Indiana Jones and the curse of the overlong movie title.

At home in east TN this weekend, very little on the plate today except to see abovesaid movie this afternoon at 3:15 and then, as Mom and Dad are feeling the ill effects of colds, to probably order a pizza, pick 'er up, and take 'er home. (Did I just split an infinitive?)

I don't hold out a lot of hope for the new Indy, but it still might be enjoyable. I will go in with no expectations. I enjoyed the first three just fine. If this one holds true to form, it'll move so briskly I won't have time to think. What I remember about Lost Ark and Last Crusade in particular was how much fun the filmmakers were having with the Saturday-morning serial form, so if this new one can do that, I'll be fine.

Which leads me for no reason into the shameful admission that I laughed out loud while watching Anger Management. More than once. The movie's total bullshit, as are most Sandler joints, but he has the knack of eking out a genuine laugh or two. OK...and I laughed more than is healthy during Happy Gilmore, back in the day.

Sandler's movies strike me as very conservative and Republican--I mean the ones he produces and stars in. There's always a healthy level of hoo-ah male bonding, lots of sports, and always these groan-inducing "patriotic" moments like the Giuliani cameo in Anger Management, and Sandler's "You did the right thing!" Overall, the movies are also really shoddy in their character development and scene management. I remember being offended by that clumsy courtroom scene in Big Daddy, as well as the whole idea that a man who teaches a kid to urinate in public could conceivably make a good father.

The man has some acting chops, I think--or at least he can be convincing playing a certain kind of soft-spoken, warm-hearted guy who is seething inside (see Punch-Drunk Love, even parts of Spanglish). But the fatal flaw of Sandler productions is how, time and again, they hold up the Sandler type as misunderstood and thus admirable. At least in Anger Management he has Nicholson's even more raging character to eclipse him.

So to sum up: 1) at home this weekend; 2) going to see Indy; 3) going to eat pizza; 4) I've seen more Sandler movies than I care to admit.

Home ownership ain't so bad, part 2: the air in here.

Nearly 400 bucks later, our a/c appears to be running much more efficiently.  I'm sitting in the study/computer room, normally one of the stuffier rooms, and I feel it on my legs way more than usual.  The temp isn't decreasing as fast as I thought it would, but it definitely feels cooler now.

We've been in this house 10 months and it took us that long to realize the a/c wasn't working efficiently.  It was running for long periods--5-6 hours at a stretch--and the house wasn't cooling very fast.  "Oh well," we instinctively thought, "it's just how it is."  Why did we think this for so long?

It's not a long-term fix, but the unit should be more functional for a while.  Unfortunately, the best long-term fix is to get a new system; this one isn't up to current SEER specifications and is also teetering on the edge of its lifespan.  But we aren't made of money.  

Again, donations accepted.

Recent and future reading, and reading that will never be.

Started today: Grace, Fallen from, by Marianne Boruch.

Just completed: Lincoln's Melancholy, by Joshua Wolf Shenk.  As someone who has suffered from melancholy, the title alone drew me in.  Shenk makes his case a little too cheerfully and often, but it's a good portrait of the man.  The links between mental imbalance and genius are massaged but not strained.

Recently completed: The March, by E.L. Doctorow, and The Sea, by John Banville.  Doctorow pulls off the trick of making General Sherman a sympathetic character and does his usual great job of juggling characters, philosophies, points of view.  An engaging mosaic.  The Sea was my introduction to Banville and I wondered how I missed him before.  He's prolific, some 10-12 novels.  I loved this book--it teems with sensuality, energy, and obsessiveness.

Upcoming: Banville's The Book of Evidence, and (yes) To the Lighthouse.  I don't know why, but reading Banville's fluid excursions into and out of memory and back again made me think of Virginia Woolf, and then I remembered trying to read Jacob's Room as an undergraduate and being baffled.  But years later I read A Room of One's Own and found it engaging, and then a few more years later I read Cunningham's The Hours, and I began to understand a little more of where she was coming from.  Then I taught "The Mark on the Wall" in American Lit. and thought "Aha!"  So now, soon, finally, To the Lighthouse.  If that goes well, perhaps Mrs. Dalloway.

The best thing I've read this year, I believe, is The Road by Cormac McCarthy--relentless and grim and beautiful, and soon to be a major motion picture starring Viggo Mortensen.  Not far behind is An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England by Brock Clarke--morbidly funny or funnily morbid.

No rhyme, no reason to my reading habits.  In the last two years, much more history and fiction, and that's intentional.  Less poetry, and that's probably one reason my own writing has--well, I was going to say stalled, but it hasn't really.  Writing blurbs about baseball games (for pay) is a different, um, ballgame, but it still counts, doesn't it?  Even though it's no Banville.

Reading that will never be, at least for a while, despite my wishes for it to be so: Ulysses, Moby Dick (started twice, never finished), The Scarlet Letter, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.  I could go on.

Blurbing for dollars.

I'm now involved in a little side project: contributing blurbs (anywhere from 2-3 sentences to a page, depending on the topic) about the baseball experience at Turner Field.  Two brothers in Chicago have a small business writing fan guides to ballparks; the guides are meant for true fans and are a little cheeky and irreverent.  So I'm doing my best to maintain cheekiness. :)  

It's writing for pay, which I haven't done too much of.  It's fun, so far, and I hope to do justice to TF.  So far, I've concocted a bit on the huge Jumbotron and a few restaurant blurbs.

How did I find out about this?  Craigslist.

You're going to Hollywood.

Well, how many of you are excited that David Cook is the new American Idol?

Um...yay?

I'm okay with it, but I never forget that AI is first and foremost a business venture, and as such, forgettable.  Simon Cowell is brilliant and spot-on, but he is a suit disguised as a V-neck sweater.  And Seacrest?  Also brilliant, in his way.  Makes perfect sense that he's Casey Kasem's successor on American Top 40, because he projects that same squeaky-clean, transparent, context-free demeanor.

The show itself is a train wreck.  The summer-camp singalongs, forced smiles, needless cameos, Abdul's Oscar-length speeches: all have got to go.  And lose the inane Q &A, please.  What do you know--I just trimmed down each episode to 15 minutes.

And yet, isn't AI the kind of show that rewards blandness and safety?  Several veterans have gone on to viable careers, but I would venture to say only two of them--Kelly Clarkson and Chris Daughtry--have started to do anything musically distinctive.  And with Clarkson, it took a while.

As for Cook, he was among my faves early on but grew much less distinctive as the machine lumbered to its end.  I always thought his voice was a put-on, though, self-consciously "smoky" or "gravelly."  Luckily, some interesting arrangements buoyed him.

And the hits just keep on comin'.

Home ownership ain't so bad, some days.

See this post for previous rantings on the challenges of maintaining this bitch called a home.

But once in a while, it ain't so bad. Dare I say, sometimes it approaches satisfaction and even bliss. I find myself most satisfied after I mow the grass. Mowing is something I can control, and so just like my dad, I mow in a carefully managed circle, keeping the leftmost wheels on the outer edge of the unmowed grass, and by god, it feels good to cut something down to size.

Weeding's not so bad either, for some reason--either weed-eating or pulling by hand. It's a real trip to yank out a big freaking weed that looks like a plant. And it is *work*, y'all. But it's the kind of work I don't mind. Again, probably a control thing.

The previously discussed downspout and gutter (gutteral?) issues are now taken care of, and it really was no big sweat to call our handyman dude again, get him out here, and have him finish what he didn't finish before. And he didn't gouge us.

If any of y'all reading this are thinking about buying a house, I say do it. But...home ownership is never done. It's like some of my old jobs; I'll never fully get on top of it.

I'm in a beachy/marshy state of mind.

Ah, the beach.

We got back last Sunday and I'm still coming out of my dreamy frame of mind. These days I don't want to listen to Jimmy Buffett for more than ten minutes, but his musical mindset is akin to what I felt last week.

We got everything we wanted: mostly leisure, of course, but also a low-country boil, the lowest tide I've ever seen, a mostly deserted beach, three cat encounters, gorgeous weather, lots of magazines, and a shudder-inducing bridge over the Savannah River (so shudder-inducing that we took the long, flat way back to our rental because it scared me so much).

This picture was taken at Hunting Island State Park. It's what happens when an island loses a mile or so of beach every year. For that reason, the park has installed "groins," wooden barriers every 400-500 feet or so up the beach. In 100 years, will this island still be around?

Word to the wise: don't be misled whenever you eat seafood at the beach thinking that because it's fresh, it'll be tasty. It very likely is fresh, but if the preparation is lame, the dinner is lame too. We made that mistake our first night at a semi-hole in the wall near our rental. I ordered broiled scallops. Indeed they were broiled, but there was hardly any seasoning and the dish was awash in butter. Even my gf's blackened grouper was bland. She summed it up well--this was the kind of place that knows how to fry really well, and most customers order their fish fried. Fuck us for trying to eat somewhat healthy.

Otherwise, it was a good food week. We had lovely dinners in both Beaufort and Savannah. We had a memorable lunch at the Shrimp Shack; the experience is summed up in the name, I think.

I'd go back. I'd like to go back right now. But that costs money, dammit. Donations accepted!

Coming up for me, end of the month: a short, low-cost trip home to Tennessee, and then back here for the bulk of the summer, with perhaps a side trip or two around the state (Milledgeville, for example, and the Flannery O'Connor home). And we have talked about revisiting Savannah for a long weekend.

My summer classes begin June 16th, and at some point I'll start prepping--but no time soon. If they both make, I'll have freshman comp I and American Lit. II. I've taught 'em multiple times before; the former I could teach in my sleep. The former I'd like to teach in my sleep, in fact, since most of my students lately are learning in their sleep.

Viva lost wages, part 2: big portions and small budgets.

If I take Las Vegas at face value, it's harmless, vaporous, like an episode of American Idol.  If I don't take it at face value--if I let it annoy the fuck out of me, if I let my slot-machine neighbor's cries of joy at winning $1000 get to me, if I remind myself that I'm getting pummeled with stimuli when I'm not in my hotel room--I am the most miserable human being on the planet.

Our trip was fine, overall.  Treasure Island was suitable: the beds were super-cushy, the coffee shop served agreeable fare.  For two boys with little need for fanciness, it more than fit the bill.  We ate a sumptuous seafood buffet at the Rio our first night; I got together with my girlfriend's parents and we had nice prime rib the next night at South Point while my friend had lovely-sounding sushi at Caesar's.  

We got sloshed on cranberry vodkas (me) and Bass (him); I threw up for the first time in forever.  I bought pants.

We rented a car and only used it one day, but we used it wisely by leaving the Strip our last day and venturing out to Valley of Fire State Park.  I am so glad we did; I was suffering severe cabin fever.

The last night, we ventured over to the Palazzo, the new sister hotel of the Venetian--gorgeous, sumptuous, spacious, marble-dominated.

But something finally crystallized this weekend while I was sitting in a casino cursing myself for losing yet another $20 on Hot Hot Penny: I'm not a gambler.  I don't have that innate need to ride a high for that long.  Like all suckers, I am seduced by the possibility of big (or even minor) winnings, and when I fall short (most of the time), I get angry.  No wonder I once walked away from a blackjack table in tears because the action was too fast.  I think, "What do I have to do to get to that place?"

No doubt I'm missing out on something, but maybe not.  I surmised on it two posts ago, and in the airport I surmised in haiku that it's probably just as efficacious to pay 10-11 bucks for a good mixed drink at the casino bar and spend an hour nursing a buzz, as opposed to nursing the possibility of a buzz at the roulette table.  Or hell, pay $60-70 for a show.

Oh well.  It ain't called Sin City for nothing.  I guess the Strip is just so relentless in its adult-playground bombardment that I feel bad when I'm not fully playing.  It's a place that shouts, "Give in!" and I'm naturally suspicious of a place that tells me to be an excessive, overindulgent tourist.  I don't always like being reminded that I'm little different from the dude smoking cigars and placing his Kentucky Derby bet in the sports book.

That said, I'll probably go back at some point.  As mentioned, my gf's parents live there, and if they don't move to Atl. anytime soon (the housing market being what it is), we may reconvene soon.  There's probably a good Strip experience to be had, and I just haven't fully had it yet.

The general surveys the carnage, part 2.

All final grades have been calculated and posted to the school Web site--yee-ha!  They ran about as I expected, with one notable exception.  In my comatose afternoon class, out of nine who survived into the final exam (i.e. they didn't withdraw or fail because of excessive absence), eight made either D's or F's and will have to repeat the course.  Of those eight, five were F's, and outright F's at that--no borderline cases here.

Crap.

I may have been a little too exacting in my points schematic, but not by much.  Half or more of those F's could have been avoided if the little rats had turned in their work, listened to me, and/or bothered to give half a fig (not even a whole one!).  So on balance, maybe not that surprising.

Now, a few days until we (the gf and I) head to the beach: Harbor Island, SC.  A whole week!  I'm actually going to try to relax and clear my mind, which I was not able to do in Vegas.  More on that in the next post.

Viva lost wages.

That's right: this time tomorrow I'll be in the air headed for LV with a friend who's turning 40 this weekend. A colleague is covering my final on Monday, when we fly back, and I'll be here to administer my other finals. Technically, it's hooky. But if not now, when?

I've been before; my girlfriend's parents live there, and we customarily stay with them. But my friend and I are doing it up right by staying on the Strip at TI--used to be Treasure Island, but now (ooo) it's TI. Luckily, I don't have the personality Vegas was designed for, and I don't make enough money to want to gamble large (or small) portions of it. I'll be pushing it if I spend $75 gambling. Quarter slot machines are almost too expensive. And anyway, I'd rather spend $40 on a semi-classy buffet than on blackjack, for instance, which moves too fast for this boy. My friend is a big roulette fan and will spend hours at the table; I may join him for a few rounds but will soon seek the sanctuary of a vodka tonic.

I've written poems about Vegas before. Even in the midst of the booming, sanitized, corporate Strip, it still has that desperate, frayed-at-the-edges, overeager vibe about it which (for me) is a good place to begin a poem. Here's one which attempts to do justice to it. The genesis wasn't really Vegas but the fact I wanted to write a poem in which I could rhyme "Caesar's Palace" with "Caesar salad."

A good weekend to all.

***

The Shops at Caesar’s Palace

Vegas: poster child for addiction,
spokesman for the perils of being sexy.
Our last night on the Strip, we hailed a taxi
and severed ourselves from our predictions.

Faux canal, faux gondola rowed by a faux gondolier,
faux wedding, faux vows vowed in a faux gazebo,
sugar rush of the insoluble placebo,
faux atoms floating in a faux atmosphere.

In the café, we wolfed a Caesar salad.
I dwelled on that gray-faced lady who’d won
five thousand dollars after playing just one,
so we ducked into the shops at Caesar’s Palace

and bought with our hearts new suits and shoes.
We felt the pounding of a construction project.
We watched a robot princess genuflect
before a heatless fire and pray to Zeus.

We walked beneath a simulacrum of the sky
which darkened as the day darkened—art
imitating life. Only the truly cruel and hard
have learned how to defuse the stimuli,

how to walk unmoved down Las Vegas Boulevard
and pass right by the giant Celine Dion,
how to write it up as just so much neon.
We went inside the store that looked like a deck of cards

and came out with a bottle of beer each.
Were we sad or happy to be leaving?
Were we glad we’d come? Were we breathing?
Would it be easier if we were rich?

I can’t speak for her, but I sought credentials—
not the jackpot, exactly, but a certain carriage,
chutzpah, confidence, dumb courage,
the myopic swagger of the presidential.

We toasted: to the fountains and piped-in strings,
to promises, to the desert air swelling with sound,
to the girl wobbling past us in a wedding gown
and high heels, crying, wide-eyed, and singing.