Girl in a Cage

Royale With Cheese

I finally finished Koushun Takami's Battle Royale. It is overlong, and I've finally decided that the bad writing/bad translating thing may not be an either/or choice, as the book contains this, one of the lamest sentences I've ever read in a published book: "The truck spun around the entire road like a car in a chase scene." Mind you, this is during a chase scene. Can't blame that on the translator.

Having said that, the ending was actually thought-provoking, the annoying Springsteen references finally made sense, and the book's message is actually pretty profound. What carried me through some of the slow parts all the way to the end was a.) the spectacular violence and b.) the author's insight into the teenage psyche. All the crushes and fights and little social things that seem life-or-death to the 15-year-old actually become life-or-death issues. Cool.

In other book news, I was at the bookstore today, because having finished Battle Royale, I need something to read while the girls are at soccer practice tonight, and I saw a big hole on the shelf where How Opel Mehta Faked Her Way Through An Enormous Book Deal had been. So they really are removing it from the shelves. The audio book was still there, though. I thought about buying it as a little collector's item, but then decided I have enough crap in my house already. I was interested to read that the author of Sloppy Firsts says she isn't seeking compensation over this. I have to wonder why not. If it was my book they plagiarized from (it's not too late! Kaavya, you still owe Little, Brown another book! Concentrate on your studies and plagiarize from Donorboy! I'm sure we can still grab some headlines together!), you know I'd be asking for the author's percentage on every copy sold as a starting point. Eh, I guess when your book sells in the six figures, you can afford to be magnanimous.

A Little Bit Country

I picked up the Isobel Campbell/Mark Lanegan collaboration, "Ballad of the Broken Seas." I figured she used to be in Belle and Sebastian, he nearly lost me there, and it's a country album, so it's bound to be something interesting and cool.

I wanted really badly to like it, but I just don't think I can. The vocals are breathy(hers), whispery (his), occasionally Leonard-Coheny(his again), and nearly always buried in the mix and hard to understand. It's kind of dark and moody and atmospheric--sounds like maybe it should be used in a David Lynch movie. I mean, it's well done, but overall, it seems like mood music for a mood I may never be in.

There is a moment, though, when he says, "A crimson bird flies when I go down on you." Eeeww! Still nice to see that my English major is useful--combined with regular Savage Love reading, my finely-honed interpretive skills allowed me to find a thinly-veiled "red wings" reference!

In other country-related news, I caught an episode of "Trick My Truck" on Country Music Television last night. You could just hear the pitch: "It's like "Pimp My Ride," but not at all ethnic!" It was a pretty standard "make over something for the person with the hard luck story" show, and enjoyable in that respect. I have to say, though, that the acting was way worse on this than on most reality shows.
(They do require acting. When I was on a reality show (Really! Go here and cue up the episode 7 clip if you don't believe me!), they were never quite ready when something interesting happened, so the sound guy or the camera guy would be like, "oh, what you just said was really good, but I wasn't ready--so if you can just pretend you're walking into the room and being surprised again, we'll get it this time.. So this kind of stuff on Trick My Truck is just painfully bad. Like when the trick-ee finds the chrome mafia or whoever climbing on his truck and says, kind of half-heartedly, "hey. What are you doing on my truck." I have to imagine that climbing on some guy's truck while he peed at the truck stop would be a really good way to get yourself beaten senseless with a tire iron in real life. Don't know that I'll ever watch it again, but it was a pleasant enough way to pass a half hour.

Sloppy First Novel

Since I work at home by myself, I am quite deprived in the office gossip department. So naturally, I've been following The Tale of the Plagiarized Chick Lit with interest and more than a little schadenfreude. (To sum up: 17-year-old Harvard Student gets half-million dollar advance for two novels and copies wording, characters, and situations from a previously published work. Plagiarized novel is then published! Oops!)

My problem, though, is that I hardly know how to make fun of this story--it practically makes fun of itself. First, there's the fabulous quote here, in which the publisher of How Opel Plagiarized Her First Novel or whatever it's called says her writing "has a seeming effortlessness to it." Hee hee! Apparently it actually was effortless!

I love her excuse, too: "I had finals."

I was going to offer my services as a writer to anybody hot, young, and ethnic who wants to be the next literary it girl: I'll write the book and take half the money, you take the glory. But apparently that's kind of what happened, since today
we find that she actually took her novel to some "book packaging firm," whatever the hell that is, and is actually sharing copyright with them on the novel, which is tantamount to acknowledging them as co-authors, rather than just the editors they're claiming to be.

And then the fact that she used this packaging firm makes me wonder: Did the publisher really give her a half million dollar advance without a book in hand? Apparently that's exactly what they did. Wow! How do I get in on this scam? (No, really. And don't just tell me I have to be young and hot. There's gotta be another way!)

In the end, of course, all I care about is what it all means to me. Well, I guess I should point out to future would-be plagiarists that I also wrote a kind-of coming of age story about a teenaged girl. If you'd like to change her ethnicity and copy some of my paragraphs, it looks like there'd be front-page publicity in it for both of us! (And hopefully a tasty bite of your ill-gotten advance and movie deal for me too!) Think it over!

Of Apples and Trees

Aside from proclaiming this or that band, album or song under- or overrated, one of the music geek's favorite pastimes is "spot the ripoff": you know, " 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' is really just 'Debaser,' which is 'More Than a Feeling', etc etc.

So I had conflicting feelings when Daughter #1 walked into the kitchen whilst I was listening to T. Rex's "Hot Love" and asked, "hey, is this The Beatles?"

"Ah, Grasshopper," I thought, "Though you're in the right country, and there might be a certain affinity for catchy melodies, the Beatles never had Marc Bolan's sexy swagger. I love that you're making the attempt, though." What I said was, "No, Sweetie, it's T. Rex."

"Oh," she said, "because the 'la la la' part sounds just like the 'do you need anybody' part on 'With a Little Help From My Friends.' " She calmly strolled out of the room, leaving me alone and slack-jawed, confirming that "Hot Love" is, in fact, ripped off from "With a Little Help From My Friends."

She beat me at my own game! How my breast swelled with pride! For what could be better than for her to be just like me? No, wait, I don't want her to be just like me--I want her to be out having fun instead of sequestered in her room listening to music! No, wait, she's not going to be allowed to go out and have fun, at least not between the ages of 13 and 20! Wait, what am I saying? Of course she is! Darn that rock and roll music and the challenges it poses to parents today!

Roll Away The Stone

We had a traditional Unitarian Easter--went to church, then came home and downloaded Mott the Hoople's "Roll Away the Stone." Despite the title, it actually has very little Easter-related content. Well, okay, no Easter-related content at all. But it did serve to get "Jesus Christ is Risen Today" out of my brain. It's a hell of a hymn (can I say that?), but I didn't want to get sick of it, since it might be my favorite thing about Easter. Except for Cadbury mini-eggs. Unitarian-Universalism! Jesus, Mott the Hoople, and Mini-Eggs! It's all part of my own beautiful spiritual journey!

Speaking of Mott the Hoople, I was tempted to grab "All the Way From Memphis" while I was at it, but, uh, I mean, I hate to sound too PC here, but am I allowed to like a song with the line "some spade said, 'you rock and rollers, you're all the same.'"? Um, I mean, Billy Bragg kind of references that song in "Waiting for the Great Leap Forward," and he's pretty damn PC, so maybe it's okay. Right? Um....I don't know. Surely that was pretty uncool even in the '70's.

Great Moments In Parenting, Part 72

Daughter #2 is learning to play the piano, and therefore plays "Heart and Soul" kind of incessantly.

Now, I knew this song had lyrics, but all I knew was that is was "heart and soul...da da da da da da heart and soul..." So I took to walking around the house whenever it was playing singing, "heart and soul...I want to feast on your heart and soul..." Which I suppose is a lot more Angel Heart than the original lyricist intended.

Nevertheless, this caused both Daughter #1 and Daughter #2 to start walking around singing, "Heart and soul...I want to feast on your heart and soul..." I laughed with glee and then had to explain to them that those weren't the real lyrics at all. They were slightly peeved, but I feel like any day you can get your angelic-looking 8 and 9 year old daughters to go around threatening to feast on your heart and soul is a good one.

ice ice, baby

Took the kids to see Ice Age 2: The Meltdown last weekend. I was not looking forward to it, as I didn't enjoy the first one. But I have to say, it was enjoyable, there were no dead moms, and we all had a good time.

I started thinking about why this particular sequel might be better than the first one, since sequels usually suck. And then I started thinking about other sequels I liked better than the originals: Rush Hour 2 and Shanghai Knights. What all these have in common is that the first movie is based on a tired formula. Ice Age was a Ragtag Band of Misfits movie, and once you've seen 6 or 8 hundred of those, you pretty much know what's coming. I've gotten to the point where I don't even get too interested in seeing how the formula is going to play out. And both Rush Hour and Shanghai Noon were Unlikely Buddy Comedies. It's just tiresome to sit there going, "oh, I wonder if the two cops with the different styles and backgrounds will find they have more in common than they thought and get together to solve the crime?" or "Can the uptight bodyguard and the laid-back drifter find they have more in common than they thought and get together to solve the crime?" or "Will the mammoth haunted by tragedy, the surly sabretooth, and the idiot sloth ever find a way to be friends?" We know the answers before we walk in the theater, which is why the second movie, in which they pretty much have to dispense with the formula and actually do something with the likeable characters, ends up being much better.

So that's why I liked Ice Age 2. Either that or because something about the mammoth haunted by tragedy finding new love spoke to me.

Can I Get Freedom Fries With That?

Just got out of the car where, as usual, I was listening to Sirius 25, The Underground Garage (you should really subscribe, blah blah), and I heard a song called "Riot Industry" by a band called Cobra Verde. Killer chorus, great, rockin' song, but nothing to blog about, or so I thought until the following phrase jumped out of the verse: "blowjob of liberty."

Genius! I've been chuckling to myself ever since.

To The Sound of Old T. Rex

I am completely obsessed with the T. Rex compilation I bought (for 9 bucks! Bargain!). A great example of a band where the canon is incorrect, and the best songs are not "Get it on (Bang a gong)." Though I have to say that even that song, which I had filed away under "Good song I never want to hear again" sounds good to me again. I got sick of it mostly because I used to sing it to myself after every wedding I went to, where there would be the inevitable reading from 1 Corinthians 13, which I began to think of as the "Get it on, bang a gong" passage from Paul's letter to the Corinthians, which would then lead me to start hearing that song in my head for the rest of the ceremony and reception.

I am most obsessed with "Hot Love" and "Raw Ramp", both of which feature backing vocals by Flo and Eddie. Leafing through the CD booklet (and already getting nostalgic for the idea that you could actually get a little booklet with your music), I saw that Flo and Eddie are actually two men, neither of whom is named Flo or Eddie. I felt like the guy in the '80's who said, "Damn, Molly Hatchet has a pretty deep voice for a girl." Did everybody know this but me? Or did everybody, like me, tune out whenever Flo and Eddie were mentioned because they had something to do with The Turtles?

In other news on my CD purchases: O, God, but that King Missile CD is awful. Hard to believe that they couldn't summon up the dadaist genius that brought us "Detachable Penis" for even one more track, but there you go. As of this writing, it's still not available on itunes, so I guess the fact that I paid 4 bucks for essentially one song shouldn't bug me. "Detachable Penis" is definitely a one-dollar song; not sure if it's a five dollar song.

I also got this compilation from the early '90's called "Saturday Morning: cartoons' greatest hits." It's way better than most tribute bands, because nearly every song is good, and even the ones by crappy bands don't exactly make you wish you were hearing the original. I bought it for the Ramones' version of the Spider Man Theme.

Get Thee to a Used Record Store

Since digital music has made me lazy lazy lazy, I haven't been into the used CD store that is right across from my "office" in months. I went in there yesterday, and if I needed any confirmation that the CD is dying, I got it.

I was reminded quite powerfully of when vinyl really died in the early '90's, and you could go into used record stores that had formerly held nothing but copies of Bob Dylan's Planet Waves and Jethro Tull's Heavy Horses and suddenly find just about any great album ever released on vinyl as everybody jettisoned their record collections.

Same thing at work in the used CD store. I mean, I didn't want all of these things, but the store was packed with CDs by bands I've actually heard of. And if I didn't actually want to buy them all, I recognized them as albums that, unlike Planet Waves and Heavy Horses, somebody might like to buy. Like the whole Ryko-reissue David Bowie catalog. Like most of the Rolling Stones catalog. Like the T. Rex greatest hits album I bought. I also picked up the King Missile album with "Detachable Penis", which, last time I checked, was not available for download anywhere.

Best of all, every CD in the place was under 10 bucks. I believe that, as the CD dies, we may well be entering the golden age of used CD shopping. Get out there and buy buy buy!

(And you can take all the money you save and buy more brand-new copies of my books!) (or else just take yourself out for ice cream or something.)