Girl in a Cage

The 411 on 826

It so happens that I live near the headquarters of 826 Boston, the Boston branch of Dave Eggers' whole "help urban kids with their writing" charitable enterprise.

They do great work, I dig their mission, and I'm glad they've expanded into Boston, and to complain about this charitable organization would be nothing short of churlish.

But why, after all, do we read blogs if not to read other people being churlish? Well, a sizeable chunk of people who read this blog appear to be searching for information on the young adult novel Girl in a Cage or else some pornographic material about girls in cages. And I get probably ten hits a day on a combination of "Best songs of the 80's" and "What does Throw Some D's on it Mean"? But still, there are those of you who come here for the churlishness, and I hate do disappoint you. So here I go.

Okay, so they've got a little sign in the window that says "Future Home of the Greater Boston Bigfoot Research Institute". And their windows are now full of exploring gear and stuff. Those of you who clicked over to their website from the link I inserted above may note that most of the material on their homepage is Sasquatch-related, with really only the sidebars containing real information about the organization. You may also note they're hosting some sort of Sasquatch-related fundraiser.

Okay, so I'm a grumpy old man and jealous of Dave Eggers to boot, but this bugs the hell out of me. It's just one more example of the whole smug, pleased-with-how-hip-and-clever-we-are sensibility that affects most of the McSweeney's Empire. (Friend Jim Hanas has published stuff with them, as has friendly acquaintance Kelly Link, and I would in a heartbeat if I had anything appropriate to send them and they accepted it and if I didn't keep dissing them here, so my complaint should be seen as an indictment of the empire as an entity rather than with every person associated with it.)

"We're so cool we don't have to take anything seriously! Even the stuff we're serious about!" this whole bigfoot thing seems to proclaim, and I have two problems with this.

1.)Self-conscious irony is so 1990's. I have nothing against the 90's--my kids were born in the 90's, I went from callow youth to grownass man in the 90's, it was the decade that brought good beer and coffee to America, and it was the decade in which the mainstream conquered punk, thus finally breaking classic rock's stranglehold on rock radio. But this kind of slacker irony thing is to the 90's what leg warmers are to the 80's or those huge collars were to the 70's: a signature trend that a lot of people thought was cool at the time but in retrospect was actually kind of ugly. The pose that made you super cool ten years ago might actually not be cool anymore. I'm just saying.

2.)I guess I just think that this kind of ironic distance is not just out of date, but also sort of bespeaks a certain amount of fear that's inappropriate to a successful organization. It's as though they don't want us to think they take their work with urban kids too seriously because that would be sincere, and sincerity is so uncool. And yes, humorless earnest sincerity is uncool, but so, I would argue, is ironic distance. Surely there's a middle ground between those humorless folk who used to hector you about this or that cause in college and the "too cool to really be into this, whatever this may be" McSweeney's pose. Disavowing something you're passionate about isn't just annoying; it's uncool.

Finally, and in all seriousness, their Bigfoot t-shirts are incredibly cool, and I totally want one.

Elvis Costello Was Right

Many people I know have emerged from jury duty with a renewed sense of civic pride and patriotism. Why, I even know someone who was inspired to go to law school after serving on a jury. (Hi, Sydney!)

But perhaps these people are natural optimists and patriots. What about the misanthropes among us? As for me, I emerged from Jury Duty with a renewed sense of the depravity and idiocy of my fellow citizens.

And no, sadly, I'm not talking about the Pauly Shore movie.

I went to a certain city in Massachusetts--I won't say which one, but the title of this post refers to it--and got kicked out of the half-empty juror parking lot and told to go "park under the bridge and keep feeding it quarters."

This was the best part of the day.

There was the expected waiting, and then I was chosen to sit on a jury. After spending the better part of four hours listening to really sad testimony (it was an illicit assault against a child under 14 case. Shudder), I got shunted off to the side because I was randomly chosen to be the alternate.

Well, I thought, five minutes while the jury debates this open-and-shut case. Instead, I spent an hour and a half in an empty, windowless room by myself. Then the jury came back, and I had to stand next to these people I had previously thought of as decent folk as they delivered a jaw-droppingly wrong and stupid verdict. There's all this symbolic standing and sitting in court, and I really wanted to sit down or maybe turn my back, but all I could do was hike back to my car as the alleged victims family stage whispered verbal abuse at us in front of the inattentive or apathetic officers of the court, ("I didn't get a vote!" I wanted to shout)pondering the depravity of the alleged offense and the incomprehensible miscarriage of justice I just had the misfortune to sit through.

Ali Told Me, Get the Force Like Wan Kenobi

The boy has been playing Star Wars: Battlefront and having a fine time of it, and I've blithely condemned the entire new Star Wars trilogy just because the first one totally sucked, so we decided to watch Episode 2: Attack of the Clones.

O, God, the tedium! The infernal tedium of it! I mean, yeah, the effects look cool, but good God, all this behind the scenes political maneuvering. So tedious! The dialogue: laughably bad! "Not so, my young padawan learner," Obi Wan said at the beginning, and you could actually see "I can't believe I said that. I'm a whore." flash across Ewan McGregor's mind as he said it. I was reminded of the old story about Harrison Ford on the set of the original Star Wars going, "You can write this shit, George, but you can't say it." They should have had Harrison Ford on retainer for this movie to call George Lucas daily and tell him that. Oy. The love story: both tedious and laughable! Since Lucas is way more interested in visual effects than human motivations, the fact that Padme or whatever the hell her name is falls in love with Annie is completely inexplicable. Annie is far younger, kind of dumb, impetuous, and prone to fits of homicidal rage! What's not to love?

Speaking of Annie, I gotta say that Hayden chick that plays her looks way better on Heroes. She almost looks like a guy in this movie!

(Rim shot! I'll be here all week! Tip your waitresses and bartenders!)

Welcome Back

My recent return to teaching has prompted me to run around the house kind of incessantly singing John Sebastian's theme from Welcome Back Kotter. Not because I'm teaching Sweathogs--I'm actually teaching adults, and they are poised and motivated and actually kind of inspiring in a way that Juan Epstein never was. And none of them has ever responded to a question with a Vinnie Barbarinoesque "What? When? Wheyuh?"

Nevertheless, I felt the song was appropriate because I was going back to the classroom. (And loving it, by the way. I think both my work and my mental health were starting to suffer due to lack of interaction with other humans, and I do have a talent for teaching and it's great to nurture a talent that had been pretty undernourished for the last four years. Oh yeah, also I love doing work that feels important every single day. And yeah, I'm still writing, but now that it's my second job, it's gotten a lot more fun again. So everything is cool.)

Anyway, so perhaps my insistence on singing while I prepare dinner inspired My SISIGWJLAH Wife (I was informed by said amazing woman that the adjective "lovely" was not to her liking, so I will from now on use SISIGWJLAH, which is an acronym for So Incredibly Sexy I Get Wood Just Looking At Her) to suggest that we actually buy the first season of Welcome Back Kotter on DVD.

Both of us find it a somewhat surreal experience--the last time we watched it, we were younger than Vinnie Barbarino--now we're older than Mr. Kotter. (And God knows I feel as old as Mr. Woodman most mornings before I've had my coffee. And yes, I do sort of aspire to that level of grumpiness, though of course I'll never reach it.) Julie Kotter is adorable, joining Bailey Quarters in the parade of Stealth Babes on 70's tv shows. You can have your Farrah and Loni. Give me Marcia Strassman and Jan Smithers! And the show, shockingly, holds up incredibly well. I was really expecting to cringe at how horrible it is, but it's actually not bad at all, and the kids really enjoy it too. They all love Freddie "Boom Boom" Washington. (I'm still a Horshack fan, which puts me in a distinct minority in this family).

Anyway, so the DVDs were a great pick: my SISIGWJLAH wife was, not surprisingly, right again.

The Original and Still the Best.

So I had a rare half hour alone in the house the other night, and I was flipping through channels, and there was the original Alien, which I've seen several times, but which I haven't seen in probably close to 20 years. Holy crap, is that a scary movie! I watched from Tom Skerritt getting killed through Ian Holm getting--well, disconnected, almost to Yaphet Kotto getting killed, and I have to say, this movie holds up incredibly incredibly well. Remarkably, for a science-fiction movie from 1979, it doesn't look hopelessly cheesy. And it's almost unbearably suspenseful: that scene with Tom Skerritt in the air ducts and the other people screaming at him to get out just about had me jumping out of my skin. And here's the thing--I knew exactly what was going to happen and when. And I screamed anyway. Yep, sitting there on my living room couch, watching a 29-year-old horror movie, I screamed at the appearance of the toothsome title creature about to devour poor Tom Skerritt.
Say what you will about Aliens, Alien 3, Alien Resurrection, Honey I Shrunk The Alien, Alien Vs. Freddy, and Aliens Breaking Training, and say what you will about Ridley Scott's post-Alien work (Uneven, and even the good ones aren't this good), but Alien is a freakin' masterpiece.

Endings and Beginnings.

So Celebrity Rehab and Project Runway ended in the same week. I was feeling kinda bereft, TV-wise, (and slightly let down--Project Runway was fine, but I just didn't get that into it this time. Celebrity Rehab, on the other hand, was riveting to the end. But then, you know, there's no winner at the end, except I guess Seth and Mary both went to sober living, so maybe they're the winners.)

Fortunately, two of my other favorite shows came back, both retooled. Celebrity Fit Club is back in a special "Boot Camp" edition, and thus far, I'm not all that convinced. For one thing, they've brought back four previous contestants, which just kind of goes to show that, like most diets, Celebrity Fit Club doesn't really work. (I got this also from the five minutes of Gone Country where Maureen McCormick had definitely gained a bunch of weight since the end of her fit club experience.) I guess it's cool that Dustin "Screech" Diamond is back, since he's usually good for some entertaining TV, but, as much as I hate to say it, I think this franchise feels a little tired, and this reformatting feels like the reality show equivalent of the big wedding, baby, or inexplicable kid who comes to live with the main character (Like Glen Scarpelli on One Day at a Time or Poor Heather O'Rourke in the last days of Happy Days.)--a desperate, post shark-jump attempt to breathe some new life into what's pretty much already a corpse.

Dirt is also back, and it's also been retooled, and I'm still not really sure what I think of the results. Watching the first couple of episodes, you can almost hear what must have been the tense meetings between Courteney and David and the FX execs when they were deciding whether to renew it or not: "We need Lucy to be more relatable," I'm sure they said, so now she's not the same ruthless, coldhearted bitch she was in the first season, and the show is less fun for it. "Does the crazy guy have to be, you know, crazy?" Well, apparently not. He's consistently on his meds for the first time, thus removing another entertaining element of the show. Though I guess this part is kind of interesting: last season, Lucy's only vestige of humanity was the way she took care of Don; this season, Don's taking care of her. Their relationship is still kind of sweet, but it's less poignant than it was last season. "Dial back the depravity," they said, so we're left with lots of roman-a-clef celebrity stuff, which is kind of entertaining, but overall the whole thing is far less seedy and depraved than it was last season, and I liked seedy and depraved. Now Lucy's all noble--she's going after Tweety just because of what he did to poor Rick Fox. The most recent episode did feature Don trapped in a senatorial candidate's sex dungeon for hours on end, so that was pretty depraved, but still, for a show that had Rick Fox pegged with a strap-on in its first episode, and Wayne Brady threatening to cut off and saute a penis with some chopped fennel somewhere around episode five, it feels like Dirt has lost its nerve. I still like it, I'll still watch it, but so far, it's not the refreshing breath of foul air it was last season.

My Favorite Writer Went to Ft. Lauderdale, and All I Got Was This Stupid Blog Entry

Whew! I am exhausted, but in a good way, having just completed a whirlwind three day trip to South Florida. (I'm blogging from the airport!). Where to begin? Thursday I left Boston, where it was a whopping 29 degrees, and arrived an uneventful three hours later in Ft. Lauderdale, where it was about 78 degrees. So already I was happy. I checked into my nice hotel room and promptly fell asleep. Then I strolled across the 17th Street Causeway till I reached the beach, where the hot sand hurt my feet and the water was blue and cool and all was right with the world.

I gathered with the other authors (There were bunches of us, but I spent most of my time hanging out with Tasha Alexander, Lauren Groff, Amy Cohen, and John Hart, all of whom were lovely people whom I did not hate despite the fact that they sell more books than I do. ) (Lauren even got a glowing blurb from Stephen King, who has yet to blurb one of my books despite the fact that I've been a huge fan since I was 12. I'm just sayin', Steve. You could help a guy out.), and we had wine at the hotel, and then proceeded to a gorgeous penthouse apartment with wraparound balcony and beautiful views of the Intracoastal Waterway on one side and the Atlantic Ocean on the other. There was more wine and really delicious heavy hors d'oeuvres. Lots of Broward County bigwigs were there, but I didn't know who any of them were. We left that party at 8, and that's when the real party started! Well, possibly, but I was asleep by 9:30. 'Cause that's how I roll, bitches!

Friday began with a trip to Blanche Ely High School in Pompano. (Go Tigers!) The students and staff were really great, I had a fantastic time, and I would have happily hung out there all day. But I went back to the hotel and napped ('Cause that's how I roll--drowsy and borderline narcoleptic!). Friday night we went to the main library and there was another reception with open bar top-shelf booze (I'm not much of a cocktail drinker, but I felt like I should have taken advantage of the free hooch, but I stuck with wine.) We sat in a circle of tables and signed books. I was sandwiched between the aforementioned John Hart on my right and Kevin Sessums on my left. (Kevin is also a very nice guy). This was a pretty humbling experience, as people were lined up for both John and Kevin and I got the occasional straggler wanting one of my books signed. Highlight--some lady, completly plowed, staggered up to the table, looked at me for a full minute, then pointed at Lauren Groff and said, "I'm goin' over there. I hear she's really good."

From there, I proceeded to the home of Kristin and Stu Jacobs for dinner. They were both really nice, really down-to-earth, really kind people, they cooked a fantastic dinner for 20, and their back yard is simply one of the most beautiful gardens I've ever seen in my life. I was really quite touched at all the effort and genuine hospitality they put into this event. (There may be video of this event showing up on Bocaraton.com, even though we weren't in Boca Raton at the time. But the guys who run the website were there with a video camera.)

I fell into bed at 1 a.m, and this morning went out to the campus of Nova Southeastern University (go sharks!), where Amy Cohen and I had a panel discussion. This was also fun. And then I went down to the lobby to sign books and was next to John Hart again, and once again he outsold and outsigned me probably ten to one. "Hey, I don't have a line!" I called to John's adoring fans. "Buy one of mine and get it signed right away, no waiting!" Some nice fan of John's took pity on me and allowed me to sign their program.

Ah, but I know what you're thinking--Brendan, you were in Ft. Lauderdale for Spring Break! Where were the drunken college girls lifting their shirts up? Well, as you can imagine, the intoxicated spring break crowd flocked to the literary events like frat boys to a warm keg of Milwaukee's Best--you could hardly sign a book without someone thrusting a sharpie into your hand and asking you to sign their left breast! (or, if you prefer, their hairless, rock-hard pecs and washboard abs) This afternoon, tired of wading through Readers Gone Wild everywhere I went, I took the water taxi (complete with cornball commentary about all the yachts and mansions we passed! I saw Leonard Nimoy's house!) over to the beach to buy tacky souvenirs. I landed in the epicenter of spring break. (There was a Howl at the Moon on top of a Hooter's. I think that pretty much sums the whole thing up.) On the water taxi over there, I was thinking to myself, "Why didn't I ever do spring break like this when I was in college? I mean, apart from the fact that I was constantly broke?" The minute I got off the taxi, I realized the reason--everybody I hated in college was there! It was a really repugnant scene I couldn't even enjoy as a prurient voyeur, so I fled back to the water taxi, tacky souvenirs in hand, and feeling deliriously happy to be pushing 40 and about as far away from that moronic bacchanalia as I could be. (Perhaps I sound purtianical--I certainly don't object to fun and collegiate hijinx, but drunken stupid people aren't much fun under the best of circumstances, and when you cram thousands of them into a really small area, it's just depressing.)

Olivia Wakeling, who is neither stupid nor intoxicated (well, then again, the event she planned and worked really hard on is finally over, so she might well be kicking back with a couple of drinks right now, and who could blame her?), and who did a great job organizing this whole thing, drove me to the airport, and here I sit in front of gate D1 feeling incredibly lucky to have been able to be a part of something so fun.

A Cruel, Cruel Trick

So I'm on the couch last night, pretty exhausted after a full week of work, and I'm flippin' through the old program guide to see if there's anything on that I want to watch.

Aha! Quoth I, the local public broadcasting channel appears to be fundraising again! And look at this! My age cohort has finally reached the point where we are the most desirable PBS funders, and so instead of "Roy Orbison: A Black and White Night" or "The Eagles: Gram Parsons is Spinning in His Grave" we have "The Clash: Revolution Rock"!

Well, I worship the Clash in idolatrous fashion, so I was thrilled at the prospect of watching some live Clash footage. So thrilled, in fact, that despite my exhaustion, I thought I might try to stay up to catch just a few minutes of it. I set the DVR to record it, found something else to watch for the thirty minutes until The Clash came on, and promptly fell asleep.

I awoke some forty minutes later to this:

In my sleep-induced fugue state, it took me a minute to figure out exactly what was going on. It crossed my mind that I might actually be in hell. After all, what was it that Sartre said? "L'enfer, c'est la famille Osmond."

I mean, for the love of God, Montresor! There are jokes, and then there's cruelty. Promising The Clash and delivering the Osmonds definitely falls into the latter category. (And why wasn't Jimmy allowed to sing? Look at his pained face as he pounds on the piano off to the side! I mean, given what he did to "Penny Lane" on one of the many episodes of "Fame" where he appeared as the developmentally delayed guy with the supposedly golden voice, it's probably for the best, but geez.) Needless to say, it'll be a while before my local PBS station sees a dime outta me.

Next Week in the Sunshine State

Hi everybody! I've been on blogging hiatus on account of getting a real job. But I'm back, and hopefully blogging on a somewhat more regular schedule. Anyway, I came across this event recently:

Brendan Halpin will discuss his new book, How Ya Like Me Now, at LitLive! at Nova Southeastern University’s Alvin Sherman Library in Davie, Florida, on March 15 at 11:30 a.m.. LitLive! is a day of literary discussion and book signings hosted by the Broward Public Library Foundation. It runs from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and includes 19 other authors. More information is available at www.bplfoundation.org or the hotline, 954-357-5954.

Wow! The Brendan Halpin? I hear he's great! I'll definitely be there! And you, South Florida residents and fans of young adult fiction, you should be there too!

The Hinges of Hell

So this morning I made my first attempt at a hot yoga class. My Lovely Wife enjoys the hot (95 degree) yoga, and so I figured I would give it a try--I have very limited yoga experience, but I find it appealing as an idea. Whenever I've tried to meditate or otherwise turn my brain off for a while, I have a very hard time doing it. I start worrying about some unimportant thing and/or thinking about my next meal and/or singing "Take on Me" in my head or something. So I dig the idea of occupying part of my brain with contorting my body into improbable positions so that the rest can shut off.

Having said that, I have concluded that this particular form of exercise is not for me. Mainly because of the heat. Oh, God, but it was hot in there. And I come from compact Northern European stock--my fireplug frame is built to retain heat, not shed it.

Well, there were a few other things that made me uncomfortable. 1.)The sex noises. Lots of groaning exhales such as I'm not all that comfortable hearing from total strangers. 2.)The repositioning. I mean, I consider myself a pretty open-minded, liberal guy, but, you know, when I'm bent over, butt in the air, the feeling of another man's hands on my hips does not inspire serenity in me.

3.) The heat. Did I mention it was hot? Here's how hot it was: I was surrounded by sweaty women in skintight clothing in suggestive poses and all I could think was "Get me the hell out of here!"

I bailed sixty minutes in, and now, nearly seven hours later, I still feel like crap. I think I'll be eschewing the hot yoga in the future.