And The Nominees Are

One may as well begin with American Hustle. Like six of the ten nominated movies this year, American Hustle, about a con artist with the most memorable comb-over in the history of the movies, who is caught between (or playing?) the mob and Washington, and, perhaps more interestingly, Amy (isn't it funny how the Halstonesque space between my understated breasts is more sexy than all the fastidiously trimmed mons pubi featured in another movie up for consideration this year?) Adams and Jennifer Lawrence, American Hustle is Based On A True Story—which is to say: a dramatic shaping of factual happenings that have themselves been redacted to serve the purpose of making a good story, one that is very much a creation by the time you see it, and with any luck feels true, and entertains, and makes some bank for its makers. Jennifer Lawrence's character, the true one, for instance—she is the very Jersey girl wife of Christian Bale's comb-over con-artist in the movie—was, word has it, fifteen years older than the hustler she was married to. Unless the con artist with the comb-over is Benjamin Button in the third grade, some factual alterations needed to be made if the movie was to accommodate the casting of someone like Jennifer Lawrence in the role, as opposed to, say, Edie Falco, or, better yet, putting some makeup on Carol Burnett and have her be the sort of shrewish nag she played on her variety show back when I was in the third grade. But that would have been a different movie, and I loved Jennifer Lawrence in the part. I loved her in Winter's Bone, and she was the only reason to bother watching last year's Silver Linings Playbook, by the same director, David O. Russell, who made a much better movie on this go round. If it won Best Picture—it could, but I'm thinking it won't—I wouldn't complain. Jennifer Lawrence, however, will probably win as best-supporting, though I worry it might be too much success too soon for the young actress, and am thus rooting for the old, dumpy-looking, hilarious June Squibb, from Nebraska. Amy Adams, who was great, and dark, in last year's overlooked The Master, could shoot the gap between Cate Blanchett and Judi Dench and surprise as best-actress. I would also give it the award for costume design. It or The Great Gatsby, which I liked, but then again I saw it at noon on a Sunday with Donna after two martinis.

Captain Phillips. Also Based On A True Story. I liked it, and so did my kids. It's a good movie. A good story, well-told. I am not among those who think Barkhad ("I am the captain now") Abdi, who, good for him, was plucked from obscurity at a casting call in Minneapolis, deserves to win an Oscar for his performance. While he was very good in the role, and stood out in the movie, and perhaps deserves the nomination, the bigger praise ought to be for the casting director. Moreover, Mr. Abdi memorably delivered a line that someone else wrote, and, being a first-time actor, was directed to play a character that someone else initially imagined with human dimension, rather than a summertime blockbuster caricature of a bad-assed Somali pirate. He was good; but his performance does not match Jared Leto's in Dallas Buyer's Club, or Michael Fassbinder's outstanding, if little noted, portrayal of a sadistic slave owner in 12 Years a Slave.

Dallas Buyer's Club—my choice for best picture of the year. It has pathos in spades, it's funny, the sex is raunchier, and more unsettling, than anything in Wolf, and it has two of the best performances of the year, one of which—Leto's—was, for my money, the best of all, in any category. Yet it won't win, and I'm not really sure why, except that it's my favorite and that's usually a bad sign, a contrarian indicator if you're laying down bets. Directed by Quebec's mostly unknown Jean-Marc Vallee—who, again, for my money, might have easily replaced Gravity's (by all accounts warm and approachable at the pre-Oscar pitch parties) director, Alfonso Cuaron, in the Best Directing category—the movie, Based On A True Story, except word has it that Matthew McConaughey's character might have been a bisexual in addition to being a prostitute-banging, bigot bull rider from Texas in the 80's, features McConaughey as the endearing bigot (with no low-down tendencies in the movie) who contracts AIDS and befriends, initially for business reasons, Jared Leto, a drag queen with pluck, and a drug problem—a light that burns bright and fast. These are performances you've heard of regardless of whether you care a whit about the movies, the sexual habits of Texas bull riders, the FDA's drug approval process, or whether it's okay to be a straight guy and still think Jared Leto was hot in the movie, before he got really sick. Matthew McConaughey, who (as we've now heard a bit too much, perhaps) could have easily maintained his income and his weight by sticking to movie star roles rather than pushing himself toward odder, more interesting material: in Bernie, Magic Mike, Mud, the delicious cameo in Wolf, and even in his Cosmic Skanky Man Murder Cop role in the new, underwhelming HBO series, True Detective, stands the best chance, in a strong field, to walk off with the best actor Oscar (though if someone upsets him, I hope it's Bruce Dern), and, I'm sorry, but if anyone upsets Jared Leto for the best supporting Oscar, it's a travesty.

Gravity. A movie, refreshing if only for its thin story not being Based On A True Story, that arguably deserves the prize in the Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Visual Effects categories, though I'm wondering if the whipped backs in 12 Years a Slave (not nominated, as it happens, in the Best Visual Effects category, nor in the Best Makeup and Hairstyling category) won't stick with me longer than the storming space debris or tumbling Sandra scenes in Gravity. The script is a dud. Unlike 2001: A Space Odyssey or even Planet of the Apes, the movie leaves your mind as quiet as space afterwards. Someone has already suggested that a better way to watch it would be to turn down the sound and substitute Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" as a soundtrack (see: YouTube, with The Wizard of Oz). For me, the most memorable bit from the movie is actually a line Tina Fey and Amy Poehler delivered at the Golden Globes: that George Clooney would rather die in space than sleep with someone his own age. The movie begs for lampooning, a Mystery Theater 3000 (does anyone remember?) treatment. Ms. Fey and Ms. Poehler, and possibly Will Farrell, or David Sedaris, sitting together at the IMAX, in rear-view silhouette, ad-libbing a better sort of dialogue for George and Sandy.

Her. It isn't often that we get a picture of the future that isn't dystopic, where, in uncluttered, bright, vaguely pastel surroundings, the men are pulling up their pants again, and Amy Adams—doing excellent work twice in one year, and this time without makeup—is there to console you, sort of, after Scarlett Johansson's voice has taken you up and down the arc of love as it is generally idealized by educated people in their twenties. But still, popping an O with Scarlett is nothing to scoff at, whether mediated by a machine or not. Perhaps I am getting old, but I wish it had excited me more. Yet I liked the movie overall. It was smart (in a young sort of way), with a big heart. It was nice to see Joaquin Phoenix (however out of place he seemed) expand his talents toward characters who aren't unhinged, battling demons most of us, blessedly, can't understand. He is one of those actors one worries about, since February 2nd.

Nebraska. One of my favorite movies of the year, and by inference another also-ran in this year's collection of nine. To be fair, I saw it with Donna at the Denver Film Festival, at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House, which is a fine place to see a movie, especially after a martini. One of my favorite lines from any movie this year: a woman at the sweepstakes shop in Lincoln wondering if Bruce Dern was a little touched, suffering from Alzheimer's perhaps, and Will Foote, his son, replying, No, he just believes things people tell him, the lady rejoining, Oh, that's too bad. Alexander Payne, from Omaha, who co-wrote the script and directed, is well on his way, along with Wes Anderson, to becoming a national treasure: the kind of person who gets you through the crazy. Either Her or Nebraska should win Best Original Screenplay, but I'm happy to say it's a strong category, with five very different screenplays, all of them good. I'd go to sleep smiling if June Squibb walked home with the Oscar for best supporting actress, and Bruce Dern the Oscar for best actor.

Philomena. About a woman from Ireland who fifty years earlier gets pregnant out of wedlock and is forced to give up her son by nuns who look after her in exchange for getting lots of free work out of her, though not all the nuns are rotten—it is a theme shared to some degree with another movie nominated this year and Based On A True Story, 12 Years a Slave, except that with the nuns you're free to go when you're of legal age, and they might pull your ear but they don't whip the shit out of you if you misbehave, and the movie, Philomena, despite its many heartbreaking moments, is funny—and not entirely because of Steve Coogan, who happens to be the perfect tonic for the skeptical, free thinker's soul. Judi Dench's mellifluous, prolix recaps to him of the pulp novels she's recently finished, and would happily lend him, are virtuosic, and give lilt to a story that, with different casting (without Dench and Coogan), and without director Stephen Frears (not nominated), might easily have been oppressively dour.

12 Years a Slave. Based ( no more unbelievably than Philomena) On A True Story, about a free black man of considerable refinement who, after too much celebratory drink, wakes up shackled, sold into slavery, where the brutality he endures and observes, in the lovely, bucolic South, is shocking. The two much remarked upon whippings are whippings to end all whippings—I am not the first to suggest that the scenes overpower the rest of the movie, or that the characterization, with the exception of Michael Fassbinder's slave owner, lacks range and nuance. The movie shares with Gravity an overwrought preoccupation with survival that could have been counterpointed more imaginatively. Are these small complaints about an otherwise powerful movie, worthy of this year's Best Picture? I'm not sure. It's been remarked that the story is so powerful in its broad strokes that it was wise that Steve McQueen (ostensibly) directed by not directing much. Perhaps. The movie is beautifully shot, and costumed, but so was The Color Purple. Like many of the movies nominated this year, there is something not altogether right in the balance and brilliance of its parts. Still, and despite its imperfections, it is a worthy, powerful counterpoint to the mythology helped along by the likes of Gone With The Wind. There is now a good antidote should one suffer for those wistful days of longing for wisteria and a life kept languorous and rich by the sweat of unpaid bodies.

The Wolf of Wall Street. Had the movie been about a someone interesting, on a subject that isn't by now tiresomely banal, this picture, directed by the great Martin Scorcese, might have, with its romping, epic feel, taken Best Picture. As it is, the movie, Based On A True Story, is a boosted, baroque, better-shot version of Scorcese's Casino—also Based On A True Story, though with more interesting characters, a better branching story, not quite as long. Those who "don't get" The Wolf of Wall Street apparently see the film as a glorification of booze and drug-addled misogyny as practiced by two-bit shitballs with piles of money—guys like Jordan Belfort, the movie's protagonist, played excellently, I should add, by Leo DeCaprio, who has been excellent going all the way back to What's Eating Gilbert Grape—though I don't count myself among that crowd. I don't think the movie glorifies anything. If anything it's a send-up of pieties, a noisy, in your face reminder that the Jordan Belforts of the world are, if anything, less redeemable, and do more harm, than (one ought well conclude, after the unending wallop we get) the Humbert Humberts—the other pedophiles—of the world. Anyway, I get all that. I just found it long and noisy and boring. This in spite of all the female pudenda on display, Leo snorting coke out of the crack of some woman's ass, Margo Robbie showing us all her stuff, and the great scene on the yacht with the cop trying to snag him. This movie, too, was Based On A True Story, a memoir by the protagonist, in the motivational speaking line now (never down for long, these guys, unless one lines them up against a wall … they will be back). A couple of hours into the movie I found myself wondering: why, with all the tits and ass and pussy on display, don't women demand some cock? In the name of even-handedness, to assuage claims of misogyny, to push that envelope if nothing else, why didn't Marty insist that Leo and Jonah show their junk? So the women would have something to talk about afterwards other than having to agree, or not agree, that Margo Robbie ... yup, she sure was hot, and maybe I should shave my pussy, too … Rather than, "OMG! I never would have thought Jonah Hill's cock was that big! Or that Leo's doglegged left like it did—to his left, I mean. He must be quite a wanker!" And the gay guys in the apartment. Weren't there plenty of gay guys watching who might have wanted to see something other than ass? And women too? I'm a straight guy, but I like to watch lesbians get it on. Why wouldn't a perfectly normal Christian woman want to gawk at a variety of well-built, flouncing men, schlongs-a-schwinging, gay or straight (who the fuck cares?), and then talk about it with her friends? Is it wrong of me to think that one of the reasons we haven't had a woman president can be gleaned from their getting naked and not having the good sense to insist on a quid pro quo in the Show Me Your Junk department? That, rather amazingly, the majority gender hasn't reared up and shouted, Fuck um! If they want to look at our stuff, we're going to look at theirs—all of it. Seth wants to sing a song about our boobs, well, we're going to have Amy and Tina sing a song about your junk. And you're going to be a good sport about it, and laugh, or you're going to be jerking off to The Song of Bernadette for a long, long time …

We'll see how that one trends.

Next time you see Based On A True Story attached to the movie you're about to see, just stand up in the theater and shout: ARGO FUCK YOURSELF!

Enjoy the Oscars!        



 

What, Me Worry?

The president wrapped up a speech in the Rose Garden, essentially comparing the tea-bagger fringe of the Republican Party to terrorists, a bunch of lunatic ideologues he isn't about to negotiate with (and I certainly hope he is serious, but we'll see), over a law that was passed by both houses of Congress, signed by the president, and upheld by a conservative Supreme Court.

All three branches of government have given their blessing to the Affordable Care Act—Obamacare—and yet there are certain members of Congress—politicians, getting paid with tax-payer dollars—who just can't accept it.

So they're holding the government hostage. A small portion of it. That portion which would otherwise have these cynical show-boating opportunists' heads on a stick, that portion is being left alone.

The military, Obamacare, anything that's expensive and would have the least potential to take this latest cheap piece of theater by these reality-show types to something affecting, truly consequential, forget it.

If you don't believe me, check out part two of this month's double feature, coming October 17th: The Debt-Ceiling!!!

Be assured that the government is not going to default on its bills, the ones Congress created. Powerful people would not be happy about that. Still, as obvious as that seems, before it's over, all of us paying attention to "the story" will wonder. Remember how you thought for a while, even if you weren't watching the story exclusively on Fox News, that Obama was going to lose the election to a guy like Mitt Romney? Hell, I was even worried.

Some advice you can take or leave: if you see the word "Countdown" on the screen, you can be sure that whatever is waiting at the end of the countdown isn't going to amount to much.

So, I'm not too worried. Anymore than I was about The Taper—the last sort of ongoing bit of theater. Of course there wasn't going to be a Taper, I thought. We have an economy that is growing at sickly rates in spite of zero percent interest rates and the Federal Reserve buying $85 billion dollars in treasury and mortgage bonds every month. To give you an idea of how much that is: with the same amount of money you could afford to pay 30 million people 50 thousand dollars a year. Instead—and perhaps in the universe of poor remedies to a quite possibly intractable problem, this is the best of the poor—we are in effect giving the money to the banks to speculate with, or to at least do what they think best with it, they being bankers and all. This rather than leave it up to 30 million people, randomly selected, in what could be a very exciting lottery, to decide what best to do with an extra 50 thousand a year!

Still, we here in Peyton Place know that it's best not to be too certain, that things can go horribly wrong just when you think, with only a minute left in the game, it would take a miracle ...

Just when you think "Lincoln" is a lock for Best Picture.

But this isn't sports. Or the Academy Awards. It's politics.

Easier to predict? Usually. But we'll see.

Lexi, The (Baby) Bird Killer

Every year, in the spring, as with the swallows return to Capistrano, the robins build a nest in a small hideaway above our back deck. It is always constructed in the same place, directly above the north post, insulated on the sides by sturdy 2X8s and over the top by a slanting, shingled roof. We—the boys, Donna, I—watch the nest come together, the eggs laid, the baby birds nourished by Moma and Papa Robin, through our kitchen window. It is one of those rare sweet things that we, the parents, can get excited about and our boys don't give us a look suggesting that if we think it's cool, it can't be that cool.

What was different this spring—different from the previous five, since our last dog died—was that we had a dog again. A dog whose home is our backyard (where there are fewer socks for her to eat). A backyard previously safe for young birds just born, assuming our neighbors' cats hadn't jumped the fence for a visit, which they used to do from time to time, though, to my knowledge, not since we got a dog.

Perhaps you can see where this is going.

For the last week or two we saw the little beaks popping up above the rim of the nest as Mom flew in worms to feed her young, while Dad, from the maple tree, looked on and chirped, his emotions mixed, thinking, no doubt, that life as he knew it was over; meantime Lexi, the dog who up until now hadn't seemed terribly interested in squirrels dashing along the top of the fence, jumping from limb to limb in the trees, who, we sometimes joked, resembled more a stuffed animal from a fair than a predator, lay off in the grass, indifferent to it all. Even as Mama and Papa Robin occasionally ate from her food.

Before long we could see the birds' heads. Pretty soon they were standing in their nest, wing to wing, as it were. It was getting crowded in there, and yesterday the first baby bird leapt from the nest.

Zachary came into the house distressed, cupping the bird in his hands, having apparently taken the small creature from the mouth of Lexi. The bird was still alive, though exhibiting clear signs of PTSD, trauma we could only imagine. What were we going to do? the boys wondered. Could we keep the bird, build him a cage, hutch him like a rabbit? What if we at least got him out of the backyard, away from Lexi's mostly good-natured teeth, to a safe place, a hideout—one where (I felt guilty, picturing) the neighbor cats could have fun with him.

I quickly discovered that trying to explain Darwinian principles to children isn't any easier than trying to explain them to thirty percent or more of the adult population of this country. I suppose it's understandable. How are you supposed to maintain a cheerful, optimistic outlook in a world like that?

"I think we need to hand this one over to God," I finally said, nearly adding, inanely, "It is what it is."

The boys, wary of such abstractions, as if in possession of a preternatural understanding that the handing of this particular problem over to God wouldn't be any wiser than, say, handing over one's backed up sewer to Him, appeared terrified, not to mention disappointed—crestfallen—in our, their parents, inability to rise to the occasion and prevent this beautiful thing we had been witnessing for weeks now—the cycle of life—from ending in tragedy.

Instead, I took the boys with me to karate, and corraled Lexi on the deck, in theory giving the youthful birds a good two hours to parachute to the grass, to learn to fly in idyllic circumstances, without being harrassed by a dog who was just learning how much fun it could be to get in touch with her animal instincts. If the birds jumped out of the front of the nest rather than the back, and landed on the deck, well, there was only so much God could do. As to the traumatized, though still alive, bird—the boys had named him Kevin—he was carefully placed in thick ground-cover at the corner of the yard, where, for all I knew, a giant snake was waiting, but at least he'd be out of view of the hawks, and not agitate our dog, locked on the deck on a day when the temperature was closing in on one hundred degrees—a covered deck, admittedly, though not as cool and comfortable as, for instance, the shaded ground-cover where I'd placed the bird.

We came home to find Kevin—we guessed it was Kevin—dead at the opposite end of the yard, another bird in the process of being harrassed to death by Lexi, who had figured a way while we were gone to open the deck gate. There was one bird left in the nest, gazing heavenward, its beak open as if trying to draw limited oxygen, perhaps due to an anxiety attack. The fourth bird was MIA. We hoped—and are still hoping—that he was the clever, resourceful, lucky type. If so, his parents had chosen nonetheless to dwell on the fates of the other three, chirping, hopping from branch to branch, occasionally flying menacingly over the head of Lexi, who remained obdurate in the attention she was giving the baby bird on the ground, the bird terrified, squealing, looking up in the trees: "Mother, Father ... why??"

I was able to stealthfully scoop up poor Kevin and drop him into the compost bin before the boys found him. The second bird, at last harrassed to death despite our stern admonishings to the dog to stand down, was picked up by Zachary and brought into the house in the hope that Donna, a nurse, after all, could help him, but the free sway of his limp neck suggested otherwise.

The boys were insistent that we give him a decent burial, not toss him into the compost as I had suggested. "Would you do that to me," Zach remarked indignantly, "if I died? Throw me into the compost—"

Ian dug a hole in the dirt by the fence with the spade (Donna wondering: "What if he hits something—cables, a gas line—"). All the neighbor kids showed up for the service. I waited for Ian (surely it would be Ian) to start in with the invocation, picturing for some warped, godforsaken, terrible parent sort of reason the preacher from "Blazing Saddles"... Oh Lord, deliver onto Heaven this our cherished bird, whose life was brief, Hobbesian, really, in its final particulars ... 

I took the previously kind and decent dog for a long walk then, bumping into Andre, our neighbor, on the way. He said the cats had dispatched their birds, who also built in the same spot every year, so precise were their instincts. He tried putting a couple back into the safety of their nests, but they kept jumping back out. There were feathers all over the yard. Cats. What is one to do?

I stopped downtown for a beer, giving the bird who was still in the nest time, the one who was missing but not yet confirmed dead a chance. Or so I hoped. I didn't get home with Lexi until after dark. Mama and Papa Robin were once again chirping like mad. Back in her yard again, Lexi was rooting around in the spot where I'd earlier hid one of the birds. I told her to get away. She did, then went back. I finally went inside.

This morning, heading outside with my coffee, I saw another dead bird, on the brick padding not far from where Lexi had been rooting the night before. Mama and Papa Robin were still making noise though not as much. A kind of resignation, I suppose. I put the dead bird in the compost before the kids woke. I expected they would have a lot of questions when they woke up, but they didn't. "You're a bird murderer!" Zachary remarked, letting the dog inside and playing with her. Dogs will be dogs. What were we doing today? he wanted to know.

Snow, Disappointment, and George Saunders

It is the second or third day of Spring, depending on which person you ask, and a foot of snow is predicted for those of us living in The Republic. I don't know what it is about snow lately—if I've simply become Colorado-ized since my arrival in 1997 and therefore can't stand a moment of daylight without sun (my wife, from Nova Scotia, and I used to rejoice and dance around and other things on days when it rained; one gets tired of endless sun, as one probably does having a dog licking your face, loving you in their way, for your salt, regardless of what you may have done or not done to deserve it) without getting sullen and paralytic, or what—but let's just say it isn't helping. Normally, by now, I would have gone to the garage and grabbed a shovel and starting digging out. It wouldn't have mattered if it was still snowing so long as there was at least six inches of snow and I could say to myself: Better to scoop some now and have less to scoop later on. That is how a person who gets considerable sunlight on his skin almost every day, who has a good outlook here in The Republic, looks at things: do a little now and have less to do later.

But I don't have the energy. I'm not even sure I'll get to it today. I'm not sure I'll leave my study, where the fan is going, drowning out the new noise my one ear is making: not ringing anymore but more like the distant chanting of Zen monks if I was locked in someone's trunk listening to it, way off.

No big deal.

I could be at karate, sparring right now. It would almost certainly be a good thing considering how I feel, which is sort of the way you feel after you've, oh, I don't know, been involved in a situation you're pretty sure is hopelessly fucked up, but you've been involved in it so long that to admit it's as hopelessly fucked up as you have a pretty strong feeling it is is just too fucking depressing to face ...

But then, finally, comes the equivalent of a telegram from God, saying something like: This Situation You've Been Trying To Deal With For Longer Than You Can Bear To Remember Is As You Guessed Hopelessly Fucked Up Stop Worse Still All Your Efforts Haven't Amounted To A Hill Of Beans And Might Have Been Better Spent Shoveling Or Moving Piles Of Rocks From One Senseless Spot To Another Or Practically Anything Else Really Stop Please Gather Your Things And Leave Immediately Before You Go On And Waste Anymore Precious Time On Something Hopeless Stop

OOOHHHMMM OOOHHHHMMMM

At least I've got the good sense to sit down and write, yes? Write your way through it, as countless souls, themselves occasionally beset by the above, have counseled. And if that doesn't work there is always drugs. Or ECT ...

Or ... OR ... one can try George Saunders.

Specifically, his new collection of stories, Tenth of December. One can do this even if he is still working his way through another collection of stories, as well as book four of the entire Thomas Pynchon oeurve. On a day like this one, one can, and should, stop what one is doing and run to Saunders. One never knows, it might only take one story ...

The first story, entitled, "Victory Lap," seemed ironic enough. Just the kind of story, as Thomas Pynchon (who blurbs the collection, which is a bit like Christ appearing out of no where to validate someone's saintliness) remarks, "to get us through these times."

Which is good enough for me.

So I started reading. The story is told from three points of view, from the heads of 1) A pretty young girl "Three days shy of her fifteenth birthday" imagining (concurrent to italicized ballet commands) an assortment of "{special one[s]}" attempting to charm her (think: Simon in "American Idol" crossed with the girl in "The Nutcracker"), 2) Her neighbor, a boy of the same age, whose parents are crazy in the current helicopter-y, high-fuss, micro-manage-y fashion of ambitious, well-heeled, educated parents in our better communities, who has a litany of thoughts going through his mind, things to be done, and avoided, leading to a scrupulously concocted, utterly absurd reward system compliments of Mom and Dad, who love him love him love him, these thoughts punctuated by Tourette's-y blasts of swear word phraseology, one of my favorite being "crap-cunt shit-turd dick-in-the-ear butt-creamery." To these two POVs is added a third: 3) A guy dressed in the uniform of someone who reads the meter. A guy who looks like, the boy thinks, a "rooskie." A bad person, we get the feeling, with bad designs on the pretty girl, as we don't discover, for sure, until much later ...

And what will the boy who has been given mulitple "directives" by his sublimely, lovingly dictatorial mother and father do, when, after all, he isn't to be outside, on the deck, without shoes on, much less when strangers are in the neighborhood, he is to stay inside until they leave, that is what he is to do, and not mess in business that isn't his, after all, and yet this stranger has this lovely girl, his neighbor, by the wrist, a girl he used to play with when he was younger, who doesn't seem to think much of him now, or so he imagines, and is dragging her to his van, a van the Rooskie borrowed from a guy named Kenneth ...

Are you leaning in yet? I was, in spite of everything. A good story, told well, in not the usual way, whatever we might imagine that might be, can do that.

Get this: instead of saying the boy was too scared to move once the man saw him on the deck and warned that if he so much as moved he, the Rooskie in the meter-reader costume, would stab the girl with the knife he was holding (in this neighborhood where nothing "weird" ever happened), Saunders remarks, "Kyle's mouth was so spitless all he could do was make his mouth do the shape it normally did when saying Yes."

Not dry. Not parched. Spitless. It's not all in the [surprising] diction, but [surprising] diction sure can help. Funny helps, too. And Saunders is very funny. This story, believe it or not, about a girl getting dragged off like one of the girls in "Silence of the Lambs," is very funny, right when you need it to be. Humor at the swerve, when you least expect it. Pretty soon you've forgotten the sun isn't shining, that you have a foot of snow to shovel. You're feeling not all is hopeless.

I won't spoil it. You'll have to read the story to see how it turns out.

Do it if you'd like, if you must.

While I go out and shovel some snow.

Roth's Birthday, March Madness, and Iraq, Ten Years After a Big Mistake

I skied for the first time this season yesterday, a beautiful snow-grabbing, low-skid, sunny and not too windy day at Copper, went directly to my son's end of the season hockey banquet afterwards, drank a couple pints of Guinness, came home and popped two Advil PMs (not wanting to be too sore for karate at noon today), woke up at 6:00 AM, still in that soporific Advil PM stupor, made coffee and got to the 5th Grade Graduation meeting at the school at 7:30. There are over 100 kids in the fifth grade and there were about ten people at the meeting, about half of whom were teachers. I asked a couple of questions during the meeting and found out quickly that even after a cup of coffee my head and mouth weren't working well together yet. I was still in my Advil PM stupor. On the other hand, my ear isn't ringing so badly today ... not yet, at least.

It's Philip Roth's birthday to today. There's a video of him being interviewed, then reading a short, depressing passage from The Dying Animal, on PBS. This was picked up by The Daily Beast, a news outlet I follow on Twitter (something I do in lieu of reading a daily newspaper, so I don't feel so fucking old). A lot of people find Roth's obsession and utter lack of sentimentality with getting older/old to be depressing. And I suppose it is. But I prefer it over being lied to. There's too much in our society that smacks of adults trying to compensate for having their illusions shattered when they discovered that Santa didn't actually bring the toys on Christmas Eve, that the Tooth Fairy didn't actually put the money under the pillow. The list goes on. It is said that we need these comforts, but I much prefer the comfort of looking to another human being and saying, What a fucking load of shit, and having them smile ironically and nod. I prefer that over someone telling me that everything happens for a reason (Yeah? And what might that reason be?), that God doesn't give us anything we can't handle (thus the set up for their fellow human beings to judge them, when it turns out they can't quite handle what God has given them, be it a ride in a train car to Auschwitz, seeing their baby tossed in the air and impaled on the end of a bayonet, not having any legs anymore due to a decision made ten years ago by a guy—several of them, actually, who dodged their opportunity to shoot and get shot at when the stupid war being fought at the time was in Vietnam—who is in Texas now, peacefully painting pictures of his dog while the Secret Service keeps watch, while the VA stays busy).

Ahhhh, but we don't need to hear a lot of glowering despairing vitriole on this fine morning, do we? It's the lingering effects of the Advil PM. Luckily, I have karate in an hour. I'll feel better after karate. I generally do. Ten years ago I was in Kauai with my family. I went there depressed, I came back depressed. I left saying, "They're going to invade Iraq while we're gone, and it'll be over before we get back. Still, it's going to be a disaster ... " Bill Clinton had been on Letterman a few days earlier. He said he'd be amazed if the military operation took more than six days. I figured it would take maybe three or four. That all the worry about that piece was a joke. I'd been meeting with a friend on Fridays and he and I would talk about it over a beer. Despite the revisionist talk that no one could have known the mess that was to come from this, there were countless articles written on why invading Iraq was a very bad idea. My friend and I both lamented ... that while the invading part would be quick, the occupation would be problematic. Insurgents coming out of the woodwork, that sort of thing. It seemed obvious to us, and we weren't geniuses. We weren't even wonks. Still, after the quick success of Desert Storm in 1991, not many Democrats, particularly the ones hoping to become president in 2004, wanted to look soft on war. And so, helping out a bunch of neocon nuts, at least three of whom were previous draft dodgers, were the future Democratic hopefuls: Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and of course the charismatic populist with the big house and perfect hair John Edwards. This after a big tax cut two years earlier that no one of consequence really fought, after we'd briefly had a surplus in our fiscal year budget. Apparently no one saw the expense coming, starting in 2011, of retiring the Baby Boom Generation. No, this was an opportunity, rather, to starve the beast, to give everyone a three hundred dollar check.

And now we're bankrupt. (Craig, Craig, you're so negative. You shouldn't take Advil PM. Have you looked into Zoloft? Zoloft happens for a reason. It's what God has given us, along with a lot of other options, more options than breakfast cereal, really, to get through what he has given us. And thanks to the Bush-Era prescription drug plan that came on the heels of a tax cut and two wars and the TSA getting created to keep us safe of planes and still allow us pocket knives and matches, you'll be able to stay smiling well into your Golden Years, for pennies on the dollar, starting when you're 65, which isn't that far away for you anymore ... Can you hear this? Or is your ear still ringing?)

You thought when I said March Madness, that I was talking about college basketball, yes? Well, not entirely as it turns out.

Obama's going with Indiana over Louisville. I saw that on Twitter, too. I saw on FaceBook that the new Pope Francis has Georgetown, Gonzaga, Creighton, and one other one ... maybe Seton Hall (they're always in there, right) in his Top Four. Big money on it, I'm told. I like this guy already. And (this is no shit, I'm told), he can tango. The man used to dance when he was younger. I heard this at the hockey banquet last night, from a tango aficionado. John the 23rd brought native languages to the Mass; perhaps Francis will bring the tango.

Don't get me started on all this fuss over Nancy and Joe taking communion. I'm more concerned about the pederasts taking communion (Everything happens for a reason, my child, some things again and again ... God doesn't give us anything we can't handle, and if you breathe a word to anyone about any of this, I will deny it, and they will think you are crazy, and that I am right ... One day I will pray for you, that you will overcome your bitterness, I will pray that you, my accuser, my cross to bear, will be forgiven ... ).

Be careful with that Advil PM. It's not what the times call for, I fear ...

Get thee to karate!!

Have a nice day!

The Monday Warm-up

Now that my son's hockey season is over, that the other's musical, "Suessical," is through, that St. Patrick's Day is finished, that I am back from Chicago, and the AWP in Boston, that I have clean jeans and underwear and socks for the week, a ski trip planned for tomorrow, four new debit cards to register and be asked afterwards if I'd like to take a few minutes to do a follow-up survey, to then get the auto-pays switched from the old debit cards to the new debit cards, be asked again if I'd mind taking a few minutes to take a follow-up survey ...

Now that the puppy has been spayed and must be kept calm, no need to walk her, in fact don't walk her, keep her calm, the vet said, here are some pills to keep her calm, pills that won't otherwise hurt her while her stapled up incision heals and she stumbles around in slightly less of a stooper with each passing day since she's getting used to the pills—Puppy's Little Helper, Valley of the Dogs—but mostly sleeps like Keith Richards splayed out face down on the bed in the hotel room, in that photo Annie Leibowitz took way back ...

Now that I've got the fan on for background noise so I can't hear my ear that keeps ringing and has been for two weeks, the ear that is on the same side that my wife (who might have been a good opera singer had she applied herself) sits in the car on long trips, that my son who inherited her vocal chords sits fighting with his brother on long trips, the son who talks as though he has buds in his ears with Metallica playing so fucking loud he can't hear himself and thus imagines he needs to talk Really Loud, at the dinner table for instance, where he sits on the side of my ringing ear, except he doesn't have buds in his ears, he can hear fine, we know it! the doctor tells us every year and I joke that ha ha ha so you can hear me when I say do this, do that, will you please Be Quiet!! Yes, he can hear just fine. It is I, his fifty-something-year-old father who has the chronic ringing in his ear, who remembers his own dad warning him that if I didn't quit listening to Emerson Lake & Palmer at two o'clock on the dial on the stereo he wouldn't be able to hear himself piss by the time he was twenty-five—and yet, here I am, nearly thirty years later, and I can still hear myself piss, even with the fan on! You'd think I'd feel pretty good about that, beating the odds for so long. Be a good American and focus on the positive. Be glad you don't have money in the bank in Cyprus. That you aren't a woman who loves shoes living in North Korea. Rejoice! You're in your fifties, man, and you can still hear yourself piss! 

With the fan on, the ringing muted, Janacek playing like at the start of Murakami's 1Q84 now that my children are off to school and my wife is off to work and the puppy is out cold on pills after her surgery last Thursday ... what is stopping me from Radically Wasting Time?

Writing. Sitting down. Doing it.

Right after another cup of coffee ...

Oscar Predictions

First of all, there may be some spoilers in here if you haven't yet seen the movies being discussed, so be forewarned. Second, I haven't bothered to read today's New York Times, or looked over my Twitter feeds. More importantly, I haven't seen all of the movies up for consideration, but, as with politics, I'm guessing it won't matter.

Here we go:

Best Picture: "Lincoln" is going to win, and probably should. This in spite of the fact that Stephen Spielberg directed it. The Academy, for reasons that aren't completely clear, has, in the past, had a problem with Spielberg—recall, among other lesser slights ("AI", "ET", the list goes on), the year 1999, when "Saving Private Ryan" got edged out by a late-surging "Shakespeare in Love"—but there is no surging outlier this year, at least not one I'm aware of, but we'll see. "Les Miserables" has its fans, but not enough of them. "Argo" and "Zero Dark Thirty" are both very good (if not excellent), but of a similar piece: movies that are "based on actual events," actual events that happened in more or less the same part of the world, and star the CIA; neither Ben Affleck nor Kathryn Bigelow (who won a couple of years back, over her ex-husband, James Cameron, for "The Hurt Locker") got a nomination for Best Director; neither is going to win Best Picture. "Django Unchained," granted, deals with slavery, too, and may be the best Tarantino movie since "Pulp Fiction," but it is hardly a sibling/vote-dilutor to "Lincoln" and otherwise has too much Tarantino-ish, bug-eyed, nutcase violence in it, even for this country. "Silver Linings Playbook" is essentially a screwball comedy, one that is dramatically forced in parts, that doesn't cohere particularly well. In dealing with its purported theme of mental illness, it doesn't unnerve us, or stray too far from crowd-pleasing notions; nonetheless, it was a lot of  fun, and the performances, Cooper's ranking behind Lawrence's, Deniro's, and Jacki Weaver's, were superb. If there is a movie that stands a chance of beating out "Lincoln" in an upset, one that would demonstrate the Academy's new insistence on happy endings in these, our difficult times, it might be this one, but I wouldn't put money on it. "Amour" is reportedly excellent, and I'm actually coping fairly well with the fact that I haven't seen it yet; it is also up for Best Foreign Picture, and will probably take that category. "Beasts of the Southern Wild" and "Life of Pi" are both very good, I'm told, but they won't win. "Lincoln" is going to win.

Actor in a Leading Role: Daniel Day-Lewis. If you saw "Lincoln" you know why. Joaquin Phoenix, whom the Golden Globes forgot about, is the darkhorse in this category. But his unbelievable performance will almost certainly, again, get beat out by another: last time it was his Johnny Cash getting beat out by Philip Seymour Hoffman's "Capote." This time, however (unlike "Ring of Fire"), hardly anyone has seen "The Master," and of those who did, few knew what to make of it, since, among other aspects of its artistry, it doesn't play to popular themes in the way that, say, Silver Linings does. Anderson isn't as weird as Malick, but he's moving in that direction. I liked Denzel in "Flight," but it isn't a performance to knock out Day-Lewis's, or Phoenix's. Hugh Jackman and Bradley Cooper might get votes, but they mostly round out the field.

Actress in a Leading Role: Jennifer Lawrence, from "Silver Linings Playbook," following an incredible, completely different role in "A Winter's Tale." A remarkable actress. Everyone else in the category was arguably excellent, but all but Jessica Chastain were in movies that few saw, and Jessica Chastain wasn't as excellent (nor did she wiggle her ass as well) as Jennifer Lawrence was (did) in a movie that could have easily been a mess without her.

Actor in a Supporting Role: This is tougher, especially if you saw all the performances. I'm going with the obvious: Tommy Lee Jones. In a role more nuanced than meets the eye, or the ear (it isn't every actor who could carry off that kind of vaulted, period diction and make it both enjoyable and memorable to adults and 11-year-olds like mine. Alan Arkin was excellent counterpoint in a movie that might have otherwise been too serious for a larger audience, but has won recently, for a performance that had more meat. DeNiro and Hoffman, actors' actors, helped out their pictures considerably, but it is Christoph Waltz, if "Lincoln" doesn't sweep, who stands the best chance of upsetting in this category.

Actress in a Supporting Role: Hmmmmm ... I haven't seen Anne Hathaway in "Les Miserables" though I'm not sure the Academy wants to chance letting her up on stage to prattle on like she did at the Golden Globes. Nor have I seen Helen Hunt in "The Sessions" though I heard she looks pretty hot naked, for someone in her forties. Amy Adams should probably win for her excellent work alongside Phoenix and Hoffman, in "The Master," but I'm skeptical. Sally Field also did fine work as Mary Todd Lincoln. Jacki Weaver's nomination shows you that the Academy is paying attention more than you sometimes think. This is my long-shot pick: Jacki Weaver.

Animated Feature: I liked "Frankenweenie." Then again, I liked "Dark Shadows." Don't be surprised, however, if "Brave" wins.

Cinematography: "Lincoln," I'm guessing, based on the sweep model. "The Master" should have gotten a nomination in this category.

Costume Design: How about ... "Les Miserables."

Directing: "Lincoln," and Spielberg, unless the Academy wants to stick it to Spielberg a little (the ending, after the excellent surprise with Jones and the woman from Law & Order, featured a bit too much of that treacly quality many object to). "Amour," and Michael Haneke, could upset.

Documentary Feature: I'm going with the OTC/Clateman feature "Searching for Sugarman," the only one in the category I've seen. Don't have a clue about the rest.

Nor do I have a clue about Documentary Shorts ...

Film Editing: "Lincoln," as I've remarked, had too fat of a coda; Silver Linings has no business in the category ... oddly, I think either "Argo" or "Zero Dark Thirty" wins here. "Zero Dark Thirty."

Foreign Language Film: "Amour" (though I haven't seen any of the rest).

Makeup and Hairstyling: "Les Miserables" (particularly for Anne Hathaway's look).

Musical score and Original Song: I don't have a clue/Can't remember/Have never gotten over Celine Dion winning for that song in "Titanic"...

Shorts: No idea

Sound editing/mixing: "Zero Dark Thirty" ... in the former (I have never understood the difference between the two) and "Argo" in the latter.

Visual Effects: "Marvel's The Avengers."

Adapted Screenplay: "Argo." An imaginative, crisp, elementally balanced treatment of something that actually happened in a more boring, less dramatic way.

Original Screenplay: My only opportunity to vote for a movie that should have had more nominations: Wes Anderson's "Moonrise Kingdom."

Have a good night. Don't stay up too late!