Pure Genius

      Thanks to RK-- who alerted me over a pint on Tuesday to a CNN story on Ray Charles literally behind my head-- I finally figured out what the hub-bub was about: not just a collection of duets with musical lesser lights, but a 7 CD and 1 DVD boxed-set of the complete Atlantic recordings.   In a word: Awesome.....   In two: FUCKING Awesome.

      Amero-ethnomusicoligsts, however, have just-- pardon the phrase-- creamed their jeans, respectively and collectively, and probably cumulatively.

Children of the Corn

      Oddly enough, I stumbled upon this article just as Stewie Griffin claimed he had "half a pack of Rolaids in his diaper."   

The Presidential Seal

      When (sigh) a rubber stamp just isn't enough....  

      This blog's favourite bit: "We'd like to tell him how respected he is in China, so we can boost his confidence and help his career."   Ah, the (er) milk of human kindness....

The Weapon of Mass Seduction

      American writers, it seems, have seen the enemy, and it is Thomas Browne.   And Samuel Johnson.   And Evelyn Waugh. And Thomas Carlyle. And John Dryden.   And, in fact, any writer availed to devices of nuance.

      Gee, I wonder why....

      (Now rewrite that first paragraph with semicolons, and you tell me which works better, the hamfisted thumping of the periods, or the subtle twisting of the semicolons.)

Beating Around The Bush

Kinda says it all, doesn't it?

Observation

      Consider it a wisdom:   If you know what a polymath is, you probably think you are one. (And, of course, you would probably be wrong.   Savour the humbling irony.)

Ligers, Not Daughters?

      It's not often I read a book review that makes me say to myself, "Damn, I HAVE to pick that book up!"   Consider this one of those instances.  

      (I can't wait: I can already hear the more pious and smug femipundits mewing like Goneril.   Hee hee!)

I Guess He Had Her At "Get Out"

      No word, however, if he'll deplete her.

U2, Rufé?

      It was only about a dozen years ago it seemed everyone and his aunt Millie was lining up to pay tribute to Leonard Cohen, but here we go again-- this time with the assistance not only of U2, Rufus Wainwright, and Nick Cave, but also (wait for it) Mel Gibson.   A wonder they didn't name the film Graveheart.  

Glib Service

      The feteing of Nabokov's Lolita -- on the occasion of its fiftieth year, as regular readers here should be aware-- continues today with a piece in the NYT that unfortunately seems more pap than meat.   The article's tendency towards glibness I find bothersome, to say nothing of misleading. Take, for example, this rather smug characterization of Nabokov's first genuine supporter, Graham Greene:

Only at the end of the year did Graham Greene, in London, relieve "Lolita" of her obscurity. Greene was not always good to little girls; he had lost a lawsuit for having proferred a few remarks about Shirley Temple and her "dimpled depravity."

"Not always good to little girls."   Oy vey....   The reductionism here makes it sound as if Greene had written about Temple as some kind of real life Humbert Humbert, when, in fact, he criticized 20th Century Fox for deliberately marketing Temple (in GG's words) with "a certain adroit coquetry which appealed to middle-aged men."   It's also worth observing that in most critical circles, GG's observations are now accepted as accurate-- and, to an extent, astutely prophetic.   (One shudders to think what hay Greene would have made from the Olsen Twins.)   It is, however, this sort of deliberately flip characterization that sends me right up with wall -- especially when it's easily remedied with a little prudent editing and intelligent research.   But-- gronk!-- nay, nary, and natch, it's easier and more provocative to suggest that Greene was luridly objectifying "little girls."   Frankly, this is one of the weaker pieces on Lolita I've seen this year, and it makes me wonder if we've learned anything at all from that book and how we approach issues of desire and objectification.   I suspect that if either Nabokov or Greene were still around, they'd read this article with mildly-profane expressions of indignance.   Actually, Greene would probably have laughed-- loudly and heartily-- at such priggish earnestness.   Perhaps best we should react the same way.

Gnothi Se

      And Brian wonders why people think he's a malignant tumour in Canadian history.

      (Who knew someone could surpass Trudeau's arrogance?   There is, however, a difference: Trudeau had A REASON for being arrogant.   Brian Mul-Brigadoon-ey?   Methinks he's trying to be the Canuckistani Reagan, his sins forgot, that he might be marshalled for greatness.   Gawd, gawd, gawd, let him go the way of Arthur Meighen.)

      Riddle me this Batmans:   How many people will do anything more than shrug when Mulroney (Gawd forbid) shuffles off this mortal coil?   If you guess more than ten, you must be using the same mathematical skills that governed Canada's finance ministry for so long.

There's A First Time For Everything....

      Bestill my quaking heart, I can't believe it: Is it possible? Is it in fact possible that Dalton McSquinty has finally-- at long last and after enough fumbling idiocy to embarrass even a fourteen-year old boy-- done something RIGHT?   Hark, hark!   Summon the heralds!   Summon the hautboys!  

      Who knew the chuckleheaded, imbecilic, dissembling panderer had it in him?   Then again, as his facesake has said, "We all go a little mad sometimes."

Puhleeze, Academy II: Trackin' Braining

      Saturday's Guardian features an intriguing excerpt from Elaine Showalter's new book Faculty Towers: The Academic Novel and Its Discontents, the title of which seems only a pair of dicritical marks away from something worthy of John Cleese.   (Note the Freudian suggestion in the title, too.)   The article's a good read, and it makes me look forward to getting my mitts on a copy of Showalter's full text, although I should say-- assuring some of you, perhaps disappointing others-- that the Not-So-Good Doctor has never once felt the desire to write about his experiences at his own Eyesore U.   If he did, however, it'd probably have to be titled How To Succeed In Listlessness Without Really Trying.   Twaddlemarch, I fear, would be just a bit too on the nose.

Caveat Lector!

      Obedient (to a point) to the wisdom of the ancients, the Not-So-Good Doc -- recently consigned, kicking and screaming, to being 2⁵-- was left scratching his beard, somewhere between stupefication and diabolical temptation, when rereading through Apostolos Athanassakis' translation of Hesiod's Works and Days yesternoon.   Pray, dear readers, what-- oh what!-- should the Doctor do, faced as he is with an injunction from a man much, much wiser than he?   Question classical teaching?   'Twould be hubris, wouldn't it?   What impudence!   What certain folly!   But, but, but....

The right time to bring a wife to your home
is when you are only a few years younger than thirty,
or just a few years older.   This is the time for marriage.
Five years past puberty makes a woman a suitable bride.
Marry a virgin so you can teach her right from wrong.
Choose from among the girls who live near you and check
every detail, so that your bride will not be the neighborhood joke.
Nothing is better for man than a good wife,
and no horror matches a bad one, a glutton
who reclines to eat and needs no fire to roast
even a stalwart man and age him before his time.

(Too late.)   Ah, what the hell, why am I even thinking about this?   Obedience is not an option, after all.   Finding a virgin in this day and age is a task from which even Sisyphus would shrink.  

      As the Romans would say, "Caveat lector." And caveat lecher, too.   Now be vewwy, vewwy quiet: it's virgin hunting season.  

      UPDATE:   Curiousity made me look up the etymology of the word "lecher." Suffice it to say, the origins are interesting:

c.1175, from O.Fr. lecheor "one living a life of debauchery," esp. "one given to sexual indulgence," lit. "licker," agent noun from lechier "to lick, to live in debauchery or gluttony," from Frank. *likkon, from P.Gmc. *likkojan "to lick" (see lick). Noun lech "strong desire" is a 1796 back-formation.

"The priests had excellent cause to forbid us lechery: this injunction, by reserving to them acquaintance with and absolution for these private sins, gave them an incredible ascendancy over women, and opened up to them a career of lubricity whose scope knew no limits." [Marquis de Sade]

Oh, the marvellous world of tongues....

(And We Can Almost Smell) Your TV Sheets....

      About this, all this blog is going to say: at least they won't have Clay Aiken and Angela Lansbury singing "Those Were The Days...."   Or Larry King doing "Thank You For Being A Friend."  

      Let us just count our tender mercies they haven't asked Ellen to "dance" to Hugo Montenegro's Greatest Hits.

      (And if you don't get the above references, you really are too young for this blog, Gosh darn ya.)

Popular Culture

      From today's Shmecktator:

By hanging on to No. 1 [in the U.S., with "We Belong Together"], [Mariah] Carey's total weeks at No. 1 is now 75.   If Carey remains in the top spot for five more weeks, she will surpass Elvis Presley's 79 weeks at the top and pull ahead as the act with the most weeks at No. 1 in U.S. chart history.

*** shudder***   It's enough to make one begin quoting Revelations.        

Stuff That Bloggers The Mind

      As many of you know, I considered dumping the increasingly problematic Enetation for handling the comments around here.   On this subject, I've hummed and hawed with Hamlet-like uncertainty.   No more.   Yesterday, I did the initial work of setting up a blog for my Film and Lit class this year, and within ten minutes of the first (trial) post there, two comments had been left, entirely Spam and boding badly for how easily things could become a giant pain in the Doc's barely-existent arse.   So, that blog, I've determined, will only allow comments from invited members (i.e., my students), something I'm not about to do with this more public site.   So, Enetation it shall remain, bumps and grinds and stalls and all.   The last thing I want to be doing is deleting ads for Cialis and Hold'Em Poker every half hour. Besides, I'm sure none of you want the Not-So-Good Doc any grumpier than he usually is.   Right?   Right.

      It's nearly 9am and the Doc is listening to Robbie Robertson's Storyville, an album now eerily sad given what has happened in New Orleans.   Apparently, the Feds in the US have shipped down 25,000 body bags, which is a haunting statistic: usually they send more than twice as many body bags as they expect to need, generally, as they say, to err on the side of caution.   Which means the Feds are (implicitly) expecting at least 10,000 dead.   Ten thousand.  At least.   And even that probable underestimation would make the death toll thrice that of September 11th.   Staggering.

M*A*S*H-terpiece Theatre?

      Not quite sure what to make of this, but it figures that Altman-- so famous for his fondness for improvisation-- should choose an unfinished play for his debut at the Old Vic.   Scripts, scripts? We don't need no stinkin' scripts!

      (As for Kevin Spacey as Richard II: let us simply hope he doesn't play the poet-king as a K-PAX-ian outsider.   The name "Verbal Cant" comes to mind.)

All He Did Was Keep The Beat (In Bad Company), or, God Save The Queen

      Maybe we don't need another hero, but, dammit, sometimes it's just nice to have another one around.  

Whip Van Wrinkle

      For the record, the five men in question had CONDITIONER in their hands.   Really.   Really really.  

      (As for the two ladies, one hopes they didn't end up having a Carrie moment.)

The Vancouver Canucks

      To tell you the truth, this blog isn't sure if it should be proud of this story, or galled by the context that informs it.   Key quote: "We've got Canadian flags flying everywhere." Yup, 'cuz the "fabulous, fabulous guys" were standing on guard for thee. Or, perhaps, floating.

Little Hams, Who Made Ye?

      It has been a while since I annoyed people with cat pictures, so I think you're all due.

      Here's Trouble, looking studious, on one of his favourite perches, the breakfast nook, which allows him a clear view of whatever is being made in the kitchen, and whatever is happening in the back room. The telephone you may be able to discern in the foreground is his favourite pillow, which affords him the opportunity to doze off on his self-appointed sentry duties. Trouble's been with me for over 10 years now, and I suspect he's about 14 now. He remains in remarkably good health, and perpetually a Character: gruff, cantankerous, independent, he always seems to be an inch and a half short of giving a damn. Every now and again, though, you can espy the kitten, the little boy, still inside the cat, as in this picture: he can still be transfixed by things he has known forever, which I find unendingly sweet. Old age-- though he bears no physical signs of such-- has demured him a bit, so now he's rather a gentle grump, with the sternest glare I've ever seen on a cat. But that's what I like so much about this pic: it seems, to this admittedly partial observer, to reveal both his intensity and that little glimmer of kittenish wonderment. It's all, as they say, in his eyes. Ah, Trouble, my boy....

      ... and here's Jenny, doing what Jenny does best, save for eating and shitting. As you can see, precious little disturbs Jenny when in sleep mode, not even a cap falling of the top of the futon. Quite the opposite in fact: the cap becomes another thing to nestle in, as if it were a blanket. And, naturally, that cat has to have control of the TV remote, which means I regularly don't have the heart to change channels when Jenny drifts off like an old man listening to a baseball game on the radio. Jenny has now been around here for ten months or so, and almost all of the indicators of being an adopted stray have disappeared: the bêtes-noires are gone, so too the inclinations to dart for the door. The only remnant: the clamorous excitement anytime food might, just maybe maybe might, be available. It's always in contrast with that ruckus that Jenny's periods of repose are so endearing, even if I think Jenny gets more use out of my futon than I do. Oh, to have the stressful life of a cat....

Yesterday's trip to Pork Spew was good but exhausting. The first trip to campus, where the frosh display their na^iuml;veté obliviously and even a bit proudly, is invariably An Experience. Older farts like me, nursing their beers, in the meantime stifle our chuckles and our temptations to mutter things equivalent to "Oh, they're like this now...." Their giddy adventurousness will pass soon enough, and they'll end up like the rest of us, as stale as yesterday's coffee.

BTW, I found myself IDed at one of the main pubs on campus, which is hilarious on its own. The manager then came along, put his hand on my shoulder and said to the 19-if-she's-a-day bartender-in-training, "I don't think there's a way he could be confused for less than 25, don't ya think?" Ah, backhanded compliments, the ways of the tavernal world....

Between The Sheets, or Inter-Cover Brother

      Following this blog's recent post on things I learned from the movies, it seemed only fitting to supply a similar post on the various things I've learned from my readings over the years-enough-to-beggar-counting.   Unfortunately, this list probably won't be as accessible as the movie one, but-- damn it-- this blog never promised to appeal to lowest common denominators, even if it frequently does. (Sn*rk.)   And with no further ado, What I Learned From Literature:

• Embrace 69-ing, because the way up and the way down are the same thing.    (Herakleitos)
  
• There's a reason that reading Margaret Atwood causes one to twitch like Herbert Lom in a Pink Panther movie.   (Atwood, "You Fit Into Me")
  
• It was Dostoevsky that invented the Axe Effect.   (Crime and Punishment)
  
• I feel discomfort, therefore I am.   (How reassuring....)   (Graham Greene, A Burnt-Out Case)
  
• When the going gets tough, the tough get naked.   (King Lear)
  
• Fiddle-dee-dee, tomorrow is another day....    (Andrew Marvell, "To His Coy Mistress")
  
• Never, ever, in your otherwise-useless life will people of all stripes be interested in you than when you have a silly metal band wrapped around your finger.   (Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings)
  
• Be careful with your relations, and keep your kids away from the Medea.   (Euripides)
  
• Always keep a hanky handy.   (Othello)
  
• Or, on second thought, maybe not.   (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight)
  
• Thank heaven for little girls.   (Dante, The Commedia)
  
• Or, on second thought, maybe not.   (Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita)
  
• Just because something smells like fish doesn't mean you should chase after it.   (Thomas Gray, "Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat....")
  
• Apparently, some women can masturbate and write at the same time.   (James Joyce, Ulysses)
  
• Pussy rubbing against a post is indeed a form of worship.   (Christopher Smart, Jubilate Agno)
  
• Shock of shocks, life IS a stitch.   (Mary Shelley, Frankenstein)
  
• It's a villanelle world when your whistle blows, and still your kid will want a piece of your time.   (Dylan Thomas, "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night")
  
• Some teachers will do anything to encourage their students.   (Mordecai Richler, Cocksure)
  
• Never, ever, screw around with your boss' daughter.   (The Tempest)
  
• They really do fuck you up, your Mum and Dad.   (Sophocles, Oedipus Rex)
  
• Even the brilliant need a shot in the arm now and again.   (Arthur Conan Doyle, the Sherlock Holmes stories)
  
• Driving Miss Daisy isn't as innocuous as it sounds.   (F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby)
  
• Just because something-- or someone-- says "DRINK ME" doesn't mean that you should.   (Lewis Carroll, Alice In Wonderland; see also Bram Stoker, Dracula)
  
• All in all, everything's just another brick in the wall.   (Edgar Allan Poe, "The Cask of Amontillado")
  
• The cruellest sentences with which one be punished are Faulkner's.   (Absalom, Absalom!)
  
• For God's sake, DON'T throw the baby out with the bathwater.   (George Eliot, Adam Bede)
  
• Sometimes the A just isn't worth it.   (Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter)
  
• Believe it or not, that burning sensation in your loins may mean you're going to Heaven.   (George Bernard Shaw, Saint Joan)
  
• And, Leonard Coehn forgive me, don't go home with your pardon.   (William Langland, The Vision of Piers Plowman)
  
• Give a woman a little romance, and all she'll want is moor, moor, moor.   (Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights)
  
• Give a man a little romance, and all he'll want is More, More, More.   (Robert Bolt, A Man For All Seasons)
  
• If the pen is mightier than the sword, a hardcover copy of Clarissa is mightier than a bulldozer.
  
• All shall be Hell, and all manner of myself shall be Hell.   (John Milton, Paradise Lost)
  
• Some people have a lot more going on upstairs than you'd think.   (Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray)
  
• Financial worries will send you right around the bend.   (Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman)
  
• Honey and Pooh: a combination even more magical than chocolate and peanut butter.   (A.A. Milne)
  
• Ladies, despite what they may tell you in Tijuana, taking the worm probably isn't a very good idea.   (Antony and Cleopatra)
  
• An ounce of Pound is a cure for invention.   (The Cantos)
  
• The world's first Surrealist was Henry Howard.   Tottle-ly.   (Yes, RK, I know, no one will get it....)
  
• You can't judge a book by its cover, or its title.   (E.M. Forster, Howards End; Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited; John Mortimer, Rumpole of the Bailey; William Golding, The Lord of the Flies; W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage)
  
• Every man thinks his bat is made of sacred wood-- until the big moment when he swings with it and misses.   Bernard Malamud, The Natural)
  
• All it takes is one snowballing incident to change your life forever.   (Robertson Davies, Fifth Business)
  
  and
  
  
• There's ALWAYS room for Tang.   (Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff)

Well, there we go. Now off the Pork Spew. Essay your own good folks.

New Orleans Was Sinking....

      ... and W didn't wanna swim, as now seems beyond debate (save for the devotedly and rabidly partisan Shrubbies).   Today's NYT features a particularly pointed indictment by Paul Krugman that encapsulates most of what wrong before Katrina struck, and what will continue to remain wrong until there's a new occupant of the Whitehouse. It's a shame, really, that the American population can't insist on a presidential recall in the same way that Californians could: such unfathomable, to say nothing of tragic, incompetence is beyond apology.   Frankly, I'd like to see the President and his cronies do a dozen or so swigs each of Biloxi tapwater before they make any more disingenuous claims of compassion for Katrina's victims.   One miserable evacuation deserves another, don't you think?

Magic Dealism

      "Falling in love... is basically a process where both sides feel they're getting a good deal."

      ....

      ....

      HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!    Oh stop, my sides are hurting.... [He wipes away the slight tear that has appeared in his eye.]   My, I needed a laugh like that.

Sensual Surrender and Formal Atrophy

      And now, ladies and gentlemen, your Bizarre Headline of the Day....

      (Bjork, the other, greasier, white meat....)

Frankly, My Dears....

      Okay, this is a result I had not expected (note the hilarious italicized section, which is, of course, my own emphasis):

Which Leading Man Are You?

Clark Gable You scored 23% Tough, 28% Roguish, 33% Friendly, and 14% Charming! You're a pretty interesting guy, all man but approachable and friendly. You like the lovely ladies, but you're also a real stand up guy with a true sense of honor and duty. You're respected by most men, although they probably wouldn't trust you alone with their girlfriends and even wives. Women find you intriguing, drawn to your playful sense of fun and true-blue core. You think most women are rather silly, but strong dames with smarts really turn you on, and you tend to marry them. Leading ladies include Claudette Colbert and Vivien Leigh, women who find you somewhat charming but a little dangerous.

I love the "roguish" assessment. Can I put that on my c.v.?   "And you tend to marry them," however, is a horrifying suggestion.

         Ladies, you might want to take the Leading Ladies Test.   If any of you end up with Claudette Colbert or Vivien Leigh, let me know....     (Then again, Gable did do The Misfits with Hollywood's favourite bicycle, so remember: there's lots of room for variety.)