Not Your Grandma’s Book Club

There are presently two kinds of barely working no-class hero jobs in the United States. They are basically the non-union jobs that don’t pay well, like dishwasher, and fast food worker, and the ones that do pay well, like auto assembly worker. (That is, it pays well until the upper class completes their goal of rolling back the clock to the days before the unions provided job security, benefits, and pensions.) I have recently read some books that chronicle each of these types of jobs.

The first one is titled Dishwasher: One Man’s Quest to Wash Dishes in All Fifty States. This book is fairly recent, having just come out in 2007. It features Pete Jordan, whose ultimate goal is to be a dishwasher in all 50 states. While this would seem to be a questionable goal to most people, it suited Dishwasher Pete just fine since it allowed him to travel wherever he wanted, find a job in just one day, and meet all kinds of interesting people you would normally never see ‘cause they are usually hidden away in the kitchen.

Although he did not finish his quest, he came pretty close, just missing it by 17 states. In the process, he created a zine, also called Dishwasher, that is now highly prized for the hilarity and incongruenty of its subject as well as the rarity of some of the original issues. (I know, because people were searching on EBay for some of the early ones.) Because of the zine, he is able to meet lots of people and actually get a dishwasher network going. This makes it even easier to travel from town to town and state to state and find good dishwashing jobs. Hilarity ensues. As he travels the country, he gathers up and writes stories in his Dishwasher zine. Some of the original articles are chronicled on his website, www.dishwasherpete.com. In fact the book is mainly a fleshed-out version of his zine. Fame ensues, and he is asked to be on the radio program This American Life. Even more fame ensues and he is asked to be on the David Letterman show. He instead gets a friend to impersonate him on the show while he stays in the green room eating and drinking, mostly drinking.

Some of the more entertaining parts of the book include Pete’s attitude towards his “profession.” Obviously, in order to complete his quest, Pete was not one to see the need to brownnose or otherwise soft soap the boss in order to move up on the job. Quite the contrary, whenever he was too hung over to go to work, stopped liking his boss, just didn’t feel like getting off the couch to go to work, or really, whenever the mood struck him, he would move on (most of the time without bothering to give any notice). Hints of promotion were also seen as a good reason to move on. He often mentions that his favorite “perk” of the job is not having to be nice to the boss because, of course, it’s just a DISHWASHING job! Some other “perks” of his job is the free food (even if some of it is leftovers on the plates he was supposed to wash), hiding dishes he doesn’t want to wash, and not having any trouble finding jobs wherever he travels. Some of the places he works at include an oil rig, a fish cannery, a commune, a dinner train, a ski resort, and more! Because he becomes well-known due to his zine, he is never at a loss for a couch to crash on and is a highly prized house guest in most instances since he always contributes by washing the dishes. The book includes all the dishwashing trivia one could imagine, including sagas of the various celebrities who have held dishwashing jobs (including George Orwell, Ronald Reagan, Malcolm X, Little Richard, and Al Pacino).

The next working class hero book I read was Rivethead: Tales from the Assembly Line by Ben Hamper. Ben is an assembly line worker at General Motors in Flint, Michigan. He gets his start writing when Michael Moore is editing the left-wing newspaper the Flint Voice, before it became the Michigan Voice. Moore suggests Ben write a column about his blue-collar experiences and the rest is history, as Hamper describes the assembly line life in a much more vivid and realistic way than any Bruce Springsteen or John Cougar Mellencamp song ever could.

Hamper spends the first few chapters of his book explaining how he tried to escape what he figures was his legacy, the life of the assembly line worker. His great-grandfather, grandfather, and father all worked on the assembly line, although it’s doubtful that those other generations kept their sense of humor about it like Ben did. Ben describes lots of inside information about the assembly line life, such as “doubling up,” which is where two workers will take turns during a shift each doing the other’s job at the same time as doing his own, and then switching, allowing each worker to goof off for half his shift. Goof off time is spent sleeping, walking around harassing the other workers, going home early, or the favorite assembly line preoccupation of going to the bar. As Ben explains, there is always a bar within walking distance of any decent auto factory. In fact, in both the dishwashing and assembly line worker trades, drinking seems to be the major preoccupation, and alcohol the main drug of choice. Some of the things done to pass the time in the factory are inventing games using auto scraps, practical jokes, exotic drugs, and of course, more drinking, sometimes at the bar after work, but just as often in the factory DURING work. This tends to explain to a lot of people why their windshield wipers wipe backwards or their back-up lights are upside down.

Ben Hamper’s book also started as a compilation of smaller pieces, columns about assembly line life that he wrote for Mike Moore’s newspapers from 1977 until 1988. The book was released in 1991 and ends with Ben being transferred to Pontiac, as GM makes its assault on Flint by closing the factories. This is further chronicled in Michael Moore’s breakout movie, Roger and Me, which Ben Hamper makes an appearance in.

The next barely working no-class hero book I read is only one by default. Titled My Secret Life on the McJob, it was written by Jerry Newman, who is actually a college professor taking jobs in fast food restaurants for research purposes. While this might disqualify him as a barely working no-class hero in many people’s eyes, he honestly worked the jobs for months at a time and therefore I am including Jerry and his research.

The book starts out with Jerry getting his bright idea to try different fast food jobs when his daughter gets what appears to be a piece of a condom in her fast food hamburger (!). Actually the end of a glove, this starts Jerry Newman to thinking about the life and sociology of a fast food worker. While the previous two books were mostly done in a not-too-serious manner, Jerry’s book is “serious” since he actually writes like he is doing world-class research that will revolutionize the world. This is probably why it just doesn’t have the same pizzazz in the writing as the previous two entries. Even the chapter titled Diversity, Discrimination, and Lap Dancing is mostly about discrimination with too little about lap dancing., detailed in too academic a style to be more than mildly interesting. On a lighter note, I actually do begin to wonder if I would have the stamina to handle some of the fast food jobs that are mastered by Jerry. The way he describes many of them, especially when they are performed at the height of the “evening rush,” makes them sound way more complicated than I could ever imagine fast food work to be. I did learn some interesting but probably not personally useful information like: the best way to stop a grease fire in a McDonald’s is to dump frozen french fries on it. This book would have been a lot more fun if Jerry had let his hair down a bit and had a few good drinking stories.

The next book was in a similar vein but not as serious. Titled You Want Fries With That?: A White-Collar Burnout Experiences Life at Minimum Wage, this book fortunately isn’t a “meaningful” research project like My Secret Life on the McJob. As it says on the flyleaf, the author, Prioleau Alexander, “walked away from a lucrative career as an advertising executive” and explores various minimum wage jobs such as pizza deliveryman, ice cream scooper, construction worker, emergency room tech, fast food jockey, and cowboy at a Montana dude ranch.

I prefer the less scholarly approach that Alexander takes in his book. Alexander is much more entertaining as he rails against being a pizza delivery guy and the various problems encountered. For instance, one major pet peeve he has is people who have no address numbers on their houses. A friend of mine who was a cable TV representative had the same complaints. I liked how he would tell people that it only cost about fifty cents a number to go to the hardware store and buy numbers to put on your house or mailbox. He would even offer to give them the dollar or two dollars it would cost them in case he ever had to come back again. As you can guess, he had no takers and the next time in that neighborhood, he would usually notice, still no house numbers.

There were other interesting points that Alexander made regarding the pizza delivery job. Such as the fact that all other cars would get out of the way for him when he drove the clearly marked pizza car. They all, he figured, still thought that the pizza guy would drive crazy because he had to get the pizza there in 30 minutes or wouldn’t get paid and so therefore was willing to die for the right of way. He said even rednecks would get out of his way! It is good to let the rest of the world know that “thirty minutes or it’s free” was a gimmick used by Dominos in the late 80s and early 90s and was discontinued in 1993 for obvious reasons, because of the number of lawsuits arising from accidents caused by hurried delivery drivers.

And because of gas costs and car maintenance costs, what is the minimum you should pay the pizza delivery guy? Five dollars. Good to know.

As Alexander starts to talk about his other jobs, the tongue-in-cheek style that made me finish reading the whole book kicks in. For instance, in his next job as an ice cream shop peon, he writes “My first solo customers were two overweight college girls in sweats, who waddled in giggling and talking about how this little adventure was going to blow their diet. It’s hard to say what diet they were on, but it certainly wasn’t one that included losing weight in the overall strategy.” How can you not love snarkiness like that?

In his construction job, he describes how happy the patrons are when the company workers actually show up when expected. In fact, their motto is “We actually show up!” In his “big box store”section, the snarkiness continues as he gives a fairly apt description of how Wal-Mart pretty much killed off small town America. He describes the process of applying to work there, which is all computerized. But he can’t describe the working process, since he never gets hired.

Finally, he works in a hospital emergency room. Hilarity once more ensues. While writing, tongue remains in cheek, which is good since the blood and gore would be a turn-off otherwise.

In case working at a dude ranch doesn’t seem incongruous enough, he throws in an essay on Mormons. This alone makes the whole chapter worth reading!

All-in-all, this is a very entertaining book and while one would usually not consider this type of book to be a page-turner, I actually pretty much read it at one sitting and would even consider re-reading it! So it got my highest rating. The fact that the guy appeared on the Steven Colbert show didn’t hurt either. Check it out and then go get yourself a college degree.

For the several months leading up to the 2008 presidential election, I was incapable of reading, watching, or dreaming anything else but the news.  Not only was this a historic election! as every news anchor, guest, and commentator reminded me EVERY THREE SECONDS, but it was also rollicking good fun.  The candidates were entertaining, the supporters were crazy, and the news coverage was fantastic rubbish.  And that was before Sarah Palin, Joe the Plumber, and Tina Fey entered the picture.

For months, the only time I changed the channel from MSNBC, it was to watch Election 2008 get the comic treatment on The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and SNL.  And while watching all these shows, I was simultaneously reading stories - the same stories - on Huffington Post and frantically searching for the latest news poll results like a crack-addled fiend looking for her next hit.

So while sitting in my living room watching Obama’s acceptance speech, I felt joy and exhiliration and - yes - hope. But I also felt a great sense of relief - finally I could sit back and watch stupid television shows and read ridiculous books! I could relax! I didn’t have to monitor the news every second of every day anymore!  I can watch the Food Network, and delightfully crappy SciFi Original Movies!

But I’ve become addicted to the news, and addictions are hard to break.  The day after the election The Media started speculating on the 2010 and 2012 elections. Will Sarah Palin run for Prez 2012?  Or maybe she’ll put herself in Ted Stevens’ Senate seat right now! Joe the Plumber for Congress 2010!  Jeb Bush for the Senate 2010!

Damn it!  I’ll never be able to watch the Food Network again.  No good can come from these people, and I need to keep an eye on them and know where they are at all times, lest they sneak up behind me and get swept into government while supporting some piece-of-shite “social reforms”.  But getting my news fix isn’t nearly as fun anymore. The economy sucks, the unemployment rate sucks, our standing in the world sucks.  The news isn’t fun anymore - it’s daunting and depressing and my post-election euphoria election has all but disappeared.

I’ve decided that the only way to regain that euphoria is to relive it.  To paraphrase Brokeback Mountain: Election 2008, I can’t quit you.

Imagine my joy then, when I heard Calvin Trillin on NPR promoting his new book, Deciding the Decider: The 2008 Presidential Race in Rhyme.  This is the book I’ve been waiting for.  Trillin covers the election from waaaay back in 2006 all the way to the 2008 post-election wrap-up.  In between, he marks the rise and fall of the 20-some candidates in the running field, reminds readers of some of the finer scandals of the presidential season, rehashes the debates, and considers the Palin/Plumber phenomenon. In verse.  Interspersed throughout the verse are short poems and and new lyrics to old tunes, with titles such as:

• “An Opponent of the War Attempts to Say Farewell to Donald Rumsfeld With at Least a Modicum of Courtesy”
• A Political Reporter Laments Being Assigned to Watch Al Gore’s Waistline”
• “Yes, I Know He’s a Mill Worker’s Son but There’s That Hollywood Hair ( A country song about John Edwards)”
• “Pat Robertson, Protector of Traditional Family Values, Endorses Rudy Giuliani, A Serial Adulterer, Who’s Pro-choice and Does Not Think That People Accepting of Gays Should Be Destroyed By Hurricanes or Other Disasters”
• “On Three Out of the Ten Republican Presidential Candidates Stating That They Don’t Believe In Evolution”
• “The Rime of the Ancient Candidate (John McCain Adapts Samuel Coleridge’s epic)”
• “How the Rove-O-Clones Would Have Conducted an Election Campaign Against Nelson Mandela”
• “John McCain Explains What He Meant by Saying That the Fundamentals of the Economy Are Strong”
• “Sarah Palin’s Bubble Deflates Just as Her Clothing Bills Arrive”

The verse is sometimes uneven, and Trillin really stretches some of the rhymes.  However, when he’s good he’s great:

Once interviews were present for critiquing,
The Sarah Palin bubble started leaking.
Though no one tried to power fastballs past her,
Her interviews were simply a disaster.
Reviews became especially sulphuric
When Palin had a chat with Katie Couric.
On Russia’s being not so far away
She sounded eerily like Tina Fey.

And in honor of PUMA’s Hilary-Or-Die supporters, Trillin includes this little gem:

The Chant of the Noseless Diehards
(Accompanied by the Cable News Chorus)

We’re Democrats always, but now we’ll endeavor
To sit this one out, or pull John McCain’s lever -
Though he’s always wrong and he isn’t that clever.
We do this to prove, well, to prove, well…whatever.

Deciding the Decider is a quick and gratifying read.  And after I finished this little volume I found that while today’s news still sucks, it didn’t bother me quite as much.

What Happened, by Scott McClellan, is by Bush’s former press secretary. The phrase “rats deserting a sinking ship” comes immediately to mind because the full title includes the tagline: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception. The Bush administration’s culture of deception would be more accurate although if one is to enjoy this book to the fullest, it is best to humor Scott and let him blame everything on all of Washington. You see, poor old Scott was with Mr. Bush from the start, all the way back to when he was the governor of Texas. These were of course different times, and Scott is happy to rhapsodize about the good old days back in Austin when George was still a uniter, not a divider. Somehow, George pulled the wool over Scott’s eyes after becoming president, because Scott was totally blindsided by all this culture of deception right up until he quit as press secretary.

The thing that really yanked Scott’s chain was when those paragons of virtue Karl Rove and Scooter Libby actually lied to HIM about their role in the unmasking of Valerie Plame as a CIA agent. After Scott publicly, repeatedly denied that Karl and Scooter had any role in the dastardly deed, they had the nerve to stab him in the back and admit complicity (to him, not to the media), some two years after. This really bothered Scott, more than the unfunded No Child Left Behind program, George’s vanishing act the day of 9/11, letting Osama Bin Laden go, vetoing the children’s health care plan, Abu Gharib, the warrantless eavesdropping program, Cheney shooting his friend in the face, and any of the other too-numerous to count peccadilloes of the Bush administration. Verily, it seems the only other thing that bothered Scott anywhere near as much as the Plame affair was not finding WMDs in Iraq. Pretty much after the beginning when Scott gives his inspirational childhood story, about a third of the book covers these two issues, with a little Hurricane Katrina thrown in.

Scott, unfortunately, was totally clueless about any impropriety in the Bush administration until just about the day before he stepped down, which was right about the time Scooter Libby was found guilty, when before he could even be assigned a prison number, he was pardoned by the totally innocent George. Up until that point, the culture of deception got the better of Scott and he was turned into a stooge by the administration, forced to tell lies to cover up the crimes of Bushco.

This book has something for lovers of many genres. Mystery aficionados will marvel at how Scott was fooled, children’s book lovers will wonder at how the evil people ganged up on Scott but of course Scott the good guy won in the end (he has even endorsed Barack Obama, the non-Republican), and humor book lovers will obviously have plenty there for them!

For Banned Books Week, I decided that instead of picking a book off a list, I was going to read a banned book from my past.  What follows is not a review of the book - how could I possibly review and critique someone’s personal experiences - but rather a review of the situation that first introduced me to the book.

Back in the fall of 1999, when I was a senior, my nondescript high school made the national news.  The circumstances for the school’s 10 minutes of “fame” were not good.

The 10th-grade English classes were assigned to read Kaffir Boy, Mark Mathabane’s autobiographical and harrowing account of growing up in - and escaping from - Apartheid South Africa.  Mathabane grew up in a ghetto outside Johannesburg and the laws of Apartheid held his family in hunger, abject poverty, sickness and dispair.  Mathabane’s mother struggled to send him to school, and despite an educational system that was not equal, Mathabane was able to his education and quest for knowledge (and interest in tennis) to pull himself out of an impossible situation.  At the time Kaffir Boy was published in 1987, millions of South Africans continued to suffer under Apartheid.

In the fall of 1999 I remember sitting in my journalism classroom during study hall one day.  The journalism adviser, a champion of free speech, was ill and we were being babysat by a middle-aged ex-cheerleader substitute teacher.  I remember I was editing stories for the paper when a couple of 10th grade girls started…fussing is really the only word to describe it.  They were reading Kaffir Boy, had slightly shocked looks on their faces, and were nervously giggling and passing the book around to their friends.

The ex-cheerleader substitute teacher asked them what was so funny, and the girls nearly stumbled over themselves in the rush to show Ex-cheerleader three pages in the middle of the book.  Ex-cheerleader read those three pages in the middle of the book, her face turned an interesting shade of crimson, and then she exploded in rage.  She began sputtering declarations that the book was “disgusting,” “poronography,” “immoral,” and that “students shouldn’t be allowed to read this,” - all of which was interspersed with random epithets against the author and the teachers who assigned the book.  Then she ran ran out of the room, the offending book clutched in her white-knuckled hand, declaring that the “principle is going to hear about this.”  And we didn’t see her again for the rest of the hour.  I assume found her way back to the classroom later that day, but I can’t be sure.

What I can be sure of is that the school’s subsequent actions were reprehensible, and it was during this ordeal when I think I saw the act of censorship for what it was.  The “offending” passage was a description of a time when Mathabane was seven years old, starving, and was lured with food by a teenage pimp to a barracks for male workers.  Mathabane chose not to take the food and ran away.  However, there were many other boys in the barracks who had chosen to accept the free meal - and what came with it.

Apparently, the ex-cheerleader substitute teacher was neither the first nor last person that the administration had heard from that week.  Apparently extreme oppression, poverty, and starvation - and the desperation that comes thereof - is just too unpleasant for white middle-class America to be forced to read.  Faced with with parental outrage over those three pages, the school administration confiscated all the books until they made a decision on what to do.  This angered my friends and I.  My journalism adviser was livid (he was constantly at odds with the administration.  The previous year he had been our English teacher and had us read Roots, the copies of which he had purchased with his own money, since the book was not officially sanctioned by school curriculum.  Those copies - his copies - of Roots have since been confiscated by the school administration).

After several school board meetings, the administration came up with a plan - they took a black marker to the offending passage.  They blacked out, sanitized, eradicated history.  They hid the truth to make the story more palatable to the well-fed and priviledged, to make the story acceptable to those who have never had to contemplate trading their virtue for a bowl of rice.  And this is the point when my high school made the national news.  Mathabane posted his response in the November 29, 1999 issue of The Washington Post, and stated that he would rather students not read the book at all than read a sanitized version of his life.

I had originally planned to end this post with the “offending” passage, in a belated act of defiance against my old school administrators.  However, what makes the passage powerful is the context in which it is written, the events that lie before and after the passage.  I leave you, instead, with Mathabane’s discussion of my school’s censorship of his book and his life:

Could “Kaffir Boy” have had this impact without the prostitution scene? I doubt it. It was an event that changed me forever. Could I have made that point using less graphic language? Perhaps. But language is a very sacred thing for a writer. When I write, I strive for clarity and directness, so the reader understands precisely what I mean. To fudge language in order to avoid offending the sensibilities of one group or another leads to doublespeak, which is the death of honesty.

That very honesty is what prompted a senior from Sentinel High School in Missoula, Mont., to send me a letter a few days ago. In it she wrote that “Kaffir Boy” made her realize “that no matter what, there is always hope.” It is this hope that I’m seeking to keep alive with my books.

I owe my life to books. While I was in the ghetto, groaning under the yoke of apartheid, wallowing in self-pity, believing that I was doomed to die from the sheer agony of frustrated hopes and strangled dreams, books became my best friends and my salvation. Reading broadened my horizons, deepened my sensibilities and, most importantly, made me think. Books liberated me from mental slavery and opened doors of opportunity where none seemed to exist.

Censorship is not the solution to the legitimate concern some parents have about what is appropriate for their children to read. I wish child abuse and racism weren’t facts of life, but they are. Only by knowing about them can we combat them effectively.

Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight is not a book I would normally read of my own volition. I like YA lit, but I generally don’t go for vampire stories, and I especially don’t go for teen vampire romance. In a better, kinder, more rational world I would not have read Twilight. But, sadly, I do not live in that world. No. I live in a world where Twilight (and its sequels) is wildly popular amongst teen girls. I live in a world where Twilight is wildly popular with their delusional mothers. I live in a world where Twilight will be invading our movie screens this November. I live in a world where my ex-friend Aardvark dared me to read this dreck. And, sadly, I live in world where I accepted, and have since regretted, this dare. (Come here, Aardvark - we need to have a little chat…a little closer….*smack*)

Reading Twilight is like watching hurricane coverage on television - it’s needlessly pointless and frequently painful, yet your twisted desire to see devastation keeps you following the story. This book is too bad to put down. On the surface, the writing, characters, and plot are so ridiculous that the book just seems to be a fun and harmless parody of, well, itself. But if you take a second or two to contemplate the book in depth (which I really would not advise), the characters and plot that seemed ridiculously harmless at first become much more disturbing. Simply put, this book cannot be a good influence on young adult girls.

So what’s the problem, then?

Meyer is a Mormon.  I wouldn’t automatically hold that against her, but Mormons and vampires really don’t belong together.  The evil, death, sex, and blood lust that are typically associated with vampires just aren’t kosher in Mormonism.  So what’s a vampire-loving Mormon like Meyer to do, then?  She created a novel in which the vampires are ashamed at their human blood lust and feed on wild animals instead (perhaps blood lust is too close to caffeine addiction). These vampires believe in creationism and preach abstinence. They stay in the dark not for any nefarious purpose but because their skin just sparkles so darn pretty in the sun. Essentially, what we have here is a novel about Anti-Vampires™.  I suppose if that’s your kind of thing, that’s your kind of thing (and this would be your kind of book). And I’m not automatically opposed to stories about really nice, exceedingly well-behaved vampires. What I am opposed to is crappy writing, poor characterization, and stupid plots. And with Twilight I just hit the trifecta. Woo-hoo!

One of the mantras of authors is to “write what you know.”  Presumably, then, Meyers should have done some research on vampires against which she could develop her Anti-Vampires™, right?  According to a love letter in Time comparing Meyer’s genius to that J.K. Rowling (oh, I think not), Meyers didn’t do a stitch of research.  The book takes place in Forks, WA - surely she’s been there or has at least done a bit of research about the setting?  Don’t be foolish.

The writing makes up for the lack of research, then?  Even Time’s love letter can’t spit-shine this one:

Meyer floods the page like a severed artery. She never uses a sentence when she can use a whole paragraph. Her books are big (500-plus pages) but not dense–they have a pillowy quality distinctly reminiscent of Internet fan fiction.

And that’s from someone who likes - nay, loves - the book.

So, the premise is weird, the lack of research is evident, and the writing is effervescent crap.  But the plot - for the book to be as popular as it is, the plot has to be good, right?  You already know the answer. This book is 498 pages long. The plot can be summarized in two paragraphs.

Bella is a high school junior who has just moved from Phoenix to live with her dad in rain-soaked Forks, WA. Bella becomes mesmerized by the devastatingly handsome, extraordinarily talented, unbelieveably strong, extremely moody, and strangely pale Edward Cullen. Edward repeatedly saves Bella from near-death and slightly uncomfortable experiences. Curious about Edward’s looks, moody temper, and seemingly superhuman abilities, Bella does some research on the good ‘ol internet and decides that Edward must be a vampire. And really, who wouldn’t.

Turns out Edward is a vampire, but he and his “family” are nice vampires who have trained themselves to feed off wild animals instead of humans. Bella and Edward fall in love. But there’s a problem (gasp!) - Bella’s blood is Edward’s poison, so to speak, and Edward spends a lot of time trying not to bite Bella. They do some chaste nice-vampire stuff. Bella learns that vampires stay out of the sun because they are just so darn sparkly. Then real vampires set their sights - or fangs - on Bella and Edward’s family drops everything to save her. And then Edward takes Bella to the prom.

“But wait…” you say. “What happens in the other 497 pages?” I was hoping you wouldn’t ask.

At least half the book is devoted to Bella (hyperventilating / not breathing / swooning / fainting / having her heart stop / having her heart beat uncontrollably) whenever Edward (looks at her / doesn’t look at her / speaks to her / doesn’t speak to her / touches her / is near her / is nowhere around). That’s a good 250 pages of overwrought teen girl angst right there. Amongst my favorite:

He tilted his head slowly and touched his cool lips to mine for the second time, very carefully, parting them slightly.

And then I collapsed.

“Bella?” His voice was alarmed as he caught me and held me up.

“You…made…me…faint,” I accused him dizzily.

“What am I going to do with you?” he groaned in exasperation. “Yesterday I kiss you, and you attack me! Today you pass out on me!”

Add to this at least another 100 pages of Edward convincing Bella to do things she doesn’t want to do, Edward convincing Bella not to do things she does want to do, and Edward physically picking her up and occasionally slinging her over his shoulder to move her. And almost every time Bella threatens to show us readers that she has a spine and just might assert herself, well she just looks in Edward’s pretty, pretty eyes and realizes that she has been completely wrong:

“..such as the time he asked me my favorite gemstone, and I blurted out topaz before thinking. He’d been flinging questions at me with such speed that I felt like I was taking one of those psychiatric tests where you answer with the first word that comes to mind. I was sure he would have continued down whatever mental list he was following, except for the blush. My face reddened because until recently my favorite gemstone was the garnet. It was impossible, while staring back into his topaz eyes, not to remember the reason for the switch. And, naturally, he wouldn’t rest until I’d admitted why I was embarrassed.” (pg. 230)

Forgetting your favorite gemstone! OMG! How embarrassing!

At least another 40 pages are devoted to Bella and Edward worrying about her falling over, tripping, or stumbling; or Bella actually falling over, tripping, or stumbling. Wow, it sure is a good thing she has a man around to save her from herself.

My feminist heart is not amused. The problem isn’t that Edward is overbearing, domineering, or a chauvinist - his character really isn’t fleshed out enough to be anything except pale, sparkly, and “devastatingly” handsome. No. The problem is that Bella is theoretically intelligent and independent, but seems to have left her spine back in Phoenix. Being spineless, the only thing holding up Bella’s character is an overactive yet morally repressed libido. And whenever Bella threatens to fly back out to Phoenix to reclaim her spine, she just takes another look at Edward’s eyes and immediately places herself in a subservient role.

But then I got to the penultimate chapter (oh thank you Lord for delivering me through this dreck), where Bella is laying in a hospital bed in Phoenix after Edward and his family save her from a real vampire. Begging Edward to make her a vampire, Bella proclaims:

But it just seems logical…a man and a woman have to be somewhat equal…as in, one of them can’t always be swooping in and saving the other one. They have to save each other equally.

What’s this? Has Bella reclaimed her spine? Has she decided to stand on her own two feet, contrary to the 470+ pages which the reader has unfortunately endured? Could this book have a redeeming value?

Don’t get too excited. Seriously. When Bella gets herself too lathered up while demanding to become a nice vampire, Edward has the nurse pump her with morphine, and she drifts into dreamland with half-hearted and incoherent mumbles. And in the final chapter he drags her crying (yes, crying) and pouting (yes, pouting) to the prom.

But wait! Bella does have one important lesson to teach teen girls:

I knew I was far too stressed to sleep, so I did something I’d never done before. I deliberately took unnecessary cold medicine - the kind that knocked me out for a good eight hours. I normally wouldn’t condone that type of behavior in myself, but tomorrow would be complicated enough without me being loopy from sleep deprivation on top of everything else…I woke early, having slept soundly and dreamlessly thanks to my gratuitous drug use. (pg. 252-253)

That’s right, girlies!

Friends don’t let friends do cough syrup.

This is Red Karma, reporting to you of the untimely demise of the correspondents Alron and Mother Hubbard. Found in a ditch in a remote Teegeeack neighborhood with signs reading “Suppressive” around their necks, the Hubbards appeared to have been bludgeoned to death with some kind of alien apparatus called an “e-meter.” Their last words were “You must get our article to notmygrandma.com and warn the people! Oh no! Not more body thetans! {scream}.” So I, Red Karma, would be derelict in my space cadet duties if I failed to deliver this swan song titled No Tom Cruise Control.

No Tom Cruise Control-Unauthorized Review of Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography

This, even without the Scientology references, would have been a pretty funny read. When reading what is basically a good trashy book about someone that you feel deserves to be trashed, you hope that it will be more detailed and inclusive that the usual trashy celebrity sources. Of course, back in the day, this would’ve been Star or National Enquirer. But today, or actually for the last 20 years, trashy celebrity information is now available on all the sources that used to give “the news.” That is, CNN, daily newspapers, and the local “news” channels.

Usually my standards are low (hear me out!) when reading trash. If it sends me to the Internet more than three times to look things up, I consider it not a total waste of time. Such was the case the Tommy C. book. I even looked up non-Scientology stuff! (“He was in Losin’ It?”) And if nothing else would cause Tom’s Scientology buddies to stalk, sue, and otherwise harass Andrew Morton, the author of this masterpiece, this should: I will never be able to look at Tom Cruise again without seeing him, OT3+ that he is, in a room by himself with a portable e-meter, running processes on his own personal body thetans! (This was until I saw the tape of Tom online talking about Scientologists being the only ones that can help car accident people.) If any of this mystifies you, by all means, get the book!

Morton starts out with Tom’s childhood and emasculation of his dad, continues through his engram-producing early movie career, and goes all the way to the witching of Katie.

The book does leave some questions unanswered. How DID Nicole (Kidman) escape the Scientologists? Who is more retarded, Tom Cruise or John Travolta? With all those Scientologists harassing Andrew Morton, who’s guarding Xenu? But all the other Tom Cruise questions, and many you didn’t want to know about, ARE answered. How can you go wrong?

The review ended here. This is Red Karma, mission accomplished, over and out!

I don’t dislike Shakespeare - I just decided fairly early on during my English degree that there were more than enough people studying Shakespeare already and my presence in the Shakespeare marketplace would just clutter up the joint.  Thus, the sum total of my Shakespeare experience consists of a few comedies, a few tragedies, and a handful of sonnets.  Yet, every so often I feel the urge to go all Elizabethan and get my Bard on.  The trouble is, because I’m not a Shakespeare scholar it takes me a while to wade through the language and references, thus making the whole activity more homework than fun.  The experience tops off my Shakespeare quota for a time, until I get a vague idea a year or two later that reading Shakespeare might be fun, and the Shakespeare Reading Cycle begins again.

I reached that point a few weeks ago when I was at my local bookstore and saw a book by first-time novelist Jess Winfield with an adorable drawing of the Bard himself nestled under the title My Name is Will: A Novel of Drugs, Sex, and Shakespeare.  Thus meeting my exacting standards of having a clever title and an interesting cover, I bought the book.  So, was it worth it?  Does it live up to its promise of “drugs, sex, and Shakespeare”?  Oh hell yeah!

There’s sex.

What debauchery!

There’s drugs.

Oh the trips!

There’s Shakespeare.

Not just one, but two!

And what about politics?  Is there politics?

I’ll see your sociopolitical witch hunt and raise ya one!

This book just blew the top off the Shakespeare Fun-O-Meter.

My Name is Will follows the parallel lives of two different people from two different centuries, whose stories intersect in varying ways.

The reader is first introduced to Willie Shakespeare Greenburg as he sits on a bus transporting a giant, 32-gram psychedelic mushroom.  However, Willie is not a professional drug runner.  He’s a master’s student in the 1980s studying William Shakespeare at the University of California at Santa Cruz.  He has spent most of his studies not studying but instead smoking hash, popping psychedelic mushrooms, and, well, let’s call it chasing tail.  In a fit of panic and having done almost no research, Willie proposes to his adviser’s assistant that he will write a thesis positing that contrary to popular belief William Shakespeare was a Catholic.  But first, he must earn some money to support his studies by delivering that giant psychedelic mushroom for a friend, all while dodging Ronald Reagan and Carlton Turner’s attack dogs, the narcs from the Drug Enforcement Agency.

The second story follows William Shakespeare, the William Shakespeare, an 18 year-old Latin teacher who struggles to keep his students’ attention and is only just developing an interest in the theater.  He has also just developed an interest in, well, once again let’s call it chasing tail.  (There is far less drug use in William’s story than in Willie’s, however there is a rather uncomfortable chapter involving a psychedelic witch’s brew, a broom handle, and William’s sore posterior.)  William has been nominally raised in the New Faith (protestantism), although he rarely attends church.  However, William’s family are closet Catholics, hiding their faith from Elizabeth I loyalists who routinely hang, draw, and quarter priests and congregants who practice in secret.  William joins a local, very amateur theater guild whose members debate whether to put on a production of Protestant or Catholic propaganda. But before the show can go on William must secretly deliver a treasured possession of a murdered Catholic mentor to the mentor’s family, all while avoiding being murdered himself.

The author, Jess Winfield, is one of the founding members of the Reduced Shakespeare Company and has put a lot of work into making the novel more or less historically accurate, noting lapses in historical fact and the literary licenses he took at the back of the book.  I’m not sure how far he went into researching the drug use, but from my novice perspective it sure sounded authentic.  The language in the chapters involving William Shakespeare is wonderful, using Elizabethan English that is witty and bawdy, rife with double entendres, but not forced into unnatural iambic pentameter (yes, yes, most wonderful linguist of the English language, etc - but seriously). And even though my ability to quote Shakespeare is admittedly weak, I snickered every time someone utters a line that might almost be clever with a little refinement:

“What’s in a name?  Rosaline may be Rosalind, and yet are both a rose, by any other -”

In short, this book is funny and fantastic.  However, one of the funniest parts of the book is buried in the author’s bio.  For how wonderful is it that the author of this bawdy debauchery, this Sex ‘n’Drugs Extravaganza, spent ten years of his life “writing and producing award-winning cartoons for the Walt Disney Company.”

It’s pretty damn wonderful.

And I’d like to see those cartoons.

You would think that being a librarian, or even just working in a library, would enable one to be able to get just about any book, anywhere, once the book has been published. But as sure as I learned to never help a patron research genital mutilation images from a public computer, I also learned librarian powers did not extend to getting the book Home in Detroit.

I first read about this book in the local weekly for Detroit, the Metro Times. Sold by Blightbusters, a group that does good work in Detroit trying to get dangerous buildings repaired or razed, I was excited and wanted to read the book as soon as I heard about it. What it is, is a book showing pictures of what houses famous people lived in when they lived in Detroit, and what they look like today. The actual list of famous people is probably the most fun. While everyone knows about Gilda Radner and Lily Tomlin growing up in Detroit, how many people know that Sonny Bono or Francis Ford Coppolla spent childhood years in the Motor City? We all know about Rosa Parks, but how many people knew Malcolm X lived in the city? What might be the most amazing fact about the book is that the photos of the houses are mostly pictures of homes still there! Only one photo near the end of the book shows a vacant lot-with the attrition of houses in Detroit, I would have expected a lot more houses to be not still in existence. (They do show what is at the address of where the house that Charles Lindbergh was born in, although the actual house is gone and there is now an apartment building on the original site. But it has the very same address and this is the only entry that is not illustrating the original property.) So this book was not disappointing by the time I finally got to see a copy. One of the most interesting contrasts was the house that Robert Wagner grew up in (a huge mansion) and the apartment Casey Kasem grew up in (dinky). The property in the worst condition? Easy, the house Marion and Mike Illitch lived in when first married. It looks like it could fall over or burst into spontaneous combustion at any moment.

Obviously, a monumental book such as this, that revealed that Tom Selleck was one of the few celebrities to grow up on the east side, was something I had to see. However, a quick check of local library catalogs and the WorldCat database revealed that NOBODY KNEW ABOUT THIS BOOK BUT ME! I soon realized that there were no free copies to be had so I would have to find someplace that had the book for sale and actually buy it. Now this I didn’t mind so much, especially since I knew the money would go to a good cause. So I went online to the usual suspects like Amazon and came up empty!! I soon realized that the only way I was going to possess this book was to do as it said in the original news article and order it through Blightbusters. This I did, calling them on the phone and even giving my credit card number to perfect strangers on the other end of the line. After hearing that I would receive the book “in about two weeks, “ I relaxed and prepared to wait to get the first thing I had actually looked forward to receiving by snail mail in decades. And waited. And waited! Finally, after two months, it looked like there might be some kind of fly in the Home in Detroit ointment. So I called and unlike the first time I called the office, I got an answering machine, one of those ones that make you listen to a long, boring message before it will let you leave a message. But wait and leave a message I did. And then waited some more. After a couple of weeks, it appeared like I was not going to hear from the Blightbusters. Finally, when I tried again, I did get a real person and found out that their credit card machine stopped working awhile back. Sure enough, I checked and my card had never been billed. So I wasn’t out any money. But it seemed that there was still no way I could easily acquire this book! I eventually called, found them in their office again, and after securing assurances that they would be in the office for at least two more hours and that they had ample supplies of THE BOOK, I hightailed it there to the west side of Detroit from the east-side suburbs. And at last, I forked over my cash and was given a COPY OF THE BOOK!

As previously mentioned, I wasn’t disappointed. For instance, all the houses WERE in Detroit (Ok, one or two might’ve been in Highland Park or Hamtramck). They didn’t cop out and show, say, Robin Williams’ house in Bloomfield Hills or Madonna’s in Rochester Hills. Of course, we did think of some famous Detroit houses that weren’t included, such as the apartment Joni Mitchell lived in when she wrote the Blue album. It had been featured in a Metro Times article a few weeks previously. Also, homes of other people like Nobel Prize Winner Ralph Bunche or rocker Alice Cooper, or revolutionary Tom Hayden, or even Nixon’s attorney general John Mitchell, were not included. Also Martha Reeves, the Four Tops, the Miracles, or Ed McMahon! There are just too many Motown artists, enough for a separate book (which I would buy) if they wanted to show the homes of the Spinners, the Dramatics, the Contours, and everyone else. Not too many sports figures were included although they did show a house for Ty Cobb.

The book can be used to settle arguments-a friend tried to convince me that Eddie Murphy had lived in Detroit because he wore a Mumford Athletic Dept. shirt in Beverly Hills Cop. But the book clears this up-Eddie is from the Big Apple(Brooklyn), but Jerry Bruckheimer, the film’s director, IS from Detroit. His house is in the book. A lot of famous sports people like Joe Louis and John Lee Hooker lived in the razed Hastings St. /Black Bottom area so that cut out a few possibilities. Most of the houses they showed belonged to national figures so not too many local politicians were included. But all in all a great collection! You will no doubt be amazed at who is included in the book and what their house looks like now.

But if you want to actually see the book, well, you’ll just have to take my word for it until I donate my copy to the library.

Aarvark is a fan of manga and graphic novels, and has been slowly working a years’ long campaign to lure me into the degeneracy which certainly must come of the genre. I was noncommittal at first - I haven’t read a comic book in almost 20 years and that one, Archie, kind of sucked. My parents tricked me into reading it during summer car rides to campgrounds, and they car/comic combo always left me nauseated by the time we had to set up the pop-up. And not only don’t I like comic book characters on the page, but I don’t like them on the screen, either (The Incredibles notwithstanding). No,  I’m not big on action. Or adventure. Or Sci-Fi/Fantasy (Doctor Who notwithstanding). And I’m definitely not into horror - oh no thank you. I’m more into plot and characterization and satire and subtext. These are elements which I usually don’t see in action/adventure/sci-fi/fantasy/horror on the screen (feel free to disagree), and they are elements which I have assumed I wouldn’t find on the illustrated page, either. However, Aardvark has stepped up her campaign recently, filling me in on all the characters and plot twists in her favorite series, and I have to admit that some of them sound kind of interesting.

Thus, I finally gave in this weekend when Aardvark pressed me to read her copy of Neil Gaiman’s graphic novel The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes, which has been collecting dust on my kitchen table for a month or two. I started reading The Sandman with only my Archie experience to guide me…and I felt like a nun walking into an S&M whorehouse. Not that there’s a lot of whoring in The Sandman - there’s very little of it, in fact. But what The Sandman lacks in sexual degeneracy it makes up for in twisted delinquency. I entered the novel eyes wide open, eyebrows raised, maw agape, unprepared for the horrors and psychological games awaiting me. Having made it through the initial confusion and horror I found myself strangely entranced, titillated even, by the twisted, twisted plot and pleasingly disturbing drawings.

Before discussing the story, I need to discuss the mechanics of graphic novels. Things apparently have progressed greatly since the days of Archie. For instance, I was unaware that you do not always read the panels left to right and top to bottom.  No.  Sometimes you read top to bottom first, and then left to right.  And sometimes you read in a circle.  Newbies will undoubtedly read the panels in the first few chapters out of order.  And just when you think you’ve got that figured out, you realize that you’ve been so focused on the reading the text that you’ve barely noticed the illustrations.  And you need to look at the illustrations - that’s where half the plot happens. And when you make a conscious effort to “read” the illustrations you forget to read the text.  Yes, reading a graphic novel is tricky thing indeed.

Some of the illustrations are fantastic, I mean absolutely breathtaking. However, this volume represents the beginning of The Sandman - there were several illustrators involved and they hadn’t quite settled on a style yet.  As a consequence, the same characters look different from chapter to chapter, which is an serious problem for the facial-recognition deficient like myself.  And I do have to admit that for a graphic novel neophyte like myself, some of the text is, well, a little cheesy.  At times the dialogues are so heavy and laden with import that I have to stop and catch my breath from laughing so hard.

But the story itself?  That’s fun, if you can follow it.  The Sandman was originally published monthly, and the first eight issues are collected in Preludes and Nocturnes, the first of 11 volumes. In Preludes, we are introduced to The Sandman, a.k.a. King of Dreams. Dream is one of the The Endless, anthropomorphic characters of the things they represent. (I originally described them as “gods,” but Aardvark struck me down in Gaiman’s stead). In 1916 a crazy-ass magician tries to capture and bind Death (another Endless) in an attempt to attain immortality, however he screws up and captures Dream instead and takes all his King of Dreams paraphernalia. Without this paraphanalia Dream is just another run-of-the-mill Emo, brooding and powerless.  He sits naked in a snowglobe in Crazy-Ass Magician’s basement until 1988, and during this time many humans’ sleep and dream cycles are seriously disturbingly screwed up. In 1988 his guards let down their guard down and fall asleep. He snatches the sand from their sleep, busts out of the snowglobe, and overcomes them, waging his revenge on them by cursing them to a lifetime of nightmares.  Harsh.

Then Dream has to go find all his King of Dreams paraphernalia: a bag of sand, a really creepy gas mask (which is apparently a crown), and a magical ruby. (I really can’t find the words to explain how much I HATE gas masks, but suffice it to say that this picture will keep me up tonight).

He finds the bag of sand and the gas mask *shivers* without too much hassle, retrieving them from a crack addict and all the demons of hell. However Dr. Destiny, and escaped mental patiend (and a resurrected character from DC Comics’ Justice League of America series), is also looking for the magical dream ruby.  His intentions?  To control humans’ dreams and turn everyone crazy so that they will bow down and worship him as their leader, king of the crazies.

After he snatches the ruby from the greatly diminished Dream (62 years sitting naked in a snowglobe can be hell), Dr. Destiny waits for the Big Confrontation with Dream in a greasy-spoon diner in the chapter “24 Hours,” which apparently is “one of the most chilling examples of horror in comics.” Dr. Destiny learns that while he likes controlling people’s dreams (and therefore their actions), he likes torturing them a whole lot more. The chapter starts out innocently enough but goes downhill rapidly. Dr. Destiny starts out by mildly controlling the actions of the people in the diner. They stay in the diner, have sex, pick fights. When that gets boring he inflicts nightmares on the mentally unstable around the world and watches contentedly as the news anchors report. A sock puppet on a children’s show instructs children on how to properly slash their wrists for maximum carnage.

Then things gets gorey in the diner. And I don’t mean cute over-the-top Kill Bil-style gore, either. Oh no.  The gore is self-inflicted by the victims, making the psychological horror far worse than the graphic horror. It…it…it just ain’t right. And the most disturbing part of all?  When I realized that this was my favorite chapter.  Really.  I like psychological thrillers, and it doesn’t get much more psycho than this.  I need help.

Preludes ends when we meet Death, Dream’s sister and the Mary Poppins to Dream’s Emo.  Yes.  Death sings “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” and makes fun of Dick Van Dyke’s crappy cockney accent. How can you not love that?

Because we can pick whatever the hell we want to read, I fear that each of us will fall into a rut of sameness, staying in our favorite genre or two without branching out.  And that’s no good at all.  Thus, from time to time I will be announcing Bloggers Challenges, the purpose of which are to keep things interesting and exciting here on Not Your Grandma.

I’ve already got a list of 10 challenges, and am always on the lookout for more.  Some of these challenges are meant to expand our intellectual horizons.  Some of them are intended to pander to the lowest and cheapest segments of society.  Put together, they should make for a thoroughly well-rounded blog that will surely be the topic of discussion among New York’s glitterati.

Without futher ado, may I present to you the first Bloggers’ Challenge:

Banned Books Week

September 27 - October 4

So what are banned books?  They are those terrible wastes of paper which have frequently ordered off the shelves at libraries and schools by fundamentalists, wacko parents, and the weak-kneed administrators who spit-shine their shoes.  Banned books are terribly sinister works by people intent on bringing down government and society.  If you’ve ever read Mark Twain or John Steinbeck you’re clearly in trouble. Dangerous black women like Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison usually make the list, too.

However, children’s books usually make up the bulk of the list.  Judging by the number of her books (5) on the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990-2000 list, Judy Blume apparently is much to blame for the downfall of our nation.  And J.K. Rowling and her Harry Potter books, which carry out the devil’s work (like encouraging children and adults to read-for shame), are not far behind.  As for those books which feature two parents of the same gender - any child who reads those -nay- even knows of their existance, clearly deserves the swift and searing damning to hell that will certainly come from Focus on the Family’s James Dobson.  And don’t even think about slipping homosexual undertones to Our Future by using true stories about cute animals saving the lives of doomed and even cuter animals.  And Tango Makes Three, a true story about two male penguins who raised an abandoned egg together, was the most challenged book of 2007.  Don’t even think about it.  James Dobson is watching.

So why even read these carriers of degeneracy, these threats to the nation?  Well, there’s this little thing called the First Amendment.  Also, civil disobedience is fun.

Thus, during Banned Books Week I will be posting a review or two about some of the finer books which fundies and hyperventilating parents have sought to ban over the years. A list is available from the American Library Association. I challenge my fellow bloggers to do the same.

Up the revolution, etc.