Image from Cassini-Huygens Mission 

All These Worlds Are Yours

"Is the dwelling place of God anywhere but in the earth and sea, the air and sky, and virtue? Why seek we further for deities? Whatever you see, whatever you touch, that is Jupiter."

--Lucan, Pharsalia, Book IX
(circa 61-65 A.D.)

"[Human reason] freed men's minds from wondering at portents by wresting from Jupiter his bolts and power of thunder, and ascribing to the winds the noise and to the clouds the flame."

--Marcus Manilius, Astronomica, Book I
First century A.D.

SAL-9000: Will I dream?
Dr. Chandra: Of course you will. All intelligent beings dream. Nobody knows why.

--2010, Arthur C. Clarke and Peter Hyams

Word from Da Playhouse

http://www.marriedtothesea.com

The Chazzbot Review of Books

Here's a fun meme I picked up from me bro. I'll try not to use all the same answers as his.

A book that made you cry:
The ending of The Grapes of Wrath, when Rose of Sharon is clutching that soon-to-be-dead baby to her dry breast, always gets me. So does Of Mice and Men, for that matter. Something inside of me is very susceptible to John Steinbeck. I also tear up every time I read Ray Bradbury's short story, "Kaleidoscope," in which a stranded astronaut contemplates the meaninglessness of his life before he burns up in the atmosphere.

A book that scared you:
Adam Johnson's end-of-the-world novel, Parasites Like Us, starts off as a broad satire of academia and the ethics of archaeology, but ends up as one of the most realistic doomsday books I've ever read. Sort of like On the Beach, only with diseased swine instead of nuclear bombs. It's all the more disturbing for putting you off guard for the first 150 pages. A book that scares me in a whole different kind of way is Shot Through the Heart, Mikal Gilmore's bio of his murdering brother, Gary. With its overtones of familial abuse and the occult, I have never been able to get all the way through it. Special mention should also be made of Jack Henry Abbott's In the Belly of the Beast. Abbott wrote the book while in prison, and Norman Mailer campaigned for his release, based on the sheer brilliance of his writing. Shortly after making the literary rounds, Abbott brutally murdered a young woman. It's hard to read his book now without that fact gnawing at the back of your mind, upsetting your admiration of his prose.

A book that made you laugh:
Pretty much anything written by Douglas Adams. Also Steve Martin's books of essays, Cruel Shoes and Pure Drivel. I'm a fan of absurdist sarcasm, apparently.

A book that disgusted you:

A book you loved in elementary school:
I don't remember the name of it anymore, but I used to have a picture book of dinosaurs that I carried around with me everywhere and would read to anyone willing to listen. My first memory of having the book was in first grade; I volunteered to read it to the class one day, and that's when my teacher started realizing I was completely bored by her reading lessons. At some point, the book, after many years of loving attention, literally fell apart in my hands. Wish I could remember what it was called. I'd love to see it again.

A book you loved in middle school:
When I first read J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, I knew there was a place for me in this world. I've written about this elsewhere.

A book you loved in high school:
Like my brother, I read a lot of Stephen King during my high school days. I would get dropped off at school about an hour before classes started, and I would usually spend that time poring over some used paperback. The Shining and The Stand were my favorites, though I still like Kubrick's film version of The Shining better than the book it's presumably based on, especially the part where the blood comes rushing out of the elevator. Ding!

A book you hated in high school:
This one's easy. A Seperate Peace by John Knowles. Fucking academy boys pissing and moaning about their horrible lives. Who gives a fuck?! John Irving covered the same territory in The World According to Garp without making me want to tear my eyes out or stab fictional characters in the ear.

A book you loved in college:
If I got nothing else out of college, it did get me to read and even reach an appreciation of Ulysses by James Joyce. I would never have read that fucker on my own, but I ended up loving that book once someone could tell me what in hell was going on in each chapter. I took a seminar on Joyce attended by only two other students, Deb Will and Gene "Conspiracy" Needham. We were all, in our own special ways, completely fucked in that class. But we all got through it, and I wear my reading of Ulysses like a proud scar earned in an Irish pub brawl. At one point, I considered getting the title tattooed onto my arm, like a sailor's badge. Such is my level of pride at having read this book.

A book that challenged your identity:
My answer here is the same as my brother's: The Autobiography of Malcolm X. I've written about this elsewhere on the site.

A series that you love:
I guess an easy answer here would be the Star Trek novels, which are kind of like the literary equivalent of a box of doughnuts that someone brings to work. There they sit, all day long, and you know they are bad for you and fattening and nothing you really need, but damned if you don't pick one up every time you pass the box, until they are all gone and your fingers are left with that unpleasant sticky feeling that transfers to your keyboard and your shirt and your desk until you feel like a complete moron for ever having picked one up in the first place.

I also have read my fair share of the Star Wars novels and the Doctor Who novelizations and the Tarzan books and I'm usually tempted to read any book that comes with a number on its spine, but I'm going to go with the highbrow response and say The Library of America, which publishes American classics in these handsome editions that feel completely natural in your hand and come with ribbons sewn into the binding and look fabulous together on a bookshelf. I have almost 100 editions from this series, and every one is a gem.

Your favorite horror book:
Though I haven't read them for a while, I had my shit completely freaked by Clive Barker's Books of Blood. To this day, I carry images from his story, "In the Hills, the Cities," in my head, which often pop up at inappropriate moments to surrealize my day.

Your favorite science-fiction book:
Wow, this is a tough one. And this is such a subjective category anymore--what really constitutes science fiction anyway? I can recommend pretty much anything by Robert J. Sawyer, but I especially like FlashForward, in which everyone on Earth gets a brief glimpse of their lives twenty years in the future, and The Terminal Experiment, in which a scientist creates three electronic simulations of different aspects of his consciousness. I also like everything I've read by J.G. Ballard, particularly High-Rise and The Concrete Island, which aren't so much science fiction as they are sociological projections (assuming there's a difference). Ursula K. LeGuin's The Lathe of Heaven is great, and I like the scope of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars series. Yeah, I'm gonna need you to be more specific with the question.

Your favorite fantasy book:
This is a little bit easier, since I don't read as much fantasy. I've read The Lord of the Rings many times and have yet to grow tired of it. A distant second might be T.H. White's The Once and Future King, but ultimately I've gotta go with Tolkien.

Your favorite mystery book:
I don't really do mysteries, but I love crime novels, especially Elmore Leonard's stuff. Recently, I've started getting into Carl Hiaasen, who mixes his portraits of lowlife scumbugs with environmental messages, and Skinny Dip is my favorite of his so far.

Your favorite biography:

Your favorite "coming-of-age" book:
Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes depicts a turning point in the lives of two boys and manages to capture that loss of innocence in achingly beautiful prose that reads like poetry. When I was young, I read it as an adventure story; now it seems completely heartbreaking.

Your favorite book not on this list:
Every American should read Andrew Chaikin's A Man on the Moon. I can give you 20 reasons to read it, but each reader will find his own meaning in Chaikin's biographical history of the men who touched the surface of another world. It is much more than a history of the Apollo program. It is a book that will renew your faith in our species.

And while we're at it, here's one man's list of twelve books that changed the world. What's almost as interesting as the list itself is the author's lengthy defense of why he didn't include any novels on the list. And it's probably the only list of its kind that includes both Shakespeare's First Folio and a football rulebook. Of course, it had to have been written by an Englishman.

I used to swim here. 

Unsolicited E-Mail of the Week

Here's a little something I found in my inbox this morning:

Dear sir,

I read with interest your entry (in the discussion about
"assault on Mt.Umunhum") describing your recollections
of life around the mountain, around 1975-77. One of my
personal interests is researching unusual aerial
phenomena (my background is in astronomy, and I have
published several books about UFOs). One of my readers,
a lady who lives in Almaden Valley, recalls a series of
unexplained lights in and around her neighborhood, specifically
in the summer of 1975 and 1976. This lady, her husband (a
police officer) and their neighbors, saw repeated flashes of
light, and occasionally well-defined luminous objects moving
around the houses. The laser hypothesis fails to account
for these observations.

Given your knowledge of the region, can you think of any
natural explanation for these phenomena? When you lived
there, was the area known for any unusual lights or other
effects?

Any information you can provide would be greatly
appreciated.

With best regards,

Jacques Vallee
General Partner, EA-Capital
www.jacquesvallee.com

For something like the last 20 years or so, I've been privately conducting off-and-on research to try to find any other reports of what Mr. Vallee (who, as it turns out, is really a Ph.D.) so benignly refers to as "unusual lights" in the region of Mt. Umunhum.

I could tell him a story that would have him shitting his pants.

Since most of the people I lived with on Umunhum were military personnel who played with what was then state-of-the-art radar equipment for a living, I've halfway convinced myself that whatever it was I saw from my bedroom window circa 1975/1976 was some kind of elaborate test. This might explain the frustrating lack of any other reported sightings from what was a modestly populated housing area on an isolated Air Force Station (that being another factor).

The other factor here, and one which has made me hesitant about sharing my experience in any great detail with anyone other than close friends, is the, shall we say, highly turbulent emotional state that my family and I were experiencing at the time.

Additionally, the brief description Dr. Vallee offers in his e-mail of "flashes of light" doesn't really match my experience, though the tantalizing suggestion of "well-defined luminous objects" hits pretty close to home, assuming, that is, that these objects were as big as a fucking house.

I did a brief background check (read: Google search) of Dr. Vallee and come up with some interesting finds. Among other things, the character of Claude LaCombe (played by Francois Truffaut) in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, one of my favorite films (largely because of its parallels with my experience on Umunhum), was based on Vallee. Vallee has also worked with Dr. J. Allen Hynek, one of the most influential UFO researchers in the world.

There, I said it. UFO. Anyone coming across this blog will now assume I am a complete crackpot.

Anyway, I'm stumped. I don't know whether I should contact this guy or not. Curiousity about the other sightings he mentions compels me to drop him a line. But preserving my privacy and maintaining a credible academic standing also seem somewhat important. Being involved with the whole UFO community seems, on an academic level, even worse that appearing in a porn film (at least then one would have the potential excuse of researching gender roles or trends in popular culture).

But getting a message from this dude got me motivated to look for any new online postings regarding Umunhum, and I found a few of interest:

Here's a site that offers some great photos of the summit and some practical info on how to make the hike.

Here's a story about a climb up Mt. Umunhum where almost everything goes wrong. I was particularly disturbed by the account of one of the hikers trying to climb into a vent on one of the abandoned buildings and coming out with "white powder" all over his shirt. That's asbestos, dude!

Here's my previous post about Umunhum, in case you want to know more about the roots of my long obsession with the place. I'm sure one day I'll build a representation of the mountain in my living room.

Ken Brewer Remembered

Local coverage of Ken's death:

The Salt Lake Tribune's front page article.

The Ogden Standard-Examiner's electronic site features four readings of Ken's poems.

Jeremy Pugh's write-up in Logan's Herald Journal contains a generous sampling of Ken's work and Ken's thoughts on his legacy. There is no direct link to the story, so I've reproduced it below:

Poet Laureate Ken Brewer Dies
By Jeremy Pugh

Eight months ago, Utah Poet Laureate Ken Brewer wrote this haunting verse:

Death moves in one night,
crawls under the sheets between us.
Cold, I roll to touch my wife.
— “Living With Death”
07/09/05

The poem was part of a cycle he had written after his diagnosis with terminal pancreatic cancer in June of 2005.

Brewer died Wednesday night at his home in Providence, after a nine-month journey of pain, poetry, love, redemption and catharsis. He was 64.

Brewer wrote furiously from the time of his diagnosis. Two weeks ago, his wife, USU professor Roberta “Bobbie” Stearman, commented, “He says he’s going to go out with a pen in his hand and a poem on the page.”

His final efforts generated hundreds of poems, among them a complete manuscript called “Whale Song: A Poet’s Journey into Cancer,” recently published by Ken Sanders Books in Salt Lake City.

“It was important for him to feel that his writing about cancer, about death, was more than just an expression of his feelings,” Stearman said Thursday. “He wanted it to be helpful to other people. He wanted people to understand that there are different ways to handle cancer. People say, ‘He fought bravely,’ but he didn’t fight bravely against cancer. He learned how to get ready to die and how to do it with courage.”

Brewer was appointed Utah’s second-ever poet laureate in January 2003. The position, given to him by then-Gov. Mike Leavitt, had no official duties, but Brewer helped define its scope. In January 2005, he opened a session of the Utah State Legislature, musing wryly that he was the highest-ranking Democrat in the room.

The poet crisscrossed the state and region, participating in workshops and educational projects, offering readings and interacting with other writers, undergrads and schoolchildren. He was returning from a writers symposium in Cheyenne, Wyo., when he discovered his illness. The diagnosis came at a time he described afterwards as the pinnacle of his 40-odd years as a writer of verse.

“This happened during what was the most productive, my most rewarding time, as a writer,” he said during an interview in July of last year.

Death sits on the side of my bed/
skirt hiked to the hair line, says/
Hi handsome. Dance with me?/
No thanks, I say, not yet./
I’m just a man with pancreatic cancer,/
not a corpse. Besides, I’m married./
Death stands and straightens his skirt./
I’ll be back, marriage or not./
Then he stumbles on his high-heeled shoes./
Careful, I say, you’ll kill yourself /
trying to walk like that. But the room,/
empty, squinches up like cheap perfume./
Left alone, I admit I could become Mr. Bones,/
and do that old soft shoe shuffle, tap, shuffle./
My father did that at the end, bones in my arms,/
as I carried him to the car for Indianapolis and the /
big VA Hospital where he saw Death getting out of a cab,/
Nice legs, babe, you wanna dance? And did./
— “The Visit”
06/25/05

Brewer was born in 1941 and raised in Indianapolis. Growing up, it was athletics that were originally the key to a wider world.

“I loved high school athletics,” he said. “I was so out of my class socially and economically. That was the only road I had to having a social life in high school.”

After graduation, he was working at a flunky job in a candy and cigarette warehouse, pulling down $1.65 an hour, when a friend asked him to head off to college.

“For some reason I said yeah.”

At Western New Mexico University, Brewer was a nose tackle on the football team and a catcher on the baseball team. He was also an English major, and academics came to the forefront after two literature professors inspired the young Brewer. When he returned to school for a master’s degree at New Mexico State University, he met his mentor, poet Keith Wilson.

“He changed my life. I never had any official classes from him. I just started taking things to him at his office, and he was kind enough to look at them and help me.”

From NMSU, Brewer taught a year of high school in Las Cruces, N.M., and an offer drifted down from Utah State University. Like many Utah transplants, he meant to just stop by on the way to somewhere else. He said he fell in love with the country — mountains, canyons, rivers and the distinct seasons.

“I have loved this fall,” he said last October. “The autumn here has been absolutely spectacular. One of the best I remember. So I’m going to say that it was on my behalf.”

He taught for 32 years, retiring from teaching in 2003.

In our back yard, the apple tree and the plum/
sag with heavy, ripe fruit, their branches/
nearly to the ground in this late summer/
I am ripe with cancer that slowly blossoms,/
that spreads its weighty fruit through my body,/
such ripeness ends one season, promises the next./
— “Ripeness”
06/26/05

Brewer was primarily known for books of poetry written around a central theme or plot. He published nine books in addition to “Whale Song,” and a batch of nature poems — “the bestiary,” he called them — that go along with a series of small woodcuts by Utah artist Royden Card.

Prior to his diagnosis, he also completed a collection of poems that collectively spin a murder mystery set on the grounds of his former home in Logan’s Island district, where there is a 100-year-old wool mill used for production in Brigham Young’s United Order.

In writing “Whale Song,” Brewer said he worked hard to understand the illness and has struggled with the often-violent language of cancer. Words like “malignancy,” “invasion” and “battle” didn’t quite fit his pacifist mind.

“He was adamant about not using those kinds of terms,” his wife said. “For him it was the idea that you can accept this but that’s not giving in.”

Since the Vietnam War, I have opposed/
warfare of any kind by anyone./
Now I use the language of warriors/
to battle the cancer in my body./
I speak of killing cells as ruthlessly /
as I imagine any warrior slaughters the enemy./
Do I now accept that old argument,/
“But wouldn’t you defend yourself and your family?”/
Is that what I do with chemo and radiation —/
chemical warfare and nuclear warfare?/
Should I name this tumor “Hiroshima?”/
Should I name it “Verdun?”/
Or should I think of this medicine/
as instruments to heal rather than to kill?/
I try, but sometimes fail, to keep myself whole/
by patience, kindness, and thoughtful action./
I restore the balance of my life/
by eliminating what I do not need./
I do not need cancer./
Or do I?/
— “Dilemma”
07/08/05

During his last days at his home, Brewer lived in a necessary exile, the result of his fragile immune system. But he stayed in contact with the wider world through the Internet, e-mail and telephone.

He gathered closely with friends and family.

“You find out all the friends you’ve got, and I’ve got a lot of really good friends,” he said. “I guess this has given me a chance to really see the love and goodwill of friends and family.”

It was his decision early on to not keep his illness private, and he gave numerous interviews. Articles about his poetry and condition were published in magazines and newspapers around the region.

“I hope I’ve contributed something,” he said. “When you get serious about writing, that’s something you want to do. You want to leave something behind that people will read and respect — something that will engage them. I think I’ve got a couple of poems that might just do that. I’ve written literally thousands of poems, but I think I might have a couple that might be maybe worth people reading in the future. That’s all the poet asks. If you get one poem that lasts beyond you, what else can you ask? We are remembered that way. In a way you don’t really die. If you’ve left something behind, either in our families or the public arena, then whenever anybody reads something by you or says your name, you come to life again.”

What is the rhythm of death? Iambic pentameter?/
Or alexandrines with very, very longish syllables?/
Or the word “death” with its “th” pressed/
against the roof of a coffin, or “fire”/
that burns to “ash” and flutters/
from a plane, a cliff, a ship, a waterfall?/
What does a dead poet write/
if not free verse?/
What about the “fear of abstractions?”/
Closed or open form? Tradition?/
Cutting edge (Well, too late for that, perhaps.)/
What about audience, publishing, SASE?/
What about hand-written manuscripts?/
And starting with “and” and ending with a question?
— “Questions for My Oncologist”
06/24/05

Ken

Ken Brewer, Utah's Poet Laureate, my professor and advisor at Utah State University, died Wednesday, March 15, just before 8:00 PM. He was attended in death by his wife, Bobbie, his two daughters, his hospice nurse, two close friends, and his dogs.

Two memories, among many:

During the time I was a graduate student at Utah State, Ken was the graduate advisor. One day he called me to his office, sat me down, looked me straight in the eye and without any hesitation asked me, "Why haven't you graduated yet?" Apparently, I had amassed more than enough credits and had been so caught up in teaching and being a grad student that I had stopped paying attention to my graduation candidacy. Ken set me straight on that in his bemused fashion, and I got the impression that while, as my advisor, he had a responsibility to get me out of the program successfully, he also understood that I was in the middle of one of the most enjoyable periods of my life. At my graduation, several months later, I caught him by surprise as he handed me my degree and hugged him.

I have little talent for poetry, but like any student at Utah State with writing aspirations, I availed myself of the opportunity to take one of Ken's writing courses. As part of the course, Ken would tape-record his comments on the poems the students submitted to him. To this day, I cannot imagine reading the sheer volume of student poetry he must have had to contend with (it was a very popular course), let alone taking the time to record commentary on them. Like most of the other students in the class, I was doing whatever I could in my writing to catch his attention. When he finally gave me the cassette tape with his comments, it was all I could do not to kill someone on my way to the nearest tape player. Near the end of the tape, he spoke three words that I have carried in my head every time I sit down to write something. Those words spoke volumes to me and gave me the impression that I could reach people, including people like Ken, with words. "Good," he said. "Good poem."

My friend Star, who has served as a one-woman news service on Ken's cancer treatments and has provided near-daily e-mail updates on his condition for the last nine months, said yesterday, "The last nine months have been an experience none of us are likely to forget. Our poet laureate will live on through his words, his gifts to us."

Here is a selection of Ken's poems read by students and faculty from Southern Utah University.

Here is a profile of Ken written last fall for the University of Utah magazine, Continuum.

Here is an interview with Ken conducted in Fall 2004 by a former colleague of mine at Weber State University.

And here is my favorite of Ken's poems.

More later.

A Real Sex Pistol 

Ever Get the Feeling You've Been Cheated?

This year's crop of Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees is the weakest yet, with several acts (Black Sabbath, the Sex Pistols) getting their nod only after being passed over a few times after becoming eligible. It's not that these are bad acts or uninfluential, but one gets the impression that the induction committee was a bit confounded at just which acts are still out there that really need to get into the Hall.

In addition to half of this year's roster being composed of leftovers from previous ballots, there is one addition that has me a bit confused: Miles Davis. Don't get me wrong--Davis has always been an interesting, if not a consistently challenging, performer, and his long discography could serve as a concise history of modern jazz. But rock & roll? What is rock & roll about Miles other than that he is so much fucking cooler than the rest of us?

If the R&RHoF is going to start inducting jazz legends, then it only seems fair to begin inducting the pioneers of rap and hip-hop, like Grandmaster Flash or the Sugarhill Gang, who have both been eligible for several years now. I don't think anyone is going to dispute the influence hip-hop has had on rock--it certainly seems more influential than jazz has been. Perhaps the Hall of Fame committee is trying to avoid confronting the genre that has thoroughly overtaken rock in the hearts of America's youth and popular culture. Hip-hop is just as transgressive and challenging now as rock & roll was during its heyday, and it pisses off just as many people. Shit, even the Smithsonian has recognized the significance of hip-hop in our culture.

But I guess Miles Davis is a safer bet for the Hall of Fame, an organization so in love with its own image that it wouldn't even risk holding its induction ceremonies at a hotel with a dance floor.

Anyway, some of this year's inductees are at least trying to avoid associating themselves with the Hall of Fame's upper-classman approach to rock & roll. The Sex Pistols have disavowed the entire proceedings, and Johnny Rotten spat out a bitter little note to the anonymous voters, complete with misspellings. Rotten's low-class aspirations are particularly amusing in light of his band's reunion tour several years back, but at least we won't be seeing him in a tux anytime soon.

Blondie, a band that brilliantly combined the punk ethos with sex appeal, didn't have any qualms about showing up to the ceremony, although Debbie Harry apparently has some idea of which of "her band" members should be included in the proceedings. With a haughty bitchiness that can only be called rock & roll, she refused to allow some interim members of the band to join the group onstage for their congratulatory performance. The exact opposite of rock & roll was demonstrated by former member Chris Infante (a man who sued his own band to be allowed to join them on a reunion tour--get a clue, dumbass!) who whined to Harry, "Debbie, aren't we allowed?" Infante clearly failed to recognize that Debbie Harry, fat and old as she may be, is still too fucking precious. Back off, man.

Another whining burnout, none other than Ozzy himself, also showed up for this year's ceremonies, despite having scolded the Hall of Fame judges a few years ago for passing over his group and asking to have Black Sabbath taken "off the list" for induction since the fans have no say on who gets nominated or inducted. But he either forgot his earlier statements (and no one at this point would be surprised if he had) or just didn't want anyone to know how badly he wanted to get his hands on the trophy, because he was all smiles and contriteness at this year's ceremony. Has he lost his mind? Can he see or is he blind?

Finally, we have Lynyrd Skynyrd, a living rock cliche. They've got everything: dead founding members, tragic plane and motorcycle crashes, hippie hair, and at least two or three songs that no one should ever have to listen to again. I guess if their music won't get them in the doors of the Hall, their willingness to provide the historical template for rock bands everywhere is certainly worth a nod. "Freebird," muthafuckas!

If you're still interested, here's a list of all the inductees thus far. An edited version of the induction ceremony will air March 21 on VH1. In the meantime, let's hope next year's inductees are more inspiring or at least drunk when they read their speeches. As Johnny Rotten said back in the day, "It's all over now. Rock 'n roll is shit. It's dismal."

And Now. . . Another Geeky Post About TV

See if this sounds like a familiar scenario to you: Important presidential election on the horizon. At least one of the candidates believes he is being guided by a higher power and, indeed, believes that higher power will take steps to insure his victory. There is a controversy over the electoral ballots and the election is thrown. Many people feel that one of the candidates is the worst possible person to lead. This person is elected. Shortly thereafter, a massive explosion kills thousands of people, persuading the newly-elected president to rush his plans for leading his people down a hopelessly misguided path.

Jump ahead about a year. The military has abandoned the president. The president has become a narcissistic asshole who lets his staff do the important work for him. The labor unions are disgruntled, but largely powerless. Many people are living in squalid conditions and the economy is tanked. Sounds like a great time for a full-scale attack from your enemies, who have decided that the president will most likely cave in the face of a true threat. And cave he does. The president surrenders and his nation becomes occupied.

This is the scenario of Battlestar Galactica, one of the most politically prescient shows I have ever seen. Last Friday, the finale of the second season aired, and the entire premise of the show was turned inside out. I have seen few programs with the balls to risk reinvention on such a scale. I have seen fewer programs so cleverly exploit my fears and misgivings about the current state of our republic without coming across as preachy or hoplessly partisan. Galactica is not afraid of featuring lead characters who fuck up on a massive scale or of having its lead characters face the disturbing and ugly consequences of their fuck-ups, or someone else's.

Not only did this season's finale leave me barking profanities at the television, it served the far more important purpose of showing a completely feasible consequence of our current national endeavours, one which I have had recurring nightmares about for several years now.

This nightmare scenario involves a nuclear weapon, a destroyed city, and a country returned to pre-industrialization standards. More or less the exact scenario of this TV show I have come to admire. I've had reoccuring nightmares before, though. They do not come up often, but they are usually quite persistent until some real-world event flushes them from my sub-conscious. The last two reoccuring nightmares I had involved an exploding space shuttle and airliners falling from the sky and/or crashing into the landscape. I had dreams about each of those events for months. I don't have them anymore. Now I dream about massive explosions and burning cities, at least once or twice a month.

So when I say that seeing a similar scenario acted out on Battlestar Galactica scared the bejeezus out of me, I'm not just being hyperbolic (although I think it's a great show that non-geeks could appreciate and that more people should be watching). It had the metallic taste of truth to it, like blood in the mouth. And because this is a blog read by only a handful of friends, I can risk sounding portentous when I say with only the conviction of my repeating nightmares and the images in my mind from a science-fiction program that speaks more truth to power than any cable news channel would ever dare: We are going to be hit again.

Drinking Coffee Elsewhere

I always get the staredown from the clerk at the downtown coffee shop/Christian t-shirt emporium. I think she must have figured out (certainly not by asking, since she hardly deigns to talk to mere customers) that I'm a soulless atheistic wanderer who mocks her shop in my blog. Seriously, she looks at me like I'm some kind of dog-raping human abstraction. I've been going to this shop every Sunday for the last six months or so to read my NYT and send my blood sugar into the stratosphere with a morning mocha. I listen to this clerk ask other customers if they'd like their card punched while I, loyal customer of many months, have yet to be asked if I want one. Then, when all her temp customers have gone to continue their trips to Vegas, I sit in the light of the front window and try to read as she clicks through the first ten seconds of every song on her laptop, which is conveniently connected to the shop's speakers, so not only do I get to hear what is playing in the background (usually Coldplay or some craptastic Christian acoustic tripe band--can you tell the difference?), but I get to play "name that tune" with the clerk's collection of downloads.

So last Sunday I finally broke down and went to the other coffee shop in town, much further out of my way and annoyingly close to the Wal-Mart parking lot. But my reception there was instantly more welcoming than all of my previous visits to the downtown coffee shop combined. The first thing the clerk did after taking my order was to set me up with a punchcard. (I don't know why these shops don't just reduce the already grossly exaggerated prices of their mochas rather than wait for me to buy 10 of them before getting a measly 10% discount, but I digress.) I went to try out the comfortability of the overstuffed chair in the corner of the shop when the clerk brought my drink to me. To me! Here was a bold new step in customer service. Actual service!

But the thing that finally sold me on the true worthiness of this shop was when the clerks started discussing the songs playing on the oldies radio station in the background. (No fucking Coldplay or any of those other coffee shop cliche bands--no, no! Here we had the Eagles and Peter Frampton and the Doobie Brothers, all without subliminal choruses urging me to come to Jesus.) Turns out one of the clerks not only knew every word to "Build Me Up, Buttercup," but she unashamedly professed that it had been her favorite song as a kid. The humanity! Then, when Tony Orlando & Dawn came on, she offered her interpretation of "Tie a Yellow Ribbon 'Round the Old Oak Tree" by stating that the singer's long-suffering partner had every right to dump the jerk while he was still in the pokey. If she had suddenly burst out into a round of "Fuck Da Police," I couldn't have been more delighted. I was home at last.

Meanwhile, spring break started today. Since Friday, we have had more snowfall in the last four days than during the last four months. What is this place?

Last Minute Oscar Picks

You can see the full ballot here. I'm not going to bother to relist every nominee, or even make a pick in each category. And, since I haven't seen all of the nominated films, my picks are a combination of assumptions and wishful thinking and illogical ranting.

BEST PICTURE: Brokeback Mountain
Will anyone be surprised to see this win? It's the buzziest picture of the year, it's already entered pop-culture lingo and the film poster image has become a popular template for satire.

What's most interesting about this year's nominees is that none of them were blockbusters (Brokeback is the closest thing to a hit on the list), they are all relatively low-budgeted and/or independently produced features, and they all carry a rather pointed political message of some kind. Apparently, Hollywood is where all the country's remaining Democrats have set up shop.

DIRECTOR: George Clooney, Good Night and Good Luck
Surely, Hollywood's sexiest Democrat at the moment is Mr. Clooney. He is widely admired, has a few films under his directorial belt, and, most importantly, is an Actor Who Has Made Good, which the Academy voters seem to love. We all want to see him give a triumphant, yet humble, acceptance speech because he is more beautiful than all the other nominated directors put together.

ACTOR: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Capote
WINNER!
This is an unusually strong category this year; I wouldn't be unhappy to see any of the other nominees win. Terrence Howard's performance in Hustle & Flow, in particular, was a beautiful demonstration of what a skilled actor can do with a somewhat stereotypical role (the struggling artiste who triumphs over adversity or, if you prefer, the black pimp with a soul). Howard blew me away, as did Hoffman, another actor with a long resume who has long gone unrecognized by both his peers and the public. Hoffman's role as Truman Capote is not only a stark departure from his other roles, it is a truly disturbing look at what a writer will do for a story and how a person can be torn between love of another human being and one's self-preservation. Howard made me cheer, Hoffman gave me the chills.

ACTRESS: Felicity Huffman, Transamerica
In contrast to the actor nominations, this category is rather weak this year and the nominees seem to have been chosen almost randomly. Charlize Theron in North Country? Will she be nominated whenever she plays a non-glamourous role? Judi Dench again? Whoever plays the lead in the latest Jane Austen adaptation? Boooooring! Reese Witherspoon is the favorite, but I like the subversive aspects of Huffman's nomination: 1) She's primarily known for her TV acting and is therefore a longshot among her Hollywood upperclasswomen, and 2) she plays a transgendered character. The gay media must be going nuts this year, what with all the representation in the major categories.

I was upset that Naomi Watts didn't get nominated for her convincing work in King Kong. Remember how Mark Hamill made you believe in that green puppet? But, as we all must know by now, Hollywood hates anything to do with fantasy films, unless overwhelming popularity forces their hand.

SUPPORTING ACTOR: Jake Gyllenhaal, Brokeback Mountain
Paul Giamatti might win this year in a belated vote for the role he should have won for last year. It might be cool to see Matt Dillon win, too. He's another actor who has long since paid his dues. But this is the next highest category that would carry Brokeback on to a sweep for the evening, and I think it's got enough buzz to do so.

SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Michelle Williams, Brokeback Mountain
See above. The other nominated roles seem fairly insignificant in terms of the screen time held by the characters. Amy Adams might be a breakout surprise for Junebug, but only if the voters don't already feel they've made a big enough statement by voting for Brokeback in the other categories.

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: Darwin's Nightmare
This is one of those categories that the voters like to use to make A Statement, and with the ongoing pissing contest going on between evolution and intelligent design in our troubled country, no one needs to have seen this film in order to want to vote for it.

ART DIRECTION: King Kong
I loved this movie. Sure, it's about a big fucking ape, but it had heart and style and, dare I say?, class. It doesn't have a chance in Hell.

COSTUME DESIGN: Memoirs of a Geisha
WINNER!
Hollywood likes their Asian women to fulfill every facet of the Oriental stereotype, and Geisha is every Asian-fetishist's dream. Well, since Kill Bill isn't eligible this year, anyway. The only thing better than an Asian chick with a big fucking sword is a subservient Asian chick who might be wearing a bust-enhancing corset under her long, loose robes.

ANIMATED FEATURE: Howl's Moving Castle
This is the first year since this category was introduced that all the nominees have been truly worthy of the award. At the very least, we can be thankful none of that obligatory Disney crap was nominated. All of this year's nominees are imaginative, innovative examples of animation, and able to be appreciated by both children and adults. It took the Academy a few fucking years to figure out this category, but this time they got it right. Howl's is my personal favorite, but any of the nominees is worthy of an Oscar.

SOUND MIXING & SOUND EDITING: War of the Worlds
Remember the disturbing, belching groans made by the Tripods? Remember the sound of people being disintegrated? Remember the combination of organic and mechanical noises made by the Tripods as they goose-stepped their way across the countryside? If you don't, you weren't paying attention or you're spending too much time jacked up to your iPod. This year's creepiest movie (well, up until the last 15 minutes or so) was creepy, at least in part, because of the unbelievable fucked-up noises made by the alien machines in this horrorfest.

MAKEUP: Star Wars: Episode III (Revenge of the Sith)
Just on the basis of how this film let me know how much of a person's flesh can reasonably be burnt off before death occurs (or should occur) and how it looks whenever a body part is hacked off by a laser sword, Episode III should win. Plus, it's the only nomination this film got, and it's the last time Hollywood will be able to say "thank you" to George Lucas for keeping the film industry alive.

VISUAL EFFECTS: King Kong
WINNER!
First of all, how did Narnia get nominated for this category? What did Narnia achieve that was so visually stunning? Talking lions? Secondly, how did Episode III not get nominated? Did the voters not see the last 30 minutes of the movie? Did they get bored of seeing all the ways in which Obi-Wan could swing his lightsabre? What about when Vader's faceplate slowly obscures the face of poor Anakin? Talk about your fucking iconic film moments.

Not to detract from the worthiness of King Kong. If Andy Serkis is not going to get an acting nomination, you've at least gotta give props to the people who made that monkey's face so expressive and heartbreaking. Seriously.

SCREENPLAY (ORIGINAL): Syriana
What a clever movie this was. Maybe too clever. Crash, also nominated in this category, tries to be as clever with its multi-branching storylines, but I never really bought into the plausibility of all those random meetings. Syriana, by comparison, is as complicated and random as real life, which is why its political message ends up being more convincing and less self-righteous. Plus, you know, shit blows up.

SCREENPLAY (ADAPTATION): Capote
Two of the nominated films in this category are based on real-life events. Munich, however, is largely fictional since no one can ever be quite sure just how all that reprisal killing went down. How much more challenging to adapt a biography (and a lengthy one at that) and still present the main character in a way that makes him seem fully human (if not sympathetic). The other stories here could practically write their own screenplays, but the adaptation of Capote must have involved a lot of painful reworking of a life into a two-hour story.

CINEMATOGRAPHY: The New World
I was pleased to see Batman Begins, with all its claustrophobic, dark settings and ninja fighting, get a nod here. Similarly, Brokeback contains all those sweeping Wyoming vistas with nary a barbed-wire fence in sight. But you can't beat Emmanuel Lubezki's lovingly held shots of the virgin America and its freakishly beautiful natives. The New World depicts a world long dead, and we are the better for having it preserved (if only imaginatively) in the lens of this man's camera.

ORIGINAL SCORE
I defer to the wisdom of Billville for this category.

ORIGINAL SONG: "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp," Hustle & Flow
WINNER!
Besides being the only film in this category that actually incorporates the creation of music as a major plot point, this song contributes to a truly poignant moment in the film, when the lead character realizes he might at last crawl away from the trap of his life, his job, his neighborhood, and his class (though, tellingly, not the color of his skin). This is by no means background music. It is as much a part of the story as the actors or the screenplay. I can't wait to see it performed during the ceremony.

Those are all the categories I'm prepared to call, which is just as well, since the roll call of winners begins in just a little over two hours from now. Nothing like the motivation of a deadline.

March 12, 9 PM 

Resuscitate Your Television

I used to have a bumper sticker on my car that read in stark black lettering: Kill Your Television. This was back when I was working a night shift job and was largely immune to the temptations of series television. I was also in the middle of working on a degree in literature which meant that I had to read a lot.

Needless to say, those days lie far in the distant past, and I now embrace my addiction to television with all the passionate fervor of a heroin junkie. I also now drive a different car and read shitty student papers for a living, so you can see how unfair it would be to hold me to the idealistic vinyl banners of my youth. Right?

Anyway, I'm totally excited about TV today because I will shortly begin a marathon session of watching it, with its red carpets and breathless correspondents and shiny dresses and declining audience numbers. Oh Oscar.

I'm very much looking forward to Jon Stewart's final year as host of the Academy Awards. Not to say that I don't think he will be as subversively charming as he always is on The Daily Show. In fact, I fully expect him to bite the hand that is feeding him, precisely because he is exactly the kind of host that doesn't give a shit whether or not the collected glitterati of Hollywood love him or not. Just as David Letterman and Chris Rock had little use for the approval of Hollywood's finest, I'm sure Stewart will deliver an evening of biting satire, effectively dowsing the tuxedo-clad and evening-gown-wearing audience at the Kodak Theatre with comedic ice water, while we at home enjoy the simultaneous pleasures of reveling in the self-congratulatory excess of Hollywood's premiere awards ceremony while the kid in the back of the class pisses all over it.

My prediction: Stewart will be reliably hilarious, but will not be invited back next year, when Billy Crystal becomes available again.

Anyway, I may yet get to posting my Oscar picks, but let me turn my attention now to the other jewels that my TV friend has to offer.

First off, let's look at the promo image for the upcoming new (and possibly final) season of The Sopranos. I love the subtly confident way in which HBO presents these images. The only copy on the print ads is simply to inform you of the day and time of the season premiere. The rest of the promo serves as a family portrait of both the cast and the Soprano family itself, and is loaded with tantalizing symbols of each character's storyarc in the season to come.

I should mention at this point that I have seen only the first two seasons of The Sopranos, so as far as the show's continuity is concerned, I am three seasons behind. However, this will be the first time that I have had access to HBO when a new season has begun, and I fully intend to dive in without bothering to read/watch up on the previous seasons. The following analysis of the promo image, then, is based almost entirely on my reading of the image itself, and incorporates little prior knowledge of the past season's storyline.

The setting of the image is the dining room of the Soprano home. Tony slumps in his chair as if he has settled in for a TV watching session of his own. But Tony has never struck me as the TV watching type, probably because he owns a strip club. Furthermore, he holds a cigar in his hand rather than a remote, and his gaze is not one of passive absorption in a game or a program, but the distracted inner gaze of a man lost in thought (or aware that he is being looked at from behind). Though he is wearing a suit jacket, his collar is open and his shirt is rumpled, indicating he has come to the end of a long, possibly active day (and fans will have a good idea of what kind of physical activity Tony has been engaged in).

Tony dominates the image, taking up the entire bottom half of the frame. His slouched posture suggests that although he might be the immediate center of attention, he is visually sliding out of the frame. The only other seated character in the image is the informant Big Pussy, whose ultimate fate has long been sealed. But even Pussy is more stable in this image than Tony, and Tony's body position is that of one who, either by choice or (more likely) by the position he finds himself is, is slowly losing the central position among the people that surround him.

The only character in the image who seems to be looking directly at Tony is Pussy, the betrayer. Every other character is either looking away from Tony (as each of his direct family members are doing) or trying to see whatever it is in front of Tony (as each of his most loyal followers are doing). That Tony is not looking at whatever is in front of him (his future?) suggests that he has, at least in his mind, removed himself from direct involvement with his crime family. They may follow him wherever he leads, but Tony is not concentrating on his next move, a surely fatal state of mind.

I love how Carmela and Dr. Melfi are positioned in this image. They appear to be looking in the same direction, above and away from Tony, but Melfi's image is ghostly, insubstantial. Melfi is either being reflected off the glass door (in which case she is in the same room as Tony, but out of the image) or she is trapped behind the door, waiting for Tony to notice and release her (which, considering his distracted gaze, seems unlikely). The upward gaze of both women indicates a forward-looking, if not optimistic, stance; Carmela's gaze is almost melancholic, and her body is positioned as one walking away from the home and all it contains. Significantly, the tree behind her in the image is the only one with leaves remaining on it. The leaves have turned, suggesting Carmela has only a limited amount of time remaining in which to make her life decision--to stay with Tony or finally reclaim her own life.

Interestingly, the trees behind the other characters are long dead, suggesting their fates were sealed along with their loyalty to Tony.

Tony's swimming pool, the site of his introduction to us in the first episode of the series, is covered. There will be no ducks landing here this season, though the pool cover is a misleading shade of chlorinated blue. Tony may still have some remnant of the hope and possibility for escape that the ducks symbolized, but it is a false optimism. Tony's fate, like the pool, is sealed.

Tony's children, positioned directly behind his head, offer interesing insights into the future of the Soprano family. A.J. slouches like his father and his gaze is sullen, as if his prospects were limited. His jacket, colored forest green, suggests he may have some hope for continued growth, but this hope, like his spine, is stunted. Meadow, on the other hand, wears a relatively bright shade of blue (or at least as bright as this picture will allow), a more natural shade of water than that of Tony's covered pool. It is an oceanic blue, suggesting the hidden depths of this college graduate. Her head is tilted and her gaze is one of curious engagement with the future; she, of all the characters in this image, is the only one who looks like she might manage to escape with some hope of a self-made life. Ironically, I think Meadow is the character most likely to inherit Tony's empire and keep it alive. She is not the blindly loyal follower that Christopher, her only rival for the empire, is, nor has she become as spiritually damaged by Tony as her brother or mother have been. Meadow may be the only character in this cold portrait to come out with her sense of self intact, not unlike her conflicted father must once have done, long ago.
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In case you needed yet another media outlet to point you toward one of the most horrificly insightful portraits of the state of our troubled union, this from the "Television" segment of "The Week Ahead" in today's NYT:

"Speaking of social relevance, do you think you're too cool to watch Battlestar Galactica? Because you're not. . . More people need to watch this show, as it's one of the best on television."
Among other touchstones of our decaying culture, the characters of BG have recently outlawed abortion (in the interests of preserving an endangered species), let religious convictions infiltrate their administrative policies, hidden a mixed race child from its evil progenitors, and justified toture, discrimination, and assassination in the name of survival. Never forget, kids, that science fiction lets you get away with all kinds of pointed commentary that you will never find on a cable news channel.

When the current season of Galactica ends this week, the Sci-Fi Channel will provide American audiences with their first glimpse of the rivaltalized Doctor Who, the only show I have ever felt compelled to represent in costume at a SF convention. There's a nice write-up on it in the NYT today, though the article mostly concentrates on the sexual preference of the show's new producer.
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OK, I'm going to review the ballot, and then I'll be back with Oscar picks, only hours before the ceremony begins. At this point, my picks will mainly serve as a source of derision tomorrow for anyone who reads them today. Meh.

Love Keeps Her in the Air

I still haven't made up my mind about Serenity. I love Joss Whedon. I hate Joss Whedon. The movie is a sell-out. The movie is a painful goodbye. I want to die like Walsh, quickly during a moment of triumph. I want to die like Book, gathered with my friends in a fight to save my other friends. I can never watch an episode of Firefly again without feelings of bitter disappointment at what could have been. I can not stop watching episodes of Firefly because it is the best fucking spaceship show ever. Goddamn it, what is it about these characters?

Mostly, though, I want to stab out the eyes of all Fox TV executives for not letting me spend seven years with these people, as it should have been.

In the meantime, here's what else has been on my mind:

The Russians have made a deal with a Canadian golf club manufacturer to have a cosmonaut perform an EVA and hit an instrumented golf ball off the ISS and into orbit. Supposedly, this will commemorate the 35th anniversary of Alan Shepard's tee-off on the moon during Apollo 14, but there are a number of reasons why this kind of prank works better on the moon than in orbit. NASA, meanwhile, live up to their reputation as a bunch of pussies who got caught screwing around on the job (and killing their co-workers), but are now playing it so safe that it's an open question how much longer the U.S. will have a space program.

Last week, William F. Buckley, the founder of modern conservatism and its flagship hackrag, The National Review, wrote a surprisingly frank editorial on how "the American objective in Iraq has failed." Buckley's comments bear a striking resemblance to comments made earlier on the war by Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean. Glenn Greenwald offers an enlightening comparison of the political fallout.

For many years, I tried to be this man. That I didn't so much fail as never even fall into the same categories (as human, artist, intellect, or activist) says (I hope) more about his qualities than my lack thereof. Anyway, reading this essay helped me realize that we did share a love of cheesy Atari games, The Clash, non-academics, and pissing ourselves.

On a more somber note, I just learned of the death of Octavia Butler, one of the most innovative and disturbing authors of SF. A pioneer in more ways than one, her work represents the best of speculative fiction: intriguing portraits of humans in the future, with all our unfinished notions of politics, sexuality, gender, and warfare confronting frightening and heartbreaking aliens who seem to know us better than we know ourselves. Butler showed how disturbingly easy it was for these aliens to gain the upper hand on those of us who refuse to think about where we might be headed and those of us who neglect our capacity for salvation or redemption. I recommend her Xenogenesis series in particular: Dawn, Adulthood Rites, and Imago.

Coming soon: the completion of my comics list and Oscar picks. If I don't post these in the next few days, I never will.