Girl in a Cage

Don't Catch Z's

Flipping through channels last night, I came across Z Rock, the new series on IFC. I had been eager to watch this because of the concept: kids' band by day, rock band by night.

A more honest tag line would be: "Kind of like Flight of the Conchords, only with nudity and no laughs whatsoever."

They are a crappy band at night, but apparently the people making the show don't think this is true, because there was way too much footage of them playing their generic 70's-style rock. And, though the rest of the show was clearly trying to be funny, it just wasn't. At all.

Now, I enjoy the nudity as much as the next guy, and if I were 16, that might be enough to make a regular viewer of me. As it is, it's not enough to save this dull, unfunny ripoff.

 I think I am the only person who watches IFC anyway, but still--avoid. Avoid. I can't stress this enough. This show really really sucks.

Yes We Can!

A while back, I wrote an entry about how trying to remove a rogue bat from my bedroom was preferable to watching Epic Movie. Since then, the same morons who made that steaming pile of excrement have made Superhero Movie, Meet the Spartans, and, now, Disaster Movie. I mean, honestly, people. Kids with far less money and far more talent than these people put more entertaining stuff up on youtube every day. (The kids got me into Fred. Check him out.) If you really feel like you have to throw ten bucks away, you should feel free to send it my way. I don't mean buying one of my books--I mean just send me the ten bucks. In exchange for your ten bucks, I promise you absolutely nothing. This is really an excellent deal. You won't be disappointed because you're not laughing. You won't feel that you've been cheated out of anything. You won't feel used, and you won't have wasted 80 precious minutes of your life. When your cash is safely nestled in my pockets, I can't promise you that I'll do anything particularly worthwhile with it, but I can promise you this: if everybody thinking of spending ten bucks on this movie sends the ten bucks my way--oh hell, you can just send me five and buy yourself an ice cream sundae with the other five--we can prevent the next movie from this cynical, talentless bunch. It's in your hands, moviegoers of America: continue to see and be disappointed by these unfunny movies, or send your money to me. The choice is clear; the future is in your hands.

My Rowdy Weekend

Friday night I had a bachelor evening at home waiting for my family to get back frm the beach. The strippers left as soon as the top-shelf tequila ran out, so I ended up sitting with the dog and watching TV. Here is my account of my rowdy night of singleness. First I watched an old episode of MTV Cribs: Rock Gods. No Gods were in evidence, but I did draw a few conclusions. 1.)The Nuge is batshit crazy. 2.)Sebastian Bach is a closet geek--he's got KISS action figures and stuff. 3.)Dee Snider seems like a surprisingly nice, normal guy. After that, I watched Cloverfield. Loved, loved, loved it. I admire the concept, because I've never really seen a giant monster movie focused on the people on the ground before, and I loved the execution--I'm a sucker for the whole handheld camera horror movie thing. It was believable and actually quite touching and stuck with me a lot more than most horror movies do. Then I watched the first hour of Monterey Pop. I was underwhelmed. Read my nasty notes on that movie here. I followed this up with the Comedy Central Roast of Bob Saget. It was okay, if you like that kind of thing, i.e., people making really cruel jokes about each other. Most of the people did predictable jokes about Saget being a sellout and not funny, and then there were a lot of jokes along these lines: "______________ is secretly gay." Saget, Stamos, various other comedians I've never heard of. Lame. "Cloris Leachman is really old." Lame, except for Gilbert Gottfried's joke. "____________ is untalented." These were actually mostly pretty funny. But pretty much everybody did versions of the same jokes, with the only variations being how incredibly filthy they were willing to be. And then Norm Macdonald did this awesome meta-roast, where he did these incredibly lame jokes ("He's got a hawk nose and an eagle eye; this guy's for the birds!") that all sounded like they came out of some "1001 jokes for Rotary Club roasts" book from the 50's. It was a bizarre and really funny performance because he was the only one who did anything different, and he was being fearlessly straight-faced about it. It's hard to know if this was real or editing, but this appeared to be the only set that had all the comedians cracking up. Yeah, so that was my big Friday night. It's a good thing I'm not alone in the house very much, because I just can't get that rowdy too often.

Saaaaabo! Saaaaabo!

Last week I wrote about how I don't give a crap about the Olympics in particular and sports in general. This week I thought I'd look back to the height of my sports fandom. I will try to keep it entertaining, but I do realize that those of you who are not Eric may find this entry falling under the insufferable "other people's nostalgia" category. You folks may want to wait till I get my act together to write that Kinks entry I've been thinking about. Or until I finish watching "Picnic at Hanging Rock" and write about that. Or until I make it through another couple episodes of "Reaper" and write about that. Anyway, let's cast our minds back to the late '80's, shall we? Squirrel Bait had not yet been ripped off by countless lesser bands..."St. Elmo's Fire" buried the brat pack phenomenon under a couple of hours of tedious melodrama...and I was a fan of a once-great baseball team that had fallen on hard times and was struggling back to the good side of mediocre: The Cincinnati Reds.

 I was a passionate Reds fan, and while there were a number of factors playing into this phenomenon, the main one is this: I was between the ages of 18 and 21 and spending summers in Cincinnati, and there was simply nothing else to do. I mean yeah, there were movies, and I did go to the movies, and there were bars, but I wasn't legal, and though fake IDs were easy to come by, I didn't much care for the idea of hanging out in bars with a bunch of people I didn't hang out with at keggers in high school. The Jockey Club was still open at least until 88, but I was legal to get in there, which definitely put me on the old side of the clientele. I felt I had aged out of the scene, which I was only ever on the periphery of to begin with. (We interrupt this stroll down memory lane for a little plug: I have an essay appearing in this anthology which comes out in November. Buy buy buy!)

But the Cincinnati Reds were accessible to all! Tickets in the top 6 rows of Riverfront Stadium, where you had to wear special beacons atop your Reds cap to warn passing aircraft away from your head, were only $3.50. This was dirt cheap even in 1987. Movies I think were 5 or 6 bucks, which seemed outrageous. So my friends and I would head down to a Reds game a couple of times a week. The ones I didn't attend, I would watch on tv or listen to on WLW with Joe Nuxhall and Marty Brenneman. When you follow a team that closely, and when you live in a place where there's really nothing else competing for your attention, you really start to feel this weird stew of emotions--love, hate, frustration, elation, and a proprietary affection for the foibles and quirks of the group. So you scream with frustration when the Reds acquire then-ancient Jerry Reuss, (he was actually younger then than I am now, but he had a full head of white hair and to my 20-year-old self, the guy was Methuseleh) and you love Ron "True Creature" Robinson mostly because he is ugly and has a huge butt even though he's not all that great of a pitcher (but look at the big lug! How can you help but love the guy!) and if you don't belong to a group of fans who bow down to "Nick Esasky, Baseball God" every time he comes up to bat, you do understand why they do it.

Barry Larkin and Eric Davis were the stars of the team, along with a young upstart named Chris Sabo. (my friend Daniel was the first of my group of friends to admit a man-crush on anyone, beating out even the gay guys, who weren't out yet, when he spun a rather lengthy reverie about Eric Davis. I applaud his courage). Sabo wore dorky goggles because he cared about ocular safety, he drove a Ford Escort because he didn't want any fancy stuff, he stole a lot of bases, and when the Reds won the World Series in 1990, beating a heavily-favored (and heavily juiced) Oakland A's team, the A's made a lot of noise about how the better team lost, and the Reds just got lucky, blah blah, Sabo famously remarked, "They're just a bunch of sore losers."

Now, this is the paragraph where most people write about how baseball has changed, or sports have changed, and oh, I lived in a more innocent time, blah blah. But baseball hasn't really changed. I have. Maybe it's just because I have so much more going on in my life than I did when I was 20. It's still possible to live and die with a team, and to feel, in some weird way, like the players are family; it's just not possible for me. But we'll always have Riverfront Stadium.... (note--not in real life. It, along with the house I grew up in, was torn down. These facts are of course unrelated, but they feel related to me.)

Indie Next!

So my forthcoming YA novel, Forever Changes, has been named to the Indie Next list for teens for fall 2008. The Indie Next list is The List Formerly Known as Booksense. It's a list put together by independent booksellers of books that they have read and recommend. It's kind of a big deal, and I'm pretty excited about it. So thanks to the fabulous independent booksellers who compile the list (the complete list is here, if you're interested in seeing the lesser other works on the list.), and special thanks to Cathy Berner from Blue Willow Bookshop in Houston, TX who wrote the nice blurb that appears on the list. September 2, people. Buy buy buy--it is fiction that will change your life.

O, Olympics, Where Did We Go Wrong?

So the Olympic Games roll on and on and on. And I really really don't care. Now, normally this kind of thing is a contrarian pose--"ooo, I'm so cool because I hate the thing that everybody else loves." I'm not above such things, not by a long shot, but that's not what's happening here. The truth is, I have a bit of a sports problem. It's not that I object to sports on principle, and I do seem to be developing a love for soccer, but it's rare that I have hours at a time to sit and devote to watching sports on tv. This is partly because I have 3 kids, and it's rare I have hours at a time to do anything. (Except I've been getting lots of delicious reading done on my current vacation, and while we're talking about that, Liz Williams' Snake Agent completely kicked my ass, and I'm buying all the sequels as soon as I get somewhere with a halfway decent bookstore.) And it's also partly because I just can't bring myself to care very much, even about the sports I used to love. I think in order to get really into a sporting event, and this may be especially true of the Olympics, you have to buy into the idea that something is actually happening. What I mean is that the Olympics in particular, and all sports really, sell this idea that what's happening is important and consequential. I don't know if it's the scandals or my own ever-growing cynicism, but I just don't buy it. It's not that sports can't be a valid form of entertainment, but, in the end, it really doesn't matter. Quick--who won the NBA championship 2 years ago? Who won the 2006 World Series? I follow these things casually, and I have no idea. And yes, Michael Phelps has won a lot of medals, and good for him, but in ten years, he'll be Eric Heiden. I've included the wikipedia link because those of you who didn't watch the 1980 Winter Olympics probably have no idea who the guy is. He was on the cover of Time Magazine. It was a really big deal at the time. And I was glued to my TV, convinced something was actually happening. What's my point? I guess my point is that instead of watching the Olympics, I've been swimming with my kids and their cousins and napping extravagantly and reading a lot (Savoring my Creepy collection, sipping it slowly like a fine single-malt scotch) and I don't really feel like I'm missing anything.

Oh, Uncle Creepy, You Are a Naughty One.

Once, decades ago, there was a boy. This boy was frequently dragged to flea markets by his antique-loving parents. This was largely torture and nowhere near as fun as the sign-stealing trips to abandoned gas stations that the boy and his dad used to take. (We had many Mail Pouch Tobacco thermometers. I don't know why, except that my dad thought they were cool.) But most flea markets had at least one stall selling dusty old comic books at bargain prices, and it was here that the boy would spend his time leafing through old issues of Charleton Comics Fightin' Army or Kamandi. Usually, having spent his allotted amount, the boy would track down his parents, who would still be oohing and aahing about some ancient knick-knack they'd found. But once, the boy came back with a stack of black and white horror magazines bearing the names Creepy and Eerie. Now, the boy's mom was a pretty open-minded ex-hippie who was pretty difficult to appall. She objected to too much television on principle and the sexism of James Bond movies, but she and the boy went to see Fellini Satyricon when the boy was in the seventh grade, so this was not an uptight household. This makes it very difficult to be a rebellious pre-teen. But here, finally, were some pop culture artifacts that were just appalling to the boy's mom. She insulted the magazines' readership with unprintable (by me, anyway) epithets. A love affair was born. And yet, like so many love affairs that happen in early adolescence, it was a fleeting passion that burned out all too quickly. The magazines lay forgotten in a box somewhere, and were probably thrown out with relish by the boy's mom when she moved. Still, though, a tiny flame burned in the boy's heart, and it rekindled into quite a blaze when the boy found out that Creepy and Eerie are now collectors' items that fetch many tens of dollars per issue in the unlikely event you can pry one from the cold dead hands of a collector. And now, Dark Horse Comics has begun reprinting old issues of Creepy, with Uncle Creepy introducing demented tales of terror. And the boy bought the reprint, was mocked by his offspring for spending fifty bucks on a comic book, and it was good.

Having said that...

Here's a review I came across in Entertainment Weekly, which, despite what people may think, has darn good book review coverage. (See, people, if we cast books as just another form of entertainment, people will buy them; if they are medicine you're supposed to take, people won't.) I know I just complained about Allegra Goodman being "a little jihad-y" in her op-ed piece about writing, but it's time for me to issue a fatwa of my own. Here's an excerpt from the review: The tale of the haunted schoolteacher ''Pete Ferry'' (yes, it's also the author's name) Oh for Christ's sake. This is over, people. No more. Valis, with not one but two author dopplegangers, Philip K. Dick and Horselover Fat, came out in 1974. Borges meets his future self in a hotel room in a story he wrote in 1977. Philip Roth appears as a character in at least one of his books. People strangely thought it was innovative when Jonathan Safran Foer did the same thing in 2002. This is not an original or fresh or interesting trick anymore, people. It's not cutting edge or clever or anything but an annoying cliche, but it's not an old enough cliche to be interesting when you dig it up. Writers of the world! Let's retire this gimmick for at least ten years! Please!

I Disagree, Allegra

So yesterday's Boston Globe featured an article by Allegra Goodman, a novelist I'm not familiar with but who has what might possibly be the lamest website of any novelist on earth. (I'm sorry, but it's true. Just click through if you don't believe me. It's like she's not even trying. I feel like anybody whose website is hosted on MIT servers ought to be able to find some cheap HTML-coding labor without too much difficulty.) Anyway, Ms. Goodman's article consisted of advice on being a writer. Most of it was stuff that isn't too hard to disagree with--you need time to yourself to write, etc., but then there was this paragraph that I had to take issue with: To begin, don't write about yourself. I'm not saying you're uninteresting. I realize that your life has been so crazy no one could make this stuff up. But if you want to be a writer, start by writing about other people. Observe their faces, and the way they wave their hands around. Listen to the way they talk. Replay conversations in your mind - not just the words, but the silences as well. Imagine the lives of others. If you want to be a writer, you need to get over yourself. This is not just an artistic choice; it's a moral choice. A writer attempts to understand others from the inside. I mean, okay, the part about observing people is good, but I really don't think you have to get over yourself to be a good novelist. I actually think you have to get pretty into yourself. (not a problem for me.) You are the only person you can ever really know deeply. Despite Twitter and blogs, you will never have complete access to anybody else's thoughts and feelings every second of the day. You will never be inside anybody else's dreams. So if you are going to create characters that live, you have to find them inside yourself. You can always tell when somebody's failed at this--the characters we can't really find inside ourselves end up two-dimensional. (if you haven't already, go read Brendan Halpin's fine 2004 novel Donorboy. It's pretty clear which characters he found inside himself, and which are just observations of other people.) And, I mean, a moral choice? Really? Isn't that a little jihad-y for a puff piece about writing?

Found Poetry of The Spam Folder

I used to do this all the time, but I haven't looked in my spam folder for a long time. Anyway, I find a weird kind of poetry in reading the subject lines of the spam folder--sometimes they're poetic individually, but when you start stringing spam subject lines together, you end up with a bizarre kind of poetry. So I decided to make some actual poems. All poems consist of subjects of actual spam emails from my spam folder, and each line is a complete spam subject line. The titles of the poems are mine and not from my spam folder.

Note--due to the nature of spam, most of these poems involve penis enlargement.
Another note--all misspellings are accurate transcriptions of spam subject lines.

Dreams
Your hapiness is much closer now
Make your dream a reality today
Anjelina Jolie XXX Video Free.

Better Than Sex
Give joy to your beloved woman
Hermes watches
Luxury items available for everyone
High quality models of accessories
She moaned and moaned.

She'll Come Crawling Back
Immense dimension of your monster
Uprade it to huge volume
My ex called me last night
Shock her with your new size
Satisfy her with your giant.

Transgression is Good for the Soul
Feel yourself more manly
A method that works wonders
Do not deny that plesure
Priest and nun humping in confession room.

Be Careful What You Wish For
Huge dimension gives increased force
Stupid man gets dildo stuck in anal.

Look out, Kay Ryan! I'm coming for your job!