The Visible Man

MichaelRHerman Michael R Herman
Going to read @CKlosterman's new book #Visible Man today in a day. Waiting for @magersandquinn to open at 10. Will live tweet w/ pg. #s.

MichaelRHerman Michael R Herman
And, yes, I will spoiler alert everything. I know you're all waiting to read it yourselves.
4 Oct

MichaelRHerman Michael R Herman
Leaving the house to pick up coffee (prepared), coffee (unprepared) and #VisibleMan.
4 Oct

MichaelRHerman Michael R Herman
#VisibleMan #spoileralert pg 1 I'm starting the novel with no previous notions of what it is about other than it's a @CKlosterman book.
4 Oct

MichaelRHerman Michael R Herman
#VisibleMan #spoileralert pg 2 Fiction v. Non-fiction. Veracity. Truth?
4 Oct

MichaelRHerman Michael R Herman
#VisibleMan #spoileralert pg 5 Unreliable narrator?
4 Oct

MichaelRHerman Michael R Herman
#VisibleMan #spoileralert pg 9 Has anyone tried e-mailing thevickster@gmail.com? Trying. Didn't immed. bounce back.
4 Oct

MichaelRHerman Michael R Herman
#VisibleMan #spoileralert pg 13 George Harrison "Be Here Now" youtube.com/watch?v=He2yrz…
4 Oct

MichaelRHerman Michael R Herman
#VisibleMan #spoileralert pg 20 "his pseudologia fantastica [footnote: This is more commonly referred to a pathological lying.]"
4 Oct

MichaelRHerman Michael R Herman
#VisibleMan #spoileralert pg 21 Book misuses Heisenberg Uncertainty in the usual way. Can't know bc of a mechanical reason, not theoretical.
4 Oct

MichaelRHerman Michael R Herman
#VisibleMan #spoileralert pg 22 Guilt vs sensation of guilt. Objective vs. subjective.
4 Oct

MichaelRHerman Michael R Herman
#VisibleMan #spoileralert This book so far prompted me to look up and listen to The Jayhawks' "Blue" online.
4 Oct

MichaelRHerman Michael R Herman
#VisibleMan #spoileralert pg 31 "Tall people are naturally confident. History has proven this- Alexander, Wilt Chamberlain, Gisele."
4 Oct

MichaelRHerman Michael R Herman
#VisibleMan #spoileralert pg 46 Not trusting that the type of people who read his books would also be able to hang w/ theoretical ideas?
4 Oct

MichaelRHerman Michael R Herman
#VisibleMan #spoileralert pg 57 Ha! Ha, ha, ha. Small admission; I'd totally do that.
4 Oct

MichaelRHerman Michael R Herman
#VisibleMan #spoileralert pg 59 Another small admission; I do that too.
4 Oct

MichaelRHerman Michael R Herman
#VisibleMan #spoileralert pg 62 I've actually watched that Yao Ming documentary and have a hilarious & heart-touching story about it.
4 Oct

MichaelRHerman Michael R Herman
#VisibleMan #spoileralert pg 83 "He wasn't there, and then he wasn't there."
4 Oct

MichaelRHerman Michael R Herman
#VisibleMan #spoileralert pg 87 Now the book can start for real. Everything before this has been pretext, scene-setting. Now comes the book.
4 Oct

MichaelRHerman Michael R Herman
#VisibleMan #spoileralert pg 88 The narrative seems H.G. Wells until I thought about it. Its actually Henry James "Turn Of The Screw"-esque.
4 Oct

MichaelRHerman Michael R Herman
#VisibleMan #spoileralert pg 92 I find the word "she-wolf" funny.
4 Oct

MichaelRHerman Michael R Herman
#VisibleMan #spoileralert pg 100 Had an experience like this recently w/ my GF. Well, all the details are different. But it's close feeling.
4 Oct

MichaelRHerman Michael R Herman
#VisibleMan #spoileralert pg 101 Daniel Johnston - The Beatles youtube.com/watch?v=YbBXkF…
4 Oct

MichaelRHerman Michael R Herman
#VisibleMan #spoileralert pg 103 "agency"
4 Oct

MichaelRHerman Michael R Herman
#VisibleMan #spoileralert pg 105 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Deck…
4 Oct

MichaelRHerman Michael R Herman
#VisibleMan #spoileralert pg 105 Also, Mary Decker iconicphotos.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/davidb…
4 Oct

MichaelRHerman Michael R Herman
#VisibleMan #spoileralert pg 114 I wonder what McLuhan would think of "The process was always the problem."
4 Oct

MichaelRHerman Michael R Herman
#VisibleMan #spoileralert pg 121 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarahumara
4 Oct

MichaelRHerman Michael R Herman
#VisibleMan #spoileralert pg 146 Only kind of aware of what's going on. But this feels like the peak of the book coming up.
4 Oct

MichaelRHerman Michael R Herman
#VisibleMan #spoileralert pg 131 "It's like trying to using math to figure out history." I wonder what Bill James would think of that.
4 Oct

MichaelRHerman Michael R Herman
#VisibleMan #spoileralert pg 147 A little "There Will Be Blood" love has me turning on the soundtrack.
4 Oct

MichaelRHerman Michael R Herman
#VisibleMan #spoileralert pg 134 Made me think of edped.tumblr.com/post/753554181…
4 Oct

MichaelRHerman Michael R Herman
#NowPlaying There Will Be Blood – Prospectors Arrive open.spotify.com/track/5gHu56UX…
4 Oct

MichaelRHerman Michael R Herman
#VisibleMan #spoileralert pg 160 "agency"
4 Oct

MichaelRHerman Michael R Herman
#VisibleMan #spoileralert pg 161 Jooky MaGoo is a real band. myspace.com/pistolwhipoffi…
4 Oct

MichaelRHerman Michael R Herman
#VisibleMan #spoileralert pg 167 Oh, hell no.
4 Oct

MichaelRHerman Michael R Herman
#VisibleMan #spoileralert pg 169 Reading this book thinking of WIM's book "Faking It". Chuck and I must read the same books. #humblebrag
4 Oct

MichaelRHerman Michael R Herman
#VisibleMan #spoileralert pg 179 This is like the personal propaganda from "I heart Huckabees".
4 Oct

MichaelRHerman Michael R Herman
#VisibleMan #spoileralert pg 191 I could've thought this up vs. I did think this new
4 Oct

MichaelRHerman Michael R Herman
#VisibleMan #spoileralert pg 203 Recondite is the perfect word there. merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rec…
4 Oct

MichaelRHerman Michael R Herman
#VisibleMan #spoileralert pg 224 The temptation must've been to leave things vague. To never resolve it. But this is fiction.
4 Oct

MichaelRHerman Michael R Herman
#VisibleMan #spoileralert pg 230 Finished. I liked it a lot. Looking at the book as a whole, it feels like a book about US involvement in...
4 Oct

MichaelRHerman Michael R Herman
#VisibleMan #spoileralert pg 230 ...torture and rendition. Reading too much into it? Yes, probably. But it feels like it.
4 Oct

MichaelRHerman Michael R Herman
#VisibleMan #spoileralert pg 230 Also, 1st thing I learned on 1st day of college in Shakespeare class: Appearances can be deceiving.
4 Oct

MichaelRHerman Michael R Herman
An excellent book. Feel like I'll be thinking of it for a while. #VisibleMan
4 Oct

CKlosterman Chuck Klosterman
@MichaelRHerman Thanks, man. Really glad you liked the book & did this experiment. It was extremely, extremely flattering.
4 Oct

My Reading List

A friend asked for my reading list. This was the result. Get on GoodReads and you'll get an e-mail every I add or finish a book. Starting with January '09...

Read

No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff
Flesh and Blood by Michael Cunningham
The Genocides by Thomas Disch
Kafka On the Shore by Haruki Murakami
The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis
Black Hole by Charles Burns
People Are Unappealing: Even Me by Sara Barron
Rock, Paper, Scissors: Game Theory in Everyday Life by Len Fisher
The Ghost Map... by Steven Johnson
Bonk by Mary Roach
My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientists Personal Journey by Jill Bolte Taylor
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
The Black Hole War... by Leonard Susskind
Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman!... by Richard Feynman
13 Things That Don't Make Sense by Michael Brooks
Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell
Alex and Me... by Irene Pepperberg
Eating the Dinosaur by Chuck Klosterman
How Proust Can Change Your Life... by Alain de Botton
The Book of Basketball... by Bill Simmons
The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2009 edited by Dave Eggers
City of Thieves by David Benioff
Inventory... by The Writers of The Onion
How To Talk About Books You Haven't Read by Pierre Bayard
Why God Won't Go Away... by Andrew Newberg
Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit by Daniel Quinn
The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly
Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson
How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer
Let The Great World Spin by Colum McCann
Pleasurable Kingdom by Jonathan Balcombe
Big Machine by Victor LaVelle
Professor Stewart's Cupboard of Mathematical Curiosities by Ian Stewart

Reading

Twitterature by Alexander Aciman
Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder
The Magicians by Lev Grossman
Avoid Boring People... by James D. Watson
News, Nudity, Nonsense: The Best of Vice Magazine Vol. 2 (2003-2008)

To Read

The Biology of Belief... by Bruce Lipton
Slapstick by Kurt Vonnegut
Speaker for The Dead by Orson Scott Card
House of Tomorrow by Peter Bognanni
Aristotle and Aardvark Go To Washington... by Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein
The Tall Book by Arianne Cohen
Wigfield by Amy Sedaris, Stephen Colbert and Paulo Dinello
The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
Professor Stewart's Hoard of Mathematical Treasures by Ian Stewart
Second Nature by Jonathan Blacombe
The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes
Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
Supermob by Gus Russo
The Collected What If... edited Robert Cowley

Come Out On Sunday

This weekend I will be marching in the Minneapolis Gay Pride Parade. I will be doing so as a member of the Orono High School Gay/Straight Alliance Reunion. The parade kicks off at 11 am and follows Hennepin Ave from 3rd St S to Loring Park. If that's all the convincing you need to come to Downtown Minneapolis on Sunday morning, wave as we walk by and we'll wave back.

http://www.tcpride.org/pride_events/2009_Parade_Location.php

Now for a further explanation. Thirteen years ago, the world was a different place for gay and gay-friendly kids. At the time there was no gay marriage, there was no Lawrence V. Texas and there was a need for an organization which supported kids who were gay or had gay friends. From that need sprung the Orono High School Gay/Straight Alliance.

The purpose of the OHS GSA was to create understanding and acceptance where the students already were. The cliche of the closed small town which saw the world in one way and everyone who didn't see it that way was destined to leave wasn't true about our community. For a high school which had tremendous programs in art, band, newspaper, choir, theater and a diversity of sports, this was a vibrant community which embraced its kids and their accomplishments. The OHS GSA felt that should extend to all of the community's kids including those who were gay.

Now it is 2009 and gay rights have advanced by leaps and bounds in the last decade. There are six US states which will perform gay marriages, Lawrence V. Texas struck down anti-sodomy laws and there is still a need for an organization which supports kids who are gay or have gay friends. Sadly there no longer is a Gay/Straight Alliance at Orono High School. The group never received official recognition from the school or school district and folded once those who were involved graduated.

That's why we're asking for your support. We are looking to you, our vibrant community, to simply show up. Those who are against gay rights believe they represent a silent majority. They believe they are "saying what no one else will say" or "standing up for what everyone else wants but won't admit it." This is not true.

If there was a silent majority, then support for gay rights would not be helping people get elected. If they were "saying what no one else will say", then the gay rights movement would be shrinking, not growing. If they were "standing up for what everyone else wants but won't admit", there wouldn't be a Pride Parade.

This Sunday The OHS GSA is having a reunion. There are a few of us who have contributed our talents, our time and a little bit of money. It's been frantic at times but the pieces are coming together. If you are an OHS alum and you'd like to march with us, please contact me, Ariel Dumas or Thom White directly. We have a t-shirt for you.

But in the end we are only asking for the smallest of measures. Please come out and support us on Sunday morning. Go to the early service of church or take your morning run an hour earlier. Then find a patch of pavement on Hennepin Ave where you can see. When we come walking past with our banner and Spartan helmets, wave to us. Wave to us and be counted as a member of a community who supports and is proud of its kids. All of them.

R.I.P. Karen Erdmann

Thirty By Thirty #2 - Read A Murakami Book

(It's not that I'm falling behind. It's that most of the things I want to do are more conducive to good weather and full employment. What I'm falling behind on is documenting.)

I've recently been thinking about who my favorite authors are and I'm coming to the realization they are almost all authors who are my contemporaries. Not necessarily my peers as they are usually older than me and most definitely more accomplished than me but my contemporaries because they are writing about now. If I had to name my five favorite authors three of them [1] would be writers who are producing excellent work right now while there are many more [2] who I hold a great deal of respect.

I find this to be a thrilling realization. Part of this may be passing beyond the saturation point [3] where the canon has revealed the majority of what it's going to or maybe it's because the level of access to writing is just higher right now [4]. More likely though is the simplest explanation. Right now is just a really good time for literature.

Case in point is the Japanese author Haruki Murakami. Often praised as one of the great post-modern authors and perhaps the greatest author Japan has produced since the war, Murakami has written 12 novels since 1979. Still his 2002 book "Kafka On The Shore" (English Translation 2005) stands amongst his greatest work. He's not slowing down and he's not resting on his laurels.

"Kafka" details the travel stories of two men in Japan with possibly intertwining stories. Murakami uses dream sequences, the supernatural and American advertising figures to suggest a world which isn't real. Which in the end is true. It's a fiction book detailing the lives of fictional characters.

What was so amazing about the book is how the suggestion of unreality in the fictional world pointed back at the reality of the world around you the reader. Murakami may have a character who wears a white suit and a small goatee named Colonel Sanders. He also has his characters taking naps, preparing food and using the bathroom. With these little anchors linking his world back to the real world, he suggest the reader take a deeper awareness of their own life.

Part of the idea behind Thirty By Thirty is to experience new things like reading an author I had not before. It's also about doing things which remind me to be aware of my own life. For that reason I am glad not only to have read "Kafka On the Shore" but also to be living in an era with a wealth of literature.

[1] Klosterman, Gladwell and Simmons
[4] Chang, Pollack, Hornby, Sedaris, Ruiz-Zafon, Martel, Jacobs, Moore, July, Auster, Azzerad, Thompson, Roumeiu, Bendis, Mack, Johns, Morrison

OMFG!!1!1! ITZ TEH WINDCHHILZ!1!!1!

I don't believe in the wind chill factor. Don't get me wrong. I do believe it exists. I'm merely stating its importance is over-stated. Its importance is in making pedestrian numbers sound SCARY!!!

Do you ever walk out the door when it's 40 degrees out, feel a 5 mph breeze and think "Man, it feels like it's 36 degrees today." NO! Because noone cares at that temperature. Even if the wind is whisking by at 60 mph, the windchill factor is still only 25 degrees. You'd be more concerned about how a tropical storm got to the Upper Midwest in the middle of January than how cold it feels like outside. It's even more meaningless when you get further down the scale. Can any of us really tell the difference between -10 degrees and -28?

But that's what gets the fonking headlines. A negative -10 degree temperature is bad. You wouldn't want to be standing around outside for too long when the mercury drops that low. But add a 10 mph wind and suddenly IT'S -28 WINDCHILL!!! THAT SOUNDS ALMOST THREE TIMES WORSE!!! CAN YOU FONKING BELIEVE WE LIVE SOMEWHERE IT "FEELS" LIKE -28 DEGREES OUT?!?!?

Take a step back for just a second. This is the methodology of how you determine wind chill. Wind chill is the heat transfer on a bare face walking into the wind at 3 mph. Sooo basically you can mitigate the effects of wind chill by not having exposed skin and/or not standing in the wind. Either this strikes you as common sense or you're a fool.

Here's what wind chill is expressing. Your body radiates heat. That heat stays close to your body as the energy required to diffuse with the air around you is quickly exhausted. The wind comes along to blow that heat away from your body. When it does, the air surrounding you is made colder. So instead of being 5 degrees mitigated by this layer of heat near your skin, it is 5 degrees next to your skin. (Ludo, how are my physics?)

So what you can do is trap this warm air near your skin. If the wind can't blow it away, then it will continue to shield you from the cold. You can either wear layers or a hat or a scarf or a less permeable jacket. Sounds like something Mom told you years ago, right?

Wind chill is, at best, a factor of inconvenience and discomfort. Wind chill won't make your car harder to start in the morning (your car doesn't naturally radiate heat) or cause frostbite (the cold itself has that locked down). It just means you may need to plan better about what you wear and how much exposure you get to the elements.

It's true. It is it's cold outside. It's January and we live in the middle of the continent north of the 40th parallel. So stay inside and while you're at it invite me over. I'll brave the cold because I'm well-prepared and don't believe in the windchill.

P.S. For those of you who care, here's the formula for calculating wind chill.


where Twc (wind chill) and Ta (actual temp) are measured in °F, and V (wind velocity) in mph.

Oh, Eight Songs

I was combing through the last year in music and I'm going to do something a little different. The thing to do usually is to make a list of the year's best albums. But let's be honest. Not only are you unlikely to go out and buy those albums, most people don't even consume music via the album anymore. It's all about single songs.

So these are eight songs I chose to represent the music which turned me on in the last year. These were bands and/or songs a regular person wouldn't have stumbled into just by listening to the radio. (Sorry Kanye and Coldplay.) At the same time I also wanted to highlight music that most people could enjoy too. (Sorry Battles and TV On The Radio.) Most of all though these were eight songs I listed to often during the year. When I think back on 2008, these songs will be the soundtrack.

And just for added difficulty, let's make them appear in the same slot as they do on the album from which they come (our first song is first on its respective album, the second song comes second on its album, etc.) and do it in under thirty minutes.

1.) Colin Meloy "Devil's Elbow" - When I think of 2008, I will think of being in Chicago. When I think of being in Chicago, I will think of three things. The first one is obvious. The second is the good times. The third will be riding the train. I rode the CTA everywhere and on the nights when I didn't have a companion I was plugged into my MP3 player.

Colin Meloy's live solo album got a lot of spins on my way to work, going to baseball games, going out to shows and most often when I was going home. I will hear this song or any from this album and forever think of the Clark and Division stop, the stretch between Sheridan and Howard and standing at Main in the morning. Add in that it's a great song and "Devil's Elbow" spells 2008.

2.) Vampire Weekend "Oxford Comma" - Have you ever heard a buzz band that everyone seems to love and they really are that great? It's not hype. It's actually music journalism fulfilling its purpose and bringing good music to light. I had a few of those this year.

Vampire Weekend was one of them. Maybe it's because all of my musical taste is calibrated to The Clash but I always love music that isn't familiar. I like weird sounds and sounds that are presented in a different way than I've heard. Being able to do that within a three minute pop song though is a real feat.

There's something that sounds very close to Jamaican reggae about Vampire Weekend's music. Their influences are actually West African and I think that's something Joe Strummer would be way into if he were still alive. I think that because it's stuff I'm way into myself.

3.) Kings of Leon "Sex On Fire" - One of the great quotes I like to pull from my life is by Gregg Allman. He was talking about the term "Southern rock." He said (and I'm paraphrasing) "All rock comes from The South. So saying 'Southern rock' is a little bit like saying 'rock rock'." Normally when we think of music that rocks, we think of the music which followed and drew influence Led Zepplin with shredding guitars, bombastic drums and soaring vocals. Allman is right though. Even the almighty Zepplin sound draws its roots in The South.

That would mean the purest form of rock made today is the "rock rock" being made by bands like My Morning Jacket and Kings of Leon. I mean what's more sex and drugs and rock and roll than a song called "Sex on Fire"? All the more to the point when you dive into the lyrics about the visceral and raw elements of making sweet love. Wrap it all up in a melody and a beat that makes you want to drive very fast down the open road and you'll be wrapping yourself in the American flag in no time.

4.) MGMT "Electric Feel" - MGMT was another buzz band that lived up to their billing. A lot of music played on synthesizers ends up sounding like its been run through a computer and filtered into bleak dystopia. It's just what happened because Bowie and Eno and their ilk were the first guys to get there and start using these new tools and that's the type of music they make.

What makes MGMT so weird and interesting is they make music about a psychedelic world without technology. They present a conundrum when they use a syntesizer to sound like a "4000 year old Peruvian flute" as Andrew VanWyngarden says in the behind the scenes video to this song. For forever the idea of more authentic and earthy music is that which is played on instruments made of wood. (See: any coffee shop this Friday or Saturday) Yet here are these two guys working with The Flaming Lips' producer to make a song about a girl from The Amazon who can create electricity from her hands. It's the type of music which appeals to your head, your heart and of course your ears.

5.) Broken Social Scene "Churches Under The Stairs" - When I think about concerts I saw this last year I'll think of the peak performances. From Pitchfork Music Festival to Lollapalooza to Rocktober to a set of shows on either side of Snelling on University to a few more great shows at First Ave, I saw a lot of really great live music this year.

Broken Social Scene contributed a large part of that great live music. I saw them not once, not twice but three times this year and each time my love for them deepened even further. Each concert was like a date. On the first date at Lollapalooza I got a quick brush-up on their sound and an introduction to some of the songs I didn't know. The second date later that evening at The Metro was confirmation that first blush wasn't a misread on my part. Then by the excellent concert of a third date at First Ave during Rocktober I had made my decision and I was wearing my good underwear. I fell for this band the way you're supposed to; by seeing them in their peak moment and being rewarded as you do.

6.) Flobots "Handlebars" - This song gives me an opportunity to give shoutouts and for wildly different reasons. First I have to shoutout Willibuster, Ghost and Emily Osby. When I was visiting home during August, we were hanging out with one of Will's high school friends and the night devolved into what most parties usually do with all of us sitting around looking up stuff on YouTube. It was even Will himself who pulled up the video for this song and every time I hear this song or watch the video I think of chilling with those three.

The other person I get to shoutout is K10. Eight years younger than me and full of opinions, K10 is more than willing to tell me my musical taste sucks and that I've gone soft in my older age. Which is exactly the thing I love about him. Ever said that if you had the opportunity to talk to yourself at a younger age you'd probably just argue about stuff? I don't have to imagine what that would be like to argue music with my younger self because of this guy. Except my younger self really likes The Flobots. "As iron sharpens iron, so a man sharpens his friend."

Additional shoutouts for additional and different reasons to Dan, Patrick, Noha, Luke, Pete, Peder, Jim, Abby, Stensby, Christian, Nicky, SayRock Brian, Ed, TK and all the people that were at Doomtree Blowout. Thanks for making "going to shows" the new black in '08. Let's go get them swimming pools in '09.

7.) The Black Kids "I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend To Dance With You" - Guess "What?". Yet another buzz band that lived up to their billing was The Black Kids. I got this CD during the month I was subletting in Evanston and it was just a matter of having heard about them a lot on the periphery and finally taking the whole CD plunge. It really is amazing doing that worked out so well for me this year.

Okay, what do The Black Kids sound like? It's like The Cure was brought to the 21st Century and decided to write in the "Just Like Heaven" mode. That mournful quality is still there as are the crazy good synth lines. The difference is Robert Smith is playing with The Revolution and that means really danceable sped-up songs underneath the heartache and loss. It literally is the type of music which can be called 1980s retro and not have that be a derisive term.

8.) The Hold Steady "Stay Positive" - Is there any greater summation of the year of Our Lord two thousand and eight than "You gotta stay positive!"? Yeah, things went into the trash this year. At the same time a new era is dawning. Things are always darkest before the dawn and sometimes things are so bad the only place we have to go is up. In 2008, we all had to stay positive or else we'd lose our minds. But by staying positive we'll see ourselves through.

Now pour that over the type of big anthemic hooks that Springsteen and U2 only stumble upon anymore and you have a song you actually can listen to and come out feeling positive and part of something larger. The song isn't suggesting that we stay positive and then leaving us to figure out how to do that. It is infused with the raw energy and mass needed to sustain and to even see the way through to thriving. It doesn't move you in the usual way of touching your heart. It should swell in you the defiant walking-into-the-wind attitude needed to tough things out. Because, as I said before, this year more than ever you gotta stay positive.

The Life of Pi

I often refer to Milan Kundera's "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" as the best book I ever read. My favorite novel is F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" while the most difficult book I've read is "The Sound and The Fury" by William Faulkner. (It only took me three tries.) Still I consider "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" the best book because of what it stirred in me.

It was more than just a simple appreciation for the method by which the author told the story or an affinity for the characters. It was a deep connection between myself and the ideas of the book on a spiritual level. I found it encapsulated not only the world I lived in or the world I wanted to live in but both at the same time.

Since I finished "Unbearable Lightness" at the end of summer 2003, I've read a lot of really good books like "Ender's Game", "Good Omens" and "A Long Way Down." But there have only been two books which approached the incredibly high level of "Unbearable Lightness."

The first was a Spanish book called "The Shadow of the Wind" by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. Set in Barcelona during the years after the war, it tells a Gothic story of a young boy whose father owns a used bookstore. His father takes him to The Cemetary of Forgotten Books where he discovers a book by Julian Carax. However when he goes searching for other works by Carax, he finds that someone has been systematically destroying all copies of Carax's work. It enthralled me to the point that I was very upset when I went to Amazon and found Zafon had not written any other books.

The other book up to "Unbearable Lightness" standards is the one I just finished, "The Life of Pi" by Yann Martel. Telling the story of a young Indian boy who finds him tossed from the proverbial pan of a shipwreck into the fire of a lifeboat inhabited by a Bengal tiger, it's more a novel about the place of Man in the world.

When the action is taking place in Pondicherry, India the emphasis is on the relation of God to Man. It specifically explores religious pluralism as the main character simultaneously adopts Christianity and Islam while retaining his Hindu beliefs. Multiculturalism is still a relatively new idea so it's interesting to watch it seep from the Ivory Tower of academia into the mainstream via books like "Life of Pi."

Still the hook of the book is the section taking place in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. As great as it is to read about this kid following many paths to the top of the same mountain, my constant thought was "This was really great AND there's a part coming up involving this boy and a tiger in a lifeboat." It's interesting to watch the story slide quickly down Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Where the Indian boy was interested in God and self-actualization in the first section, his focus slides quickly into pure survival. Man's place in the world is re-framed as he has to take on a direct (the tiger) and indirect (the sea) threat to his life from Nature.

Finally the way it all wraps up is beautiful. Like its predecessors before it, the ending was everything I could've expected while reading the book. It encapsulates the ideas I have as well as the ideas I'm moving towards and that meant the book carried a lot of weight for me. It's definitely a book which requires a lot of consideration and that's the best thing you can say about a book. Quite simply put it's the best book I've read since at least "The Shadow of the Wind" and maybe even "The Unbearable Lightness of Being."

Tropic Thunder

Hollywood is obsessed with itself. I mean that beyond the obvious narcissism involved in its relentless promotion of stars and starlets who have this movie they just happen to be starring in opening this Labor Day weekend. It's just a part of the marketing to make an actor talk about what a character (written by someone else) means to them. Of course that's going to be very self-referential.



I'm referring more to when Hollywood decides that seeing a movie isn't enough. What audiences really thirst for is a movie about making a movie. It's not a few and far between occurence either. On IMDB there are 164 "Film Within a Film" movies, 366 "Film In Film" and 558 "Breaking the Fourth Wall" movies. Not all of them have been on par with Fellini's "8 1/2" either.

Tonight I went to see the latest incarnation of this phenomenon. Except "Tropic Thunder" is a film-within-a-film but also a BIG SUMMER ACTION MOVIE!!! So the intent is to make a bunch of inside jokes and observations about filmmaking that will be relateable to as many people as possible. Just beginning from that point while making a satire will doom you to taking limp cliches and calling them jokes. Which is exactly what "Thunder" does.

If fighting cliche with cliche is allowable, then my quick review is you see all of the best parts in the trailer. By the time Steve Coogan makes his "exit" from the film, the majority of the jokes have already been made once if not twice and they're coming back multiple times over the next hour and a half. "Thunder" plods along making points that a Pat Proft movie could've made a lot more efficiently and inexpensively while it also reminds us over and over how clever it's being. It's not a commentary about Hollywood as much as a bunch of ideas of what that might look like and the shadow versions were disappointing through and through.



The truth is I suspected "Thunder" would be a bad movie going in. Although he has made a bunch of really hilarious movies in the past, you can see in the trailer when Ben Stiller is going to be on auto-pilot and it looked like this was going to be one of those movies. However the movie was getting a lot of really good reviews and I felt it necessary to give it a chance in case my barometer was off. Sometimes its necessary to absorb a bad movie to know your sense is still accurate.

Hellboy 2: The Golden Army

When the original Spider-Man movie came out in 2002, I was disappointed by it. I felt like the action looked too CGI-ed, the story was weak and the Green Goblin lacked any real motivation to be, y'know, evil. I was one of the people who helped it to $115+ Million in box office on its opening weekend. But that was the only time I saw it in the theaters and never watched it on DVD. However when the second movie came out, it was my favorite movie of 2004. My best guess is that since the first one made Sony so much money, they left Sam Raimi alone for the second one.

Which is exactly what seems to have happened to Hellboy in a roundabout way. The first one came out in 2004 and wasn't very good. It had some promise but didn't follow through on it largely getting lost in the smart aleck aspects of Hellboy instead of the comic book's mythology. Normally that's the end of the line for an action movie franchise, especially one that doesn't even make back its production budget. There was a catch. Guillermo Del Toro, the director of "Hellboy", made "Pan's Labyrinth" as his next project. That movie was well-reviewed and raked in more than four times its production budget. Suddenly Del Toro was a hot director again and the door was reopened for a Hellboy sequel.

The result, "Hellboy 2: The Golden Army", is the best movie of this year so far exceeding "Iron Man", "Get Smart" and "Forgetting Sarah Marshall". Basically Del Toro was allowed to work to his strengths. He was able to build a fantastic world on the mythology of Hellboy (that's basically what comic books are, modern hero mythology) and make a visually stunning movie which doesn't feel like it was whipped up on a Mac. The number of practical effects in this movie are refreshing in the world that gave us both Hulk movies. Add in that the story suceeds on the both the Big Problem and little problems levels and it's what makes a great comic book movie.

It's amazing on some level that Hellboy movies are being made. Just like DareDevil, Iron Man and Elektra, the level of awareness of the Hellboy character amongst the general non-comic-book-reading populace should be limited to the family and significant others of people who read Hellboy. Instead a really good and well-done too sequel to an earlier box office bust based on Hellboy was the number one movie this weekend. Almost 8 years to the day from when my brother and I saw the X-Men movie at the Mall of America, the comic book movie has become more than just an abberation or a curiosity that lives off of previously existing fans. It is healthy and survives under its own merit as a viable genre and that's amazing like Spider-man.

2007 - The Year In Film Pt. 3

(Hi, Mom! I already did my taxes.)

Finally, here are the best of the best movies from 2007.

In 2007, The Top Five Movies stood apart from the rest of the bunch. I'll again type a few paragraphs about each which is why you might be reading this in March. In reverse order...



5.) Once

When I was 13, my childhood epilepsy returned for one isolated incident while I was away at summer camp. Chasing down the theory that I had the seizure because of a lack of sleep and exhaustation, I stayed up with my dad overnight the night before I had a CT scan. We watched two movies, "Terminator 2" and, more importantly, "The Commitments". It was the beginning of a family tradition of non-traditional musicals.

Now, more than half my life later, the guitar player from The Commitments is the male lead in a quaint, non-traditional musical. It's a romance through music but not in the way "Moulin Rouge" is, more the way it actually happens in real life. The circumstances aren't ideal. There are things which hold you back. But in the end you find a way to be with that person. "Once" is about what you love in its many forms.



4.) Lars and the Real Girl

"Lars and the Real Girl" is also about love in the real world. It's just about not knowing what you want yet. Though Ryan Gosling's character takes the road otherwise untraveled, it's a different shade of the journey most of us take to find the person for us. In a roundabout way, it's about chasing after the ideal person.

However anyone who has been on the journey knows it's really about finding out what is lovable about you. This movie could've been a freak show about a guy who has a relationship with a RealDoll. It's more about a man out-growing his damaged past and into a full and heathy adult. For him, the journey is about finding where and how he fits in the world.



3.) Hot Fuzz

The best satire comes from deep admiration. When Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg made "Shaun of the Dead" in 2004, it was from a place having seen and loved the old masters of the genre. It was spot on as a zombie movie eventhough, as a comedy, it was meant to also expose the quirks of the genre. It is a case of using the tools of the master to lovingly deconstruct the masters' house.

Then they returned last year to take on a genre even more ripe for satire, American action movies. Yet they took a different tack to lampooning the largest of Hollywood's movies. They made them very small. It's comedy is the comedy of inversion instead of adoption. By scaling down (but not toning down) the violence, the absurd hilarity was increased exponentially.



2.) Michael Clayton

I've been a fan of George Clooney for a long time. My admiration springs from his willingness to do projects which are difficult and on the fringe. Compare to his close friends. Could you see Brad Pitt in "O Brother Where Art Thou"? Or Matt Damon directing "Good Night and Good Luck"? Clooney has attained a level of being able to do the projects he wants and follows through on doing them.

"Michael Clayton" is another project with some teeth. It's part Grisham-esque legal thriller (without the courtroom) and part morality quest for the titular character. What sets the movie apart is the ending. I don't want to give it away. I will say that it was one of the rare times where the ending was set-up well throughout the movie to conclude at a point instead of just ending.



1.) Knocked Up

One year, two excellent movies about unwed pregnancy and in both cases they keep the baby. Hollywood has a liberal bias? Like the other movies I was drawn to this year, I enjoyed this movie because it was a reflection of the contemporary world. There are people who get pregnant out of wedlock and DON'T have their lives descend into ruin (despite what health class teaches us).

I also really like both Seth Rogan and Katherine Heigl. One of my constants of romantic comedies (even of the Apatow variety) is I have to like the girl and see myself in the guy. Now I don't see myself as an adrift stoner trying to set up a celebrity nudity site. But there is something about getting to a point in your life when you have to decide to switch from being someone's child to being an adult. For some people that's when they have a child of their own and, instead of being angsty and mourning their childhood, growing up a lot in a short time.

Finally, as I mentioned, it was an Apatow comedy. As a fan of "Anchorman" and "Forty Year Old Virgin", I'm glad to see the dual success of "Knocked Up" and "Superbad" solidifying the place for movies like this in the market. As I mentioned in my "Hot Rod" blurb, there's a different paradigm in movie comedies now. Ten years ago a comedy was based around a funny concept. You took a swinging 1960s superspy, put him in the post-AIDS 1990s and all of the jokes flowed from the "fish out of water" situation. Now it's sped up, more YouTube-ized where the what matters isn't a concept which can grow stale and wear thin quickly. You have to bring the jokes. This style where the plot is a starting point, not a teether, means there are no throwaway jokes. It's all in there because it's all funny.