bad movies

04.be kind rewind - on NPR this morning i heard that the supreme court ordered the military to confiscate several copies of be kind rewind from guards at guatanomo. apparently the jokes in the film were so bad and the plot was so far-fetched and stupid that its use on prisoners violated the geneva conventions.

06.picnic at hanging rock - this is a film that makes me think that despite the popular knee-jerk criticism of twenty-first century hollywood productions, movie-making has progressed a great deal during the last few decades, and perhaps my officemate, who heartily recommended this 1975 film, hasn't. OK, james and i usually see eye-to-eye on films, but in this case the scenery, sound effects, storyline, and overall picture experience did nothing for me. there's a novel concept in the film, but it only works if you can overlook the aforementioned flaws and suspend your critical thinking skills.

the greatest literary figure of our century

i have a new favorite author.

he recently won the national book award for the absolutely true diary of a part-time indian, but i didn't read it. he has had several novels honored as new york times notable books, including indian killer and the business of fancydancing, but i haven't read them. he received the PEN/hemingway award for best first book of fiction for the lone ranger and tonto fistfight in heaven, but i didn't read it. my newest favorite literary figure has even appeared on a new yorker's best writers list.

so who is this fellow that wins my praise without hardly a glance at his novels?

he is sherman joseph alexie, jr., S-H-E-R-M-A-N, last name A-L-E-X-I-E, the great champion of sonics basketball and the gabbiest witness ever known to seattle law.

as an aspiring literary editor, i sometimes feel constrained by the categories of good literature, as if my life should be a series of witty remarks, fine wines, and twisting metaphors, as if everything must add up to transcendence and truth, as if anything less than poetic is second rate.

but that's all wrong.

and today, as mr. sherman alexie, one of washington state's great writers, testified about the value of professional sports, especially the sonics, i was reminded again that the value of everything in this life is to some degree a function of artifice, emotion, and quality. and inasmuch as sonics basketball typifies these characteristics, it is valuable.

later this year, if the city's lawsuit is unsuccesful, the seattle courts may attempt to put a price tag on that value--is sonics basketbal worth $10 million to the city? is it worth $50 million? $100 million?--but really it is invaluable.

OK, so why is alexie so great? well, besides knocking me on the head and reminding me that i need not make excuses for liking the sonics, or cheeseburgers, or gas-powered motorboats, alexie also gives a crazy diverse testimony. he takes the courtroom and transforms it into a canvas where he paints NBA basketball as a unifying force for families and cultures and, you got to see this to believe it, a playground for our century's hercules and athena.

i love this.

Q: Say they plan to leave at the end of the lease term, why renew for those final two years?
A: . . . I want two more years of the Greek gods.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2008/06/19/2008007865.pdf (search for alexie)

some thoughts on quotation marks and italics

+updated 6/19/08+

I wrote this for another context, but I haven't posted in a while, so I thought I'd bore the world rather than just my colleagues.

As you may know, my day job is as an editor for a university. In this position I work for a bunch of academics, and over the last five years I’ve developed the bias that many academics are not great writers.

This is compounded by a few factors.

First, the overarching goal of most academic writing is not the creation of good writing, it’s the generation of new ideas, or if I’m a bit less generous, the goal is to sound smart and innovative. Thus, academic writing is by its very nature flush with field-specific terminology and verbosity.

Second, because academics are bright and successful within their field, many seem to naturally assume that they are also good writers. Actually, this is probably true of non-academics also, but in my department, I’ve found that it takes a long time for the higher level faculty to seek editorial assistance. But they all need help, and once I find my way to their manuscripts, they hardly ever bat an eye if I swap some quotation marks for italics or make a few nouns roman type (I suppose they’re usually too busy!).

Likewise, I think the academics that write for nonprofit theology journals could use some help, and I doubt they’ll really care if lowly journal editors assert their will on matters of emphasis. But if they do care, such editors have the big guns in their arsenal: (1) they’re using CMOS, the king of style since the early 1900s—it happens to be the stylebook of most book publishers, the stylebook of most scholarly work in the humanities—and as far as writing style is concerned, CMOS is like the US constitution, and the journal editors are the Supreme Court; (2) they’re attempting to keep all of our articles consistent, so an author could be consoled that there’s nothing wrong with their style, they’d just like it to match the rest of the issue’s content; (3) they’re attempting to make their content relevant to a larger audience than just other theologians; (4) they’re an interdisciplinary journal with a creative writing section, so unlike other theology journals, great writing will never take a backseat to great theology; and (5) even if the author is a big name that they just have to publish, they are still the one’s pulling the strings, so authors are really beholden to their editorial decisions.

My perspective is that academics, especially in the humanities, attempt to compensate for their lack of writing genius by using artificial means of emphasis like the quotation mark. In most instances, a word can be emphasized naturally in the sentence or paragraph construction without stooping to quotation marks or italics. Moreover, by making sparse use of this convention, words that are set off by italics will stand out more. Also, many writers seem to use (or overuse) quotation marks for ironic use (see CMOS 7.58) when it really doesn’t make much sense.

So given that it’s generally best to trim a manuscript of excess italics and quotation marks, here are the guidelines that I'd recommend for a theology journal:

• Foreign words unfamiliar to readership = italics
• Emphasis (try to avoid) = italics
• Terms, words used as words, letters used as letters = italics
• Nonstandard, ironic, or other special sense (try to avoid!) = quotation marks

Of course, ultimately, the author is always right. Editors can usually get away with enforcing matters of style, but if there’s an impasse, an editor's only options are to give in or reject the piece.

pizza, pirates, and laser tag!

when my dad concocted 3d pirate black-light mini golf, we thought he was crazy, but now he's managed to combine pizza, pirates, and laser tag. check out this video:

by the way, i've tasted lou malnati's deep dish in chicago; i've tasted the pesto in the cinque terre; i've tasted pagliacci, pegasus, and tutta bella, but despite my far-flung pizza-eating experience, pietro's is still my fav.

the great smoky mountains

i'm planning a trip to nashville and the great smoky mountains next month, and i have potentially 4 days to spend in the smokies. (or is it smoky's?) anyway, if you have any knowledge or advice about that part of the world, let me know!

atheism, sharing, and god

ok, i live and breath editing, so you'll have to pardon another ancillary mention of my work at the other journal (TOJ).

in my editing class, we've been getting the inside scoop on the publishing biz; this means chatting with acquisition editors and writing book proposals.

now several months ago, i thought it might be interesting to approach my boss's boss, the director of mental health at the seattle VA, about a book on his amazing discovery of prazosin, the nightmare-relieving pill for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). murray's a funny guy, a great storyteller, and an important figure in the research community, so i figured that a book that walked a tightrope between biography, history, and timely political commentary could be entertaining from his perspective.

but then the miracle of calvin college happened. at the festival of faith and writing, an editor for one of the big christian publishers approached TOJ about the prospect of transforming our atheism issue into a book. the editor encouraged us to submit a book proposal and then he bounded back to his world of signed books.

as it happened, my assignment for a book proposal was due the next week, so i jettisoned the poor iraqi PTSD veterans--in fact, were i to properly edit this post, they'd have been wiped from the annals of the 17 point scale because i have nothing more to say about the dormant book idea; i suppose that it's relevant to the chronology but not to the story--and attempted to pull together a coherent thesis for the a TOJ atheism book.

here's what i determined: recent publications that write on atheism from a christian perspective tend to lapse into polemics. they exist solely as a response to richard dawkins, christopher hitchens, and company. in contrast, the content in the current issue of TOJ uses atheism as a starting point for more important discussions about what it means to be christians. how should a life of faith differ from a life without faith? what atheistic ideas challenge christians to live life better and more like christ? i was a bit surprised to find such a foundation, but i think it might work.

still, just now as i was relaxing on my couch and listening to my highest rated playlist, i couldn't help but get a little apologetical. and when i say "a little apologetical," i'm referring to the branch of apologetics that relies chiefly on easily disproved observations.

i was listening to "a friend i had" by aaron sprinkle, and i thought, gosh, this seems like such a perfect song. it was more a gut reaction than the result of a close analysis of the melodic complexity or the lyrical juxtapositions, but i was overpowered by a strong sense that everything was just right. so right, in fact, that i needed to tell someone. i needed to get the message out to as many people as possible. i needed to share.

i think that this silent urge to share beauty is everywhere in the world. it's in the thousand blogs that celebrate a quote or lyric in every post. it's in my atheism book proposal.

and what's not in my atheism book proposal is this simple proof: perhaps that beauty is truth and perhaps that truth--perhaps all truth--somehow leads to god and perhaps our innate need to share that truth is in some way reflected in the international movement known as the church.

after exchanging book proposals with an editing partner in my class, she remarked, andrew, you need to use more confident language. enough with the "may," "could", and "perhaps"--write with some authority.

ok, then.

you can poke holes in my theory or decry organized religion or dismiss church or laugh at ritual but isn't it true that there's something distinctly human about sharing beauty, and isn't that to some degree the purpose of church?

yes, it is so.

photograph: andrew david. "the shining." central park, nyc, ny.

letter to you!

April 1, 2008

Dear Everyone I Know:

Baseball’s had its opening day (Hooray, Bedard!) and the calendar says April, but I’m not yet convinced that it’s spring. Yesterday I dashed through the VA parking lot in a big fat hail storm, and just last Friday my coworkers were leaving work at noon to avoid icy roads and the promise of snow—what’s going on? This is Seattle, the land where clouds and sun play peek-a-boo all spring long, the home of drizzle, not snow.

So since I’m in a wintry mood, I thought I’d send a Christmas letter of sorts, an annual holiday update but with a twist (WARNING: that twist means that I’m asking you for something).

I think that people usually start these letters by describing the highlights and lowlights of the year:

THINGS I DID
I founded a soccer team. During the first season we were known as The Others, but after a season of soul-searching, we changed our name to the Powerhouse Penguins. We’ve even won a game!
I performed in a Sufjan Stevens cover band and a Backstreet Boys karaoke group.
I contacted my legislature and governor about various SuperSonics related issues, got cynical about their lack of response, and haven’t yet contacted them about Darfur.
I wrote several book review blurbs that were published in ImageUpdate, dozens of blog entries, two pages of an in-progress novel, and a few articles about Alzheimer’s research.

PLACES I VISITED
New York City, NY: Beth and I attended the Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference and visited with Matt and Jacinda Basinger.
Ocean Shores, WA: I celebrated my birthday in the penthouse at the Gray Gull with a dozen or so of my friends.
Belize: Beth and I joined my parents and grandparents in a Belize adventure. I have some great memories from the trip, and it was good to be able to travel with my Grandpa one last time before he passed away in October.
Portland, OR: I made several trips to visit my parents for holidays (e.g., Thanksgiving), Pietros Pizza fun, and Powell’s Books.

MY NEW FAVORITES
Book: Cormac McCarthy’s Border Trilogy
Food: Indian curry

OK, so now the twist.

As you may know, I’ve been working as an editor for the University of Washington (UW) Department of Psychiatry for a few years now. It’s interesting work—I’ve learned a ton about schizophrenia, posttraumatic stress disorder, and Alzheimer’s disease—and they even paid for me to get a certificate in editing from the UW, but I’ve been hoping for something with a little less statistical genetics, something a bit more creative.

Then, in August of 2007, I was invited to join the staff of The Other Journal, an online quarterly that explores matters of faith in the context of art, culture, social justice, and theology. The journal aspires to be a meeting place between the academic and the popular, and they publish essays; book, film, and music reviews; visual art; blog posts; and creative writing. They asked me to edit their upcoming print anthology and the Imagination section, a hub of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction.

Since then we’ve published an issue on psychopathology (“Virtue, Sin, and Psychosis in the New Millennium”) and an issue on atheism (which is currently ongoing), and I’ve had the opportunity to work with a great collection of amazing writers and poets. I even got to meet poet Luci Shaw, who was shocked to find that I was a twentysomething rather than a bespectacled old scholar in a tweed suit.

Now, I said that this was something of a Christmas letter. That’s because I’m kind of asking you for a Christmas gift.

The Other Journal is a non-profit organization, staffed primarily by volunteers (and people like me, working at about a buck an hour) whose work is made possible by the generous financial contributions of our readers. They hardly pay me, but I’m excited nonetheless. The experience is great and I think we’re publishing important content that needs to be seen—check us out at http://www.theotherjournal.com/. Therefore, I’m asking that you consider giving to The Other Journal.

We would use your contribution to help fund the continued work of the journal and to increase our ability to impact the world. This month, for example, we plan to attend the Faith and Writing Festival at Calvin College, an important gathering of leading voices in the exploration of faith, writing, and culture. The Faith & Writing Festival represents a unique opportunity to promote The Other Journal by hosting an exhibit and networking with publishers and writers. The conference will also allow our team of editors to meet from across the United States to refine our focus for the upcoming year.

Your contribution would also help run a series of films, lectures, and panel discussions called Film, Faith, and Justice. Last year we joined with the organization Human Rights Watch, to have the festival at the UW campus, where over four days we drew more than 1,800 participants from Seattle’s eclectic community of activists, students, academics, videophiles, and people of faith.

We need your support; all donations to The Other Journal are tax-deductible.

We are accepting online donations through the Mars Hill Graduate School donations page (https://www.mhgs.edu/af/donate.asp); in the Gift Information section, be sure to write the following:

apply my gift to OTHER
if other: The Other Journal

Donations, made out to “Mars Hill Graduate School” with TOJ/AD in the memo line, can also be sent via snail-mail to The Other Journal at:

The Other Journal at
Mars Hill Graduate School
2501 Elliott Avenue
Seattle, WA 98121

Thank you for reading my letter and considering supporting The Other Journal.

Cheers,


Andrew David
The Other Journal

PS I’m also hopeful that this working-nights-and-weekends gig might eventually turn into a more legitimate part-time job, and if we do really well at getting donations, that might be a possibility.

profanity, art, and toj

there's some great content up at the other journal. the current issue is on atheism.

also, i really like this poster.

but today i'm returning to an opus that i abandoned several months ago. the psychopathology issue of toj features the poem "hedonist's prayer,"a dark parody of the pater noster. the poem approaches the theme of moral depravity with harsh, honest language as the narrator confesses an appetite for "smut and sex" and an allegiance to "the satiation of desire." the poem even drops a participial adjective f-bomb.

so how does such a poem find its way into a christian journal that is primarily staffed by evangelicals?

there are several ways to approach the issues raised by "hedonist's prayer," but i'd like to deal with my mom first.

i expect that my mom would object most strongly to the profanity. indeed, i remember getting my mouth washed out with soap for calling someone stupid. at the time i was probably being naughty and belligerent in other ways too, but my mom used the opportunity to illustrate a biblical mandate for thoughtful, conscientious, and clean action. as the scriptures say:

do you not know that your body [e.g., mouth] is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body [i.e., with your mouth] (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).

and the lesson stuck. i don't cuss and i don't use profanity in my writing, and although i see the distinctions that separate some swear words from non-swear words as somewhat arbitrary cultural designations, i still cling to a belief that there is value to keeping my mouth clean, that this non-divisively sets me apart from a culture that could care less, that this somehow honors God.

my personal rejection of profanity is universal yet nuanced. there seem to be several uses of profanity, and although my personal usage has yet to waver, i recognize distinctions between these uses.

many people seem to use profanity as a normal character in their everyday alphabet. perhaps this pattern of usage supports the view that profanity is no longer profane because some pockets of culture have adopted it into the general lexicon.

yet here comes my mother again, thrashing her broom against those four-letter words, crowing that profanity is unnecessary, that there are better, more eloquent ways to convey one's meaning. were my mom an editor, she might say that when someone's sentences are peppered with profanity, they are falling into the trap of someone who uses like to convey every little thought or who has fallen exhaustingly in love with (nasty) adverbs.

and to this critique, the language lover in me raises his glass and cries, "cheers!" although creative writing that attempts to recreate a foul-mouthed dialect may succeed at realism, i hardly ever find it poetic. likewise, i'm not sold on literature that appears to have missed the copyediting desk--if it uses alternate spellings or attempts to excuse odd pronunciations with a boatload of apostrophes, it's probably not for me--and if the profanity is grating in its insistent repetition, it's probably not for toj.

others seem to use profanity to express anger, shock, or surprise--coffee in the lap, rat in the room, spouse in the doghouse. although these emotional outbursts share an authenticity with the first pattern of usage, they generally are accompanied with more oomph and pack a more powerful punch. if a character drops an anvil on his toe, a lone word can communicate a lot. when the anvil crushes the toe, it really isn't necessary for the character to say anything intelligible, but a brief curse certainly has more literary merit than a weak "ouch, that hurt!"

returning to paul's letter to the corinthians, i find that scripture seems to be speaking to precisely this kind of profanity, this harsh un-love-ly response to life lemons. personally, this is the point where i choose not to swear. but what about my characters? what about a poem in the editorial slush pile?

and finally, the occasional speaker of profanity seems to use their swear words literally, that is, their profanity means what it says. when profanity is used for the purpose of clear explication, when no other word conveys the same meaning as the ostracized word, i think this is where the editorial gates must open wide and begrudgingly let the word stay.

art and morality seem to be in a strange match of tug-o-war, and as a young editor, i'm caught in between, wondering how things turned out this way. if i truly believe that art is our way of communicating some sense of truth, of unconsciously channeling messages from the divine, how do i balance artistic integrity with moral integrity?

i don't really know, but i stand behind art like "hedonist's prayer," art that navigates the precipice of profanity with care, that uses every word to serve the purpose of the work without succumbing to shock and awe, and that seeks to show us something of ourselves, the world around us, and perhaps God.

and because i haven't published something on the sonics in about a week . . .

from sonicscentral.com:

3,691 to 117

This was the 4 day total of calls to the governors hotline beginning the morning after the Ballmer announcement and ending the Tuesday we assumed it was dead and filed our public disclosure.

97% of the people who bothered to call in urged her to support a solution and get something done. We expect similar numbers but a much greater quantity of calls when the legislature returns their tallies.

also, last week we heard a lot of rhetoric about "not having enough time to put together a package." but as i was listening to 950 KJR AM tonight, i learned that during the thursday session at least 5 hours (!) were spent congratulating one another on a session well spent and recognizing the lifetime achievements of some of the retiring legislators. that's a bit frustrating.

on the sonics blogs i frequent i've noticed an overwhelming response in favor of this proposal (i.e., hundreds of posters) and an equally dramatic backlash against the politicians in olympia for sitting on their butts and doing nothing. my impression is that many of these fans are your typical washingtonians--liberal and left--and i wonder how their dissatisfaction might influence the next round of elections. i know that i for one am disappointed that i haven't even received a dismissive form letter back from my legislators.

finally, people are calling obama's latest speech amazing. my pastor, for instance, has said that it is "perhaps the most powerful speech on the issues of racism and economic divides offered in the past 40 years." check it out at the npr site. and i'm sure that if obama were on the scale tonight, one thing he might add is that each and every one of us should do our part to end racial discrimination, economic crises, and sonics atrocities by emailing the seattle city council and urging them to find a solution to the missing $75 million (council@saveoursonics.org).

andrew the political provocateur

my friend greta recently pegged me as "pretty passionate about the sonics," which i suppose must be somewhat true. after all, during the last week i have sent several impassioned pleas to my governor and state legislators, and i have printed and posted "save our sonics" paraphernalia--grammar errors and all.

however, i haven't actually watched an entire sonics game all year. the supes suck this year, and i'm happy to spend my time elsewhere, give someone else my dollars.

the thing is, NBA basketball is cyclical. today we field a team of rookies and scrubs, but tomorrow--and by tomorrow, i mean five years from now--the key arena/ford center will rock. think '95-'96.

but my sudden political activity isn't founded on a gamble or the promise of a rosy future--i'm willing to admit that durant might lose a leg and presti's stockpile of #1 draft picks could turn to naught. no, my desire to keep the sonics and impeach the legislature is entirely separate from the great potential of future iterations of the green and gold.

i guess i am just tired of the same old irrelevant arguments. i am tired of dogma that prohibits us from looking beyond our wallets and imagining the world from someone else's shoes. i am tired of leaders who parrot back the same meaningless answers to straw man arguments rather than taking decisive action.

and that is why i have called the legislature (800.562.6000), written my governor, and enlisted at least 3 others to do the same.

now it's your turn! unless the governor schedules an emergency legislative session, the city ponies up another $75 million, or some other sports miracle occurs, today is the last day.

photograph: sean meichle. "the provocateur." VAPSHCS, seattle, wa.


PS apparently i am so annoyed at our leaders that i even gave the governor some input on an unrelated bill about law enforcement and gang activity.

the sonics make me happy, frank chopp does not

contact the governor!
http://www.governor.wa.gov/contact/default.asp

My email to Gregoire:

Dear Governor Gregoire:

Hi, I'm writing to encourage you to take a stand in favor of the recent proposal by the potential Sonics investors who are offering to contribute half the cost to a Key Arena renovation. As I understand it, the City of Seattle would chip in another $75 million, which only leaves $75 million for the state. And since the bonds for Safeco are expected to be paid off early--right?--that means no new taxes! For $75 million I think this is spectacular, must-do high priority.

I'm proud that Washington state hasn't caved to Clay Bennett's extortion attempts, but this deal is our chance to say YES! to the 40+ years of memories, the jobs, and the civic pride that is the Sonics.

And I am counting on you to take a leadership role and make the legislature consider this sweet bill before the NBA Board of Governors meets in April. Frank Chopp and Jeff Morris are fond of saying that there isn't time or that other issues are more pressing, but quite frankly, it's the 11th hour and now is the time.

Governor Gregoire, if you don’t do all that you can to embrace this bill and keep the Sonics in Seattle, if you don't rally for the legislature to fund the state’s portion of the proposal before this session ends, I will be very disappointed. Please don't let your legacy suffer; don't make me vote for Rossi in the next election; make our state ecstatic and proud.

Thank you for your time,
Andrew

my synthar blurb

as usual, my latest image update blurb, a review of synthar's evenings and weekends, is kind of a gamble.

i'll explain the gambling later, but in the meantime, here it is:

Synthar: Evenings and Weekends

In this season of last caucuses and primaries, with the names of presidential candidates on our tongues and a foretaste of change on our lips, the pop-indie band Synthar has come out with just the album to match that extra kick in your step—or that worried furrow of brow—that may accompany this historic time. Synthar’s debut album, Evenings and Weekends,is a genuine, synthesized consideration of change and transformation. Its sound lies somewhere between electronica and folk—as the Jackson Free Press says, Synthar has taken “synth-pop into singer-songwriter territory.” Synthar is an internet band: its members—spread around the world from Shaoxing, China, to Jackson, Mississippi and from New York, New York, to Stanford, California—huddled their laptops together to create an irresistibly catchy mix of Moogs, vocoders, guitars, and sad, understated vocals. The tracks of Evenings and Weekends range from themes of changes in landscape—“Hurricanes” is lead singer Johnny Bertram’s firsthand response to Katrina and Rita—to the hiccups and tragedies of relational change in “My Heart Is a Beating Drum,” “Stabbed by an Unseen Blade,” and, most traumatically, “The Phone Call.” Synthar also asks us to question how our dollars and cents impact the world. In “The Robots Among Us” they warn that “in the land of milk and honey / where we walk the thin line between / what we need and greed” there are “robots among us” who “don’t understand the warmth of human touch”—and the song builds to a chilling climax when the robots join in the chorus. But most extraordinary is Synthar’s uncanny juxtaposition of generally dark, meaningful themes with spritely, upbeat melodies. The combination of thoughtful lyrics with playful synthesizing and vocal harmonies results in moments of happy-pop-bliss, making Evenings and Weekends an album that is not just smart, but indeed, as they sing in one of their happier tracks, gives you “the urge to dance… dance the morning away / and when the day finally turns into afternoon / you’ll flip the record and dance to new tunes!” Because Synthar is an independent band in the truest sense, the best way to buy Evenings and Weekends is directly from them on their website (ours even came with a handwritten “thanks.”) Plus, the handsome CD and packaging are individually screen printed by hand.

For more, visit Synthar.com. You can also listen to a few tracks on Synthar’s Myspace page.

OK, how is this a gamble? it's not that i'm hesitant to recommend the album; evenings and weekends is seriously really good. it may even be my favorite new album of 2007.

no, it's because i write these reviews for an arts journal that focuses specifically on work that somehow engages faith. therefore, i always feel challenged to center my thoughts on some theme or idea that is relevant to the image vision--faith, art, mystery.

sometimes that's a breeze--the culturally savvy christian, for instance--but often it's a stretch. it's not that i walk the plank of clear, accurate critique into the surging waters of creative interpretation, but that i sometimes have to dive beyond the patent responses of other reviewers. i have to lay all of my cards down on the table and say, "you know, i haven't heard anyone else say this, but the road sure strikes me as an incarnation story," (yikes!) and that's a scary place to be.

so here's where things get dicey with my evenings and weekends review. every other e&w review explores the synthar sound. they reference bands i've never heard of. they describe how andrew, johnny, matt, and joel have built a bridge between new wave 70s (?) and synth pop. occasionally a reviewer mentions synthar's socially conscious lyrics, but the only reviewer to mention subject matter says that he was initially turned off by the "futuristic, sci-fi themes."

(futuristic, sci-fi themes? as far as i can tell, only one song, "the robots among us," taps the sci-fi genre, and as i suggest in my blurb, it does so in a satirical, now-focused way.)

the problem is, i'm no music critic. i can confidently rank e&w among my top three 2007 albums because i probably only listened to three 2007 albums. and so my only chance of saying something profound and worthwhile about a band is to listen to those words, those strange syllabic formations that some listeners may deem a musical afterthought. and those words tell me that change is in the air. so when i say that my blurbs are a gamble, i really mean that i hope the synthar fellows won't be surprised to learn that their tracks are about change. i hope a few dozen readers will buy the album, nod their head--in time to the beat, of course--and hear the change.

save the sonics!

Legislative Hotline 1.800.562.6000

Call it, tell them that you are calling in response to the articles last week and the ones you’re going to see tomorrow morning. Tell them to be supportive of local investors attempts to buy the team.

This is important.

See the article "Business titans try to keep Sonics here" in Tuesday's Seattle Times for more info.

i want a clinton-mccain-obama hybrid

in case you missed it, here is tonight's democratic debate. russert seems like a pretty tough moderator. i kind of wonder what it would be like if this debate was hosted by the daily show.

i'm busy

a few weeks ago someone asked me whether i had any prayer requests. i thought for a moment and settled on the impossible. "i need more time," i said, "perhaps an extra hour every day, or an extra day of the week."

i wanted a miracle.

another friend demanded that i write more on my novella. "but i don't have time!" i replied.

i happened to have some highlighters handy, so i sketched him a seven-day calendar and then started filling in the squares. by the time i finished, there were about six hours free. so where does all my time go?

1. 40 hours a week at my old full-time job editing psychiatric stuff.
2. 8-25 hours a week managing the imagination section of the other journal.
3. 3-7 hours a week taking editing courses at the UW.

and then this sunday pastor richard encouraged the congregation at bethany to examine how we spend our time. he warned that a bulging calendar is sometimes the harbinger of an unpleasant paradox, sometimes we cram our lives with stuff in order to avoid a clash with meaning, truth, and emptiness.

well, i'd love to take some time to consider this, but i have an essay on capitalism to edit.


photograph: andrew david. "revelations." mount st. helensish, wa.

a pot of blog

"a tea pot!"

"no, a little blue tea pot."

"a little blue tea pot!"

"right, little because the latest reincarnation of the 17 point scale endeavors to be brief."

[quizzical look]

"a blue teapot!"

andrew david. "the roommate on pot." seattle, wa.

movie ratings

13.tristram shandy: a cock and bull story - funny; inventive filmmaking

inside man - i don't remember
the break-up - i liked it more than others at the time

07.the lake house - the house that eponymizes the lake house is a fitting image for the film itself. the house balances precariously over the water on whisker thin stilts. these stilts are a great physical representation of the poorly-considered sci-fi premise that supports the lake house, and the coolest scene from the film is when the weight of bullock and reeves's unfortunate careers proves too much for the little stilts and the house tumbles and crashes into the big blue lake of failure. okay, that scene may not really happen but the meaning of my metaphor still strikes true. and the thing is, the lake house has no qualitative pretensions. the synopses and previews don't attempt to hide the ludicrous nature of the film (and you already know that it stars bullock and reeves!) thus, as the s.o. and i sat down to watch the lake house, i suspended any and all cinematic expectations for the evening. however, the s.o. was unable to restrain her brain; her logic wouldn't leave her alone to enjoy the film. consequently, the horrors of the lake house were turned comedic as she punctuated the scenes with her sighs and mockery. indeed, the lake house is a chick flick for illogical chicks.

left to rate (2006)
who killed the electric car?
the devil wears prada
a scanner darkly
half nelson
jesus camp
the science of sleep
little children
babel
a good year
deja vu
the pursuit of happyness
the painted veil
the good shepherd
children of men
pan's labyrinth

left to rate (2007)
freedom writers
dreamgirls
seraphim falls
breach
amazing grace
black snake moan
reign over me
hot fuzz
the invisible
next
once
pirates of the caribbean: world's end
knocked up
ocean's thirteen
sicko
live free or die hard
ratatouille
license to wed
transformers
harry potter and the order of the phoenix
the simpsons movie
the bourne ultimatum
stardust
michael clayton
american gangster
no country for old men
i am legend
charlie wilson's war

does your stomach purr when you're pregnant

"does your stomach purr when you're pregnant?" was an actual query on ask.com today, and the query returned my blog as the second hit! unfortunately, the 17 point scale isn't a particularly good resource for someone wondering about the likelihood of future kitty litters. if you have any answers for she of the purring stomach, please leave a comment in case she returns.

also, while i'm asking for advice, if anyone has any wise words about rats, i would be delighted to hear from you. there's a rat loose in our house, particularly in my room, and it doesn't seem to care much for mousetrap peanut butter.

recipes for the not-so-food-savvy bachelor: tacos

in 2005 when i first designed the 17 point scale, i described the blog as "an excuse for [me] to ramble, feign perspicacity, and post pictures; possible topics might include art, quirky observations, and cooking tips." as the blog took shape, i refined the description a bit, proclaiming it "the world wide web's home for cooking recipes, travel pictures, and random thoughts on life, grammar, and that other thing you're really interested in." the descriptions were my attempt to promote and summarize the disparate inklings that i posted in this odd corner of cyberspace. they also amused me.

i am not much of a cook, and i certainly haven't use the blog for sharing cooking tips or recipes. in fact, over the last few years, the closest i've come to a 17 point scale recipe is the caption on a photo of guacamole. and when i was experimenting with blogger's features, i even posted some text at the bottom of the blog that read: "by the way, i lied. there are no recipes on this website. if it's cooking you want, take a bowl, a spoon, a box of cap'n crunchberries, and some milk; mix 'em all together; and voila! cereal du jour." i kept the text there because, again, it made me laugh. and although i may be the only living soul to scroll to the blog's bottom and read this confession, i don't feel that my lie is an act of malice--while googlers may reach the 17 point scale in search of "blood meridian chickens" or lewd sexual phrases (to name some of the last 100 searches), i can't recall seeing a single hit for cooking or recipes.

now, however, i find myself at a strange precipice. i've decided to post a recipe. and not just one recipe, perhaps several. i think this means that i may need to revise the 17 point scale mission statement:

food			ingredients	method		time		result
#1 mini tacos			4 mini beef tacos (trader joes brand), a handful of shredded medium cheddar cheese (gen), pace chunky salsa (gen)	microwave tacos in paper towel (30 s) and thaw cheese on counter (1 m), add cheese and microwave for 45 s		less than 7 m		tasty, simple; requires a side dish (e.g., christmas cookies, satsumas)

as you can see, these recipes will not be fancy. they will merely chart the learnings of a lazy, cooking-challenged kid with some blog space to spare.

back page: blood meridian or the evening redness in the west

xii.

blood meridian or the evening redness in the west by cormac mccarthy**

12/27/07
according to bauercount.com, jack bauer, the protagonist of 24, has killed 185 people over the course of six seasons. yet the glanton gang of mccarthy's blood meridian could teach bauer some things about killing; they eclipse this feat without the benefit of automatic weapons, and because mccarthy writes so matter-of-factly of violence and brutality (not because of the sheer number of murders), these indian scalpers make bauer seem like a harmless saint nick. biblical commentators speak of the earth groaning as it awaits the expulsion of darkness, and no novel offers a grimmer account of the pulsing menace of humanity (and our complicity with satan and, for that matter, nature) than blood meridian (not even the road). read it if you dare.

14 out of 17*

*the 17 point scale panel of experts--andrew, andrew, andrew, andrew, andrew, andrew, andrew, andrew, andrew, andrew, andrew, andrew, andrew, andrew, andrew, andrew, and, yes, andrew--rated blood meridian between 13 and 16 and have yet to formally declare their rating tried and true. they still have some thinking to do.

**i think the cormac mccarthy lemonade is flooding hollywood. i just read that ridley scott will be directing blood meridian. i can't imagine how this could be filmed tastefully yet with profundity. do dark, dark, bloody epics translate well to film?