Reviewing
Yes, I write book reviews for a book store. Yes, the book store wants to sell books. And yes, I have written my share of positive book reviews. But just to prove that I don't always say a book is fantastic, I humbly submit this.

Of course, none of those are my favorite review.

Meeting of the Minds
What was said at this summit?
A) And I-I--I-I--I-I--I-I--I-I--I will always love intractable situations.
B) The Road Map to Peace is my new prerogative.

World Affairs
I sure hope we don't invade more countries so soon after invading that one country. It could lead to something crazy.

Options
You have a choice, really: Defective Yeti or defective yeti.

Legal Tip
When accused of witchcraft, go on TV and get interviewed by a clown.

Cheers 2
Making your way in the world today takes everything you got
Taking a break at Rod Beck's RV sure would help a lot.
Wouldn't you like to get away...
Sometimes you wanna go
Where Rod lives past the centerfield stands
And he drinks some beer with fans
You wanna go where Rod Beck knows
neither of you have got plans
You wanna go out past the outfield stands

Punked
I watched that show Punked on MTV. It's hosted by dreamy Ashton Kutcher of That 70's Show and they play pranks on all his celebrity friends. Anyway, last night on Punked, they totally punked Mandy Moore. They sent her back in time to Redondo Beach circa 1982 where she became a disenfranchised teenage boy. Mandy/boy began staying out all night, sniffing glue, and riding a skateboard with friends and was soon shaving her head, wearing an oversized leather jacket (decorated with hand-scrawled anti-authority slogans), and getting arrested in violent clashes with the cops. Later in the show, with Ashton cracking up watching the feed from a van, Mandy landed a gig as the lead singer of Black Flag, touring the country and playing chaotic shows at crappy dive bars before getting a groupy pregnant and ultimately dying of a heroin overdose. You should have seen her face when Ashton came out from behind a dumpster in the deserted alley and yelled "You've been PUNKED!" Oh man, she was so mad.

Guest Entry

From Dave Liljengren, who thinks of such things:

"I remember reading somewhere that among Anne Frank's possessions, and perhaps pasted into her diary itself, were photos of a handsome young Hollywood actor named Robert Stack. That fact stuck with me because Anne Frank seemed to have died about a thousand years ago, and Robert Stack was still alive. Until yesterday. Robert Stack died yesterday at the age of 84.

Stack's first movie, First Love was released in 1939 and since it sounds like the kind of movie which would have gone over big with teenage girls, there's at least a chance that Anne Frank could have seen it before the Nazis rolled into town."

Back to me for additional commentary:

There's very little chance Anne Frank saw some of Stack's other movies.

Scout?
Tim Carvell is beautiful and should not be killed.

Discussion Topic
The New Orleans Arena Football expansion team will be called the Voodoo. That's fine, but I think the New Orleans NBA team should use that name. After all, there are no more Hornets in New Orleans than there are Grizzlies in Memphis or Jazz in Utah. It makes me wonder: who would win in a contest between the Voodoo and the Orlando Magic? How about the Voodoo versus the Wizards? Or the Voodoo against the Fort Wayne Heebie-Jeebies? I made that last one up. But still.

I Heart Headlines
I read this one in the morning paper. I mean, I don't personally watch her show but I don't think very many people want her to die.

Sorry it's been a while.
This article in Slate came out on the same day that Morning Edition rejected this commentary:
The NBA playoffs are into their second round and I just can’t bring myself to care. Is it the absence of Michael Jordan? The fact that every player has been arrested at least fourteen times this year alone? No. My apathy is borne of one factor: the completely lame-o team nicknames.

In one half of the NBA Eastern Conference playoffs, the Detroit Pistons are taking on the Philadelphia 76ers. While a piston certainly works hard, can anyone really get jacked up to root for a car part? And what, after all, is a 76er? Someone who lived in colonial America? A rabble rousing Declaration of Indepence signing pointy hat wearer? Or are they referring to a nineteen 76er? A Jimmy Carter voting, Fleetwood Mac appreciating, macramé sofa owner? When these two cities square off in football, it's the Lions versus the Eagles, a horrific yet compelling battle of nature. Elsewhere in the East, the Boston Celtics (who, judging by their logo, are green clad Edward G. Robinsons) are taking on the New Jersey Nets. Is anyone tuning in to see chubby pipe smokers battle interwoven pieces of string?

Out west it doesn't get much better. The Spurs of San Antonio are taking on the LA Lakers. Sharp metal boot parts squaring off against - what?- people who live by lakes? The Lakers used to be based in Minnesota but now are one of the unfortunate teams whose nickname bears no relation to their actual locale. At least the Memphis Grizzlies and the Utah Jazz are out of the race. In the final playoff match up, the Sacramento Kings are playing the Dallas Mavericks. This last one is at least a bit compelling: Long robed crown wearing old men battling the Mavericks who I like to think of as a team of James Garner doppelgangers. An admittedly odd game but still intriguing.

As a solution, I propose new nicknames for NBA teams that reflect their cities’ identities while still providing a little bit of an edge. Let’s see the New Jersey Sopranos, the Detroit Economic Conditions, or the Los Angeles Persistent Barbra Streisand Careers. If there was a championship series where the Dallas Handgun Toting Drive-Through Liquor Store Customers took on the Boston Overly Privileged Kennedy Family Members, you can bet I’d tune in for every second of the action. I’d probably even buy some replica jerseys.

Man...
I picked the wrong time to leave that company. Could have got some cool travel perks.

Pledge Drive
How about this for a pitch during the NPR pledge drive: "We're on our way to a goal of $550,000 during this pledge drive. If 550,000 of you each pledge a dollar, we will get there. Volunteers are standing by."
Maybe not. But what if other companies tried something similar?

Animals
Traveling in the car yesterday, I was eating a donut. There were some crumbs on my hands. I rubbed my hands together to get rid of the crumbs and this disgusted my wife.

HER: Ugh. We live like pigs.
ME: No we don't. It's not that bad.
HER: What's an animal that lives a little cleaner than pigs?
ME: Goats?
HER: Fine. We live like goats.

So it turns out we live like goats.

Bumpy's Trip to the Woods: A Critical Overview
Last night, I was playing with my two-year-old son Charlie and he was pretending to put his enormous yellow rabbit, Bumpy, to bed. I should mention that it was by no means a "bed" that we were putting Bumpy in. It was a blanket on the floor. But whatever. After tucking Bumpy in, Charlie decided to tell Bumpy a story, the first one he's ever made up. It goes like this:

"Bumpy and a bear went to the woods. They met another bear. They heard a noise. It wasn't the other bear. It went 'baa baa baa baa'. It was a sheep. The sheep said 'Hello Bumpy. Time to wake up.'"

I don't know where to begin in dissecting this travesty.

To begin with, let's talk characters (although to be honest, that word is perhaps overly flattering to the portraits Charlie created). Bumpy is a strong protagonist: large, yellow, friendly-looking, and huggable. But then we get to the bears. Early in the story, I enjoyed the inclusion of the first bear, the "companion" character as it provided some tension to our protagonist's, Bumpy's, story. While rabbits and bears are not natural enemies, they are not exactly friends either. So why are they in the woods together? What is their agenda? The bear's existence has dramatic potential but the promise is never fulfilled. When it's revealed to be nothing but a silent do-nothing figure, well, that insults the reader and that makes me furious at my son, the author.

But while the first bear at least has squandered potential, the second bear has no place at all. Is it meant to be a red herring, trying to lure the listener into thinking that there is a major ursine twist to come? Is it merely a stalling technique by an inexperienced author who can't bring himself to set down the pen and think a situation through? No one knows, especially not the author.

If you can call him an author.

Some elements of the storyare promising. "Animals going into the woods" is a solid premise. Keep in mind, both rabbits and bears are supposed to live in the woods. Are Bumpy and his nameless companion returning to their ancestral home? Rejecting their lives in the world of humans and beginning a potentially problematic reassimilation into the wild? Or are they simply visiting? Going back to all the same old rustic haunts and reminiscing in that patronizing way that big city folk do when they go back to their old middle-American high school towns? Will they come to realize that their rustic cousins are not so dumb after all? Could this, with heavy workshopping, be a zoological Doc Hollywood? If that's the case, perhaps the second bear has a role after all. Is there a prodigal bear narrative that merits exploration? There might be a story there.

But the operative word is might. Charlie doesn't pursue it. Is that because he's lazy? Or because he's two? The reader doesn't care, the reader wants to be captivated, and Charlie fails to deliver.

Whatever my son has tried to construct in terms of an arc falls apart when we arrive at this ridiculous sheep character. It's all so facile: the rabbit and the bear, forest creatures, enter the woods and discover the sheep a meadow animal. Forgetting for a moment Charlie's clumsy and obvious introduction of the animal (do we need four full "baa"s to realize it's a sheep?), this habitat switcheroo is just another hamfisted attempt to arrive at the already tired "fish out of water" scenario. Maybe that premise is fresh when you're two.

Speaking of things that aren't fresh, let's talk about the ending. "Hello Bumpy. Time to wake up." Some Charlie enthusiasts will claim that he's deconstructing the very idea of the bedtime story. Not only is Bumpy the story's hero, he is also the one being read the story and by telling him, through the sheep, to wake up, some would argue that Charlie is attacking bedtime story convention and even making a political statement against the tyranny of bedtime. A sort of updated "Being John Malkovich". "Being Bumpy". And while "Bumpy's Trip to the Woods" is sure to score points among fellow anti-sleep toddlers, it's pandering. It's like making Ashcroft jokes at an ACLU meeting. And it does nothing to mitigate the hackneyed "all a dream" conclusion. It's not novel, it's not shocking, and it's not even innovative. It's "Dorothy wakes up" for the sippy-cup generation and it's an insult to all the readers who have invested themselves in these characters' struggles.

Does Charlie have the potential to be a great story teller? To produce the next Hamlet or Ulysses or Goodnight Moon? Well, he's still young. But I'm done working with him until he starts taking this a little more seriously.

Well...
I suppose that is true.

First Joke of The Syrian War
I heard the US troops are covertly erecting an easily collapsible statue of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad for future use. Also, they're airlifting sandals into Damascus to be distributed among scrappy Syrian kids.
It's not a good joke. But it's the first.

Hooray for Everyone!
The really great thing about this war is that now that it's over (kinda), so many Americans can feel that they were right.
People who support the war see the fact that we stormed in there, blew stuff up, and took over as proof that we did the right thing. And there's plenty of footage of cheering Iraqis and kids hitting statues with shoes to make them feel like heroes. For these folks, the inevitable outcome (victory) is inherent proof of the righteousness of the cause. Tidy!
People who opposed the war can point to the fact that no nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons were found along with the fact that most Iraqis were not cheering and therefore didn't make it onto the TV. For these folks, the same inevitable outcome, and it's accompanying destruction, is the very reason they opposed the war in the first place.
Neat!
Everyone wins!

McSweeney's
Got a thing on McSweeney's today. As if more people read this than that. But there you go.