Oh, heaven have mercy. It's that time again, my young friends. Pancake Tuesday is upon us. Sure, if you're in New Orleans, go on and do what you have to do to get a string of shiny beads. Your parents probably won't ever see that DVD anyway. Probably.
As for the rest of us, we're going to be eating pancakes. And why not? Some people claim there's like this whole history behind it and everything. For more, check out this "lovely" Aussie site where you can see a picture of Dwight Eisenhower grillin' up a mess o' pancakes. Like Ike? You'll love his pancakes.
Ooh, and I really have to insist that you take a peek at this site as well. Some of the same information, but with so many references sure to make an English schoolboy titter (titter! ha!) that I hate anyone to miss out. You'll see what I mean. And if you don't, well, don't admit it in front of the others. They won't think you're cool. Just laugh when everyone else does. That's called "socialization." You'll get the hang of it.
Now get out of here. Seriously. Go make some pancakes and prepare for the self-flagellating slog of Lent. I have to go get my hairshirt from the cleaners.
Monday, February 27, 2006
Sunday, February 26, 2006
buckwheat pancakes (not a joke ... an actual recipe!)
People often come to this blog--home to short fiction, digital snapshots, and occasional musings on the amusing--for actual pancake recipes. I feel bad for these people. Clearly the name of the blog is confusing to them, and in my small way I am therefore wasting precious seconds of their time. Worse, many of these visitors, from what the site's visit log indicates, are peeking in from far-flung areas of the planet: Russia, China, South America, Belgium, Detroit. What kind of ambassador am I being if I lure them in with the word "pancakes" and then fail to deliver on their expectations? Why, that's far too much like life!
Here then is my goodwill gesture. I hope it's delicious.
Buckwheat Pancakes
(makes 12 pancakes)
1 cup buckwheat flour
1 cup whole-wheat flour
1 egg, beaten
1 tablespoon baking powder
2 cups water
1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
In a medium bowl, combine the flour, egg, and baking powder. Mix until evenly blended. Add the water, applesauce, and vanilla extract. Stir until only small lumps remain.
Heat a large nonstick skillet coated with cooking spray over medium heat. Working in batches, pour the batter into the pan and cook for 2 to 3 minutes, or until the bottom is browned. Turn and cook for 1 to 2 minutes longer, or until golden brown.
Remove to a plate and keep warm. Repeat to make a total of 12 pancakes.
Here then is my goodwill gesture. I hope it's delicious.
Buckwheat Pancakes
(makes 12 pancakes)
1 cup buckwheat flour
1 cup whole-wheat flour
1 egg, beaten
1 tablespoon baking powder
2 cups water
1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
In a medium bowl, combine the flour, egg, and baking powder. Mix until evenly blended. Add the water, applesauce, and vanilla extract. Stir until only small lumps remain.
Heat a large nonstick skillet coated with cooking spray over medium heat. Working in batches, pour the batter into the pan and cook for 2 to 3 minutes, or until the bottom is browned. Turn and cook for 1 to 2 minutes longer, or until golden brown.
Remove to a plate and keep warm. Repeat to make a total of 12 pancakes.
Thursday, February 23, 2006
Monday, February 20, 2006
Sunday, February 19, 2006
Pancakes Dunst on Hair Care
Lorinda had cleared her calendar so she and Pancakes could spend the day together. She imagined a picture-postcard afternoon: a medley of fairy tales at the puppet theater, high tea, light shopping. But already it seemed she would have to contend with her daughter’s argumentative behavior.
Pancakes had been excited about the puppet theater, but soon after the performance began she had reacted to key moments with exasperated sighs that did not go unnoticed by the other people sitting near them. At intermission, Pancakes complained that the material wasn’t “challenging enough,” but she didn’t want to leave. “I think I should see what else they come up with,” she told her mother. “Maybe part of the problem is their source material.” So they stayed, but Pancakes didn’t seem any more satisfied with the latter half of the show.
Later, when they were in a cab and heading across town to have tea, Pancakes offered her critique. “Not a bad production,” she admitted. “I guess I’m just surprised by the kinds of messages they’re sending to kids.” This last part she said as if she were not herself only a few months into being nine.
Lorinda felt on shaky ground. She suddenly wished Emiliano were with them. He enjoyed these kinds of conversations with Pancakes. Plus, then she could hit him on the arm for turning their little girl into a precocious literature critic. “What messages are they sending, honey?”
“Well, like Rapunzel. She’s just so passive about her whole situation. All she does is grow her hair!”
“What’s she supposed to do?” Lorinda asked. “She’s in the tower. She can’t escape from there. It’s too far down.”
“I don’t know,” Pancakes said. “But I don’t see how having a guy climb up there is going to help. She needs to get down.”
“But she can’t get down. She needs someone to come help her. And her true love does that.”
“I don’t buy it,” Pancakes said. That prompted an eye-roll from Lorinda. Pancakes grinned.
“What don’t you buy?” Lorinda asked.
“If her hair is long enough for somebody to climb up, why doesn’t she climb down?” Pancakes asked. “She could cut off her hair and make it into a rope. Then she could just climb down.”
“But what about her true love?” Lorinda asked. “What does he do?”
“Well, if he’s her true love, then they’ll meet anyway, right?” Pancakes asked. “Otherwise, he was just in the right place at the right time. Anybody could have come by and climbed up there. I bet if Rapunzel figured out how to get down on her own, she might meet some other guy. The way it is, she just waits around for whoever comes along.”
Pancakes had been excited about the puppet theater, but soon after the performance began she had reacted to key moments with exasperated sighs that did not go unnoticed by the other people sitting near them. At intermission, Pancakes complained that the material wasn’t “challenging enough,” but she didn’t want to leave. “I think I should see what else they come up with,” she told her mother. “Maybe part of the problem is their source material.” So they stayed, but Pancakes didn’t seem any more satisfied with the latter half of the show.
Later, when they were in a cab and heading across town to have tea, Pancakes offered her critique. “Not a bad production,” she admitted. “I guess I’m just surprised by the kinds of messages they’re sending to kids.” This last part she said as if she were not herself only a few months into being nine.
Lorinda felt on shaky ground. She suddenly wished Emiliano were with them. He enjoyed these kinds of conversations with Pancakes. Plus, then she could hit him on the arm for turning their little girl into a precocious literature critic. “What messages are they sending, honey?”
“Well, like Rapunzel. She’s just so passive about her whole situation. All she does is grow her hair!”
“What’s she supposed to do?” Lorinda asked. “She’s in the tower. She can’t escape from there. It’s too far down.”
“I don’t know,” Pancakes said. “But I don’t see how having a guy climb up there is going to help. She needs to get down.”
“But she can’t get down. She needs someone to come help her. And her true love does that.”
“I don’t buy it,” Pancakes said. That prompted an eye-roll from Lorinda. Pancakes grinned.
“What don’t you buy?” Lorinda asked.
“If her hair is long enough for somebody to climb up, why doesn’t she climb down?” Pancakes asked. “She could cut off her hair and make it into a rope. Then she could just climb down.”
“But what about her true love?” Lorinda asked. “What does he do?”
“Well, if he’s her true love, then they’ll meet anyway, right?” Pancakes asked. “Otherwise, he was just in the right place at the right time. Anybody could have come by and climbed up there. I bet if Rapunzel figured out how to get down on her own, she might meet some other guy. The way it is, she just waits around for whoever comes along.”
Saturday, February 18, 2006
Friday, February 17, 2006
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
for the uninitiated, this is "snow"
So maybe Somerville didn't get 27 inches like NYC did. We don't go in for all that showiness. No time for it. And we don't have tourists to impress. Don't have tourists, actually. Unless they missed a turn trying to find someplace in Cambridge, which is always a possibility.
Sunday, February 12, 2006
Thursday, February 09, 2006
Detention Journal, part three
Is there some reason, by the way, that no one’s talking about how we’re reliving the Red Scare these days? Terrorism is the new Communism! Enforced Liberation is the new Containment! Gross Unchecked Consumerism is the new Gross Unchecked Consumerism!
Has it not occurred to anybody? Or is it just that our schools are really as bad as they say? Being in lockup makes you think about these things.
Well, being in lockup in addition to, say, all the geopolitical events of the past several years.
There’s this girl over in the corner who has on more makeup than anybody I’ve seen. At least anybody who wasn’t in a music video or playing a hooker in a movie. Or even on Jennifer’s sister, who one time had on so much eyeshadow that she couldn’t open her eyes all the way. We all thought she was sleepy for a whole day.
Anyway, the girl with the makeup never seems to turn her head. I keep seeing her looking around, but she does it all with her huge, huge eyes. Her mouth is all pursed up like she’s been eating supersour Altoids. She’s been like that ever since the teacher caught her text-messaging someone on her cell phone an hour ago and took it away. She got so annoyed, like she never expected it. Why was she surprised?
Plus, the teacher didn’t think to turn the phone off when she confiscated it, and in a couple of minutes you could hear it ringing from her desk drawer. There was some musical ringtone on it, and three separate people got the briefest of grooves on before we were all hushed up and she finally figured out how to switch it off.
Has it not occurred to anybody? Or is it just that our schools are really as bad as they say? Being in lockup makes you think about these things.
Well, being in lockup in addition to, say, all the geopolitical events of the past several years.
There’s this girl over in the corner who has on more makeup than anybody I’ve seen. At least anybody who wasn’t in a music video or playing a hooker in a movie. Or even on Jennifer’s sister, who one time had on so much eyeshadow that she couldn’t open her eyes all the way. We all thought she was sleepy for a whole day.
Anyway, the girl with the makeup never seems to turn her head. I keep seeing her looking around, but she does it all with her huge, huge eyes. Her mouth is all pursed up like she’s been eating supersour Altoids. She’s been like that ever since the teacher caught her text-messaging someone on her cell phone an hour ago and took it away. She got so annoyed, like she never expected it. Why was she surprised?
Plus, the teacher didn’t think to turn the phone off when she confiscated it, and in a couple of minutes you could hear it ringing from her desk drawer. There was some musical ringtone on it, and three separate people got the briefest of grooves on before we were all hushed up and she finally figured out how to switch it off.
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
are you sensing a theme?
It's not my intention to start some kind of clown cult, I swear. I just grab pictures of things that draw my attention.In this case, it's not the clown so much as the fact that this particular toy is one I'd completely forgotten about until my sister and I found it at my grandmother's house over Christmas. Who knows how many kids have been given nightmares by its like over the years?
This is just one of a whole collection of interlocking, vaguely human-shaped, wooden clowns. If you'll note, the shape of the thing's head is exactly the same as the negative spaces that fit into each of its shoulders. Very Escheresque. You're supposed to fit them together like they're insane, utterly still acrobats, from their stubby legs and squashed feet to their pointy shoulders and creepily truncated hands.
That's Bill Ding, folks. Isn't he great?
Thursday, February 02, 2006
Your Lucky Numbers
She rarely showed such care, such patience and gentleness, but Pancakes took her fortune cookies very seriously.
She preferred the kind that didn’t come wrapped in plastic, obviously straight from the factory. It was better if the restaurant preserved some of the mystery by presenting the crisp, hollow fold as if it might have been created in some small, unseen room behind the kitchen. Pancakes liked to think that wizened elders composed the fortunes, baked the cookies, and tucked each narrow strip of paper into its edible housing with great deliberation.
Basically, the plastic messed it all up for her, and she often objected when her parents wanted to visit a restaurant where she’d already been faced with the harsh, cellophane realities of mass cookie manufacturing. Not that she told them her reason. It was simpler to say, “They use too much MSG.” Her mother, Lorinda, was particularly suggestible on that note.
The restaurant in which she now sat with her father, however, was of the plastic-wrapped cookie variety. That annoyed Pancakes, because it didn’t used to be one of those. She had liked the place a lot, actually, even if the Mu Shu pork was a bit drippy and made its little wraps (she refused to call them “pancakes”) soggy and hard to manage. It made for messy eating. But she secretly loved the sweet scent of the sauce on her fingertips later, assuming she was able to dodge having to wash her hands after the meal. Lorinda usually insisted, but her father frequently forgot—or at least pretended to.
Pancakes peeled the cellophane from the cookie, then tried to pretend the plastic wrapper had never been there, tucking it underneath the black plastic tray on which the waiter had delivered the bill. With great ceremony, she cracked the pale yellow-brown cookie neatly in half, almost but not quite preventing a few stray shards of the confection from dropping to the tabletop. All the while, her father watched in amusement. He never tired of this ritual, but he knew better than to be too obvious about watching. If Pancakes realized he found it funny, she’d become self-conscious about being thought of as cute. She’d suspect Emiliano of being patronizing.
As was her custom, Pancakes put one half of the cookie in her mouth and chewed slowly while she pulled the paper fortune out of the other half, which she set on the table. She the message silently and pondered its meaning. She didn’t seem to like this one, her father saw. When she liked what she read, she smiled and read it aloud with her mouth full of cookie. When she didn’t like them, there was silence.
“What’s it say?” Emiliano asked. “Not one of the better ones?”
“‘Your love of life will carry you through any circumstance,’” Pancakes read in a near montone. “That’s a fortune? This place used to have better ones.”
“But that’s a good one,” her father said. “It’s positive.”
She lowered her head and glared up at her father. This was the withering look she’d been practicing for months, ever since she’d seen her mother do the same in a play. In another ten years, Pancakes might very well stun someone into silence with such a look. At seven years of age, it merely presented her father with a challenge not to laugh.
“Dad,” she said slowly, as if speaking to a child, “it’s boring. It’s not even a real fortune.”
“Oh, no?”
“No,” Pancakes explained, “it’s too simple. It’s not challenging. Like, what’s that word you used?”
Emiliano frowned. “What word?”
“When you were talking about that last Pancakes book. That one you didn’t like.”
Emiliano tried to recall. The quality of series had gotten so bad that he was ashamed to have his name still emblazoned across the brightly colored covers. Whatever he has said, he was sure it wasn’t good. “I’m not sure, honey. Insipid? Uninspired? One-dimensional?”
She shook her head. “It sounded like a number.”
“A number?”
She nodded.
He smiled. “Oh, benign.”
“Right,” Pancakes said. “That’s like this.”
Her father nodded. “Yes, I can see that. It is rather benign. You want to hear mine?”
“You probably got the good one. What is it?”
Emiliano wiggled his eyebrows comically. “I did get the good one. Mine says, ‘Someone dreams of being with you.’”
“Hey,” Pancakes said, “I think that was supposed to be mine. That sounds like the kind of fortune I should get. This one’s for you.” She offered the paper she’d been holding, but her father refused to take it.
“No, I don’t think so. Besides, if someone’s dreaming of being with you, I want to know who that is. You’re a little too young to be getting that kind of attention.”
His daughter grinned. “Maybe. But anyway, I bet I know who’s dreaming about you.”
“Oh, really?”
“Mom,” Pancakes said simply.
Emiliano smiled and looked wistful, wishing Lorinda were there with them. “Yeah,” he said. “She’d better.”
Pancakes noticed something on the back of her father’s fortune, and turning her own paper over in her hands, she saw that hers had the same thing. “What’s this?” she asked, pointing to the series of numbers. She’d never seen that before. It was something these new, plasticy cookies had.
He looked down. “I think those are your lucky numbers. They put that many on there so you can use them as lottery numbers.”
She frowned. “I don’t get it. What numbers do you have?”
He read out his numbers while Pancakes looked at her own.
“But those are totally different!” she exclaimed. “How do they decide what numbers to put?”
Her father shrugged. “I think they just make them up.”
Pancakes was stunned. She stared at her father in disbelief. “They make them up?” she asked. “How can they do that?”
“Well,” Emiliano began, feeling like he was treading into dangerous territory somehow, “they just make up the numbers. They can’t know what numbers to put.”
It made no sense to Pancakes, no sense at all. “But how can they just make it up? It’s too important. What if people go and bet on them? They can’t all win!”
He was sure the truth was just going to upset her further, but Emiliano didn’t know what else to say. “Then I guess they lose their money, Pancakes. It’s the lottery, after all. People lose all the time at it.”
Pancakes looked disgusted with the whole thing. She wadded up her fortune and threw it on the table. Usually, her father knew, she liked to keep them and later tape them into her scrapbooks. “Yeah, people lose, but they do it with their own numbers. Not numbers some fortune told them to use.”
“True.”
She pushed away from the table. The waiter had taken Emiliano’s money and brought his change during the course of their exchange. “Can we go, Dad?” she asked.
“Sure, honey, let’s go. Are you okay?”
She nodded. “Sure. I’m fine. I just don’t think they should make up important things, that’s all.”
Her father nodded. “No, they shouldn’t. Plus, there’s something else I noticed tonight.”
“What?”
“I think this restaurant has started using too much MSG.”
Pancakes took her father’s hand and led him toward the door. “I noticed that too,” she said, smiling up at him as they pushed through the glass door and stepped out into the dark night.
She preferred the kind that didn’t come wrapped in plastic, obviously straight from the factory. It was better if the restaurant preserved some of the mystery by presenting the crisp, hollow fold as if it might have been created in some small, unseen room behind the kitchen. Pancakes liked to think that wizened elders composed the fortunes, baked the cookies, and tucked each narrow strip of paper into its edible housing with great deliberation.
Basically, the plastic messed it all up for her, and she often objected when her parents wanted to visit a restaurant where she’d already been faced with the harsh, cellophane realities of mass cookie manufacturing. Not that she told them her reason. It was simpler to say, “They use too much MSG.” Her mother, Lorinda, was particularly suggestible on that note.
The restaurant in which she now sat with her father, however, was of the plastic-wrapped cookie variety. That annoyed Pancakes, because it didn’t used to be one of those. She had liked the place a lot, actually, even if the Mu Shu pork was a bit drippy and made its little wraps (she refused to call them “pancakes”) soggy and hard to manage. It made for messy eating. But she secretly loved the sweet scent of the sauce on her fingertips later, assuming she was able to dodge having to wash her hands after the meal. Lorinda usually insisted, but her father frequently forgot—or at least pretended to.
Pancakes peeled the cellophane from the cookie, then tried to pretend the plastic wrapper had never been there, tucking it underneath the black plastic tray on which the waiter had delivered the bill. With great ceremony, she cracked the pale yellow-brown cookie neatly in half, almost but not quite preventing a few stray shards of the confection from dropping to the tabletop. All the while, her father watched in amusement. He never tired of this ritual, but he knew better than to be too obvious about watching. If Pancakes realized he found it funny, she’d become self-conscious about being thought of as cute. She’d suspect Emiliano of being patronizing.
As was her custom, Pancakes put one half of the cookie in her mouth and chewed slowly while she pulled the paper fortune out of the other half, which she set on the table. She the message silently and pondered its meaning. She didn’t seem to like this one, her father saw. When she liked what she read, she smiled and read it aloud with her mouth full of cookie. When she didn’t like them, there was silence.
“What’s it say?” Emiliano asked. “Not one of the better ones?”
“‘Your love of life will carry you through any circumstance,’” Pancakes read in a near montone. “That’s a fortune? This place used to have better ones.”
“But that’s a good one,” her father said. “It’s positive.”
She lowered her head and glared up at her father. This was the withering look she’d been practicing for months, ever since she’d seen her mother do the same in a play. In another ten years, Pancakes might very well stun someone into silence with such a look. At seven years of age, it merely presented her father with a challenge not to laugh.
“Dad,” she said slowly, as if speaking to a child, “it’s boring. It’s not even a real fortune.”
“Oh, no?”
“No,” Pancakes explained, “it’s too simple. It’s not challenging. Like, what’s that word you used?”
Emiliano frowned. “What word?”
“When you were talking about that last Pancakes book. That one you didn’t like.”
Emiliano tried to recall. The quality of series had gotten so bad that he was ashamed to have his name still emblazoned across the brightly colored covers. Whatever he has said, he was sure it wasn’t good. “I’m not sure, honey. Insipid? Uninspired? One-dimensional?”
She shook her head. “It sounded like a number.”
“A number?”
She nodded.
He smiled. “Oh, benign.”
“Right,” Pancakes said. “That’s like this.”
Her father nodded. “Yes, I can see that. It is rather benign. You want to hear mine?”
“You probably got the good one. What is it?”
Emiliano wiggled his eyebrows comically. “I did get the good one. Mine says, ‘Someone dreams of being with you.’”
“Hey,” Pancakes said, “I think that was supposed to be mine. That sounds like the kind of fortune I should get. This one’s for you.” She offered the paper she’d been holding, but her father refused to take it.
“No, I don’t think so. Besides, if someone’s dreaming of being with you, I want to know who that is. You’re a little too young to be getting that kind of attention.”
His daughter grinned. “Maybe. But anyway, I bet I know who’s dreaming about you.”
“Oh, really?”
“Mom,” Pancakes said simply.
Emiliano smiled and looked wistful, wishing Lorinda were there with them. “Yeah,” he said. “She’d better.”
Pancakes noticed something on the back of her father’s fortune, and turning her own paper over in her hands, she saw that hers had the same thing. “What’s this?” she asked, pointing to the series of numbers. She’d never seen that before. It was something these new, plasticy cookies had.
He looked down. “I think those are your lucky numbers. They put that many on there so you can use them as lottery numbers.”
She frowned. “I don’t get it. What numbers do you have?”
He read out his numbers while Pancakes looked at her own.
“But those are totally different!” she exclaimed. “How do they decide what numbers to put?”
Her father shrugged. “I think they just make them up.”
Pancakes was stunned. She stared at her father in disbelief. “They make them up?” she asked. “How can they do that?”
“Well,” Emiliano began, feeling like he was treading into dangerous territory somehow, “they just make up the numbers. They can’t know what numbers to put.”
It made no sense to Pancakes, no sense at all. “But how can they just make it up? It’s too important. What if people go and bet on them? They can’t all win!”
He was sure the truth was just going to upset her further, but Emiliano didn’t know what else to say. “Then I guess they lose their money, Pancakes. It’s the lottery, after all. People lose all the time at it.”
Pancakes looked disgusted with the whole thing. She wadded up her fortune and threw it on the table. Usually, her father knew, she liked to keep them and later tape them into her scrapbooks. “Yeah, people lose, but they do it with their own numbers. Not numbers some fortune told them to use.”
“True.”
She pushed away from the table. The waiter had taken Emiliano’s money and brought his change during the course of their exchange. “Can we go, Dad?” she asked.
“Sure, honey, let’s go. Are you okay?”
She nodded. “Sure. I’m fine. I just don’t think they should make up important things, that’s all.”
Her father nodded. “No, they shouldn’t. Plus, there’s something else I noticed tonight.”
“What?”
“I think this restaurant has started using too much MSG.”
Pancakes took her father’s hand and led him toward the door. “I noticed that too,” she said, smiling up at him as they pushed through the glass door and stepped out into the dark night.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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