Friday, January 27, 2006

Inspired by Actual Events

When I first read your book, I was awed. Your story was so moving, so harrowing. You faced many difficult trials. The tortured, alcohol-fueled rages. The encounter with that motorcycle gang. The date with the homely debutante.

I’ve had my own problems, but yours made mine seem small by comparison. Sure, the missteps that led to prison constituted something of an awkward stage for me. I was still finding myself. The addictions and the poorly constructed betting pools. I leapt from one hobby to another. But it was kid’s stuff compared to your spending the night in an overfull laundry hamper in a Colombian cocaine cartel’s clubroom. Sure, the cellblock riot I started a few years back caused a bit of a mess. But I never brought down a passenger plane when I drunkenly left a half-eaten panini in one of the jet turbines. My sins were nothing compared to yours.

Your story gave me immense hope. You made it through all that. You faced your demons. You wrote it all down and got that fat book deal.

But even though your words were duplicated several million times and were read by people all over the world, it was as if you were speaking to me alone. Even in the opium-induced haze in which I contemplated your story, I sensed that immediately.

So imagine my surprise when I heard it was all a lie.

You faked your own memoir? Even after the thousands of hours I’ve spent ingesting the contents of the prison library while researching my appeal, I find I lack the words to express my disappointment, my anger, my outsized sense of personal betrayal.

How dare you inspire me to better myself with your invented life? Now when I see your book on the library’s “New and Notable” shelf, I find myself filled with disgust. The words I savored seem empty and weightless. Robbed of reality, the story you tell there is nothing more than fiction.

If you didn’t really consume a gram of black tar heroin daily for three years, how can I be sure you really loved you father as much as you claim? If I have to doubt the truth about those years you posed as a Mormon elder just to keep a steady supply of young wives working your meth lab, what’s to say you felt any pain at the death of your sister? If that running gun battle with the border patrol was just made-up, maybe your feelings of gratitude for your AA sponsor were a similar flight of fancy.

If something didn’t happen—and happen exactly as it is said to have happened—then it’s a useless fairy tale. It seems clear to me now: Redemption is a lie. All my efforts to educate myself, to make amends with those I’ve harmed, to work toward bettering the lives of those around me . . . none of it has any meaning. That’s what the real story of your story has taught me.

Thanks for helping me waste the best years of my life on that crap.

Detention Journal, part two

There’s this girl sitting in my row, about eight desks back. We’re supposed to keep to ourselves, so it’s hard for me to see her very well. I’d have to turn all the way around to get a good look at her, and I’m already in enough trouble as it is.

But I can hear her just fine. She turns the pages of her notebooks really loudly. I’m sure she’s doing it on purpose. You can only get so much sound out of a page, though, so it’s not quite enough to get her in trouble, which I’m sure she knows.

She also clears her throat every so often in this stilted, theatrical way. It’s also not really enough to get her in trouble, but you can tell the teacher in charge of the detention hall doesn’t like it because she looks up and kind of frowns in her direction every so often.

Also, Sorta Loud Girl has her hair braided with a lot of beads in it. Every time she moves her head more than a little, you can hear them clacking together. Between the page flipping and the throat clearing and the bead clacking, but there’s no way you can miss her, even if you can’t really see her. She’s made sure that everybody knows she’s here.

For today, she’s my new best friend.

Sunday, January 22, 2006

Lorinda Chooses an Instrument

Lorinda ran down the wide hallway. Her bare feet slapped the marble floor with an eager rhythm. Her long, pale hair fluttered in her wake. She held her arms back like rigid wings, thrusting her chest and chin forward. With self-consciously light movements, she pivoted quickly into her bedroom, flitted about briefly, and padded out again.

Lorinda ran.

At eleven years of age, Lorinda’s legs were already longer and stronger than those of her classmates. Her body wanted to move quickly, to move prettily. She had known it ever since her mother took her to the ballet the previous month, and she had been adopting the role ever since. It was the only thing she had ever wanted to do. The previous ten years were a blur of aimlessness to her. Now she knew: Some day she would take the stage.

Lorinda ran.

She took a small leap—a sauté, she thought—across the threshold of her mother’s bedroom and pranced over to where Ingrid sat at her vanity table, applying makeup in preparation for a date. Lorinda stopped dramatically a few feet from where her mother sat. She rolled her delicate shoulders forward, curled her torso inward, and then thrust her hands forward, fluttering her fingertips gently.

Ingrid slid her eyes toward her daughter’s reflection. She hoped the sigh that had just forced its way out of her chest was inaudible. She didn’t want Lorinda to know that she was exasperated, but this had been going on for weeks.

“Dear, all I asked you to do was check to see if your blue dress was clean for the party tomorrow,” she said. She went back to lengthening her thin eyebrows.

Lorinda peered up at her mother. Her young face showed disappointment. Ingrid had been less than encouraging about Lorinda’s dance ambitions. Most of her comments about them had been warnings against injuries, accidents, and unladylike contortions. Plus, she obviously didn’t care about her own daughter’s feelings if she was going to go sighing like that.

Lorinda unfolded herself and stood rigidly before her mother. She tried very hard not to stand in one of the five positions. “It’s clean, Mother,” she said. She gave a curtsy. “May I go? I’ll be sure to tell you when he gets here.”

Ingrid turned her face toward her daughter and arched one freshly painted eyebrow. “When who gets here, dear?”

Lorinda shrugged. “He, your date,” she said in a slightly less defiant tone. “You didn’t tell me his name.”

Ingrid smiled and rolled her eyes upward in a sheepish expression. “Actually, I was hoping I had.” She dropped her voice to a loud, conspiratorial whisper. “I can’t remember!”

Lorinda smiled in spite of herself, and without realizing it, she relaxed her rigid posture. “Somebody new?” she asked. “Have I met him?”

Ingrid frowned slightly as she tried to remember. “Nobody new. I swear, I just can’t remember. Werner is out of the country, so it’s not him. Michael has a business something-or-other this week. Maybe Patrick? David?”

“Troy?” Lorinda asked helpfully and hopefully. Troy was always very nice to her. And he had perfect teeth.

Ingrid shook her head and turned back to her vanity. “I just can’t remember. Isn’t that silly?”

“Well, they’re the ones who keep asking you,” Lorinda said. “As long as you remember his name when he shows up, that’s okay.” Lorinda cocked her head thoughtfully and imagined a future series of suitors for herself. She smiled inwardly at the idea of that unknown parade of earnest, flattering men arriving at her doorstep to take her out and do their best to impress her. The age difference didn’t work out at all, but Troy was definitely standing at the head of that line.

Ingrid nodded slightly while she checked the blending of her blush and started to consider the array of lipstick shades that might best match her evening’s palette. “I suppose you’re right, dear,” she said. “Thank you for keeping my escort company while I finish getting ready. I expect he’ll be here any minute.”

Lorinda had one final concern. “Did you see the dress?” she asked. It had been Lorinda’s favorite tradition of her mother’s date nights that she got to choose one outfit she thought appropriate for the evening. Tonight it had been a fitted, navy-blue number. The neckline was modestly immodest, the sleeves mere suggestions, and the skirt comfortably mid-calf. Lorinda had been attracted to the light linen, its faint pleating, and the delicate peacock motif embroidered across the left shoulder. To her, there was something alluringly balletic about it.

Ingrid nodded. “A perfect choice, dear.”

Lorinda beamed. “Thank you, Mother!” she said, louder than she intended. I’ll go wait for Mr. Man.”

Ingrid turned to suggest to Lorinda that she choose some shoes before she went downstairs, but with a plié and pirouette, the girl ran from the room. Her steps down the stone stairway sounded like a distant, rapid heartbeat.

Lorinda ran.

Saturday, January 21, 2006

Detention Journal, part one

Dennis is in here, sitting a row over and several seats away.

Dennis always pretends that he doesn’t remember me, but he does it in that way that clearly indicates he does. At the very least, he’d have to remember me from all the times he presented that studied look of unrecognition when he saw me.

It doesn’t matter. I certainly remember Dennis, because I have him to thank for making me stop liking jerks. Back in eighth grade, we had this dance at my school, and I made Jennifer go with me so I could try to get Dennis’s attention and maybe get to dance with him. I’d had a crush on him for almost the whole year, and this was my bold move to get noticed.

But he barely talked to me when I tried to chat with him. He ignored all my hints when I made it very obvious that I wasn’t there with anybody and I really wanted to dance and I liked this song and that song, and did he like this song?

Totally ignored me! He just wanted to dance with Katrina Parker, who was totally ignoring him. So I decided after an hour of making an idiot of myself that this was stupid, and I went and found someone who wanted to dance with me, and did.

And now here’s fate throwing me and Dennis together in the detention hall. Be still, my heart.

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

oxy: more on it

peacekeeping mission
American intellectual
publishing profits
easy trial
Homeland Security

Thursday, January 12, 2006

The Adventures of Pancakes Dunst: No. 21

This Week Only: All Nouns Half Off!

Everyone knows that billionaire businessman Anson Jarry prefers to keep his public comments concise. But no one predicted that in his silence he sought to seize the world’s wealth! With the publication of his glitzy autobiography, An Economy of Phrasing, Jarry unveils his scheme of complicated contracts that make him the owner of most of the world’s common words. Citizens across the globe try to protest, but they can’t afford the outcry. “Hey, no fair!” complain the world’s leaders, instantly incurring bills for their countries’ GNPs. Even at his low, low introductory prices, no one want to argue just to see Jarry profit. Pancakes Dunst resolves to button her lip, but she still has a thing or two to say about this stranglehold on free expression. Mime and interpretive dance have never been so compelling!

Wednesday, January 04, 2006

clowns on mass. ave.


Stereo Jack's dug deep and came up with an inspired display of LPs featuring clowns on the covers. Guaranteed to inspire joy or fear, depending on your reaction to greasepainted, garishly dressed overactors with a penchant for tiny, tiny cars.

Maybe a Rental

The guy in this movie I saw last night used to be in that TV show a few years back. The one about the podiatrist in California who part-time manages a golf-ball salvage company near Pebble Beach? Remember that one? It was on for, like, three, four seasons. I liked him on that show, although I remember a lot of the other characters better. Still, he was pretty good in it. Now his hair’s all different, but he still mostly looks the same. You know the guy I’m talking about? The one on that show?

Anyway, in this movie he’s a small-time dealer of decorative cow skulls. For Southwestern decorating or whatever. He lives out in New Mexico and has this whole setup with a rendering plant to get cow skulls. Then he bleaches them and decorates them with turquoise and silver and paint. All the tourists go crazy for that stuff, so he has a nice little business and his life seems okay. But then this corporation wants to buy him out and mass-produce the skulls he makes. He’s got a lock on the business because of his deal with the rendering plant, so they want to take over the whole operation. The company wants to make the skulls faster and cheaper, and then sell them at these stores they have all over the highways, a chain of gas stations and restaurants called Hoof ’n’ Mouth.

The company sends out a PR specialist lawyer or something to sway his decision. It’s not totally clear what her credentials are, but she’s ridiculously pretty. That’s the love-interest angle. She’s played by the girl from that cheerleader movie. You know the one? It’s been a few years since that movie, and she looks older now, but it was still hard to believe this girl was a hotshot lawyer with a huge corporation. She looks more like she’s still hoping to pass her bar exams. But she was pretty good, I guess. Anyway, she comes to town and keeps trying to make appointments with the guy so she can convince him about the benefits of selling out. He keeps dodging her.

Oh, I should mention here that the company wants to just go over the guy’s head and make a deal directly with the rendering plant, but two of the main executives at the plant are the guy’s twin cousins. And they don’t like the Hoof ’n’ Mouth company, anyway, because years ago they were staying at one of its luxury hotels with their fiancees, who then ran off with members of a Latin jazz band playing at the hotel lounge. So they’re against doing any kind of deal, and every time the subject comes up, the twin cousins get all weepy about the women who ran out on them. It’s a pretty corny shtick.

Besides that, though, most of the story is made up of stilted conversations between the two main characters. It’s textbook romantic comedy stuff. You can sense right away that they’re both really attracted to each other, but they’re on opposite sides, so it’s all mixed messages and awkwardness. And they’re always trying to look like they’re not looking at each other, but of course they are. Averted eyes, stammering, shifting from foot to foot—the whole deal. But she’s very persistent. He keeps saying no, and she keeps finding new angles, coming around day after day with another offer. Finally after a week or something, she gets the guy to meet her at a local diner, and then they start the serious flirting.

You can tell that the woman knows she’s not going to get anywhere in the negotiations, so it’s funny after a while how she just keeps coming up with reasons to go visit him again and again. He always acts annoyed, of course, but he always stares after her just a little too long when gets into her rental car and drives off. Or he takes much longer than necessary with their banter before he insists on knowing what her visit’s about this time. So it’s easy to see that he likes the fact that she keeps showing up, even if he does get pretty sarcastic in some of the scenes.

But when they’re at the diner, the whole thing just comes together for them. She’s nervous, and she looks for a really long time at all the items on the menu, even though she later ends up ordering the first thing she mentioned she was in the mood for. But while she’s staring at the menu, the guy just stares at her like he’s lovesick. And then she looks up, directly into his eyes and raises her eyebrows very, very slightly. And he doesn’t look away for a couple of seconds until the waitress comes over and interrupts them. Both of them get nervous and start fumbling around, trying to place their orders like nothing just happened.

It seems like everything should fall into place then, but it’s just the beginning of the end. At least for the guy who has the skull-selling business. He and the lawyer fall in love and all, and the big romantic song from the movie, “Piece by Piece” (a horrible song title considering all the rendering plant scenes, really) plays over the tastefully filmed scene of them going back to her motel and going to bed together. (“Tastefully filmed” means you totally don’t see anything, so don’t get excited.)

Then the lawyer goes and has a meeting with her bosses at the local Hoof ’n’ Mouth. She makes this totally unworkable pitch that the company should give up buying the guy out and should somehow work with him instead. The bosses get mad, and she’s immediately sent back to the company’s headquarters in Atlanta. She’s upset but she has to go if she wants to keep her job. And then the big corporation somehow forces a board meeting at the rendering plant, and when some of the board members find out just how much money they can make by partnering with them, they sell out for all the animal parts they want. Then they all have this big barbecue to celebrate. It’s kind of hard to watch.

With everything he’s worked for now gone, the guy packs up a truck and heads out to Atlanta. The lawyer left without really telling him what was going on, but he finds out how she got transferred so quickly and goes after her. But when he gets there, he’s in for a surprise. She’s been involved with someone else all along. Part of the reason she left without more of a fight is that she thought it would be better for everyone. This gives the main character a chance to have a big, ranty speech in which he talks about how betrayed his heart has been. It’s also kind of hard to watch.

The last part of the movie is a kind of goofy chase as the guy hits the road, heading back out west in search of a brand new start. And then after half a day of soul-searching—a long montage of the lawyer being distressed and remembering all the great stuff about this new guy she loves while “Piece by Piece” plays again—she decides that she’ll go after him. She ditches her stable, fulfilling life, the handsome, sensitive guy she’s engaged to, and her financially secure future. She packs a bag and heads west to follow her impulsive, unemployed, former kitsch artisan of a lover.

They both drive and drive. It’s supposed to be funny and cute and romantic and just a little dramatically frustrating, but whether you swallow that or not, what basically happens is that they keep going to the same places at exactly the wrong time. Just after he pulls out of a convenience store, she walks out of the ladies room and goes inside to get some coffee. He stops at a roadside vendor to buy homemade tamales, and she zooms past to get to the next town. And since she ends up taking the last vacancy at the motel in town, he has to drive another hundred miles to find a place of his own. On and on like that, for countless scenes, all the way back to New Mexico, where the figures he can start a new business making Day of the Dead dioramas to sell in Santa Fe.

In the big, final scene, he ends us being the one to find her, rather than the other way around. He stops at this strip mall along the highway, and he gets into a conversation with a guy who works at a memorabilia store. Then out the window of the store he sees that the lawyer from Atlanta is in the same strip mall. She’s ordering lunch at a fast food burrito shack. He stops in the middle of his conversation and goes out the door.

This is where the film just chucks all pretense at believability and unexpectedly plays the art-house card. One guy in the theater found this so jarring that he started making a lot of comments about it right out loud. It’s a wonder he didn’t get kicked out, but that’s probably because a good portion of the audience agreed with him. What happens is, as soon as the guy leaves the store, there’s a jumble of confusing jump cuts and you end up following the rest of the action to four separate conclusions, none of which is obviously the right one. It’s not like a dream sequence or a wish sequence or anything. It just goes down one path, then another, then another, and finally another. But in all cases, the conclusion draws to the same scene, only with a different spin.

First the guy leaves the store, stands looking at her across the parking lot for a good long while, shakes his head sadly, and gets into his truck and drives on down the road. The woman never even sees him. She sits at one of the big round concrete tables alongside the burrito place and stares off down the highway in the opposite direction. She looks really sad, and you can tell she’s pretty much giving up now. Then the guy running the burrito stand calls out several times to get her attention. He tells her that her order is ready.

Then they jump back and the guy leaves the store, goes over to the burrito place, and waits for her to turn around and see him. When she does, she gasps and runs over to him. Neither of them says anything. They just hug for a long time, then sit down anxiously at the table. She tells him she’s been chasing him across six states. He tells her that if she’s tired of chasing him, he’s ready to stop now. They kiss. Then the guy running the burrito stand calls out several times to get her attention. He tells her that her order is ready.

Then they jump back again and the guy leaves the store, goes over to the burrito place, and waits for her to turn around and see him. When she does, she gasps, but she doesn’t run over to him. Because he looks really mad that she’s there, and she doesn’t know what to say. She tries to explain what happened and how now she’s come to her senses, but he doesn’t want to hear it. He’s still mad that she lied to him, and now this stunt has just made it all the more obvious to him that she’s a very unstable person. She risked her job, let her company order her around against her will, betrayed the man she had been with, then put her whole life on hold and went chasing after somebody she hardly knows. He doesn’t want to hear anything more from her. She looks really upset, and he goes to his truck and drives away. You get a chance to see just how really sad he is once he turns away from her, but that didn’t seem very redeeming after he just blasted this woman in public without even bothering to hear her out. The woman sits down at a table and starts crying. Then the guy running the burrito stand calls out several times to get her attention. He tells her that her order is ready.

Then they jump back one last time and guy leaves the store, stands watching her from a distance for a while, and then goes over to her. He taps her lightly on the shoulder. She turns and gasps, then waits for him to say something. He looks nervous, but finally asks her how the food is here. She laughs lightly and says it’s her first time to eat there, so she’s not sure. Then after a pause, she starts trying to apologize for everything in a rush. He gets her to calm down, and they sit at a table and begin to talk slowly and deliberately to one another, expressing themselves as best they can. It’s apparent that he’s apprehensive, but he wants to see if they can salvage something and go on from there. She agrees and takes his hand. Then the guy running the burrito stand calls out several times to get her attention. He tells her that her order is ready.

The screen goes black. Credits roll. Songs by people you’ve never heard of play over the credits. And they note in the credits that no animals were harmed in the making of the film, which is comforting given the large part rendering plants played in the movie. Plus all the cattle skulls. But, seriously, how’d they get their bones out without the cows coming to harm? Did anyone even bother to check on that? Maybe they’ll explain that some more on the DVD release, which is probably happening any second now.

Monday, January 02, 2006

Today's Alphabet of Offenses

  1. Air Guitar Playing
  2. Boxing Kangaroos
  3. Censorship
  4. Discussing Deconstruction
  5. Encouraging Mediocrity
  6. Fluttering Your Eyelashes and Meaning It
  7. Guffawing
  8. Hierarchical Thinking
  9. Irksomeness
  10. Jingling Your Keys
  11. Kleptomania
  12. Legerdemain
  13. Monopolizing the Conversation
  14. Name Dropping
  15. Ogling
  16. Pretending Not to See Someone Who, Come On, You Can Obviously See
  17. Quantifying Your Emotions
  18. Reengineering Corporations
  19. Sulking
  20. Training Animals to Talk
  21. Ululating
  22. Vapidness
  23. Wanking (just kidding! seeing if you’re paying attention!)
  24. Xeroxing Your Butt
  25. Yielding to Authority
  26. Zaniness