I am a bad yak

-
In yesterday's post about the delightful CowParade Boston, I neglected to do something vitally important: aggressively plug Sacred Cows, the superb debut novel by my friend Karen Olson, because it actually features a Cow Parade in New Haven, the setting for her debut mystery novel about hard-boiled police reporter Annie Seymour. Probably the reason I forgot to make the connection is because of my shameful secret: I haven't actually read the book yet, though Karen was kind enough to give me a copy a while back. Why, you ask? Well, early on, I guess I was subconsciously afraid that I wouldn't like it and then would have to think up something nice to say about it, and of course I didn't want to hurt any feelings. Not that I'm any great judge of literature with ultra-high standards; as anyone who knows me can attest, I have never shied away from books that some ivory-tower aesthetes might view as, well, trash. In fact I was the despair of my favorite high school teacher, who was always glad to see me toting around a book but invariably horrified to find out that it was often something on the order of Lad: A Dog. The basic problem is that I'm generally not a fan of the entire mystery genre (mostly because I NEVER figure our whodunit before the reveal), so I figured that the deck was already stacked against me liking Karen's book. Although Ben gulped it down in one long night, which is saying something because he almost never reads novels (most of his reading consists of online perusal of CNN.com, the Jerusalem Post and the NASA site about the two cute little Mars Rovers). So now I have publicly admitted my shameful secret and all I can do is make amends by reading the book. Just as soon as I finish absorbing the warmth and cuddliness of A Million Little Pieces. Which, you know, who cares if it's not all completely true -- it's an amazing piece of writing. All the barfing and substance abuse of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and the emotional dysfunctionality of Running With Scissors, but with just half the laughs!

I've discovered some people who are probably even geekier than Rocky Horror/Star Trek fans: the members of the World Rock Paper Scissors Club (recently the topic of an NPR story). Did you know that RPS is a nationally competitive sport complete with strategies and gambits? Did you know that you can take a quiz to determine what sort of RPS player you are? Did you know that one or more people spent quite a few hours of their lives putting together their web site? Why am I still surprised that there are sites like this out there?

Comments

Anonymous said…
You are so kind, and so honest to admit that you didn't read my book. Although even if you don't much care for it, you will recognize the newsroom because every single newsroom is exactly the same no matter where you work. And that will, hopefully, give you a real chuckle.

Thrilled Ben liked it!
4:21 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Entertainments II

-
1. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons, which I'd never even heard of until a couple of years ago. Because of the title similarity, I guess I assumed it would be something like Cold Mountain, but actually it's more like Oscar Wilde meets Wuthering Heights. A phrase that sticks with me is the characterization of one of the characters as a "trying female." Such a useful description. 2. Jagged Little Pill , the Alanis Morissette album from several years ago that I recently rediscovered thanks to my iPod, which I've been listening to on my commute, since there's only so much NPR you can take at rush hour without getting bored and/or depressed. Lots of cool songs in addition to the familiar singles. That woman has a way with words. I can't help but wonder how many different men she's trashing, how people manage to careen from love to hate, and about the success of her future relationships given her apparently poor track record (and the potential intimidati
Read more

Beaky and spiny

-
Image
Yes, it's been a while. But today... today I have found something so inspirational that I can't help but share it with the world: long-beaked echidnas , beautifully described in The New York Times as "plump, terrier-size creatures abristle with so many competing notes of crane, mole , pig, turtle, tribble, Babar and boot scrubber that if they didn’t exist, nobody would think to Photoshop them." AND! Did you know the males have a four-headed penis? Oo la la. *** Though it's been a while since her death, I must still mark the passing of Bea Arthur, who created the unforgettable character of Maude, a rather underappreciated sitcom, lost in the 70s shuffle of "All in the Family," "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," "M*A*S*H" et al. One reason the show was so good was the writing, tackling fraught social topics and taboos just as AITF had before it. Here's a tour de force one-woman episode where Maude sees her analyst . *** One of the funnies
Read more

The rogue wave is coming

-
Ben and I saw " Poseidon " on Wednesday. To absolutely no one's surprise, I have lots of Deep Thoughts about the remake as well as comparisons to the original ("that's heavy, Robin"). I know it's retarded, but I took a pass on the scifi-fantasy Hobbit / Dungeons and Dragons nerdliness earlier in life, and I'm not a computer programmer, so I have the right to geek out about SOMETHING. Too bad I don't put this much effort into something else, like say learning an instrument, in which case I'd be appearing nightly at Carnegie Hall or at least Great Woods. But this is gonna take a while, so brace yourself for a future sea o' type. Elsewhere in the news, work has turned into a deluge as I crank out actual web pages, among other side projects that have suddenly cropped up. This three-day weekend will be a wonderful thing. And no 9:15 a.m. soccer tomorrow -- woo hoo! Ben personally accompanied the surveyor and held the sticks this morning at our
Read more