movie is nearly two hours long, and at the end of it absolutely nothing of significance had happened. But forget plot, what about character? After those same two hours, I had no idea who the Bride is. And I’m not just talking about her real name (a mystery, by the way, that had no relevance whatsoever). She had no depth, no dimension, and no personality. She resembled nothing so much as a hero from one of those disposable kung-fu flicks from Hong Kong in the ’70s. I can hear Quentin Tarantino’s supporters jeering me now: “That’s the point, dickhead!” Well, that may be the point, but it’s not one worth making. Kill Bill vol. 1 is literally nothing but a string of ultraviolent fight scenes in which people lose their heads to the blade of a samurai sword (and subsequently spray blood out of their neck stumps like lawn sprinklers). The Bride wants revenge. Why? Because her ex-boss/ex-lover killed her fiancĂ©, her friends, and he tried to kill her. Why? Who the fuck cares? Let’s get on with the fighting! Yay! The extended scene in which the Bride takes on O-Ren Ishii’s Crazy 88 reminded me of the scene in Matrix Reloaded when Neo takes on dozens of Mr. Smiths at once. That scene started off cool and exciting, then became repetitive, then dull, then yawn-out-loud boring, and then I had to sit through another three minutes of it before the scene finally, mercifully, ended. I glanced at my watch many times during this movie. Put more plainly: I did not like it.

The Transporter 2 Following up Kill Bill vol. 1 with the sequel to The Transporter only served to strengthen my resolve that Quentin Tarantino’s latest movie(s) are overrated. I would ask a simple question of his devotees: What makes Kill Bill vol. 1 a better film than, say, The Transporter 2? I would argue that the fight scenes in The Transporter 2 were more visually exciting, more deftly choreographed, and more vividly photographed than the fight scenes in Kill Bill vol. 1. More importantly, though, The Transporter 2 contained that thing screenwriting legend William Goldman defined as “a plot.” I’m paraphrasing here, but a plot is “the shit that happens in-between decapitations.” There wasn’t much character development to speak of in The Transporter 2, but at least it provided me with a charismatic protagonist about which I could care, sort of. And there were no neck stump geysers to speak of. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that The Transporter 2 is an example of genius filmmaking. On the contrary, I thought it was only so-so. But even it was better than Kill Bill vol. 1.

Kill Bill, vol. 2 Fortunately, I’m happy to report that the second film was better than the first one. Not far better, mind you, but better. It finally gave me something to care about, and even some characteristic Tarantino moments that weren’t present in Kill Bill vol. 1: the creep-out scene. Some examples: (1) the “cutting off the ear” scene in Reservoir Dogs, the “what the fuck? Is that a dude in black leather? What’s going on here?!?” scene in Pulp Fiction, and, uh, well I can’t think of any creep-out scenes in Jackie Brown but when Louis shot Melanie in the parking lot that was pretty fucked-up. Anyway, when Budd buried the Bride alive in a coffin it freaked my shit out very effectively. But then I’m claustrophobic so that may have facilitated the process. I’m also glad that we were given a few scenes of, uh, what’s it called? oh yeah, dialogue between the principal characters to clue me in as to what was going on and why I should care. I more or less enjoyed the entire sequence in Budd’s trailer with Elle and the Bride. And the ending (from the time the Bride locates Bill’s house) was satisfying. It kept reminding me of Tarantino’s contribution to Four Rooms, though, which is not a compliment.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang Without a doubt my favorite movie of the weekend. It was quirky, funny, bizarre, and entirely enjoyable. Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer made the perfect buddy-picture team. I loved all the cinematic and narration gags, and I was only slightly confused near the end. I can’t recommend this movie highly enough to people who like their movies with a dash of weirdness in them.

So that was my weekend. How was yours?

Thursday, July 20, 2006

Book Crazy, part 7





Hallelujah!  Here we have my final bookcase.  After this I can go back to writing about other trivial shit that doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things.  Like television. 

Predictably, I have bought over a dozen books since taking all the photos that comprise this and the last six diary entries.  So now I don’t know what to do.  Take pictures of just those books and tack them on at the end?  I guess that’s what I’ll do.  But not now.  Maybe later.  Jeezus, what a pain in the ass this idea has become!

Bitch bitch bitch....



Bookcase 12

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This is the “new” bookcase that I bought a few weeks ago after getting rid of all my videotape boxes.  Very exciting.  If you look closely at the left-hand edge of the photo you can see the remaining video boxes, which I still have to go through and weed out (I do not need, for example, my commercially bought VHS copies of Alien and Die Hard, etc., now that I’ve switched everything over to DVD.  I wonder if I can unload those on eBay...).



Top Shelf

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Anthologies galore!  Most of these are really good—particularly Fiction 100, The Short Story, The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Short Stories (which also happens to be a mouthful of a title, let me tell you), The Paris Review Book of Heartbreak, blah blah blah, and The Better of McSweeny’s, vol. 1.  The Scribner’s Best of the Fiction Workshops annuals, as well as the Best New American Voices annuals, are hit and miss depending on who the guest editor is, but it’s still cool to read stories by people who are not household names.  One of my creative writing instructors from college made it into the 1998 edition.  Whee!



Second Shelf

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Er, more anthologies.  The first three are from college.  Every time I see those books I remember my first college English lit class with Al David (who was the Middle English editor for the Norton Antholgies at the time).  He was this short old guy with wild silver hair and clothes that were shabby even when compared to the average shabby professor, but he spoke the strange sounds of Middle English (you know, “Dream of the Rood” and all that) with such verve and pleasure that I couldn’t help but get into it. 

Words without Pictures is a collection of prose stories by the top names in comics circa 1990.  Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman are prominently included.  Mondo Marilyn contains poems, short stories, and literary fragments about Marilyn Monroe.  One of my favorite poems is Sharon Olds’s  
target="_blank">“The Death of Marilyn Monroe.”  Very haunting.  The New Yorker short story collections are, of course, excellent, and Marilyn: Shades of Blonde is a less innovative collection of Marilyn Monroe-related stories.

The Clouds Above is a comic book by one of my favorite independent creators, Jordan Crane, whose anthology non was completely awesome.  Ice Haven is not Clowes’s best work, but still excellent.  Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware is arguably the greatest comic book ever written.  It’s also completely heartbreaking.  Jason Little wrote this amazing comic book called “Jack’s Luck Runs Out,” and although Shutterbug Follies isn’t nearly as inventive, it’s still a good story. 

The Peanuts collections are some of the most beautiful books I own.  If you think Peanuts is just a dumb kids’ comic strip, you would be wrong.  Yes, Sparky started letting a bit too much religion seep into his work near the end, and he allowed his relatives to renege on his plans to stop syndicating reruns of Peanuts in newspapers after he died (which in turn kept additional page space from being available for newer cartoonists such as Frank Cho), but even so, Peanuts is almost singlehandedly responsible for the format of the modern newspaper comic strip.  And for several decades Peanuts was ingenious, hilarious, inventive, and not at all sappy or lame—like many other comic strips today.



Third Shelf

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More books that I would never allow my mom to look at.  The R. Crumb Coffee Table Art Book is mostly redundant since I have the (previously displayed) Complete Crumb Comics series, but it’s such a beautiful book that I couldn’t resist it.  The Adventures of Sweet Gwendoline and Guido Crepax’s oeuvre (and the Eric Stanton collection further down the line) are the kinds of books I bought just because I like outsider art.  And because the books are beautifully packaged.  And because I’m a bit of a perv.  Just kidding.  (Eh, no I’m not.)

Luis Royo’s sketchbooks are beautiful works of art, and I really love sketchbooks.  Speaking of which, The ACME Novelty Date Book by Chris Ware is my favorite sketchbook of all time.  Glenn Barr’s sketchbooks aren’t far behind, nor is Coop’s The Big Fat One.  And yes, that’s a demon girl’s ass on the spine of that book. 

The Strangers in Paradise hardcovers are a disappointment to me.  Initially I was convinced that Terry Moore would include all kinds of stuff in them that weren’t in the regular trade paperbacks.  But I was wrong.  So the collection is incomplete and probably always will be.  Heck, I haven’t even read the end of the series, yet.



Fourth Shelf

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Ah, my Marvel Masterworks.  This shelf looks like a total mess, doesn’t it?  Well, believe it or not these book are actually in some kind of order, even though they don’t appear to be.  It’s all Marvel’s fault, as usual (the bastards).  As you can see they went through three design incarnations of the Marvel Masterworks line before they settled on one they liked.  Personally, I preferred the first design (with the fake marble background and the nice, indiscreet lettering on the spine) and wish they’d just stuck with it.  The second design (the really kooky, ĂĽbercomicky spines with the terrible fonts) is the worst.  The final incarnation (the black spines) aren’t too bad, with the major exception of that horrific, ubiquitous (and, especially in this case, totally incongruous) Marvel logo that I hate so much. 

In terms of content, I have to admit that I’ve read fewer than half of these books.  I was initially excited about the Fantastic Four collections because I’d never read any Fantastic Four comics in my life (which is weird since I was such a loyal Marvel reader as a kid; it’s like saying you’re a huge DC fan but never read any Batman).  As it turns out, though, there was a reason.  I just couldn’t get into it, with the singular exception of the Galactus and the Silver Surfer issues.  All the early Spider-Man issues were great, and of course the Daredevil issues still knock my socks off.  As with FF, I couldn’t get into The Avengers either, and I feel only so-so about Thor and Captain America.  The Hulk, The Silver Surfer, and The X-Men were all winners, though.



Bottom Shelf

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For Christmas Julie got me The Complete New Yorker on DVD-ROM, and it is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.  All the rest of this stuff doesn’t really require an explanation, as it’s just the last shelf I had to fill up with books that didn’t have a home before I bought this bookcase.



So there you go.  My complete book collection.  (Minus the handful that I’ve bought over the past few weeks.)  I may find the energy to update this last page with pictures of my new acquisitions, but honestly it doesn’t seem likely.  In any case, watch this space for future developments!

Aaaaaand scene....

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Book Crazy, part 6





What seemed like a fun idea initially has now become a chore.  But there are two things fighting in this little book cataloging project’s favor:  (1) I am a stubborn individual and (2) I have OCD, so I’m going to complete it whether I like it or not.  I must admit that I want desperately to write about something else.  I have many things to discuss, in fact, but these last two bookcases are hanging around my neck like an albatross.  So I will endeavor to push through them so I can get onto the interesting stuff (like Julie’s and my trip to Des Moines, Iowa, for instance).  Anyway, here we go....



Bookcase 11

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This bookcase is another trip back in time, for the most part.  You will note that 99 percent of the books on this shelf are “mass market” rather than “trade” paperbacks.  Who even buys mass market paperbacks anymore?  Not me.  But I guess that’s because I don’t buy as much sci-fi as I used to.



Top Shelf (Front)

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Hey, I wonder if this guy likes Isaac Asimov?  There doesn’t seem to be any indication here.

But honestly, Isaac Asimov almost singlehandedly shaped my concept of science fiction in book form.  I haven’t actually read Forward the Foundation (his last novel) yet, but only because a while back I started re-reading all of Asimov’s novels chronologically (according to when the books take place in the future, that is, not according to when he actually wrote them) and I’m only up to Pebble in the Sky. 

I read Gibson’s Neuromancer in college and it just didn’t grab me.  I look forward to reading it again now that I’m a little more mature (ha!) to see if I’ll like it the second time around.

I really liked Alastair Reynolds’s Revelation Space so I bought the sequels and Chasm City, which takes place in the same universe, but I haven’t gotten around to reading any of them yet.  They look nice all sitting together on the shelf, though.

I love Philip K. Dick but I own very few of his novels.  In fact, I own only two:  Ubik and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?  Oddly enough, neither of these are among my favorites.  My hands-down favorite is The Transmigration of Timothy Archer but the two times I read it I borrowed a copy from a friend, and the one copy I did buy was a present for someone who hated it so much that she actually yelled at me for giving it to her.  And she didn’t even give it back.  What a bitch!

During my aforementioned/alluded to trip to Iowa last week I bought half a dozen used C.J. Cherryh novels at the best half-price bookstore I’ve ever seen, including the prequel and sequel to The Faded Sun: Shon’jir, which I’ve never read.  But yesterday I started reading The Faded Sun: Kesrith (the first in the trilogy) and I like it a lot.  I can’t believe I’ve lived this long as a sci-fi fan without reading any Cherryh.  Blasphemy!

The Long Tomorrow and Sar together inspired a science fiction novel I wrote in middle school called Global Eclipse.  It followed the exploits of an escaped slave in earth’s post-apocalyptic future who travels the world in search of the descendents of NASA’s abandoned moon outpost who settled in the Black Hills of South Dakota.  It sounds silly and it probably is (I haven’t re-read it in years).  But both of the books that inspired it hold a special place in my heart.



Top Shelf (Back)

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Gee, more Asimov?  Whodathunkit? 



Second Shelf (Front)

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A lot of cherished classics on this shelf, including The Magus, Salinger’s entire (in print) oeuvre, Lord of the Flies, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, The Chocolate War, and The Handmaid’s Tale.  In college I wrote a paper on The Chocolate War in which I claimed that the book was optimistic rather than pessimistic because although the rest of the main character’s life in high school would suck utterly, he would be able to look back on those days without any regrets because he had the strength of character to stand against the corrupting forces of his school rather than giving in.  My professor loved it so much and started talking about it in class, but because I’d written half a dozen more papers in between writing this one and getting it back that it took me several moments to remember what my thesis had been.  After a beat my professor said facetiously, “You did write this paper, didn’t you?”  From then on I made a point of remembering whatever bullshit I’d generated in all of my college papers after that.  What an embarrassing day that was.



Second Shelf (Back)

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I used to devour science fiction by the yard.  Is that becoming clear?  Between the Strokes of Night was so good that it remains one of the few sci-fi books (not by Asimov) that I’ve read twice.  James P. Hogan’s “Giants” trilogy was really good, and I liked the first two “Rama” books, but I never read the last two in that series. 



Third Shelf (Front)

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More cherished classics on this shelf, including The Stranger, my dad’s 1950s copy of  Nineteen Eighty-Four, Frankenstein (a clean copy and a college-era version that’s been underlined to within an inch of its life), The Time Machine, The Three Musketeers, and The Black Tulip. 



Third Shelf (Back)

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I have never read Dune, and since I’m one of the few who likes David Lynch’s screen version I probably never will.  This is my dad’s copy of the novel and he liked it enough to read all the sequels.  Lucifer’s Hammer was awesome and also, now that I think about it, probably an inspiration for Global Eclipse as well. 

I used to be really into James Bond.  Can you tell?



Fourth Shelf (Front)

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Mirror of Infinity contains my favorite short story of all time, Isaac Asimov’s “Nightfall.”  It still chills me when I read it.  Vonnegut, what can I say?  I love that guy.  May he live to be a hundred years old.  The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is a classic, as is Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.  Then we have my adolescent biographies of Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, my pretend high school girlfriend Drew Barrymore, Marilyn Monroe, and—yes—Madonna (my pretend elementary school girlfriend).



Fourth Shelf (Back)

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You can probably tell why most of these books are hidden in the back.  I may be a self-professed Star Trek geek, but owning Star Trek novels is going a bit too far, don’t you think?  Ditto on the prose adaptations of all the original Star Trek episodes (though I acquired those well before the proliferation of cheap VHS tapes and channels like Spike TV and G4 TV that show reruns of Star Trek ad nauseam).  The Robot City spin-offs are equally embarrassing, but only to other true Asimov fans.

On the other hand, all the books stacked in the upper right-hand corner are true works of literature so I don’t want to hear it.  Kindly address all taunts to my middle finger.



Fifth Shelf

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Edgar Allan Poe and Gonzo dominate this shelf that is otherwise occupied by favorite old magazines and some semi-embarrassing Anime cell collections. 




Sixth Shelf

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More magazines.  Duh.