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My holiday coffee session started off well enough, pressing random-play on my Zen turned up Bob Dylan’s things were good right up until Knocking on Heavens Door.

Listening to this track for probably the 200th time, I finally heard something different about it. Something, horribly wrong… There’s a tape loop embedded in this song. Put your headphones on and cue up track #10. About every 3-4 seconds you’ll hear somebody whistling in your right ear… over and over and over. Not realizing it was a loop, I thought this was just beginning-of-the-song- exuberance you hear often in live recordings. After two minutes I was having my doubts about the sanity of this random whistler. By three minutes I was wondering why nobody else in the audience hadn’t punched Whistler out completely. By four minutes in I figured they were too busy constantly clapping to punch anybody out. By minute five the song was totally spoiled. They put a tape loop in an otherwise decent performance… corrupting it really. You actually realize its a decent performance only for the last 45 seconds of the track when the idiot produces stopped the tape loop… What a bunch of jerks.

Maybe you won’t know what I’m talking about. I bought this CD in the UK at least 12 years ago. Some album mixes can vary from one market to the other, and from one year to the other. Maybe they didn’t foul up the U.S. version. I’m going to have to look into that. And I’d like an explanation on why any producer would think constant whistling would actually enhance a song. I bet they didn’t really like Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door in the first place so they felt like screwing around with it.

Tags: music, bob dylan, tape loop

I’m about halfway through this book now and I am starting to get the idea that Les Miz is a collection of unfinished stories woven together into one completed story. Not criticizing at all here… being incapable of finishing a novel (or starting one) of my own I’m always interested in how great books get written.

So far I can see at least two: a historical telling of the Battle of Waterloo and the convent at Petit-Picpus. Both of these were extremely long diversions from the main thread of the novel. In fact, both episodes stall and stall and stall until the very last pages of their stories before getting “tied in” to the main story. I think if these were intended to be integral parts of the original store of Jean Valjean, they would have been made shorter like the episode for Monsieur Gabaillard(?) Gillenormand and probably been linked to the main story by more than one tenuous fact.

I think what we see in this book is Victor Hugo’s ambition to create and entire suite of novels about France’s history and the city of Paris. His multiple references to Voltaire (who was responsible for a canon of some 2,000 books) suggests to me he was a kind of hero, or at least someone Hugo strived to equal in some ways. When these stories didn’t pan out into complete novels on their own, rather than throwing them on the fire he made use of them in his main work—maybe he got paid by the word or he really thought these plot-diversions were too good not to see the light of day.

Whatever the motivation, he made good use of this extra material. There’s is no doubt in my mind that people call this a great book in part because these many episodes drift away from the main story only to bring you back once you’d forgotten where you were. Most writers would bore you to death using this tactic (even if they used it less often) but when Hugo finishes you definitely feel like you're involved in a much richer story.

Tags: writing classics reading novels

I dusted off my long-neglected copy of Les Misèrables. The difference between now and fifteen years ago is this time I’m certain I’ll actually finish the thing.

I’ve been reading on the train ride home all week. Normally that would put me well on the way to finishing an average novel but thing—thing is 900 pages of small print (about 12-15 words per line, the usual novel text runs 8-11 words per line). This got me to wondering—how on Earth did this book get read enough to become popular? Were people such voracious readers back in the day that a tome like Les Miz didn’t put them off of starting, much less actually finishing it?

Certainly in this day an age brevity contributes to popularity—In spite of the high page count you could finish a Dan Brown in hours, not weeks. If Victor Hugo were alive today his works could easily go unnoticed because honestly, not enough people would actually read books of this size and weight to popularize it.

Although, there is the “Ulysses” effect… That’s my pet theory that only a dozen people have actually read James Joyce’s Ulysses all the way through—But J.J. has such a good rep for “artistry” that no one wants to admit they don’t get it… For an example of this theory in a modern context, see the reviews of the TV mystery/drama/WTF/show called Twin Peaks. Nobody knew what the hell was going on there, but anybody who raved about the show was certain they knew what was going on.

Did the same fate reach Les Misèrables? Did people start off insisting it was great because they didn’t have 3 or 4 weeks of spare time to finish the book yet they had too much pride to admit the book beat them?

I know of at least one person who read the book all the way to the end, that guy who made the musical… Presuming the book also ends with the lost alien rejoining his parents on a spaceship to outer space.

Tags: novels, reading, classics, great books

Ok, I’m still playing catchup with all the shows and I’m only on episode 5 but I have to say Weeds 4th season is off to a great start—

Guillermo, I know he’s super-bad and all but I’m rooting for him, like I don’t want this character to go off the show. Most of Jenji Kohan’s characters don’t make their way back to the show, for obvious reasons. Andy is such a believable goof I hope they’re not going to wreck thing by linking him up with Nancy—I just don’t see it as a good match. Albert Brooks’ short stint was excellent but I expect he’ll turn up next season as a convenient plot wrinkle.

I bet those writers enjoy their jobs. What I mean is, they’re enjoying the entertainment just like we are—only they get some satisfaction from knowing they thought of it first. Born in the right place at the right time, that’s one sweet job.

And somewhere out there is the batter's circle and Californication is on deck. American cable-TV dramas rock. They really do. What a shame the regular networks go with only safe bets. I'm not saying I don't like some of the shows on the regular channels, I'm just saying it would be nice if more people stuck their neck out once in a while.

Actually, not all the the Showtime dramas are the shit. I never saw the pull of the Sopranos, for example. But people still liked it-- even when they didn't make an episode for nearly two years! Clearly an example of a show that was giving people something they wanted. I remember when the producers said they'd "skip" a season people when apeshit. No really, apes and shit, that was the visual on the Entertainment Tonite show. No fooling.

What a shame, I spend 10-12 hours at a keyboard nearly every day for 12 years and I still haven't written a prize winning novel. Sometimes the universe just don't make no sens

Tags: tv, weeds, writing

Fifteen minutes in, and I’m certain I had the right idea never to watch this movie. You see, it was a moment of weakness when I chose this movie... That is, I didn’t see any better choices. Now I know... ANYTHING would have been a better choice.

Mostly, I’m not unimpressed how they’ve brought out just about every end-of-movie cheap trick and we’re only 20 minutes in! The slo-mo scenes the mystical vignettes and the dramatic pauses played out before any tension is raised. I mean, really now, that’s not just a little much, it’s too much!

I suppose what we know about ancient Greece in mostly statues, so I shouldn’t be so surprised that the best they can do with a story from this age is at best, a collection of talking statues -the writers of the movie put too much faith in the comic books ability to develop character or plot! Graphic novels look good, they don’t read good.

I could give you 298 more reasons, but I’ve just decided I’m not going to watch this long enough to come up with the rest. Yechh.

Tags: movies, opinion, criticism