Ten Thousand Thundering Typhoons
I begin my first post after James-Frey-is-a-liar-gate (which jacked my Alexa rating up into at least the top 500,000) with a sort of rebirth. After falling one distressing book short of the 50 Book Challenge last year, I have vowed to make my mark this year, even if it means skimming The Great Gatsby for the 20th time on December 30th. Certain people of high intelligence and no personal life are trying to jack their reading up to 75 books this year. But I have a kid, and I also now have HBO for the first time in my adulthood. So I must pray again for 50. I would blame HBO's Rome and Curb Your Enthusiasm marathons for keeping me from my 2005 goal, but it wasn't HBO that caused me to cut it so close in the first place.
Fortunately, I'm a professional writer, so publishers send me books to blurb, which allows me to supplement my library check-outs and my late-night online splurge purchases with books that I can pretty much guarantee no one has read yet, except possibly the Bookslut people. Therefore, I have read two books for blurbing since the turn of the year. The first is called Mammals, by a French writer named Pierre Menot. Because it's a French novel, Mammals is a savage denunication of bourgeois hypocrisy. There are also some funny scenes about working in an aeronautics museum. My blurb will, I'm sure, help sell tens of copies.
My second book was an unexpectedly pleasant surprise. I've known Jami Attenberg for many years, though mostly through Internet contact, and I've always found her clever and friendly. However, I wasn't prepared for Instant Love, a sad, funny and knowing collection of linked stories that examine the sacrifices intelligent young women have to make to fit our society's definition of romance. The stories recalled, to me, Tom Perrotta, Denis Johnson, Margaret Atwood, and even Alice Munro, in their perceptiveness, their attention to detail, and their wisdom. Again, I don't know Jami well, but I sure am proud of her.
I'm equally proud of my Phoenix Suns, though for entirely different reasons. After all, they don't need my endorsement. Not when they have Tim Legler's. But hey. Eight wins out of ten, including a two-night sweep of Miami and San Antonio. The only losses came on the road, in triple overtime. The Suns, according to ESPN News (hosted by Michelle Bonner, who I'm sure is annoying in person, but her eye makeup always matches her jewelry perfectly and there's not much else at midnight for a guy who's on his couch in striped boxers and black socks pulled up to his ankles), are the first team in more than 50 years to play two triple overtime games in a ten-day period. Steve Nash is going to have to spend three days wrapped in one of his patented towel cocoons. The very thought of two triple-ovetime games makes me feel fat and old, though, to be fair, so does the thought of everything else. Yes, I am a man and I have body issues! Let's work through this together.
In other news, my pathetic cat Gabby has decided she wants to spend most of her time outside, in a neighborhood ruled by Rottweilers and hot rods. We're trying to stop her, and to catch her if we can't stop her, but at a certain point, I think our hearts will leave the game. I, for one, am tired of Gabby constantly pawing at my crotch, and I don't like it when she eats flowers and throws them up, either. In general, I'm hoping for a feline leukemia outbreak in my house. No one will ever have to know that I bought the strain from a local weapons dealer.
Elijah, meanwhile, is generating little of interest. We did go out for dim sum on Sunday, and rode the train to Chinatown, thank you very much. He celebrated by eating very little, though he did bite the heads off every single one of a plate of head-on salt-baked shrimp, and he ate those heads, too. Regina thinks he was unaware that these were heads, but I have hope that he was, in fact, very aware.
Later that night was storytime. The usual mix these days is Richard Scarry, Maurice Sendak, and Tintin.
I spent some time living in Belgium as a little boy, because my father was employed by a large hotel corporation there. There will be no complaints about the experience here. Living in Europe is great if you have the means, and we did back then. One of the few remants of that period of my life is my reasonably large collection of Tintin and Asterix comics. Elijah prefers Tintin.
Who wouldn't, though? Elijah's two favorite books each contain an exploding volcano and a plane crash, not to mention the perpetually drunk seagoing playboy Captain Haddock. There are lizards and spiders and rats and bats and secret tunnels. People are always bumping into doors. This is just the speed of humor for a kid who howls with laughter at blooper shows on Animal Planet, and who thought that the dog-getting-flushed-down-the-toilet scene in Meet The Fockers was the funnniest thing ever put on film, other than perhaps the dog getting dragged behind the car in National Lampoon's Vacation. I know these aren't appropriate movies for kids, but kids' movies suck. I don't particularly like Meet The Fockers, but it sure as shit beats The Land Before Time.
So yeah. When I "read" Tintin to Elijah, it usually goes like this:
"Uh-oh. Look. The ship's cook is making something for dinner. It looks like he's making spaghetti! Here comes Snowy to eat the spaghetti. Naughty Snowy. Oh, no! The spaghetti fell!"
"He's running around with noodles all over him!" Elijah says.
"Yes."
"He's a noodle dog."
"Yes."
"Noodle dogs are silly, and so are, so are...pasta dogs!"
"OK."
"Monsters don't eat noodles, daddy."
"OK."
"No! They do eat noodles!"
Like sand through the hourglass...I am now one more night's sleep away from becoming worm food. Aloha.
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