Author: Ridley

In case you missed it, the great Ted Leo opened a Kickstarter today to complete and produce his new album. And, 12 hours later, it was fully funded. I’ve always thought that he had unusually avid fans who were eager to support him and I couldn’t be happier to be proven right. Leo’s not just a great musicians; he’s a great guy in the old school punk tradition. In the post major label world, artists my not have the same breadth of support, but I suspect there’s more depth than there was before. In the past, the only way to “make it” in the industry to was to have a gazillion fans and sell a ton of records. Now, it seems that getting as many fans is tougher, but an artist can connect with their with their dedicated fans on a deeper level than was possible before. Anyway, while the Kickstarter is fully funded, the incentives make it worth your while to continue to support, and there are going to be more goodies as more money comes in. I for one am going to be getting not one but two signed post cards to me and to one of my aliases. In case you hadn’t guessed, I’m a fan. After mentioning I’d been reading Wodehouse, my friend Jim recommend I read Jonathan Ames’ Wake Up, Sir!  So, that’s what I did. Ames is the creator of the TV show Bored To Death, which was weird and funny and ended way before its time, and his brings a very similar sense of humor to Wake Up, Sir! There’s obviously a good deal of Wodehouse pastiche going on and its executed well, but that’ll only carry a novel for so long. Fortunately, the protagonist is a nightmare. He’s not Bertie Wooster, he’s two generations removed and he’s exactly the sort of person that makes you think that old people who shake their fists and complain about “kids today” might be on to something.  Comedy novels seldom work make me laugh (Terry Pratchett being the obvious exception), and while I didn’t laugh much, I smiled a lot. This is a funny novel and I’m a little embarrassed that I’d never even heard of it. There are even frequent references to to Raymond Chandler for goodness’ sake! I blame it on Wake Up, Sir! being published during my “not reading” years.  Next up is Tom McHale’s Principato, which was suggested to me by my brother in law. I’d never heard of McHale, but I’m hardly alone in this. I couldn’t find a copy at any of the book stores, used or new, in town. In fact, even Amazon didn’t stock it so I wound up ordering a copy from a shop in England.  McHale’s Wikipedia page is a pretty grim read. He was a critically successful novelist in his 20’s, got a gig as writer-in-residence, wrote several more well-received novels, took a gig teaching at a university, then ended his own life right before he started.  He was compared to Heller, Vonnegut, Updike, and Roth, and now he’s all but forgotten. That’s a cautionary tale or three here, isn’t it? -RK

This one’s going to be a bit of a ramble, so bear with me… We were watching Mr. Show last night because Mr. Show is, in my opinion, the funniest live action comedy show ever produced by these United States. Every time I see it, I’m struck by how they cleverly avoid the problem of coming up with an end to a sketch by just stopping when it was no longer funny and moving on to something else. It’s the same thing Monty Python did and it’s just as effective. Compare this approach to what Saturday Night Live has done since it first aired some time in the pre-Cambrian. No matter how slight the idea, they seem compelled to provide each sketch with an ending. All of the humor has long since been wrung from the concept, but they soldier on painfully (both for the actors and the audience). Good endings are hard to achieve if you try to force them. The trick, then, is knowing when to stop as opposed to insisting on a specific ending at a certain time. Here’s an imaginary G.K. Chesterton from an equally imaginary book*: October knew, of course, that the action of turning a page, of ending a chapter or of shutting a book, did not end a tale. Having admitted that, he would also avow that happy endings were never difficult to find: “It is simply a matter,” he explained to April, “of finding a sunny place in a garden, where the light is golden and the grass is soft; somewhere to rest, to stop reading, and to be content.” I saw Neal Stephenson at a book signing a good while ago, and he was asked the dreaded “process question.” He said that he didn’t have any set number of words he tried to write each day; he just worked until he wrote what he recognized as a bad sentence. He erased the sentence (he was writing longhand at the time and may still be), put down his pen, and stopped for the day.  While I was thinking about this, I was reminded of the film Stranger Than Fiction. You know the one, the Will Ferrell film where his life is being written by a novelist played by Emma Thompson. On a side note, I feel like Stranger Than Fiction is fading from the public consciousness. It certainly isn’t as widely referenced as the equally-deserving Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind. Anyway, if you’re thinking about graceful endings, you really can’t avoid thinking about Stranger Than Fiction. The artistic tension between having the “right” ending and having the ending you want makes for surprisingly effective drama. I feel like Emma Thompson’s character’s choice was informed by the same sentiment the imaginary narrator expressed above, and I like that idea. My mother always tells me that her favorite books have ending that land in such a way that, after reading the last line, she closes the book and exhales “Yeah.” It sounds better in person, trust me. There aren’t a great many that I can think of that end so gracefully. Terry Pratchett’s Small Gods has a coda for the ages. Even if it weren’t one of my favorite novels, it would be worth reading just for the end. The Grapes of Wrath ended beautifully, although I’m a biased Steinbeck fan boy, so take my opinions with a grain of salt.  For a post concerning endings, you’d think I’d have a good one queued up. At least, you would if you didn’t know me.  Ideas which occur to you while soaking in a tub half asleep might, might make for a decent post, but those hazy states of mind rarely provide one with a proper stopping point.  -RK P.S. Songs which end albums well are rare and satisfying things. This doesn’t really fit with the post, but I was thinking about some of my favorite album-enders and I’ll just list them here: Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt” (The Downward Spiral) My Bloody Valentine’s “Soon” (Loveless), Radiohead’s “The Tourist” (OK Computer) Spiritualized’s “Cop Shoot Cop” (Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space) Pop Will Eat Itself’s “Wake Up! Time To Die” (This Is The Day…This Is The Hour…This Is This!) Pink Floyd’s “Brain Damage/Eclipse” (Dark Side of the Moon)  The The’s “Lonely Planet” (Dusk) * This is from Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman. The lines are from a book in the Library of Dreams, a repository of books imagined but never written. They are Gaiman’s imagining of Chesterton’s imagining of the book The Man Who Was October. The Sandman really is extraordinary and you ought to read it. Funny thing is, I enjoyed Gaiman’s imaginary Chesterton a good deal more than the real one.  

I am not what most people would describe as a great planner. I’m going to pause here to allow the people who know me well to finish their laughter, derision, or Tina Fey-esque eye rolls. There. Everyone back? Good. Like most traits, this one is not good or bad in and of itself. I’m perfectly comfortable when plans get changed or canceled and I improvise pretty well, generally getting from point A to point B without much fuss.  That said, a little structure helps a lot. When I was at the absolute lowest point of my life, simply having weekly events to look forward to were invaluable to me. I couldn’t see too far into the future as it seemed dark and scary and not particularly worth experiencing, but the fact that I had a regular Wednesday morning meeting to look forward to broke time into chunks small enough to digest. I couldn’t see the top of the ladder, and I probably would have despaired had I seen how far away it was, but I could focus on that next rung right in front of me. Things aren’t anywhere near that bad now. My life, all in all, is pretty fantastic. It’s much better than me-in-high-school would have believed. But, there’s the general feeling of unease/fear/terror due to having a President who seems bound and determined to destroy everything you like about your country. It doesn’t help that the state government has jumped on board and is, if anything, worse than the President. I’m still struggling to find my feet with the new regime at work. There’s just a great deal of change and uncertainty. To combat this, we’ve already booked a week out in west Texas. We’re heading back out to Marfa, the bookend of our honeymoon,this summer. Knowing that that is on the horizon is a nice, big carrot in front of me. Just hold it together for a few more months and then I get to spend a week with my wife, some books, some adult beverages, and some clothing-optional outdoor hot tubs. Not pictured: The “clothing optional” part So, nope, I’m not a great planner and I doubt I’ll ever be once. It’s just that having a few plans, a few milestones, a little bit of structure, makes the bad stuff seem a good deal less bad. In a funny way, vacations are like the opposite of the ladder analogy. They can get you out of your daily rut of just focusing on what’s directly in front of you. More than a few vacations I’ve been on have served to remind me of just how many things are worse than a rut, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Getting away from it all (or at least as much of “it all” I could leave behind-there are limits in this age of wireless tethers to one’s job) clears the distractions away and gives you a chance to really sink in to what’s important to you. There was more than a little “why am I spending all my time doing that when this is what I want?” the last time we were in Marfa. Granted, they have to pay me to do “that” and I, turn, have to pay to do “this”, so the question answers itself.  I’m getting off-track here, but my point is…wait, there was a point, wasn’t there? My point is that having something to look forward to is an underrated boon, and that the specific thing I am looking forward to right now is a vacation to one of my favorite places on this planet (I say this as someone who hasn’t traveled especially much) and I’ll be spending a week there with my favorite person on this planet. It seems like I could have said that in fewer words, but brevity, like planning-ness (?) isn’t one of my great virtues. Cue the knowing eye rolls.  -RK  

We’re spending the evening together and we’re most definitely not talking about current events. Of course, we’re both exhausted and fell asleep on the sofa, but I’d rather be asleep on the couch, drooling into my shirt (and not her hair, I want to emphasize) with Nicole than an awfully long list of things. So, no update to speak of today. We’re going to make late-night filets mignon and watch 30 Rock and do Jello shots of each other’s backs and all that other stuff people do on Valentine’s Day. If you’re reading this, I hope you’re where you want to be, happy, relaxed, and having a good evening. I know I sure am.   * After our wedding anniversary and Love Day, of course.

I think I have damaged some close friendships due to disagreements regarding the President. I am of the belief that a Trump presidency would be (and so far, is) too damaging to my leftist beliefs to oppose Clinton on the grounds that she wasn’t a good standard bearer for the left. A couple of my friends did not come to the same conclusion; they believed that Clinton would more damaging, and that a Trump victory would force the Democrats to become a true leftist party. Yes, I feel strongly enough about this to make a comic. I’d love to be proven wrong and for this administration to be less monstrous than it has thus far been and for a surge in socialism to take over not just the Democratic party, but the government, from the bottom up to the top. Even if that happens, I’m still going to be angry. I feel like it was one hell of a risk to take, particularly when the people forcing the gamble were the ones who would be most insulated from the consequences. Plus, I just hate having a gun held to me head. On a happier note, Target is now carrying refrigerated “Pizzeria Uno” pies. They’re better than any frozen pizza I’ve had. The cheese, the sauce, and the crust are all thiiiiis close to tasting like a decent delivery pizza. The only problem I had with it was that the top of the crust cooked nicely, but the bottom of the pie didn’t quite harden the way it should have. Still, it was good enough that I’m willing to take another crack at it when I need a pizza fix. In spite of the above paragraph, I’ve been eating much better of late. We’ve cut out foods with added sugar, essentially eliminating sweet drinks and desserts. Minus tonight’s lapse, I should be dropped pounds like nobody’s business. As it turns out, while steroids are magical for curing many, many things, they’re not much good for people who are trying to drop weight. In theory, the better diet should reduce my need for the steroids, so, crossing my fingers, this is just a temporary setback. Tonight, my friend Jim got up on a stage and sang in front of people for the first time in his life. Just thinking about doing something like this gives me the jibblies. Go give him a high five because doing things that scare you is cool unless “being a tool” scares you. It’s like they old PSA said: “Being a tool is NOT cool.” I ran on fumes all of last week and I’m like as not going to be doing the same thing tomorrow (at the very least), so I’m going to call it a night. Sweet dreams, everyone. -RK      

The above image has nothing to do with the post, even obliquely, I just thought it was cool. I love maps.  Recently, my friends have offered some intriguing suggests as to what I should read next. My friends seem to have highly specialized tastes as none of my local book stores carry any of the three books they suggested*. So, last week, I picked up a copy of Chuck Klosterman’s “Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs.” It’s a collection of clever essays on pop culture. When he’s on, I absolutely love Klosterman’s ability to take a single goofy idea and flesh it out into a monster of snark.  When he’s not at the top of his game, he can get a little cringe-worthy. Pop culture criticism, unless it is the finest example of the genre, has an expiration date. What was edgy and provocative looks silly and obtuse in the rear-view mirror, especially when some of it has a whiff of sexism. Remember the Seinfeld episode where Kramer ticked off his produce vendor and Jerry had to guy and buy those weird, exotic foods like mangoes and plantains? Some of it reads like that, or even like an old blog post by a guy like, um, me, only slightly less embarrassing. What was most intriguing to me was the essay on journalism. The change in tone when Klosterman went from writing about things he’d seen and started in on things he done was easily the highlight of the book. I’d love to read an entire book on subjects Klosterman can write about with that level of authority, but alas, this one wasn’t it. I finally found a copy of Nnedi Okorafor’s Hugo award winning “Binti” on Tuesday and, an hour later, I was looking forward to the sequel because I’d finished it. I’m a big fan of novellas, but I wish “Binti” had been just a little longer.  That’s about the only complaint I can think of. Okorafor’s a fine storyteller, and if the arc of “Binti” is pretty familiar, it’s well-told and the pages fly by. Her prose is tight, her pacing is brisk without being rushed, and the characters have a life of their own. However, what sets this story above other YA space operas is the imaginative, world-building. This is not yet another universe where everyone is a white American painted with a slightly different skin color or given names to suggest a diversity where none really exists. I love it.  I picked up the sequel today and I expect to tear through it almost as quickly.  -RK * “Principato” by Tom McHale, George Alec Effinger’s “When Gravity Fails,” and “Wake Up, Sir!” by Jonathan Ames. McHale is so obscure that I had to buy from an Amazon affiliate in England. I love how easy that is now. BTW, my book-buying method, in case you’re interested, is: 1. If the author is no longer with us, I’ll start at a local used book store. 2. If the author is still around, or if the book isn’t at the used store, I’ll go to a local indie bookseller. 3. If all else fails, it’s Amazon. 

I’ve written three posts in the last three days and deleted each one of them. Not because they weren’t any good, but…wait, no, it’s exactly because they weren’t any good. Between the ongoing crisis centered in D.C. and the loss of my father, I’m struggling to concentrate on anything else. So I won’t. This is mostly for my own benefit, to remind myself. If you’re interested, by all means read on, but I won’t be upset if you decide to skip this one. Some of these memories could well be inaccurate, but that doesn’t bother me. They’re my memories and I don’t love them any more or less if they’re true. The first vacation I remember taking with my father back when The Beatles were still a band. We lived in a big, two story rental home in Dallas. We had a wall calendar and there was a picture of an airplane on the day when we were leaving. About all I can remember is that we were flying Braniff back when they were still a major airline and they painted all of there planes in different solid colors with white tails.  I hoped we’d take a blue plane because it was my favorite color. I don’t recall whether we did or not. I don’t remember our first proper camping trip. I do remember that the weather invariably turned rainy any time we camped. When I later became a Calvin & Hobbes fan, I really appreciated all of the strips where the dad insisted that they enjoy their camping trips no matter the weather, as camping in the rain “builds character.” I remember swearing that, when I grew up, I would never again camp in the rain. I have kept that promise. We owned a canoe and took semi-regular trips, mostly day trips, but sometimes overnight, to float the rivers in north central Texas. They were gentle floats, most of the time, as there was no white water anywhere near us. We floated the Trinity, the Caddo, and most often, the Brazos. The Brazos had a marvelous limestone bed which made the river incredibly clear. Dad did the bulk of the paddling as I was (and remain) lazy and preferred fishing to paddling.  The Brazos was most definitely “our place.” We had a preferred camp site, most likely on private property up a creek on the west side of the river below Lake Whitney. There was an enormous limestone boulder, a house-sized cube, just in front of the mouth of the creek. If you weren’t prepared, you’d miss the entrance and have to paddle back upstream. The first hundred yards were wide and slow and had a very low canopy of branches which gave the impression of being in a tunnel. The creek turned to the right at another, smaller, cube of limestone and the canopy gave way to open sky. There was a small, white beach behind the boulder where we could tie up the canoes.  You followed a short path up a ten foot cliff to and found yourself underneath a one hundred and fifty foot wide amphitheater carved out of a limestone cliff. Under the shelter of the shell was the softest, whitest sand you’ve ever seen. We often slept under in the amphitheater one just an air mattress and a sheet, no tents or sleeping bags, and watched the stars wheel by before falling asleep. More often, we’d camp either using our travel trailer or a borrowed Merry Miler conversion van. I loved that van. The idea of having a house behind the driver’s seat seemed very science-fictiony to my tween brain. We took it out to New Mexico, where I first smelled pinion pine fires and had my first sip of Jack Daniels by a camp fire on a cold, clear night at what was surely the highest altitude I’d ever experienced. We drove down to El Paso and I visited Mexico for the first time back when crossing the border was a simple thing to do. That night, my grandfather on my mother’s side passed away and we drove overnight back home through an ice storm. We stopped in Clyde, Texas, and we found that there was more than an inch of ice on the van, but we kept going anyway. The trailer wasn’t quite as much fun since I was stuck in the very uncomfortable back seat of a 1970’s Chevy Blazer. It was better for sleeping and cooking and showering, though. My mom always made her shrimp salad with iceberg lettuce, the smallest frozen shrimp I’ve ever seen, and Good Seasons Italian dressing. We took the trailer up for an overnight camping trip, dads and sons, by some reservoir in north Texas (I can’t remember which). The dads set up camp and started drinking bear and cooking beans and sausages and they laughed when we kids took off with fishing poles for a little sandbar near the camp sight. If you’ve never encountered a sand bass run, let me describe it for you: No matter what you throw out into the water, you will catch a sandy. The bait didn’t matter. The lure didn’t matter. We got to the point where we were tying multiple lures to the same line and catching more than one fish at once. When we returned to camp, each kid had a stringer or two full of pound to pound and a half sand bass. I still remember the look on all the dad’s faces. Alas, the trailer did not get a happy ending. One night, the night before we were going to go on a trip, my sister and I couldn’t sleep, so we were moving around the house and we noticed a light outside. It turns out that gas lines are difficult to repair and the trailer burned down that night and we never got another one. My father was very big on the traditional Big Family Vacation. He even had t-shirts screen printed with logos for the vacations, something that seemed very exotic at the time. The first one of these vacations I remember was to the Big Bend National Park. Our truck ran out of gas on the way down there and mobile phones were still a couple of decades away, so we flagged down a couple of…

…post a list of links! The news has had a certain Gish gallop quality to it. I have a lot to say about it, but I’m not sure I have anything useful to say yet, and so I’m linking these for posterity’s sake.  Charlie Stross on his travel plans (hint: they’re not going to involve visiting the United States for a while). Patrick Joseph with a list of the highlights from the first week of our unprecedented president. John Scalzi lays out his case for hope (or for despair-it’s a pretty fine edge). Gizmodo with an extremely short menu of options for people who want secure telephones. Virginia’s representative Dave Brat showing his knowledge of slang is equal to his understanding of women’s issues. The SPLC describes what an honest investigation of voting issues would turn up (I wouldn’t hold my breath). A convoy of Navy SEALS drove through Kentucky in otherwise unmarked vehicles flying Trump flags. Speaking of SEALS, the President sent them into action ‘without sufficient intelligence.’  Should we be expecting Benghazi-ish hearings? Um…wouldn’t bet on it. The new President, being as presidential as he can, uses the national prayer breakfast to mock Arnold Schwarzenegger. If you click the link, please be sure to watch Arnold’s response. And now, some Ted Leo to close out. Put on your boots and march. -RK  

…then it probably is.  These are really lousy times on both a personal and global level. One of the very few, very bright silver linings is how much love and support I’ve received from friends both near and distant. Even without the support bit, hearing voices I haven’t heard in a long time, even if only hearing them in my head while reading, has been a huge help to me. If you’re reading this, thank you, as there’s a very real chance it’s you I’m talking about. I switched the site over to a different font because the other one was too twee (and it handled quotation marks about as badly as I’ve ever seen them handled). While most of the experts recommend Helvetica or something similar for legibility, I kind of hate the look of it on my site, so we’re switching to something else shortly. I have a stack of books I’m eager to read, but unfortunately, that stack is virtual as the local Half Price stores don’t have what I’m looking for. I have a system for for book-hunting: 1. If the author is still alive, I buy it at a local indie bookseller to ensure the author benefits and the local bookstore gets their cut. 2. If the author is not longer with us, I’ll look at Half Price to try to support a local bookstore as I’m somewhat less concerned about enriching the author’s estate. 3. If the book is just plain unavailable locally, then I’ll look at Amazon. Anyway, that’s a long way of saying that what I’m currently reading is Chuck Klosterman’s Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, which isn’t what I’d planned on reading next and isn’t really in my wheelhouse. Come to think of it, the fact that it isn’t the sort of thing I’d normally reach for is probably a good thing as I tend to gravitate towards what I’m comfortable. Anyway, I’m happy to give Klosterman a spin because he wrote one of the best rock-related essays ever, but I’m not entirely sure that that level of hipness will carry an entire book. -RK  

I’m avoiding social media entirely during work hours today, and probably for the week. Not only am I way behind at the office, but watching events unfold is throwing me in to fight or flight mode. I can’t do anything useful about what’s happening, and I can’t concentrate on work, so I just have to try to tune it out. If you need to reach me, there’s always e-mail or telephone*. The events of the day are extraordinary, utterly unlike anything I’ve ever seen, but I have to tune it out while I’m at the office. Be safe out there, and don’t let the bastards win.  -RK * It just occurred to me that I’ve had an email address for 24 years now, and I think I still have my original address. It can’t have been that long, can it? Funny old world.