LOTR

23. August 2010 · Comments Off on LOTR · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Literary Good Stuff, Media Matters Not, That's Entertainment!

The only times I ever got ahead of any particular zeitgeist was when I started blogging – which was in 2002, and for this blog. There may have been fair number of blogs in existence back then, in the Dark Ages of blogging, but you still had to explain exactly what it was, this mysterious thing called a blog – and god bless ‘em, people like my parents who were only barely aware of the internet, had to have the whole concept explained to them very, very, carefully. And I was way out there when it came to the Tea Party, but that was only because a person I knew and liked – through blogging – asked if I would like to get involved.
More usually, I am the one wandering along the well-trodden track, well after the herd has gone by, wondering vaguely where all the footprints were going, and then being distracted by butterflies or rabbits or something. So it was, when it came to reading Lord of the Rings – I didn’t actually read it until I was well along in high school, and all my friends had read it ages ago. For some reason – possibly because The Fellowship of the Ring was checked out of the library – I read The Two Towers first, and then Return of the King, before reading The Fellowship of the Ring. This had the advantage of kick-starting the adventure off in high gear. Anyway, simply everyone else had already read the whole thing, and in some cases, years before. (It was just one of those books that you read then, just like everyone had read Stranger in a Strange Land. You just did.) So, I read it all, and caught up with everyone else – and then, I did something a little radical: I read it aloud to my little brother, Sander, who was then about four or five. My parents did not believe in TV, you see. This is how people used to amuse themselves, back then.

They read books, and I had established a regular habit of reading a couple of chapters of appropriate kid-lit to my little brother. We had already read The Hobbit – so, one afternoon we launched into LOTR. At a chapter or two a night, it took most of a year, and he was absolutely enthralled before we had gotten very far, and would often beg for another chapter – because the end of most chapters is a cliff-hanger, you see. You simply have to start the next chapter to find out what will happen to our sturdy hobbit adventurers, and before you know it, here comes another peril. As I said, it took most of a year; and by the end of it, Sander could talk like Sam Gamgee. That Halloween, he insisted on dressing up as a hobbit, with a tunic and cloak (we had to fudge on the furry feet, though) and a little wooden sword and a shield with Tolkeinish runes painted on it. I have no idea what his various grade school teachers thought of all of this, by the way. He must have come to school with some very strange turns of phrase, during this period.

And then, when my daughter was four years old – I read the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings aloud to her, as well. We were in Greece then, and still without a television, VCRs had just barely come on the market and it wasn’t as if I could afford one anyway. So – back to the refuge of books. Blondie, the Daughter Unit became as enthralled as my little brother had been – again, it took the best part of a year. She began relating the latest development to her best friend, at nursery school, and the best friend begged her mother to begin reading LOTR to her. But Blondie was still ahead as far as the cliffhangers went, for we remained a few chapters in the lead, and she could still let her friend know what was coming next.
When the Peter Jackson movie version came out – of course, Blondie and I were so there; every year, when I came back to California to visit my parents for Christmas, we’d go to the big movie theater in Oceanside together; another one of those family rituals. And the last freelance project I finished, allowed me to indulge in some books and DVDs that I had always wanted, among them a boxed set (second-hand, naturally!) of the extended-version of LOTR; the one with all the extra scenes included. Just couldn’t stop at the end of each disc, by the way – had to go a little way into the next. What a visual feast of a movie; and how very curious that it all looked just as I had imagined it would look, all those ages ago, when I read it to my little brother.

Just Another Small Note

11. August 2010 · Comments Off on Just Another Small Note · Categories: Domestic, General, History, Home Front, Literary Good Stuff, That's Entertainment!

…a note in C-sharp.
I have a couple of horrifically impending deadlines, so blogging is at a minimum until I can meet them – and it is important to meet the most impending of them since it is a paid writing project.
Another of them is the follow-on to this book, A 21 Story Salute…
Finally, I have to carve out some time after these two projects are done to finish the next book, which will be called Daughter of Texas, although the working title all along has been Gone to Texas.
In September, I will be at the West Texas Book and Music Festival in Abilene, Texas to promote the books now available. May I ask a favor – of those readers who have read To Truckee’s Trail and the Adelsverein Trilogy? If you haven’t done so, can you post a rating and review on Amazon for them? Nothing especially lengthy; just let readers know what you liked about it – and if you have criticisms, be honest about that, too. It’s kind of embarrassing, they’ve been out on the market all this time, and have only a handful of reviews each. (Although oddly enough, they still continue to climb in the ratings. But slowly … like an arthritic snail crawling across a hot asphalt parking lot.)

Thanks!
Sgt Mom

Whither Hollywood?

16. March 2010 · Comments Off on Whither Hollywood? · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Rant, That's Entertainment!

Seriously, what is it with the people that make our movies? I might almost believe there was something about the higher reaches of show biz that turns people into complete and raving loons. What with a long series of much-ballyhooed movies culminating in The Green Zone, most which in some degree or other, can easily be construed as anti-troops/anti-war productions and most of which have tanked at the box office, an Oscar evening which I didn’t even bother to watch, let alone seeing any of the movies involved, and Tom Hanks near as dammit shooting himself and his TV series The Pacific in the foot with statements about American racism in interviews . . . oh, heck, can I be forgiven for wondering if there something in the water? Never mind how the Hollywood good and the great appeared to jump on the global warmening and the Obama bandwagon, almost simultaneously. Never mind how the Law’n’Order TV concession painted tea partiers as dangerous terrorists. Never mind the incessant slams against the religiously observant, or the monstering of Sarah Palin. The cumulative idiocy is almost too much to be born; it’s almost as if they don’t want us to be watching any of their damned movies or TV at all.

For the record, this last weekend, we went to see Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, which is about the first time in a year that we went to see a first-run movie in the theaters. (Last time it was Gran Torino, if memory serves, and no, I can’t remember what we went to see the time before that.) I might have gone to see Up, and Blondie and I were considering Julie and Julia, but just didn’t feel strongly enough about either to make the effort. Seriously, I used to love going to movies, but somehow and somewhere in the last decade or so I lost my enthusiasm. Between the expense and hassle of actually going to the theater, the sheer badness of most current releases, the speed with which the best of the current crop show up on DVD (where I can ask to do a review and get the darned thing for free) and the steady drip-drip-drip of ignorance and insult directed at flyover, working-class Americans, conservatives, military, and tea partiers – all sourced from the glitterati . . . well, really, what’s the point? Why should I put up with having my values routinely insulted, right along with my intelligence? I have long insisted on skipping anything which features car chases, machine-gun fire and massive explosions, in lieu of plot and dialogue. And I’d prefer to think of actors as a kind of well-trained performing monkey, whose job is to amuse the audience. I do not want them to be lecturing me on politics, history, international relations, global warming or ecology at the drop of a hat or Charlie Sheen’s trousers, whichever happens oftener. Not unless they actually have some professional education or expertise in those fields, which damn few of them appear to do anyway. Stick to entertaining me, dammit.

So Many Decades of Hope

22. December 2009 · Comments Off on So Many Decades of Hope · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, History, That's Entertainment!, War

Bob Hope, that is.

(Link Found courtesy of the Belmont Club)

Feel the Love

17. December 2009 · Comments Off on Feel the Love · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Media Matters Not, Politics, Tea Time, That's Entertainment!

. . . As well as the jaw-dropping, industrial-strength, armor-plated ignorance displayed in the comments appended to this story. Quite honestly, I ought to have become used to this, since the usual tools used to have about the same misconceptions – and probably still do – about military. All of this industrial-grade bigotry on open display, without ever actually coming anywhere near the military, a military base, or any members of the military. So, I very likely am right that the most virulently hostile of the commenters here quoted, and which I have seen in other internet venues have never actually come to a Tea party rally, or personally know anyone involved with a local Tea Party. And of course, the most ironical part is that these people very likely take a great deal of pride in how open-minded and tolerant they are.

Just a sample, for your delectation:

I DESPISE the fascist tea-party movement. If they get into office, this country is going the way of the Nazi party, in essence. No thank you. They are the most dangerous and evil movement in the United States since the John Birch Society, which they very much resemble. – Susan in Redmond, WA

Didn’t the Nazi party start kind of like this? Desperation is scary to say the least. – Dash Riprock

A bunch of bible banging – racist – right wing domestic terrorists – running around with tea bags stapled to their foreheads? – Feisty Redhead Roselle

And then, of course, I realized that a lot of them must be fans of the recent seasons of Law & Order, which explains quite a lot.

The Best of Times, the Wurst of Times

03. November 2009 · Comments Off on The Best of Times, the Wurst of Times · Categories: Ain't That America?, Eat, Drink and be Merry, General, Local, That's Entertainment!

So, once the Halloween decorations were sorted out and put away, we could think of nothing better to do than to drive up to New Braunfels on Sunday morning to join in the Wurstfest celebration. What better place, and what better day is there to celebrate suds, sausage and song than in a small town, in a park by a cool green river, and on one of those gloriously cool autumn days? Music and revelry, carnival rides for the kids, and plentiful seating, under the pecan trees, or in the big and little tents, or the main hall. Wurstfest is one of those gloriously scrambled ethnic holidays that can only happen in the US – and possibly only in Texas. For sure, it might be the only place on earth where you can see a woman wearing a dirndl and cowboy boots, or have a serving of nachos and cheese with sauerkraut, while listening to an oompah band play the National Anthem, followed closely by the chicken dance. A monumental beer stein in the main hall features – you guessed it, a painting chickens dancing.

Besides the official leitmotif of sausages in every form – and there practically is every other variety of meat-onna-stick known to man available, the food vendors also have a wide range of fried stuff; regular fairground things like funnel cakes, but also deep-fried pickles and a delight which about made my arteries close up just to consider it; chicken-fried bacon. One of the vendors, the New Braunfels Smokehouse is well-established, but most of the other food vendors were run by local booster clubs and associations, like the Little League, the Canyon Lake Masonic Lodge, and the various Lions Clubs.

Of course – beer is the second official leitmotif, by the glass or the pitcher. New Braunfels was the second town established in the mid-19th century by a massive influx of German settlers brought over by a well-meaning, but ultimately disorganized group of nobly-born philanthropists. The Germans – those who survived the journey and the vicissitudes of the frontier – brought along an appreciation for arts, culture, and technology – and straightaway set to producing beer. It is only fitting that one of the largest, if not the largest collections of beer bottles in the world is permanently housed on the Wurstfest grounds in the Spass Haus, which is either a museum cunningly disguised as a bar, or a bar cunningly disguised as a museum. In either case, no one dares begin to sing “9 thousand, 9 hundred, 99 bottles of beer on the wall,” because they’d be there for at least the whole run of Wurstfest. The bottles are from all over the world; the oldest American beer bottles are from the 1840s.

And finally – it’s hats, some of them very strange; hats shaped like chickens seemed to be awfully popular, I spotted one shaped like a beer keg with a spigot on the side, another shaped like an over-flowing stein, (which really came from Germany, the wearer of it informed me) and the hat with a number of green tentacles on it also seemed pretty popular.
Wurstfest runs until Sunday, November 8th, not only at Landa Park, but throughout New Braunfels.

Redline Overload

23. October 2009 · Comments Off on Redline Overload · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, History, Media Matters Not, Politics, Rant, That's Entertainment!

Sometimes, it’s a real pain in the ass, knowing history – kind of like one of those lines of telepaths in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover novels, who could see all the possible futures, resulting from any deliberate or random action and usually went mad, from it – not daring to take any step at all, seeing all the millions of possible results.
Knowing history is a bit like that. You know what happened before – sometimes many times before – as a result of specific actions or inactions – and even though those baleful results didn’t happen every single damn time, the unfortunate and unlooked for results happened frequently enough to make you jumpy when you start seeing certain things happening one damn more time. And saying, between slightly gritted teeth “No, as a matter of fact, I am NOT paranoid – I just have good pattern recognition!” is of no particular comfort, or defense.

I’ll leave to more qualified and credentialed intellects than mine to take a resounding thwack at the current administration – they’re being beaten like a cheap piñata at a kid’s party where everyone present has slipped off the blindfold, taken up a baseball bat and had a fair old go at it; hey ACORN – how ya doing, still facilitating setting up whorehouses stocked with underage Third-world staff? Lizard-Lips Lady, still adoring Mao and Mother Theresa … geeze, how did someone with a disability that makes you look as if you are trying to pry peanut-butter off the roof of your mouth mid-speech get a job as communications director? Oh, never mind – wife of old Chicago crony – I can do the math. Like I didn’t see that kind of deal coming, from when the serious politicking began, all these long months and years ago. And adding Fox News to the enemies list? Bad move, sports-fans … never pick a fight with someone who buys printer ink by the barrel or pixels by the cart-load. Besides, you are increasing their viewer-stats by degrees, and raising uncomfortable memories of Richard M. Nixon, he of the White House enemies list – and many of those so-called enemies have been dining out forever on their established reputation. You’ve made their reps well into the next couple of decades as ‘fearless chaps and chapesses who dared speak truth to power’ – at least, if they have a sinecure in broadcasting like the dear old croaking saint Daniel Schorr of NPR, in which case they will have a cause to go on croaking about unto the next generation or two. Yeah, like never give a hack a cause to harp on about, endlessly. Eternity, that is thy name.

No – the thing that seriously worries me is what I first started to notice, when I occasionally went spelunking through the deeper lefty-depths of regular bloggers at Open Salon. What initially unsettled me was the casual and usually much applauded (to judge by the appended comments) demonization of the “other.” The “other” in this case being – depending on the issue under discussion – conservatives, Republicans, Sarah Palin fans, Tea Partiers, church-goers, Obama Administration critics, or critics of health-care reform. And these same leftish OS bloggers were not – for the most part – the sort of screeching howler-monkey Kossacks that I would have avoided anyway. I’ve been blogging at OS for more than a year, and many of these exact same bloggers were in a way of being fans of my own OS blog and my writing in general – so the free-floating contempt for conservatives and non-Obama fans of every variation was a little disheartening. I post at OS for the literary exposure, more than engaging in political fisticuffs, so I haven’t made many attempts at open discussion. It’s kind of like your grandmother’s house at Thanksgiving, encountering some of their reactionary old friends: yeah, you could start an argument with them – but it’s not the time or the place, and the whole exercise would be kinda pointless anyway. The minds are already made up, and your Grandmother would be hurt over having a good dinner ruined. Just bite your tongue and have another helping of chestnut stuffing. This sort of thing has been going on since the first ur-blogger put on his saber-toothed tiger PJs, crawled up to his stone keyboard and pecked out “Urg-rok is a moron!” I may not want to get drawn into the discussion—but I’m fairly used to it, after blogging since mid-2002. Used to it – and tired of it. I just observe and analyze, these days and in that venue.

The automatic denigration of the “other” starts to worry me, though, when it slides seamlessly past an equally automatic disregard of whatever argument or position the “other” holds – merely because it is the “other” holding it. The default position becomes “There’s no need to even bother considering “x” because everyone who holds position “x” is *insert group identity label here* – say, a “Tea Partier”, or a “conservative” or “a Christian” or – going even farther “a Fox TV fan” , “a global warming denier” or “someone who wants the poor and uninsured to just die already!” It’s not good and it’s not healthy to have this kind of contempt normalized, especially among people who otherwise pride themselves on being right-thinking, tolerant and broad-minded. And then, a little farther along the continuum of contempt, I get a little more worried, when one starts to hear sincerely-expressed wishes that the “other” just go away, just vanish – so that the well-meaning and sensitive and caring sorts won’t even have to bother with considering those nasty “others” any more. I fear that a dangerous threshold has been reached, when this kind of emotion seep out into the commentary of a semi-mainstream commentator like Garrison Keillor – who most famously of late commented: “one starts to wonder if the country wouldn’t be better off without them and if Republicans should be cut out of the healthcare system entirely and simply provided with aspirin and hand sanitizer. Thirty-two percent of the population identifies with the GOP, and if we cut off healthcare to them, we could probably pay off the deficit in short order.” Kind of a sweeping statement there; would Mr. Keillor also recommend that people he disagreed with be subjected to a sort of modern political Nuremburg Law? I suppose he intended to be witty – but it comes off as sour, and angry – and more than a little unsettling, given that he would be talking about a third of his fellow citizens and countrymen.

This very week, the White House has made a fairly concerted and so far unsuccessful effort to de-legitimize Fox News as a news source, arguing that it is just dishing up too much ideological content to be a real news organization. One might suspect that the real problem is that Fox isn’t genuflecting deep enough for the White House press office’s taste, and has the embarrassing tendency to cover issues that the White House would rather be left uncovered. De-legitimizing Fox as a news organization is all of a piece with the tendency noted above; essentially, “what you think and say doesn’t matter, because all good-thinking people have decided that you are beneath notice, that you are ignorant at best and malign at worst, and maybe it would be best for all if you just weren’t around.”

Yeah, knowing history can make reading the headlines a little discomforting; sometimes paranoids really do have people out to get them.

Droit de Seigneur

02. October 2009 · Comments Off on Droit de Seigneur · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Good God, Media Matters Not, Rant, That's Entertainment!

According to the invaluable but frequently erratic Wikipedia, that translates to “the lord’s right” – that is, the right of a noble lord to be the first to bed any or all of the local girls, willing or not, who caught his lordly eye. Further, Wikipedia states that although there is not much credible evidence to suggest this legal right ever existed or was practiced in Western Europe, the phrase has been used ever since, as a convenient short-hand, in reference to all those rights that a noble lord exercised over the tenantry – especially those rights and privileges which infuriated those they were exercised upon. The rights of the lord with regard to the lesser orders variously infuriated, insulted, demeaned, degraded, or at the very least inconvenienced the sturdy peasantry. And there is, I think, something of a race-memory of this in middle- or working-class Americans, for they don’t much like it when someone attempts to claim a lordly privilege. Nothing is more calculated to earn a snappy comeback from a hard working American prole with nothing to loose, then someone in a high dudgeon demanding “Don’t you know who I am?!” There are whole sub-categories of stories of independent mechanics and plumbers who reply, “Yeah, the guy who ain’t gonna get his Hummer back until next Wednesday,” or “Yeah, the a-hole who’d better call another plumber!” The original of this tale involved the English investor, visiting an American cattle ranch, in the far West, circa 1880, and accosted one of the ranch-hands, saying, “Where is your master?” and the hand replying (doubtless with a spit into the weeds and something of a John Wayne snarl) “The S-O-B ain’t been born, yet!”

So, no – traditionally claiming special privilege on account of exalted wealth or blood never went down very well over on this side of the pond, although there is an element in American society that does tend to go all wobbly-kneed when it comes to Euro-royalty. Or royalty of any sort; just look at the covers of the magazines on the rack by the supermarket check-out station. But an over-developed interest in aristocracy of the old, or the new-made kind ought not to be confused with any eagerness to allow law to be set aside for the convenience of a member in good standing of the aristocracy – as the usual Hollywood crowd is discovering to their horror in the wake of the Polonski business. I’d have called it l’affaire Polonski, but that doesn’t quite translate the sense that it wasn’t an affair, in the sexual sense. It was plain old rape (and drugging, and unconsenting sodomy) of a minor, for which the perpetrator bargained down to a lesser charge, was found guilty and skipped the country. And nope, I don’t give a rodent’s patoot that it was upty-odd- decades ago, that he’s a really sooooper-talented, and all his nice Hollywood friends with their faultless moral compasses and quasi-aristocratic assumptions are rallying around, demanding that he is a very, very special person, and entitled to clemency. Nope – that will not do. It wouldn’t do if it had been the plumber Ronnie Polonski, or the Father Polonski the Catholic priest – in fact, I think – no, scratch that; I know the reaction of the Hollywood set would have been much different, in those cases.

I think most of us have assumed for years that Hollywood was a weird, and insulated little world, all to itself, and now we see how very, very easily they assumed the trappings of privilege, and a sense of how the laws that apply to everyone else, somehow, magically do not apply to them, and their very special, talented friends. And now we see, exactly, what they would justify and excuse, and explain away. Frankly, I find it pretty sick-making. Even more sick-making, is the list of actors, directors, and other illuminati who have come out in support of their good buddy, the child-rapist. From what little I might know of some of them, I had expected a little better. Especially Whoopi Goldberg, whom I used to think funny…

Well, then – there’s another ten of fifteen entries on my private movie boycott list, some of them with movies that I still would watch. But not now, not after this sick little exercise in droit de seigneur. Really, are these people trying to make everyone in the whole damned country not watch their movies?

Clouds of Illusion

14. September 2009 · Comments Off on Clouds of Illusion · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Politics, Rant, Tea Time, That's Entertainment!

I am amused to note a lot of amusing new and old media fall-out, after the massive Tea-party inspired rally on the Mall on Saturday – which, depending on which media outlet and which political orientation you read – may have been as many as two million people or just one or two of them walking a million times around the Capitol Building. They were all carrying Nazi symbols, and Confederate banners and getting their hate on, according to some of the more … ahem … outspoken commentators, such as this one, whose illustration for his post takes the absolute cake for condescension and arrogance … although apparently, the Tea Partiers did pick up the trash when they were done, for which I think they ought to get some credit. And no, I didn’t read much past the ‘teabagger’ reference in the linked column. That’s according to my new principle of considering that as akin to the n-word. This Daggatt person is supposed to be “a meticulous political blogger” according to David Brin’s blog at Open Salon, and offer a “ a truly excellent appraisal.” Yeah, that David Brin. Guess he doesn’t get out all that much.

Quite honestly, I am left shaking my head in weary disbelief, reading the picture that is painted of the Tea Party and conservatives/libertarians in general on the leftist blogs and media – in a similar way that I used to be shaking my head at the portrayal of the military, in similar venues. People would write the most astonishing things, insist that every word was true, and the most horrible things were going on in the military – and couldn’t accept that what they were saying wasn’t anything like the military that I actually lived in. You’d think that a military veteran and someone active in the Tea Party would have some credibility with them, for … you know, actually being there, and being able to speak with authority regarding their particular concern … but no. Their minds were already made up – and who should I believe, them or my lying eyes?

Coincidentally, there is another ruckus brewing – fortunately this involves Hollywood and it’s not Kanye West, so it’s fairly minor, rating only a long and amusing thread at John Scalzi’s Whatever. Apparently the pearls are being clutched, over the inability of this film to find an American distributor because – get this! Those fundamentalist American yahoos are just so anti-the-teaching-of evolution that no one will touch a costume drama about Charles Darwin with a ten-foot pole. Oh, spare me the attack of the vapors, people – the grownups in this country who eschew Michael Bay and all his works and his ways eat up this high-toned, historical costume-drama Merchant Ivory stuff as if it were a quart of Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey, and don’t you even try telling me otherwise.

See, both these parties appear to have something in common – besides a stratospherically high estimation of their own superiority – and that is, they think they know something, and everything they read, hear on TV, and at cocktail party chit-chat with their friends all reinforces that thing that they think they know. The producers of “Creation” – or more likely, the marketing guru who they have hired to gin up some controversy, attract some attention, and with luck, snag an American distribution deal, all know that Americans (to quote the acerbic Mr. Scalzi) are knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing Creationists. All nice, creative, brilliant and witty Brits know this, and they know this because they read it in their newspapers and hear it on the BBC, and all their nice, creative, brilliant and witty friends say so.

And so it is also with our very own dear media and intellectual elite: they just know that the Tea Party folks are ignorant, racist, knuckle-dragging hicks, who are puppets of (pick one or all) Fox TV, the Republican Party, or the insurance industry, because all the very best people say so, and really … the New York Times say so, and so does NPR. Well, there you go. I think that what these people have done is to create a simulacrum in their own minds of what an American is, or a semi-libertarian conservative Constitutionalist is, which has some tiny and almost coincidental resemblance to what they are, really … and for one reason or another, it’s just easier, or more comforting to believe in the simulacrum.

Well, it’s kinder than thinking they are all just nucking futs, which was my first reaction. Hey, I at least did the courtesy of at least trying to be understanding. I live to serve, people.

The Mockery, It begins

22. August 2009 · Comments Off on The Mockery, It begins · Categories: Domestic, General, General Nonsense, Media Matters Not, Politics, sarcasm, That's Entertainment!, The Funny, World

And it burns, it burns us, it does!

Yeah, I saw this at Protein Wisdom. In a perfect world, this would have been on Saturday Night Live. Alas, most funny and deeply sarcastic stuff is on YouTube, these days.

Baiting the Humorless

26. July 2009 · Comments Off on Baiting the Humorless · Categories: Fun and Games, Fun With Islam, General, Israel & Palestine, That's Entertainment!, The Funny

Oh, man – there are some people who just cannot take being laughed at, as richly as they deserve it. Kudos for Sacha Baron Cohen, for having a brass pair … tastefully trimmed with some fashionable and expensive designer-something-or-other, I am sure.

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch

02. July 2009 · Comments Off on Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, General, Local, Tea Time, That's Entertainment!

Plans for the 4th of July Tea Party proceed apace, although mercifully for all concerned, this will not be anything like the Tax Day Tea Party. It won’t be downtown in Alamo Plaza for one, and it won’t be 15-20,000 people, all crammed together in front of a historical building on a warm spring afternoon …. No, no, no no – doing all that again on a Texas July afternoon would be like an open-air Black Hole of Calcutta, as much as that sounds like a contradiction in terms. I was trying to wriggle through the packed crowd in front of the entrance to the Hyatt at about 5:30 on that day. There was no way you could have passed a piece of paper in between the people massed in front of that stage … so just as well that the 4th of July Tea Party will be out in the country. Yes, it will be hot. It’s July in South Texas, it’ll be hot, just like it’s cold in January at the North Pole. Some things just ought not to need saying; they just are.

But the Rio Cibolo Ranch is out in the gentle-rolling country, a little east of that ring-road that marks the farthest outer boundary of San Antonio. In April the meadows around the various venues were green – the Cibolo is a little more of a creek, more like a baby river- and the groves of pecan and oak trees around were thick and shady. There are small gardens all around the two smaller buildings, a horseshoe pitch and an area to play Frisbee golf. The biggest building is a huge pavilion with a stage at one end – we will have a couple of local bands, and Evan Sayet to MC the evening’s speeches: Marcus Luttrell is one of them, and so is Joe The Plumber, he who once was a private citizen who had the temerity to ask The One an impertinent question during a campaign photo-op. He’s been a mini-celebrity ever since; the volunteer who has been organizing the event and who has been talking to him now and again says he is a really amusing person, and does great on the radio.

Doesn’t have quite the eye-ball attraction quotient of Glenn Beck and the Nuge, though – which might be a blessing, since we don’t know where we would have put all the fans and their cars, out among the fields and cows; it’s also proved to be a bit more of a chore, attracting the fickle attention of the big media outlets – such as they are, in San Antonio: most of said attention will come in the last couple of days. The local big-city paper, the Express News is still oohing and ahhing over our new mayor’s intentions to be in the Gay Pride Parade, which will be around midday on the 4th. We have formally invited Hizzonor to the Tea Party, and await his response with considerable anticipation. If he attends, or sends regrets only – it will be amusing for us, either way. I am getting ready to face the media hoards, one more time – so blogging over the weekend will be as light as it has been this week. Sorry – have to save the country, you know. Or the cheerleader, or something like that.

Later PS: Just been informed that Gov. Perry of Texas is coming to our modest little tea party event … so ummm … I may not be able to come up for a breath for the next two days…

From the Department of Better Late Than Never

12. June 2009 · Comments Off on From the Department of Better Late Than Never · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Media Matters Not, Stupidity, That's Entertainment!

National Organization of Women slaps Letterman on the pee-pee-pipe for a crude joke involving Governor Sarah Palin, her daughter, a Hispanic baseball player and a visit to a baseball game.

Way to go, ladies. About time. I thought you’d take notice … eventually.

A Little Light Entertainment

29. April 2009 · Comments Off on A Little Light Entertainment · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, General, General Nonsense, That's Entertainment!

(These are lifted from an email sent out to the Yahoo group for FEN broadcasters. The following are alleged to be quotes from translated kung fu movies. No idea of they were really in movies or not; they just sounded pretty funny.)

1. I am about to choke you like a chicken!
2. Fatty, you with your thick face have hurt my instep.
3. Gun wounds again?
4. Same old rules…no eyes, no groin.
5. A normal person wouldn’t steal pituitaries.
6. Damn, I’ll burn you into a BBQ chicken!
7. Take my advice, or I’ll spank you without pants.
8. Who gave you the nerve to get killed here?
9. Quiet or I’ll blow your throat up.
10. You always use violence. I should’ve ordered glutinous rice chicken.
11. I’ll fire aimlessly if you don’t come out!
12. You daring lousy guy.
13. Beat him out of recognizable shape!
14. I have been scared shitless too much lately.
15. I got knife scars more than the number of your leg hairs!
16. Beware! Your bones are going to be disconnected.
17. The bullets inside are very hot. Why do I feel so cold?
18. How can you use my intestines as a gift?
19. This will be of fine service for you, you bag of scum. I am sure you will not mind that I remove your manhoods and leave them out on the dessert flour for your aunts to eat.
20. Yah-hah, evil spider woman! I have captured you by the short rabbits and can now deliver you violently to your gynecologist for a thorough extermination.
21. Greetings, large black person. Let us not forget to form a team up together and go into the country to inflict the pain of our karate feets on some ass of the giant lizard person.
22. I am damn unsatisfied to be killed in this way.

Tea Party: San Antonio

16. April 2009 · Comments Off on Tea Party: San Antonio · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Tea Time, That's Entertainment!, Veteran's Affairs, World

This is the speech that I gave last night at the San Antonio Tea Party rally. I was sort of squeezed in between various celebrities, local and national. My job – to set the scene. I had one of those stupid hand-held mikes, which was very nice for Ted Nugent, doing one of his restless and kinetic rants, but it was a b**ch for me to handle it with one hand and keep my script laid flat with the other, against an intermittent breeze . Quite a lot of people didn’t hear me clearly, I’m afraid. Sorry, all. I thought there was a tech, minding the audio board. Anyway, this is what I said. I have no idea how it all looked – I didn’t dare look towards the jumbotron.

Hullo – and thank you all for coming to our modest little tea party in the heart of San Antonio! (pause for laughter) First of all – are we having a wonderful time? Fiesta San Antonio begins tomorrow, so we have been telling everyone to come for the Tea Party and stay for Fiesta. First though, I would like to thank everyone who took that extra effort, and worked very hard to make this particular place – this very special place – available to us, on very short notice. We would like to thank the ladies and gentlemen of the various departments of the City of San Antonio, and acknowledge the graciousness shown us by the members of the Fiesta Commission! Thank you, City of San Antonio!

Yes, this is a very special and significant place for our Tea Party – although most visitors, upon seeing it for the first time are surprised, because it looks so very small – nothing like the way appears in all the movies. San Antonio de Valero… so called ‘the Alamo’ for the cottonwood trees that grow wherever there is plenty of water in otherwise dry country. And there were cottonwoods nearby then, enough that the soldiers of Spain who set up a garrison in this old mission called it so, after those trees. Imagine – if you can – how this place would have looked, then! Just… imagine.

Close your eyes, and if you can, banish the sight of all these tall modern glass buildings, and those rambling beaux-arts storefronts, while I paint a word-picture for you. Go back… go back a hundred and seventy three years. The actual town of San Antonio is now some little distance away, a huddle of adobe and stucco walls around the tower of San Fernando.
The air smells of wood-smoke and cooking, of sweat and horses, and spent black-power. We are in a sprawling compound of long low buildings, a single room deep, with tiny windows, and thick walls. Some of these have flat rooftops, others with shallow peaked roofs. Many buildings have their inside walls razed – others have been filled with rubble and dirt to make cannon-mounts. The gaps between them are filled by palisades of earth, tight-packed and reinforced with lengths of wood, and tangles made of sharpened tree branches. All of this work has been done painfully, by hand and with axes, picks, shovels and buckets. The chapel – of all of these the tallest, and the strongest – is also roofless. Another earth ramp has been built up, inside; to serve as yet one more cannon-mount. This place has become a fortress, and last defense, surrounded by an overwhelming enemy force, a large army of over two thousand men, outnumbering bare two hundred or so defenders by over 10 to 1. This enemy army…, trained…, hardened and disciplined, is well-equipped with cannon and ammunition, with cavalry and foot-soldiers alike. By the order of the enemy commander, a blood-red flag signifying no quarter to the defenders of this place has been flown from the tower of the San Fernando church.

The story is, that on the day that the last courier left the Alamo – a local man who knew the country well, mounted on a fast horse bearing away final letters and dispatches – one of the Texian commanders called together all his other officers and men. He was a relatively young man – William Barrett Travis, ambitious and to be honest, a bit full of himself. I rather think he might have struck some of his contemporaries as a bit insufferable – but he could write. He could write, write words that leap off the page in letters of fire and blood, which glow in the darkness like a distant bonfire.

He was in charge because of one of those turns which bedevil the plans of men. His co-commander, James Bowie was deathly ill… ironic, because he was the one with a reputation as a fighter and a leader. Bowie was seen by his enemies – of which there were many – as a violent scoundrel, with a reputation for bare-knuckle brawling, for land speculation and shady dealing. And of the third leader – one David Crockett, celebrity frontiersman and former Congressman, he did not claim any rank at all, although he led a party of Tennessee friends and comrades. He had arrived here, almost by accident. Of all of the leadership triad, I think he was perhaps the most amiable, the best and easiest-tempered of company. Of all those others, who had a stark choice put before them on that very last day, that day when it was still possible to leave and live… most of them were ordinary men, citizens of various communities and colonies in Texas, wanderers from farther afield – afterwards, it would become clear that only a bare half-dozen were born in Texas.

It is a vivid picture in my mind, of what happened when a young lawyer turned soldier stepped out in front of his rag-tag crew. Legends have that Colonel Travis drew his sword – that weapon which marked an officer, and marked a line in the dust at his feet and said “Who will follow me, over that line?” It was a stark choice put before them all. Here is the line; swear by stepping over it, that you will hold fast to your comrades and to Texas, all you volunteer amateur soldiers. Make a considered and rational choice – not in the heat of the fray, but in the calm before the siege tightens around these crumbling walls. No crazy-brave impulse in the thick of it, with no time to do anything but react. Stay put, and choose to live, or step over it and choose to go down fighting in the outpost you have claimed for your own.
The legend continues – all but perhaps one crossed the line, James Bowie being so ill that he had to be carried over it by his friends. It was a choice of cold courage, and that is why it stays with us. These men all chose to step across Colonel Travis’ line. Some had decided on their own to come here, others had been tasked by their superiors… and others were present by mere chance. They could have chosen freely to leave. But they all stayed, being convinced that they ought to take a stand … that something ought to be done.

Imagine. Imagine the men who came here, who made that choice, who had the cold courage to step over a line drawn in the dust at their feet.

They were animated by the conviction that they were citizens, that it was their right – and their responsibility to have a say in their own governance. They were not subjects, expected to submit without a murmur to the demands of a remote and arbitrary government. They did not bow to kings, aristocrats, or bureaucrats in fine-tailored coats, looking to impose taxes on this or that, and demanding interference in every aspect of their lives. They were citizens, ordinary people – with muddled and sometimes contradictory motives and causes, fractious and contentious, just as we are. But in the end, they were united in their determination to take a stand – a gallant stand against forces that seemed quite overwhelming.

This evening, we also have come to this place, this very place – as is our right as citizens and taxpayers, to speak of our unhappiness to our government in a voice that cannot be ignored any longer. This is our right. Our duty… and our stand.

(Afterwards, I sat on some of the leftover stage platforms from the Glenn Beck program and talked to Blondie, one of the other executive committee members, and the husband of another. The husband had run a pizza place in New York, and he and Blondie swapped recipes and techniques for making calzones. For a bit, we were also chatting with Janine Turner, and her daughter, who had also come to the Tea Party luncheon with Glenn Beck, and was a last-minute addition to the program. Lest you think I have gone all celebrity ga-ga, I haven’t… it’s just that she was a a very charming and unpretentious person, and it was a crowd of us, waiting our turn to speak, or hanging around in the back-stage area with the spouses and friends, and a bunch of roadies knocking down the Glenn Beck set, and security types with earphones all murmuring into their sleeves, all fenced around with industrial yellow barricades. More to tell in the next installment… like, why I know now how Ted Nugent is so popular. And how a bunch of uninvolved, un-politically connected citizens managed to pull off a huge Tea Party rally in about ten days flat.)

American Idol 2009

08. April 2009 · Comments Off on American Idol 2009 · Categories: That's Entertainment!

In case you missed Adam Lambert singing Mad World last night, I finally found it online.

So basically the contest is over, the only question is whether or not he’ll tank it so he can cut a decent record when the show is over.

And I haven’t really been watching the show, I just catch the videos online the day after.

Kaaaaahhhhnnnn, De Plane De Plane, In Rich Corinthian Leather

14. January 2009 · Comments Off on Kaaaaahhhhnnnn, De Plane De Plane, In Rich Corinthian Leather · Categories: That's Entertainment!, The Final Frontier

Bummer, Ricardo Montalban is dead at 88.  But I bet he rooked mahvelous my dahlings.  Okay, that’s Fernando, but you had to think about it a moment.
I should stop…seriously I jest with all resepct an awe.  What an icon.

Run Fat Boy Run

23. November 2008 · Comments Off on Run Fat Boy Run · Categories: That's Entertainment!

Seriously, however you ge your movie fix, watch this movie.

Funny, funny movie.

Meatloaf, Bat Out of Hell Random Screed

16. November 2008 · Comments Off on Meatloaf, Bat Out of Hell Random Screed · Categories: That's Entertainment!

People who don’t like Meatloaf’s Bat Out of Hell remind me of people who are proud of the fact that they don’t own a television or are proud of the fact that they only watch PBS or The Discovery Channel.  Good for you, but please STFU and let the rest of us enjoy “the crap” you find so offensive.

Life Just Got a Bit More Interesting

07. October 2008 · Comments Off on Life Just Got a Bit More Interesting · Categories: Memoir, That's Entertainment!

So last weekend I decided to try out for a play at a small community theater here in town.  I wasn’t familiar with the show but the outline looked like there were a couple of small character roles that I used to do so well.  I was hoping to ease my way back into theatre after an almost 15 year hiatus.

Talked to the director on the phone last night and she wants me to play the title role.

I’m still in “Holy Crap” mode.  More later.

The Juggernaut

02. October 2008 · Comments Off on The Juggernaut · Categories: Domestic, Fun and Games, General, General Nonsense, Media Matters Not, Politics, Rant, sarcasm, That's Entertainment!, World

The juggernaut was-and still is, according to a quick internet search, an enormous, towering wagon, with the image of a locally-worshipped Indian deity enthroned at the very peak of it, under a vast canopy, which is taken out for a grand procession once yearly, pulled by devotees through the streets of the city. This is no quick spin around the block and back again, for this wagon is enormous, clumsy, and heavy. Picture Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra, arriving to meet Mark Anthony, or the Persian emperor Darius grand entrance in 300; it’s an arresting image, which must be why it was used to indicate a certain sort of power and will.

And it also comes to my mind, increasingly often, this election season. Rather than picturing our very dear mainstream press creatures as deep-sea divers so far into the tank for Obama that they must have a couple of handlers and a pump feeding oxygen down to them, now I visualize the Obama campaign vehicle as a garganutuan, creaking juggernaut, pulled along by the masses of our media, along with lashings of the more loudmouthed and stupider popular entertainers. I visualize them straining at the chains, the ropes that bind them to the axles of this impossibly heavy vehicle as they tug it painfully onward, as they push at the back of it. They lean their shoulders to the wheels, willing the tottering structure ever onward towards the finishing line. They will accomplish this, of course – it is in the power of their will to move the One to glorious victory, and never mind those concepts – or those among them who fall under the wheels or are crushed against the side of a stone building as the juggernaut lurches briefly out of control.

I have honest to god never seen it as bad as this, as blatant – and I was paying attention during the last election. As hard as they could, the mainstream media couldn’t make the sow’s ear that was John Kerry into a presidential silk purse. It wasn’t for lack of trying, though – and they weren’t helped that he appeared to have all the actual, personal charm and charisma of Frank Burns and Eddie Haskell put together.

This time, they appear to have thrown any pretense at impartiality under the wheels. What can you think after seeing the storm of vicious editorials and outright fantasies about Governor Palin that somehow appeared out of the clear blue, upon being named to the VP seat? How can anyone not compare and contrast the energetic digging into her past, personal life and professional career in the last few weeks, with the elaborate disinterest in Senator Obama’s over the last 18 month and not begin to wonder if there is something just a little unbalanced about this sense of focus.

It’s not been unknown for members of the working press to have sentimental favorites – look, they about got down and drooled over John. F. Kennedy, and the deity knoweth some of the old press guys and gals still view him through a hagiographic haze. Similarly, Lyndon Johnson was so universally despised by the press and the intelligentsia that I (as a middle school kid just getting interested in that kind of stuff) rather felt sorry for him. Nixon was loathed, and Gerald Ford lampooned as a clumsy oaf – but in between all that, the serious media still were capable of some kind of detachment. Well, mostly – and mostly those in the middle of the road, not veering off onto the lunatic fringe. Which sense of impartiality still lingered long among us- but it just seems now the lunatic fringe is driving the whole thing. And that sense of even-handed detachment is what the media is losing, or has already lost this season. It’s gone; no one who has been paying attention the last couple of weeks, months, years – no one believes that mainstream media is neutral and independent any more. They are become the organ of state, or the state that they hope will be, once they drag the juggernaut over the finish line.

It’s as if NPR and the New York Times were about to morph into Pravda, or the state media in one of those third-world nations where el Presidente’s cousin is the head of the national press council – and no one dare print or broadcast a critical word about either of them. What a pity – for a lot of the last century, being a journalist in the mainstream American media was a respected profession . . . and now they are reduced to shoveling out propaganda and dragging the juggernaut along.

Clay Aiken’s Gay?

25. September 2008 · Comments Off on Clay Aiken’s Gay? · Categories: Rant, That's Entertainment!

I’m SHOCKED, shocked I tell you…

Other things I’m shocked about:

Senator Barack Obama is black.

Senator John McCain is white.

Governor Sarah Palin is hot.

Senator Joe Biden’s mouth moves faster than his brain.

700 billion dollars could possibly be spent on better things than bailing out rich guys who don’t know when to fold when they’re holding a pair of twos and there’s a nut flush showing on the table.

The Air Force is talking about bringing back Strategic Air Command and putting Space back in Colorado Springs.

Marines are just plain bad-ass.

Matt Damon is a fine writer/actor, but seriously, he should stay out of politics until he learns to Google.

Russia may not be the good buddies we thought they were in 1990.

Pakistan is shooting at U.S. troops on the Afghanistan/Pakistan border.

Bill Clinton seems to be undermining the Obama campaign.

David Blaine’s latest stunt was preempted by the President’s speech and nobody cared.

Most of the people in Survivor Gabon aren’t who they say they are.

I Love the Weirdness That is Summer Glau

22. September 2008 · Comments Off on I Love the Weirdness That is Summer Glau · Categories: That's Entertainment!

She’s just so wonderfully weird.

SNL (080913)

13. September 2008 · Comments Off on SNL (080913) · Categories: That's Entertainment!

Just a couple suggestions.

Tina Fey as Sarah Palin appearing with Hillary:  Saw it coming and it was still funny.  However, people from Alaska don’t sound like they’re from Minnesota or Northern Wisconsin.  It’s a different sound altogether.  Ya might want to spend some time outside of New York now and again.

Sticking every sports star that hosts the show into that locker room with the creepy coach playing the tape and dancing like Gumby on meth…not funny.  Wasn’t funny last season with Peyton Manning, not funny tonight with Michael Phelps.  Best part, Michael Phelps lowering his head and shaking it because he couldn’t believe his agent talked him into this.

The parents with the creepy kids whom they impose on their guests…not even remotely funny.

Was a time when SNL hosted the cutting edge in music.  That time was between 1975 and 1985 with occaissional brilliance in the 90s.  I don’t know who Lil Wayne is and if he’s the best rap has to offer, it’s dying as bad as rock is.

Alaska Pete?  This is your answer to Sarah Palin?  Alaska Pete?  How lame can you get?  The rest of Weekend Update wasn’t much better.  The lame political comedian, seriously not funny.  Makes me want to hurt someone.

The riff on the T-Mobile commercial was a little funny, but too long…and that commercial is over a year old.  And the customer service reps at T-Mobile are going to hate you for saying that 10,000 free text messages, free nights and weekends come with a MyFaves plan.

Andy Samberg’s videos are oddly amusing, but I can see them on YouTube.

I’m not finishing this, it’s too painful.  I can’t believe I missed Man Against Wild for this.

UPDATED to include the Tina Fey/Sarah Palin opening.  Somehow missed it last night.

You May Obliterate Bands You Hate

22. August 2008 · Comments Off on You May Obliterate Bands You Hate · Categories: That's Entertainment!

If you could erase any five bands/artists from music history, who would you choose?

Difficulty: “but if you erased (insert band here) then all your favorite bands wouldn’t exist” is not a valid answer. We’re talking fantasy here.

My answers were:

I’m going to try and cover one band from each of the last five decades. There are really too many to keep it down to five, but…

60s: The Beatles. I can listen to them now without retching, just barely.

70s: Bread. Seriously…the sound of David Gates’ voice will cause me to twitch.

80s: Toto. Was almost Metallica because when they first came out I seriously thought they were a parody band, but then I remembered “Rosanna.”

90s: DMB. I’ve been mostly clean and sober since 1988 with some relapses. Been good since 2000. I’m told that’s why I don’t like them.

00s: Nickelback. Actually, I kind of like most of the music of this decade…this one was hard. And though they technically were around in the 90s, I didn’t start to loathe them until the radio started playing them so freaking much.

Stolen from Michele at A Big Victory.

Further Adventures in Book Publishing

21. August 2008 · Comments Off on Further Adventures in Book Publishing · Categories: Domestic, General, Literary Good Stuff, That's Entertainment!, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

The adventure continues, with final approval of the text and cover for Book 2 of Adeslverein, (AKA The Civil War Years). Two down and one to go! Mike at Strider Nolan (the publisher of record) is editing the final volume. When that is done, all I need do is review it, and the final cover… wait for the printed version to come in the mail, and there we are… nothing much to do until December, except continue scrounging for reviews. This time around, because I have delayed final release of all three volumes until December, I can appeal for reviews from print venues which prefer to do reviews beforehand. As I discovered last year with “Truckee” it takes anywhere from a month to six months to squeeze a review out of some venues. Ideally, the reviews appear around about the time that the books will be available. It’s still very much a crap-shoot, though. A couple of months ago, another IAG member who was a subsidy publisher, pointed out that getting one single review for every four review copies sent out was a pretty good return on the investment.

I was startled to find that out, actually. I’ve been doing reviews for a while, for Blogger News. My thought was, if I have the book in hand, and I have asked for it… well, then I am pretty well committed to doing the review. I only ask for books that I am semi-interested in reading anyway, so it’s not like this is an insurmountable chore. It does appear that there are all sorts of scope for interestingly shadowy dealings in the review gig. The first of them is that the main print review producers – the Mt. Everests of the literary scene, like the New York Times Book Review- receive simply tons of free review copies of books every week. There is only space for a tiny fraction of them to be read and reviewed, so the excess are mostly donated to various worthy causes. I am given to understand that most of the other reputable reviewers do likewise. For a writer, sending out review copies is a gamble anyway. Not quite up there with playing the lottery, but pretty darned close. You have to put the book out there, one way or another. Many of the mainstream literary review publications don’t do publish-on-demand books (the snotty SOB’s!) so those of us who have done small press or independently published books have to go to the second tier review sites, of which there are any number, in response to demand. Some of these sites and reviewers are reputable and discriminating; those are the ones that are as exacting in their requirements as any of the mainline published reviewers. Some are not; but all of them depend on volunteer reviewers, even if it is only a review as basic as one posted on Amazon.com. This is one of them – for which I do reviews, also.

By volunteer, I mean that like me – they usually like books and reading. Getting sent any number of freshly-minted books that you didn’t pay for is still a bit of a tiny thrill to me and I would presume for many of the other volunteers. Strictly speaking, that is how we are paid – with a free copy of a book. After we post the review, we can do whatever we like with it; put it on our own shelves, donate to a local library, school or hospital, trot down to Half-Price Books, put it on E-bay, whatever. From a discussion in the IAG forum last week, it does appear that a certain degree of corruption as tiptoed into this arrangement. That is, reviewers trolling in the pools of small-press and POD authors, offering reviews and requesting book copies… and then either producing a very cursory review with a five-star rating, such as might be dashed off by reading the back cover or the accompanying publicity materials, and then offering the book for sale on E-bay or some such. Sometimes a review copy is even offered in the “used” section of the Amazon listing, in competition with a new version! Or even worse, no review at all. This has some of the IAG members fit to be tied; not only does the cost of review copies comes out of our pocket, but every sale of a new copy of our book is precious, as our sales stats inch ever higher. Some of us are considering stamping “review copy” in a couple of places in the interior margins, but for now, naming and shaming those particular review sites and reviewers is enough. In the meantime, treat short, glowing but 5-star reviews with extreme suspicion. Especially if the reviewer does a lot of reviews; I’m doing good if I can read half a dozen books in a month and pound out 300-plus words, but then I have a life, two jobs and another book to finish.

Memo: Telling Stories

13. August 2008 · Comments Off on Memo: Telling Stories · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, History, Literary Good Stuff, sarcasm, That's Entertainment!

To: Professor Denise Spelburg,
From: Sgt Mom
Re: Clarifying Matters Literary and Beyond

1. According to the story here (which may need registration to complete the link – sorry!) you are painting yourself in colors of victimhood, now that you are being righteously criticized on line and have received a ton of so-called hate-mail, for your part on kicking up an all-mighty fuss about a bodice-ripping historical novel about the youngest wife of Mohammed. (Or would that be a burka-ripping historical novel?) Welcome to the real world, professor… it’s that place that extends somewhat beyond academia, where reactions to words and ideas can sometimes get wild and woolly.

2. In this real world, we have writers – sort of like myself, as a matter of fact – who like to tell stories to people, sometimes quite lengthy stories based on historical characters, facts and incidents. This is a whole genre out there, loosely known as “historical fiction”. At one extreme, the best of them are carefully researched and stray no farther from verifiable and researched historical fact than anyone in your own university department. Then there is the other extreme, in which practically anything goes. In either case the operative word is “fiction”… which means, my dear Professor… that stuff is made up. Created out of whole cloth. Imagined. Clear so far on that concept?

3. At least, you are well-enough acquainted with enough of that world to know that provoking the adherents the so-called religion of peace can have occasionally fatal consequences. I am cynically amused to note that in your academic world Salman Rushdie’s “Satanic Verses” is worthy of defending against threats of violence because he can, according to the story “…claim he was raising an existential, theological query, however impertinent. Jones’ book is a mere burlesque.”

4. Ahh, we see – some ideas and authors are more equal than others. A piece of light and fluffy historical fiction is not worthy of the protections afforded to the heavyweights of the intellectual world. Duly noted, Professor. You are a self-important snob, as well as being a tattle-tale and a bit of a coward. If doing a nice little blurb for “The Jewel of Medina” was beneath the dignity of a heavy-weight intellectual and scholar such as yourself, then wouldn’t a polite note to the management at Random House, declining to comment have been sufficient, with or without the back-up from your lawyer. You didn’t want your name and credentials attached to Ms. Jones’s book in any way. I – and hardly anyone else has a problem with that.

5. The breathless warning to your friend at the altmuslim discussion group was in the long term, neither helpful or necessary. In fact, it seems rather malicious; “Ohhh, she is talking such trash about you… and what are you going to do about it?” is the way that it comes off to those of us who remember junior high school pretty well. Professor, we didn’t like that kind of nasty, passive-aggressive manipulation then, and we like it even less now. Perhaps that is how the game is still played in academia these days – but again, in the real world, it doesn’t go over well. Take note.

6. Finally, I can’t help wondering if this is a little bit of unseemly possessiveness about the subject on your part. I would assume that you have a great deal invested in your visualization of Aisha, and did not take very well to another writer picturing something different. There is one other historical researcher who has done a great deal on the Stephens Townsend Party, the subject of my own historical novel. I got a very odd, hostile vibe from him, when I communicated with him – it was as if their story was his exclusive property and I was trespassing on it by imagining something different. I am grateful that I did not ask that particular researcher for a blurb for Truckee – at least he did not sic the forces of the Oregon-California Trail Association on me for my trouble!

7. I do think Ms. Jones ought to be grateful to you, however. “Jewel of Medina” will now probably sell in quantities several times over what it would have, if you had just quietly given a pass on blurbing it to begin with.

Hoping you will find these remarks helpful
I remain the unrepentant scribbler of historical fiction,

Sgt Mom

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