Sunday, November 18, 2012

Excellent Quotes: The Affair

Lee Child (nee Jim Grant) is already a best-selling author of thrillers; he is about to become quite le celebrite when the Tom Cruise vehicle, "Jack Reacher," is released this December.

Reacher novels all follow a bullet-proof formula: Jack--a code-of-honor drifter who got BRACed from the Army's military police and has since gone off the grid--drifts into town. His engagement in the plot begins uneventfully. He picks up a job or hitches a ride or buys a cup of his beloved coffee. This immediately entangles him in a massive and highly-secretive plot to do very bad things, conducted by bad men, that the Law cannot or will not address. Jack laconically investigates. He meets and beds a local woman. Events come to a head. Inevitably, Jack brutally kills the perpetrators (sometimes he kills a symbolic representative of the evil-doers, sometimes he kills their leader, sometimes he kills a phone book full of baddies.)

As a character, Reacher has some endearing quirks: He does not do laundry; instead, he simply throws his old clothes away when he buys a new set. He owns just a toothbrush. He always knows what time it is without consulting a watch or clock. He has a Sherlockian memory for all sorts of neat facts that prove useful in solving crimes, such as the rate of deadfall due to gravity, the population of most major cities, the percentage of cheese in the moon, and so forth. He doesn't really care much about anything. But--like all good noir heroes--he secretly does care about some things and he'll do anything to get to the truth.

As an author, Child, too, is  endearing. He has a delightful way of over-specifying the mundane and under-selling the big stuff. He brings a LOT of detail into the narrative, but avoids the Clancyesque (THIS Jack will never reach into the darkened room and expertly and precisely flip the light switch of the Leviton MDI06-1LI 600W, 120 Volt AC 60Hz, Single-Pole light switch mounted exactly 3 meters above the Woodgrain Millwork WG 1866 9/16 in. x 5-1/4 in. x 96 in. Medium Density Fiberboard Base Moulding that abuts the carpet).

Violent, yes. Formulaic, true. Still, I love me some Reacher novels. Here's a taste for those of you who have not yet met the quietly menacing protagonist in the black and white. Jack is on an emerging date with Sheriff Elizabeth Deveraux, the local lady he will bed:

"The clock in my head hit ten in the evening. The pies arrived, and so did the coffee. I didn't pay much attention to either. I spent most of my time looking at the third button on Deveraux's shirt. I had noticed it before. It was the first one that was done up. Therefore it was the first one that would need to be undone. It was a tiny mother-of-pearl thing, silvery gray. Right behind it was skin, neither pale nor dark, and very three dimensional. Left to right it curved toward me, then away from me, then toward me again. It was rising and falling as she breathed."

- The Affair. Child, Lee. New York (NY): Delacorte, 2011. Pp. 199-200.

Read the series. I recommend either starting at the start, with Killing Floor, or at the helpful review of Jack's life to date, with Bad Luck and Trouble.

PS - One of Jack Reacher's key attributes is that he is six-foot-five (Reach-er, get it?). In the movie he will be portrayed by Tom Cruise, who's playing height is five-foot-seven. Enjoy the ensuing fanboy controversy. Oh, and "Sticky Chemical" by Bobby Bare is another endearing thing; now playing on iTunes.

Sunday, April 22, 2012

Funny Thing: Muzak

As any reader of this blog knows, I am fairly dedicated to music. I am learning how to play the guitar (for 15 years now), am a recovering mid-life crisis band member, and I provide a song recommendation with each entry in the “PS” section of the post.

I also have a good-sized CD collection. Not so large that I can start my own rebel Internet radio station anchored off the New York skyline. But large enough that it can be reasonably blamed as a major contributor to the fact that I continue to rent an apartment rather than own my own home.

I have been having a devil of a time migrating my collection out of my ‘90s-style entertainment unit--which hulks in a corner of my living room intimidating the bric-a-brac and the smaller furniture--and into my iMac. Sometimes, I sort of want to follow one well-heeled pal’s lead and just pack it all up in boxes and send it to a company that loads it onto a drive for you at a fixed price per CD...but then the Scotsman in me goes nuts and says, “Hey, English fancypants, you canna load them yourself, you valueless yuppie?!”

But the prospect of logging serious time at the computer swapping hundreds and hundreds of disks in and out is daunting. It is a mirage of discipline that fades as I walk across the desert of dinner dates and movies and work. What to do?

Well, I’ll tell you, dear reader. I determined to load one CD onto iTunes each day when I get home from work. Not more. Not less. Just a few minutes every day. In a few years I’ll have all my music in there and each day my iTunes reservoir groweth rewardingly.

This has, surprisingly, been working exceedingly well. I just refresh a small stack of CDs on my desk and pop one in nightly when I get home from the grindstone factory. I am up to 5.1 days of music already (you gotta love the Apple measurement systems).

But I did recently have one moment of panic that reminded me that I am not a digital native; that, like Larry, Curly, and Moe, I am perpetually waiting at the nun’s orphanage for digital parents to adopt me, getting older and more eccentric with each passing software release (woo woo woo).

As I got into the groove of slugging a new CD into the collection each day I inserted one that was both a DVD of music videos and a CD of songs all on one platter (damn you, broken-up R.E.M. and your tech savvy). As only Apple can, when it came time to eject the disc, my iMac wanted to know which format I wanted to eject: one, the other, or both. I panicked. I began pressing buttons at random. The pretty, rainbow wheel of “loading” began to spin perpetually like a digital Tibetan prayer wheel in the center of my screen. My system began to Escher itself into a Mobius strip of indecision. Nothing worked. Nothing responded. I was screwed.

I looked desperately for an override. I examined with minute attention to detail the body of the computer, looking for a pinhole into which I could insert a paperclip to eject the disc as in days of old. I swore. I begged Steve Job’s ghost for insight. I promised to put an Apple bumper sticker on my car. Nothing worked.

After some serious sweating, I recalled that I had a brand new, shiny, optical drived, envy-inducing iPad. Ha! Salvation. I sat by my recursive iMac and used the iPad to Google how to force a disc out of a Mac. It was so meta.

And here is what it the sum total of mankind’s knowledge, stored on the Cloud and delivered at the speed of light from a self-repairing global network of servers told me: push the eject button on your keypad. Push “|>”

Doh!

PS -- Seriously? I overlooked the eject button?! Sigh. Oh, one song you should load into your collection is "The Heartbreak Rides" by  A.C. Newman; now playing on iTunes.

Saturday, April 7, 2012

Thai Massage

This week I met with my professional coach for a healthy and frank discussion of my weaknesses as a person and employee and finalized a work plan to face head on some of the issues that keep me from being the best that I can be. I also met with my boss for my 2011 performance review, celebrating what I had done well in the past year and addressing the strategic concerns that continue to bother her and keep me from being the best that I can be.

I also started running again, slowly and badly, since my recent annual checkup revealed that I have gained 10 pounds and am approximating the ideal weight for an all-pro tight end but not so much for a desk-bound middle-aged manager and that my weight issues are compromising my long-term health and keeping me from being the best that I can be.

Additionally, I scheduled time with my dentist to replace two old, dark amalgam tooth fillings with miraculous, white ceramic fillings that cost about as much as a new car payment. (Speaking of cars, I dropped a cool grand on car repairs, too.)

I brought the week to a gentle close by calculating how much I owe the federal government in taxes.

All in all a purposeful week of accomplishment and bravery that left me in serious danger of weeping openly if one more piece of constructive criticism or personal upgrade crossed my path.

So, I decided that I needed to:

(a) drink with a vengeance and wake up in jail with a new tattoo
(b) get a fluffy puppy who will love me unconditionally
(c) get a professional massage

I chose (c) a massage. In fact, I decided to get (c) a Thai massage because there is a parlor a few blocks from my house. Now I understand that this sounds like I chose (c) pay for sex. There are a few common misconceptions about Thai massage floating around. Let me clear some up.

     There is no sex involved. This is initially disappointing but ultimately morally comforting. It also proactively eliminates the need for my next annual medical checkup to include a healthy dose of penicillin.

     You pay about 60 dollars an hour. Your life looks on the surface like you are in the 1% if you take a gander at the iPad, the Starbucks card, the cool neighborhood, the hipster cache of music, the foreign car, and all the rest. But you are reminded in a subtle but ugly way that you are really in the 99% if your level of relaxation,which grows with each minute of massage, simultaneously erodes with the nagging consciousness that it is costing a dollar a minute to relax.

     Thai massage is not really massage. When you hear the word "masseuse" you imagine an attractive but un-embarrassingly-arousing woman named Helga who smooths the week's woes from your body with firm and comforting caresses. A Thai masseuse is in reality a tiny but unnaturally strong woman named Somchai or a compact, gymnastic man named Sunan; neither is interested in your comfort. Thai massage is less like getting a lightly-oiled hug and more like enduring a thoughtful beating.

     Yes, they step on you. Dude, I got Sunan and he stood on my thigh for quite a while. Ouch.

On a scale of 1-10--where 1 is the pressure of flannel sheets on your body as you sleep by a crackling fire and 10 is telling your captors the nuclear codes just to make. it. stop--my massage held steady between 6-7, punctuated occasionally by real pain.

Really, I feel like I joined Fight Club. But, I can rotate my head to see behind me beyond my elbow now.

So I had my many troubles manhandled out of me and I paid dearly for it. I needed it. I needed it a lot.

PS - But next time I may call Helga. Oh, and "Neeps and Tatties" by Stanton Moore is not painful at all; now playing on iTunes.

Sunday, January 8, 2012

Do It: Watch WALK OFF THE EARTH

The catchiest, earwormiest song on the airwaves today is from Melbourne's Gotye, pronounced Gaultier (heh).  His Making Mirrors album sports the infectious "Somebody That I Used to Know," apparently "feat-ing" a singer named Kimbra.

Now--in a visually compelling group-grope of a single guitar, the band Walk Off the Earth has covered the tune. My vote for best viral video of 2012.

So, do it: Watch Walk Off the Earth's cover.

PS - That pronunciation guide is like a dictionary entry that says "Gotye: Of or relating to Gotye-like stuff." Oh, and Gotye's "Somebody That I Used to Know" itself is something you've got to get to know; now playing on iTunes.