Comcast Sucks

Quick Sunday night Comcast update.

We have cancelled our service. From installation on Wednesday August 1 to cancellation on Sunday August 5th -- I'd say Comcast made pretty short work of a couple of new customers.

The wife returned from from Sunnyvale last night and this morning she began work on setting up a wireless network in the new apartment. Well, the modem Comcast gave us, unlike the modem we had with BellSouth (now AT&T), has no wireless capability. So either we'd have to buy a wireless router OR we could pay Comcast another $150 to get one of their modems with wireless capability. On top of which we'd have to pay another $5 a month. My wife began her call this afternoon shortly before her parents dropped by. I was sitting in the living room chatting with them while the wife was in my office, door closed, talking to Comcast about wireless. Twenty minutes go by and she opens the door and tells us we've just canceled with Comcast.

She said the guy she talked to that prompted her to end our brief but passionate affair with Comcast was straight out of "Idiocracy". His apology for the Nintendo DS imbroglio (referred to in the last post) was so stupid and insincere ("I'm really sorry that happened to you. I know I would hate it if someone said I was going to get a DS and I didn't get one, but there's nothing I can do" -- only imagine this spoken by someone with an IQ of 80 who thought parting one's lips to form a syllable was a hardship he wasn't going to inflict upon himself), that she felt she had no choice but to cancel. When she told the guy, "I'm going to go ahead and cancel." The customer service rep's response was a quick, "Okay." No "What can I do to address the problems you're having?" or "I'm sorry to hear that. What if I gave you three months for free, would that be of interest to you?" Just "okay". It's a wonder anyone stays with them. Did I mention Comcast sucks?

Thanks, all, by the way, for your comments on the last post. I guess it shows how easily influenced I am that, for as long as I was reading each comment, I was convinced I should to do what each commenter said, but then, gnat-like, I changed my mind as soon as I got to an opposing point of view. I am a vacillator, what can I say? I guess I needed my MBA wife to come home and make the right call. (sigh) Hang on one sec -- I think I left something in my wife's purse. Okay. Got 'em.

Also: Bubba Burgers. Good, huh?

Also: did anyone else watch the Republican debate this morning on ABC? My God. A scarier crew of politicians I never did meet. The scariest one of them all, and a real embarrassment to the Republican Party (and Jesus Christ is that saying something) is Tom Tancredo. He actually said the following, and though I'm paraphrasing, it's scarily close to what he said: "My job as Chief Executive is not to insure the nation's poor or educate the nation' children, it is to protect the nation's people from outside attack." Can you believe it? Leave it to a party that demonizes taxes, prefers faith to reason (and believes them to be mutually exclusive) and vilifies anyone who believes in the idea of a common national welfare to produce a character that virulently wrongheaded. I know the Democrats are embarrassed to have an elderly stoner like Mike Gravel in the debate, but the Republicans should be ashamed Tancredo can be counted as one of their number.

All in all, it was a thoroughly depressing exercise. Yeah, they're Republicans and anytime you watch a bunch of Republicans talk it's going to make a sane person feel down in the dumps, but these particular Republicans are so absolutely trapped by their craziest constituencies that it's as astonishing as it is demoralizing. For example, they can't say anything good about a strong separation of church and state or they'll offend their Jesus Camp constituency. And they can't be in favor of protecting civil liberties because they'll offend the screaming meemies who think the sky will fall if the NSA isn't listening to everyone's phone calls and reading everyone's emails and torturing all suspects without due process. And you can't say the obvious and announce to the whole world that the Bush administration has been nothing but a disaster for this country because you'll offend the mental ward residents who still approve of the job the President is doing. And with the groundrules thusly set, you hear statements like, "Say what you will about this administration but they've kept us safe for the last six years!" (Romney). "It took me 30 years before I realized Jesus Christ is my personal savior." (Tancredo). Or that to help insure our nation's children, we need to rely on "more market-based solutions" (Brownback). Or that in order to raise enough revenue to restore our crumbling infrastructure, we should cut taxes. (Giuliani). Bizarre.

And do we really need Presidents who think "strengthening families in America" should be a major priority of their administrations, as both Romney and Tancredo do? It's almost like these guys wish it was the '92 campaign all over again, back when Dan Quayle and George Bush lamented Murphy Brown's "child born out of wedlock" or whined nonsensically that the "nation needs to be closer to the Waltons than the Simpsons". Unfortunately, we have more pressing issues now than we did then, like the threat of terrorism and a failed war predicated on a lie, but mostly what these have in response to our new and sad reality is Romney's call to "triple Guantanmo!" or Tancredo's threat to bomb Mecca and Medina if we're attacked again, or McCain's view, untainted by reality, that democracy is beginning to take hold in Iraq. I guess what I'm having trouble with is after two terms of Bush, how can anyone in this country take seriously any candidate who still calls themselves a Republican? Hasn't Bush proven that those who despise government can't actually run the thing? Why should we give them another shot?

What's a Guy Got To Do To Get Hisself a Nintendo DS?

I had my cable installed yesterday by Comcast. As well as my internet and phone service. My phone works well, the cable works well, and aside from running a little slow, my internet connection's okay.

But after the surly Comcast installers left, I remembered the Nintendo DS owed me as part of the promotion Comcast is running for anyone who orders their service online. Though I ordered online, the order never went through because, unbeknowst to me, I had to "chat" with a "fulfillment agent" at the end of the process in order to finalize the order. Though it is true my online ordering process ended in a live chat screen, no agent, or anyone at all, appeared in it to speak with me for many a minute. Staring at a useless chat screen, I figured I'd navigated somewhere in error because I certainly didn't feel the need to speak with anyone at Comcast, and so exited out of the window and began the long wait for the Comcast man to come on July 30th. When, of course, no one showed, I called Comcast. The agent I spoke to apologized and sent someone out the very next day, which was yesterday. So yesterday post-installation and for about 3 hours today I'm on the phone trying like a 13-year old circa 2003 to procure for myself a free Nintendo DS. All of the people I spoke to on the phone are trying their best to get this shrill white man off the phone by saying the only way I can get what I want is to go straight to the website and "chat" with someone who knows what the hell I'm talking about, because no one on the phone did. So after I told my story 4 times to 4 different "service" reps, I decided further talk would be fruitless. I would have to take up the fight once more by chat.

Chat wasn't much better than actual talking. I was bounced around 3 times to 3 different "analysts" in our little chat room. The last one, Toby, "entered the room" and asked what he could do for me. I started typing my story. I was nearly through when Toby informed me he was ending this chat session due to inactivity. Before I could hit "Enter" and show that I was there, that there was no inactivity, that there was in fact, quite a bit of activity, Toby was gone. I admit it; I went a little crazy. There was no steering wheel to pound on, so my laptop and my desk took the brunt of my rage for a second or two. After I calmed, I got back into the "queue" to chat with an analyst again, and this time I got an analyst named Jeff. This is our conversation.

"user brian_ has entered room

Brian(Thu Aug 02 2007 15:57:55 GMT-0400 (Eastern Standard Time))>

nintendo DS online promotion problem

user brian_ has left room

user brian_ has entered room

analyst Jeff has entered room

Jeff(Thu Aug 02 2007 16:01:03 GMT-0400 (Eastern Standard Time))>

Hello brian_, Thank you for contacting Comcast Live
Chat Support. My name is Jeff.
Please give me one moment to review your information.

brian_(Thu Aug 02 2007 16:00:56 GMT-0400 (Eastern Standard Time))>

OK

Jeff(Thu Aug 02 2007 16:01:27 GMT-0400 (Eastern Standard Time))>

I will be happy to assist you, Brian. What exactly is the
issue you are having with the promotion?

brian_(Thu Aug 02 2007 16:01:40 GMT-0400 (Eastern Standard Time))>

I was told that I'm not eligible even though I did order
the bundled service online.

brian_(Thu Aug 02 2007 16:03:06 GMT-0400 (Eastern Standard Time))>

after I chose the three connection windows, I went to a
live chat that no one came into for about five minutes
or so. Since it was unclear why I needed to
chat with someone, I exited out of the window. I was
told later that it was in chat that the order's finalized,
which is not at all clear on the website. When
I called to say that

brian_(Thu Aug 02 2007 16:04:26 GMT-0400 (Eastern Standard Time))>

no technician had come by, the operator apologized and sent
someone out the following day. because the order went through
her desk and not online, customer service reps are telling me
I don't get the DS, and I'm writing to say I believe I
held up my end and shouldn't be denied the promotional item
because of Comcast's mistake

brian_(Thu Aug 02 2007 16:04:34 GMT-0400 (Eastern Standard Time))>

and that's my story

Jeff(Thu Aug 02 2007 16:06:17 GMT-0400 (Eastern Standard Time))>

One moment please.

Jeff(Thu Aug 02 2007 16:09:35 GMT-0400 (Eastern Standard Time))>

I am showing from the website that in order to get the
promotion you would need tosign up through Comcast.com. I am
not able to make any changes to that to give you
that promotion, you may want to check the local Comcast
office to see if they can get that for you, since you did
try to sign up through Comcast.com. 

brian_(Thu Aug 02 2007 16:09:24 GMT-0400 (Eastern Standard Time))>

are you still there? I don't want the chat to end sudden;y
because I haven't written anything for awhile

Jeff(Thu Aug 02 2007 16:09:55 GMT-0400 (Eastern Standard Time))>

Yes, I am still here. Sorry for the delay.

brian_(Thu Aug 02 2007 16:11:17 GMT-0400 (Eastern Standard Time))>

I don't want to go to my local Comcast office. Everyone
I've talked to today said to go online and here I am. I
don't want to make a special trip to plead for
Comcast to give me what they promised in their offer. It's
a voucher. Comcast sends it out. Who do you need to contact
to get one of those vouchers out to me?

Jeff(Thu Aug 02 2007 16:13:21 GMT-0400 (Eastern Standard Time))>

I do not have access to send that voucher. That would have
been done only on the Comcast.com site.

brian_(Thu Aug 02 2007 16:14:29 GMT-0400 (Eastern Standard Time))>

Does your manager have access to that voucher? And if not
him, do you know who in the company would? As far as I
know I'm talking to you through the Comcast website, so
it's unclear to me how the voucher people are different
from where you are at. 

brian_(Thu Aug 02 2007 16:16:14 GMT-0400 (Eastern Standard Time))>

Jeff, my goal here is not to be a jerk. I feel
badly used by the company so far, and I feel this is
a fairly clear case of bait and switch. I wonder if there is
something more you can do to help a Comcast customer

Jeff(Thu Aug 02 2007 16:17:20 GMT-0400 (Eastern Standard Time))>

I can only assist with existing services but when you
order online on Comcast.com you would reach an order
fulfillment agent who processes orders. Let me check
further if there is something else I can do for you.

brian_(Thu Aug 02 2007 16:17:18 GMT-0400 (Eastern Standard Time))>

ok

Jeff(Thu Aug 02 2007 16:23:52 GMT-0400 (Eastern Standard Time))>

I am told by a order fulfillment agent that the order
would need to be placed at Comcast.com. Then when the
installer comes, they would give you a confirmation
number in order to get the Nintendo DS. But there is
no way for me to get you that confirmation number. You
may want to try at the local office, or cancel the order
and re-order from Comcast.com to chat with the order
fulfillment agent.

Jeff(Thu Aug 02 2007 16:24:24 GMT-0400 (Eastern Standard Time))>

I am very sorry for this inconvenience this has caused,
since the order was not completed online at Comcast.com.

brian_(Thu Aug 02 2007 16:24:21 GMT-0400 (Eastern Standard Time))>

what would it cost me to cancel and re-order?

Jeff(Thu Aug 02 2007 16:25:42 GMT-0400 (Eastern Standard Time))>

There is a 30 day guarantee so you should not need to
pay anything. I suggest trying the local office as well
to see if they have access to give the Nintendo DS voucher.

brian_(Thu Aug 02 2007 16:25:54 GMT-0400 (Eastern Standard Time))>

all right Jeff. Thanks.

Jeff(Thu Aug 02 2007 16:26:51 GMT-0400 (Eastern Standard Time))>

You are welcome, Brian. Sorry again for all the
frustration. Is there anything else I can assist you
with at this time?

brian_(Thu Aug 02 2007 16:27:20 GMT-0400 (Eastern Standard Time))>

A time machine to go back to when I decided to go
with Comcast, but short of that, I think we're all set.

brian_(Thu Aug 02 2007 16:27:28 GMT-0400 (Eastern Standard Time))>

thanks."

Yeah, I was a smart ass (especially with the dumb time travel joke at the end), but
I was pissed.

So I don't know. On one hand, what am I doing? I don't even really want a DS that
much,I just thought it would be fun to have one for, you know, free. So why keep
on with it? If I start thinking too much about "the principle of the thing" as a
reason to keep on with it, then that's a quick one-way street that takes me right
to Ass-hole Land, isn't it? It is bait and switch though, right? It seems like the
DS's are going to the few brainiacs who were able to psychically intuit what
Comcast wanted them to do with its Blank Chat Screen of Mystery.

So should I keep on with this or let it die? Do they really owe me a DS or is it
really my fault that I didn't know how Comcast wanted to finish the order? I think
Comcast has me beat here. I think a full-on, full-bore quest for the DS will end
with Comcast giving me not a DS, but an asterisk by my name for "Problem Customer".
Anyway, that's my bitchy blog post for the day.

Internet Connectivity Returns, and So Does the Inanities!

Hola readers! Happy August 2007.

I am now officially moved into the new apartment. OK, so I've been officially been moved in for a week, but I only got my Internet connection today, so here I am blogging again. Lucky you people. The place is in a lil' city called Marietta, which has been sitting on the west side of Atlanta all the time I've lived in this state but has remained, with few exceptions, unvisited by me. And now I live here. I also live within spitting distance of not just interstate 75, but of Dobbins Air Force Base, which is, as Air Force Bases go, extremely active. Most days it's big ole cargo planes roaring overhead. Today it was fighters. A whole mess of jet fighters going over once, circling around, and then coming over again. It's been a week and still, like a child, I fast-walk to the windows whenever I hear one approaching because I really like watching them go by. Maybe it's a symptom of being a self-hating liberal, but at the same time I want to frown at the show of military muscle and, by extension, everything that show of American military muscle implies, I also experience that dumb, lizard brain emotion that understands how American soldiers abroad could listen to "America! Fuck Yeah!" from the "Team America" soundtrack and enjoy it without irony.

I'd say more about the area but I haven't been out much. For the past 7 days I've been unpacking in my maddeningly inefficient way and the going has been slow. Mostly I unpack at commercial breaks, and even then I'm usually content to sit through the ads to wait for the next morsel of show. I've been living with an exclusively analog signal for 2 years and living with it again for another week wasn't too bad, particularly since there exists a TBS (which came in the best of all of the channels) to meet all of my TV-watching needs. Guilty pleasure TV shows? Check. (King of Queens). Classic TV shows? Check. (Seinfeld, Everybody Loves Raymond, Cosby Show). Shitty movies I always wanted to see but figured I'd wait until they came on free on TBS? Check. (Shanghai Knights). The list goes on, folks. I would have liked to have spent my time more wisely, say writing or drawing or even reading, but disorder of the kind I'm confronted with in this freshly unpacked apartment saps my will to do anything but stare blankly at a box that shows pretty pictures. The TV serves this purpose nicely. But some good news: the apartment is nearing orderliness. Right now, one of the bathrooms is essentially spotless and has just one unopened box in it.

Before this goes on too long, I do want to quickly direct your attention to a fascinating email sent out by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Robert Olen Butler. In this email he describes the circumstances by which his wife, writer Elizabeth Dewberry, left Butler for Ted Turner. Yeah, that Ted Turner. Go here for the complete (and completely awesome) email. And then, if you're still interested, go here to listen to Butler talk to NPR about the email and the reaction to said email. Listen carefully (you won't need to) to hear Butler's nausea-inducing self-importance. I'm not sure, but I'm pretty sure it's unseemly to mention your Pulitzer so many times.

And finally, I finished "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" a few days ago. My Spoiler Vigil of Death has now ended. I guess I have to go add Heath back to my Friends list on MySpace. (Sigh). More soon.

The Wait Is Over

My wife received an email yesterday from her soon-to-be employers informing her of which city she (and thusly, I) will be working out of.

Atlanta.

A big surprise for us, but a happy one. Staying in the city really simplifies things. No stressful interstate moves, no forward planning to visiting our parents around the holidays, and we know the area. I'll admit there was something attractive about the idea of a "fresh start" in a new city, hanging out again with old friends and all that, but I'm also a little relieved about staying with what's familiar and not having to say goodbye to anyone. So here we'll stay until the company decides my wife's talents would be better put to use in, I don't know, Cleveland.

London: Day Two

On our second day in London my wife and I slept all the way in till 8 a.m. Bleary-eyed I climbed into a shower the size of a roomy coffin, inside of which I was assaulted by both cold tile and a frigid and clingy shower curtain that wrapped itself around me at the slightest provocation. It was like that every morning we were in London. It wasn't the kind of shower in which one lingers.

The first appointment we had that day -- a true British tea service at the British Museum -- wasn't until 3:30 that afternoon, so we had all morning and most of the afternoon to kill. We decided to head towards Knightsbridge to see the famous Harrod's department store. My wife was adamant that we visit Harrod's during our trip, even though I had no particular enthusiasm for it (which is not to say there was ever a chance we weren't going). I figured that once we finished looking at all the high-dollar clothes and perfume and jewelry, we'd get on with the day. But after we stepped inside and I saw for myself how Harrod's differs from all the department stores I've been in, I wasn't in a hurry to leave.

Covering 4.5 acres on 5 massive floors, Harrod's is 158 years old and generally considered one of the premier shopping destination in London. Harrod's prides itself on the notion that you can buy anything you can dream up inside; a stroll through its 5 floors are proof that their motto, "Everything for Everybody Everywhere" is absolutely true. Back in the day, Harrod's embalmed Sigmund Freud, sent herring across the ocean to Alfred Hitchcock, sold an elephant to Ronald Reagan, and once called Oscar Wilde one of its best customers. Harrod's has changed hands a lot of times over its history but is now in the hands of the Fayed family, who've spent buckets of cash to restore Harrod's from its eighties dinge to its former glory. Not necessarily to replicate what it may have looked like in the past, but to make it the destination department store it once was. Model-pretty men and women populate the handbag and cosmetic counters. Clean-cut men in snug uniform suits scan the floor for would-be shoplifters. A bank of escalators called "the Egytian Escalator", decked out like a secret burial chamber for some Egyptian pharaoh, moves shoppers from floor to floor. The Fayeds spent $600 million to build the escalator passage and the surrounding decor and the space is fantastic, more amusement park than department store. Yes, there's a full-bore Waterstone's bookstore inside, a nearly Toys R' Us-sized toy store, all the clothes, pianos, furniture, household appliances and sporting goods you could want, but for me the "grocery store" part of Harrod's is where you truly see Harrod's's dedication to creating a sense of wonder.

In the room marked 'Meats', glass cases lined the walls, each featuring ruler-straight lines of beef, chicken, pork, lamb, duck or pheasant all ready to drop into the frying pan. Protruding from the wall was a fully-functional sushi bar, complete with full-time sushi chef and top-quality fish. The produce, located in an adjacent room, was of farmers' market quality. I looked but couldn't find a bit of rot or wilt anywhere. In the candy and chocolate room was a long line of glass cases stocked full of every conceivable form of marzipan. Everything in the grocery area of Harrod's was displayed and presented in such a way as to visually overwhelm, and it did that very well. Also, the place runs like a clock. Periodically, uniformed employees appeared holding trays filled with just the right number of items to replace what's depleted. Not surprisingly the prices were as sky-high as the quality, more in line with Whole Foods than Kroger, but high prices don't deter some of England's wealthier folks (and London's got lots of them). In one of the grocery rooms I saw an old man sitting in front of a desk while a well-dressed woman in her mid-twenties supervised other workers who were gathering the old man's groceries in cloth bags. The old man was having a spot of tea while all of this was going on. I'm thinking London is probably a very nice place in which to be very very rich. Having had an aristocracy in place for longer than nearly any other part of the world, merchants in London know how to cater to wealth. Anyway. After the craziness of the grocery section of Harrod's, the other four floors were amazing but still anticlimactic. But needless to say I was happy the wife put Harrod's on the itinerary.

Afterwards we took the Tube from the Knightsbridge station to Piccadilly and window shopped to kill some time before our afternoon tea. For those of you who read this now-sporadically updated blog, you know I like me some books. Not so much to read, but mostly to buy and put on my shelf and gaze at and feel smart. So you might imagine my joy to find not just one, but two 6-story bookstores on this road and just a few blocks from one another. I've never been to New York, which I'd imagine would compete for this title, but London is by far the most obviously literate city I've ever been in; these two massive bookstores thriving in such close proximity to one another is evidence of that. The first of these bookstores I went into was another Waterstone's, which is basically the Barnes & Noble of the U.K.. I visited all five stories and saw that one whole level was dedicated to biographies of obscure British celebrities and minor politicians, and another to literary criticism and obscure British poetry. The 6 stories thing didn't seem quite so great after that.

Looking back, I realize I was excited about these bookstores all out of proportion to what was really contained inside, namely a whole lot of very British books. I now understand that the same isolationist prejudice that drives most readers to only pick titles about their own countrymen doing things inside their own country, also helps determine what books I choose to read. If a thoroughly British writer named Sebastian Faulks writes a novel set in 70's London that sends up England during the Thatcher years, it turns out I'm not really too interested. Who knew?

The second 6-story bookstore was a different story (no pun intended). Hatchard's, which opened for business way back in 1797, is the oldest bookstore in London. The interior is done out in dark hardwoods and looks every inch the classic English bookshop, much moreso than the more generic Waterstones. The other thing that distinguished Hatchard's from the Waterstones and WH Smith's I'd been to before, was how many hardcovers were wrapped in a beige fold-in with the word "Signed" printed on the front. According to the Hatchard's catalog, authors come in every other day to do signings. Easily half of the new titles had that tell-tale fold-in, including the British edition of Ian McEwan's latest novel, "On Chesil Beach". This was awesome, but, unfortunately, I had already bought a copy at the Waterstone's at Harrod's. So I bought a signed copy and resolved to head back to Harrod's sometime before we left England to return the first, unsigned copy. By the way, I visited every floor of Hatchard's too.

After that, we headed to the British Museum for our tea. Because the British Museum's main chamber is cavernous, the restaurant, located on the museum's second floor, felt kind of like an open-air cafe. We sat by a bank of windows overlooking a vast library located in the middle of the main chamber, but as it was under renovation, our view was blocked by a black protective screen. The afternoon tea service was good; three finger sandwiches, two scones served with a ton of clotted cream and a ton of jam, and of course the tea, a whole pot of Earl Gray for me. (The wife haqd Chamomile). I don't know tea, so I figured if Earl Gray was good enough for Capt. Picard, it would be good enough for me. And after I put 4 or 5 cubes of sugar in there, it was a lovely beverage. (And here's a picture of me enjoying my Earl Gray.) Afterwards, we walked around the museum for a while, gawking at mummies and obscene fertility sculptures. Now we get back into some pictures. It isn't pretty.

This is me standing beside the British Museum's crown jewel, the famed Rosetta Stone, created in 196 B.C. and discovered by the French in 1799. With a lot of museum pieces, the true value of the piece isn't immediately clear outside of a purely aesthetic perspective. A shard of clay pot that was used in a Sumerian hut, for example, is not obviously valuable to anyone but the anthropologists and archaeologists who specialize in that sort of thing. The Rosetta Stone, however, is accessible to the layperson (like me) as it lets you know why it's important right away. At the top, a passage is written (chiseled really) in Egyptian hieroglyphs, a language that prior to the Rosetta Stone's discovery had not been deciphered. Below the hieroglyphs is the same passage written in demotic Egyptian, and then below both of those is the same passage chiseled in Greek, which was (and is) well-known to scholars. Pretty momentous, eh? Anyway, when we first got to the Rosetta Stone, the whole front of the display-case was crowded with museum-goers taking pictures. Without thinking, I ambled around back where it was less crowded to see what was written on the other side. When I saw only rough rock I felt at first surprised and then kinda stupid. The Rosetta Stone is not, as I'd supposed, like a piece of notebook paper on which you cover both sides with writing.






This is a big lion-looking thing carved out of stone.







I don't really know what to say about this photo. I don't know whom the bust is based on, I'm not even sure if he's Greek, but forget him -- I look like a complete idiot, so I thought I'd include it for a laugh. Or perhaps a stony, disappointed silence. (By the way, the wife has asked me to state that I hiked up my pants for the sake of the photo, and that this is not how I normally dress. I thought this went without saying, but she would rather be safe than sorry.)

After strolling the British Museum and the surrounding neighborhood, we made our way, Tube-wise, towards the West End's Theater District. (I'm not sure if 'Theater District' ought to be capitalized, but I'm doing it anyway.) We had tickets for the 7:30 show of the musical version of "Lord of the Rings" at the Theater Royal Drury Lane. But first: some fish and chips.

It had been nearly 24 hours since I'd last eaten some fried cod and french fries, so we had to address this problem immediately. As the wife had read a travel guide at the Harrod's Waterstones listing the the best fish and chips places in London, she remembered that one of them, a place called Rock 'N Sole, was within walking distance of our theater. We took a place outside on one of six big picnic tables set up on the sidewalk. We joined a lawyerly-looking fellow of, perhaps, Indian descent, and when he left, our food arrived and so did two American girls of roughly college age who sat down beside us. When my wife and I weren't talking, we couldn't help but overhear the two girls blab about a friend of theirs who was making really bad relationship choices. I got the sense that they were in some sorority in America. My wife, who's better at eavesdropping than I am, got a totally different story from their conversation, which just means I've probably got some kind of hearing loss going. In addition to the fish and chips (which were very good), I also had the "mushy peas", which according to the travel books is a traditional English way to eat fish and chips. I was game, so I tried them. Very salty. My palette is pretty unsophisticated, but I couldn't really see how the mushy peas complement either the fish or the chips. Old habits die hard in England, I guess.

And then we were off to the theater. The Theater Royal Drury Lane is a very old theater and was, for a time, considered the most important theater in the world. Oscar Wilde premiered two plays here back in the 1890's. A big plaque on the wall in the lobby of the theater hints at the theater's rich history from when it was first opened after a fire in 1674 and designed by the famed architect Christopher Wren, through all of the owner/creative directors in the theater's multi-century history, all the way to its current owner, "Phantom of the Opera" writer-composer Andrew Lloyd Webber. (Though the plaque made no mention of how many times the theater burned down over the years and was completely rebuilt -- guess it makes it all seem a little less antique.)

"The Lord of the Rings" musical opened for a while in Toronto to mixed reviews. Critics said its running time (3 1/2 hours) was too long, there were too many characters and the songs weren't catchy enough. So they closed the show, reworked it to bring it down to 3 hours, cut a few of the characters and tried to punch up the songs so people might have something to hum on the way out of the theater, and then opened it back up in London on May 9th of this year. The show is a major production. The producers (one of whom is listed as Saul Zaentz, though I doubt he had much to do with it) spent 16 million dollars (or 8 million pounds) to stage the thing, and to my unpracticed eye, the money's all up there on-stage. The whole proscenium is covered in a tangle of leafless tree branches, as well as a few of the balcony seats and a good bit of the ceiling. While the theater fills up, the actors who play the hobbits come out onto the stage to loiter in character, meaning smug and happy. One of the hobbits, maybe it was Pip, sees a firefly (an LED light flicking at the end of a thin hard wire) and the whole gang of hobbits goes crazy for it and work together to capture it. There was a lot of short British actors crawling over theatergoers and improv-ing goofy, slightly embarrassing dialog in the aisle beside us. The whole process is goofy and self-conscious, but overall pretty fun to watch. When the hobbits catch the last of four or five of the LED fireflies, the theater is full, and the lights go out and the production begins.

"Lord of the Rings" is a good show, but exhausting. At every moment, at least a hundred D&P types are running around backstage to make the spectacle on-stage possible, and there can't be any mistakes. If it isn't a massive Balrog puppet or the 10-foot high Shelob the Spider puppet that have to be perfectly manipulated, than it's the rotating stage that can rise, in sections, to what looked like 12 feet high. Instead of getting wrapped up in the story, I found myself more concerned with whether or not they'd pull the thing off. With a few minor hiccups, they did, but it seemed like a close thing at times. For a musical where the stagecraft was the main attraction, the singing and acting was fine, though the actor who played Gollum did well with an aerobic role.
The standout in "Lord of the Rings" was Laura Michelle Kelly who played the Elf Queen Galadriel. Her performance during the scene when Frodo offers her the One Ring was, in my view, more compelling, more authentic than Cate Blanchett's, which is a big deal as Kelly had no special effects to augment her performance. Even with the jaw-dropping spectacle on display through most of the show, Kelly's vocal performance was the absolute highlight.

As I clearly have no interest in keeping this post brief, I will include this one quibble with the show: Gandalf was way too pissed off at Frodo. I thought part of why the film version of "Fellowship of the Ring" was so successful, was because Peter Jackson got Gandalf exactly right. The wizard can be a stern prick at times, but all the hobbits know he still loves them. He's like Jesus that way. In the musical version of "Lord of the Rings" however, Gandalf is all prick all the time. When Gandalf and Frodo reunite in Rivendell, instead of taking a moment to be happy that Frodo didn't die of his Nazgul sword wound, Gandalf bursts into his room and bellows angrily, "Frodo!" and then berates him for some such thing that wasn't even his fault. I think if they'd gotten Gandalf a little closer to right, they might have had a better show. Just saying.

Some hours later, after we'd been lounging in the hotel for a while, we realized we were still hungry. We walked up Craven Road, past our Tube station, and to the nearest Burger King. (There are a lot of Burger Kings in the U.K.) As the BK guy grabbed our drink cups, my wife asked if we could have an extra cup of ice. He smiled and said, "Ice? You two are Americans?"

That's right. In England, we Americans are famous the Isles over for our love of ice. At that moment, I felt a sudden kinship with not only my left-leaning libtard brethren, but with all 300 million Americans -- even the dumb ones who believe in the Rapture and vote for George W Bush no matter which laws he breaks. At the end of the day, no matter what we believe, we all really freakin' like ice in our drinks. Love it, even. It was a patriotic moment for me.

Anyway, we headed back to the hotel, ate cheeseburgers, watched BBC on the telly, and went to sleep.

Stay tuned for Day Three as soon as I recover from the writing of this post.

Happy Fourth of July!

London: Day One

Yeah. It's been nearly a month since I got back from Scotland, but what am I going to do? Not post up a long, boring account of my trip on my blog? Of course not. Personal blogs DEMAND long boring accounts of vacation trips to distant lands, often with little consideration for the interest level of the readers of that blog. Who am I to be different? So I'm a going to get into it. I will try my best to keep this thing short(ish) and mostly sweet. And there will be photos.

Prior to our departure from Hartsfield on Wednesday, May 23rd, I had never really been overseas before. Yes, I was born on the northern part of the boot of Italy and grew from an enormous infant to a monstrous toddler over the course of a year or so, but I don't think this makes me a world traveler. My wife, however, has been around the world with some frequency these last 3 years, and in January of 2004, she stopped for a couple weeks in London. Because she was bunking with a friend there on business, she was mostly on her own during the daylight hours. Though she had a lot of fun zooming across the city on double-decker sightseeing buses and subways, the countryside on luxurious cross-country buses, one crucial element was missing:

Me.

Specifically, my sparkling commentary. Can one truly say they've seen, for example, Stonehenge, if they don't have a gangly, pudgy-faced smart-ass remarking, "It's really just a pile of rocks, isn't it?" in their ear while viewing it? What, you say? Far from enriching your travel experience hearing a steady stream of adolescent editorializing would actually go a long ways toward ruining it? Well, lucky for me, my wife is that peculiar, singular soul who enjoys my brand of relentless sardonic "humor". Even luckier for me, she so enjoys it that for years she's been counting the days until she could return with me to stroll the city of Shakespeare and Dickens just so she could listen to my low-register mumbling voice crack dumb along the way. So when her friends from business school decided to get married at St. Andrews, Scotland at the beginning of June, and my wife's folks agreed to give their daughter a pair of plane tickets to Great Britain, it was if the stars aligned to put my ass in London. And so it came to be.

Sad to say, the trip did not begin well. Don't get me wrong. There wasn't much to dislike about my 3 weeks in Great Britain, it was all in all a blast, but what little there to dislike all happened that first day, and a lot of it had to do with Air France. No one likes a guy belly-achin' about a bad plane ride, so I won't spend a lot of time doing it here, but I will say that my aisle seat became a middle seat plum in the middle of the plane between my wife and a big-sitting guy who looked quite a bit like the depressive novelist Russell Banks. The temperature, which on most flights runs from pleasantly cool to blanket-worthy chilly, was a zesty 80 degrees on this flight, the perfect temperature to induce not only a delightful sheen on the dryest of brows, but the spicy natural odors of one's plane-mates. Viva la France! I won't get into the surprisingly hands-off attitude of the flight crew towards the distribution of drinks and snacks, or their off-putting customer service style of overplayed but obviously pretend concern for the passengers' well-being during the 10-hour or so flight, but you get the idea. So, exhausted from lack of sleep (I can't sleep on planes), and keyed up from suppressing a claustrophobic freak-out for 10-11 hours or so, we landed at Airport de Kafka, otherwise known as Charles de Gaulle. As my wife tells it, Charles de Gaulle has been under construction for about 48 years? And from the looks of things, I'd say they're nearly halfway through.

It was bright and sunny in Paris. And also stiflingly hot. And worse than that, very very smelly. The bus the airport uses to cart off-loaded passengers from one terminal to all others was un-air conditioned, the terminal from which we boarded our connecting flight to London was un-air conditioned, and all drinks for sale in that terminal were un-air conditioned with nary an ice cube in sight. Yes, these tired observations place me squarely into the Spoiled Whiny American category of international travelers, especially given the fact I'd been informed of the silent European distaste for all things unduly cold before we left the States, but the lack of relief from the unbearable weather was still jarring. In the face of temps soaring into the nineties and blessed with the technology to chill both one's beverages and one's air, the French and the English's surrender to intolerably hot weather was baffling.

After we cleared Customs in London, we took the Heathrow Express into London's Paddington Station. The structure was beautiful and grand in an airy, practical way. Distant, soot-stained ceilings rose 50 feet into the air, old Victorian brick columns appeared here and there around the edges, (also soot-stained from the coal-burning engines that still pull in and out of the station). This station and others like it stood as backgrounds for arrivals and departures of soldiers going off to and returning from World War II. That is if they weren't bombed to smithereens during the Blitz. So, wide-eyed and loaded down with 3 bags over my inward-curving shoulders and one big suitcase rolling behind me, I walked through the cavernous station following my wife towards the street and our hotel.

While standing on the street corner just outside Paddington station waiting for the light to change to WALK, I watched the native Britons stream past us to cross the street and experienced a quiet and completely nonsensical thrill. "These people are all British," I thought to myself, awed. I listened to them talking, picking out snatches of conversation spoken in genuine British accents as opposed to the fakey mongrelized version of a British accent I do too often. We must have looked lost because a nice British woman came up to us and asked if we needed directions. As it just so happened, we did! Smiling and polite, (and in a lilting British accent mixed with something else) she directed us towards our hotel which was in the exact opposite direction of the way we'd been going. (Coincidentally, not long after we checked into our hotel and headed out, we saw the same woman again walking past and we said hello like old friends who'd been living in that part of London for years.)

If I haven't said before, let me say it now: it was hot in London. I don't know what the exact temperature was because I can't do the conversion from Celsius to Fahrenheit, but it was damn hot. I'd been sweating for going on 24 hours (and, as I hadn't yet slept, miserably aware of every salty drip) and was looking forward to the blessed kiss of some A/C and an icy shower soon after. However, there was no A/C in the lobby, no A/C in the coffin-sized elevator up to the 5th floor, and no A/C in our cramped but clean hotel room. Lack of sleep made all of this seem disastrous, but when viewed in hindsight, the heat and the dearth of ice was an entirely survivable inconvenience. I'm writing here, so obviously I survived it. In my defense, though, I didn't know then that the hot weather would end the following day, or that many if not most buildings in London do indeed have air-conditioning. But I know that in those hours post-arrival and pre-sleep, I was a sullen, unhappy bore. Eventually, I recovered.

So after an icy restorative shower, the wife and I headed back to Paddington station to get on the famous London Tube. More on the city's public transportation system later, right now I want to get right to the London Eye and some photos.


Towering there just behind my smiling face is London's newest landmark, the British Airways London Eye. Though it looks like a ferris wheel, it differs in a few important ways. Riders of the London Eye do not ride in the usual leg-dangling metal benches familiar to all state fair and carnival visitors. Riders of the London Eye go around in roomy capsules. The Eye is officially called an "observation wheel". There is no sensation of movement. Throughout the ride, you are as stationary as you would be on the observation deck of any tall building. And, unlike your typical ferris wheel, the Eye does not spin with any speed. In fact, it rotates only once every half hour. And for the price of admission, that's exactly how long you get to be in a capsule.

Even before we left Atlanta for England, I was already a little scared of the Eye. I was only made completely aware of my own fear of heights one day years ago down at the Santa Monica pier. My wife and I walked down the pier fully expecting to get on and ride the wheel all around like regular folks. We even bought tickets (which, if I remember right, were not as cheap as I'd imagined). But when I stood at the base of the ferris wheel and looked up at the dangling, peeling-paint iron swings whipping past and then shooting up heedless into the sky, I couldn't do it. More than that; I believe it would have been impossible for me to voluntarily place myself into one of those swing-benches. So with that distant day in mind, I approached the Eye worried the same base fear would reassert itself and make a little girl of me. And, to make things a little worse, tickets to ride the Eye (already pre-purchased) were quite a bit more than the Santa Monica ferris wheel. So, once again, both my masculinity and a bit of cash were on the line. But after camping at a table in an outdoor eating area at the base and drinking some coolish bottled drinks, I mustered my courage, slapped both cheeks to wake myself up, and climbed aboard.


Happily,the Eye really is an "observation wheel" and resembles a ferris wheel only from a cursory glance at its exterior. The only slightly vertiginous moments came as I stepped a little too close to the floor-to-ceiling windows and looked out over London. The photo to the left was taken during the first half of our revolution, looking up at the capsules preceding ours. The Eye moves so slowly that, even looking out at any one particular point on the cityscape, it is not immediately clear the capsule's moving at all. A couple times I was sure we'd stopped entirely. I took a bunch of digital photos while we were up on this thing. My wife watched the city sink beneath and then lift above us from the comfort of a long bench that runs through the middle of the capsule. Most of the photos I took suffer from the camera's proclivity to focus on the glass rather than the world outside the glass, but I got a number of shots that, if not particularly straight or interesting, are at least in focus and feature recognizable London landmarks.

Like this photo, for example. Here you can see Big Ben to the left and Parliament to the right. All of this was famously blown up in both the graphic novel "V for Vendetta" and the film adaptation of the same name. Yes, as I am more a student of cheap pop culture than of history, these are the images that come to mind when taking in the great historical landmarks. Oh well. I'd have to say that taking the Eye up 400 or so feet into the air over the city is a pretty good way to get acquainted with London for first-time visitors like me. You can see all the obvious sightseeing destinations in a half-hour floating capsule ride, and get an idea from high above of which old buildings warrant a close-up viewing or perhaps even a tour.

This oblong building in the distance here is called by Londoners "the Gherkin". Its full title, given to it by its designer, is "the Erotic Gherkin". No one at all, according to our Jack the Ripper tour guide, calls it that. Whatever its goofy name, it's a striking building, and adds a bit of much-needed modernity to London's skyline, which I thought was surprisingly lacking in that regard.

Anyway, we did the half-hour revolution, and here are a few more of the photos I took on the way round.






More Big Ben.













A high view of the Thames at high tide.










This is a not-so-clear shot of the London Eye employees checking our capsule for bombs or somesuch with the use of mirrors affixed to the ends of sticks. Terrorism, or the fear of it anyway, is everywhere.














And here I am with Darth Vader. There was a Star Wars exhibit in a building adjacent to the Eye and different Englanders came out dressed as characters from both the original films and the prequels. Some goofy-looking "Padawan learners" who came out after Darth made his exit.
















In the foreground: me wife. In the background: the London Eye in full.














After we stepped off the Eye and met Darth Vader, we walked across the bridge to Big Ben. This is me on the bridge.











And here I am at a cafe just a block to two down the street from our hotel, about to dig into my first official English meal of fish and chips. The fish and chips pictured here were okay, but far from the best I had while in England and Scotland.

Anyway, that was day one in England. I don't expect each day to warrant all this verbiage, so future postings will be more brief (hopefully).

All right, this entry is long enough. Stay tuned for Day Two.

Hie Thyself to the Multiplex!

I've just seen a midnight showing of "1408". If you have time this weekend, go see this film. As with most movies I really like, I don't want to say too much about it and run the risk of lessening its impact. For example, if I say "1408" is, at times, terrifying, you may steel yourself against it, so I won't say that... because it's not. Or something. I'm feeling an urge to engage in some hyperbole here, but as it is 2:38 a.m. and I'm rarely at my most cogent at this hour, I'll spare myself any potential embarrassment. But if you've got a few extra dollars, I do recommend you check out a screening of this film before Monday. It is good, and it doesn't deserve to be beaten by the likes of "Fantastic Four 2" on its opening weekend.

In other news, still packing up the damn place. Nearly done. Swung by the liquor store on the way to the movies and grabbed up some more free boxes. They're the perfect size for the odds and ends we haven't yet packed. The movers come Sunday. Anyway, see "1408".

About Commenting

Hola guys. So we're busy packing up now. We still don't know exactly where we're headed, but we do know that we have a certain amount of money with which to move, and we get to keep whatever we don't spend. So we're packing up our apartment now.

Anyway, you may have noticed that there is no way to comment on the blog right now. This is temporary and will change likely on August 1st. By that time I will have finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, as will hopefully any other serious devotees of the series, and will thus be immune to any additional spoilers broadcast by certain (ahem) unnamed persons.

All right. Back to packing.

Oh God He's At It Again. This Time It's Books

Blogger has added a new feature that lets you post up images into the blog's header with ease. I've taken advantage of it, as you can see, in the stupidest way possible. An uncropped, unfinished drawing of what appears to be a total dullard now greets all comers to the Inanities. While I was away, my PC crapped out on me, so I haven't yet moved Photoshop CS from my busted PC to my still-working laptop (on which I'm composing this blog entry). But if I had access to Photoshop, this image would be cropped. But until I get access to it, this image will remain in its goofy, uncropped state. (Or until I get tired of it and ax it altogether). I actually think though that this drawing I did on Photoshop last month is kind of fitting. No offense to any of you, of course, but he kind of looks like he ought to be reading this blog.

Anyway, as you may have guessed, I'm back from my trip to the British Isles. Got back about a week ago and since then I've been dealing with uncooperative computers. Those issues are all resolved now, or mostly resolved (see above), and now we look ahead to the big move out of Atlanta. We have to be out of our apartment in 9 days, and we still don't know a.) what city we're going to, or b.) what or how the new employer plans to subsidize our relocation. We're hoping for a telephone call of enlightenment sometime today. I don't mean to give the impression that we are 9 days away from homelessness. The wife and I will be staying one county up with her parents until she goes away for training. But as to where we'll be at the beginning of September and the foreseeable future following, we do not know. Good times.

Enough of that. My plan was to come back, get on the 'puter, and blog about my trip right away. The 7th of this month is what I think I'd promised. A week later, I'm still not prepared to do that. The photos we took are off the camera but loaded onto my wife's calculator-sized laptop, and I won't use that because if I so much as rest my gigantor hand on it, I'll break it. So, seeing how I want to supplement my exciting travelogue with photos and those photos are not, this moment, available to me, I can provide no travelogue today. But I will do something far more boring instead. I'll tell you about the books I read while I was traveling the world! Whoo! And for those who are already clicking on other websites, take care and check back for an exhaustive description of my England trip. Here we go:

1.) The Raw Shark Texts. A Brit named Steven Hall wrote this novel which someone billed as "Memento meets Jaws". Unfortunately, this summation is accurate, and it's just as bad as that weird mish-mash of stories and genres would suggest. The story's about a twenty-something named Eric Sanderson who wakes up in his apartment one day with no memory of who he is. He finds a note nearby, addressed to him (he assumes), penned by someone calling himself "the First Eric Sanderson." In the first 20 pages, he goes to see a shrink the First Eric Sanderson tells him to visit, reads about 200 instructive notes written by the First Eric Sanderson meant to gently ease him into understanding the terrifying predicament that is his life, and he is then attacked, in his living room, by a "conceptual shark." My copy of the "Raw Shark Texts" was a library book. I've already turned it in so I can't, as I'd like, include passages from the book, but take my word for it: as difficult a time as you're no doubt having trying to imagine in your head what a "conceptual shark" looks like, the author of the novel is able to lend absolutely zero assistance. Instead of sitting down and trying as hard as he can to make the unimaginable imaginable, Hall just adds a lot of clever but bullshit modifiers to the word 'shark' to sell his story. Add in a ridiculous, shoehorned love story, a penchant for writing novels like an amateur screenwriter who's just got his hands on Robert McKee's "Story", and you've got a novel with problems. If only those were his worst sins. The end of "Raw Shark Texts" follows, in many instances beat for beat, the last 30-40 minutes of "Jaws". Seriously. So much so, that I knew what was going to happen to the characters 75 pages away from the last page because I recognized which character was Brody, which Quint, which Hooper. As I read, I held out hope for Hall. "This whole sequence is going to just be a riff on 'Jaws', he's not going to just keep ripping it off, is he?" But he does. After finishing the book, I was more than a little mystified as to mainstream publishing's well-documented excitement surrounding its release. Less mystified, though, as to why it's been termed a "disappointment" in the few months since it came out. I doubt there was very much positive word of mouth because it is not very good. That is not to say that Hall didn't have an interesting premise -- he did. I likely wouldn't have picked it up off the New Fiction shelf at the library if it didn't. He even manages to include some legitimately mind-expanding passages in his novel -- ways of thinking I'd never encountered or seen put into writing with such precision. But the goofy, screenwriter-wannabe missteps he makes the rest of the time overpower the story. I hope he has better luck next time out of the box.

2.) For the Relief of Unbearable Urges. This collection of short stories was written by Nathan Englander. He did the Iowa Writer's Workshop, his stories have appeared in Story magazine and The New Yorker, and his new novel, "The Ministry of Special Cases", has been getting rapturous reviews from everyone who reads it. Since I didn't want to plunk down $25 for an un-discounted hardcover of the new book, I picked up his first book instead. In one a wealthy, WASPy gentile decides, while sitting in the back of a cab, that he is Jewish. His transformation from Polo shirt and penny loafer wearing prep into an Orthodox Jew (right down to the little black box some penitents wear at the Wailing Wall) is meant to be hilarious, and though it is funny at times, mostly it is just sad, as are most of these stories. Englander's reputation as a masterful short story writer is well-deserved. His tone is pitch perfect for each story, the epiphanies subtle and well-managed, the themes clearly drawn and if creative writing teachers held this book up to their students to say "this is how you write short stories", I would have no problem with that. Though, as with most serious, so-called "literary" fiction, I feel I'm only half-getting the stories. And by that I mean I understand them on one, maybe two of several levels the authors were writing on. I think in the case of this particular book, some of my ignorance might be corrected if I'd either a.) retained what little Sunday School instruction I got, or b.) pick up the Bible and just suck it up and read the damn thing. In all of these stories Englander is much concerned with Jews and Jewishness, and the Old Testament Biblical allusions were a flyin'. Anyway, good reviews are much more boring than bad, so I'll just end with that.

3.) Arthur & George. Another book written by a Brit. Written by Julian Barnes, this novel was shortlisted for the Booker prize in England a couple years back. Set primarily at the beginning of the 20th century, "Arthur & George" tells the story of George Edalji, a half-Scottish, half-Indian man living in the English countryside who becomes the object of an unjustified criminal prosecution. To the rescue comes the rich and wealthy Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes. Spurred to action by a letter from George's father, a Vicar, Doyle uses his position and wealth to clear Edalji's name. Though Arthur and George don't meet until page 293 (the book is 501 pages long), the meeting still manages to feel perfectly timed. Barnes is so deft at not only conjuring the imagined personalities of these real-life men with clear attention to the true details of their actual lives, but also to recreating the world they inhabited. The effect of this careful work is that their first meeting in the lobby of the Grand Hotel is actually thrilling and, in the end, not at all predictable. Because the characters in this novel, even the non-famous ones, behave like people and not as characters in a novel, unexpected moments do sometimes arise in the story that intentionally move the reader away from easy judgments and moralistic pronouncements. For instance, after Doyle has begun his investigation into the crimes George is alleged to have committed, he interviews the bigoted chief of police (or the British equivalent) that managed the original investigation. Far from depicting the systematic and satisfying destruction of the Chief's (Anson's) irrational and dangerous beliefs on race at the hands of a Holmes-like Doyle, Barnes instead casts Anson in the Sherlock Holmes role and Arthur Conan Doyle in the exasperated and befuddled Watson role as Anson calmly and condescendingly instructs Doyle on both the particulars of the case and the sad truths about the nature of truth. After that conversation, I figured that none of my assumptions were safe, and even began to doubt the innocence of George. I have to say that my reading of the story was in no way helped by this suspense, so, if you do plan to read this book, let me tell you this: George didn't do it. Knowing this may help you later on. Anyway, an engrossing, beautifully-written, fast-moving read. I highly recommend it.

4.) The Interpretation of Murder. So we go from brilliant to terrible. This is the book I read while flying back to the States. This means that, along with "Raw Shark Texts" I sandwiched my UK trip by reading two bad books while flying over the Atlantic. This is by far the worst of the two and a particularly egregious instance of an author completely failing to deliver on a fantastic premise. This, from a single page preceding the novel.

"In 1909, Sigmund Freud... made his one and only visit to the United States. Despite the great success of this visit, Freud always spoke, in later years, as if some trauma had befallen him in the United States. He called Americans 'savages' and blamed his sojourn there for physical ailments that afflicted him well before 1909. Freud's biographers have long puzzled over the mystery, speculating whether some unknown event in America could have led to his otherwise inexplicable reaction."

To me, this is a great premise. What terrible thing happened to Sigmund Freud when he visited New York at the height of its Gilded Age? Just as with "Raw Shark Texts", the author got a big advance for a first novel, and the publishers put a lot of their selling power to bear to get this into bookstores in a big way. I opened the book expecting something on the order of Caleb Carr's "The Alienist", which was also about psychology, serial killers, New York and true life historical figures. Instead I got 529 pages of true dreck. Though Rubenfeld may have mastered many a discipline in his life (his author bio, located on the inside cover, lists his many accomplishments in both drama and law), he can not count "Writing a Good Book" as one of them. This is one of the worst books I've ever read, and I've read a few. Here is a brief list of his transgressions: He starts his novel in the first person voice of one character and then, in the next section when describing things the other character cannot have witnessed, blithely switches to third person voice. The "great trauma" Freud was supposed to have suffered, the one Rubenfeld alludes to in his one-paragraph preface, turns out to be neither great nor particularly traumatic. He uses movie-like catchphrases. For instance, after the main character is nearly drowned in the Hudson river, he emerges alive, and reunites with a fellow psychiatrist. When the main character is asked what he's been up to, he says, "Just trying to keep my head above water, really." If that's not enough, the novel was boring, the characters all lifeless puppets, and the solution to the murders was, if not completely implausible, than at least intolerably dull. The only vaguely interesting thing about this book was the interplay between Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, who traveled with him and whom Freud considered the heir to his methodology. But even that Rubenfeld manages to caricature so cartoonishly that Freud comes off as the all-knowing, all-seeing mind reader, and Jung the hedonistic, deluded, mentally ill ass-hole whom Freud insensibly coddles. The only thing more opaque than the plot or the inner workings of the minds of the characters is how much praise this book received! My copy is riddled with adulation. "Spectacular ... fiendishly clever", says the Spectator. "Unusually intelligent", so says the Times. The Sunday Telegraph weighs in with, "Rubenfeld writes beautifully." The Independent: "A dazzling novel." Entertainment Weekly calls "Interpretation", "an expertly crafted novel." I don't know if they read a different book or didn't read it at all, because none of this has any bearing on the contents of "Interpretation of Murder".

All right. I'm through. More soon.

Declaration of Intent to Hiatus

Hola, readers.

I wanted to post up briefly to let you know that, owing to a stint of traveling I'll be doing (to PA and then England -- weddings), the Inanities will go dark for 3 weeks. I'll resume posting on this blog on or shortly after the 7th of June. I'll let you know how everything went.

Until June.

The Wife Has Gradumagated!

And, just like that, two years of business school is over and my wife has graduated with honors.

The graduation ceremonies happened this morning and she is now officially done.

Last week she accepted her first post-M.B.A. job and it has been determined that we will be moving, though to where we don't yet know. Her training starts in July, which will take her to Sunnyvale, California and then to Dehli, India, and the job itself begins in August, which is when we'll probably be moving. So pretty exciting. Having listened to a bunch of speeches aimed at "looking back" over the last couple days, I don't feel at all inclined towards retrospection, so you don't have to worry on that score. Maybe as the move-out date draws closer. Anyway, I wanted to let you folks know -- I'll keep you posted.

But hey! In movie news, I saw "28 Weeks Later" over the weekend. Excellent stuff. It's not as good as the original, but it's a strong bit of work. The scares aren't cheap, the suspense is expertly done, and the premise is designed to put the screws to the characters in the cruelest (read: most entertaining) way possible. Good times.

Some other very brief reviews.

1.) "Happy Feet": Wtf?

2.) "The Holiday": Sheer embarrassment all the way through. "Bewitched"-level embarrassment.

And I've got "Little Children" and "A Good Year" on tap. I'm hoping they do better than the last pair of DVDs.

"Spider Man 3" and "Eragon". Both Sink Beneath the "Average" Mark, but One Buries the Needle

6:20 a.m. is too early to be blogging.

My allergies, which I'm thinking are related to grass, are the worst of my life and they've woken me out of a sound sleep. I've never really had them before, and the fact that they've developed at a time when I'd always thought I'd go through my life immune to pollen in all its forms is pretty depressing. It's just another bit of evidence that, sometime in the unknowable future, even more unpleasant afflictions and maladies are likely to develop. In other words, my prolific nostrils and red, irritated eyes are additional proof I am not invincible. Whether you want to know or not, I'll tell you that the roof of my mouth feels like the thinnest of membranes. Up till this past week, I always thought that just above the roof of my mouth were layers and layers of impenetrable skull meat. But now I realize that a series of strenuous tongue-pokes could puncture that membrane and allow me to probe the interior of my skull, whether with my tongue or a finger, in no time flat. Yeah, it's gross, but it's my blog, so I'll bore you with whatever I want.

Anyway, onto movie reviews. [Beware: Below Thar Be Spoilers.]

1.) Spider Man 3. There's a point late in "Spider Man 3" when it becomes clear that Sam Raimi has made a less-than-great film and that there's no hope of saving it. The moment happens in an alleyway in which Sandman (Thomas Haden Church, or Lowell from "Wings") is fighting Venom (Topher Grace, or Eric Foreman from "That 70's Show"). Who knows why they're fighting, they just are. It's what people in costumes do. They quit fighting for a minute at which point the black Venom-suit skin tendrilizes away from Topher's face and Topher suggests that, as neither of them alone can kill "the spider" alone, that they should team up and do it. Lowell thinks about it a second, and then, reluctantly, sadly, agrees. The scene was lazy, expository, implausible, wildly coincidental (among many many wild coincidences that punctuate the movie), and served solely to move the plot forward. The scene implied that this unwieldy monster-budgeted behemoth called "Spider Man 3" had really and truly gotten away from Sam Raimi. If this shitty, throwaway scene was the best way Raimi and his screenwriters could think of to set up the ridiculous, overlong finale, then all hope was lost.

I didn't hate "Spider Man 3", and I don't think it's a terrible movie, but considering the two fantastic films that came before, this second sequel is a big disappointment. The thing we were all worried about going in to the movie, namely that Raimi had crammed too many villains and subplots into this thing a la "Batman Forever", turned out to be exactly right. With hindsight being what it is, I think had the screenwriters taken out the entire Sandman sub-plot and focused on the Eddie Brock/Venom storyline, "SP3" might have been in a league with the brilliant "Spider Man 2". But even then I'm not so sure success would have been assured. Raimi's masterly understanding of the subject and tone of these films faltered a few times in this movie, but never so egregiously as during the jazz club scene, an adjunct of the Venom plot-line. As I watched Peter Parker express the depths of his dark side through jaunty "mean" dancing, I remember thinking, "This is pretty weird." But since it was Raimi, I figured he had everything well in hand; he'd pull it out. But just a few seconds later I understood. Raimi or no, the scene was just bad. And so was quite a bit of what came after.

Though there were a lot of fun sequences in the movie (OK, a few), overall "SP3" just felt muddled and rudderless. A disappointment.

2.) Eragon. The true badness of this movie is not at all apparent in the trailers cut for this movie. From a viewing of "Eragon"'s trailers, the film looks like a fairly low-rent dragon movie for the 12-13-year old male set, but not any kind of cinematic travesty. There are warning signs, sure. The appearance of not just Jeremy Irons, but also John Malkovich, adherents to the I'll Be In Anything school of acting, made me suspect true and depthless badness, but the fantastic dragon effects threw me off the scent. (They are good.) The movie is a testament to the trailer cutters' skills. "Eragon" is abysmal. It is a no-rent dragon movie for kids. The novel on which "Eragon" was based was written by then-16-year old Christoper Paolini, and that's exactly how it plays -- like a 16-year old wrote it. It was as if Paolini had only ever seen "Star Wars", had only ever read a novelization of Lucas's screenplay for "Star Wars", and then decided to write a new version of "Star Wars", except his version would have the same characters but with different names, dragons, and he'd stretch out the story over 3 or more books. The film ends with little to no resolution of the larger plot: for example, Malkovich plays the evil king in "Eragon", and the film ends without our Skywalkerian hero having anything to do with him. I don't want to write any more on this, so I'll just put it simply: the movie's crap.

Wow. I spent about 2 hours writing this post. Crazy.

Anyway. Enjoy your Wednesday.

Glorious "Golden Compass" One-Sheet For Your Thursday Night Enjoyment

After seeing the first bit of footage New Line released, I was feeling that maybe Chris Weitz (the screenwriter and director) was taking the film in a different direction than I'd envisioned while reading the book. This one-sheet, released today, which features the polar bear Iorek Byrnison in all his beary greatness, makes me think Weitz really does get these books. Could be a great movie.

NBCC Stages a Rally in Atlanta, "Night at the Museum" was Worse Than I Anticipated, and Another Drawing From the Archives

Tomorrow at 10 a.m. in front of the Atlanta Journal & Constitution building in downtown Atlanta, the National Book Critics Circle is holding a "read-in". The AJC's book editor, Teresa Weaver, was recently fired because the paper was essentially eliminating original book reporting, deciding to rely instead on wire reports and the reporting of larger newspapers. I agree with the NBCC. This is no good. The few times I pick up that awful newspaper and found something worthwhile, it was usually some bit of original AJC book reporting edited by Weaver. So for a few minutes there, I was thinking, "I should just go down there. Show my support. What the hell else have I got to do tomorrow morning?"

On the other hand, I don't read the Atlanta Journal and Constitution. I don't think it's a very good newspaper. Even if they reinstall Weaver and renew their commitment to book reviews and author profiles and whatever else, I have no intention of buying a subscription. So, with all that said, wouldn't it be less than forthright on my part to go down there and quietly demand (via "read-in") the AJC reallocate their resources to a robust book section when I don't do any business with the AJC and have no plans to do so in the future? It just feels hypocritical.

The point is moot anyhow. The wife reminds me we have someone who saw our ad on Craig's List coming by to look at some stuff tomorrow at 11 a.m.

Anyway. I rented "Night at the Museum" the other night, mostly to see what the hubbub was all about. This movie's about 99.8% for kids. I know most of you already knew that, but I was expecting a slightly more favorable ratio. Goofy, pointless, not fun, and the kid who plays Ben Stiller's son reminded me less of an actual kid than the creepy "children" in "The Polar Express". "Night at the Museum"'s $250 million domestic gross is even more staggering now that I've seen exactly what everyone went to see during the 2006 holiday season.

And finally, I was looking through my "artwork" folder, and realized a drawing I'm proud of hadn't ever made it up onto the blog. A quick search of this blog for the word "Wright" confirmed my suspicion. So here it is:


















I drew this as a gift for my father Christmas before last. Thought it came out pretty well.

That's all I got for today.

A Woman Named Kristin Calls and Insists I Asked Her Out at The Grocery Store

So, something weird happened to me last night. The phone rang at 7:43 p.m.. Privacy director listed "Private Name, Private Number". Usually, I ignore calls like this, but against my better judgment, I answered.

Me: "Hello?"

Woman: "Hello, may I speak to Brian?"

Me: "This is he."

Woman: (pause)

Me: "Who's this?"

Woman: (laughingly, as if we know each other well) "This is Kristin." (A trashy southern accent.)

Me: (pause, as I wrack my brain for Kristins I've known. I come up with nothing.) "Kristin who?"

Woman: (as though I'm being dense) "Kristin!"

Me: "Are you sure you have the right number?"

Woman: "This is Brian, right?"

Me: "Yes, but..."

Woman: "We met the other day. You gave me your number, said we should go out some time."

Me: "Uh..."

Woman: "Honey, is this a bad time?" (in the background, a small child is saying, "Mommy.")

Me: "What's my last name?"

Woman: "Hon, do you want me to call another time?"

Me: "No, no. I have no idea who you are, and you're not saying."

Woman: "We met the other day."

Me: "Where at?"

Woman: "At the grocery store."

Me: "Which one?"

Woman: "Kroger."

Me: "Which Kroger?"

Woman: "Oh, I don't remember, the one down in Decatur. Sweetie, if I called at a bad time, I can call back..." (again, the child in the background says, "Mommy.")

Me: "Oh no, don't call here again."

Woman: "Honey, I'll just call back."

Me: (yelling) "No! Do not call back here again!"

I hang up.

Now, that's just a rough transcript from memory. Reading over it, it comes across as shorter than it actually was.

As you can probably tell, I was very freaked out by this conversation. By the end, my heart was racing and I was shaking a little. I think what was most strange about the conversation was how goddamn certain she was that she knew me. Even though I hadn't been inside a Kroger since early last week (which would have been a stretch to include in her vague "the other day" time frame), and even though I was pretty sure I would have remembered something like giving a woman named Kristin my number (or any woman for that matter), her casual certitude made me question my own hold on reality. "Did I hit on some redneck woman at the grocery store and give her my number?" I wondered. It didn't sound like me (to which the wife agreed when I told her about it), but her certainty was, at least during our brief chat, compelling evidence that I was in fact a cheating bastard. Clearly, it doesn't take much to make me doubt my sanity.

After I settled down and remembered I haven't ever tried to start up an affair, much less one in the fruits and vegetables section of my local grocery store, the question became what had Kristin been after? How had she gotten my name and address? The phone book was the simple answer to this question, as my name, number and address are listed there for all the world to see. So what was she doing? Running her finger down the Yellow Pages and calling random Metro Atlanta men by alphabetical order? And all just so she could try and convince them she'd caught their eye at the grocery store in whichever city they lived?

So what if the conversation had gone a different way? What if I'd been the kind of guy looking to score some "alone time" with a random trailer park single mother? What would have happened to me when Kristin and I finally went "out"? Would it have been her and two hillbilly thugs waiting behind trailer #14 ready to drive me and my bank card around to a bunch of ATMs? Would they figure I might not say anything given the circumstances surrounding my kidnapping, thus leaving their crime unreported and them free to run the same scam again? I'm not sure. Though it's possible that Kristin's out-of-the-blue evening call was just a weird prank or maybe the wishful delusions of a mentally ill woman, I think it was likely some kind of scam. Any of you have any theories?

Anyway, you heard it here first. The weirdest, most ineffectual telephone scam you can imagine may be coming to a city near you! Watch for it! But don't hang up like I did! See where it leads!

Also: for more fun telephone hijinx from the Inanities Archives, click here and here.