Christopher Moore's Blog

It’s great when it’s them, not you, isn’t it?

I mean, when you see a news teaser on TV that says, “Certain snacks cause incontinence and dementia, find out at eleven if you’re at risk.” Then you tune in at eleven and sit through the inane city council meetings, the woman who was jailed for keeping three tigers and an ostrich in her studio apartment, the weather, the sports, and the water-skiing squirrel, and finally, when you’re convinced that it’s you — that you knew you shouldn’t have eaten nothing but Pop tarts in your freshman year at college — the prompter puppet comes on and says, “Hair gel.”  Then she explains that a five year study at the university of Helsinki concluded that people who have a diet high in hair gel tend to be incontinent and demented.

And man does it feel good. It’s not you. It’s SO not you. Sure, you ate a little paste when you were six, and you might have built that model of the Battleship Missouri in the closet with the door shut and went kind of blind for a week or so from the glue fumes, but you have definitely never eaten hair gel, that you can remember. You rule!

Take a minute to enjoy your internal gloat.

Well this blog is like that.  I am totally not writing about you. Not one of you. I’m writing about them. So don’t roll up in the comments all, “That’s not me.  I’m not that way at all.”   I know.  Isn’t it great?  Let’s take a minute and feel just a little better about ourselves, shall we?

Come with me.

First, the teaser. Here’s a comment on my blog the other day about Experience and Imagination:
— (I couldn’t reach this guy to see if I could use
his name, but if he contacts me, I’ll put it in)

I personally am an independent voter with a political philosophy similar to Andrew Sullivan (andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com which is to say i am fiscally conservative but socially libertarian). I am also a person of dark skin who grew up in an area that is 99% white. I have many white friends who are from blue collar/union and traditional democratic leaning families. It is with unfortunate realization that they have often mentioned to me that they simply can’t vote for Obama simply because of his skin color. I am often flabbergasted by their honesty and they will only do it because I grew up with them and at this point they don’t think of me by my skin color. How ironic. And unfortunately for the country I often wonder how many people are there like this in states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan (the swing states that can determine this election) that won’t admit to this fact.”

And there’s the rub. I’ve read it in a dozen places, people who say, “there are just some people who, no matter what they think about the issues, will not vote for a black man.”

Are you feeling a little superior? Are you feeling a little smug. Of course — you are voting the issues, or experience, or ideology — goes without saying. I stipulate that you are voting for your candidate and not voting for the other one for good reasons. I even understand if you’re Libertarian/Green/Telletubbie Party and you just won’t feel irrelevant enough unless you choose your own personal moonbat.  You have got to feel good about not voting race. You have got to be pleased that you are evolved and enlightened enough to not make decisions based on skin color.  In short, you rock.

But let’s talk about them.

Let’s talk about them, on their deathbed, shall we?  Not tomorrow, not in two years, but oh, forty, fifty years down the line.  Children and grandchildren gathered around the bed. And there they are, with their life stretched out behind them.  I’ve written a fair amount about death, as those of you who’ve read A Dirty Job know. I’ve thought about it, researched it, and I’ve sat deathwatch on a couple of people as well, caring for them in their last days. I’d like to tell you that it’s all a bright light and morphine haze.  I’d like to tell you that people, in their last days, are wise and forgiving and possessed of an inner peace.  But in my experience, that’s just not the case.

Regrets come back. They circle in the mind of the dying like carrion birds. Even people of faith, who believe that they are forgiven, can be nagged by regret.

We all have regrets, things that we will never admit that we did, that we’re ashamed of, and that we can make excuses for, but things that raise up in the back of our minds whenever we make a sweeping statement: “Well at least I never–”

Maybe you murdered a songbird with a slingshot when you were a kid, showed your hoo-hah to the boys behind the garage, maybe you told your brother you just didn’t have the money, when, in fact, you just didn’t want to give it to him. Maybe it was the time your wife sent you out for Huggies and you shagged the counter girl with the brace on her leg in the back room at the Jiffy Mart, maybe you saw that guy get hit on Highway 280 and you didn’t stop to see if he was okay, maybe you could have done something, sometime –something to make life better for someone, but you didn’t. You might have been able to save someone but you didn’t, but only you know.

So, now it’s forty years from now. You’ve taught your children how to be good people. Maybe you’ve taught them about the compassionate Buddha or the forgiving Christ, you’ve taught them that it’s never wrong to do the right thing.  But as the light dies, and you want, so badly, to go gently into that good night, you start, you jerk, like a dream where you miss a step. You’re wrenched back into  ache and unsettling, because you know, and only you know, that despite how you felt about the health and prosperity of your country, you just could not pull that lever because you just couldn’t vote for a black guy.

That’s how you sum up a life of accomplishment, with a deep, wrenching feeling that you did the wrong thing. And you lay uneasy forever .

I’m so glad that none of you are that person.  Let’s rejoice, shall we.  For no matter our choice, we did not make it for hateful, small-minded reasons. Doing the right thing never needs to be justified.

And come Wednesday morning, after election day, you will wake up to the first day of the future of our country — a future that you made.  Imagine how great you’re going to feel, how satisfied with having done the right thing.

And in the end,  you can rest easy. Forever.

VOTE

(Warning, this is kind of a political rant. I didn’t know it was going to be when I started. You might want to go look for new LOLCATZ if you’re not interested in politics and my completely biased opinion.)

Couple of days ago, because I’m interested in books,  I posted a blog on MySpace about the inquiry by Sarah Palin about banning books in the library in her home town in Alaska. Well, that happens, and it’s only the First Amendment, which I don’t think Ms. Palin is fond of because that’s also the one about congress not sponsoring a State religion, and she’s on record as saying that the war in Iraq is a mission from God, as well as how building a gas pipe in Alaska is doing God’s will.  Anyway, that’s not what I’m writing about.

In the comments yesterday, I got this:

“I think she is hot. I mean the hair up in a bun and those glasses…… Oh wait, we don’t make our political decisions based on superficial circumstances. I mean would you really vote for someone because they are a great speaker but have very little experience?”

Here’s my response.

I’ll vote for the person I think is the smartest.

George Bush is a nit-wit, whose blunders have cost the lives of tens, maybe hundreds of thousands,
as well as the reputation of our country around the world.  He’s added four trillion dollars to the debt and virtually all measures of economic and social progress have slowed or regressed during his presidency — and McCain said that he completely supports the policies of George Bush. (Although that was a couple of weeks ago, before he became the change candidate.) John McCain voted with George Bush 90% of the time.

McCain votes the nitwit ticket. If that’s the sort of experience you think is required, then McCain is your man. By all means. I wouldn’t dream of trying to change your mind. If John McCain represents the kind of change you’re looking for, which he is evidently getting around to mentioning now that he’s been in Washington for 26 years, then by all means, have at it. The reason these guys are pounding experience so hard when they’re talking about Barack, and ignoring it when they’re talking about Palin, is that the only thing they get right the first time is being disingenuous. (Lipstick? Really?)

Examples of Bush Administration Executive Experience: No meetings about Osama Bin Ladin, no mention of him, and ignoring completely the White House Memo entitled, Obsama Bin Ladin Determined to Strike Within the U.S.. August 1, 2001. Richard Clark told them again and again that this guy was dangerous, but because they wanted to go after Iraq, they ignored Clark (and Bin Ladin). Well, after we were attacked, they decided that Islamic Extremist Terrorism was a priority. Well, that is learning from experience, but maybe if they’d been smart, they would have been able to stop the attack. “Nobody could have seen it coming?” Condiliza Rice said. “No one could have seen terrorists using aircraft as weapons.” Well, yeah, except for the two movies where that happened, and the episode of the Lone Gunmen. (Great title, sort of like The Two Mavericks — the irony is built in.) “A failure of imagination” the bipartisan 911 commission called it.  (Make a mental note, a FAILURE OF IMAGINATION)

They invaded Iraq because after the first Gulf war, Saddam Hussein was still in power and the Neocons from the first Bush Administration (Rumsfeld/Cheney) wanted him gone. It’s on record, they were looking for ways to invade Iraq and made them up. Then they invaded, declared mission accomplished, and fucked up for six years until they finally did what Colin Powell and other generals, who were dismissed, by the way, told them what they needed to do in the first place, which was send in the overwhelming force to secure one area at a time — a page right out of the military manual on fighting insurgency. So yes, the surge worked, but they got it wrong for six years before the surge, and they got it wrong when they attacked Iraq in the first place, NONE of the justifications for war were true. But they did learn from the experience. (1 Trillion Dollars, hundreds of thousands dead.)

They let Cheney formulate energy policy in secret, with oil company executives, and seven years later they decide that maybe they ought to get an energy policy. They deregulate S&Ls, and S&Ls crash, and they say, “You know, maybe we ought to regulate them a little.” (That was in the 80s, when McCain was one of the Keating five, and Bush’s brother was implicated in the failure of Lincoln Federal. McCain was not indicted, but the judge in the case admonished him saying, and I quote, “the senator showed incredibly poor judgment” in regard to the scandal.)  Then they deregulate the mortgage industry, and shazamm! “Well, maybe we do need some Federal oversight.”  And taxpayers are footing the bill for hundreds of billions in bad mortgages.

They refuse to regulate because “government has no business in business, the free-market will fix everything”, then they bail out the failures when they realize that the economy can’t absorb a five trillion dollar hit (that’s the value of outstanding debt of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac).  At every step, these guys have to screw up at least once, before they get it even remotely right.

They govern by ideology, instead of intelligence and logic. They believe that greed is good and government cannot be effective, then they go on to prove it every time they get in power. They have to value experience above anything, because they are constantly making the wrong decisions out of an ideological outlook instead of a logical one. Experience instead of intelligence. Experience instead of imagination.

Every single analyst on Wall Street, every think tank, and every energy analyst I’ve heard says that drilling for oil on the coasts and in protected areas will not bring significant amounts of oil to market for seven to ten years, and will make no significant difference in the price of oil. Yet a whole arena of Republicans chant drill, baby, drill for five minutes and seem to want that as part of their political agenda. Slowly now, the important point is, “will make no significant difference” in the price of oil. How can the be the smart way to go?  Well, experience may prove, and I’m just guessing here, that drilling off shore and in protected wildlife areas will not significantly impact the price of oil. But by golly we’ll have experience.

Working-class voters continue to vote republican for various reasons, and continually fail to get what they voted for. They do worse, economically, under Republican administrations, and the “wedge” religious issues are dropped from the Republican agenda as soon as they are in office.  What good is experience if you don’t learn from it?  Most conservatives I know are scratching their head right now going, “Wait a minute, we had both houses of congress, the White House, and the Supreme Court, and spending did what? Government grew how much? My wages declined by how much? Gas costs how much? The employment rate is what? The deficit is what?”

But you certainly can’t question the experience of the administration. Cheney had many, many years in government, in appointed cabinet positions, and his way into congress was garnering the votes of nearly 100,000 people from a state of 530,000. Why, that’s almost a fifth of the number of people who bought my books — last year.  And he did have all that executive experience running an oil exploration company. (Hey, wait a minute…) And George Bush had two terms as governor of Texas, and he too had business experience as an oil man. Of course he failed as an oil man. In Texas. But he used that experience to later on fail miserably as a president.

John McCain’s executive experience is commanding a fighter squadron in Viet Nam. That is certainly valuable experience, and I’m sure that if elected president, he will not be shot down again, because he has learned from his experience. I’m completely confident in that. I’m not that confident that he won’t lead us into a completely misguided war like Iraq again, because he thinks the surge working, is the same as the war being the right thing to do in the first place. Just to be clear, we were not attacked by Iraq and we were not defending ourselves. We picked a small (albeit obnoxious) kid on the playground and beat him up. It’s below the dignity and honor of the United States. Honorable servicemen were given a dishonorable mission, and they carried it out. It’s their job and they are compelled to do it — by love of country, duty, loyalty to comrades in arms — but the people who set them to their mission should be ashamed of themselves. Anyone who supported the war, and the compromise of America’s honor by playing bully, should be ashamed of themselves, including, John McCain. I hope he learns from the experience.

I wouldn’t dream of trying to change anyone’s mind regarding experience. Absolutely go for the guy with the most experience. What do I know about experience?

I do, however, know something about inspiration and imagination. I’m sort of in the inspiration and imagination business. I’ve been in it for twenty years (and did it as a volunteer for twenty years before that). From my perspective, inspiration is very valuable thing.From Henry the Fifth’s St. Crispin’s Day speech (we Band of Brothers), to Elizabeth I’s speech at the attack of the Spanish Armada, to Roosevelt’s “We have nothing to fear but fear itself,” to Churchill’s “We will never surrender” to John Kennedy’s “Ask not, what your country can do for you,’  to Dr. King’s “I have a dream” — inspiration and motivation have been the very catalysts of history. I’ve been in a room where Barack Obama was speaking, I’ve talked to people who were inspired to get involved by him. I had dinner with a guy tonight, who is Canadian, he said, “I can’t even vote,” and for the first time in my life I sent money to a politician, to Barack Obama,  because he inspires me to make things better.  Inspiration IS  LEADERSHIP. Rallying people to help their fellow citizens so they might improve their lives and the lives of the less fortunate,  IS LEADERSHIP.  Having the intelligence and imagination to foresee trouble and avoid, or defuse it, those are qualities above those of experience that doesn’t inform good judgment.

What I find baffling, is that the very same people who decry inspiration and oratory and not being of value, who scoff at someone who was a “community organizer”, are people of the Christian faith. Faith IS an act of imagination! If you can’t imagine a world where God cares and sent his son to die for your sins, you really can’t, as a Christian, be faithful, can you? There is, I think, I hope, in every single person of faith, the potential for imagination beyond that of fear. An ability to imagine that which is better. If you can’t imagine it, you’ll never get there, and if you’re not inspired, you can’t imagine it.

I know the value of imagination, judgement, and intelligence.
I’m voting for the smartest guy running.

Wow, I just got an invitation to come to Camp Obama here in California?
(Link Disabled)

(Link Disabled)

Well, I got some pages done today, but I didn’t really expect to get much done before the end of the month, what with the Democratic Convention in Denver and the threat of world-ending nuclear war in Poland, so why not go to camp.

Imagine us, all of us Obamamaniacs, out by Lake Barrack…

Itinerary: Camp Obama

8:00-9:00  Non denominational prayer breakfast — secret Muslims not allowed.  (You CAN be Muslim, but you have to be “out”. )

9:00_10:00 Group Hope by the dock (followed by the “HOPE TEST” — no one will be allowed to leave until they have sunk a three-point shot in front of a crowd. Hook shots from the top of the key will also qualify, but only if there are no perspiration stains on the shooter’s underarms.)

10:00-11:00 Bowling instruction by Billy Ray Jones Johnson. (Can you look cool in rented shoes?   Oh yeah, I think you can. Billy Ray teaches you how.)

11:00-Noon Intramural three-legged race: Empowering the Team Player in You.
Cougars vs. PUMAs (Your partner not pulling her weight? Don’t forget to tell her she’s pretty.)

Noon-1:00 Lunch with Keynote:  “How to not scream, “But he’s so fucking old! Human life means nothing to him! He loves war! He’ll get us all killed!”   We don’t roll that way at Camp Obama and you won’t roll out of here like that either.  You will learn how to participate in a measured and civilized debate of just how fucking old and War-crazed he is.

1:00-2:00 HOPE FLOAT AT THE LAKE
The seminar will be given in a flotilla of canoes lashed together.  Participants will learn:
1)Where they live.
2)How many houses they have. (We have to know this stuff, evidently. People will ask.)
3)Why the only reason that volunteers are not being paid $5 million dollars a year is so they don’t have to worry about that camel through the eye of a needle parable.  (Secret Muslims and Jews, ask your Christian Brothers. Catholics, ask your priest – psssst, New Testament.)
4)Why, out of respect for Native American cultures, there is no Camp Obama team called the Hopi.  (But why it would totally rule if we could get them on board.)
5)And finally, use of Hope in the application of basic lifesaving skills, and how much more effective the former is when combined with the latter.

2:00-3:00 – Crafts! Basket-weaving, lanyard-making, pottery throwing, and guided meditation: The Hope Against Audacity: Participants will learn how to keep from loosing their mind when confronted with the following audacious precepts:
A)Human life is sacred in the womb, but not in a house in Iraq or New Orleans.
B)Everything should be left to the wisdom of the Market, except for no-bid military contracts and Medicare drug programs.
C)The definition of victory is never ending the game.
D)Knowing what arugula is makes you an intellectual snob.
E)Spending time in a prison camp thirty eight years ago gives you special super powers.
F)Spending money you don’t have is somehow different and better than just paying your bills as you go. (Because that’s worked so well on everyone’s credit cards and mortgages.)

Participants will also learn how to weave “Obama-Mama” into their lanyard or basket gifts for their mothers.

3:00-4:00 — CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE. YOU GUYS PICK THE CAMP OBAMA ACTIVITY FOR 3:00-4:00 o’clock and put it in the comments.  (Stay in the spirit of things. No Hannity/Limbaugh talking points. I am, after all, firmly, in the Obama-Rama. Although, any activity that involves keeping Joe Biden from saying patently stupid shit will be appreciated.)

Hey kids. I know I’ve been remiss on the blogs and posts here. I’m locked down, trying to get a new book finished before the tour in February. I promise I’ll start producing some web material soon.

For now, let me confirm the release date of the new book, Fool, will be February 10th. And that the next book will be — well — here’s the first paragraph:

“The city of San Francisco is being stalked by a huge, shaved vampyre cat named Chet, and only I, Abby Normal, emergency back-up mistress of the greater Bay Area night, and my manga-haired love monkey, Foo Dog, stand between the ravenous monster and a bloody massacre of the general public. Which isn’t, like, as bad as it sounds, because the general public kind of sucks ass.”

So, there you go. Now, back to work for me. As always, you can email me at BSFiends@aol.com if you actually want to get a personal response. I try to answer my MySpace messages, too. I’m not able, however, to respond to all of the general MySpace comments (I have to draw the line somewhere or I’ll never get any books written.).

Your author guy is going to be on Live Wire radio, Saturday, June 21st, at 8:00 pm.
Details at:
http://www.livewireradio.org/
I have no idea what to expect. Sounds like it could be like Prairie Home Companion.

Until I figure out how to embed a movie here, check out the MySpace blog post:
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=95547714&blogID=406520022&indicate=1
Here’s the first installment of the LONG VERSION. I’m guessing this takes fifteen minutes or so to look at. The remaining 300 photos tomorrow:
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=95547714&blogID=406552439
COMMENTS: http://bbs.chrismoore.com/viewtopic.php?p=202963#202963

Let’s face it. I’m a gadget guy. I like shiny new machines, sometimes because they are shiny and new. I have an Iphone, an Xbox360, 2 Playstations, two Macs, five PCs (4 of which I built), 3 flat-screen TVs, 2 Tivos, 4 Ipods, 3 Digital SLRs, 4 digital point and shoot cameras — well, you get the idea. I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, a luddite, or anti-technical. I am not averse to change, nor am I nostalgic for the “old days” that never really existed. Neither am I evangelical about technology – I don’t have any unnatural affection for my Macs, and I don’t have any built-in revulsion for my PCs, or vice-versa. I like stuff that works, and I get pissed off at stuff that doesn’t. Okay. Just so we’re clear.
So, despite my misgivings about E-books, which I’ll go into in a whole different blog, I bought a Kindle from Amazon. My history with the electronic book reader is this: I tried to demo the Sony reader three different times in various book stores and there was never one that worked long enough to actually tell what it was like. But it was obvious that electronic paper had some possibilities.
Then, about two months ago, Amazon’s Kindle PR division contacted me and asked me to do a blog for them, which I linked to here. I started looking into the Kindle machine, reading reviews, asking friends, checking out the specs. After all, you couldn’t sign on to Amazon without being hit in the face with another Kindle promotion, and I sign onto Amazon a lot. (Note ridiculously long gadget list above.) So, even through Amazon had sent Kindles to my friends Neil Gaiman and Daniel Handler for review, and not to me, and I had done a blog for them (for fucking nothing, despite the fact that I actually get paid to do this – a lot) I ordered a Kindle. And eight hours later (I’m not kidding, eight hours) they lowered the price by $50.
So, you know, good start. So, here are my observations. And yes, this does go on a bit.
First, the good:
Kindle delivers available books in about 60 seconds through a free cellular data network, anywhere in the country. It’s fast, there’s a pretty good selection, and the screen is easy to read, with scalable fonts. It’s light, and the battery supposedly lasts a pretty long time, as power is only required to turn/change a page, not show text (it’s not back lit). They ship it with a very nice leather cover, that almost completely negates the size and weight advantage, but does protect the Kindle if it’s strapped in, and you can surf the internet, search Amazon products, and subscribe to and read blogs, magazines, and newspapers that are available from Amazon. You can also mail Word or other text documents to yourself and for ten cents a piece, Amazon will convert them to Kindle format and send them to your Kindle. These are all cool things. With a cheap SD memory card, you could easily carry 200 books with you in this little machine, and it highlights, clips, makes notes and bookmarks text.
Which means that the Kindle is not a complete P.O.S. It is, however, at least in this generation, a partial P.O.S.
The Not So Good: 1. No place to hold it. Every place you grab it does something — activates some function.

2. No page numbers. They have reference numbers, but not actually page numbers. There’s no way to find something or tell someone else how to find it. If you change font size, the reference numbers change. So, for instance, you might say, “Oh my God, there’s the funniest line in that new Sedaris book!” “Really, what page is it on?” “Uh, 2023 of 4432 in the second biggest font.” “Oh, yeah, that means something to me.”

3. There’s no place to clip the light they sell you to clip on it, and without the light, it’s dark. Of course you can clip it to the cover they sell you but…

4. It falls out of the cover. There’s a tiny “ledge” that’s supposed to keep the Kindle in place, but it doesn’t work. Yes, I could put a piece of stick-on velcro on the back and solve this problem, but I just paid $400 for this thing, I shouldn’t have to add velcro to make it functional.

5. It shuts down. I took it to Los Angeles for a weekend trip. I’d charged it before I left, and it’s supposed to be good for 7000 “page turns” on a charge, but even with the wireless off, it just stuck on a page on the second day, so I had nothing to read. I’ve never had a real book, “lock up”.
6. Reading on the screen is disorienting. I read a lot on a screen, more than I read on paper, but reading a novel on a screen is disorienting. The screen is still pretty small, and a full page of text from a book isn’t displayed. You never have a feel of how far along you are in a book. You don’t know how far from the end of the chapter you are. There is a little line of “progress dots” along the bottom of the page that’s supposed to indicate how far along you are, but it doesn’t feel “real”. It think if you could make it default to page numbers that mirror the real book, and you knew you were on page 44 of 400, you’d have a better idea. The progress numbers aren’t always right, either. I loaded the manuscript of my new book into it. The reference numbers keep showing things like, 2483 out of 98. Which, you know, is confusing.

So, the Kindle, in my opinion, just isn’t quite there. And understand, I think there’s a certain inevitability to electronic books, so this is not a rant against the form. For some things, particularly college courses, I think e-books could rock hard. But until there’s a generation who has never read or worked with paper books, the “analog” aspect of the reader has to be a lot better. You’ve got to somehow simulate the good things about paper books (and I don’t mean the smell or the fact that you can tear the pages out and wipe with them if you’re stuck dropping dooky in the woods), while taking advantage of the assets of e-books.
I’ll have a whole new blog on e-books soon, in which we’ll explore how you can decorate your garage to accommodate your own homeless author guy, who just got Napstered out of a job.
Meanwhile, e-book owners, share your thoughts.
COMMENTS: http://bbs.chrismoore.com/viewtopic.php?p=202482#202482

So, people are always asking me what I’m reading. And usually, I’m reading something for research, or some book someone has sent me for a jacket comment. (I have a two-foot stack of books on my desk right now that I’d love to read and comment on, but then, I would never be able to write another book.) It’s an occupational hazzard or just a hazzard of life, I guess. There are more books to read than you’ll ever have time to read. But when I was in Europe last month, doing a whole month on a couple of carry-on bags, I could only carry one book at a time, and since I was in Italy most of the time, there were very limited English language titles I could buy. So I got to read some books for fun that I might not have picked up otherwise.
First, I was in Siena, a very cool Medieval City in Northern Italy, when I ran out of reading material and so I picked up Northern Lights, the first book in Phillip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” series. It’s a young adult fantasy, and I have some trouble getting engaged in some YA titles, but I absolutely loved this book. (The Golden Compass film was adapted from it, but I hadn’t see it yet, fortunately.) I was never able to finish a Harry Potter book for some reason, although I could certainly see the appeal. But here, for the first time in a long time, I was completely lost in the story. (Perhaps because I was trying to drown out the sound of Italian guys on cell phones on trains. Travel note: Italian guys never shut up. Ever. If they are awake and there’s not food in their mouths, they are talking. Especially if there’s a woman around. I wanted to have a T-shirt made with the letters S.T.F.U. and point to it in these situations, because clearly, even with 3000 years of civilization, they have never learned to Shut The Fuck Up.) Anyway, giant armored talking polar bears. Yes! Northern Lights creates a very rich, alternative world that looks much like early 20th Century England, only more steam-punky, but the main thing you need to know is: Giant Talking Armored Polar Bears. Sure there’s a cute and spunky little Pippi Longstockingesce girl, there are Dickinsean street urchins (which you can now order n sushi bars in London – they are served with English hot mustard instead of wasabi) and a hydrogen-stealing zeppelin pirate, (a species rumored to have once existed in the Castro in San Francisco), but they had me at Giant Talking Armored Polar Bears. Hijinks ensue. (I’m reading the second book in the series now on the Kindle, which sucks ass in so many ways I don’t have time or room to enumerate them, so I don’t know if it’s any good or not because I can’t get past dealing with the stupid machine.)
So then I read Heat, by Bill Buford, which is sub titled: An Amateur’s Adventures ans a Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany. It’s about working in restaurants, but it’s also about learning about food, about obsession, about the restaurant business, a biography of Mario Batali, and an overall history of Italian cooking. This is a terrific non-fictuon book that I probably would have never finished if I hadn’t been traveling, and I would have been poorer for having missed it. Buford is a talented writer, but also has the ability to humble himself as a student, which makes him a good teacher. I learned a lot about food, about restaurants (and I used to work in them) and about Italy. If you eat, you should read this book.
I picked up Michael Chabon’s book, The Yiddish Policeman’s Union in Verona. Chabon doesn’t need me to sell his ability as a writer, he’s won tons of awards, including a Pulitzer for The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. This book, however, I think is my favorite. It’s a noir mystery, so Chabon gets to show off his ability to turn a phrase, but it’s also a very high-concept alternative-history, wherein the state of Israel was not established in 1949, but the Jews from the post-war diaspora were relocated to a colony in Sitka, Alaska. So you have a detective story peopled entirely with people who speak in a Yiddish idiom, intermingled with Tlinglet Indians, one of whom, a giant, is raised at the adopted son of the main character, and so is a practicing Jew, right down to his yarmulke and the fringe of his garment. It makes for an extraordinarily interesting story, peppered with Judica and hard-boiled kvetching. If you’re Jewish, you really need to read this book, but if you’re not, you’ll probably learn something in addition to being entertained.
Finally, I read a book off of my “read for comment” pile that I chose because it would fit in my computer bag. Captain Freedom, by G. Xavier Robillard, is a very funny send-up of the super-hero genre. I won’t go into detail because it won’t be out until early next year, but leave it at: “it’s a hybrid of The Tick and Mark Leyner’s, Et Tu Babe. Very sharp, funny social satire. Meanwhile, you can check out G.’s Blog at http://www.alldaycoffee.net/
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