In a World...

... without Don LaFontaine.

Rest in peace, sir. I'll miss your voice.

Rob

Taking a Dive

Is John McCain throwing the presidential election?

That’s a mostly facetious question, but between the murmur of a Republican convention and his pick of Sarah Palin as his running mate, I’m not seeing a whole lot of enthusiasm for winning.

Granted, the Republicans pretty much had to board up the convention’s windows yesterday to prepare for Gustav. Katrina’s Public Enemy #1 was scheduled to speak that night, and with the odd outbreaks of spontaneous dancing, buttslaps, and chest-bumps the President has been exhibiting lately, who knows what he’d do? Maybe he’d have brought a fiddle. But even the most somber, sober of speeches would have begged the questions: Why is he here? Shouldn’t he be protecting us? I could be wrong, but I don't think Democrats would have had to run from the storm so much if it made landfall a week earlier; it would have been wise to set aside political attacks, but beyond that, the convention might have proceeded according to plan, largely because it was a Republican administration that mishandled Katrina and Rita. (Of course, hurricanes also tend to bring into focus the need for a federal government, a notion none too popular with small-government Republicans anyway.)

But beyond that accident of timing: What about Palin? A few days ago, I had no real idea who she is. But now I see that she is under investigation for allegedly pressuring a state official to fire her ex-brother-in-law, then firing the official when he wouldn’t do it. She was promoted as someone who opposed Ted Stevens' “Bridge to Nowhere,” when in reality, she supported it. The candidate of “experience” is touting her 18 months as commander and chief of the Alaska National Guard as foreign policy experience, but the campaign can’t even point to a decision she made that would have any FP relevance at all. And, oh yeah, she used to be a member of an Alaskan separatist movement.

Now, I know McCain isn’t really taking a dive. He didn’t knowingly choose someone so unsuited for the job so that he’d lose in November. But the fact remains: He chose someone who just isn’t up to the job... most likely because his team didn’t arrive in Alaska to vet her until the day before he announced her as his choice.

I don’t think it’s setting the bar too high to ask that a Presidential candidate actually bother to look into who’s going to replace him. Like most decisions a President faces, it requires research and careful consideration, not a gut feeling. Especially when that gut is so, so wrong.

Sheesh.

Rob

What I Did on My Summer Vacations

Listed briefly:

Swam under a freezing cold waterfall.

Hiked to a boulder field.

Relaxed in two different hot tubs.

Drank in two different hot tubs.

Was asked if I was trying to drown myself in one of those hot tubs. (I wasn't; I was just tired of listening, and put my ears underwater.)

Played Magic: The Gathering.

Watched a ton of That 70s Show.

Saw Tropic Thunder. (Lots o' fun.)

Rode my bike around Corolla, NC.

Ate the best chicken I have ever had the pleasure of tasting. Oh good god, more please.

Cooked pulled pork. Cooked lasagna.

Took a kayak wildlife tour in the northern outer banks.

Rode in a SUV over miles of beach.

Saw lots of wild horses.

Recognized that we really need dunce caps to take things to the next level.

Camped.

Drank.

Started to learn how to play "Cruel to be Kind" on the guitar.

Participated in a campground version of The Dating Game. Claimed my special porno talent was "deep sea diving." Lost, but got a free condom anyway.

Lost a free condom. Possibly in the wash.

Tried honey whiskey, against a magic eight ball's advice.

Saw Steve Earle kick ass onstage. And Kenny White, and the Felice Brothers, and so many more.

Threw my nephew around a pool.

Explained the physics behind shotgunning beers to my niece; briefly regretted it.

Borrowed my mom's car, making the North Carolina drive much better than it would have been otherwise. (Thanks, Mom!)

Missed pretty much all of the Democratic National Convention.

And the Olympics. Though I did see one Ethiopian runner pass his countryman at the last minute to take the bronze medal in the marathon. That had to be one uncomfortable flight home.

Swam in some pummeling waves at the beach. Bodysurfed to exhaustion.

Played beach volleyball.

Read Little Girl Lost, The Way Some People Die, Songs of Innocence, and The Thin Man.

Hung out with friends.

Hung out with family.

Bought more fudge than I should have.

Saw the Wright Brothers Memorial in Kitty Hawk.

Ate a dozen raw oysters.

And more, I'm sure... but it slips my mind at the moment.

Rob

Home From Vacations

After driving and driving and driving and staying with friends and driving and driving and swapping cars and driving and driving, we're home from our vacations at last.

More later on how it all went.

Rob

Shellshocked

Finished Songs of Innocence in a little over a day.

Devastating.

Rob

Biden

For a while, I was vacillating between whether I wanted Clinton or Obama to win the Democratic nomination. (This speech put that to rest.) The one thing I felt was in Clinton's favor (experience, in my view, being both a plus and a minus in certain ways) was this: She's a pit bull. She would not give up; she would fight dirty, if necessary; she would do whatever was in the bounds of the law to become president. And in the long primary, she proved all of that... much to the chagrin of many. (It should be noted that Dems picked up a ton of new voter registrations during this time, and the long, every-state primary was in large part why. I'll throw no stones her way.)

But Obama/Clinton was never a ticket that sounded right to me. It would open up too many questions, and set reporters to blowing up any possibility of drama.

Meanwhile, months ago, I heard Biden say about Giuliani, that all he needed to form a sentence was "a noun, a verb, and 9/11." It was a hell of a soundbite, and I thought, "That's the guy I want running for vice president."* I guess I wasn't the only one.

Obama still needs to fight back against McCain personally. I subscribe to what Josh Marshall calls (somewhat ashamedly) the "bitch-slap theory of electoral politics" -- essentially that your response to political attacks gives the public an idea of how you'll lead. If you let them continue without answering them (as John Kerry did for too long in 2004), it raises the question, "How can this man defend the country when he can't even defend himself?" And it's been the one crucial test I've been worried about Obama failing. Unlike Kerry, his defenses are eloquent. But eloquent or not, they're too long for a good soundbite.

But if you need bite, Biden's your guy. The man can jab.

Rob

*Naturally, running for Veep and being Veep require two different skill sets. I'm confident Biden has one; I hope he has the other.

Old Dog

Thirty-eight is too goddamn old to be learning how to drive.

Rob

Books By Their Covers

The other day I went to the Borders at Madison Square Garden to pick up some novels to read in North Carolina. I intended to get another crime novel (because they're the juice for me right now) and a science fiction or fantasy novel for a change of pace. Immediately I picked up Songs of Innocence, Richard Aleas's sequel to Little Girl Lost, which floored me by how good it was. But as I walked the SF/F section, I simply couldn't pick one. Their covers all looked the same. or rather, they looked three different ways:

1) Hard SF: Big technology, maybe in orbit over a planet.

2) High fantasy: Serious-looking people in impractical armor.

3) Contemporary urban fantasy: Sexy women with half their faces showing.

I don't know much in the way of current SF writers -- and even less about fantasy writers. I know enough to know that I don't want to support Orson Scott Card, no matter how good Ender's Game is supposed to be. I thought I read a Dan Simmons book years ago (a vampire novel called Children of the Night, I believe), and nearly picked up Ilium, because it was one of the few covers that attracted me and I'm a mythology geek. But it was crazy long, and it looks like it has a sequel, and... I'm tired.

So I walked around the Lit section for a while, nearly picking up Possession and Lonesome Dove (which again was longer than I'm looking for, simply because I'm still harboring the illusion of reading Ulysses). But eventually I returned to crime.

And picked up Dashiell Hammett's The Thin Man, unquestionably something I'll enjoy. But I was really hoping for something a little more out there. If only the covers in the SF section had a bit more panache, I might have gotten it.

Rob

Man of the People

McCain Unsure About How Many Houses He Owns.

I'm the same way about my DVDs.

Rob

Regarding the Previous Post

In my haste to publish, there's one thing I forgot to add to my last post:

"Boo hoo. Poor me, I'm going on vacation. Again."

Gotta keep things in perspective.

Rob

Vacation Overload

So we’re driving to North Carolina this weekend—the last leg of our first-and-only August Vacation Overload. Three vacations in a month, scheduled so close together to accommodate a lot of diverse schedules. Speaking for myself, my wife, and our two lonely ferrets, We Will Not Do This Again. We’ve had fun on our trips, but it’s not so much fun doing laundry from the suitcase to load it into a backpack to unload it, wash it again and load it into a suitcase. And I hate seeing Gus and She-Devil settle into their comfortable routine in our living room, knowing that in a few days they’ll be having to adjust to new surroundings again.

This is wearying on a number of different levels, even before we get to the ten hours of driving.


But ten hours of driving is exactly what’s looming in our future. Luckily, we’re breaking it up, stopping over with family on the way down, and friends on the way back. But that’s still a lot of driving, and we’re taking Kathy’s car because she has air conditioning. My car used to have air conditioning, but it’s been fixed and refilled a few times now and somehow the freon keeps leaking and I’m sick of wasting the money and putting freon into the world for no good reason and anyway my windows roll down so screw it.

(Years ago, my family had a car with a broken A/C and windows that could no longer roll down. My friend Chris and I took it car shopping one July day; it was our only way to the dealerships. At every red light, we opened both doors wide so we could get some sort of a breeze through the sweltering hotbox of the Reliant. It was so hot I was actually slowing down so I would miss green lights. When we stepped out of the car, it looked like we were climbing out of a swimming pool.)

Anyway, we’re taking Kathy’s car. Which has one obstacle:A stick shift.

So I suggested that this week we trade cars, so I can drive to work in her car and get used to the controls, since it’s really unfair and impractical to make her do all the driving for this vacation. And if there’s one thing I know, it’s that it’s easier to seep into my unconscious mind when I’m sleepy than at any other time of the day.

So this long post all comes down to the one point I wanted to make: There was a little bit of nervousness to my morning because of the stick shift, but nowhere near the white-knuckle terror of parking in the Canyonero.

This was really going to be a one-sentence post. Boy, did it go off the rails.

Rob

Strobe Flashes of Fest

Rather than forcing things into a narrative, I figured I'd just blog some glimpses of Fest.

• I always stress out over getting a good space for our campsite, but things work out every time. But the uncertainty leading up to it—the drive to Schwenksville, the weird parking situation, the run to an empty spot in the field—they take their toll on poor little me. But come 10:30, when our spot is secured and all I have to worry about is hauling all of our way-too-heavy crap up and down hills on a day too hot for decent people? That’s when Fest begins.

• Sometime during the first day, Kathy overheard a fiftyish-looking guy on his cell phone, walking through camp: “I’m at the corner of beautiful half-dressed girls and gorgeous half-dressed women. How’s your day?” It’s not like everyone at Fest is beautiful (I’m certainly not), and it’s not just that I have a weakness for hippie chicks (though I do). Maybe its just that everyone looks better when they’re happy, and Fest is a great place to be happy.

• I walking up the hill to get water on Friday morning when I heard the difference between sleeping and passed out: “Passed out is when you don’t take your shoes off.” Works for me.

• I really wish artists would leave some CDs with the Fest staff after they leave the festival. There were three different artists—The Felice Brothers, The Ryan Montbleau Band, and especially Kenny White—that I would have bought music from (White was so good I would have bought all three of his CDs without a second thought), but I missed the boat because I didn’t run right to the sales booth after their set. I'll probably wind up ordering these discs online, but it's an extra step that shouldn't be necessary, and probably costs more than a few sales.
  

• On our last night, someone had brought a trap set and an electric bass to their campsite. (Must’ve had some batteries for the amp—it was loud.) They, along with a couple people on bongos and a guy on trumpet, were playing a propulsive, driving jam in the darkness. We ambled down and listened and grooved. I started kicking a soccer ball around with some other people gathered. A girl stood there, swaying in a swinging hula-hoop. Someone lit off some roman candles, giving the whole experience a colorful strobelike effect—frozen flashes of the soccer ball, hands smacking bongos, the hula hoop against the girl’s hip. Probably my favorite moment in camp... everything came together right then.

• Finally, Mark Evanier sometimes introduces videos by saying there are some times you realize that you’re seeing someone do something better than anyone else. In that vein, check out Jake Shimabukuro play ukulele in this YouTube video. I saw him play three times this weekend, and each time took my breath away. Be amazed.

Rob

Thoroughly Fested

I'll write more when I'm able, but I thought I'd check in and say we're back from the wilds of Schwenksville safe and sounds, and (at last) clean. I'd also like to thank Albert Giblin and all who followed in his footsteps.

Rob

Briefly Noted

The plastic witches' cauldron that we use to display Halloween candy for trick-or-treaters has finally made its way fully up to the attic on this day, 78 days before Halloween 2008.

Rob

It's Close, I'm Come Undone

Kathy & I are hitting the road in the morning, and I've got a lot of packing to do. So here some live performances from some of the folks at the Philly Folk Fest. These are from among the performers I know of before the weekend starts. Come Monday, I'll inevitably have a new bunch'a faves. (Hoots & Hellmouth, for example? They knocked me out at Fest two years ago. Can't wait to see 'em again.)

Steve Earle: "The Revolution Starts Now"



Kimya Dawson (best known from the Juno soundtrack): "I Like Giants"



Hoots & Hellmouth: "It's Close, I'm Come Undone"



Vinx, performing an languid and beautiful version of Carole King's "It's Too Late."



Have a good one, folks. See you Monday.

Rob

Ain't No Party Like My Nana's Tea Party

Word.

Rob

Macabre Tales of Vacation

So it’s the next to last day of vacation, and one of the kids sharing the house with us—the youngest girl, a golden-haired cherub—asks me if I’d like my fortune. She has one of those folded paper oracles that kids make. So I pick a color, and she spells it out, folding and unfolding the paper flower. B-R-O-W-N. Then I pick a number, and the counts it out, moving the flower again. Then I pick my final number, and she lifts the flap and says:

“You’ll live tomorrow.”

Which is nice, I guess. But even as innocently as she said it, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the kids were about to orchestrate a great culling of the tall ones, and I alone would be spared.

Rob

Speak, Team Venture!

Jackson Publick and Michale Sinterniklass talk about Venture Bros. at San Diego. If you're a fan (and you should be), you might like to see this.

"I can't tell if you guys love to hate the moppets, or if you just hate the moppets."

Rob

Ah, Publishing!

Foolish me. I looked at my work email while I was on vacation. But my inbox was largely taken up by two message threads: "33 Best Belgian Ales" and "Summertime BEER!"

Ah, publishing. Without a pub, how could we even spell it?

Rob

Not Dead Yet

I just wrote another post as I lurch my way through Ulysses. Not that my comments are illuminating in any way, but at least they're there, and I can move on to chapter 4 now.

(Warning: link and book contain booger-picking.)

Rob

On Vacation

See you in a week.

Rob

Will the Real Mavis Trent Please Stand Up?

This is Mavis Trent, a supporting character in the Silver Age Hawkman series, a museum curator who would vie for Carter (Hawkman) Hall's affections, even though he was married to Shayera. (I found this image at Scott Tipton's Hawkman retrospective.)


She appeared at least into the 1980s Hawkman series, where it's possible she was killed. (It might have been a fakeout, though.) After that, I lost track of Hawkman for a while; it could be that she appeared in Hawkword, too. If she wasn't dead, that is.

But wherever she appeared, there was one place you could count on her not being:


A Marvel comic. The shiny lady in the center is Mavis Trent, a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent who is (unbeknownst to her bosses) doubling as a muckraking blogger for True Believers, a TMZ-style website in the Marvel universe. (It's also the name of the comic, written by Cary Bates and drawn by Paul Gulacy.) It's a fun read, looking at the seamier side of the Marvel universe. But I've gotta wonder what bus Mavis took to get her from Earth-1 to the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier.

Rob

Summer Reading

After a summer of putting off reading Ulysses (what the hell is wrong with me?), I finally read Wicked Game last week, and it's even sharper than I remembered -- and you might remember that I expected really, really good. What I wrote about it a couple months ago still stands -- it's exciting and funny in all the right places, and is a rollicking good yarn. The dialogue is sharp, the protagonist is likable (and hey, everyone likes con artists; she muses about this herself), and it builds to an exciting climax. Plus there's a host of groovy, distinctive vampires and shout-outs to great rock 'n' roll. And the sequel, Bad to the Bone, is forthcoming. Jeri Smith-Ready's blog is the place to go for updates.

So yesterday saw me haunting a bookstore once again. I was looking for one of Donald E. Westlake's Parker novels (written as Richard Stark; the first one is The Hunter, which Mel Gibson's Payback and Lee Marvin's Point Blank are based on). I wanted murder, and I wanted it in large quantities. And I wanted it Now.

Problem is, those books are out of print, and are being re-released next month. Which is fine for Future Rob, but what about me?

I went with Little Girl Lost, by Richard Aleas (Hard Case Crime publisher Charles Ardai's contender for Best Pen Name Ever), which starts out with a murder and ladles on the guilt and noir atmosphere. I've wanted top read it since Greg pointed out Ardai's interview on Fresh Air a few months back. I also picked up The Way Some People Die, by Ross MacDonald. (Man, there are titles and there are titles.) I've never read any MacDonald (always confusing him with John D. MacDonald, whose Travis McGee books I love), but I've heard great things. So it looks like I've got a week full of sex and murder.

Sounds like a vacation to me!

Rob
(Kathy sez: "Can you limit the sex to just me?" Will do. "And the murder?" Only drifters, honey. Only drifters, and I'll bury them deep.)

Get Your Ass To Mars

Seriously. There's water and everything. Can three-titted hookers be far behind?

Rob
(Thanks to Mike S., who gave me the heads up and the post title!)

In case you're wondering

(And I still get searches on it, so you very well might be.) I'm still the number-one Google choice for "Rick Springfield dentures."

Rob

In the City of the Mountain King

I had some time to watch a movie last night, and pulled Fritz Lang's M from the shelf. It's the story of a child-killer in 1930s Germany, starring Peter Lorre in his breakout role. But really, Lorre's character, Hans Beckert, is almost incidental throughout most of the film. He's a man in shadows, or signified only by his own cast shadow and the playful tune he whistles (perhaps nervously, or perhaps in barely contained delight) as he stalks his young victims: "In the Hall of the Mountain King," from Peer Gynt. The real story is going on in the city in the grip of the fear the murders create.

Parents are terrified. Cops are baffled. Criminals are angry; the killings are bringing the cops down harder on every other type of crime as they try to uncover the murderer. People are desperate; eventually the crooks band together to find the murderer themselves, just to get the heat off their other crimes.

At one point, an old man is accosted on the street because he dared to tell a little girl the time when she asked him for it. Everyone is suspect, and a mob can form in an instant.

It's this feeling of fear that permeates the movie. People are scared, and they have to do something, even if there's no sensible basis for their actions.

The Dark Knight has a similar baseline of public dread. Heath Ledger's Joker terrorizes Gotham City with seemingly motiveless crimes of great violence. He pits people against each other, and uses their own better instincts against them. He actively tries to make them complicit in his crimes. At one point, after killing a mob boss, he breaks a pool cue in half. He tells the dead men's bodyguards that he's got room in his organization, but only room for one of them. Then he drops the sharp end of the cue on the ground between them.

It's the Joker's unpredictability that makes him terrifying, and he uses it ruthlessly. And Gotham responds by turning on Batman, demanding he unmask on the chance that the Joker would keep his promise to end things once he did. Or they try to assassinate someone because the Joker brutally makes it doing so seem for the greater good. Cops betray their duty, and their friends. All from fear.

It's important to remember, as the days of heightened terror alerts return like swallows to Capistrano, that we tend not to make the best decisions when we're afraid. President Roosevelt said something to that effect. Do not fear. In the end, when we confront it, the monster that terrified us becomes a weak, craven man pleading for his life.

Do not fear. There is no Mountain King.

Rob

Roll Credits

Roger Ebert reminisces about the long run of Siskel & Ebert and Ebert & Roeper. And, at the end, posts a couple of YouTube clips of he and Gene Siskel sniping at each other and also joking around. I'll miss the show, but man, watching those old videos reminds me how much I miss their partnership and arguments.

Thanks to both of them for helping me love movies as much as I do.

Rob

I'm What's For Dinner

Let's get literal: I went to my meeting today and registered a loss of 2.0 pounds. That's a sizeable hunk of meat, although considerably more fatty than this 2-pound bison sirloin steak.


And yes, I'm inspired to post mostly to move the video below this from the top of my blog.

Rob

Now THAT's Commitment!

I'm posting this at the insistence of some friends: