Being an Expert

They even look like clever kids, don't they?

 I recently discovered a band called the Beths, and I really like them. Artsy smart-pop from New Zealand. Highly recommended. The single off their most recent album is called "Expert in a Dying Field". It's ostensibly about how it blows that, by the time you figure out the outlines of a relationship, it's on its last legs...and there you are, being highly knowledgeable about something that no longer exists. Rings true. 

Don't even get me started on the old saw about "experience is the best teacher"...bullshit. Experience is a shit teacher that only teaches when it's too late to benefit from learning. "I hope you enjoyed the exam on the quadratic equation yesterday. Today we're going to learn the quadratic equation. Just think how motivated you'll be to learn, now that you've failed an important exam!"

So it's a great song. But as I listened to it for the sixty-third time, as I'm prone to binging when I really dig something, I realized that it hit a little differently for me. Sure, I'm always willing to preach about the unfairness of experience and all that, but it applied to me in a whole 'nother way. I was doing some session prep for the family D&D game, and I was really proud of what I had together: good characters, original situations, and inventive twists. Proud. Then I realized that I'm an expert in a field that isn't dying, not by any stretch, but a field that has almost no impact on anything that matters.

I had notecards and back-stories and detailed histories. I had regional economies. Flora and fauna. All invented from my pointy little head. But for what? For a game. For fleeting entertainment that'll fade from my players' minds in a week or two.

Felt a little pointless. And a little bitter, to be so damned good at something so ultimately silly.

Like Sturgill Simpson says, I wake up every day, gonna be the best clock-maker on Mars.

The Harrowing Journey (and the Warriors)

 Of all the genres of fiction, I think my favorite is the desperate journey: a small band, trying to get somewhere important (usually home), against long odds in hostile world. There's just something powerful about the desperation, the no-choice aspect, and the need to (as my grand-dad used to say when confronted by something difficult) "duck your head, grit your teeth, and get to it".

The Lord of the Rings relies heavily on this theme, from Frodo leaving the Shire to the Fellowship leaving Rivendell, all the way to Frodo and Sam heading east alone. They set out against long odds because they have no real choice. The line "one does not simply walk into Mordor" has become a meme, but in the context of the story, it's the equivalent of Hugo Weaving sending the Fellowship on a suicide run. Only Gandalf, Boromir, and Aragorn really know how long the odds are, but everybody else has a pretty good idea; and yet they set out anyway, because there are no other options. 

Side note: Boromir saw some pretty swell options, but (as a testament to his character), he still sets out to do what needed to be done. His heart remains steadfast but for a single instant, that tragic instant, and that's why I love him.

One does not simply talk shit about my main man.

Incidentally, I'm firmly in the "Boromir is the real hero" camp. But maybe I digress. A bit.

The doomed-journey trope is really just a variation of the standard Hero's Journey, but in this case, the hero's obstacle / foe is distance; it's hostile territory, miles and miles without a friendly face. It's not a single enemy to be fought, it's everything between here and there, and that's a mighty long way.

The classical example of this trope goes all the way back to 400 BC: Xenophon's mostly-true Anabasis recounts the tale of ten-thousand badass Greek mercenaries backing Cyrus the Younger, contender to the Persian throne. Deep in Persian territory, Cyrus gets shanked, and Xenophon and his men find themselves friendless and alone, with no choice but to march back to the sea, every hand in the land against them. They are outlaws, far from home; fighting, not for glory or conquest, but for simple survival. It's powerful stuff when the battered survivors finally find themselves looking out over the waves, knowing that they've finally made it.

Snobs can scoff all they want, but the purest descendant of Xenophon is the 1979 film The Warriors. Set in a grimy version of 1970's New York overrun by gangs, the leader of the largest gang in the city calls for a "gathering of the armies". His proposition? That, united, the gangs outnumber the police, and they could run the city. In an obvious nod to the source material, this charismatic prophet is named Cyrus, and Roger Hill's portrayal of Cyrus is no-shit mesmerizing.

Can you dig it, suckas? Yes I can, Cyrus.

A rogue gang of psychopaths (fittingly named the Rogues) shoots Cyrus for no reason other than the love of chaos, and pins it on the Warriors. The entire city is turned against them as every other gang and the cops hit the streets in pursuit.

Gods among men, these guys.

The Warriors are just the best. Rag-tag? Check. Plucky? Check. Basically decent? With one exception, check. They took the train all the way up from Coney Island, unarmed, wearing their colors, to hear Cyrus out. When Cyrus is killed and they are framed, they find themselves the same way: unarmed, wearing their colors, and a long, long way from home. Along the way, they run a gauntlet of often-Geek-inflected horrors: close-up interludes of a smooth-talking DJ's sexy lips and microphone serving as the Dramatic Chorus; ghostly, bat-wielding Yankees fans called the Furies; and, strangely, a side-trip to the island of Lesbos. They descend into the Underworld like Odysseus and emerge, like Xenophon's weary ten thousand, to finally reach the sea.

I'll skip the plot summary. Yes, they eventually get home, and, yes, it's awesome. Seriously, go watch it again. 

Good Old Books

 I used to read a lot. It cracks me up, here in this graceless online age, when I hear someone say (usually on YouTube) that they're a voracious reader. Scrolling Goodreads and putting up an aspirational list doesn't count, squirt, and audiobooks are dubious at best. I was a voracious reader in an almost literal sense, like I'd eat books and would shrivel up and die without a steady intake. And I ate well, being no snob: I wasn't reading Dostoevsky all the time, it was mostly paperbacks, mass-market stuff, science fiction and horror and fantasy books with barbarians and nekkid wimmen on the cover. I'd read one and move on to the next.

What else is a sissy kid in central Texas supposed to do, back in the olden-days 80's? I lived fifteen miles north of town, surrounded by horse pasture and scrub oak and mesquite. I'd wander around and find a shady spot and eat beef jerky and read Fritz Leiber and Tolkien and Larry Niven books.

I got the book gene from my mom. She was a reader, always had a book, and she was no snob, either. She was mainly an Agatha Christie gal, with a healthy dose of Stephen King and Peter Straub thrown into the mix to keep things lively. (I never got a taste for Agatha Christie, myself; it took me about three books to realize that they were the adult equivalent of Encyclopedia Brown books: neat, predictable puzzlers, formulaic as a feature, always wrapping up into a neat package at the end. I understand the appeal, but it just never clicked with me. I like a few loose ends and unexplained corpses in my thrillers).

The horror stuff, though...now that left a mark. I read Stephen King's short story collection Night Shift when I was maybe nine years old, and that shit left scars. King has a way of sucking you in so you aren't so much suspending your disbelief, it's like he strips you of your ability to disbelieve. When he's on a roll (and no, he's not always on a roll, sometimes he falls flat as a fritter), but when he writes the ones that snag you in that first paragraph, you're as credulous as a kid sitting at a campfire. You might look back later and shoot holes in his premise or plot; but, while you're reading, you're hooked, you're along for the ride...buckle up, spud. Now try taking that particular thrill ride when you're an impressionable nine year old. Zoinks.

Now that I'm old and crusty, I try to read new things and not just wallow in nostalgia. Hell, if I'm being honest, it's an effort to just read, period. YouTube and Xbox and streaming have really driven a wedge between me and my books. I'm still pretty good, though, knocking back a book every couple of weeks or so. But, being old and crusty like I said, sometimes it feels really good to go back and read something from back in the day, to revisit that lonely little nerd sitting under a scrub oak in Salesville, Texas on a 103 degree August day in 1982.

So, with that long-winded preface, I present you with Peter Straub's Shadowland, an understated little gem from 1980. I'm going to skip the analysis and plot summary, and just leave you with this: Straub evokes a Bradbury-esque vibe with this book, but in a more sinister, menacing way. Maybe Bradbury in a Something Wicked This Way Comes vein. It's spooky, but it has a wistful, melancholy undertone that I find really satisfying. It's Peter Straub, which means it's a bit slow off the starting line, but that undertone is strong enough to keep you moving, even when things get a little off the rails. 

If you put a gun to my head and told me to describe it in a single word, I'd say it's a beautiful and sad fairy tale, wrapped up in a modern novel's packaging. And then you'd shoot me, because that's a lot more than a single word. But at least I'd go out knowing I'd been honest.

That's it. Go read it. Or don't. But if you don't, you're missing out, and probably a bad person who would shoot somebody for going over their word-count. 

listening to: Billy Squier
drinking: Coors Light (in the weird pint can-bottles)

Inequality. All Kinds.

Whatever you think of Bernie Sanders, you have to respect his base message: the 'economic recovery' is a load of shit. The Average Consumer (jeez, what a depressing monicker: Hi, I'm Dave, I'm an Average Consumer!) is, according to all the statistics, doing ever so much better these days.
But I took Statistics 101. And 102. So, think about this for a second:
If I set up a lottery and sell 20 tickets, and the Grand Prize is $100, Second Place is $50, Third is $30 and the "Ticket Holder with the Nicest Bootie in a Pair of Yoga Pants" gets $20, guess what? The Average Redneck Lottery Ticket-Holder makes $20! That's a swell deal, right? Because $200 gets doled out over 20 people, then Mr. Average gets $10.
Except any six year old could tell you that's bullshit. One guy gets a nice chunk of change, two people get a decent little somethin', and Ms. Bootie pockets a sweet twenty spot, except she can't pocket it because yoga pants don't have pockets. That means sixteen people, 80% of the ticket holding world, get two things: Jack,  and Shit.
There is no actual Mr. Average, is there?
Likewise the statistics on the news. Average incomes are up. Average spending is up. Average, average, average. Better term: mean. The sum of a series divided by the number of that series. So when you get hedge fund managers making billions-with-a-B (yep, read it today on Forbes), that kind of skews the average. That means most of us poor dipshits can be slowly sinking, and the average is still going up, because Mr. Hedge Fund is doing o-kizzay.

While I'm bitching, smoking rates are down, too. But I still see plenty of guys who look like this guy, lined up at the Circle-K by my house, counting out pocket change to buy a $6 pack of smokes. I betcha smoking rates on average really are down. But the corollary, follow-up, double or nothin' bet is this: smoking rates have plummeted among the well-off. But take that trod-upon bottom 20%, and I betcha smoking rates are holding steady.
If anybody has any kind of firm numbers, I'd love to see 'em

Urns and Stuff...

So I was writing a post on Keats "Ode on a Grecian Urn", and here's what I thought about it.
I have to admit, I was a bit leery coming to Ode on a Grecian Urn. The poem is almost a punch-line, associated with doe-eyed young poets in white shirts with flaring sleeves, open at the throat, sighing heavy sighs. Despite my early days as a poetry junkie, I'd somehow missed Ode, so I came to it with some preconceptions.
First time through, it struck me as vaguely...not to use a fifty-cent SAT word, but...pedestrian. It seemed pretty obvious to me that the urn was wicked pretty and stirred some wistful longing in Keats. Okay, next.
So then, I was standing in the rain, waiting to pick the kids up from school, and made another stab at it. Very different reading the second time around.
It seemed to me that Keats saw the best things in life, frozen in time upon the urn, and the figures' eternal static postures reminded him that all those good things are so transient in real life. They are captured in the urn, but that's the only permanent manifestation of all the good things...when experienced, they are fleeting, and the urn serves as a reminder for all time that the good things are impermanent, and maybe that's part of what makes them so dear.
I suppose watching all the little kids rip-snorting out of class at the end of the day reminded me of Keats urn. They all grow up, and end up with mortgages and divorces and bitterness; but for that one moment in time, frozen in my memory, they were all six years old and wild for life.
*sigh*
Oh well. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
~Jack

Okay...

So I finally got around to writing my paper. Hell, I even got an A. But my professor said I needed to lay off with the semicolons; despite my technically correct usage, she said I was in imminent danger of losing their narrative "punch".
I loves me a semicolon. You can string together phrases without worrying about comma placement or awkward conjunctions or coordinating clauses. You can babble endlessly with a few well-placed semicolons; and the best part is that my paper was on Jane Eyre. Read some Charlotte Bronte one of these days...that kid was totally obsessed with the semicolon. I mean, it's totally rampant, especially in her dialogue.
So, to my Seminar in English Literature professor, I want to give a big old Colonel Klink shout-out.

Valentine's Anomie

That's my old Paladin on the right there. Yes, I am such a geek that I used to draw my own character portraits. And let's talk about geekiness...
I have a seven-page paper to write on Jane Eyre and Victorian society, but I can't get moving. It's due tomorrow night; I have a nice thesis statement, a rough idea, sources lined up and citations highlighted for use...but I can't get writing.
I'm in the proverbial funk.
Profoundly less than satisfied.
Do you think that, maybe (work with me here)...do you think maybe growing up as a total book-worm can ruin somebody's life? Maybe lead to some inflated ideas about how things should be?
Blame it on my middle-school obsession with Tolkien, followed by Robert E. Howard, followed by Michael Moorcock, Frank Herbert, Harlan Ellison, John Bellairs and Ursula LeGuin...all of that followed by another thirty years of voraciously reading every book I could get my hands on: real life falls a little flat, don't you think?
Where's the dramatic climax? Where's the heroic sacrifice that saves the day? Where's the love that topples kingdoms and lasts for all eternity?
Real life just kind of...goes on. No structure. No plot. No denoument, no climax.
Blah.
Even better:
meh.