As the media try to convict George Zimmerman for such offenses as telling his wife to wear a bulletproof vest while she goes around town, thanks to the frenzy that the media continues to look for wood to pour on the fire it started, using the tragedy of Trayvon Martin as its kindling, two other cases have also popped into the public eye: the trial of Jerry Sandusky, and the death of Jesus Mora Flores.
No matter whether George Zimmerman ends up in prison, thanks to a jury that would have decided to get the stench of Casey Anthony out of Florida jurisprudence and just convict SOMEBODY in a famous case, or whether the judge realizes that it's not a sign of depraved indifference toward human life (a key element in second-degree murder by Florida law) and throws the whole thing out, sending Zimmerman home, or something in between, his life is over.
No, he's not dead, but he will have the same shadowy existence of Casey Anthony, hiding in a house and (maybe) blogging about how he can't do anything or go anywhere.
Maybe he deserves it. Or maybe justice is more elusive, more slippery, than anything we can mete out in a news cycle. But when Trayvon Martin's mother abruptly backed off from her eerily accurate portrayal of the situation as a "tragic accident," this matter officially became a cause for the Powers that Be to use, rather than a horrific confluence of bad decisions.
But the trial of Jerry Sandusky and the death of Jesus Mora Flores also bring the question of justice back to the table. Who is Flores, you ask? Well, he allegedly grabbed the 4-year-old daughter of a rancher in Lavaca County, Texas (a bit east of San Antonio) and headed for a "secluded area" on the property. When the rancher found out, he went and called for his daughter. When she screamed, he ran to her. A few minutes later, Flores was dead. The sheriff's department investigated it as a homicide, but the county prosecutor decided not to press charges.
The question has flown across the blogosphere...should this rancher "get away" with killing the man that he saw abusing his daughter?
So, you see your daughter being molested...are you supposed to ask the guy to stop? Or just yell at him? Or call the police and wait for them to get there?
Which, of course, brings us to the Jerry Sandusky trial. As Rick Reilly poignantly asks, why is this trial even happening? Why are these abuse victims being forced to testify -- and be cross-examined -- about the horrors of their childhood? Is hearing all of this, and then waiting for a jury to say what everyone already knows, justice for anyone? Will a life sentence in protective custody be justice? Or would it be a power outage in the general population one night, with Sandusky in the middle of the rec room when the lights go out?
The law is one of the mechanisms that we use to keep order. It's a hamhanded mess at times, but only because we are flawed as individuals. We lie, we make excuses, and we want to simplify what happens to other people into five-word sentences or, when possible, pictures and YouTube videos. We also want revenge, in as grisly a fashion as possible.
But then we second-guess each other. We wonder if what we did was really right, or whether or not people in horrifying moments could just have done something different. After all, if Mike McQueary had picked up a folding chair in the locker room and brained Sandusky when he saw him in the showers with his victim, Victims 1 through 10 would not be going back through hell now.
But what if Sandusky had been with his victim in the shadows between two buildings? And wearing a hoodie? And a different ethnicity? And the victim had run away before the police could show up? Where would McQueary be today? Would Joe Paterno still be coaching? Would he still be alive?
That's the problem with living the way we do. We want things to be simple, to be easy. We want what we want, when we want it. Unfortunately, we forget that the people we use are also individuals, not tools for our bidding. We also forget that when tragedy strikes others, and the Today Show or Bill O'Reilly package that tragedy for our consumption, that there is often far more at work than we will ever take the time to consider.
Three cases....three sets of unanswerable questions.
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Saturday, June 2, 2012
Two Empty Suits and the Oval Office
Taft 2012 by Jason HellerMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
If you follow my reviews, you know that I am setting mysteries down for a while. I'm not liking any of them, which might not be fair to the people who read this, because they might be good.
So my new rule has been that a book must contain a very cool concept, or at least have been well received by an author who is very impressive to me. Yes, very subjective, but that's why anyone with a keyboard and an imagination can set up one of these blog things.
The concept behind "Taft 2012" mirrors a concept that I have had in mind for a book of my own for a long time. Luckily, the concept isn't so close that mine will look like plagiarism, if it ever finds its way to a publisher, but here it is: William Howard Taft, instead of slinking away after his four years in the White House to serve as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court a few years later (by the way, he was the only President to do that), simply disappears on the morning of President Wilson's inauguration in March of 2013. He appears again, in the same place where he was napping on the White House grounds in 2011, having napped in some sort of wormhole for 98 years.
He is clearly not an impostor: he knows the Presidential ID code that all Chief Executives, at least in this fictive world, have had since Andrew Johnson was in the White House, and his DNA matches samples that were preserved in the detritus of information that was taken from him way back in the days of the Titanic.
Of course, he clearly represents a conundrum to the world of 2012. Yes, he gets a pension just like all of the other ex-Presidents (thankfully, not retroactive to 1913). He gets Secret Service protection.
Meanwhile, all around him is swirling the Presidential campaign of 2012. President Obama, although unnamed specifically, hovers in the background, running against an equally (in the view of the book) unimpressive unnamed Republican opponent. Taft, still finding his way around this new world, has a great-granddaughter serving in the Congress -- from his own home district in Cincinnati. He becomes an object of curiosity and (somewhat) odd attention when he happens out into his environs in D.C.
Then, an interesting thing happens. A talk show host, and a host of bloggers, decide that this mild Republican Progressive is just what the American public needs, in the giant vacuum between the Secular Moral Majority, which is what the Republican Party has become (at least in this writer's opinion) and the Former Liberals Occupying the Middle by Default. Neither party has great ideas; neither party has workable solutions to the nation's problems; neither nominee has the courage to voice an opinion stronger than a weather report.
And so why not Taft? In 1912, he was belittled by the great TR for having let down his vision of the Chief Executive as holder of the "Big Stick." In 2012, though, his notions that people should think freely, act decently, and take care of one another when needed strike a chord with the American public.
Until we find out who is bankrolling this grassroots movement. But that would spoil things. I will say that processed foods are also a source of the author's (and Taft's) venom in this story.
And so Mr. Heller's book is whimsical, somewhat silly at times, but at other times it is spot on. The characters are a bit flat, although Taft's New Year's Eve romp with a punk rocker made me laugh out loud. After all, this was a man that had to be pried out of the White House bathtub, because he was just that large. In the era BEFORE high fructose corn syrup and the Happy Meal.
The narrative structure hops around, from straight story to quotes from his assistant, to surveys taken in the news, to "rants and raves" posted on Craig's List. This gives the book more of a documentary feel, like this is more of a look at a political movement than a novel. The end result is a fake political movement, along with its own real website. It definitely blurs the lines between reality and fiction, but not any more so than, say, The Audacity of Hope did.
I don't know about you, but I'm tired of the most "important" political issue of our time consisting of gay marriage, while Syrian children die by the truckload under the thumb of Assad. I'm tired of our leadership waiting for their underlings to tiptoe out to important positions to see if they will be victims of public outcry before the leadership itself will take those positions. I'm tired of leaders settling for easy answers, or even no answers at all, because they don't think we're paying attention.
So in between reading these outstanding reviews, and checking Facebook for status updates, do something to change the world. One outrage at a time.
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My Last Mystery...for a While
Or the Bull Kills You by Jason WebsterMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
First of all, I'm willing to concede that I've read too many mysteries lately. The newest C.J. Box offering, for example, Cold Wind, answered all of my questions about Joe Pickett's mother-in-law, in a way that was much too easy, with some preaching about wind turbine energy that I found just as annoying as I find all of that dreck that Nathaniel Hawthorne lined The Scarlet Letter with, in order to transform it from a 50-page story into a novel.
Of course, I may also just need to change genres for a while. Stephen King, for example. I'm a huge fan of his, but the last two I've read from him barely cracked three stars. Again, it may be that familiarity breeds contempt.
So, with "Or the Bull Kills You," I changed authors (this is Jason Webster's debut novel, after a nonfiction career) and countries (I've not read a novel set in Spain since "Don Quixote" in high school). At least I don't think I have.
This is a novel about bullfighting and about love. The main character, Max Camara, is a homicide detective in the town of Valencia, assigned to solve the murder of the flamboyant and successful bullfighter Jorge Blanco. Not only was Blanco murdered, but the attacker tried to hack off some very private parts of the torero before running away.
Yes, Camara has been dogged by allegations of police brutality in prior cases. His superior is ready to can him, or at least demote him to a very menial position in the civil service. He fights against the political establishment in the whole city. A hot girl hits on him, but then she ends up moving away (oh yeah, spoiler alert, if you couldn't see that coming). He leads a tortured existence, so he starts drinking when he wakes up, and fortunately his grandfather grows pot for the two of them.
By the time these cliches have stopped landing on your head, you'll also find that the bullfighter was engaged to an older woman clinging to notions of her beauty (think of someone between Madonna and Carmen Electra on the age/sensuality scale), but also secretly gay. No, the gay lover didn't kill him. But I won't tell you who did.
So, I've come to two conclusions after reading this book. I think there was a lot of cool description of the "Fallas" festival that happens in Valencia each year, but I was distracted by all of the meaningless maudlin meandering that took up too much of this book.
But I might also be worn out on mysteries. So, I'm not reading any more until the library notifies me that my hold on James Lee Burke's newest, Creole Belle, is ready for me to pick up. This should be sometime in July or August.
If you like pensive detectives with a dark side, then by all means go for it. If you pay attention early on, you'll solve the mystery in the first 80 pages. But if you don't, and if you do enjoy reading a man's thoughts after he has been dumped, for page after page, then this might be the summer read for you. Just don't expect things to turn out well.
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Monday, May 28, 2012
Love Lifted Me...but not Jack Black
If you go north out of Dallas on U.S. 75, or east on Interstate 20 or 30, or even south on Interstate 45, it does not take much for you to notice the scenery changing. In Dallas, only the established wealthy and the poor have large trees in their yards; everywhere else, the subdivisions were put in by leveling the trees first. As you travel from the city, though, you'll notice the world turning greener, with an increasing number of pine trees. If you roll down the windows, you'll pick up that scent that trees and grass give off after a warm rain, unless it's the wintertime. Your allergies might start bothering you, but somewhere down in your bones you will realize, even if only subconsciously, that you are not far from barbecue, from corn on the cob, from a steamy pie with a side of hand-cranked ice cream. You'll be tempted to stop for a while.
If you do pull off the road and spend some time in an East Texas town, you'll see that this is not like any other part of the state. Some call this the place in Texas where the Old South begins, and while Louisianans are quite different from East Texans in many ways, with the magic of Cajun and creole, the similarities do pick up again in Tennessee and Arkansas. West of I-45 and U.S. 75, things are different. There are the granola culture in Austin, the desert moonscape of the Rio Grande Valley and southwest Texas, and the culture of Dallas, a place so artificial in so many ways that nature has even responded, giving us the humidity that befits a harbor, even though the sea is 300 miles away.
But in East Texas, you'll see a region that has coalesced into small towns that are fiercely loyal to their own, that mistrust the outsider and despise the snob. Everyone in your town will know your business, which can be a good thing when you need help, but can be a bad thing when your life turns upside down, because everywhere you go, people know about it. This is not an area in which homeowner's associations and zoning laws do well, because of the individualism that runs like a high-voltage power line through the area -- at least as far as personal rights go.
The church is the hub of the community in East Texas, in ways that larger cities have lost. In other parts of the world, there are synagogues and mosques and churches that have services in multiple languages -- but not in East Texas. In larger cities, more and more people are staying away from church, and megachurches and emergent churches and coffeehouse churches are trying to find them and bring them back in, but that movement has not made into the Piney Woods yet. Yes, the church is a place of worship, but it's also a place to maintain your friends, to hear the latest news, to see and be seen.
When I was a child, my great-uncle was a Baptist pastor who served several of these small churches in Grayson and Fannin Counties. My own family went to one of the largest churches in Dallas, and so when I went to visit my great-aunt and great-uncle, things were definitely different. The people in the churches that Uncle Harold served were happy to see me and remembered my name, even if it had been months since I had been there. There were no columns or arches in those churches, and the stained glass was probably plastic, and the organ had no pipes, but the feeling in those churches was warmer in those places, and it seemed like there was no place for anyone who was not genuine.
Of course, if you were different from those around you, you had to work harder to fit in. And that's where the story of Bernie Tiede comes in.
Bernie was a mortician's assistant in the town of Carthage, Texas. He was a single man in his late 30's with what his boss described as an amazing sense of how to design the inside of a funeral home, and how to serve the needs of the bereaved families, especially the elderly widows. He would dote on the elderly women in town after they had lost their husbands, and his singing voice and flair for the preparation of corpses for open-casket funerals made him one of the most beloved people in town. Even if he was seen as "effeminate," which might mean that people thought he was a closeted homosexual. In a town like that, there is no diversity that will ever be officially recognized; instead, you carry out your affairs privately.
Marjorie Nugent was a prickly widow who was known to be mean before her husband's death, and she became even more so afterward. Bernie reached out to her, and his warmth caused her to soften and make him her constant companion. However, she became so possessive and emotionally abusive that, in 1996, he shot her in the back and stuffed her body into a freezer in the garage. For nine months, he was able to cover for her absence, because she had alienated her family and her town from her.
The most unusual part of this story, though, is that when the rest of Carthage found out what had happened, no one wanted Bernie to go to jail (that link goes to a well-written article in Texas Monthly by Skip Hollandsworth). Everyone in town loved him -- and everyone hated the mean old woman who had made his life so miserable. In fact, the trial had to be moved to the tiny town of San Augustine, because the prosecution didn't think it would get a fair shake from the jury. I dare you to find another example of that.
Fifteen years later, this story has become a major motion picture. Here's the trailer:
Yes, that's Jack Black. Many of you may be fans of his body of work, but I was not one. He's all well and good as the voice of that panda, but Gulliver's Travels just made me mad. Turning an ignorant curmudgeon into a slacker trying to impress a girl? There are movies that will do that without making Jonathan Swift's most important work even less understandable. By the way, if Hugh Laurie is looking to change his brand after the end of "House, M.D.," the role of Lemuel Gulliver in a well-written script would be very interesting. After all, he only has Jack Black and Ted Danson preceding him in the role.
Back to Bernie, though. This movie also stars Matthew McConaughey as the district attorney who must sit in his church pew and hear his pastor call for prayers for Bernie -- even though Bernie confessed to shooting a woman who had given him over $3 million in the back. True, Bernie gave most of the money away, or bought things with it and gave those things to people who needed them, but it was hard to argue that a woman who had taken him to Egypt and New York City and Russia -- all first class -- could have goaded him to murder. So now he's in prison.
But Jack Black is simply amazing in this film. Instead of being that loud annoying moron that he seems to have played in about 136 other movies, here he has become that portly, effeminate mortician's assistant. His singing voice and his demeanor just nail, with precision, every oily minister of music who has stepped into a pulpit between Dallas and Shreveport. He oozes sincerity, whether it is comforting the bereaved at a funeral or struggling to handle the increasing meanness with which Marjorie treats him. Her habit of staring right at him, demanding eye contact without saying a word, while she chews each bite of food 25 times (even if it's refried beans), drives him crazy. And she keeps doing it because she knows it drives him crazy, and she knows she can manipulate him into taking her to lunch every time she wants him to. Her character is a bit too flat to merit attention from the Academy, but there are not many women that you would hate more, after seeing this movie. McConaughey's flustered, cornbread management of the role of the district attorney is true, from his imitation of the hand motions of the evangelists he'd seen in three-piece suits as a child during his closing arguments to the jury.
No matter what you think of people who live in towns without symphonies or even minor league baseball teams, without Trader Joe's or the Whole Foods Market, though, the spirit of this East Texas town comes out, ultimately, warm and comforting. People who don't quite fit in with the mainstream, in terms of lifestyle, are left alone -- but not excluded, if they want to be friends with everyone else. It is a real shame that this doesn't mean that diversity has gained acceptance in this part of the world, but the good intentions are such that it's hard to believe that won't change over the coming years. It will just take a little more time, just like it takes more time to crank a case full of peach ice cream than it does to run down to Kroger and buy a half-gallon. You can't force that ice cream to be ready any faster, but when it is ready, your mouth will remember it when you're sitting on your front porch, fighting off the trip to the nursing home, wondering why dessert just isn't good anymore.
If you do pull off the road and spend some time in an East Texas town, you'll see that this is not like any other part of the state. Some call this the place in Texas where the Old South begins, and while Louisianans are quite different from East Texans in many ways, with the magic of Cajun and creole, the similarities do pick up again in Tennessee and Arkansas. West of I-45 and U.S. 75, things are different. There are the granola culture in Austin, the desert moonscape of the Rio Grande Valley and southwest Texas, and the culture of Dallas, a place so artificial in so many ways that nature has even responded, giving us the humidity that befits a harbor, even though the sea is 300 miles away.
But in East Texas, you'll see a region that has coalesced into small towns that are fiercely loyal to their own, that mistrust the outsider and despise the snob. Everyone in your town will know your business, which can be a good thing when you need help, but can be a bad thing when your life turns upside down, because everywhere you go, people know about it. This is not an area in which homeowner's associations and zoning laws do well, because of the individualism that runs like a high-voltage power line through the area -- at least as far as personal rights go.
The church is the hub of the community in East Texas, in ways that larger cities have lost. In other parts of the world, there are synagogues and mosques and churches that have services in multiple languages -- but not in East Texas. In larger cities, more and more people are staying away from church, and megachurches and emergent churches and coffeehouse churches are trying to find them and bring them back in, but that movement has not made into the Piney Woods yet. Yes, the church is a place of worship, but it's also a place to maintain your friends, to hear the latest news, to see and be seen.
When I was a child, my great-uncle was a Baptist pastor who served several of these small churches in Grayson and Fannin Counties. My own family went to one of the largest churches in Dallas, and so when I went to visit my great-aunt and great-uncle, things were definitely different. The people in the churches that Uncle Harold served were happy to see me and remembered my name, even if it had been months since I had been there. There were no columns or arches in those churches, and the stained glass was probably plastic, and the organ had no pipes, but the feeling in those churches was warmer in those places, and it seemed like there was no place for anyone who was not genuine.
Of course, if you were different from those around you, you had to work harder to fit in. And that's where the story of Bernie Tiede comes in.
Bernie was a mortician's assistant in the town of Carthage, Texas. He was a single man in his late 30's with what his boss described as an amazing sense of how to design the inside of a funeral home, and how to serve the needs of the bereaved families, especially the elderly widows. He would dote on the elderly women in town after they had lost their husbands, and his singing voice and flair for the preparation of corpses for open-casket funerals made him one of the most beloved people in town. Even if he was seen as "effeminate," which might mean that people thought he was a closeted homosexual. In a town like that, there is no diversity that will ever be officially recognized; instead, you carry out your affairs privately.
Marjorie Nugent was a prickly widow who was known to be mean before her husband's death, and she became even more so afterward. Bernie reached out to her, and his warmth caused her to soften and make him her constant companion. However, she became so possessive and emotionally abusive that, in 1996, he shot her in the back and stuffed her body into a freezer in the garage. For nine months, he was able to cover for her absence, because she had alienated her family and her town from her.
The most unusual part of this story, though, is that when the rest of Carthage found out what had happened, no one wanted Bernie to go to jail (that link goes to a well-written article in Texas Monthly by Skip Hollandsworth). Everyone in town loved him -- and everyone hated the mean old woman who had made his life so miserable. In fact, the trial had to be moved to the tiny town of San Augustine, because the prosecution didn't think it would get a fair shake from the jury. I dare you to find another example of that.
Fifteen years later, this story has become a major motion picture. Here's the trailer:
Yes, that's Jack Black. Many of you may be fans of his body of work, but I was not one. He's all well and good as the voice of that panda, but Gulliver's Travels just made me mad. Turning an ignorant curmudgeon into a slacker trying to impress a girl? There are movies that will do that without making Jonathan Swift's most important work even less understandable. By the way, if Hugh Laurie is looking to change his brand after the end of "House, M.D.," the role of Lemuel Gulliver in a well-written script would be very interesting. After all, he only has Jack Black and Ted Danson preceding him in the role.
Back to Bernie, though. This movie also stars Matthew McConaughey as the district attorney who must sit in his church pew and hear his pastor call for prayers for Bernie -- even though Bernie confessed to shooting a woman who had given him over $3 million in the back. True, Bernie gave most of the money away, or bought things with it and gave those things to people who needed them, but it was hard to argue that a woman who had taken him to Egypt and New York City and Russia -- all first class -- could have goaded him to murder. So now he's in prison.
But Jack Black is simply amazing in this film. Instead of being that loud annoying moron that he seems to have played in about 136 other movies, here he has become that portly, effeminate mortician's assistant. His singing voice and his demeanor just nail, with precision, every oily minister of music who has stepped into a pulpit between Dallas and Shreveport. He oozes sincerity, whether it is comforting the bereaved at a funeral or struggling to handle the increasing meanness with which Marjorie treats him. Her habit of staring right at him, demanding eye contact without saying a word, while she chews each bite of food 25 times (even if it's refried beans), drives him crazy. And she keeps doing it because she knows it drives him crazy, and she knows she can manipulate him into taking her to lunch every time she wants him to. Her character is a bit too flat to merit attention from the Academy, but there are not many women that you would hate more, after seeing this movie. McConaughey's flustered, cornbread management of the role of the district attorney is true, from his imitation of the hand motions of the evangelists he'd seen in three-piece suits as a child during his closing arguments to the jury.
No matter what you think of people who live in towns without symphonies or even minor league baseball teams, without Trader Joe's or the Whole Foods Market, though, the spirit of this East Texas town comes out, ultimately, warm and comforting. People who don't quite fit in with the mainstream, in terms of lifestyle, are left alone -- but not excluded, if they want to be friends with everyone else. It is a real shame that this doesn't mean that diversity has gained acceptance in this part of the world, but the good intentions are such that it's hard to believe that won't change over the coming years. It will just take a little more time, just like it takes more time to crank a case full of peach ice cream than it does to run down to Kroger and buy a half-gallon. You can't force that ice cream to be ready any faster, but when it is ready, your mouth will remember it when you're sitting on your front porch, fighting off the trip to the nursing home, wondering why dessert just isn't good anymore.
Friday, May 25, 2012
Mile 81 by Stephen KingMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
The novella is an underutilized genre, in my opinion. While the epic of Harry Potter might indeed require seven large doorstop-sized volumes to tell in full, and while Stephen King's Insomnia might well be worth reading a text the size of Anna Karenina, the discipline of telling a story that is too long to be considered "short," yet does not require even 100 pages, is fading from American letters.
The temptation to stretch a story past its necessary, or even desirable, length is not a new one. Consider The Scarlet Letter, for example. You could tell that story in perhaps 50 pages, even with a length interlude in the forest. It is Hawthorne's desire to drive his point into you with a rivet gun that stretches that story well over 200 pages. The introduction, The Custom-House, is over 30 pages on its own -- and most readers just jump right over it and go to the story.
In other words, it is important to let stories be stories. And this is where the ebook format may help writers. Publishers may not want to front the cost of an 80-page release. It doesn't really look like a novel, and so readers may walk past it to something that looks better, just because it's longer.
But did stretching the economical "Heart of Darkness" into that marathon "Apocalypse Now" improve the story that much? Granted, the classic Duvall line didn't appear in Conrad's novel, but then again there was no napalm in the days of colonial Africa.
The novella in ebook form goes right to your e-reader, or to your computer screen, without the bias of looking smaller than its peers in the ranks of the novel.
Which brings us to this story. Young Pete Simmons, age 10, is spending the day in the care of his older brother, but his brother wants to go play with his friends at the town gravel pit, and Pete is just too "little" to be cool enough to hang out with the 13-year-olds. So, he tells Pete to entertain himself for a couple of hours and goes off.
Pete doesn't go home and play his XBox all afternoon, though. Instead, he heads off to get into the type of adventure that will impress his brother, and he heads down to the abandoned rest stop at Mile 81 of Interstate 95 in Maine. Boarded up, what had been a Burger King is now rife with stained mattresses, cigarette butts, soda and beer bottles, and the other detritus of bored teenagers looking for some thrills. He tries some hits off a bottle of vodka that he finds, and soon he is fast asleep on one of the filthy mattresses.
Meanwhile, a strange station wagon pulls up to the rest stop, and the driver door opens. No one, however, gets out. The grown-ups who try to solve the mystery of this station wagon pay the price for being a Good Samaritan and seeing if the station wagon's owner needs help -- to tell you anything else would spoil it.
This would have been a great story to let my son read. He's 12, likes scary stories, and this would be a great introduction to Stephen King. I'm normally not on the side of those who protect kids from content, though, but the language that Pete has in his internal monologue may be in my son's as well, but it's not something for a father and son to share -- at least for a few more years.
As far as a tale told in the true Brothers Grimm tradition, though, the station wagon stands along side the Gingerbread Man and the Big Bad Wolf in the pantheon of childhood villains. The way that the station wagon's owners succeed in bringing horror to this sunny Maine day is an indictment on the ways that too many adults turn off their minds when they forget what being a child is like. So while the story seems to warn against being a Good Samaritan, the true lesson is that it is never a good idea to stop, at least completely, seeing the world like a child does.
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Monday, May 21, 2012
The Death of Gregory House
You have to be an addict of some kind to fully appreciate the genius of "House, M.D." Whether your vice is Vicodin, like House, or alcohol, or porn, or other drugs, you see yourself in the eyes of House. The self-absorption through which he sees the world is evident in the half-shrugs that he gives when baldly confronted with the choice between right and almost-right, and the maddening pauses that keep him from becoming the person that he could.
NOTE: The series finale of "House, M.D." aired tonight (May 21, 2012). There is information in this post that will reveal the events of that finale, so if you read on, you may find that the episode is "spoiled" for you.
Which speaks to the genius of Hugh Laurie, who has put on the costume of this genius who draws people toward him through the sheer magnetism of his ability, only to drive them away with the thorns of his personality. Many of the barbs that he throws are intentional, as with the insults that he uses to keep his diagnostic team at bay. Other barbs come from deep within, much less superficially, as in the episode in which Cameron confesses her attraction to him, only for him to pause long enough to give her hope before telling her that he does not like her.
The things that House wants in life are not that different from the things that any of us want. He wants love and a family. He wants to love others, and for that affection to be returned. For whatever reason, though, he does not know how. One is sure that therapists could march in to the situation and declare him to be high-functioning Asperger's, or autistic, or perhaps even irascible. He finds love not once, but twice, but in both instances his behavior drives the women who love him far away, looking back on him with pity even as they decide that a life with him is not going to happen.
Occasionally, House finds mirrors of himself in the patients who end up in Princeton Plainsboro. There is James Sidas, the brilliant physics student who found a way to dull his intellect through a regimen of cough syrup, because he was happier as a dazed deliveryman, on an intellectual level similar to his simple but loving girlfriend, no longer tortured by the whizzing speeds at which his mind operated when not weighed down by the alcohol in his Robitussin ("Polite Dissent," Episode 8, Season 6). Ultimately, though, House decides that is not a life for him.
After enough time has gone by, House finally wears down his friends. The pain that comes from an old leg injury drives him to Vicodin, which has a far stronger relationship with him than any person can. The strength of his addiction causes him to forge prescriptions for himself, to rummage through the hospital pharmacy, and eventually to capture the attention of the police (by being so rude to a police officer who came into the clinic that he ends up being the target of that officer's vendetta).
Even after a stint in rehab, even after finally winning Cuddy's heart, House never leaves his true mistress -- his pain medicine. Medication is far easier than dealing with actual people with actual needs, and so even the Russian woman whom House married just to spite Cuddy -- and who falls in love with him -- ends up fleeing from him, when it is clear that his own weaknesses will consume him.
And so when the final episode begins, House is lying on the floor, in the second story of a burning building, next to a dead man. The dead come to visit him, to spur him out, but Amber can't shame him into taking his life back up again, and his first love, Stacy, shows him what he can still have -- if he will try to live, but he just lies down. It is when Cameron comes to tell him that he deserves the rest that death will bring, even though all that means is that his self-centered disdain for others will have turned out to be right -- that dealing with other people simply is not worth the time and effort -- that he struggles to his feet, insisting that he can change. That he will change.
Of course, that is when Wilson and Foreman run up to the building, only to see House's profile against the glass, fire behind him. A beam falls on the shadow, though, and then the building explodes. House is dead, and the funeral immediately follows.
Colleague after colleague (but not Cuddy) gets up at the podium, giving short, superficial tributes to House's work, and to the way he challenged them. It is when Wilson turns from praising Caesar to killing him, calling him an ass and a jerk, that he gets a text message on the phone that had belonged to his best friend, House, telling him, "Shut up, you idiot."
The scene shifts and we find Wilson pulling up next to a figure in black on a set of stone stairs, leading up to a brownstone. There is House -- legally dead, having switched identities with the dead man who had lain next to him on the floor. It was this man, finally, who had shown House that change was possible, that even a person who had let addiction run its cold fingers around his very heart could commit great sacrifice -- if he had nothing left to lose.
And so House realized what he had to do. By leaving behind his medical license, his apartment, his legacy, he truly made himself free. His next gesture as a free man is to spend the next phase of his life being Wilson's friend. Suffering from terminal cancer, Wilson believes that he has five months to live. House knows this and asks him, "I'm dead. What do you want to do for the next five months?" When Wilson pauses to remind House what might happen when the cancer worsens, House simply responds, "Cancer's boring." Then they head down a country road on a pair of motorcycles, fields of green all around them.
In Luke 9:24, Jesus said that "For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it.." This comes in a conversation with the disciples in which Jesus predicts his own death; right before this, though, he had sent the disciples out on their own, going around to heal the sick. Then, he had performed the miracle of feeding five thousand people who had shown up to hear him, turning a handful of fish and bread into enough food for this crowd.
While it might be a stretch to find theology in the escape of an atheist from a burning building, the imagery of House, lying in a room surrounded by flames, as he decides whether or not he will rise up and leave the building, does suggest the power of choice that exists for all of us, regardless of our religious persuasion, or lack thereof.
And the choice is this: will we go out into the world and do what we were made to do? Or will the distractions that lie in wait for many of us, whether in the form of syringes, magazines, bottles, or in the simple presence of fear and anxiety, keep us content to survive, rather than to live?
If you want to see what it is to survive, instead of to live, watch any of the first 176 episodes of "House, M.D." If you want to see the kind of choice that can push you into life, though, watch #177. It's called "Everybody Dies," but it will make you want to live -- and to laugh. The identity of Gregory House may be officially dead, but the vision of two friends, riding free on a green day, having cast aside their fears and their illusory needs, is a testament of hope.
NOTE: The series finale of "House, M.D." aired tonight (May 21, 2012). There is information in this post that will reveal the events of that finale, so if you read on, you may find that the episode is "spoiled" for you.
Which speaks to the genius of Hugh Laurie, who has put on the costume of this genius who draws people toward him through the sheer magnetism of his ability, only to drive them away with the thorns of his personality. Many of the barbs that he throws are intentional, as with the insults that he uses to keep his diagnostic team at bay. Other barbs come from deep within, much less superficially, as in the episode in which Cameron confesses her attraction to him, only for him to pause long enough to give her hope before telling her that he does not like her.
The things that House wants in life are not that different from the things that any of us want. He wants love and a family. He wants to love others, and for that affection to be returned. For whatever reason, though, he does not know how. One is sure that therapists could march in to the situation and declare him to be high-functioning Asperger's, or autistic, or perhaps even irascible. He finds love not once, but twice, but in both instances his behavior drives the women who love him far away, looking back on him with pity even as they decide that a life with him is not going to happen.
Occasionally, House finds mirrors of himself in the patients who end up in Princeton Plainsboro. There is James Sidas, the brilliant physics student who found a way to dull his intellect through a regimen of cough syrup, because he was happier as a dazed deliveryman, on an intellectual level similar to his simple but loving girlfriend, no longer tortured by the whizzing speeds at which his mind operated when not weighed down by the alcohol in his Robitussin ("Polite Dissent," Episode 8, Season 6). Ultimately, though, House decides that is not a life for him.
After enough time has gone by, House finally wears down his friends. The pain that comes from an old leg injury drives him to Vicodin, which has a far stronger relationship with him than any person can. The strength of his addiction causes him to forge prescriptions for himself, to rummage through the hospital pharmacy, and eventually to capture the attention of the police (by being so rude to a police officer who came into the clinic that he ends up being the target of that officer's vendetta).
Even after a stint in rehab, even after finally winning Cuddy's heart, House never leaves his true mistress -- his pain medicine. Medication is far easier than dealing with actual people with actual needs, and so even the Russian woman whom House married just to spite Cuddy -- and who falls in love with him -- ends up fleeing from him, when it is clear that his own weaknesses will consume him.
And so when the final episode begins, House is lying on the floor, in the second story of a burning building, next to a dead man. The dead come to visit him, to spur him out, but Amber can't shame him into taking his life back up again, and his first love, Stacy, shows him what he can still have -- if he will try to live, but he just lies down. It is when Cameron comes to tell him that he deserves the rest that death will bring, even though all that means is that his self-centered disdain for others will have turned out to be right -- that dealing with other people simply is not worth the time and effort -- that he struggles to his feet, insisting that he can change. That he will change.
Of course, that is when Wilson and Foreman run up to the building, only to see House's profile against the glass, fire behind him. A beam falls on the shadow, though, and then the building explodes. House is dead, and the funeral immediately follows.
Colleague after colleague (but not Cuddy) gets up at the podium, giving short, superficial tributes to House's work, and to the way he challenged them. It is when Wilson turns from praising Caesar to killing him, calling him an ass and a jerk, that he gets a text message on the phone that had belonged to his best friend, House, telling him, "Shut up, you idiot."
The scene shifts and we find Wilson pulling up next to a figure in black on a set of stone stairs, leading up to a brownstone. There is House -- legally dead, having switched identities with the dead man who had lain next to him on the floor. It was this man, finally, who had shown House that change was possible, that even a person who had let addiction run its cold fingers around his very heart could commit great sacrifice -- if he had nothing left to lose.
And so House realized what he had to do. By leaving behind his medical license, his apartment, his legacy, he truly made himself free. His next gesture as a free man is to spend the next phase of his life being Wilson's friend. Suffering from terminal cancer, Wilson believes that he has five months to live. House knows this and asks him, "I'm dead. What do you want to do for the next five months?" When Wilson pauses to remind House what might happen when the cancer worsens, House simply responds, "Cancer's boring." Then they head down a country road on a pair of motorcycles, fields of green all around them.
In Luke 9:24, Jesus said that "For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it.." This comes in a conversation with the disciples in which Jesus predicts his own death; right before this, though, he had sent the disciples out on their own, going around to heal the sick. Then, he had performed the miracle of feeding five thousand people who had shown up to hear him, turning a handful of fish and bread into enough food for this crowd.
While it might be a stretch to find theology in the escape of an atheist from a burning building, the imagery of House, lying in a room surrounded by flames, as he decides whether or not he will rise up and leave the building, does suggest the power of choice that exists for all of us, regardless of our religious persuasion, or lack thereof.
And the choice is this: will we go out into the world and do what we were made to do? Or will the distractions that lie in wait for many of us, whether in the form of syringes, magazines, bottles, or in the simple presence of fear and anxiety, keep us content to survive, rather than to live?
If you want to see what it is to survive, instead of to live, watch any of the first 176 episodes of "House, M.D." If you want to see the kind of choice that can push you into life, though, watch #177. It's called "Everybody Dies," but it will make you want to live -- and to laugh. The identity of Gregory House may be officially dead, but the vision of two friends, riding free on a green day, having cast aside their fears and their illusory needs, is a testament of hope.
Be Glad You Don't Live on an Ant Farm...a Great Beach Read.
Under the Dome by Stephen KingMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
The original "Twilight Zone" show featured an episode entitled "Stopover in a Quiet Town." A married couple had gone to a party the night before, had a little too much to drink, and then they awoke the next morning in a strange house. The phone doesn't work, the food in the fridge is plastic, and there is no electricity. When they go outside, they hear a girl laughing, but they can't find anyone in the town. They find a stuffed squirrel in a tree, and they discover that the "grass" is really papier-mache. The laughter sounds again, and they chase it, but still do not find anyone.
Eventualy, they come to a train station and hop on. However, the train makes a circle and returns to the same stop. Once they get out again, they are chased by a giant shadow -- that turns out to come from a hand. This hand belongs to a giant girl, whose parents are aliens who abducted the couple to live in their daughter's toyland. There is no way out.
The question of what people would do if they were trapped with no escape has fascinated writers for centuries. Whether it's Sartre's "No Exit" or "The Simpsons Movie," the ways that people would slowly (or quickly) turn on one another, and social order would break down, have served as a fascinating plot point in work after work.
Stephen King began "Under the Dome" in the 1970's but put it aside until 2007. The story of an inexplicable force field that traps the residents of Chester's Mill inside, while the outside world can look inside (and even hear inside) is an interesting morality tale. There is the prototypical "big fish in a small point" in Second Selectman James Rennie, who sees the dome as an opportunity to create his own empire, and there is the dissident hero, the oddly named Dale Barbara, who was bullied by some townies, who was one hitchhike attempt from leaving the town before the dome appeared, who also happens to be a retired soldier who is stop-lossed when the dome hits, because he happens to know a highly ranked military leader who has been charged with solving the problem of the dome.
As with just about every Stephen King story, there is a diverse cast of characters. There is the crazy meth addict hiding out in the Christian radio station, his depressed ex-wife who thinks he is hundreds of miles away, a merry band of nerdy kids who end up finding the source of the dome, an OxyContin addict who is a town selectman, a sad farm kid who loses the rest of his family to accidental death and suicide, and even a May-November romance, as a couple who happened to be vacationing in Chester's Mill takes in a pair of children whose parents had run out to a convenience store -- just over the city line -- and were not able to get back into the dome.
The plot is one of King's best, snaking back and forth from subplot to subplot, keeping the intrigue hopping for over 1,000 pages, a tough feat in a small town with no way out. One does wonder, though, why it took so long to see the radioactive glow around the apple orchard (I can't tell you more without revealing the source of the dome).
The most gripping character is Rennie, who changes from being a corrupt blowhard to a brutal dictator, willing to stop at nothing to keep power, in a matter of hours. Too many of the characters, though, including the hero, "Barbie," are more types than people -- at least in comparison to masterworks from King's body of work such as "Insomnia" and "It."
As always, though, the enemy is the darkness within each of us -- and the truly random which can come from without.
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