The Holy Bible

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I got my first Bible in 1969, three weeks before the first moon landing, in exchange for two books of S&H Green Stamps. I still have it. It's a big black-bound King James red-letter edition, with large print and lots of maps in the back.

 

 

The Bible fascinated me, and still does. It was the biggest and most convoluted puzzle in the world, and the prize for solving it was eternal bliss. I didn't really know much about the rules – in those days, I went only occasionally to the local church, which espoused a very general kind of God-loves-you Protestantism – but I gathered this much:

 

 

• It is very important to read the Bible. All of it. In seventeenth-century English.

  
  

• Memorizing it is good too.

  
  

• Things that seem contradictory (like the Gospel timelines of Jesus' life), or obviously fictional (like the stories of Jonah and Job), or just plain pointless (like the list of Jesus' ancestors in the Gospel of Matthew, down to Joseph – except that Jesus isn't Joseph's son, right?), are all part of some huge jigsaw puzzle. You can work it out if you try. A few people have managed it. A few people have gone completely crazy trying to work it out. Again, the prize for doing this is eternal bliss.

 

• So get cracking!

 

 

I took all this very seriously, and as a result, I know the Bible pretty well. I know who Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz was, and Keren-Happuch, and Shear-Jashub. I know the longest book of the Bible, and the shortest. I have suffered through Paul's interminably pompous epistles, and smiled through Zechariah's wonderful apocalypse, in which the bells of the horses are engraved with the words HOLINESS UNTO THE LORD. I know the book of the Bible that ends with a punchline, and the one that ends with the word “curse.”

 

 

I have flickered in and out of faith, of various kinds. I was an indifferent pseudo-Protestant for a while, and then a Catholic convert, and then a former Catholic. As of this writing, I am a sad unwashed pagan. I have shamed my Catholic baptism.

 

 

I still go back from time to time, however. I keep multiple Bibles at home, and two at work, just for reference.

 

 

The Bible, at its best, is lyrical and terrible and beautiful and very sad:

 

 

“The voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field: The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of the LORD bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass. . . . O Zion, that bringest good tidings, get thee up into the high mountain; O Jerusalem, that bringest good tidings, lift up thy voice with strength; lift it up, be not afraid; say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God! Behold, the Lord GOD will come with strong hand, and his arm shall rule for him: behold, his reward is with him, and his work before him.”

 

 

I wish it were true. It would be lovely if it were.

 

 

I'm glad it's not true. I'd be utterly doomed if it were.

 

 

But this much is true (as I can tell you from personal experience): the grass withereth, the flower fadeth.

 

 

Amen, brothers and sisters.

 

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The planet Mercury

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As a kid, I devoured books about astronomy. My brother Leonard actually gave me a telescope for my tenth birthday. But I was handicapped: I was afraid of the dark. Not good for a budding astronomer.

 

 

Over the years, I've gotten out more, and I am no longer afraid to get out under the dark sky and look up at the stars and planets. I only wish I still had that old refracting telescope; it was only 60x, but it wasn't bad. I saw some wonderful sights with it: the rings of Saturn, and the moons of Jupiter (dim little stars ranged out along the planet's belt, just as Galileo saw them), and the phases of Venus. The Moon, huge and cratered. The Pleiades, a flower-garden of stars. The Hyades, ditto. The Orion Nebula, a dim mysterious flickering patch of light.

 

 

I tried fitfully to see some of the rarer sights – nebulae, the Andromeda Galaxy, etc. - but I was handicapped in several ways:

 

 

• The Pacific Northwest is not a good place for viewing, as the air's usually pretty thick.

• Remember how I said I was afraid of the dark?

 

 

I've seen a lot, though.

 

 

But I've never yet seen Mercury.

 

 

Mercury is elusive. It never gets far away from the sun; you can only see it in early evening or early morning, just before sunrise or just after sunset. It's just another star that dims with the sunrise, or sets quickly after the sun.

 

 

Every year I buy an almanac and look for the times of year when Mercury will be most visible.

 

 

And to date – after almost fifty years of on-and-off looking – I still have not seen it.

 

 

I'm sure it's lovely. I like thinking about it: that bright hot little orb buzzing like a crazy hornet around the sun, showing itself low on our horizon only once in a while.

 

 

Maybe if I actually got up before dawn one of these days . . .

 

 

And what are the chances of that?

 

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Mr. Williams writes a novel

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A few years ago, while up in the Berkshires, Partner and I went to Mass MOCA, a huge spectacular modern-art museum hidden in the hills of western Massachusetts. I was browsing the gift shop, and I came across a book called “No Plot? No Problem!”

 

 

I skimmed the blurbs and the first few pages, and I bought it on the spot.

 

 

You see, there's this group of people – determined to be writers, as aren't we all? - who resolve to write a novel in a single month (usually November).

 

 

The book contains detailed instructions and a lot of tips, some of which are actually valuable. Here's the most important: Just write! Stop worrying about what you're writing and just write!

 

 

The idea was irresistible. Within days – while still on the vacation, in fact – I went out and bought a nice fresh clean notebook, and began writing.

 

 

The first novel (“novel,” in terms of this program, is a fictional narrative of at least 50,000 words) took me a little more than two months; the second took a little less.

 

 

It's great fun. More than that, it's very fulfilling, and it tells you a lot about yourself.

 

 

Haven't we all promised ourselves that We Will Write A Novel Someday? Well, now I've written a couple. The apartment is fairly littered with them now. (I think, counting a couple of abortive things I spawned in my college days, my total is up to four. And I'm only fifty-four years old! I have lots more time!) And I will tell you, if you've never done it: it's a wonderful feeling.

 

 

Now: go back and read what you've written.

 

 

Surprisingly, for me, this was not completely painful. Sections of them are actually bearable, and sometimes funny and / or interesting. I'm not bad with dialogue. I'm good with brief asides, and small glimpses of backstories.

 

 

 

However: I can't structure a plot. I can't make things happen. I know what I want the ending to be: generally I want everything to be okay, and everyone to be happy. But once you've thrown everybody in the story off-balance – what do you do?

 

 

So Speed Novel #1 has two huge craters in it: the main character's backstory, which I was never tough enough to elaborate completely, and the actual conclusion, which required something to happen – and I couldn't quite figure out what.

 

 

Speed Novel #2 – which I actually wrote almost by accident – is much more coherent. But it has a ridiculous premise.

 

 

Those are pretty serious flaws.

 

 

Rewrite!

 

 

Maybe by the time I'm seventy, I'll have written something worth reading . . .

 

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Everybody's a chump

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You may have noticed the word “chump” turning up in this blog from time to time over the past few months. This is because my frenemy Apollonia, AKA the Angel of Darkness, uses it regularly, and I have picked it up by osmosis.

 

 

A “chump,” by Apollonia's definition, is anyone doing anything of which she disapproves. Eating soup, for example. “Soup is for chumps,” she announced. “It's water and maybe some noodles. Why bother?”

 

 

She made this Delphic pronouncement at lunch one day, in the presence of myself and our mutual friend Cathleen. Cathleen was – you guessed it – eating a bowl of soup. We both looked at Apollonia incredulously. “Soup is good food,” I admonished her. “The Campbell's company has been telling us that for years.”

 

 

“I like soup,” Cathleen said in a quavering tone.

 

 

“It's a waste of time,” Apollonia said, glaring at us both like the Eye of Sauron. (You know how some people just keep digging themselves in deeper and deeper? You think you've caught them in something indefensible, and they shock you by maintaining that they're right nonetheless? Like Republican presidential candidates. And like Apollonia.) “I don't have the patience for it.”

 

 

Um, well, you see what we're faced with on a daily basis.

 

 

Who else is a chump?  Let's see:

 

 

• People who go to Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun to gamble. (“You can drive to Twin River in Lincoln and lose your money there, and it's only a fifteen-minute ride and you spend less on gas.”)

• Birds. (“Half the time they're on the ground. If I could fly, you'd never find me on the ground. What's the matter with them? Do they forget they can fly? How stupid is that?”)

• Other drivers. (“So I'm sitting behind him at a traffic light, and he's not going anywhere, and I start honking my horn and yelling: 'What are you waiting for, a different shade of green?'”)

• People who cook at home rather than eating out. (“Why would you want to go to all that trouble? Not to mention doing the dishes afterward. Who needs it?”)

• People who eat imperfect bananas, i.e., bananas with any visible dark spots or imperfections. (“I want them perfect. Is that so wrong?”)

 

 

You will notice that the word “chump” is not used directly in the above statements. It is, however, always implicit.

 

 

It's in the tone of voice.

 

 

What kind of chump are you not to know that?

 

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Movie review: "The Debt"

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Partner and I saw “The Debt” this past weekend. We mostly went for Helen Mirren, who is good in pretty much anything she does. (If you haven't seen “The Queen,” drop your needlepoint and rush out to rent it, or something.) For once, I didn't know the movie's plot in advance; I only knew generally that it involved some Israeli Mossad agents who were reactivated to complete some unfinished business.

Who doesn't like a spy thriller? A good spy thriller, I mean, with a little subtlety: good, and evil, and the huge gray area in-between. And huge symbols: the Iron Curtain, the Berlin Wall. Drab central-European landscapes and nondescript cities – Prague? Budapest? Berlin? Churches, dilapidated castles . . .

You know I hate suspense. I usually make a point of learning the ending in advance, just so I don't have to suffer. Well, I didn't see this one coming, so for once I had the pleasure of being surprised. The movie has a very neat twist about halfway through, which I did not expect.

But: the story is morally very cut-and-dried, good and evil, Mossad versus Nazi-butcher-in-hiding: how much more clear-cut can you get? We know who's good and who's evil.

But, then again, no we don't.

There are some big plot holes here, which require some major suspension of disbelief.

But, in this movie, it's all about the casting.

Each of the three main characters is seen in 1965 and in 1997, and so we require two actors for each. David, the sensitive soul, is Sam Worthington (who spent most of his time as a blue long-tailed alien in “Avatar”), and also Ciaran Hinds, who was the imperious Julius Caesar in the TV series “Rome.” Both are staring and vulnerable and very moving. Stefan, the pushy officious leader, is Marton Csokas, who was Celeborn in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, and who's very good (and also very handsome, and nice in a tight t-shirt) here, and also as Tom Wilkinson, that really stellar actor who can do pretty much anything. And Rachel, the key member of the group, is Jessica Chastain (whom I only recently met in “The Help,” as a vulnerable young housewife), and in later life, Helen Mirren, about whom I need say very little.

Lovely, all six of them.

But I need to say a word about the wonderful (and heretofore unknown to me) Danish actor Jesper Christensen.

His was a difficult role: a reworking of the Josef Mengele story. We first meet him as a doctor in East Berlin in 1965, and he is considerate and gentle and kind. We know he has butchered babies and children, back in the concentration camps; we try to keep all of that in mind. But he is enormously manipulative, and ultimately vicious. He uses his voice, his soft gentle reasonable voice, to accomplish everything. Early on in the movie, I thought: My god, he's the serpent in the Garden of Eden. He's using words to make these nice young people doubt themselves, and do things they shouldn't do.

This movie: it's a good old time in the cinema. There are some nasty bloody scenes, but you can shield your eyes. I did.

Go see it.

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Labor Day blog: Arturo Toscanini conducts "The Internationale"

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It's almost 2012 – another gottverdammt election year – and I don't know if I'll live through it. The political commercials alone will probably give me an ulcer, if not a coronary.

 

 

So, for Labor Day, here's something a little closer to my core beliefs: the old international workers' anthem, the “Internationale.” conducted by Arturo Toscanini. I find it soothing.

 

 

Arise, ye victims of oppression!

 

 

And happy Labor Day.

 

 

 

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Sunday blog: "Innsbruck, ich muss dich lassen"

 

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Here in southern New England, this is officially the last weekend of summertime. No matter that the September and October weather is generally spectacular: summer is over. Put away the beach umbrella and the topsiders.

 

 

Silly, I know. But it's also back-to-school, and the end of vacation season. The humid heat of summertime is (mostly) behind us now.

 

 

So, I thought, maybe something sweet and sentimental for today.

 

 

This song was written circa 1500 by Heinrich Isaac. It's a poignant little farewell to his beloved hometown Innsbruck – or so I always believed; it turns out, upon research, that Isaac was originally from the Low Countries, and lived and traveled all over Europe during this lifetime.

 

 

Whatever. You can choose to believe whatever you like. The tune's over five hundred years old, for god's sake! Bach used it in one of his chorales! And this performance is lovely. And the images of Innsbruck are lovely. I've never been there, but Partner has, and this video brought back some nice memories for him

 

 

Enjoy.

 

 

 

 

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Absinthe: the review

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As I wrote some months ago, I bought an adorable little bottle of absinthe some months ago. It was called “Le tourment vert,” and it held about three ounces of what I hoped would be the authentic Green Fairy. (I'm a big fan of fin-de-siecle Paris, and wanted to find out more about what exactly Rimbaud and Verlaine and Debussy and Satie and Picabia and Apollinaire were slugging down all that time.) I even bought a box of designer sugar-cubes to prepare for the Big Moment (you'll understand why after a bit).

 

 

But I waited for a special occasion to drink my absinthe.

 

 

Well, what's more special than a hurricane?

 

 

The hurricane came and went. It was, apart from a hiccup in our electricity, a big nothing. I mostly napped through it. As evening fell, I remembered my little bottle of Tourment Vert, and decided that this was, in a word, le moment de verite.

 

 

I looked up the instructions online: one part absinthe to five parts cold water. No ice in the drink. Absinthe in the glass first; the water is to be dripped slowly into the glass, preferably through a sugar cube held in a special slotted absinthe spoon.

 

 

I did not invest in an absinthe spoon. Maybe when Partner and I tie the knot, I'll put it on the wedding registry. I used a salad fork. I did pay almost seven dollars for those bloody designer sugar cubes, though.

 

 

Absinthe is green. When you add water, it becomes cloudy – as we Francophones say, “louche.” This did in fact happen as I dripped the water over the sugar cube / salad fork. Aha! Paris 1919, here I come!

 

 

I took a sip. I'd been warned that the stuff was bitter, which was the reason for the sugar. It was not at all bitter, or only slightly so. The sugar was a pleasant addition. But the absinthe itself -

 

 

It tasted just like Pernod.

 

 

Aha.

 

 

They can't make this stuff like they used to, full of wormwood-based toxins. So they make a green-colored simulacrum and flavor it with anise, which – of course – turns cloudy when you add water to it.

 

 

Well, that was a third of the (tiny) bottle. Time for another experiment: this time I tried flaming the sugar-cube and dropping it into the absinthe. No luck; the absinthe was (supposedly) 100 proof, but it wouldn't catch fire. I did a sort of creme-brulee thing with the sugar-cube and stirred it into the absinthe, and dripped some water in, and -

 

 

Well, what do you know? A nice warm feeling was creeping over me. Not like regular inebriation this time. Sort of a warm universal benevolence. I was getting very French by this time, and my Mallarme was coming back to me: “Une belle ivresse m'engage, o mes divers / amis . . .”

 

 

Yeah, whatever.

 

 

Just a little left in the bottle. Back to Method #1, with the salad fork; I was more skillful at it this time, and the sugar dissolved more quickly. The flavor wasn't unpleasant.

 

 

But now I was getting a headache.

 

 

I drink with some regularity, and I know the various phases of inebriation. And normally I do not get a headache after three rather small drinks.

 

 

Evidently there's some thujone in this stuff after all.

 

 

Morning after: head throbbing like the sound of car-horns in the streets of Montmartre.

 

 

Memo to myself: Forget “Le Tourment vert.” Buy a better brand of absinthe.

 

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Jersey Shore: Stupidita all'italiana

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Do we need to speak about this new season of Jersey Shore?

 

 

Probably not. But I can't help it.

 

 

Stupid is as stupid does, we say. Some of the cast members are turning out not to be stupid. Who knew someone named JWOWW could be (relatively) mature and intelligent? And Vinnie – while no rocket scientist – is not a dummy. And Paulie is funny, and a natural entertainer.

 

 

But now let us speak of the others.

 

 

Deena: the less said the better. She thinks she's fun. No, really, she does! But she is not. But most assuredly she is not. She is a dull-witted hanger-on who falls down a lot. Basta.

 

 

(Speaking of “basta”: did I mention that they're in Italy? Doesn't matter. They could be in Teaneck or Schenectady or Hoboken. They go out to eat a lot, and you catch glimpses of the Arno and Santa Maria Novella and the Campanile di Giotto in the background, and Snooki has discovered a taste for “Italy wine.” So much for the show being set in Italy. Let's get on with this.)

 

 

Ron: okay, my opinion of Ronnie is skewed, because I think he's cute. But he's violent, and we've seen him beat the shit out of a couple of guys, and we've seen him push and hit women more than once. 'Roid rage? Just natural meanness? Doesn't really matter. We will be hearing more from him, probably in those TMZ moments when they update us on celebrity meltdowns.

 

 

Mike “The Situation”: his psychology is so tangled it almost defies description. He can cook, for one thing, and he's not as absymally stupid as some of the others. But he's desperate for attention, and he loves meddling for its own sake. He discovered the TV camera before most of the rest of them did, and it took him a couple of seasons to learn not to look directly into it before doing something especially heinous. He likes creating drama and watching people fight. It was really viscerally pleasing (for me, at least) to see the murderously serious Ronnie try to beat the life out of him not long ago.

 

 

And last, the eternal Snooki (or better, as an Italian florist called her, “Nookie”). She looks like a dirty ungroomed obese hairy parakeet. She burps. She is an ungodly shade of orange/brown. She, like Deena, thinks she's attractive. She keeps pointing to Florentine churches and wanting to know if they're the Vatican. There's a grotesque close-up of her kneading pizza dough (yes, they keep pretending that they're working real jobs) with nasty claw-like blue-sparkly fingernails.

 

 

Why oh why do I keep watching this show?

 

 

Because it is just about the funniest and saddest thing on TV, with the possible exception of “The A-List: New York.”

 

 

Next week (I hope): Snooki loses one of her fingernails in the pizza dough!

 

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Rick Perry: Call him! Call him louder!

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You know I am seldom political - here, in this blog, anyway. I would hate to alienate anyone, especially you, my dear reader, whom I have wooed so carefully with my natural sweetness and Mark Twainish common sense. And if you are a dirty conservative, well, I forgive you, and will look the other way discreetly while you see the error of your ways.

 

 

I will also forgive you for your error if you are religious. In my lifetime I have tried very hard to be religious, in several ways (both Protestant and Catholic). I have failed. It's just too difficult to believe in ridiculous things; I don't care to expend the energy anymore. As I've said elsewhere: if Christianity were more colorful and entertaining (like Hinduism, for example), I'd be tempted, just for the sake of aesthetics, to suspend my disbelief and jump into the worship business. But the Christian god is not a million laughs: he is sometimes well-meaning, but he is often an unholy bore and a prig, and he serves (sadly enough) as a ventriloquist's dummy for every bigot and charlatan who comes along. The bigots and charlatans all look into their hearts, and pray, and what do you know? God always agrees with them! No matter what! No wonder they love their prayer breakfasts. God always confirms their prejudices! What do you think about that?

 

 

Anyway: sorry. I'm ranting, aren't I?

 

 

I have been bemused lately by the snake-oil-salesman posturing of new Presidential candidate Rick Perry. He says outrageous things for the sake of outrageousness; he seems to think he's still running for governor of Texas, where you can say things like “Let's secede from the union!”, or “Ben Bernanke is a traitor!” (Ben Bernanke! Of the dark eyes and kissably soft beard!), and get away with it. See, Rick, the cautious use of words is often considered an asset in a president.

 

 

Also: this is the Rick Perry who has held two big prayer vigils since the first of the year. One was to end the Texas drought. The other was to remedy the current fiscal crisis.

 

 

Neither one worked.  

 

 

Can we find some Biblical precedent for this?  Oh, most certainly we can.  I got lots of gold stars for memorizing Bible verses, back in the nineteenth century.

 

 

From the First Book of Kings, chapter 18 (King James version):

 

 

• 26  And they took the bullock which was given them, and they dressed it, and called on the name of Ba'al from morning even until noon, saying, O Ba'al, hear us. But there was no voice, nor any that answered. And they leaped upon the altar which was made.

• 27  And it came to pass at noon, that Eli'jah mocked them, and said, Cry aloud: for he is a god; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked.

• 28  And they cried aloud, and cut themselves after their manner with knives and lancets, till the blood gushed out upon them.

• 29  And it came to pass, when midday was past, and they prophesied until the time of the offering of the eveningsacrifice, that there was neither voice, nor any to answer, nor any that regarded.

   

 

 

For those of you who didn't grow up with the KJV: in this passage, Elijah has called upon Jehovah to punish Israel with a drought. The priests of Ba'al try to pray it away. Nothing happens. Elijah mocks them, since – obviously – if their god were real, their prayers would be effective.

 

 

Get it?

 

 

Get it?

 

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