Ride of the Valkyries....Really?

So, I watched the post convention blowout for Kerry. John Williams and the Boston Pops, fireworks, and so forth. Nice display. Kind of grating to hear John Williams music (like Superman, E.T., Raiders of the Lost Ark, etc.) against that scene.

I kept wishing for Born on the Fourth of July. No dice, but what I got may have been better. It was certainly more...odd.

Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries." You know the one, with the blaring french horns and all. The problem is that its most famous use in the last several decades was as source music in Coppola's Apocalypse Now.

We all know that Kerry, by the way, served in Vietnam.

But we also know that the scene in Apocalypse Now that Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" overlays is one in which American soldiers in helicopters massacre Vietnamese civilians with machine guns.

Kerry's admitted to committing atrocities in Vietnam. Perhaps few people know that, but the collision of John Kerry, Vietnam vet, with "Ride of the Valkyries" is most unfortunate because of the reminders that it dregdes up from our collective movie-going past.

The Night Owl Strikes Again

Finished Motherless Brooklyn. Great book. Am excited about the prospect of the movie. If nothing else, it'll be a tour de force for Norton.

Also, need to mention that I have to be at work in seven hours. Ick.

Lyle Lovett and Antiques Roadshow coming up this week, both on Saturday. Should be fun, but maybe a bit hectic.

Sunday, Laundry Sunday

As is usual on Sunday, I'm doing laundry. I actually prefer to do laundry on Friday night or Saturday, but sometimes it gets put off a day. Yesterday, I went with my cousin and my mom up to Ripley, Tennessee, to an estate sale. Pretty stuff, some of it, but I wound up with more questions than answers about some of the more expensive items there, so I didn't buy anything except a couple of ceramic bowls that will be ideal for proofing bread and the like. You can never have too many giant mixing bowls.

I'm hungry. I'm also feeling vaguely sociable tonight, but it's too late, really, to call anyone and instigate anything.

So perhaps I'll just dry my clothes and try to finish Motherless Brooklyn. I'm close, but I think I may be just far enough away from the end of the novel so that finishing it will keep me up later than I ought to be.

I did see two great movies over the weekend, The Magdalene Sisters and City of God. The former I may never watch again, but it was a brilliant piece of work about a chapter of history of which I am completely ignorant. The latter also concerns a place about which I knew little, but cinematically it was reminiscent of De Palma, Scorsese, Tarantino, Coppola, and Soderbergh, to name a few. I was expecting depression from City of God, but it wasn't depressing; the violence, poverty, cruelty, and corruption present in City of God were assumed to be the norm and thus were not questioned, just stated. Alternately, The Magdalene Sisters has a moral tone; implicitly, a place outside the asylum exists from which actions inside it are judged. Judgments, if any, in City of God are more tenuous, because the only world present in the film is that of the City.

That's not to say that City of God doesn't view what goes on in the City as being wrong and horrific, but the two films deal with violence and depravity in completely different ways.

An Amazing and Slightly Terrifying Photograph

The Drudge Report posts a photo of a storm that must've hit Miami this evening. It's truly an amazing photograph. 

Another Book on the Reading List

Dang. It's always something.

First it was William F. Buckley's new autobiography, which awaits my perusal following Motherless Brooklyn.

And now, it's Roger Kimball's The Rape of the Masters: How Political Correctness Sabotages Art.

Q&A with Kimball is available on the National Review's Web site. I read the article looking for excerpts to post here and found that exercise to be fruitless, primarily because I enjoyed it all and don't feel like quoting out of context.

I am not currently a subscriber to either The National Review or The New Criterion. I have a feeling I ought to be a subscriber to both.

All that comes before in this post is an example of what a little late-night Web surfing can do; I was going to link to Rich Lowry's Tuesday article, "W.'s Double Binds," which begins:

Sometimes a political figure becomes so hated that he can't do anything right in the eyes of his enemies. President Bush has achieved this rare and exalted status. His critics are so blinded by animus that the internal consistency of their attacks on him no longer matters. For them, Bush is the double-bind president.

It's an interesting article and kind of fun, even if you're not a rabid right-winger like I am.

Weekend Parties & Photos

This weekend was full; Saturday night I hosted a grill-out party; it was fun, and it went late, but I think the mosquitoes ate more than the people did — and the people ate a lot. In fact, the party spilled over into Sunday morning. Folks went home, and then some of them came back tonight for round two. Too bad that work beckons in the morning for everyone.
 
I've decided that a digital camera is in my future. As well as a Mac. I've wanted one for a while now, but the lure of iPhoto and the other iApps is too strong to resist once one's actually considering a digital camera. Plus, OS X rocks.
 
I don't know that I'll take the G5 plunge now or wait for the new G5 iMac. I'd rather have the pro machine with the 23" HD monitor, but justifying it in terms of hobby-like photography is tough.
 
But the real problem is with the camera. I'm conflicted; I'd like a small and portable camera, because I figure I'll get more use out of that type of camera; I have an old Eos Rebel that I love, but it's big and bulky and difficult to travel with. Not the kind of camera you can take with you and snap photos any old place. It's what I might call a "destination camera." The sort of camera that requires constant planning for its use. You take it with you when you're going someplace where you're sure you want pictures. So I'd like the portability of something smaller.
 
I'd also like, however, to get the resolution and picture quality that's available from nice lenses and mondo-megapixel cameras. Additionally, everybody and his brother is making digital cameras nowadays; sifting through all the different models to find one that's appealing may take some serious time.
 
I've looked at cameras from Canon and Minolta, and I've read good and bad things about both. But that's just scratching the surface. I've used a Kodak EZShare, but it's a couple years old.
 
Several of you out there have digital cameras, I'm sure. Your comments are welcome and would be of some assistance as I begin the trek into the wilderness of digital camera-buying land.

A Dark and Stormy Night

After a day of agonizing heat and humidity, a cold front is in the process of coming through tonight; it's brought thunderstorms with it, and some relief from the sauna-like weather of earlier today.

Tomorrow is supposed to be cooler.

Motherless Brooklyn continues to be an enjoyable read, though I've not been able to devote as much time to it as I'd have liked. On the way from Amazon.com is William F. Buckley's newest book, his autobiography, Miles Gone By. Buckley, whatever one may think of his politics, is a consummate stylist; and I've heard that this book contains a number of essays that don't deal with the political; I'm anxiously awaiting this book's arrival.

I've been agonizing about my own writing; part of my job involves editing, and the writing I'm seeing because of that is in every sense atrocious. I know that reading poor quality writing negatively impacts my style. I'm concerned about this issue because I'm to write a paper on Suttree for the 25th Anniversary Celebration of same that's to be held in Knoxville, Tennessee, this October.

Finding time to reread Suttree and write a coherent, cogent paper about it is not going to be an easy job between now and October. I still have plenty of time, but I need to get to work soon.

Summer Colds & Weddings

I've spent most of the day, at work and after, battling what seems to be a summertime cold. I'm not bad off yet and hope not to be. This is a cold that apparently arrived on the plane with my sister, who was here last week. My mother's had it, and I've felt poorly all day.

There's nothing worse than a cold in the summertime.

Got an invitation from an old friend to his wedding, which is in August. The quest for someone to accompany me has now officially begun. Going to weddings alone is horrible.

Also talked to The Girl tonight. She's as happy as a clam. This, of course, was after a week of phone tag. I heard a brief report on the radio today that mentioned the pope's saying (and I'm not Catholic, despite my Italian last name) that sometimes life was so hectic that it made it impossible for people to pray and think about things. (I am sure the pope put it better than that, but his basic sentiments I won't disagree with.)

In fact, I read an essay by Mark Helprin, "The Acceleration of Tranquility" an eternity ago, and I thought then it was an epoch-making essay, in that it summed up nicely the problems with the age we're living in. Most of what he said then is more true now than when he wrote the essay.

That, in fact, is one of my favorite Helprin essays. Another, which was the first Mark Helprin I ever read, is "Against the Dehumanization of Art."

The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy

I am, and have been, a staunch Bush supporter viz. the War on Terror (up to and including the Iraqi campaign). When I happened across the news feed that appears now on the right pane of the site, I just couldn't resist posting it. It took all of two seconds to add.

Meeting Cormac

I've mentioned before that I'm the Webmaster over at The Cormac McCarthy Home Pages. Few people know how that came about; here's the story.

I was fortunate to have been allowed, while in college (1989-93), to interview Shelby Foote, who came to school and spoke one morning. During the course of our chat (I was nervous, and tapes of the event betray such by my constant mmmm-hmmms and other verbal tics), I asked him who his favorite contemporary novelist was. Foote remarked that Cormac McCarthy was "very good"; in Shelby Foote's argot, that's high praise indeed.

This interview was conducted in the spring of 1992, just before All the Pretty Horses was published. Foote said he'd read the galleys and the novel was (again) "very good." I waited several months and bought All the Pretty Horses the first time I saw it for sale.

I read about half of the book and then went back and bought three more copies — I'd been something of a book collector before, but encountering McCarthy induced a case of full-blown bibliomania that's not let up from that day to this.

I also became an evangelist for McCarthy, proselytizing as I was able, giving away copies of the book (most of the rest of his work was then still out of print), and generally talking about this obscure writer McCarthy at length to anyone who would listen.

All the Pretty Horses went on to become a runaway best-seller. And the reclusive McCarthy became famous. He still didn't give interviews, though, so little information existed about his life, and no critical work existed apart from Vereen Bell's The Achievement of Cormac McCarthy and John Sepich's Notes on Blood Meridian.

It turned out that the latter book had been published on the occasion of the first McCarthy conference, which was held at Bellarmine College in Kentucky in 1992. I didn't yet know it, but I'd later meet most of the small circle of scholars and enthusiasts who were at that conference.

Papers from the First Conference were assembled into another book, edited by Edwin T. Arnold and Dianne Luce. I picked up a copy of that book upon its publication.

Then in 1994, I broke up with Psycho Homewrecker, the (now ex-) girlfriend. That left me with a lot of free time on my hands. And the second volume of The Border Trilogy, The Crossing had been published earlier that year.

Also, about this time I discovered the Internet. I had an account with the old Prodigy Service, which offered "Personal Web Pages." I got a book on HTML, taught myself, and put up a page devoted to McCarthy and his work. At the time, it was practically the only site devoted to McCarthy in existence.

I collected material about McCarthy, wrote a short biography, and made lists of available criticism and reference books. Then, one day out of the blue, I got an email from Edwin T. Arnold, who I mentioned above as having co-edited the papers from the First Conference (Perspectives on Cormac McCarthy). I was, in a word, dumbstruck. I sent Dr. Arnold an email back asking if he were The Edwin T. Arnold who'd edited Perspectives, and he said he was indeed. He and some of the folks from the First Conference were contemplating forming a Society, and lo and behold, they asked for my help. Wanted me to be their Webmaster. For this, I'd get some content for my site, my Internet access paid for a while, and a seat on the Society's Board.

And the rest, as they say, is history. I attended my first McCarthy Conference in (I believe it was) 1995, and continued to participate on a more-or-less yearly basis from then on. I presented papers, had a few articles published, and generally established myself as something of a raconteur on the subject.

Again, out of the blue, I got an email asking me if I'd contribute the entry on Cormac McCarthy for the Dictionary of Literary Biography's 20th Century American Western Writers volume. I wrote that, too.

I now know and am good friends with many of the Society folks, who continue to host conferences and now publish voluminously about Cormac McCarthy. I'm continuing my maintenance of the Web site, because McCarthy's work is endlessly fascinating to me.

In October of 2002, I flew down to Houston, where several Society folks had gathered to witness the first production of McCarthy's only play, The Stonemason. McCarthy, to the shock of all of us involved with the Society, had indicated that he'd attend. Several of us met him and talked with him. He and I discussed the weather.

He's slight-of-stature with piercing blue-gray eyes that always seem to be probing something. He talks in a warm, affable manner, and his demeanor almost belies his considerable intelligence.

And that's how I met Cormac McCarthy. Other stories exist, from other people, about how McCarthy once called them up on the phone, wrote them letters, and the like. The Society as a whole, however, has taken a hands-off view toward his personal life, preferring to honor his requests and let him live his life in peace. We admire the books.

Things I Learned from James Bond?

Upon reflection, I'm struck by the fact that around that same time, I was reading Robert Ludlum's books: The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Conspiracy, The Bourne Supremacy, The Bourne Ultimatum, etc.

It's possible I could have picked up the below-mentioned tip from Robert Ludlum. But Bond's just so much cooler. Even if, as I heard once, you shouldn't shake a martini because it bruises the gin.

Things I Learned from James Bond

Or, The Doug Wamble Ramble

A few weeks ago, I went with friends to see Harry Connick, Jr. The venue was an outdoor park, and the six of us congregated there and waited for the show to start. At the last minute, the show's organizers had announced an opening act. It was to be a fellow named Doug Wamble, who plays a kind of loose acoustic jazz/blues.

One of the group I was with not only knew who Doug Wamble was, but went to high school with him. High school was a while ago, and the two of them had lost touch. But once the connection had been made, it was the topic of conversation throughout the night.

The show ended, and my friend decided that she should go find Doug Wamble. All of us had been drinking (not excessively, but enough to make all of this extremely funny), so we went with her on what's now known as the Wamble Ramble. We left our table and ventured over to where we thought Doug might be — the tour buses.

At this point, I began thinking about James Bond. When I was about twelve years old, I read all the James Bond books; those are like crack to a teenage boy. I bought all of them in paperback, and I'm quite sure I drove my parents batty by my repeated trips to the bookstore every third day or so to get another two or three books.

I now remember very little of those books, but one piece of advice they offered has stuck with me. If you don't know where you're going or what you're doing, acting like you do — walking at a determined pace and without looking like you're lost or otherwise clueless — can get you a long way. I'm not sure if the others were aware of this particular piece of advice, but that's what I was thinking about when we embarked on our little quest.

Shortly, we were stopped by security. He asked us where we were going, and the Wamble Ramble instigator spoke up for all of us. She said, "we're trying to get to our cars."

Look like you know what you're doing, I'm thinking.

She was very confident.

Security guard buys her story, and proceeds to walk us to the back gate. He doesn't know, and we don't say, that our cars are clear around on the other side of the park. He lets us out, and we mill around. Now, we're still carrying coolers full of ice, food, drinks, and the like. That stuff's starting to get heavy. And we have a long walk ahead of us.

Fortunately, the night was cool. We soon happened upon a large chain link fence.

Trouble.

There was a gate, though, and it happened to be open. The chain and padlock were there, but the gate wasn't locked. We scooted on through. Lucky for us, because if we hadn't made it through that gate, we'd have had to double back — and I'm not at all certain the security guard would have thought so much of the "getting to our cars" story the second time he heard it from us, especially since we'd then be walking in the opposite direction.

After a bit more meandering, we made it back to the cars, and the night proceeded uneventfully from there. More drink, lots of good conversation, and the recollection of being thwarted by a security man who seemed to be taking his job a little too seriously.

Coda: my friend did manage to get in touch with Wamble. She called his agent.

So that's what I learned from James Bond. Look like you know what you're doing.

It's too bad, though. One might suppose there were a lot of other more interesting things I could have picked up from 007 but didn't. Bond was always good with the ladies. Plus, he had some cool toys.

Not too Pretty, but....

Added an RSS feed to the Blog this evening.

Well — added something like one. An Atom feed (per Blogger), and a piece of script that lets me parse RSS feeds from other sites. My example, in the right pane, is the iTunes Music Store RSS.

Information about how to do this came from:

http://jade.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/feed/

More on this experiment later.

Paul Simon Still Rules After All These Years

I'm buying the new huge Paul Simon CD set; I'd prefer to wait until the albums are released in SACD or DVD Audio, but I heard this track the other day, and I am for some reason completely captivated by it. It's a demo of "Homeless" that was evidently recorded prior to Simon's South African trek.

QuickTime
Windows Media Player

Sometimes, simplicity speaks for itself.

What The M is Reading

Last night, I started Jonathan Lethem's Motherless Brooklyn. That means I've abandoned both Gould's Book of Fish and Simon Winchester's Krakatoa, which have been sitting on my bedside table for a while now, untouched.

Lethem's book is intriguing, as the narrator has Tourette's Syndrome, so is given to sudden verbal outbursts. The Tourette's is mostly not being played for laughs, but it does make for an interesting and different read. I've had this book for several years now, have heard good things about it, and have been meaning to get to it for a while now.

I also hear that it's to be a movie next year, starring and directed by Ed Norton.

Another comment about my reading of late: I've been reading almost nothing but mysteries for the last several years now. I'm not sure when this happened, but it's definitely a trend in my reading habits.

Turnabout is Fair Play

http://www.michaelmoorehatesamerica.com/

A film about a guy's trying to get an interview with Michael Moore, who apparently won't grant him one.

A Strange Group of People

My family is a strange group of people.

Before the big patriotic concert, there was large family gathering. Food everywhere. My sister's in town, too, so she was there. My dad's family doesn't get together much, but when they do, it's almost always a hoot.

My dad's family is the crazy side. How crazy depends on the day. They weren't really crazy today, only moderately so. Not enough alcohol was consumed to make anybody talk too much. I did see pictures of my grandparents and great grandparents that I'd never seen before. Strange, looking at pictures of relatives that have been dead since well before I was born. These were folks from the Old Country, too.

Stranger and Stranger

The life keeps getting stranger and stranger. "The girl" has moved back here from another city, but she's dating another guy, and they're pretty serious. She and I have had our big talk, and the outcome was much like I'd expected, but not what I'd wanted. However, her moving back here has allowed us to reconnect with each other. We talk more, and actually get to see each other from time to time now, so things are good. Most people have too few friends. When you find a good one, you'd best hang on to 'em.

Another friend, an old and dear friend, recently lost her husband in a terrible tragic accident. After having been out of contact with her for ten years, we're suddenly talking again. Waking up and finding myself in that situation one morning was something I'd never expected.

Just goes to show you, you can't plan anything. Not really.

I'm trying to do what is right and good; beyond that, I don't know.

The weekly trivia team has exchanged Blog addresses. I haven't yet provided mine, because the Blog has languished so long that it needs some content before I let anyone else know its whereabouts.

In other news, attended a supposedly patriotic concert event tonight. Thought that the folks performing had mistaken the holiday. It's Independence Day, not the Fourth of July. Someone ought to shoot the producer of that show; sound was bad, too.

At the end, there were fireworks, though. So, all in all, I'm happy. There's not much that feeling the explosion from fireworks ruffling the cuffs of your pants won't make up for.

Notes After a Prolonged Absence

I have decided to renew my commitment to my Blog. Henceforth, it shall be about what interests me. As that varies from day to day, so will the subject matter of this blog vary.

Today's topic is the nature of the Blog itself. I've discovered that a friend of mine has a Blog. And this friend, who happens to be female, does not know that I know of the existence of her blog.

The question of the moment is: am I obligated to tell her of the existence of my Blog? And if she knew of my Blog, would she be obligated to tell me?

I feel as though I'm spying on her. The Blog is personal, somewhat private, but — as it's on the Web, public.

What are my ethical obligations here?

Premises

A few more housekeeping items. I've never really laid this out before, so I beg your indulgence.

I believe that words mean things. The meanings of words can be ascertained by reading them, both in isolation and within their context. I also believe that words are valuable and should not be trifled with. I have little patience for people who waste words.

I believe in God. Creator-God, Judeo-Christian, God-of-the-Bible God. I cannot contemplate a world or universe without Him. Without God, logic itself (being accidental in that case) can claim no special privilege.

Both these things are articles of faith. And one (the value of words) follows from the other (belief in God).

Words are the things by which we are capable of understanding God, contemplating Him, asking Him questions, or even doubting His existence. They have the added benefit of allowing us to communicate with each other, both about abstract ideas and about what happened yesterday.