Violet survived her squeezing
If you were to ask me, “How could anyone hope to improve on Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory”, I wouldn’t say, “Have Tim Burton direct the remake.” But hey, that’s a great idea. I’m a Tim Burton fan, although I must say his latter day movies have never quite matched the promise of Frankenweenie. And I wouldn’t say, “Cast Johnny Depp in the role of Willy Wonka,” even though that’s a great idea, too. I remember Depp from his 21 Jump Street days. He was just another pretty face. Who ever thought he had an edge? And yet, unlike wussie twenty-somethings like Matt Damon or Josh Hartnett, Depp has consistently chosen meaty (and dangerous) roles. To name a few: Dead Man; The Ninth Gate; Once Upon a Time in Mexico. (And then there’s Pirates of the Caribbean, proof that no one bats a thousand.)
No: I would say, “Kill off all the Oompa-Loompas.”
Me hates the Oompa-Loompas. There’s something deeply offensive about beating the viewer about the head and shoulders with a message, any message. Guess director Mel Stuart felt it essential that every last two-year-old get it.
But on to the point of today’s blog: where are they now? I am happy to report than none of the Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory kids ended badly. Hey, not all child stars follow the same paths as Danny Bonaduce, Dana Plato, or Todd Bridges. Take me, for example —
Oh. That’s another story.
Here’s the run-down.
Michael Bollner (Augustus Gloop) is a tax accountant in Munich.
Paris Themmen (Mike Teevee) works as a business manager for Disney. He had an uncredited roll in The Big Lebowski.
Denise Nickerson (Violet Beauregarde) gave up acting in 1978 and became a nurse. Her acting career is also notable for her involvement in a musical production of Nabokov’s Lolita.
Julie Dawn Cole (Veruca ‘I want it NOW’ Salt) is the only one of the five who is still in the biz. Julie is my personal favorite. A quick IMDB run reveals she has been very busy in the TV world.
And (drum roll) . . .
Peter Ostrum (Chuckie himself) is a farm animal vet in Upstate New York. Here’s his full story.
Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory opens this July. Yippee!
D.
Because Maureen asked for really bad angst-ridden poetry
I’ve decided I would make one rippingly good homosexual. I’m obsessed with my body; I cook like there’s no tomorrow; I cry at the end of every episode of Dead Like Me; I think Winona Ryder is hot. (Wait. No. That would make me a lesbian.) My high school girlfriend once called me ‘one of the girls’ and, now that I think about it, she’s never taken it back.
There’s just that one picky little detail. You know, the one about having sex with men. Like, eeee-ew. Is that strictly necessary?
Anyway, for Maureen, I’ve posted a poem today. Read it and see if you don’t agree that I am a total bitch. Here’s the set-up:
Third year of med school: that’s when it starts to get tough. You take call with the big boys and girls; you’re actually expected to do some thinking on your own; the hours are long and you’re beginning to wonder if maybe, just maybe, this isn’t all a big mistake. Unfortunately, you get used to it, and learn to ignore that inner voice.
Bad turned to worse when our med school newspaper began running whiffy poetry written by a sensitive, angst-riddled soul* who regularly opened a vein for our benefit. His metier: the cryptic rhyme scheme, the mangled metaphor, the trite simile, the archaic contraction. His chief gripe: not being able to spend enough quality time with his loved ones.
Perhaps I should have been more sympathetic. Instead, I decided to shut him down.
I was a Teenage Angstwolf
Mistah Donahue — he dead.
Oh faithful collie at my feet
Do not ask me why I weep
For I might tell you, and you must sleep;
Sometimes it hurts to feel so deep.
Spring is the cruellest month, sigh;
Winds whisper the throbbing question, why
The swollen hopes of huddled masses,
Hardened hearts, and real tough classes.
In a dream, I asked the Deity why
She told me
“Everything I tell you is a lie
Including this.”
Her saffron robes were the color
Of Existential Panic.
A toast to my colleagues, Sturm und Drang,
Angst and Ennui, that noble gang
Though only geists, their spirits sang,
They never forgot for whom the tolled bell rang.
(Bonus points if you can name the kid.)
Post script: my poem worked. Mr. Sensitive’s Rod McKuen-aspirin’ days were over.
Next up on the book review list: an oldie but (if the first two chapters are any indication) a goodie. Hint: Nebula Award Winner; chief influences, Carlos Castaneda & Joseph Conrad. Pat, no fair guessing, since you recommended this one to me.
*I forget his name, but he’s undoubtedly one of those HMO docs who is on the phone all day telling other docs how to practice shitty medicine, then goes home and whines to his family about how rough his life is.
My Deep Throat
Today’s announcement that former deputy blah-di-blah-blah of the FBI W. Mark Felt was Deep Throat made me feel mightily pensive; like, I suppose, any great writer, today’s Watergate watershed made me think of me.
This is a story about a revelation. Not one of those “LUKE, I AM YOUR FATHER” revelations; this is more of a “I was in love with you all through seventh grade!” revelation.
Nixon resigned in the summer of 1974. A few months earlier, towards the end of 7th grade, I became our junior high school’s Student Body President by running on a platform of, “Elect me, and I’ll try my best to do whatever you want me to do.” I narrowly beat Linda Bloem — my chief academic rival, occasional object of my affection, and the only girl in junior high who would dance the slow dances with me — primarily because Linda ran on a platform of, “Elect me, because God wants me to be your student body president,” thus prefiguring George W. Bush.
When I opened my locker on the first day of eighth grade, I found a handwritten note:
I was a victim of synchronicity. Throughout eighth grade, I had to endure taunts of “Impeach Hoffman!” and “Hoffman, Resign Now!” all because of Richard Nixon. And I was a good student body president. Our dances made money. With our profits, we bought a drinking fountain for our quad, which made us the first student council to do anything, ever. We became the paragon by which all future student councils would be measured.
And yet the notes trickled in at regular intervals: stuffed in my pre-algebra book, scooted under my lunch tray, dropped in front of my gym locker.
Naturally, Linda Bloem was my chief suspect. Sure, she continued to dance the slow dances with me — that was just her crafty way of deflecting suspicion. My next suspect was the student council treasurer Bret Lawson. Why? Sheer antagonism. I’m pretty sure Bret didn’t like me. I’m pretty sure he still doesn’t like me (if he thinks about me at all) even though we went to Berkeley together, which should count for something, you know?
I had other things to distract me that year. I can’t remember who I was in love with, but I was always in love with someone, ever since age 2. (If anyone from my family still reads this — that girl at Cassie’s, the one I used to play King of the Hill with, and she always won. What was her name?) I think I was messed up about Tamara Cynar that year. Right at the end of seventh grade, Tamara told one of her girlfriends, right in front of me, that she thought I was cute — so of course I fantasized about her all summer. Come eighth grade, she wasn’t there. She’d moved.
Only a thirteen-year-old can be totally destroyed by something like this.
Meanwhile, Linda Bloem’s dancing slow dances with me, and Lilly Sznaper’s making eyes at me too (well, at least once or twice), and all I can think about is some girl I’d never even looked twice at, just because she was unattainable. And how fucked up is that? Adolescence SUCKS.
End of the year: yearbook signing. Sue Youmans, a very tall and very gorgeous girl who had never had very much to say to me, wrote
Sue had the flattest stomach and the hottest belly button of any eighth grader. My sexual fantasies were only beginning to take on a bit of character (having, that year, discovered Xaviera Hollander’s book Xaviera! — thank you, Jeff Swee, fellow Berkeleyite, for being a dumpster-diving thirteen-year-old), but I could still see the potential of belly buttons.
Asked why she had messed with my brain all year**, Sue stuck to her guns. “I thought it was pretty funny. Didn’t you think it was funny?”
Well, sure. Now I do.
D.
*Do I actually remember what the note said? Hell no. This is personal history. No one said anything about historical accuracy.
TAMARA! WHY???
Darth Yawn
I’m not a Star Wars fanboy. Never was, never will be. Sure, I saw the first three as a kid (and had the good taste to despise ewoks even then), but when Lucas started grinding the cash cow with Episode 1, I read the reviews. Feh. Not even Natalie Hershlag* could get me off my ass & down to the theater . . . and this, despite the fact she was just as cute as she was in The Professional, but grown up now. I’ll wait until Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta comes out; Natalie plays Evey.
Back to the story that should have died long ago in a galaxy far, far away. It’s bad enough Walmart defines science fiction as ‘that which has Star Wars in the title’; now, Blogger — my host — persists in posting a link to Darth Vader’s Blog on its ‘Blogs of Note’ list, even though Darth has thrown in the quill. This evening, I popped over to see what Darth is up to, and discovered that he wrote his last post nearly two weeks ago. As of this writing, Darth’s terminal entry has racked up close to 600 comments. 600 comments, my minions, and for what? I defy you to read that Sith bastard’s blather without falling asleep. Will someone unplug his respirator — please?
I had stopped by before. All this resentment has been brewing for some time, let me tell you. This isn’t merely the ire of a non-fanboy left out in the cold, the one kid who doesn’t get the joke. It’s the fact that I do get the joke, and it isn’t as funny as it could be. Not by half. It enrages me, seeing a great comic opportunity pissed away.
(Aren’t there more important things in the world for me to be upset about? You betcha, but this isn’t a political blog. I understand there are already a few of those out there in the blogosphere.)
But I have plans. Oh, do I have plans. And I won’t have to rip off anyone’s creative product except my own.
Watch this space.
D.
*Natalie, Natalie. Why did you have to take a shikseh name like Portman? Think of all the Jewish boys who would not have given up looking for Jewish brides, simply because they knew there were girls like you in the Jewniverse?
Imagineer This
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow
A few years back, I asked printmaker Rosemary Feit Covey what she thought of fellow printmaker Edward Gorey (of Gashlycrumb Tinies fame, &c). She told me something I didn’t understand at the time: she had a hard time appreciating Gorey’s work because she got too caught up in analyzing his technique. It was a problem she had with art in general, but especially with the work of other wood engravers.
At the time, the only art I understood was writing, and, well, I was a hack. Okay, a worse hack. But now I think I finally get her point. And man, is it ever annoying.
Cory Doctorow’s 2003 debut, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, is one of the most original novels I’ve read this year. It’s also one of the most predictable. It’s a question of content versus form: I found the content to be fresh, but the form was strictly by the numbers. Here’s the deal (and you’ll find this, or something nearly like it, in just about every self-help writing book you’ll grab off the shelf):
(Hey, this might be a spoiler. If you care about that, skip the numbers and read on.)
- Start with a likable protagonist.
- Throw some adversity his way.
- Throw some more adversity his way.
- Bring him low, very low.
- Lower still.
- Mmm . . . no, lower still.
- Has he lost everything yet? Good!
- At the last moment, wrench him from the jaws of defeat . . . oh, and make sure he has learned something in the process.
Okay, there it is, my one and only gripe. A story this fresh — and Doctorow couldn’t manage to throw in a surprise? Can you say formulaic?
This isn’t a negative review. Really. Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is a cool book, and now that I’ve gotten all that off my chest, I’m going to tell you why you* need to buy it.
Our hero, Julius, lives in an era where death and disease are ancient history, and none of the essentials are in short supply. Money has been replaced by the only things that matter in this post-scarcity world: esteem; prestige; reputation.
Whuffie, in other words.
This novel’s universe has all the trappings of cyberpunk without any of the drear. Imagine Gibson on Ecstacy and Prozac. Peoples’ brains are permanently online (quite convenient, since they’re always checking each other’s Whuffie to see who’s top dog), and by periodically making a backup of one’s personality, immortality is assured. If you die, your most recent backup gets plopped into a force-grown clone. Told you Down and Out had all the trappings.
They call this the Bitchun Society, by the way — as in, bitchun wave, dude.
So what do folks who have everything do to keep busy? They stoke their Whuffie, naturally. (No money, but humans are as greedy as ever.) One way to build Whuffie is to find new and better ways to entertain the fun-seeking multitudes.
Disney World has long been Julius’s port in the storm, a place he returns to whenever his life hits the skids. He loves this place with an irrational passion, the way a Texan loves Texas. Now he’s living out his lifetime dream: he has become a member of the Ad-hocracy that runs Liberty Square and Tom Sawyer Island at Disney World. It’s Julius’s dream job, and it’s one hell of a good gig for racking up Whuffie.
The Haunted Mansion is part of Julius’s domain, as is The Hall of Presidents. But not for long, for the aggressively Whuffie-mongering Debra, seasoned veteran of Disneyland Beijing, has her sights on The Hall of Presidents — and maybe all of Liberty Square.
Sinister intrigue . . . murder (as much as anyone can get murdered in this world) . . . love . . . betrayal. If this is starting to sound a bit like hard-boiled fic, there’s a good reason. I’ve read lots of SF novels that tried to ape hard-boiled fic, but this is the only one I’ve read that works, largely because Doctorow knows better than to follow the genre too closely. Down and Out is a murder mystery in the same way The Amazing Lebowski is a detective movie. He has a sense of fun that reminds me of certain other genre writers, like Elmore Leonard, or Carl Hiaasen.
Parting thought: Doctorow must really love Walt Disney World to have written a story like this, and it must have been painful as hell having to avoid all those copyrighted characters. You won’t find Mickey or Donald in these pages. Oh, just think of the set pieces Doctorow had to forfeit to avoid getting sued.
D.
*All of you, except for my parents. I know you guys wouldn’t like this. Oh, and those of you who have already read it? I guess you’re off the hook, too.
Los Angeles
Los Angeles by Kenney Mencher
Good writing day. Fixed one scene, wrote another; 2K words in all. That means I get a little break from the ol’ blog. Here’s a bit of sleaze to tide you through your weekend. Apologies to those who have read this before.
The Psalmist
by Doug Hoffman
Sun-blessed
Child of light
Sin-eater
I bask in your youthful fire
Thy noble loins have cheered me
Filled me with renewed force
Thou hast anointed me with fragrant oils,
Rubbed away my old cares
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death
I shall fear no evil
For thou art with me
And the death is but little
Remain in Light
I love Neil Gaiman. Mind you, I don’t worship the parchment he writes on (Neverwhere had a bit of the bloat, and there were one or two dogs in Smoke and Mirrors), but he sits squarely in my category of Authors I Read So I Can Do Better Next Time. So when Neil Gaiman calls something “A remarkable book — easily my favorite SF novel in the last decade, maybe longer”, I listen up. I buy. I read.
And Gaiman is in good company. Similar effusions abound in the first few unnumbered pages: from Stephen Baxter (“The first classic of the quantum century”), Iain Banks, China Miéville. Given that we live in an age where Margaret Atwood feels it necessary to disavow all connection with us SF geeks, Miéville’s quote is worth repeating:
M. John Harrison proves what only those crippled by respectability still doubt — that science fiction can be literature, of the very greatest kind.
Yay! Of course, he goes on to say that Light “puts modern fiction to shame” (I can’t argue with him there) and “It’s a magnificent book.”
Ahem. (You remember what ahem means, don’t you, my minions?) Light is the sort of book that makes a satirist’s fingers twitch in eager anticipation of a keyboard. Sixty pages into it, I began scribbling reminders on a post-it note: every last one of Harrison’s stylistic tics which, if the Harry’s Bar and American Grill folks ever tire of Hemingway and discover Harrison, will enable me to write one rippingly good lampoon.
But you thought you were reading a book review.
Light weaves the stories of three characters. Michael Kearney, a PhD researcher whom we discover on page 3 to be a not very nice man*, is pursued by the Shrander, a supernatural being from whom Kearney stole a pair of dice. Four hundred years later, Seria Mau Genlicher is a woman who has given up her humanity to merge with a K-ship, a primo-bitchin’ enough craft that you would give up your humanity, too, if you had the chance. Lastly we meet Ed Chianese, AKA Chinese Ed, a pilot-adventurer whom we are given to understand has BEEN THERE, DONE THAT to such an extent he now seeks his kicks dreaming in a tank. Like Kearney, Seria Mau and Ed are also on the run: Seria Mau, by a pack of thoroughly creepy aliens; Chinese Ed, by the Cray sisters, a nasty pair whose names, I suspect, are meant to stir memories of the Brothers Kray. All of their paths lead to the Kefahuchi Tract:
a thousand lights out of the galactic Core, the Kefahuchi Tract streams across half the sky, trailing its vast invisible plumes of dark matter.
It’s a mysterious region where physics ain’t quite right, and where pirates like Seria Mau and plunderers like Ed love to hang out. The Kefahuchi Tract is one of the marvels and victories of this novel, largely because Harrison doesn’t bother to spell it all out.
Harrison is a show, don’t tell kind of guy (a plus), and he puts due effort into character development (also a plus). He knows how to instill a sense of wonder. He can sometimes turn a phrase that is so pristine and elegant you’ll want to weep.
So, why am I pissed? It’s those stylistic tics.
Harrison isn’t the kind of guy who believes in invisible prose. Words like cheongsam, aubade, and etiolated draw attention to themselves, particularly when they are repeated over and over again. Within a single line of dialog, phrases are often repeated again and again. (Sure, people talk like that, but it doesn’t make for good dialog.) Characters call each other by their full names. Adverbs abound. Uneven lists abound. The stupidest things happen during sex. (Okay, I’ll grant him that one.) Weird noises filter in like Vonnegut’s pooteeweet: “Yoiy Yoiy Yoiy.” “Er Er Er.” I mean . . . huh? Various constructions keep reappearing like kudzu — for example:
She said (line of dialog).
She said (line of dialog).
Some constructions only have to show up once to be irksome.
What happened was this:
And so I ask you: do you have to be a writer to find this kind of thing annoying? Am I being (gasp) overly sensitive? Or am I simply in a jealous rage?
There’s so much goodness in Light. So much that makes you want to tip your hat, curtsy, clap your hands, you name it. Why did Harrison have to ruin it by shoving himself so firmly into view? Someone as obviously talented as Harrison could easily take the next step and tone himself down. Wasn’t it Elmore Leonard who said, “If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it”?
Before folks start egging me for wanting to turn M. John Harrison into Elmore Leonard, let me explain where I’m coming from — what I consider the ideal of fiction. John Gardner is my guru. Gardner writes that fiction is a consensual dream, one shared between the author and his readers. Although this will brutalize Gardner’s delightful words, I’ll summarize: whatever promotes the dream is good; whatever breaks the dream is bad.
Final verdict: I’m not sorry I bought Light. I’m not even sorry I read it. I may very well reread it.
But . . . damn.
D.
*I promised myself: no spoilers this time.
I am not Tim Robbins
Yesterday, while doing my 45-minute shvitz on the elliptical trainer, I watched CNN’s Wolf Blitzer interview Tim Robbins regarding his play, Embedded. The play has been out since 2003, but a film version was just released on DVD; hence Wolf’s urge to hold Tim accountable. But I’m guessing here.
My ears pricked up as Wolf ran down the play’s premise: five reporters embedded in Iraq must decide whether to report the truth or succumb to military brainwashing (as well as pressure from their own networks). This, with a few changes*, is the core of my novel-in-progress. I desperately need to know how much overlap exists. Have I been scooped? Will publishing house readers throw out my manuscript, calling it “a thinly veiled Embedded”?
CNN showed a few clips from the play. Painful stuff, and by ‘painful’ I mean ‘Saturday Night Live ever since Eddie Murphy left the show.’ Satire with all the subtlety of a jackhammer, characters that give cardboard a bad name. But wait (says I): CNN and their ilk are the targets of Embedded; perhaps they’re showing the crappy bits on purpose.
Enter Tim Robbins, in two days’ growth of beard, black tee shirt and brown sports jacket, left eyebrow permanently arched — possible evidence of a forehead lift gone bad (although, thanks to Jacko, the bar for celebrity plastic surgery disasters resides somewhere in the Kuiper Belt. But I digress). Unflappable, he deflected Wolf’s criticisms by pointing out (repeatedly) that two of the play’s five journalists are stand-up folks who risk all to report the truth. Two of Wolf’s guests, both of whom did their time as embedded journalists, provided counterpoint. One, a young woman who had actually seen the whole play, was sympathetic to Robbins’s satire and said there was a lot of truth in it (as well as some distortions). The other journalist hadn’t seen the play and basically read from a prepared statement.
By now, I was confused as all hell. Is the play any good? Is it garbage? Can I trust FoxNews.com’s review calling it “not so realistic”? (Stop laughing. Jeez, just because I said trust and FoxNews in the same sentence.) Would I be wasting my money buying the DVD? Our contractor delivered the most recent bill today for our remodel; do I even have the money to waste on this DVD? It wouldn’t be the craziest thing I’d done to research The Brakan Correspondent. That would be buying The Alamo on DVD (the John Wayne version, naturally).
Embedded is being distributed by the self-styled Emperor of marginal film marketing, Netflix. They’re the people who brought us “Eve Ensler’s ‘Until the Violence Stops,’ a look at the global effect of her ‘Vagina Monologues.'” Is this relevant? No. I just really like the phrase, “the global effect of her ‘Vagina Monologues.'”
As I read the story of the DVD’s release, reported in LATimes.com, all of my problems were solved. It turns out Embedded will air on the Sundance channel this August. I can hang on to my twenty bucks for a few more days.
I promise to get back to science fiction. I promise.
***
Karen News Flash:
Female tarantulas groom frantically after doing the nasty.
Karen figures I can work such details into my story line; I keep trying to tell her that she and her arachnid-lovin’ e-buddies are the only ones who would understand these in-jokes, and I don’t know how many of them read fiction. About a year ago, she posted a link to my sixteen-legged love scene, and did any of her spider pals come by to take a look? Noooo. I ain’t gonna be selling too many copies to that crowd, even though I’m pandering to them like there’s no tomorrow.
D.
*As far as I know, Robbins’s play doesn’t have any birds. Or pigs. Or flies. Or spiders. Or Colonel Kirbys.
unintelligent design
The April 28 edition of Nature carried this label on the front cover:
This journal contains material on evolution. Evolution by natural selection is a theory, not a fact. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered.
Approved by the University Board of Regents, 2006
An eye-popper, huh? Particularly if you’re the kind of person who reads Nature. The meaty bits came in an editorial (“Dealing with design”) and a news story (“Who has designs on your students’ minds?”) If you find the “Intelligent Design” debate at all interesting, hunt down this issue of Nature . . . and read on:
The gist of the editorial was that scientists should, if they themselves are religious, “[take] the time to talk to students about how they personally reconcile their beliefs with their research.” Ahem. (That’s Ahem, as in Gag me with a rusty spork, not Amen.) In the May 19 issue of Nature, I was gratified to discover that I wasn’t the only one to find this a wishy-washy position.
David Leaf (Dept. of Biology, Western Washington University) wants Intelligent Design to be taught in college classrooms — and he makes a great point:
In my experience, upper-level biology students with the appropriate background in molecular biology, genetics, developmental biology and evolution are capable of distinguishing the scientific merits of evolutionist and ID claims — to the great disadvantage of ID.
He goes on to write that we should keep it out of high schools primarily because high school students lack the scientific equipment to make “a well-reasoned judgement about the status of any scientific theory, including evolution”. (I would argue that it is possible, and it is worth the effort; but are our high school biology teachers up to the job? Mine certainly wasn’t.)
Chris Miller (Department of Biochemistry, Brandeis University) points out that our analogies are all wrong. We shouldn’t be calling evolution “a blind watchmaker or any other kind of engineer”
but rather a short-order cook, and — looking at the phenomenally complicated structures — one who is less like Isaac Newton than Rube Goldberg or W. Heath Robinson.
After first referring to the Wnt signalling pathway and G-protein control of cellular calcium, Dr. Miller concludes, “Just look at the details, and you’ll immediately abandon all thoughts that biological systems were designed with any intelligence whatsoever.”
(I came to that same conclusion after pondering the wit of Intelligent Design proponents.)
There are many more great letters. I urge you to pick up a copy and read ’em for yourself (pages 275 – 276 of the May 19 issue). As a parting shot, I’d like to quote from one last letter written by Jerry Coyne (Dept. of Ecology and Evolution, University of Chicago) and signed off on by a few blokes like, oh, Richard Dawkins, Richard Lewontin, James Watson, Steven Weinberg, Lewis Wolpert . . . the list goes on:
The real business of science teachers is to teach science, not to help students shore up worldviews that crumble when they learn science. And ID creationism is not science, despite the editors’ suggestion that ID “tries to use scientific methods to find evidence of God in nature”. Rather, advocates of ID pretend to use scientific methods to support their religious preconceptions. It has no more place in the classroom than geocentrism has in the astronomy curriculum.
. . . . Scientists should never have to apologize for teaching science.
Amen to that.
D.