A note on the Venture Brothers

I must admit that the first time I saw the Venture Brothers I thought it was kind of dumb, but I have since grown to love and cherish it as only a grown man can love and cherish a cartoon. Anyway, it's really good and the first part of this season's finale was wall-to-wall excellent.

YOU BE THE JUDGE!

VERSUS

Looks at Books

What's up, Internet? Me, my energy is through the roof since I unlocked the potential of regular cardio workouts. I've also started wearing UnderArmor and saying "'sup?" Soon I will be as unrecognizable as the pale waif at the end of that Edward Gorey story, only in the opposite direction.

And now, some DISSAPOINTING BOOK REVIEWS!

The Night Land
William Hope Hodgson
I'm a little late on this one, since it dripped from the syphillis-addled pen of William Hope Hodgson in 1912. In a typical move for books of this era Hodgson's novel concerns the comings and goings of psychics who live in a gigantic silver pyramid several millions years into the future. The sun has gone out and terrible powers prowl the land, just completely killing the shit out of anyone they catch. The first half of this long narrative is pretty interesting and defies comparison to any other writer I can immediately think of. The protagonist stumbles around blindly in a suit of armor, relying for his safety on the home audience observing him through high-powered binoculars and signaling him with the 1912 idea of a Jumbotron. Various horrible things attack him. H.P. Lovecraft (unsurprisingly) loved it; I did not. In the second half the hero reunites with his (extremely) long-lost love and after that it's page after page of stomach-turning twee mincing: they argue for pages and pages about which one of them will give the other one their cape. An interesting curio - the text is available for free on the internet.

The Book of Lost Things
John Connolly
Hey, book-writing public, can we maybe have a moratorium on people explicitly acknowledging debts to Joseph Campbell and his god-damn Hero's Journey? And then, after that, can we have a big "get-together" where we inform the world community that just because you can get all excited about the supposedly ubiquitous "Trickster" category in world myth doesn't mean you should? Has anyone heard of Claude Levi-Strauss?

ANYWAYS, The Book of Lost Things is actually pretty good. Set during World War II it follows a boy named David as his family falls apart and then he gets blowed up by a crashing German bomber and travels to Darkly Re-Imagined Fairytale World, where anthropomorphic wolves menace him and the Crooked Man (eventually) offers him a terrible bargain. I think the story can't pick what it wants to be - self-indulgent gory action romp, or over-metaphorized psychological coming-of-age tearjerker. Other critics have pointed to a bizarre interlude with Snow White and the Seven Dwarves as a symptom of the book's schizophrenia; I rather liked this portion, but I'm surprised that the editor didn't cut it, since it does contrast jarringly with the rest of the narrative's largely desperate tone. The slightest touch of thought's keen razor will begin to unravel major plot points as well (why, for instance, did the Crooked Man give David so many opportunities to grow emotionally self-reliant or be horribly killed?)

Connolly apparently writes thrillers, and much of the narrative moves along like one. It's certainly hard to put down, but in places the writing gets a little sloppy, the dialogue is leaden (although it's coming out of the mouths of knights and woodsmen - how natural can it be?), the characters are not terribly complex, and David's critically important emotional journey from petulant child to dude-stabbing badass is not really believable. Tune in for well-imagined villains, surely written action, and a satisfying little dab of schmaltz at the end. Not great literature; skip the conversation with the author at the end unless you have a specific reason to destroy your admiration for the book.

I am basically a huge jock now

Oh hello there internet! I didn't hear you come in!
Anyway, I bought a used bicycle and have started biking, which seems to me like the least loathsome form of exercise. Time will tell. I've been working furiously on a project for S&F over the past few months, and you can bet that I will tell you all about it when it comes to fruition.

Horribly Depressing Crap

I urge Moon Sash's loyal readers to visit this website and urge their representatives and senators to ban the export of American horses to Mexico and Canada for slaughter. Search for your zipcode at the main page and it will set you up with an automatic email form to send to your representatives. The form urges them to support an act which will ban this horrible abuse. The details of this practice are pretty harrowing and awful. I'm sure that if this bill passes some novel form of cruelty will spring up to replace the current one, but it's still worth supporting.

Life Imitates Bart

See this link for the major GOP candidates as Buffy villains. Thanks to Betsy Smith, who linked to this on Facebook.

My Incredibly Famous Life

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Internet, once again I come before you to shill for Beeswax magazine, in whose latest issue you can find my multiple page-spanning short story "Some Events of the Spring of 1999, Bordeaux, France." At $4 the issue is a bargain, even if you tear out my story and discard the rest of the magazine like the lifeless shell of a denuded cannolli. The story features several real stores from the Rue Ste. Catherine in real Bordeaux, where I once bought a perfectly good H&M suit for $12.00.

The Madness of King Internet

Fans of my column at Smyles and Fish may rejoice; the new one is up. It continues my sexy adventures with Doctor-Professor Lothar de Groot, the man who has elevated cruelty to fruit to its current, lofty height.

Reviews That Made the News

JUNO
What is this, Napoleon Dynamite for smart people? No, it isn’t, and it invites only superficial comparisons to that catchphrase-laden abortion of a film. Juno, played by Ellen Page (who turned in a comatose performance as “Kitty Pride” in the last X-Men film), is a sixteen year old girl who has sexual intercourse with George Michael from Arrested Development and gets pregnant. Hilarity ensues, aided immeasurably by the movie’s fine cast (Allison Janey, the guy who played Vern Schillinger on Oz, Jennifer Garner, and Jason Bateman). Juno cracks wise with about 97% of her lines, which sounds a little forced but may or may not be perfectly natural for a teenager deeply invested in seeming like a badass. Garner and Bateman provide a nuanced, reserved performance as a disintegrating couple interested in adopting Juno’s baby. The movie’s generally cheerful atmosphere and likeable characters sometimes push the central conflict into the background, but it’s ultimately pleasing even though nothing really awful happens. Highy recommended.

THE GOLDEN COMPASS
This review comes in on the late boat from lateness junction, but the film is still in theaters so I think it meets the strict relevancy requirements of this blog that no one ever reads. Many other critics have bemoaned the fact that the movie version misses Phillip Pullman’s stately pace, glossing over concepts that Pullman explores in depth. These critics are nitwits; Pullman’s tendentious, portentous work desperately needs this big screen enema. Lyra’s adventures come off as adventures in the movie, not painful lessons in multiculturalism or skepticism. The action moves swiftly from scene to scene without bogging down in Pullman’s unbearably tedious explanations of dust and daemons. If Pullman’s original novel had made daemons into anything other than an on-the-nose, inconsistent representation of the human soul the movie would have done him disservice. As it is, they still seem important enough that the trauma of being separated from one’s daemon seems appropriately traumatic. The film avoids the mega-downer ending of the novel by lopping it off entirely, which may very well make for an extremely depressing sequel. Look out for Ian McShane in a surprise role as evil bear king Norsely Scandinavian.

Synthetic Biology and the New Fruit: Reflections on Modern Equipment

Ol' Smyles and Fish has my new column up, and I think you will all enjoy the heck out of it.

Neu Columne

A typical scene from my dissertation fieldwork

Tune, if you will, your internet browsers to Smyles and Fish, where you will find my new column, which reviews the evil Druids of New Hampshire.

Abdominate your Abs with the Abreactor!

Read, if you will, this excellent New York Times Book Review essay on conservative conversion narratives. In it Stephen Metcalf dissects a collection of essays that describe how their authors became conservatives. Metcalf precisely likens their conservativism to obsessional neurosis - it is rooted in a primal trauma (caused, in these accounts, by liberal academics or feminists or both) which the conservative constantly re-experiences. This always fresh trauma lends to their political arguments the raw personal heat that speaks so persuasively to ordinary American people (despite the fact that their authors are invariably extremely privileged elites). Basically, Metcalf claims that conservatives are a bunch effete nerds who never got laid in college, an argument which I myself have championed on this very blog.

My Original Carnivàle Novella [NOT Fanfiction!]

Ben Hawkins was feeling depressed. He was so sad that he could barely get up from under the truck in the morning and pull on one of his collection of grimy undershirts. He sat in the chow tent toying with his tin dish of carny beans. "Hmmm," he said to himself, "I sure hope I get some kind of artistically filmed horrifying vision soon, otherwise I'll never find my grimy weirdo father Henry 'Hack' Scudder or my lady friend Sofie with whom I had sexual intercourse in a truck."

Meanwhile, Lila said or did something disgusting.

Ben Hawkins was having an eerie vision of Scudder's Navy days; Scudder had been an ensign aboard the U.S.S. Casual Elegance during World War I. Scudder was grooming a bear which had been smuggled aboard in a false torpedo by Dr. Lodz. The bear's hair began sticking to Scudder's shedding comb, coming out in nasty clumps. It revealed that the bear had a mystical tattoo: a muscular male centaur with a busty barbarian maiden riding him, each hand holding aloft a sanguinary battle axe. "Every prophet in his house!" said the bear, facing directly into the camera. Ben Hawkins, back in the chow tent, got a nosebleed and was asked to leave because of health code strictures. He staggered over to the Management trailer to meet with Samson.
"What's the good word, kid?" Samson asked him. "I think I know where Scudder is," Hawkins replied, taking a seat in the cluttered trailer.

Meanwhile, Samson was a dwarf.

Ben Hawkins stepped out of the truck, shading his eyes against the descending sun. Atop a nearby hill crouched a scabrous shack, its front door gaping open on its leather hinges. Hawkins climbed the hill. A wizard emerged from the shack.
"I foresaw your coming, Ben Hawkins," he boomed, stroking his long white beard. "I am Lord Fluffheart, tenth level animagus and Wizard of the Faerie Grove. I can also turn into a busty anthropomorphic female fox."
"It looks like my erotic adventures are only beginning!" said Ben Hawkins.

Wingardium Leviosa!

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Spoilers!

• In the final scene, Voldemort seals Harry in an envelope of Impolex-G and launches him on an uncertain trajectory in a V-2 rocket...or DOES he?
• Sirius Black re-appears and explains to Harry that he was "just resting" during book 6; Bellatrix Lestrange kills him AGAIN by tricking him into eating a tack.
• Harry transfers to Simon's Rock College of Bard and gets his own radio show "Untitled Monday Rock Arriba."
• Hermione's cat Crookshanks revealed to be a Death Eater/animagus/furry named Lord Fluffheart.
• [MAJOR SPOILER] In at least one scene, the characters will eat wacky-sounding food.

Spine-tingling!

A non-funny and distinctly unhappy post

Many of you may have read or heard about Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick, who apparently was running a dog-fighting ring out of a home he owned in Virginia (he has yet to be convicted, but the evidence looks very strong). I urge all my readers to visit the American Humane Society webpage and send a letter to the NFL commissioner through their form. The letter urges the NFL to suspend Vick. I will not repeat the details of the investigation here, but they are readily available (through the New York Times for instance), and you should probably learn them before sending the letter.