Read Education Week's coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign to learn more about where the two candidates and their running mates stand on a wide variety of education issues. Also, read the edweek.org blog, Campaign K-12, for more analysis of the candidates' views.

Registration:
http://www.edweek.org/ew/marketplace/webinars/webcast_ed_next_president.html

Those interested in the history, philosophy, and ideas of education might want to pick-up the current edition of Lapham's Quarterly; the theme of the Fall 2008 publication is "Ways of Learning" and includes probing, provocative essays by Thomas Jefferson and Cardinal John Henry Newman to Michel Foucault and Dave Eggers.

__

On a different note...

*** "Top 5 Grisliest Sporting Injuries" at Peak Performance.

*** As Gretchen Reynolds of the NYT summarizes in this week's e-issue of Play magazine, "llegal doping isn’t the only drug-related quandary in sports... The world’s best soccer players downed a mix of legal prescription drugs and nutritional supplements before and during almost every match of the 2002 and 2006 World Cup competitions. Using data supplied by team physicians, researchers found that, on average, each player used about two drugs or supplements per match. Some players were taking as many as seven different legal substances at the same time." Study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

*** "New exercise guidelines released Tuesday set a minimum sweat allotment for good health" [italics mine] at Associated Press.

*** The "style and sensibility" of New York City bicyclists from the New York Times.

Play, think...
J. R. Atwood

• Well-Liked Books I Dislike
  • Crime and Punishment—discussed extensively in the earlier post.
  • The Grapes of Wrath—dirt, dust, despair; and I don't care for Steinbeck's prose. Same goes for Of Mice and Men, The Pearl.
  • Tess of the d'Urbervilles—moral disagreement with Hardy, as I recall.
  • Pride and Prejudice—I don't dislike this terribly, just don't like it as much as other people do. Prefer other Austen.
  • Anne Tyler. Had to read two (three?) of her books in my high school English class—the teacher, who was otherwise great, was really in love with her. Serious moral issues with Saint Maybe; the rest just seemed mediocre.
  • A Death in the Family—I actually don't remember much of this one outside of not liking it.
  • Lord of the Flies—one of the few books I felt was too boy-oriented for me.
  • The Great Gatsby—I guess the language was nice enough. But not that nice. I enjoyed it but found it a bit overrated.
  • Gilead—some combination of the small-town Midwest, an old man, and a preacher was just too much boringness for me. I don't think that's ever been a problem before. And I have to say I was a little icked out by the fact that such an old man had a young wife and a young son. And I wasn't taken enough with Marilynne Robinson's writing style to make up for it.
  • The Golden Compass—I guess you could say I am Pullman's "target audience," unfortunately the plot and characterization left a lot to be desired. And I don't think it is quite "as advertised" either.
• Disliked Books I Liked
  • The Corrections—I like Franzen. And he mentions my hometown!
  • Wuthering Heights—whenever I see someone complain about this book, I feel like it's all because people have some kind of bizarro romantic idea of it that's totally inappropriate. No one ever told me Heathcliff was supposed to be a heartthrob, so I wasn't disappointed, I guess. Also, it's awesome.
  • Moby-Dick—literary deliciousness and sentimental value all wrapped up in one package.
  • Hemingway. This is one that always makes me a little sad about the people who dislike him. Something I find especially common among women.
  • McSweeney's. I know, if I was really hip or had any taste at all, I would be too hip and too tasteful to like McSweeney's. Just ask my boyfriend. But I like it, I think it's funny, and I liked A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius too. Too bad.

I'm sure, like last time, I'm missing a lot. I suppose there are a lot of people out there who don't like Nabokov—I've definitely seen some criticism of Lolita on grounds that I find almost irrelevant. People who find him too self-indulgent I disagree with, but at least on some level I can accept that this could be a valid complaint. But complaints that it celebrates child rape...well I think they are rather wide of the mark. The overarching theme for my dislikes is really prose style; I am a bit of an aesthete. If I don't like the sentences I will probably not like the book.

So...where do you go against the grain?

I have read over a dozen books in the past few weeks here in albuquerque. It's been great to have the time to catch up and finally read some of the books that I have been wanting to read for a long time. Following are a few of the reviews that I have left on the site. They weren't all winners but here are a few that I really enjoyed.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Dave Eggers

 "We are pathetic. We are stars. We are either sad and sickly or we are glamourous and new...We are unusual, tragic and alive."

A finalist for the Pulitzer Dave Eggers has written something unique and memorable. It eschews the conventional definition of a memoir. Not quite sure what it is but at times very funny, very clever, sad and beautiful.

The Stranger

Albert Camus

 There was something fascinating about it and yet... absurd. ;) I read it at the dinner table and while I was sleeping. When ever the sun gets in my eyes I am going to think of this book. I get it now... wish I had read it years ago. 

 

Werewolves in Their Youth: Stories

Michael Chabon

 I liked that each of these stories involved people who were making life decisions or experiencing life changing moments even if they don't realize it at the time. Michael Chabon is a talent, these short stories are well written. I'm looking foward to reading more of his work.

 

The Little Prince

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

 "Look up at the sky. Ask yourselves: Is it yes or no? Has the sheep eaten the flower? And you will see how everything changes... And no grown-up will ever understand that this is a matter of so much importance."

 

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Mark Haddon

 This book is very clever and it kept me engrossed through the whole story. I wasn't planning on it but I ended up reading it straight through. The mystery of a dead dog found in the neighbors yard, told from the view point of a fifteen year old Autistic boy. It made me think of "The Stranger" in the way that the narrator was detatched from so many emotions. Fascinating book. I really enjoyed it and have already started recommending it to my friends. You should read it... friends.

 

Siddhartha

Hermann Hesse

"I have had many thoughts, but it would be difficult for me to tell you about them. But this is one thought that has impressed me, Govinda. Wisdom is not communicable. The wisdom which a wise man tries to communicate always sounds foolish."

"Within Siddhartha there slowly grew and ripened the knowledge of what wisdom really was and the goal of his long seeking. It was nothing but a preparation of the soul, a capacity, a secret art of thinking, feeling and breathing thoughts of unity at every moment of life."

 

It's a lot of fun. You should join, or just let us know what you are reading, that you like. If there are any favorite books of yours that you'd like to share, please do. Hurray BOOKS!

If you’re not somewhat jealous of Nick Laird you either don’t know enough about him oryou’re a really, really good and balanced person. His On Purpose, recently published by Norton, is his third book, after Utterly Monkey, a novel, and To a Fault, an earlier collection of poems. Both those books either won or were shortlisted for big awards, and both, from what I’ve read of them (not the whole thing of either book), are really really well done. Plus he’s young. Plus on the back of On Purpose the first blurb’s from D.Eggers (and the last one’s from Jorie Graham), whcih blurb starts “Goddamn, this is what a poetry collection should be.” If that’s not enough, just know, too, that Laird’s married to Zadie Smith (who is not only really really pretty, but whose books are flat-out better written than most writing going on anywhere, by anyone—if you didn’t read White Teeth because you didn’t want to bandwagon-jump it, you’re stupid: read it).

The reason why all of the above’s so palatable and easy to handle is because Nick Laird is a fucking amazing writer, and On Purpose is one of the brightest and toughest and most sweetly real and honest books of poetry out there right now. If there’s some central question of concern, it’s about love (and maybe marraige), but Laird’s unbelievably discerning eye catches love for all it is, good/bad, dark/light, hard/worth it. An example:

In “Statue of an Alderman in Devon,” “You have to drive five counties” (the fucking music of that line? Christ, can you hear it?) to “where a sign points to the Ice Factory, / and in front of you is the sea.” And, once there, you have “to find yourself, lost, of course,” and eventually you’ll find a bronze statue “of an alderman / who watches, like some soul who outlived, / in the end, everyone he loved.” This is desolate, real stuff: that’s the fifth poem in the book and though love’ll rollercoaster, somewhat, through this book, Laird never hides love behind that great red curtain of ‘ease’ that cheaper books/movies try to.

It’s a domestic book like that, full of moments of gardening, of having dinner (the book’s first poem, “Conversation,” is one huge and mighty boot to the chest, it’ll knock you just about right over) or, say, finding a glass of skim milk, at night, at the edge of the sink (“The Present Writer”) “like the ghost of a lighthouse // in Atlantic mist.” The poem moves outside where “the wind...is tugging / at the rigging of clematis” but the speaker and his beloved “are in bed, two by two, // and side by side as animals.” Before the poem even has a chance to be about some Biblical echoey thing, Laird snaps the thing back like a towel and ends it thus: 

Love, I’d turn for you clean-living,

relinquish drinking, fighting, singing.

The ghost can only long in man.

You were asleep but talking.

Which way to the good.

At the next wet, we sail forth.

(AGAIN, CAN YOU HEAR THE MUSIC THERE? Good lord.)

There are books of poetry that seem to cover whole globes of thought and idea, and then there are books of poetry that seem like hidden maps of secret neighborhoods, maps that not only list streetnames but have little asterisks next to houses where certain people live, little dots on the map to point out the best place to watch night settle or the place that’s best to play frisbee, and Laird’s book is exactly that sort of beautiful and lightly-touching map. With language that’s as pretty as it is knuckly, Laird lays out these streets of this place he lives—this we that’s inside and around him—and it’s a remarkable, remarkable thing that he’s done.

via The Future of Words by Dave Eggers - Esquire.

Books, inherently, require faith. Faith in an author that he or she will reward the many hours you'll spend in those pages, faith that a good story will be told, a lesson will be learned, a light will be shone upon a dim corner of the world. If you're reading this magazine, with its vast and rich history of literary achievement, you're alive to the pleasures of reading--for school or for no good reason at all. Now you have to give teenagers the benefit of the doubt, that they know what you know, that they do read and will read, that they will keep books alive, as alive as ever--that they will continue to pull the books from the shelves and add to those shelves books of their own.

I believe in youth and the suggestion that books are not dead as Dave Eggers quote from his full Esquire interview explains.

I just had a comment come in and I do not delete comments where I was told for my own good to go find suitable employment to support my kids.

Well the best employment I have ever had is being a stay at home dad who educates, motivates, intervenes with school teachers who put my kids down by simply telling them that its not the kids fault and you should know better, taxi-drive my kids to their friends and to skiing and swimming, and on top of all that praying everyday to the Blessed Virgin Mary for her help to make sure my kids do not go without.

Well let me tell you they read and they are growing up knowing that they are loved and that they are special and no matter what is happening in their lives they can always come to me because I have never punished them when they told the truth.  How many people can say that?

And since I read and write and believe and try, they see this and it is really amazing to walk into the house and see them sitting around reading, even if its just one of them, while the others are on the computer.

I know so many adults that live and breath their lives on the Internet and Facebook this and LinkedIn that and Bebo et al. at the expense of quality time spent with their children.  I wonder how these children feel when all they want is for their parents to take a look at their school project they got an A on and here the words I am so proud of you etc.

Life is hard, but what is worse is when ife is sad.  There is no sadness in my house and there is an environment of love and compassion where each member of the family is treated as an individualal and is listened to and given much attention and support.  Yes sad is why we do not see kids reading books.  That's one thing.  I am sure a whole blog could be built up around this topic that Dave Eggers inspired me to write today.

There is a housefly named Matthias, and he will never die. Most flies live a few days, but Matthias has been granted immortality, and for quite a long time he felt good about this, the fact that he was immortal, but lately he's not quite as enthused. He has, he supposes, seen too many friends die, and his heart is heavy. He had long known of that notion, of having a heavy heart, but he could not relate to it until now, when his heart is just that: heavy. His heart is so heavy that he feels, when he's flying, like he's carrying a piano or an anvil. He's been immortal now for about 16 years, and in that time, he guesses, has known perhaps 1,250 fellow flies, all of them now gone. Francisco, Davia, Gunther, Marco: all gone.

Over the years, to be sure, the pace has slowed. Having lost 600 or so fly friends in the first three or so years, he had to spend more time alone, to spread out his acquaintances a bit - he simply couldn't sustain the death-a-day rate he'd been enduring. Cindy, Jasper, Anna, Khushbu: all gone. But did they, his here-today, gone-tomorrow companions, know that he was immortal? Never. Most flies don't even know they're going to die; they have no such foresight. They spend the day or days of their lives flying, landing on things, exploring whatever glass surfaces they can find - the feeling of antenna on glass is, oh! oh! beyond description! - and finally, they find a good windowsill or glass of orange juice, and they simply turn over and give up. And for 16 years Matthias has watched this 1,000 or so times, passing through shock and revulsion and empathy, and now he finds himself tired. He is tired of life, of death, of seeing and knowing and breathing. This is why he will, at his next opportunity, fly into your mouth or nostril, this being the only way an immortal fly can end his life. Please welcome him, forgive him, help him to the next world. Do not cough or chew.

I should tell you why we all need to read What is the What, and how I got a very welcome dose of selfless humanity tonight. But for now, here's this link to someone else's blog. How's that for lazy and uninspired? I thought you were inspired tonight, Writing at Naptime. Can't you do better than this, when writing and reaching people and connecting on a human level seems so important right now? Yes, well, there is that. Seriously? Not quoting from and discussing someone else's work, but just plain old linking? Um......yep. Gotta love the Internet for the sheer ease of it all. Or so said the several students every stinking semester who plagairized papers for my class despite the dire warnings.

This woman (at a little pregnant) writes so well it makes me want to stop blogging and get back to parenting poorly and barely writing one of my novels.

The "Best American Nonrequired Reading" series, edited by Dave Eggers, is also fun, and the plain old "Best American Short Stories" is a good anthology to pick up too. There are lots of others that I've never read that don't fall into my areas of interest, like sports writing and spiritual writing. Part of me dislikes the idea of anthologies, because I feel like I should just be reading all this material in its original source. But I have to be realistic; there is no way I would find everything that the editors do unless it were a full-time job.

*Ideas: HAAAAAAAAAAA. Mixtube lets people make playlists out of audio scraped from YouTube (making it much closer to legal than previous Mixtape apps like Muxtape). I blogged about a similar idea a while ago. Also: I am an idiot. [readwriteweb]

*Slots: SlotMusic - this nearly universally maligned plan is to sell albums not as CDs or MP3s, but on SD memory cards. The idea may well not be a good one at all, however, the attitude and authority with which so many people claim to know the music business and what's good for it is appalling and depressing. Whoa. Where did that come form?

*Politics: Obama releases a campaign soundtrack, Yes We Can: Voices of a Grassroots Movement. Songs by Kanye, Adam Levine, Jackson Browne and Los Lonely Boys. [largehearted boy]

*MySpace: TechCrunch has screenshots from the much-awaited MySpace Music. The MySpace is still too ugly for me! I'm over 30!!111 OMG. And bald. Ugh.

*Mobile: Will Google's Android phone be equipped with a client for Amazon's MP3 store?

*Fashion: The Guardian gives props to Andre 3000 for giving props to British style. According to the article, Benjamin also went to a high school where a preppy street gang called the Stray Cats wore Benetton and beat on people with tennis raquets. What the fricking fuck? [licensing plate]

*Interviews: P-fork talks to David Byrne. Seems like someone talk to David Byrne every couple weeks, doesn't it? Anyway: "Things that might have alienated me in the past, now I just figure, well, that's the way that person is or that's just the way things are. I'm not going to let that bother me too much. And maybe it's because being older there's a certain kind of don't-give-a-shit attitude." I think I would like to, if this description is any indication, be old, but without the baldness.

*Video: Dave Eggers talks to Chris Elliott. (It's 32 minutes, and there's some earnestness, but still.)

*Meta: WTF? Wordpress is fucking with my shit? Maybe it's time to find a new thing. If I can muster the energy.

What was most striking about yesterday was my running train of thought that went from refugees, to the book I'm currently reading, to the neighborhood I run through almost every day, and education.  As this is the place for me to record my "running thoughts" (no matter how unprofound they may be), I guess I'll put it all down here...

First, I started reading a new book yesterday.  It's a biographical novel on one of the "Lost Boys" of Sudan.  The pulitzer-prize winning book is called What is the What by Dave Eggers.

So this book is obviously a great connection to the plight of refugees.  It's also a connection to the neighborhood I often run through.  Located just off the corner of 85th and Greenwood is a magical little tutoring center called 826 Seattle.  The cool thing about the center is that the front-end is a space-travel store.  They sell all kinds of stuff from space food to ray guns to moon dust.

Anyway, the guy that started up the "826 seattle" concept is also the same guy that wrote "What is the What."  He also just won the 2008 TED award where he was granted one wish.  Check out his TED2008 presentation here.

As you will see, his wish was for folks to find a way to help support public schools through volunteering, etc. He's started up a website for people to record how they've contributed to his wish - Once Upon A School.

As I thought about all these things, I also started thinking about my future role in education, how to help those in our community that need it most (refugees being just one of the major groups), and how our upcoming trip to England ties into the future.  All this has my mind buzzing as I think about what on earth "pacific315" is all about.  That's a whole other story!

beats today: 8,400

total beats: 109,200!!!

Even though I’ve seen plenty war films, animated movies, and more than a few documentaries, Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir came as a revelation. In the film, Folman, who was an Israeli soldier in the 1982 Lebanon war, interviews fellow fighters as a means of recovering his memory of what happened. Real interviews are interspersed with more dream-like dramatizations of historical events.

Animated films have traditionally served as a window on a fantastical world. In Waltz with Bashir, the fantastical world the film transports us to is the unreliable region of memory. Full of dark, stylized visuals, and also the ability to treat subject matter beyond its tradition’s familiar modes, Waltz with Bashir was like a kinetic graphic novel. Just when it seemed as though the stylization put me far enough away from the film's core revelations to take them in at a safe remove, I felt as though the filmmaker pulled the rug out from under me.

Dream-like visuals find an unlikely complement in real interview footage. In its treatment of life on the battlefield, Waltz with Bashir shares much with war films like Full Metal Jacket, Saving Private Ryan, or Platoon. With an eye on the absurdity of what it’s like to be a grunt, Folman’s film deftly portrays boredom and gallows humor punctuated by moments of genuine horror.

Treating such weighty historical material as an “animated documentary” is initially unsettling because it robs the film of its ability to document, a least photographically, its subject. A better term for Folman's film might be a “filmed memoir.” In the way it turns fresh eyes on an old subject, and confronts head-on the confounding nature of memory, especially of traumatic events, I found that the film shared more with works of self-consciously artful nonfictionists from Dave Eggers to W.G. Sebald.

Ultimately, the film finds its real power in the way it keeps the audience guessing about notions of culpability and heroism. In one section, a former soldier tells the story of his being abandoned by his unit during battle. He's haunted by feelings of cowardice and failure, but the film provides viewers with no clear-cut verdict on his actions, only the uneasy feeling that we might have reacted in the same way in his place. Later, Folman isn't sure why he's so fixated with a massacre that happened during the war. “Were your parents in the camps?” a friend asks. When Folman says yes, the friend says “You've been living with this massacre since you were six.”

“Films can be therapeutic,” someone says of Folman’s project early in the film. The finished film he’s offered goes a step further. Finding an idiosyncratic synthesis of elements from documentary, war film and graphic novel, it offers a transformative view of history and memory.

Tickets to Waltz with Bashir are still available:

Wed Oct 1: 9:15
Thu Oct 2: 6

1. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

You loved it when it came out. All the self-conscious narcissism seemed to justify your own self-conscious narcissism. Then you realized everyone was reading it and that Eggers’ self-involvement was not nearly as interesting or cute as you had originally believed. Eventually you said things like: ‘why don’t you go read some Dave Eggers and listen to Cursive’ when someone seemed like they were trying too hard. There was serious backlash.

Now, though, A.H.W.O.S.G. may seem okay again. Sure the conversation with the real world chick may be nigh interminable, and the first chapter still contains the best writing in the whole book, but Eggers shouldn’t be written off so easily. And for all his self-consciousness and D.F. Wallace copping footnotes and acronyms, the book is earnest and personal in a way few works are. Definitely worthy of reverse backlash status.

Plus, like, don’t you remember college?

2. Garden State (and to a lesser extent the Shins)

When Garden State came out it was pretty much the best thing ever. The soundtrack was great and you still loved the Shins and the first Coldplay record. This was a movie for your (our) generation – maybe not ‘the Graduate,’ but you totally wanted to be Zack Braff in that big house running around with Natalie Portman (which happened to be the exact moment that Natalie Portman’s hotness was hereby solidified once and for all). Also, let’s not forget Peter Sarsgaard who rules unequivocally, and almost keeps Garden State out of initial back-lash territory in the first place.

Then you realized that you it wasn’t cool to like the Shins so much anymore and Coldplay started turning into U2. The shmaltzy romance seemed forced and the gimmick with the shirt and the wallpaper seemed, well, like a gimmick. Oh, and Natalie Portman doing something ‘totally original’ made you want to fucking die. Plus this movie seemed to somehow single-handedly have destroyed indie rock.

Now, however, Garden State survives as an artifact of the times. We have realized that, while the Shins aren’t the best thing since the Beach Boys, they are still a pretty damn good rock band, and the first Coldplay record still holds up, especially ‘Don’t Panic’ – the song from the freeway scene at the beginning of the movie.

No single movie can destroy indie rock and Peter Sarsgaard is still great.

Garden State makes you nostalgic for the past and, if you take the time to watch it, will put you in a relatively good (if sedated) mood: it is like the warm milk of small-scale romantic comedies.

The pet graveyard scene, however, is inexcusable.

3. Pitchfork (and to a lesser extent the Arcade Fire)

You started reading Pitchfork when it hadn’t changed formats yet – remember the old green web design with the review in the middle of the page? Reviews came only a few times a week and Brent Brent Dicrescenzo had not yet been fired over that whole Beastie Boys thing; you loved his Kid A review. Also, Ryan Schreiber still actually wrote. This was your special place on the internet and no one else knew about it. These were truly the best of times.

Then Funeral came out and Pitchfork got the new blue and white redesign. Now everyone was reading it. Indie was all over the OC and Brent Dicrescenzo was gone. Pitchfork was trying to find the next Arcade Fire a.s.a.p. and the reviews had lost their creativity (while simultaneously becoming more professional). Pitchfork review were making or breaking indie bands: no one else had a say in the matter. And don’t forget, they even had a festival now.

Now Pitchfork, for better or worse, has become the de-facto place for indie music on the internet. It seems ridiculous, or at least a tad reactionary, to rail against the undisputed leader of indie rock journalism. The Pitchfork Music Festival is actually really awesome, and Pitchfork seems to have kept its heart in the right place. Pitchfork is here to stay and provides a great service. If you want pretentious and drawn out reviews there is always Cokemachineglow, and anyways those old Dicrescenzo reviews seem pretentious and overblown now anyway.

4. Donnie Darko

You saw it and were blown away: this was some trippy shit. An evil rabbit. An amazing 80’s goth-pop soundtrack. A fabulous opening tracking shot. A confusing plot that you just knew you could figure out if you watched it enough times; everyone had a theory.

Then you realized that this movie makes absolutely no sense at all. Really. It doesn’t. I know a lot of you think that it does, but even the director’s cut doesn’t hold together – and Richard Kelley is giving you those page long placards in between chapters to read. You should never have to read a movie to understand it (unless it’s subtitled, natch). Also, if Donnie decides he must sacrifice himself then what happens the pedophile? Ostensibly he gets off scott-free. Putting Echo and the Bunnymen in your movie does not equate to making a coherent film.

Reverse Backlash: Who cares if it makes sense? The imagery is great, the camera work is awesome and the costumes are iconic. While Echo and the Bunnymen can’t make Donnie Darko make sense, they can make it so cool that it doesn’t have to make sense. There is just something so magical about watching this movie it doesn't need coherency. While the plot may be excessively convoluted (one might say it is confusing INXS, hehe) some phenomenal individual scenes (‘I don’t think you are fully committed to sparkle motion’) give Donnie Darko definite reverse backlash status.

Other Notable Mentions for Reverse Backlash Consideration:

-Lost
-Full House
-Oasis (and to a lesser extent U2)
-Showtime soft-core porn
-The OC
-Titanic
-Poodles

Deserved Backlash:

-Tapes ‘n Tapes
-Napoleon Dynamite
-Vice (but VBS is pretty cool, actually)
-Return of the Jedi
-Titanic

Those who look upon words as vital sustenance, who worship at the altar of the English language--and who do so in a city bound crucially to its service industry--will not balk at the suggestion that there might be something telling in the similarity between the words "writer" and waiter."

Not all waiters are writers, of course. Many servers, hosts, busboys and other menial restaurant staffers are in fact budding actors or musicians. You should be careful not to accidentally confide your literary aspirations to the wrong type of waiter, lest you embarrass yourself. Actors are distinguished by their less offensive odor, musicians by their visible tattoos. The rest, especially those wearing hats: writers all.

The waiter-writer connection may have to do with the New York writer's servile devotion to his city, a bond he maintains by promulgating the New York mythos in work after unpublished work, as waiter must present course after course, and for which in return he is allowed his poverty-stricken, gin-drenched existence.

Beyond a few trite generalities, it is next to impossible to say anything meaningful about a group with such diverse members as Ralph Ellison and Dave Eggers, Philip Roth and Edgar Allen Poe. Luckily, New Yorkers--and writers especially--trade in trite generalities like they're clove cigarettes, and we may therefore lay down a few general guidelines for the aspiring Greenwich Village literato:

The first thing to do is to decide you are a writer. It has been said that you are only a writer once a writer calls you a writer, but don't worry: this can be accomplished easily enough by yourself, using a hand mirror. (Don't worry about the bootstrapping details--short-circuiting logic is as expected in the literary world as in every other facet of city life, including the Möbius strip of nightclub queues and the self-contradictory schedules of the 1-2-3 trains.)

Next, you should be blogging. Even reading this blog is effectively sucking time away from your expressing your own precious opinions online. Wordpress is still cool (obviously); Blogger is about as hip as the last Tom Wolfe novel.

At the next opening gala you attend, when that skinny eyewear model asks you what you're working on, you will want to say a biography of some sort. Writers are always going on about some great historical figure to whom they will finally do justice. Have a good New York subject in mind, preferably from the late-19th to early-20th century. Do a little preliminary research on one or two and you're made. (Presidents, mayors and this guy have been pretty much covered.) Bonus points for saying you're doing a "multi-volume." Triple score if you're fictionalizing it.

The recent passing of David Foster Wallace reminds us that tragedy often follows genius. We don't recommend dying per se, but you could try the always try the next best thing. A messy divorce is of course mandatory. You won't have any trouble there--just be yourself.

In short, the art of being a writer in New York demands a quick mind for deception, a smug sense of superiority toward everyone you know, some pens, a jaunty hat and, most importantly, a white tuxedo shirt. Bon appetit.

So, to lead as an example, we have found a project on onceuponaschool.org that we will actively be supporting. The project is called "A new Africa: ‘Galaxy of Stars' writing centre" and the idea is:

"My vision is to create a tourist-attracting writing center in a poor township in Cape Town, South Africa - with a view to replicate similar models throughout Africa.

The center, named "Galaxy of Stars," will be run under the custodianship of the African elders (senior citizens) and abide to the spirit of tribal story-telling. Elders and youth will unite to share and write stories and develop literacy, vision and self esteem.

The center will also serve as a library/tutoring center/publishing house and performance venue. For each story published, a tree will be planted and nurtured in the community."

The project was submitted by Juliet Close.

Having lived in Africa (South Africa and Senegal) for many years, it has always been my believe that a lot of the problems, be it HIV/ AIDS, poverty, famine, war or human trafficking can be addressed through proper education. Education allows people to understand the world around them better and can better judge what is right and what is wrong. Twidox also supports this idea by making educational resources free available without any barriers. Therefore, we have chosen a project in Africa which helps to address this problem.

If you would also like to support this project, click here, alternatively, have a look at the many other brilliant projects and support one that you believe in.

If you are interested in this, too, let me know.  It means a lot to me.

Dave Eggers TED wish

PS I spent over an hour trying to embed this video, but every single thing fell apart for me, slowly, separately.

Take the level of excitement that most women felt about seeing the Sex and the City movie* and mulitply that by 2.  This is how much I have been looking forward to seeing Spike Jonze's rendition of Where the Wild Things Are.  Not only is Maurice Sendak one of my favorite authors, but my other favorite writer, Dave Eggers wrote the screenplay. *

As if that wasn't enough, Paul Dano is in it. 

It's as good as 10,000 manolos. 

While the screenplay was completed in 2005, the project itself has been a long time coming.  Finally, today comes news that the film will be released in October.

Mark your calendars now kids.

*I have still not seen SATC the Movie.  Please do not tell the vagina mafia that when, after brunch, my friends and I went to go see the flick, me and my girl Erin decided to go see Sarah Marshall instead.

**I just feel like sharing today.  Can you tell? I actually wrote my senior paper in college on the work of Maurice Sendak and work that sprung from his writing.  I have to highly, highly recommend that if you haven't picked up one of his books since childhood, you do so today.  His work is intense and dark and highly psychological. 

Also-If you haven't, please read A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Eggers, or You Shall Know Our Velocity.  I promise you'll thank me.

As well as organising the conference, TED also do something else, the TED prize. The TED Prize was created as a way of taking the inspiration, ideas and resources that are generated at TED and using them to make a difference. Although the winners receive a prize of $100,000 each, and the support of the TED community in making the wish come true.  A wish to change the world.

In this regard, TED Prize have announced an open challenge in support of author and philanthropist Dave Eggers and his 2008 TED Prize wish to collect 1,000 stories of private citizens engaged in their local public schools.

As an extension of Eggers initial wish, the open challenge asks individuals to design and implement new projects for local public school students. The three winning entries will receive a pass to the sold out TED2009 Conference to be held in Long Beach, California on February 4-7, 2009. Additionally, Eggers asks local citizens to support 826 National, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping students, ages 6-18, with expository and creative writing at six locations across USA. Eggers co-founded the original 826 chapter, 826 Valencia, a non-profit tutoring centre and writing school for children, in 2002.

Entries are open to the public and may be submitted by visiting onceuponaschool.org and will be judged by a panel of educators, entrepreneurs, and creative's from the TED Community. Projects will be evaluated on the following criteria:

• Innovation: Was a new model used? Is the approach creative? Were the students provided with access to something new?
• Collaboration: How well did the project leaders work with the teacher/school? Did the project address a specific challenge or need of the students?
• Impact: What changed in the life of the students, teacher, and school? Was the community affected? Did the work inspire other private citizens to get involved?

The Deadline for submissions is October 31, 2008.

For more information, please visit: www.onceuponaschool.org

For more information on the TED Prize, please visit www.tedprize.org

For more information on Dave Eggers' wish, please visit http://www.tedprize.org/?page_id=7

For more information about 826 National, please visit http://www.826national.org/

This is a brilliant initiative from TED and Dave Eggers so I hope that you take this opportunity to visit onceuponaschool.org and submit a project for your for local public school students. Alternatively, visit the site and support a project.

Coming up, our expose on conveniently placed TV headlines on sitcoms. But first, Peter, watch out for that skateboard.

Peter promptly slips on the skateboard.

I find this specific flavor of humor effective, and while seven years old, still reasonably fresh. The unrealistic cliche that sitcoms use as segues, the TV headline, is routinely accepted despite its unreasonably coincidentiality. The Family Guy writers took the audience's acceptance of poor storytelling, and before anyone can really catch on, turns it on its head and satirizes it.

This duplicity in meaning is hardly complex. While some to whom Family Guy's humor has become obnoxious or those too old to ever really care for it in the first place may not find it laugh out loud funny, but they intuitively "get it". The humor is classically ironic, where that is defined as saying one thing and meaning another. More specifically, this brand of irony is,

(esp. in contemporary writing) a manner of organizing a work so as to give full expression to contradictory or complementary impulses, attitudes, etc., esp. as a means of indicating detachment from a subject, theme, or emotion.

A consistent theme in Family Guy is its invokation of cliches from the 80s and early 90s while satirizing them. These cliches were insipid and silly, but there's nothing wrong with a sudden nostalgic reference to them. Only through simultaneously -and ironically- using and making fun of them does the show give "full expression" to the way many young adults view anything from sitcoms to Star Trek.

As stated, this humor isn't really hard to understand. Still, if this form of irony is taken one step further, the effect is completely lost on anyone not paying perfect attention. The comedy Undercover Brother is hardly an satirical masterpiece, but its cornerstone achievement is in making fun of stereotypical stereotypes. It is effectively a reaction to a reaction to blaxploitation films, while appearing only to be a reaction to blaxploitation films. If that made your head spin, you now understand most audiences' confusion. Too many people took it as retreading the work of Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy when Undercover Brother was really making fun of them. If you sit here after watching the film and seeing David Chappelle quip, "Babe Ruth... [was a] black man", what else could the filmmakers be possibly be doing?

This is not only lost on the uncouth masses, but professional reviewers as well. In Ebert and Roeper's review of the movie, Roeper spends the length of the segment detailing how dated the film's humor is. When Ebert steps in and points out exactly what I pointed out, Roeper immediately dismisses such complexity. After about five seconds, he becomes viscerally upset since he didn't "get" the essential cornerstone of a mediocre comedy starring Eddie Griffin and begins angrily nitpicking.

If one of the most important cinematic critics cannot "get" circular humor in a scarcely complex application, how can we assume the "informed" moviegoer, let alone the philistine, understand it themselves?

If an elite reviewer of film cannot understand the subtleties of a mediocre comedy, how can the masses understand the endlessly complex A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius?

The book, a decade old without showing a day of its age, explores the pains of its introspective author, Dave Eggers, after both of his parents died within a month of one another. The work, ostensible a memoir, frequently elictits the previously established form of irony in comfounded, compounding forms which demonstrate the author's anguish of using his parents' death in a satirical work of fiction. Several times throughout the book, real life friends and family "break out of character" and the fourth wall, and criticize the author's choices in life or justification in writing the book itself. Eggers prepares his readers for these jarring "conversations" in the "acknowledgments" section, describing the themes as,

• "The unspoken magic of parental disappearance [...]
• The brotherly love / weird symbiosis factor [...]
• The painfully, endlessly self-conscious book aspect [...]
• The Knowingness about the book's self-consciousness aspect [...]
• The telling the world of suffering as a means or flushing or at least diluting of pain aspect[...]
• The putting this all down as tool for stopping time given the overlap with fear of death aspect[...]
• In addition to putting this down as tool for stopping time, the sexual rendezrous with old friends or grade school crushes as tool for collapsing of time and vindication of self worth[...]
• The part where the author either exploits or exalts his parents, depending on your point of view[...]
• The memoir as act of self-destruction aspect[...]
• The easy and unconvincing nihilistic poseurism RE: full disclosure of one's secrets and pain, passing it off under a semi-high-minded guise when in fact the author is himself very private about many or more matters, though he sees the use in making certain facts and happenings public[...]
• The fact that, below, or maybe next to, the self-righteousness, and the self-hatred, is a certain hope, instilled far before any of this happened[...]
• The flouting of sublimation as evidence of enforced solipsism aspect[...]
• The solipsism as a likely result of economic, historical, and geopolitical privilege aspect[...]
• The Toph Dialactic: His serving both the inspiration for and impediment to writing of memoir[...]
• The parental loss dialectic: in terms of that factor lending itself well to situations necessitating the garnering of sympathy and also to those requiring a quick exit[...]
• The self-aggrandizement as art form aspect[...]
• The self-flagellation as art form aspect[...]
• The self-aggrandizement disguized as self-flaggleglation as even higher art form aspect[...]
• The self-cannonization disguised as self-desctruction masquerading as self-aggrandizement disguised as self flagellation as highest form of all aspect[...]"

Notice further how Eggers further distances himself from these "themes" by phrasing them awkwardly and unnecessarily scholastically. This distance, or irony, signals us to understand the multidimensionality the work takes. The reader comprehends that Eggers wants to "aggrandize" his loss all the while informing the reader he is fully aware of how distastful publishing the book is.

Ironic, circular humor is not a trifle or inginificant literary device. It is a cornerstone of modern film and prose. I would even argue its place in contemporary music. Such satire can even effectively be traced to those of such stature as Vonnegut, especially in Breakfast of Champions.  Ciruclar humor allows for a whole other dimension of artistic communication, portraying contradictory understandings of truth far more honest and inclusatory than earlier binary models. Confoundingly circular and ironic messages are not just a meaningless fad of postmodernism, but a permanent step in our ability to communicate comprehensively in a world of uncertainty.

That is the question many people ask me everyday

Have a look at people who make a difference

Watch them Get inspired

See them on my Mogulus Channel

Live your dreams for human evolution

See Randy Pausch  John Wood  Robert Swan  Dr. Beat Richner  Greg Mortenson  Bill Strickland  Neil Turok  Dave Eggers  Nicholas Negroponte  Steve Jobs  Stephen Hawking  Masaru Emoto  Geoff Lawton  John Medina

Do it

Everyone can make a difference

• Money by Martin Amis
• Black Swan Green by David Mitchell (I particularly like this one as it deals with an 80s childhood)
• A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
• Anything by Douglas Coupland
• Someone else's suggestion of Jurassic Park has grown on me in a weird way
• Haruki Murakami really feels to me like a good fit as well, maybe Norwegian Wood for the 80s even though it's not my favorite of his—I think despite the cultural divide this works for some reason
• The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
• The last two Rabbit books, maybe
• Amsterdam by Ian McEwan

  For the current decade, while I maintain The Corrections as my first pick, I also like Ian McEwan's Saturday.

  PS—What are people's thoughts on the 70s?

  ]]> http://kellyelephant.wordpress.com/?p=62 Tue, 02 Sep 2008 22:25:18 +0000 Patrick http://kellyelephant.it.wordpress.com/2008/09/02/reclamation/ Note: this post and the next were meant to be one, but my thoughts and ruminations about the state of my writing life and the state of my musical life expanded further than I'd anticipated---especially the latter, due mostly to a long electronic latenight conversation with Eric, during which I listened to The National's entire discography (or at least all of their full-lengths; some would call this too much melancholy indie rock; I would call it not nearly enough, never nearly enough). I decided to break this "state of the personal union" address into two parts.

  Reclamation

  Today reading Door Wide Open (letters between Kerouac and Joyce Johnson) (found at fantastic new Kilgore Books & Comics--we've [Denver] been needing a place like this for ages) was inspired to track down my old Smith Corona electric typewriter, covered in a layer of dust in the closet in my old bedroom (now Adam's) at The Attic on Pearl Street. After a trip to Goodwill to look at what they had to offer--two beat-up, heavy things, overpriced, ribbons dry or missing--remembered my old electric in my old room; luckily Julie still lives there (there where the ceiling in the lobby has gone missing and where the fake-punk kids still hang out on the porch with their delicate hairdos and their black jeans and their piercings and their sneers, oh you look the part kid but your late-model green Volkswagen gives you away) and so found her at the laundromat with Adam, kidnapped her and forced her to take me back, open up the door, hold things I pull out of the closet---Adam's black dress shoes, a cap, my (mom's) old broken record player until unearthed old Coronamatic, on which I've written several letters (or maybe just one?---might be overnostalgicizing) to C. and as many school assignments as I could get away with (generally they want a generic barebones 12pt Times New copy, no imagination or sentimentality). The typewriter is lifeless and impotent, now; ran out of ink years ago, but managed to track down correct cartridge (not just a ribbon like old typewriters, more like an ink cart; even when I'm trying for older tech I can't quite reach back as far as I'd like), ordered two cartridges, which should last me some time, and then---

  Here's the thing. Writing---it's come slowly, painstakingly to me, recently, if it's come at all. I haven't written anything of substance since finishing school in December, and can feel it. I've entered into a strange relationship with the written word, like taking a lover whom I can't stand to be away from, but when we're together I just don't know what to do, where to start, so I panic, retreat, send her away. You see, even my metaphors are in a sorry state---shallow, shaky, suspicious. I haven't been reading enough, either, and that shows, too; Christopher, chance encounter'd at the grocery store, once quite satisfied with my recommendation of an Eggers novel, asked for a tip on something else to read and I had naught for him, couldn't dredge up a thing; in the last four months I've read maybe three books (count 'em: Golding, Lord of the Flies, which somehow I'd missed; Christopher Ross, Mishima's Sword [excellent part-Yukio Mishima biography, part-travel writing, part-exploration of violence in Japanese culture---recommended---should have slipped him that name?], and Kate Tower Williamson's A Year in Japan, which is beautiful but not really a read, proper), all in Boston, all too few-and-far-between. Writing productivity and creativity is of course linked directly to the quality and quantity of incoming inspiration via others' books; hardly is it a self-sustained, renewable-fueled-from-within craft, writing, unless you're Joyce, maybe, mind too full of brilliance and inspiration already to clutter it with anything else, or Kerouac himself, who needed only life (and of course booze and bennies) to inspire him to pour it all out (and even then we know he was reading Kierkegaard and probably Balzac all along). When I'm reading actively I'm developing actively as a writer, at least as a writerly mind, because I'm seeing things "Oh, I didn't know you could do that, or never thought to do that---I see" or "See? It worked for him, it could work for me" or "If they published this surely I've got a great fighting chance---" because even drivel is good to read, to remind you what not to do and what to do much better.

  It hasn't helped of course that my life has been in constant upheaval recently; haven't had a stable writing environment---I've barely had a stable living environment---for the last four months. Half of me says That's an excuse, you're lazy, you should be able to write anywhere, as long as you've got you're laptop or better yet a typewriter or a pen and paper or a cocktail napkin you should be writing, you fool, and something tells me Rebecca Gorman and countless other writing teachers would agree; but then to a certain extent it's true; when you're negotiating the terms of whose couch will I be sleeping on next week and do they have a spare key or will I have to coordinate with him or her each time I want to exit or enter the apartment and will this ruin our friendship? (in my experience it will, at least, strain every one), it's difficult even to remind yourself that not writing is not acceptable and you have no excuse, difficult to find the time, even, to scribble on paper, let alone sit down and get some proper word counts on paper or screen.

  All this to say I'm acknowledging, finally, that I've been sorely neglecting what is probably my one (also, only) shot at real creative expression (where music, tragically, falls flat--see next post) as a human being, and it's time I started doing it again. I've had too many people tell me I'm a talented writer to just let it go (not that I'd ever intended to drop it altogether, but things have a way of disappearing from your life when you've told yourself they're just taking a vacation), and I'm not citing the encouragement as egotistic proof that I owe it to the world to keep writing or anything like that; it's just enough to know that not only do I think I'm good enough at it to have a shot at a proper writerly life, but others see it in me, too.

  I think I've made this decision---to reclaim what I once considered my primary creative pursuit, and my favorite at that--at just the right time; once those ink cartridges arrive I'll have the months of September and October (autumn months already---a quarter of a century has already gone by just since I've been alive---time is strange and untrustworthy) to compose some long-overdue (and some recently-necessary) letters, hammer out skeletons for a short story or two, and then November will have arrived, and with it the task of writing another novel (because if you remember, National Novel Writing Month 2006 was one of my most triumphant writing moments---or series of moments, rather, thirty days' worth---and I aim to do it again). This means by December of this year I'll have two skeletal novels and a handful of short stories in various stages of completion with which to move forward, and that's not a bad place to find yourself after a re-start such as this one.

  There's also the graphic novel idea, involving another Patrick---more on that in time.

  That also means that a number of people should be expecting letters from me, finally, and real ones; and since this first wave of letters is one phase of the rough-hewn plan for a kind of personal resurgence---if not renaissance---of the written word and the story told, be glad, if you're one of the individuals listed below, to receive a letter and be a part of this. You'll do more, also, to help push this thing along if you respond and we construct a correspondence. I can bang out a hell of a letter, as some of you know, especially with a typewriter, and odds that I'll include a mix CD or other extras are high, so it's rarely a burdensome pen-pal kind of affair. The list of likely letter recipients, as of today---whatever today may be---:

  S.---cousin-like-a-sister, the person I've regularly described as "my absolute favorite in the world"---because now we live in the same city again is no reason we shouldn't exchange letters, still, according to plan, especially because we still don't see each other as often as I like; we could hand-deliver them, that would be nice---?;

  C.---you know I've always got plenty to say to you, especially now; rumor has it (by which I mean you told me) there's one on the way here from you. I've been scheming a new letter to you since reading the Burian book, so it's about time. I've got notes scattered everywhere---in my scribble-book, on my laptop, in my head---about what I want to write this time. Always.

  L.---new friend. As I said, I'm sadder, now, to have left Boston, because we could have made something happen; at the very least I would have had someone to go with to see Why? and The Dodos. But letter-writing and mix-making would be most excellent; indeed, your mention of doing both coincided perfectly, as you can see, with my newfound resolve and my intention to begin another series of epistolary adventures. I have more to say to you directly, before this correspondence begins; expect another message soon.

  That's off the top of the head. If you, reading this, think that the two of us could or should write some tremendous letters to one another, or if you feel there's more between us that ought to be said, but somehow it never gets out---is denied either the time or the opportunity, or both, to be expressed---Mike, I'm thinking in your direction?---let me know. You'd only be doing me a favor with the request---it's all practice, after all, and it's all for real, at the same time.

  Likewise, if you're one of my patiently supportive friends, who've been waiting for new things I've written---Shea, for example, who requested something to read long ago and all I had to share was that half-baked "Aubrey" scene from an as yet imaginary novel---you should be seeing something, soon. First signs will probably appear here, so keep reading.

  It's been a slow process, coming back around to this writing business, but I suppose, all things considered---with all that's happened in recent months---eight months from the time of my release into the world (loosed from the comforting womb [or, less graphic, the cradle] of undergraduate education, with its assigned writing exercises and mandatory peer criticism and the natural competitive spirit that comes with being in a class full of other aspiring writers spurring me to action, pushing me to excellence) to now, when I realize, again, I need to take this thing seriously, is not such a bad turn-around. I could have lost years to idleness and tremendously-ambitious-but-ultimately-failed music endeavors (again, see next post) and the demon television (which is not to say I don't plan on devouring The Office season 4 as soon as it arrives via that wonderful red envelope in the mail [and if you've been following my saga---by which I mean this blog---carefully you'll note that last it was mentioned I was downloading the entire season; obviously it goes without saying I gave up and resorted to Netflixing the damn thing---but that will only be a luxury I allow myself, entertainment on the side---no more neglect, o stories in my head, o movies in my head!).

  I've said (more than) enough. Wish me luck, and come back soon to read about the other side of this creative restructuring; after all, something had to give.

  Until next time (when I will have probably listened to another 50 or so songs by The National in a sitting---I just acquired both the Cherry Tree and Virginia EPs and I'm excited to hear them)---

  P

  ]]> http://jasonhabisch.com/2008/08/31/dave-eggers-makes-his-ted-prize-wish-once-upon-a-school-video-on-tedcom/ Sun, 31 Aug 2008 19:36:39 +0000 habisch http://jasonhabisch.com/2008/08/31/dave-eggers-makes-his-ted-prize-wish-once-upon-a-school-video-on-tedcom/ pirates. learning. awesome.

  [vodpod id=Groupvideo.1522322&w=425&h=350&fv=bgColor%3DFFFFFF%26file%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fstatic.videoegg.com%2Fted%2Fmovies%2FDAVEEGGERS-2008-2_high.flv%26autoPlay%3Dfalse%26fullscreenURL%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fstatic.videoegg.com%2Fted%2Fflash%2Ffullscreen.html%26forcePlay%3Dfalse%26logo%3D%26allowFullscreen%3Dtrue]

  more about "Dave Eggers makes his TED Prize wish:...", posted with vodpod
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