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Book Review: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (Eggers)

I had read so many positive things about this book I finally decided to pick it up in the O'Hare airport even though I knew it probably wouldn't live up to expectations. Any book with a really funny copyright page can't be resisted, though, so I gave in.

Overall, it was good. It captured emotions that I hadn't ever seen captured before, especially that feeling of your brain rapidly playing out a scenario covering years, triggered by a simple observation. The book starts out (after a too-clever acknowledgements section) with a very gripping story of the death of his two parents. Afterwards, the story gets more knowing of itself, and while I can identify with the desire he has to admit the falseness inherent in writing a novel, it threatens to overtake the more fundamental emotional truth of the story. But he admits to all this, too, so it is hard to criticize too much for it. Perhaps all I can say is that it makes the book less enjoyable to read for a while and I had to put some effort into finishing it.

It is perhaps the most "knowing" book you will read, at least in terms of the self-recognition, not just of the narrator, but of the fact that it is a book. I can see the temptation in thinking about what his next book would be like - if the really moving scenes in here could have been used in the service of a more sincere, or less clever, or less self-knowing story, it could be really good stuff. So maybe now that he has come to terms with having written a book he can stop obsessing about it. But I think I will wait a while before picking up his next book, since this one hasn't left my brain completely yet, which is another sign that there was something good in there.

Anti-science, pseudoscience, and prevention programs

Today's lunchtime reading was an article about approaches to evaluating prevention programs in schools. These are the programs that try to keep kids off steroids, or alcohol, or from having sex, or whatever. I agree that it is necessary to try to objectively analyze the worth of these programs since the people who run them have a strong bias to keep them going. And many of the programs have worthwhile educational goals, so we should be putting money into ones that work. I remember plenty of useless activities in my school years so I know they can't all be good. But I thought the article was especially interesting by simply explaining some of the objections to using typical scientific methods to evaluate social programs. The article takes for granted that these objections are essentially worthless, but I appreciated the straightforward explanation that was included.

WonderCon

I went to my first WonderCon this year. It was a really disappointing experience, reminding me of all the things about comics that makes people think of it as a childish medium. Whereas APE was full of interesting people sharing their art and creativity, full of energy and excitement, WonderCon was full of people selling other peoples art, people dressed in costumes of other peoples ideas, people selling their artwork of scantily clad women, with an overall feeling of... is this it? Sure, there were some famous creators there, but most people seemed to ask uninteresting questions ("are you going to write superman? is there going to be more babylon 5? is there going to be a movie?") about things besides the comics. DC presented its upcoming ideas - which seem a lot like all of the ideas from before. Marvel didn't really show up, SLG was the only smaller publisher with a big presence. I overheard people asking each other if the main convention hall was really all there was - and the sad "yeah, this is it" that was the reply. It was a really uninteresting show. I am sure there were some people trying to do something new and exciting, but I didn't really find them. I did appreciate being able to pick up my Sketchbook Diaries Volume 3 by James Kochalka at the Comic Relief booth, and AiT/PlanetLar had their usual strong books available, although I think I was already caught up, so I spent a little extra money to finally try out Keith Knight's work (early judgment: very funny). It was looking to be a disappointing day, though, overall. Not even movie trailers could save it. Especially not when there was a group of guys cheering whenever an attractive female would appear in a revealing outfit. Ugh.

But, the day was saved by the good folks at Isotope, who threw a little party with an open bar. The party was fun because it was full of interesting people without an obnoxious person in the whole place that I could find and the drinks were free and strong. Plus, they had cheese! Yes, James Sime went to college in Wisconsin, and anyone who spends time in Wisconsin knows it isn't a good party without cheese. But it made me regain some hope that there are interesting people involved in comics, so I should keep looking for the interesting ones.

Distracted

I have not been putting enough effort into the website lately!

Must be distracted by this strange "girlfriend" person... strange in the best of ways, of course!

Cecile de Brunhoff

I have not been keeping up things on this site lately, so I forgot to post a link to obituary of Cecile de Brunhoff, who created the character of Babar as part of a bedtime story. Her husband helped turn it into the character that inspired, among other more important things, the online username I sometimes use.

Bedtime stories are good things.

Movie Review: Bulletproof Monk (Hunter)

I expected a pretty typical action movie from this. And the opening scene, a particularly uninspiring battle on a bridge, made me think I was actually going to get a below-average action movie - terrible dialog, lame action, bad special effects. But once the action moved to modern day New York, I realized - it was supposed to be bad. And it was actually funny. I don't know that Seann William Scott will become known as one of the great actors of his generation, but he holds the screen well and is very likeable. Chow Yun-Fat was good as always, and they even found a way to give him a double gun pose even though he was playing a Buddhist monk. Remind anyone who complains about the script of that! And the end even featured a little twist I didn't expect. Now, I'm not trying to say this is a good movie - but it was an entertaining stupid movie after a long week at work.

It is a shame, though, that the creators of the characters got no credit in the movie, financial or otherwise. A little reminder to be careful about what you are signing, I guess.

Patience

"BTW, all programmers want to tell you How It Works. In excruciating detail. As if you cared. Try to be patient."

- Dave Winer

Back to work

well, I dragged myself away from all the good things involved in my vacation to come back to all the little ups and downs of my regular world... not exactly sure how I feel about that yet...

Vacation Part 1

Well, I made it out here ok and have already gone hiking, seen a movie, had several tasty large meals... need to find a little more time for sleeping, but I don't think that will be a problem.

Vacation

As you may have guessed from the lack of entries, things have been busy lately. But it is now vacation time! And it seems overdue. While I am relaxing, I may try to catch up on some things here, unless that does not seem relaxing...

Rain

Rain, rain, go away
Come again some other day
We want to go outside and play
Come again some other day

p.s. if you are driving in the rain, why wouldn't you turn your lights on?

Fools

I can't even think of a good shocking thing to post here as an April Fools Day joke. Oh well.