adrian is rad

I read RFK’s[1] Thirteen Days today [2].

This is RFK’s memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis. (Note: that’s different than the Bay of Pigs.) Basically the USSR put nuclear-equipped missiles in Cuba while publicly claiming they weren’t. There was a period of thirteen days between when the intelligence regarding the presence of missiles and the Soviet’s agreement to withdraw them. People often say this is the closest the world came to nuclear war (so far).

It’s pretty dryly written, but still very interesting. There’s something really fascinating about how people act and react under intense pressure and stress. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that there was a happy ending.

One thing that I found pretty interesting was the role the Guns of August played in the whole situation. It’s a book about the time and decisions leading up to World War I. Apparently JFK and other took this book under special consideration in how they made their decisions regarding the Cuban situation. Imagine how cool it would be to be Barbara Tuchman–you would have helped prevent nuclear war. Not a bad thing to put on a gravestone.

[1] The more I read about RFK, the more I like. There’s something about his radical Catholicism that makes me think that if I was a more charismatic and better person I could be like him. It would have been interesting to see what would have happened had he not been assassinated.

[2] Yeah, I read the entire thing today. Granted, it clocks in at 100 pages including forward, but it felt good to read a whole book in a day. It don’t do that much. The last time I did it was the Perks of Being a Wallflower (and the one previous to that was my second reading of Ender’s Game).

(I have a backlog of posts started when I was in Taiwan. Here’s one of them.)

I recently [well, I started this a while ago, so more like a month or two ago] finished Born on a Blue Day by Daniel Tammet. It’s a memoir of his life with savant syndrome and Aspergers.

You might recognize him from his appearance on Letterman a few years ago:

I found it pretty interesting. Daniel is one of the people on the autistic spectrum that is most able to describe going on in his brain. For instance, each number has a shape and texture in his head. If he’s multiplying two numbers the shapes/ textures come together to form a new shape and he just says what that new number is based on the shape. Interesting, but not exactly helpful in getting my to do complicated multiplication or sums in my head…

There’s also quite a bit about dealing with Aspergers, unrelated to any special abilities he has. He has problems socializing and with making eye contact and things like that. I do too (though not as extreme), but people seem to just tell me to get over it.

It’s well-written and the reading goes smoothly and quickly (in case you’re concerned about reading a book written by someone who talks about his problems communicating). Overall, it’s an uplifting book, with plenty of hope and overcoming obstacles.

You can also check out another interesting video. He also has blog.

Number of days: 112

Number of days or parts thereof spent traveling: 47 (3 to/ from, 7 intra-Taiwan (3 Kaohsiung, 2 Taroko, 2 Kinmen), 37 intra-Asia (7 Indonesia, 5 Thailand; 15 Hong Kong, Macau, China; 10 Japan)

Number of countries visited (since moving): 6 (Taiwan, Indonesia, Thailand, China, Japan, U.S.) + 2 special administrative regions with separate border controls (Hong Kong, Macau)

Number of countries visited (year to date): 8 (above + South Africa, Swaziland) + 2 S.A.R.s

Number of flights (since moving): 14 (SFO-> TPE-> CKG-> DPS-> CKG-> TPE-> BKK-> TPE-> HKG-> TPE-> NRT-> TPE, TSA-> KNH-> TSA, TPE-> SFO)

Number of flights (2007): 31 (SFO-> CVG-> IAD-> JNB, DUR-> CPT-> JNB-> JFK, BOS-> JFK-> SFO-> BOS-> DFW-> SFO-> HNL-> LIH-> HNL-> SFO + above + SFO-> CLT-> DCA)

Miles flown (since moving): 27,406 miles (44,106 km)

Miles flown (2007): 63,569 miles (102,304 km)

Number of high speed train journeys: 4 (Taipei->Kaohsiung->Taipei, Tokyo->Kyoto->Tokyo)

Number of train journeys: 6 (above + Taipei->Hualien->Taipei)

Approximate number of km ridden on scooters: 225

Best hotel (overall): Kamandalu Resort, Ubud, Bali. A connection to the cousin of the owner opened the door for staying in this swanky place. Gorgeous surroundings and really nice rooms. Private verandas looking over rice paddies. The service was also excellent. We went out riding bikes around the rice paddies one day and came back sweating. Pretty soon after we entered the lobby we had cool moist towels to wipe our faces with. Perhaps the only nicer place I’ve stayed is the ridiculous Schlosshotel Veir Jahrezeiten (Four Seasons Palace Hotel) in Berlin. (They had a Ferrari convention while we were there and it didn’t seem out of place.)

Best hotel (value): Hirano Guesthouse, Kyoto. 3500 yen a night in Kyoto is very cheap and besides a nice place to stay, the owner was very friendly, helpful and accommodating, making us tea when we came home for a break in the afternoons. She also made us breakfast every morning, let us use her bicycles and computer/ internet. Oh and there was a candy bowl and after we ate an unreasonable amount of it, she didn’t complain, she just refilled it.

Number of American chain stores patronized (not counting convenience stores, exact): 3 (2 Subways-Taipei, 1 Denny’s-Kyoto)

Number of American chain stores patronized (counting convenience stores[1], approximate): 22.2 (the above + Circle K’s in Taiwan, Bali, Thailand, ampm’s in Japan, plus 0.2 for a Mister Donut in Japan[2])

Oddest food obsession: Harbo’s Happy Cola gummy candies

Most common food eaten: rice (~ >1.5 servings a day)

Most common food product eaten: Kinder Chocolate (~ 0.6 a day)

Most “exotic” foods eaten: crickets, silk worms, frog

Number of Dr. Peppers consumed: 2 (one in Japan, one in Thailand)

Foods most missed: good bread, good cheese, Dr. Pepper, good beef, shelled shrimp, deboned fish.

Number of Hello Kitty products seen: in the thousands

Number of Hello Kitty products purchased: 1 (alarm clock, convenience store, Japan)

America: so quiet, so dark, so many English speakers, so many whites/ latinos/as, blacks. big supermarkets. low population density.

Least useful piece of clothing: dress shirt (the greenish one, never worn, given away at the end)

Most useful piece of clothing: shoes (the brown Adidas, nearly daily)

Most useful piece of clothing out of its original purpose (and new use): board shorts-style swimsuit (exercise shorts)

Piece of clothing I most immediately realized I’d forgotten: navy blue cotton boxers (that I use as warm weather pajama bottoms)

Number of books read: 5.75 (2nd 0.5 of Slow Man by Coeztee, Love is a Mixtape by Sheffield, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: a Story of the Hip Hop Generation by Chang, Sex Drugs and Cocoa Puffs by Klosterman, Born on a Blue Day By Tammet, You Don’t Love Me Yet by Lethem, first 0.25 of About a Boy by Hornsby)

Number of concerts attended: 3 (Emily the Band @ Underworld, Apples in Stereo @ the Wall, Sugar Plum Ferry @ the Wall)

Number of CDs purchased: 19 (5 in Hong Kong (Monitor), 5 @ WWR (1st trip), 5 @ WWR (2nd trip), 2 @ IMPO, 1 @ FINAC, 1 @ Roses(?))

Number of pieces of mail received: 6 (3 packages of promo CD(s); 1 each from Ian, Lauren, Gumbeaux)

[1] This is tricky because things are confusing. 7-11 is Japanese for instance.

[2] Mr. Donut is an American brand but the Asian stores are run by Duskin Co out of Japan under a licensing agreement.

So I have one week left here. It doesn’t seem that soon and though intellectually I know I’m excited to go back, I don’t particularly feel that way right now. Does that make sense?

This week has turned a bit hectic as my number of days is numbered and the number of things-I-meant-to-do-but-haven’t is still rather substantial. Last night I went to a night market and then shopping for some souvenir sort of things for friends. One great thing about living somewhere with a funny script–everything looks cool, so I could probably give friends a piece of paper with some chinese characters on it and they’d think it was cool. Or at least that’s what I’m hoping because that’s what they’re getting…

It’s rather suddenly gotten warm again, starting around Sunday. The last few weeks it has solidly been jacket weather, with highs in the low-to-mid 60s. It was raining a lot a couple weeks ago (another typhoon) but it was pretty nice last week. Both Monday and yesterday I was walking around outside at night in a rather average way–not quickly or uphill or strenuously at all–with a hoodie or jacket (respectively) on and I had to take them off because I was sweating. At night! In December! I didn’t even wear/ bring my jacket to work today.

In other weather news, it’s supposed to rain every day until I leave. Looks like I’ll be holding onto my crappy umbrella.

I sold my speakers on Monday. The rice cooker and bicycle are not going as fast. I’ve probably gotten ~$22 of use out of each of them (what I paid) over the last few months so if I have to just give them away, I won’t be too distressed. But it’s still better for them to be used by someone else.

With my no-earbuds-on-transportation rule and my battery appearing to be kaput on my laptop and a good likelihood that I’ll finish my fast-reading book before the flight only to start one that doesn’t look as exciting, I’m not sure how painful the flight home will be. Oh and I’m going to try to stay awake the whole time because to stay in the right time zone the whole flight home, that’s what I should do. For some people, trying to sleep on a plane is the problem. That is not my problem.

This is a really good interview with Dave Eggers by the Montreal Gazette. It’s largely about What is the What, which I enjoyed and we all know I’m a big Dave Eggers fan.

Reading today, I realized I had an opinion about something that most likely no one cares about…so of course I must blog about it.

For me, the ideal bookmark is a reasonable size, is a bit thicker than standard paper and is plentiful, as I often lose bookmarks.

4 good bookmarks:

1. business cards: I have a box of 500 and I give them out pretty rarely. They’ve got a nice thickness and if I lose the book it’s already labeled. the downside is that they’re a little small and can slide around on the page or fall out of the back cover (which is where I store my bookmarks when I read).
2. business reply cards from magazines: these things are annoying when they fall out of magazines, but they’re always around and they’re a good size and thickness for bookmarks.
3. receipts: I buy usually one book at a time and often keep the receipt in the back cover in case I want to return it, so this is often my default bookmark. they’re pretty thin and often too big so they get crinkled and folded.
4. ticket stubs: a great size and thickness. I go to enough shows, ball games, and movies that these are often around. I get a little nostalgia trip whenever I look at them too.

Miranda July’s new website for her book No One Belongs Here More Than You is lo-fi (so to speak), reminding me, actually, of spultek’s old website which was scanned from a hand sketch. She made the entire website by taking photos of a “whiteboard.” It’s a good idea and great execution.

Miranda’s the same person who wrote, directed and acted in the quirky and funny 2005 film Me and You and Everyone We Know. I’d recommend it.

I love Dave Eggers and I make no bones about it. A Heartbreaking Work is among my favorite books and I’ve read all of his books so far, so I picked up What is the What: the Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng pretty soon after it came out.

But before I go too far, let me clear up one thing: you don’t have to be an Eggers fan to like this book and even if you disliked other of his books, I think you may like this one.

This story is presented in an odd way; it is presented as an autobiography but the author and the name don’t match. Also, it’s labeled fiction. I want to explain these things quickly as well, as I understand them. It’s written in the voice of Valentino but it’s written by Eggers. There are some fictionalized elements, like composite characters and events/ conversation from Valentino’s childhood which he couldn’t remember.

The story takes place largely during the Second Sudanese Civil War (which is not the Darfur conflict but is related) follows one of the Lost Boys of Sudan in his journey from his hometown of Marial Bai in southern Sudan to Ethiopia and eventually Kakuma in Kenya, and it also covers some of his life and hardships in the United States after being resettled here as part of the Lost Boys program.

Raiders burned and ransacked his village when he was still very young (about eight, I think). Valentino spent the next few years walking, avoiding disease, dehydration, attacks from the army, and being shuffled from camp to camp before ending up in Kakuma for many years. When I was eight, I was trying to see if I could jump and touch the sign during recess, he was seeing friends die and starving.

But anyway, you can read about the displaced people of southern Sudan during that war. You can hear about what some of the boys went through. I’d see the documentary (which I’d also recommend) and something on 60 minutes about the Lost Boys, but I hadn’t really gotten a feel for what all happened. It’s different reading one person’s narrative from the beginning to end.

It’s a really good book. Eggers’ prose bring this story to life and even some of his sometimes-annoying literary quirks are diluted in telling this other man’s story.

I saw Valentino speak earlier this week at Kepler’s. I was struck by this in the book as well, but in person it is even more evident. He’s been through more hardship than I could imagine going through in my entire life and, yet, he still has hope. He still has hope and it’s amazing.

A couple weeks ago, I finished Body Piercing Saved My Life by Andrew Beaujon (named after the “clever” shirt.) (Amazon, , one review, two mp3-blog like posts by the author about Christian music)

It’s a look at Christian Rock, capital C, capital R, by an outsider. Beaujon is a writer for Spin so he comes from the mainstream rock criticism side of things. I’ve never been really involved in the scene he talks about although I stood at the edge of it a couple years, so I’m a bit of an outsider to it as well. (Which reminds me of a post about an article of the same topic and perspective…)

He spends chapters looking at aspects and events in the Christian music world. He looks at particular bands and people as well as other cultural forces like Mars Hill Church and Tooth and Nail Records. There are various people that come off earnestly and then there are some more slimey people. I’d heard some negative things about T&N (that they don’t give their bands a fair shake) and they were sort of confirmed in this book.

Perhaps my favorite section is the chapter about David Bazan (at the time of the interviews, still in Pedro the Lion). Where a lot of interviewees seem to sidestep questions that might result in controversial answers, Bazan seems to take any and all questions head on without flinching. Sufjan denied the interview request, apparently, so there’s only a brief section on him, which was a bit disappointing.

Overall, it’s an interesting, informative and well-written book about a large cultural phenomenon (Christian records easily outsell jazz records currently). I’d recommend it if you are curious about the scene or genre.

I’ve since moved on to the Dave Eggers editted The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2004.

Despite liking the book and Clint Eastwood’s previous directorial work, I hadn’t been looking forward to Flags of our Fathers much. Maybe I just felt that the World War II movie had been played out or that Eastwood’s touch wouldn’t be as deft in a subject that tends to be done in an epic and over-the-top manner. But the critics seemed to be liking it, so I thought I’d catch a show yesterday at the new megaplex down in Redwood City.

It’s about the photo and the people in the photo, Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima and more broadly about World War II, and “heros”. The book is written by one of the flag raisers’ sons and it goes through the story of each of the six flag raisers, the story of the flag raising, the history of the battle of Iwo Jima and other related topics.

I was surprised by how closely it stayed to the book. I was expecting that everything that wasn’t the battle of Iwo Jima would be stripped out. It’s not really a battle movie, as such, because of this because a lot of it takes place after the battle. The movie bounces back and forth between the post-battle scenes and the battle scenes; it might be a bit hard to follow for some, but I didn’t have much of a problem.

The cinematography has a very gritty quality to it for the battle scenes. It’s filmed in a way that it’s almost black-and-white for the battle scenes and, like similar scenes in Saving Private Ryan, it’s sometimes filmed in an unsteady manner such that it’s closer to what a soldier would have seen. The whole film is gritty too. Eastwood doesn’t sugar coat the situation or truth, here. It’s all here and laid out for you to see. He leaves out a lot of the feel good parts you might see in another war movie.

It’s good. Not amazing, but good. It is a film with some weight: it hits you and doesn’t leave immediately.

I was talking to a WWII veteran earlier in the same day who had served at Okinawa. He was 19 at the time and was in the campaign for 75 days. I don’t know about you but when I was 19 I couldn’t have handled that. I mean at 22 I lived in Germany for 75(ish) days and was marginally able to handle that. No killing people, no enemy combatants, no watching friends die. That was it, either: he was scheduled and was training to be in the second wave to invade Japan, if that had happened. And then they, for the most part, just went back to school or work and went about their lives. I always take the opportunity to talk to WWII vets when I have a chance. If you think about it, if a soldier was 18 when he was fighting in the last battles in 1945, then he’s 80 now. It’s a shrinking group of people, I imagine rapidly at this point.

I don’t know what it is about WWII, something gets me about it. All these young kids went off and fought, hopefully, the last war of that magnitude (110,000 Japanese died on Okinawa alone—the population of more than Menlo Park and Palo Alto put together died on one side during one battle). It was the whole country too. The whole country mobilized and supported the effort and sacrificied. (Interesting fact: we went to war with Japan because they attacked us. Why did the US go to war with Germany? They declared war on us.) I’m not saying anything for or against war here: just that the sacrafice of the WWII generation gets me.

Tonight was the 826Valencia benefit show at the Palace of Fine Arts with Patton Oswalt, Zach Rogue, Mark Kozelek, Dave Eggers, Sarah Vowell, Jonathan Richman, and Aimee Mann.

The Palace of Fine Arts is a pretty big building. The auditorium area has very comfortable chairs in stadium-style seating and the walls are drapped in red velvet. (I’m getting that old that I’m really glad that this was a seated show.) The stage area is large and the visibility from pretty much anywhere seemed like it’d be good. The sound was excellent. That’s thanks to the sound guy, John Karr (seriously, that was his name). Thanks John!

Let’s go through the night:

Patton Oswalt: actor comedian guy. I recognized him. IMDB tells me it’s probably King of Queens (from the twoish times I’ve watched it). Turns out he’s very funny, in the offensive vein of humor, mostly.

Zach Rogue (Rogue Wave): I’ve seen him play solo before. He played a short set including “Publish my Love” and “Postage Stamp World”. He sounded great on the guitar and his vocals sounded really good too. He said a couple funny things and a few things about 826 and that was that.

Mark Kozelek: I feel pretty lucky I live in the same city (or metropolitan area) as Mark Kozelek (Sun Kil Moon, Red House Painters) and that I get to see him with some frequency. This guy is amazing. His voice is just so pure and incredible and his fingerpicked guitar playing is intensely good, though my concert companions wished “he’d just strum a chord sometime!” His set included “Trucker’s Atlas”, “Rock N Roll Singer”, and “Glenn Tipton”. I could listen to him singing about killing babies and he’s probably sound good. [I do no condone killing babies.]

Dave Eggers: He just showed a video about 826. It was fine. Then he showed some slides of the work of this kid named Alex who utilizes 826NYC. These were hilarious. He’s about 7 and does this collages of things like a peanut and a gingerbread man and then scrawls “A gingerbread man and a peanut got married. Can you imagine what their kids look like?” or a picture of a robot playing a trumpet and the scrawled writing says “Robots are the new jazz man. They are not good. If you want to go to a jazz restaurant, do not go, no matter how good the food is! DO NOT GO!” I’d buy a book of these if they made one.

Intermission: Hug Dave Eggers for $20, get a “buddy punch” from Sarah Vowell for $5 (or 5 for $20! bargain!). I did not partipate in these deals.

Sarah Vowell: She did a reading of a story she wrote about her favorite explorer, a German cartographer named Charles Preuss who she read about when she was on a book tour, reading a book about explorers. Patton Oswalt provided the voice of Preuss in thick German accent. He was quite funny about it. The story was entertaining and funny. I’m saying “story” but it was more like a report or something. There were many mentions of the Oregon Trail, but no mentions or jokes associated with The Oregon Trail. I was quite disappointed. You gotta pick the low hanging fruit!

Jonathan Richman: The last time I saw him was also a benefit show (and also with Mark Kozelek). He’s still as absolutely entertaining as always. He’ll move his hips to the music while playing Spanish-influenced guitar and singing in Italian while providing running translation in English or making off-handed comments. And then he’ll do an odd stage bow (or think of it as a figure skater at the end of a routine). I had a big smile on my face the whole time. I’m not overly familiar with his music but he closed with “Not So Much to be Loved as to Love.”

Aimee Mann: She was the only one to play with someone else, Paul Brion (any relation to Jon ?) He sang back ups, played bass (which was up way too much in the mix, only sound problem of the night), and guitar. I’m not incredibly familiar with her stuff, mostly just her Magnolia work and a handfull of other songs. She played a nice set, including “Save Me” and “You Could Make a Killing.”She’s got a great voice and the way her melodies work over her guitar is something else.

I’d heard reports of collaborations (Byrne/ Stevens and Gibbard/ Roderick) at other 826 benefits and so I had my hopes up for this one, but nothing materialized. Mann/ Richman? Mann/ Kozelek? Kozelek/ Richman? I wonder what any of those would have sounded like.

All in all a very good concert. What’s with benefit shows being great shows? I want my Small Stakes poster for this one, though. (I don’t think any were actually made.)

The other day I finished King Dork by Frank Portman, (former) front man of the band, The Mr. T Experience who I remember coming through Pittsburgh a few times in my youth.

It’s a “young adult” novel, which is a genre that I don’t delve into often*. Tom Henderson is the main character. He’s a dork, surprise, who is well outside of the “normal” clique in his high school. He has one friend, Sam Hellerman, who he’s friends with largely becauses of alphabetical ordering. They’re in a band together. In fact, they’re in many bands together. Tom maps out his school year so far, in fact, by what their band was named at the time. They have lots of trouble finding a drummer (which I might relate to—my high school band, Where’s Luke?, got its name from our missing drummer). Tom gets harassed daily by the alpha males of the school. He has a bit of a disfunctional family, with a step-father that he doesn’t see eye-to-eye with, a mother that’s still disturbed by Tom’s father’s death some six years in the past. The book finds him struggling with the bullies at the school, his family, Sam’s new friends, his first experiences with girls, and mysterious notes left in some of his father’s books from his childhood.

It was a quick read and I liked it a lot. I related to Tom in some ways. I liked that it was sort of like taking an normal YA novel and jamming in a little bit of music geekery. And it was a good and interesting story. I found myself wanting to find out what happened next. It’s nothing groundbreaking but it was worthwhile.

* The last YA novel that I read was The Perks of Being a Wallflower (in a day back in the spring of 2003) which was written by a guy that went to my high school. I related to it for my similarities to the main character but also because of the connection to my high school, which was pretty subtle, small references to teachers I had and phrases we used. One of the acknowledgements at the beginnig of the book was of a person I used to play ultimate with. The main characters of King and Perks come down on polar opposite sites of whether Catcher in the Rye is a good book or not.

I think the Coudal Partners’ Field Tested Books Series is pretty interesting so I thought I’d try one of my own.

Roald Dahl’s Omnibus field tested by yours truly at Schloss Emlau, outside of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Bavaria, Germany. Early August 1995.

I was in Germany with my second cousins and their parents (my dad’s cousin, her husband and children), the Fuesers. I’d just finished 8th grade and was going to be starting high school in about a month. The Fuesers lived in Solingen near Koeln and Duesseldorf and the like. It was my first trip far away from my immediate family (I’d gone to London and Amsterdam with my brother the previous year) and my German was spotty from three years of slow and substandard German education. Part of the reason to go, I think, was to improve my German. I was nervous and shy about my German skills. I’d think for ten minutes about how to ask someone to pass the chocolates only to have them offer before I asked. Eventually I gave up trying and that turned into a refusal as the trip went along. The Fuesers all spoke English fairly well—they spoke English better than I spoke German certaintly—but it was obvious my refusal to speak German was a strain on them.

After about two weeks in Solingen, we left for the south of Germany, for Schloss Emlau, more of a nice hotel than a castle (Schloss = castle, palace). It was perhaps sometime during the car trip, or perhaps only after I arrived at the Schloss Elmau that I started Omnibus. Most people know Roald Dahl for his children’s stories, but the Omnibus included many of his short stories, including those that he contributed to Playboy. I was no longer a kid and I was reading “adult” stories.

There was a dance in the grand ballroom at Schloss Elmau. I didn’t want to dance. (I wasn’t much of a rebelious teenager, but I say that this German trip landed smack dab in the middle of my three months of rebelion.) Instead, I would go up to the balcony overlooking the ballroom, dressed up in my flannel greys and shirt and tie (because, my aunt decided doggoneit, even if I wasn’t going to dance, I had to be dressed in case I changed my mind) and read the story about a family feeding their weak baby royal jelly only to see it start turning into a bee. Roald Dahl has a way with characters and stories. They’re not subtle or overly complex, but they’re good.

I’d also read at night. My bed was across the room from the son’s, Justus’, and I’d read with the light on while he was asleep. My innocent fourteen year mind absolutely exploded a story about two buddies trading wifes (without their knowledge) for a night. This story is quite possibly less graphic than what ones sees on prime time TV and definitely less graphic than what one sees in any R-rated movie, but my young mind was sent reeling and I had to contend with a funny feeling in my pajama pants.

I read it quite quickly. It was good and I was lonely. All my communications were strained so I withdrew.

On the last day at Schloss Elmau, I made a concession: I went to a class to learn the Schloss Elmau dance with the daughter, Olga, and we danced it at the dance that night in the ballroom. I’d learned all the steps well but it went into a freeform waltz portion at the end, during which I repeatedly stepped on Olga’s feet. We decided to sit down instead of dance that part.

This week I read Goat by Brad Land. (Here’s a review/ plot summary.)

It’s a memoir about Brad as a college student that gets abducted, beat up and has his car stolen. He’s pretty traumatized by the event.

A year later he joins his brother at Clemson, where the brother’s joined a fraternity. Brad decides to join the same fraternity. The hazing that follows gets to him and gets mixed up in his head with his previously trauma and he starts having nightmares every night and shaking constantly.

It’s a fast read and well-written. I was (technically) in a fraternity but even by MIT standards it was a bit of an outlier. By the time I was a senior I still hadn’t ever seen a keg in real life and we were more likely to have a discussion about LEDs or carbon nano tubes than getting drunk or getting lucky. And people didn’t even memorize our frat’s poems or history, let alone go through any more serious hazing. I knew this sort of thing went on and probably still goes on, but the details, the specifics were shocking.

All in all, it was pretty unsettling.

It also made me want to write a memoir of my college years. I’ve been thinking about this since about my sophomore year. I think it could be a good story.

This morning, I finished Bob Dylan’s autobiographical Chronicles, Vol. 1.

It’s not your average autobiography by any stretch. It just arounds to a few different periods of his life and focuses on those. Those periods include when he first moved to Minneapolis and later New York and hadn’t been signed yet, a period shortly after his motorcycle crash in the last 60s and a period at the end of the 80s when he was recording Oh Mercy with Daniel Lanois.

He just between these, giving little reference to time and intervening facts. If you don’t know some of the Bob Dylan story going in, you’d probably get lost in these jumps. Reading the Dylan wikipedia entry would serve you well.

Even in these little parts that he focuses on, he doesn’t provide the reader with the facts and chronology as much as he provides his thoughts on what was happening.

It’s a funny biography. The reader goes in and comes out of it the same in many ways; he doesn’t give the Chronology of many events, he doesn’t talk about writing or recording his most famous albums; he doesn’t talk of his stint (or permanent change to?) christianity; he doesn’t talk about going electric; he doesn’t talk about “Blowin in the Wind”, “The Times, They are a-Changin’”, or “Mr. Tambourine Man.”

It is nearly three hundred pages long, so he does talk about something though. He somewhat extensively talks about the folk scene in NYC in the early 60s. He also talks extensively about his early influences, including, of course, Woody Guthrie.

He also writes quite a few pages about a new guitar playing style he developed in the late 80s and early 90s. Not so interesting.

In the way he writes the book and in various passages in the book, it seems clear to me: Dylan doesn’t want to be what people want him to be. He doesn’t want to be the Voice of a Generation and he doesn’t want to write about “Blowin’ in the Wind” or going electric.

All of that being said, for the most part, he writes interestingly and he really shows the hunger of his young self. Just don’t expect him to tell you all his little secrets.

Next up: perhaps King Dork by Frank Portman.

Today I finished Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane. I blanked out part of the name above because K- is an offensive racial slur equivalent to the N-word in America (when said by non-blacks at least). Basically it’s best to only say it in context of the title of this book.

This is the latest in my series of South African books (Cry the Beloved Country, Country of My Skull, Tsotsi and Karoo Boy were among the SA books I read in the last year), this was possibly the hardest to get through, though Country of My Skull is up there too. As with Country of My Skull, it’s not hard to get through because it’s poorly written—both are well-written, in fact— but this is just some heavy heavy shit here. I picked it up in early April, read the first bit and then put it down for a few weeks before I could pick it up again.

This books is a memoir of Johannes’ (aka Mark’s) youth in the Alexandra township (”ghetto”) outside of Johannesburg. There are graphic descriptions of things he saw and went through in everyday life: violence, disease, malnutrition, and prostitution. I would be reading this during lunch at work and find myself nauseated by it and have to stop reading so that I wouldn’t lose my stomach; or I’d have to close my eyes for a few minutes.

The book is divided into three parts: Road to Alexandra, Road to Knowledge and Road to Freedom. The first part is the heaviest and the one that brings about this feeling of dispair. The second and third parts are more optomistic. The book, in the end, is, in part, a story about overcoming adversity, but it’s also about the system that lead to this adversity and the anger and frustration and hatred bred by it.

As I said, it’s well-written, though I actually found it a bit on the overly descriptive and heavy handed side of things at a few points. A lot of questions are raised in the book, many of them thought-provoking. The book is written, of course from one perspective and it has its biases, biases that history (the book, incidentally was completed and published years before apartheid was abolished) has shown to be on the right side of things. However, as with some other books on apartheid, whites are painted in one of two clear camps: revolutionaries/ those that actively help blacks and racist biggots who fear blacks and want to hold them down. As much as Mark defends himself in the book for having friendships with sympathetic whites and for not being a revolutionary himself, so too are there whites that would defend themselves for not being revolutionaries and yet would still put themselves in oppisition to apartheid.

It’s a worthwhile read, though. Like many things, even after the main conflict is over, the ideas are still true and for many years yet, no doubt, there will be other peoples in human rights struggles and in similar situations.

As much as I’ve been enjoying this literay tour through South Africa, I need a break for a while. I think I’m going to read Chronicles, Vol 1, Bob Dylan’s autobiography, which will go along well with my recent Bob Dylan kick.

In the last week I finished Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon and In the Aeroplane over the Sea by Kim Cooper.

Michael Chabon has become famous for books since Mysteries of Pittsburgh, most notably Wonder Boys and the Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay. It’s a story about a kid’s post-college summer, his gangster father, his gay friend and his retro-loving girlfriend. It also takes place, in part, in Junction Hollow, the “Lost Neighborhood”, an odd place in a ravine beneath CMU that one can end up accidentally, but rarely on purpose.

It’s a well-written book, interesting and engaging. It’s bittersweet; not too bitter, not too sweet. It’s like an indie movie.

Then I read In the Aeroplane over the Sea about about the best album of the last decade. It’s a small book, barely hand-sized and only a little over a hundred pages long, so you can really gun through this. But then again, it’s sort of like extensive liner notes and how many liner notes do you know that are a hundred pages long? The book goes through the history of the band and the Elephant 6 collective, and the events leading up to the recording of the album. If you are obsessed with this album, I’d recommend this book.

Next up: Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane.

While I’m on the subject of books, have you read any books lately that you can recommend? I have a bunch in my list, but I’m going through them pretty well. I’m generally more into good+readable over good+seminal+hard-to-read.

Also, I have a total soft spot for books about/ set in/ by South Africa(ns), so I’ll take any into special consideration.

Anyone have thoughts on Wind Up Bird Chronicles? I don’t know much about it but I like a band called Wind Up Bird.

I finished Moneyball on Thursday night. It’s about inefficiencies in the baseball player market and how they came to be exploited by the Oakland Athletics and their manager Billy Beane. I found it really interesting for a non-fiction book. I tend to like fiction books and read very few non-fiction books because I tend to get bored with them, but this one kept my attention throughout. I’d recommend it if you like baseball at all, especially now, with the baseball season fast approaching.

A few things that struck me while reading the book is the statistical significance of baseball. A hundred sixty two games a year. A few at bats a game. A few pitches per at ball. Overall, this leads to a statistically significant number of pitches and at bats. You can really run some numbers on this stuff and figure out what is significant in winning games, which is, as it turns out, something that people have done and is explained in this book. Football, with sixteen games a year, maybe a couple more, doesn’t have much statistical significance.

Another thing that stuck me is that all these people going into baseball now are from Harvard and Yale and crap. (Theo Epstein went to Yale). Where are all the MIT people in baseball?

In somewhat related news, I’m trying to read more. In the last month, I’ve finished How We are Hungry, Karoo Boy and now Moneyball. I’m starting Mysteries of Pittsburgh now. Hopefully I can keep this up. I like reading.

In yet another South-African-book-now-made-into-a-movie-which-I-haven’t-seen is Tsotsi (the other ones are Cry, My Beloved Country, which I’ve since seen the 1995 movie version, and Country of my Skull). I got the book back in South Africa in October 2004, but it’d been sitting in my stack of books until I saw a preview for Tsotsi, which has since been nominated for an Oscar. So I decided I should read it before it’s out in the theaters.

It’s by Athol Fugard, known mostly as a playwrite. I’ve read and enjoyed a couple of his plays, including Sorrows and Rejoicings. This is his only novel.

It’s about a young thug in Johannesburg in the apartheid days (published in 1980, it was written in the 60s and set in the 50s, though it’s pretty timeless). His life changes when he is left with a baby after a woman he’s accosting runs away. Similarly to Cry, My Beloved Country, though it’s not about the conditions under apartheid, there is a lot that reflects on and reveals those conditions.

It’s a largely psychological novel with relatively little dialogue. The characters are very well fleshed out . The descriptions of events, people and places throughout are sometimes a little much but are always thorough. The ending is a bit unsatisfying, but in a book like this, the ending isn’t as important as the journey.

I like this book a lot. If you want a more narrative story from South Africa, you might want to start with Cry, My Beloved Country.

Slightly related note: is there an equivalent to IMDB for books? Wouldn’t that be useful?

I just finished Country of My Skull: Guilt, Sorrow, and the Limits of Forgiveness in the New South Africa by Antjie Korg (pronounced “ahnt-key kroge”). It recounts the events and stories of the Truth and Reconcilliation Commision (TRC) as told by an Afrikaaner poet and South African Broadcast Company (SABC) radio correspondent.

I’ve been reading it on and (mostly) off since about Christmas. It’s not a quick read, certainly, and it is, at times, overly academic or swamped by the language, but it’s undoubtedly a very important and valuable thing to read. There are many sections that are direct transcriptions of the testamonies of victims and perpatrators that are so effecting that I simply had to put the book down. I also found the sections where she reacts to the events very interesting.

Here’s one such passage:

The proceedings are concluded with the anthem. I stand, caught unaware by the Sesotho version and the knowledge that I am white, that I have to reacquaint myself with this land, that my language carriers violence as a voice, that I can do nothing about it, that after so many years I still feel uneasy with what is mine, with what is me. The woman next to me looks suprised when I sing the Free State version of “Nkosi [Sikelel’ iAfrica].” She smiles, holds her head close to mine, and shifts to the alto part. The song leader opens the melody to us. The sopranos envelop; the bass voices support. And I wonder: God. Does He hear us? Does He know what our hearts are yearning for? That we all just want to be human—some with more color, some with less, but all with air and sun. And I wade into song—in a language that is not mine, in a tongue I do not know. It is fragrant inside the song, and among the keynotes of sorrow and suffering, there are soft silences where we who belong to this landscape, all of us, can come to rest.

Maybe this has meaning to me, but not you.

I had Friday Night Lights from Netflix for a while and got around to watching it last night. I liked it. The screenwriters did a few clever things to fit some things (quotes/ thoughts) into the movie that weren’t said in the main action. Some of it was sensationalized from the book (which Odessans said was sensationalized from the reality) and some details were left out, but that’s to be expected. It’s pretty hard to condense four months of detailed story and backstory into a two hour movie. Tim McGraw did a really good job for his first acting role and the kids and Billy Bob Throton were good as well.

The Explosions in the Sky soundtrack was pretty awesome. I’d heard many of the tracks already, but they fit in a lot better in the context of the movie.

We watched Ray last night. Before I get started on the movie, I’d like to point out that it showcased the Wurlitzer electric piano, though his models were, I believe a 140 (around “What’d I Say”) and later a 200(A) (”Hit the Road, Jack”), not the 206A or the 203W. The movie was definitely worth seeing. The story is good; I’ve seen better man-stuggles-with-drugs stories and better man-overcomes-disabilities-despite-what-people-may-think and better man-cheats-on-wife-repeatedly-but-in-the-end-doesn’t-want-to-lose-her stories. But add some great music scenes in and you have a pretty good movie. Jamie Foxx just about is Ray Charles. There weren’t any points when I thought the actual Ray Charles was on the screen, but it was close. Does he deserve the Oscar? I don’t know. Take away the acting-just-like-Ray and you have a decent, but not incredible, guy-on-heroin, which I’ve seen better (um, Requiem for a Dream). And the acting-just-like-Ray is basically a spot-on impression. Guys at comedy clubs making $25 a night do spot-on impressions. Heck there was a kid at this Boy Scout camp that I went to that did a spot-on impression of Brett Weinheimer, the scout-in-charge of the whole camp, that was so good that he fooled many patrols into thinking that Brett was coming to a surpise inspection. Okay okay, Foxx is really good at doing Ray Charles and pretty good at the rest so maybe that’s good enough? Clint Eastwood was really good in Million Dollar Baby but he was probably too stoic in the role to (jennifer) garner (ha!) the award.

I also finished the book Friday Night Lights last night. I’d been stuck on a couple books a couple weeks ago while I was over at a coworkers house playing poker. He’d just finished Friday Night Lights so he lent it to me. The story is a reporter from a Philadelphia newspaper decided that he needed to write a book about high school football in the heartland and moved his family to Odessa, TX. He followed the team for a year and wrote this book. Fans are crazy about the Permian Panthers there and games against the cross town rivals will draw 20,000 fans (to a high school game!). There is a lot of pressure in this town that doesn’t have anything else going for it for the football team to win, but not just win, to go to State. The book was written by a reporter, a journalist, so that shows in both the way its told and also what is told; there is a lot of background to the football, of course, but also included is lots about the town’s economic and social and racial problems. All in all, it’s a pretty easy/ quick read, but it’s not as light as many sports books. I liked it. I would like to qualify a recommendation, however. a) I like sports stories, though I don’t read many of them. I read a lot of those Matt Christopher books as a kid. I was entralled by the BoSox’s story this year. b) I like it when people play for the love of the game. c) I know all about high school football and it’s importance to people. Upper St. Clair had (slightly) more going for it than just football and people didn’t live and die for the team, but it was a football school, in large part. Perhaps the only thing that people talked about as much was the musical in the spring. I never missed a game in high school (I was in the marching band, so I had to be there), including the freezing trip to State my junior year.

(There has been a movie made of Friday Night Lights and the Austin, Texas post-rock group Explosions in the Sky did the original soundtrack. I would sometimes play the soundtrack while reading the book, which is almost like watching the movie.}

I’ve been listening to this song by the Red House Painters called “I’m Sorry,” off of a John Denver Tribute album called Take Me Home and it could possibly be the most crushing song ever. Mark Kozelek’s voice imparts added melancholy to whatever he sings. It’s so good!