hooray!

Vacation starts tomorrow!!!!

wow. fucking wow.

That’s how a friend described Pandora. I can’t disagree. You put in a song or a band, and it creates a “radio station” based on that and then you tell it if you like or don’t like the songs it’s playing and it adapts. And it’s free. I’m convulsing in my chair about how amazing this is. And I’m not getting any work done because of it.

I’d gone a surprisingly long time without a music post!

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…

I can NOT wait for my vacation. Okay, I can wait and besides I don’t exactly have a choice. But here I am on the day after Christmas (er, that is, the first day of Chanukah) sludging through my day at work not getting nearly enough done. It’s bad enough that I came in at like 10 and will be in pretty late tomorrow because I’m getting a new battery for my car at Sears in the morning. So, really, I should be working my ass off but instead I’m just middling through stuff. I’m sure it will work out, I always find a way to get stuff done, but January will be much worse for it. C’est la vie, right? But, I’ve been (for the most part, anyway) so good about working crazy hard here it’s kind of frustrating to hit this lull. Ah well, back to work, I suppose…

Let’s do it once…

The Imperial Presidency

Today’s lead editorial in the Times.

I’ve always liked the phrase “Imperial Presidency”; it has a nice ring to it. Although I think “imperial” just scratches the surface of what’s wrong with the Bush Administration and frankly isn’t really the focus of this editorial.

I’m glad the NY transit strike is over, but we’ll have to wait to see what it accomplished. It doesn’t seem like Toussaint is the greatest labor leader around. But he deserves our support for standing up to a totally unbending MTA, whose main negotiating strategy appears to have been the bait-and-switch (sending out an offer of not changing the retirement age for pensions, but then, when the workers show up to negotiate, casually mention, “oh, but the worker contribution has to be increased from 2% to 6%.”

Okay, lest you totally miss the point, tripling the contribution has a substantially greater negative effect on workers than increasing the retirement age by 7 years. That’s not to say that the MTA had no legitimate points, of course they did. But I really don’t think they were negotiating in good faith prior to the strike. As I said, though, we’ll see what the result of the mediation is.

Also, hopefully the judge will reduce the penalties for violating the Taylor Laws. My big question about NY right now is: should they re-reform (i.e., actually reform) the Rockerfeller drug laws or the Taylor law first? Not that they’re doing either of these…

nothing doing

Still reading The Godfather, the movie is very very similar to the book. Probably not really a worthwhile read, but I’m far enough through that I’m not going to drop it. Hopefully, I’ll finish before next Friday so I can take new books with me for the plane flights and the week off. Or maybe I’ll work on the plane.

I haven’t watched any movies lately, but from netflix I currently have The Big Lebowski, Field of Dreams, and Hotel Rwanda. I’ve seen the first two lots of times, but not the third.

That’s about it, but I should really be working right now… I have so much I should do before I take a week off!

Sometimes my thoughts confuse me.

The sun crashes to the ground but it sets upon my head. Let’s do it once…

Incidentally, though I’m now reading The Godfather (which I’m enjoying well enough, although I don’t love the writing style and really the book is crap), I haven’t really gone back to Dress Your Family in Cordoruy and Denim. Perhaps on the airplane to California.

Prep

Okay, so I finished Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld and here are my disorganized and incomplete thoughts:

[Warning: I give away significant aspects of the story here. I will not use the term "spoilers".]

First, I saw this book a while ago at Borders on the “New [paperback] Fiction” table and I considered buying it but then didn’t. Then I saw it on the NY Times 100 books of 2005 list and decided I would read it (I’m such a follower) and actually bought it at Target, which seems kind of 16-year-old girl, but whatever. Borders gets enough of my money (although so does Target) and I haven’t found a smaller bookstore here that I like. (I think I’ll spend some time in Cody’s when I’m back in Berkeley for a week in January, and maybe visit City Lights.)

So, I really liked the book. My original discomfort (see previous post “I’ve been reading a lot”) with the fact that the narrator was the main character basically 10-15 years later ended up being perhaps the highlight of the book. I read very little first-person writing, and I think a big part of that is I’m always a bit uncomfortable with the fact that the narrator is usually describing what he or she thought/felt/knew at the time the events are taking place but that you have a sense that he or she knows something more that they aren’t telling you. They must, right, because they are writing some time in the future. But the late-20s or early-30s “Lee” who is the narrator of Prep is quite open with what she knows “now” and occasionally (and charmingly) implores her past self to do what she now thinks she should have done. (Incidentally, Sittenfeld says as much about narration in the Atlantic Monthly interview re-printed in the back of the book, which made me feel very unoriginal. On the other hand, it sort of made me feel like the book was written for me.) That said, she doesn’t ignore the feelings of high school Lee; indeed, this remains the focus of the book. At times the transition between these two Lees is unsuccessful, but usually Sittenfeld does it to great positive effect.

Actually, the sense that Prep was written for me (not me personally, but people like me) ran through the book. For one thing, although I didn’t go to a boarding school, I did go to a preppy preppy prep school and this book certainly makes me think that my very good friend who left after freshman year for Exeter probably had a substantially similar high school experience as I did. I think I already knew this, but Prep reinforced that sense. The social interactions described in the book were all so familiar, both from high school and, though in a somewhat different form, from college as well.

I also found Lee, both in her narrator self and her character self to be quite likeable. At times, her feelings were shocking and somewhat awful and occasionally offensive or just depressing, but that made her feel very real to me. She is, without question, extremely cynical, but there’s a hint of optimism that rarely leaves. Even if often in a putatively negative way, she’s always looking forward to what’s next. In light of how depressed she is at her school, that itself seems a form of optimism. I mean, she clearly lets her life beat her down, but there is always a tinge of “life could be, can be, maybe will be better than this” from her. There is something adorable and beautifully innocent in the way the freshman Lee wishes that some shy boy will be attracted to her shyness and drawn to her when she skips the school dances.

Then she actually gets what she wants (the attractive and popular boy on whom she’s had a crush or perhaps been in love since he was nice to her one day). Of course, once she does, she is so pessimistic and guarded about it that she often can’t enjoy it. But still. There’s an ongoing sense of bittersweetness in her life and, as I’ve said here before, I’m a sucker for the bittersweet. And the guardedness of her character often hits close to home.

And I have to say how gratifying it was for me that at the end of the book it finally comes out that Cross Sugarman is half Jewish. I mean, everybody I’ve ever met whose last name is Sugarman is Jewish and I was thinking this the whole book. And how silly to be named Cross Sugarman. How could a Jew, even married to an Episcopalian or whatever possibly let his son be named Cross? I laughed a lot reading this book because I laughed every time I saw the name Cross on a boy I thought must be Jewish. And then to have one of Lee’s college friends point out the silliness of his name: it was just too perfect (in a good way). I appreciated that a lot. My guess is a lot of other Jews reading this book feel the same way.

I also appreciated all the commas, because I’m generally discouraged from using commas in the writing I do for my current job, and that seeps into my other writing, that is, here, since that’s all the other writing I really do.

I can say that I was a bit shocked (not in a prudish way, just shocked) by the rather explicit sex scenes. Not bothered though. I thought it said a lot about the character (and presumably the author) that the specific nature of the sexual experiences was extremely important to her. The awkwardness, the discomfort, the bad and the good, that’s all really important. I did feel a bit dirty as a 27-year-old man reading about the explicit description of the first time a 17-year-old girl is giving a blow job, but it really did seem like an important part of her experience: she had been waiting for three years to be close to this boy and sex was really how they got close. It was surely no less important than the moment when they had it out in the gym and he showed that he really did know a lot about her, a lot more than she ever thought.

The other thing that made me uncomfortable (in a very different way) – the one really unlikable thing about Lee – was the really negative things she often felt about her best friend. Yes, it was sad she couldn’t tell her best friend how much she loved her, but that seems typical. But the feelings of hatred, of disgust, of disdain, whatever, it was almost hurtful to read that she felt this way. I really don’t think boys and men feel this. Is this something that’s common for girls and women? I’d like to think not – I’ve never heard it expressed in such strong terms – but maybe it is.

That said, I still found Lee overall quite likeable and quite familiar. As I did about some of the other characters, in particular: Martha, Ms. Moray, Dede, Darden, Devin, and Cross. I’ve known all these people, and been some of them in one way or another (including Lee). When it comes down to it, that’s what I liked about the book. I get the impression that some people just can’t stand Lee. If I’d felt that way, I would have had much trouble reading the book; it would have been too much like watching Rushmore where I just didn’t find anybody likeable and didn’t really wish any of them well. All through Prep, I found myself thinking, “I hope this girl can be happy.” And you get the impression that, even if she’s not happy, narrator Lee is at least comfortable with how her life has turned out and is able to navigate safely through to the world around her. I know some readers wanted to tell her to “snap out of it,” but I’d say that those people didn’t really get what she’s feeling. It may be that if you don’t already know her self-imposed desparation that you just can’t understand it.

One last thing: I chuckled at the end when she asks (more or less), “Do you want to know what happened to everybody?” I was not expecting that and, not that I wasn’t interested where the characters went “after the end of the book,” it didn’t weight that heavily on me; I didn’t need to know. But the fact that Lee ended up staying in touch with Dede and having a decent relationship with her told me a lot about how Lee (and presumably Dede) grew after high school and gave me a sense of optimism that the book might have lacked a bit without it. So, a surprising move on Sittenfeld’s part, but a good one.

I’m curious if this will be made into a movie and, if so, how the movie will turn out. I kind of hope it isn’t, but on the other had I wish success for the author so maybe I hope it is.

I’m actually going to try to read The Godfather now. I suspect I will be the first person to read The Godfather after reading Prep, which pleases me for some reason.

I don’t hate Christmas…

…but the war on the “war on Christmas” is probably the stupidest thing I’ve heard in years besides… um, well… it’s really really stupid.

I enjoyed the New York Times talking points on this (TimesSelect required).

But this is much more fun: fuckchristmas.org.

Feeling Yourself Disintegrate

Love in our life is just too valuable
Oh, to feel for even a second without it
But life without death is just impossible
Oh, to realize something is ending within us
Feeling yourself disintegrate

brap brap brap bah-rap a-brap-a brap

Hard boiled…

I boiled some eggs yesterday and I ate one today. They came out pretty well. I’m pleased because it’s been years since I bolied an egg.

I’m starting to get a bit antsy at work. I’m really looking forward to my vacation and the awesome New Year’s Eve show/party/thing I’ll be going to (more on that later). But for now, I need to do all kinds of work to be prepared to take a week off. I took Wednesday-Friday off for Thanksgiving (but then worked Saturday & Sunday). Besides that, I can’t remember the last time I took off even two days in a row. For that matter, I rarely take a full day off at all. But I’ll be away from 12/31-1/8, and probably will only work part of the day on 12/30, so I gotta “buckle down”.

I also need to find a job for next year. I better start thinking more about that.