The Newsstand Sophisticate

Pay Attention, and Be Outraged

2006-09-26T20:09:00.000-04:00

When I lived in New York, I didn't much notice bumper stickers. Now that I live in Texas, I drive, and I see them everywhere. My least favorite is the one that reads "If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention." It's hard to beat for smugness and self-righteous ire, two most unattractive qualities. It's usually on the bumper along with an upside-down "Question Authority," "Dissent is Patriotic," and/or a fading "Kerry for President." But its essential vacuity was made obvious to me recently when I saw it next to a "W: The President" sticker. And why not? As long as you think your anger is a virtue you'd like to parade in front of other motorists, it doesn't really matter what you're angry about.

Then about a month ago, I saw a new sticker, which said "If you're not completely outraged, you're not paying attention." I can only imagine the contempt the completely outraged, cruising down the road with every molecule of their body absolutely humming with attention-prompted anger, must feel for the merely "outraged," with whom they occasionally share the road.

Pyramid Power

2005-04-19T12:48:00.000-04:00

The U.S. government has thrown the old food pyramid into the dustbin of history. And in its place we have been given twelve new pyramids, each one geared to a different lifestyle and nutritional need. And these aren't your grandfather's pyramids, either. No, according to the AP article:

Inside the familiar pyramid shape, rainbow-colored bands representing different food groups run vertically from the tip to the base. The old pyramid's sections ran horizontally.

If twelve vertical-rainbow pyramids can't turn around our nation's problem with obesity, I don't know what can. Ascend the dizzying heights of your own personal pyramid here.

Gainful Employment

2005-04-18T13:24:00.000-04:00

I begin working again next week. I'll be editing and reporting for a small daily newspaper near here. It should be an interesting if not terribly lucrative experience. The wife will be quitting her day job and devoting more time to her business, Love Plus One, and I think it will be a good move for both of us, at least for the near future. More details later.

Rattle and Hmmm

2005-04-15T13:01:00.000-04:00

Somehow I missed Taylor's annual Rattlesnake Sacking Contest. It happened two weeks ago, but nobody told me about it. I guess I wasn't prepared for it as I usually do my rattlesnake sacking in late summer. A reminder to always plan ahead.

In other missed-opportunity news, Norman Geras, who writes normblog, is in New York now. I've corresponded with him a few times electronically, and though I can't say I would have been able to meet him if I were still in New York (it is a big, busy place, after all, and I a rather minor blogger), the sad truth of the matter is that I definitely cannot meet him in Taylor. Perhaps he'll come to Austin for Kinky Friedman's inauguration in 2006?

Product Placement

2005-04-12T13:12:00.000-04:00

My father was here recently, helping us look for and buy our new car, and he recommended to us the new Tabasco Chipotle Pepper Sauce. We've tried it, and now we're addicted, too. It's delicious. I've started putting it on almost everything I eat. I'll know I'm in need of professional help when I start splashing it on ice cream. I'm not usually one to tell friends and family that some new product will make your life better, but I think this one just might.

Fleetwood Brougham D'Elegance, 1980-2005, Requiescat in Pace

2005-04-08T13:16:00.000-04:00

Some of you may be preoccupied with the death of Pope John Paul II, but another baroquely elegant fellow has also recently given up the ghost. The Cadillac my grandmother lent to us went down in a blaze (literally) of glory (not so literally) last Wednesday. I had just left an interview in Northwest Austin and was prowling along Braker Lane at about 11:15 looking for an onramp for I-35 when the air-conditioning in the Fleetwood wheezed and then stopped. A block or so later I smelled a faintly sweet smell, like a Wint-O-Green Life Saver burning. After driving another block, a noxious black smoke began to seep out of the cracks between the hood and body of the car, and then through the air-conditioning vents. Soon the smoke began to pour out of the vents with gusto, and I noticed flames melting the plastic under the steering column and dripping liquid plastic onto my shoes and the floormats.

I pulled into the Enterprise car rental parking lot (there was also a tattoo parlor and an Asian grocery store there) and hurriedly began to remove all of our belongings from the car before the whole thing caught on fire. Some people driving by in an SUV told me that they'd called 911, but before the firefighters arrived, a young man in a truck pulled up next to the car and put out the fire with a halon fire extinguisher, a product he happened to be a salesman of. (If anybody would like a referral to a fire extinguisher salesman and good samaritan, let me know. I have his card.) The firefighters arrived a few minutes later and blasted some sort of freezing powder (one of the firefighters showed me how it worked on some unfortunate fire ants that were crawling near the car) into the vents and scanned the hood with a thermal imaging device to make sure the fire was truly out.

It was an exciting day. The Cadillac was taken to a junkyard, as the repair costs would have exceeded the value of the car. Now, thanks to some help from my father, we drive a 1996 Honda Accord. It's a much more reliable car, of course, but I don't think it would take the Nudie Cohen treatment as well as the Cadillac would have.

Green Acres

2005-03-29T16:11:00.000-05:00

The other day I mowed the lawn in the back yard. I haven't lived in a house with a lawn since I was in high school, so it was not something I've done in a long while. My wife, a native New Yorker, was so taken with the novelty of the spectacle that she began to take pictures of me, often putting her toes at risk of removal as she crouched in front of the advancing mower to get a good shot. Sadly, she erased all the pictures from the digital camera because they didn't come out well (or so she says). We'll be sure to document the process better next time.

Special Delivery

2005-03-24T17:05:00.000-05:00

Texas is critter country. Yesterday afternoon when I opened the mailbox I noticed a little bat lying on top of it. I thought it was sick or dying, but when I touched it lightly with a broom it woke up, looked directly at me, screamed some very high-pitched screams at me, and flew off toward the south. I've never been face to face with a bat before.

Apparently, a bat in the house is considered to be good luck in China. I hope that it will be in my case as well.

Fleetwood, Mack

2005-03-22T13:37:00.000-05:00

I don't have an actual picture yet, but for those of you trying to imagine our little family maneuvering about our daily errands in Texas, this car is very similar to the one we're driving (borrowed from my Grandmother), a 1980 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham D'Elegance.

It's a far cry from the subway.

600 Pounds of Radio Fun

2005-03-21T18:30:00.000-05:00

Some worthy soul has posted the recordings of Orson Welles's 1938-40 radio program, The Mercury Theatre (the show is most famous for broadcasting "The War of the Worlds"). I'm especially looking forward to listening to "The Man who Was Thursday," a dramatization of the G.K. Chesterton novel, but I'm reading it right now (a birthday present from my lovely wife) and don't want to spoil the surprise. Such a clash of heavyweights, artistic and otherwise (Welles and Chesterton both weighed as much as 300 pounds), is bound to be good.

Also, the site says that Bernard Herrmann did the music on at least some of the episodes. I wonder which ones?

Can You Dig(nify) It?

2005-03-17T12:52:00.000-05:00

Here's a nice juxtaposition from two articles on facing pages of today's Austin American-Statesman:

In a story about a conservative radio host named Laura Ingraham visiting Austin, Ingraham is quoted as saying, "'Red state America loves our military. We know what blue state America stands for. It means that being pro-life is being for the spotted owl, the snail darter, a centipede. Red state America is about being for human dignity.'"

Across the page is a story to illustrate her point:

"Five people were hospitalized after what reportedly began as a spring break fistfight snowballed to a fight involving more than a hundred people near the Radisson Resort, near the southern end of [Padre] island.
The cause of the 5:30 p.m. melee remained unknown Wednesday, but witnesses told The Brownsville Herald on Tuesday that it could have been caused by the destruction of a religious sand sculpture or sparked by rivalries between schools.
Some witnesses said the brawl was mostly between students from the University of Texas and Oklahoma University. Others said it was between UT and Texas A&M students, and some witnesses said the brawl involved Baylor University students. [...] Some witnesses said the brawl was started by people who intentionally walked on a sand sculpture of Jesus, but others said the work of art was a casualty of the violence. "

Don't be so sure that the students trampling the sand Jesus were people of blue-state values, either. They may have been attempting to uphold the second commandment, which forbids the making of graven (or gravel) images.

A minor complaint, but I wish that the second article had used the word donnybrook. It is St. Patrick's Day, after all, and would thus have been much more appropriate than melee.

Time Out Taylor

2005-03-15T14:23:00.000-05:00

Today I received a copy of Time Out New York, forwarded from our old address in Brooklyn, and promptly read their exhaustive report on New York City's dive bars. Now that's news you can use. Anyway, there's no knowing for sure, but I imagine I'm Taylor's only TONY subscriber. I bet I also have Taylor's largest collection of Joy Division albums, but if anybody knows otherwise, please correct me.

Gone to Texas

2005-03-14T13:03:00.000-05:00

I've been neglecting this blog since I moved to Texas. I have plenty of excuses, but no good ones, so I'll just start posting again.

Living in small-town Texas is rather different from living in Brooklyn, though not as different as many expect. The real opposite of both cities and small towns is the suburb. Though some of the adjustment has been trying, one thing has been a particular delight, and that is Taylor's H.E.B grocery store. Not only do its vast selection and low prices put New York "super" markets to shame, but they play new wave/eighties music on the p.a. It's a truly joyous experience to stroll down the aisles of a gigantic supermarket with the local farmers and country folk while Morrissey, Erasure, Depeche Mode, and even When In Rome--in short, some of the gayest, least "country" music in existence--are playing above you. It's especially delicious for me since the last time I lived in Texas, when I was in Junior High School, I was ridiculed and occasionally physically attacked for listening to just this kind of music. (Admittedly, that was in the more redneck precincts of Whitney, Texas.). I'm almost afraid to ask anyone there why they play this music for fear that they'll stop. Anyway, as far as I am concerned, the Taylor H.E.B is the greatest supermarket in the world .

Texas Advent, December 22nd

2004-12-22T13:10:00.000-05:00

Novelist Patricia Highsmith, best known for Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley, was born in Ft. Worth, Texas, on January 19, 1921.

"The abnormal point of view is always the best for depicting twentieth-century life."

Texas Advent, December 21st

2004-12-21T10:57:00.000-05:00

The largest urban bat colony in the world lives for much of the year under Austin's Congress Avenue Bridge. Every evening from March to mid-November you can sit on the banks of the Colorado River and watch 1.5 million Mexican free-tailed bats take flight from under the bridge and go on their nightly hunts for mosquitos and other insects.

Release the Bats!

Texas Advent, December 20th

2004-12-20T13:17:00.000-05:00

Stax's Texas representative, Archie Bell and the Drells, known worldwide for their smash hit, "Tighten Up."

"Hi everybody! We're Archie Bell and the Drells, from Houston, Texas. And we not only sing, we can dance just as good as we walk."

Texas Advent, December 19th

2004-12-19T12:00:00.000-05:00

Saxophonist Ornette Coleman, born March 9, 1930, in Fort Worth, Texas.

"It was when I found out I could make mistakes that I knew I was on to something."

Texas Advent, December 18th

2004-12-18T12:00:00.000-05:00

The King of Western Swing, Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys.

"It was there I found beside the Alamo/Enchantment strange as the blue up above."

Texas Advent, December 17th

2004-12-17T12:00:00.000-05:00

Clyde Barrow, the partner-in-crime of Bonnie Parker, was born March 24, 1909, near Telico, Texas. Barrow and Parker were ambushed and shot to death by law enforcement officers on May 23, 1934 near Sailes, Louisiana. Parker was born on October 1, 1910, in Rowena, Texas. The FBI has a synopsis of their case here.

In addition to their numerous robberies and murders, the pair was also the inspiration for a Serge Gainsbourg/Brigitte Bardot collaboration.

And of course the 1967 film starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway.

Obscure Archetypes 1: Eggs with Legs

2004-12-16T17:30:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure, actually, if "archetype" is the word I'm looking for. We all know that certain character types recur again and again in books and movies: the hero with a secret; the beauty who is destined to a tragic fate; the young man of obscure origin who is actually destined to be king (or something equally grand). Scads of books have been written about these and other archetypes. I'm interested in more obscure ones; similar motifs or characters that come up in different works and different periods. The first one I'm going to talk about is the walking egg.

My daughter watches a television show called Oswald, about an octopus and his pet hot dog, Weenie. They have lots of odd little friends in their city, including Egbert and Leo, two walking, talking eggs. Egbert and Leo are snazzily dressed twins with exaggerated aristocratic accents. They're minor characters, but I'm always glad when they're in an episode. There are also walking eggs in Margaret Wise Brown's children's book The Color Kittens, in the kittens' dream sequence ("a world of Easter eggs, that danced about on little short legs"). Both of these remind me of the earliest instance of ambulatory eggs I've identified so far: Pieter Brueghel's The Land of Cockaigne, a painting of a fantasy land of plenty where roofs are shingled with pies, ham can be sliced directly from a still-living pig, and a little hard-boiled egg walks around in the foreground with a spoon sticking out his crown, inviting people to eat him. Then of course there's Humpty Dumpty, though there might be some debate as to whether he was an egg to begin with. (I imagine "Was Humpty Dumpty actually an egg?" is the "Does the Balrog have wings?" of the nursery rhyme fan-boy community.)

I'm not quite sure what to make of this, except that there's something oddly pleasing about the persistence of an obscure piece of fantasy like walking eggs. You expect fantastic creatures like dragons to come up again and again. But the humble legged egg has staying power, too.

Does anybody reading this know of any other instances of the humanoid egg? Any other "obscure archetypes" are welcome, too.

Ursula Speaks

2004-12-16T14:16:00.000-05:00

For any of you who may have stumbled upon the Sci-Fi Channel's miniseries supposedly based on Ursula K. Leguin's A Wizard of Earthsea, the author herself has written an article about how they "wrecked [her] books."

Texas Advent, December 16th

2004-12-16T11:20:00.000-05:00

It's nice to note, as a follow-up to my post on the right to ridicule, that Texas's state bird is Mimus polyglottos, the Northern Mockingbird. According to the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department's Web site, "Not only can [the mockingbird] perform thirty-nine species' songs and fifty call notes, it also can mimic sounds such as that of a barking dog, squeaky hinges, notes from a piano, and even a cackling hen, so expertly that even an electronic analysis could not tell the difference between the mockingbird and the original."

"Keep On Mockin' in the Free World"

Roaches of the Soul

2004-12-15T14:47:00.000-05:00

You've been on the receiving end of their backhanded compliments ("What a great outfit! I wish I had the courage to wear something like that in public!") and their confidence-sapping "praise" ("Wow, a blog. I've always meant to do that, but my work at Vanity Fair just keeps me so busy"). Now Ron Rosenbaum reveals that there is a name for them: underminers. Identifying the problem is the first step toward its solution.

Mr. Bean Doesn't Respect your Beliefs

2004-12-15T13:31:00.000-05:00

Rowan Atkinson, a comedian whom you may know from Mr. Bean or Blackadder, has written a piece at Index on Censorship opposing a proposed law in the UK that would criminalize "incitement to religious hatred." Atkinson is worried that it might make the ridiculing of religion a crime (thus putting thousands of comedians out of business). I agree with him, and hope that the law doesn't pass.

Many people say that they "respect the beliefs" of people whose views they disagree with, but I think an important distinction is being lost in this phrase. I respect the right of people to believe whatever they want. It is, if I may be so bold, a sacred right. The beliefs themselves, though? There are people who believe that God created AIDS to punish homosexuality; that an evil scientist created white people to destroy the black race; that L. Ron Hubbard is a good writer; and many other horrors besides. The right to believe what you want is sacred, but let's face up to the awful truth: much of what we believe is absolute twaddle. The right to ridicule is sacred, too.

It Is What It Is

2004-12-15T13:18:00.000-05:00

I've noticed people saying this a lot lately. The phrase is usually used to dismiss criticism or to preserve some sort of dismal status quo. You know, "Sorry you thought watching Spider-Man was like watching somebody else play a video game, Julien, but it is what it is." Or "I don't know why you think newspapers should have special 'Crime' and 'Animals' sections, pal. A newspaper is what it is."

But as a general rule this is poor response. I'm not saying that it is what it isn't (or that it isn't what it is), but rather that it is what it shouldn't be (or isn't what it should--or could--be). So please don't tell me that "it is what it is." Of course it is. What else could it be? That's the question.

Is that clear?

Texas Advent, December 15th

2004-12-15T13:01:00.000-05:00

Dancer and actress Cyd Charisse, born in Amarillo, Texas, on March 8, 1921. Her given name was Tula Ellice Finklea, which for some odd reason she changed upon going into the entertainment world.

Cyd and Fred Astaire in a Scene from Singin' in the Rain

Texas Advent, December 14th

2004-12-14T13:40:00.000-05:00

San Antonio's finest Tex-Mex psychedelic garage band, The Sir Douglas Quintet!

"Hey, where'd you learn to play that freaky guitar, man? You must have learned that out there."

Newsstand Sophistication

2004-12-13T13:38:00.000-05:00

Perhaps I flatter myself, but it occurs to me that some of you out there might be curious why I named my blog "The Newsstand Sophisticate." Well, it's a publishing trade term for the pornographic magazines that they sell at newsstands, and it always makes me laugh to think that the "sophisticate" section of the newsstand is not where you find the New York Review of Books or the Economist, but magazines like Juggs or Leg Show (No, I'm not going to provide a link to those last two. This is a family blog!). But after I first heard the term, it kept recurring in my thoughts not as a descriptor of dirty magazines but as a character: a dapper, witty sophisticate loitering by the newsstand with his friends and discussing the issues of the day.

Frank and Hal's Barber Shop, in San Rafael, California, is where I got my hair cut when I lived in San Rafael, which was off and on from when I was in the first grade till I graduated from high school. It is across the street from Frank Lloyd Wright's Marin County Civic Center, and was always filled with lawyers, local politicians, bail bondsmen, plaintiffs and defendants, policemen, mechanics, park rangers (like my dad), and others, all discussing news, politics, culture, sports, trivia, and everything else. It was, in short, full of newsstand sophisticates, people who, though they certainly had individual areas of expertise, took an enthusiastic general interest in almost everything. (The barber shop, in addition to the daily newspapers, always had the following magazines available: Field & Stream, Time, California Highway Patrolman, and Playboy, so it had the original kind of newsstand sophisticate, too.) Other than the fact that this was a totally male environment, it always struck me as a perfect example of what much of life in a democracy should be like: people of different backgrounds arguing about the world with humor and brio (and keeping well groomed at the same time). It's what the blogosphere at its best is like, too, and I hope that I can make this blog live up to its name (in the second, improvised meaning, of course, not its legitimate, filthier sense) and contribute to such a conversation, especially since I now live very far away from my favorite barber shop.

Texas Advent, December 13th

2004-12-13T11:09:00.000-05:00

The Texas Horned Lizard, or "horny toad." My mother and her friends played with them in the backyards of Hillsboro, Texas, when they were children in the 1950s. They're very docile creatures, though when angered or threatened they do have the ability to squirt their own blood at attackers from special ducts under their eyes. Pesticides and cars have killed off many of them, and they are now a protected species. Reports are that their population is growing again.

"Don't make me squirt blood at you."

Texas Advent, December 12th

2004-12-12T13:34:00.000-05:00

Quanah Parker, the last chief of the Quahadi Comanche Indians, spent most of his life (c. 1845-1911) in Texas and Oklahoma. You can read about him here.

"My people had to bend to survive, but we will never break."

Texas Advent, December 11th

2004-12-11T10:26:00.000-05:00

Cartoonist Frederick Bean "Tex" Avery, born in Taylor, Texas, on February 26, 1908.

"Ahh-Ooogah!"

Voice Lessons

2004-12-10T13:51:00.000-05:00

K.B. left a comment on one of my posts below welcoming me to the "blah blah blah blog world," and her reference to the endless chatter of the blogosphere seems as good an excuse as any to link to Louis Menand's recent review of Lynne Truss's Eats, Shoots & Leaves, a best-selling book about punctuation and grammar that is sure to be the bane of copyeditors for a long time to come. Menand's piece is worth reading for its spirited criticism of Truss ("the British are less rigid about punctuation and related matters, such as footnote and bibliographic form, than Americans are. An Englishwoman lecturing Americans on semicolons is a little like an American lecturing the French on sauces"), but also for its discussion of that elusive quality of good writing: voice. Voice is what causes you to return to your favorite writers (and bloggers), and voice is what is so difficult to control in your own writing. Often it pops up when you're not even trying, and sometimes great effort only scares it away. And if all that isn't mysterious enough, the "voice" on the page is often oddly different than the "voice" of the writer in person. Here's Menand's description of the phenomenon:

Inside your head, you’re yakking away to yourself all the time. Getting that voice down on paper is a depressing experience. When you write, you’re trying to transpose what you’re thinking into something that is less like an annoying drone and more like a piece of music. This writing voice is the voice that people are surprised not to encounter when they “meet the writer.” The writer is not so surprised.

I am certainly yakking away inside my head all the time, so I hope that I can occasionally produce something more like music than yakking on this blog. Also, since I have had the pleasure of meeting K.B., I'm taking it as a matter of faith that all you bloggers out there whose writing I enjoy are just as charming in real life as you are on the (Web) page. You're not going to try to prove me wrong, are you?

Texas Advent, December 10th

2004-12-10T10:26:00.000-05:00

Honky-tonk king William Orville "Lefty" Frizzell, born in Corsicana, Texas (also home of alleged world's finest fruitcake, from the Collin Street Bakery), on March 31, 1928.

"If you've got the money, honey, I've got the time."

Texas Advent, December 9th

2004-12-09T11:24:00.000-05:00

The Longhorn

"Mooooo."

Advent Calendar

2004-12-08T14:56:00.000-05:00

In only twenty-four days, my wife and daughter and I will be moving from Brooklyn, New York, to my ancestral homeland, Texas. We'll be living, at least for a month or so, in a small town outside of Austin, which should make for a bracing contrast with Brooklyn. I'm looking forward to it with fear and trembling, but I really am looking forward to it. I hope to have more time to write and to be with my family, and to keep this thing up to date with contentious arguments, mordant criticism, strange stories, and amazing facts.

I haven't been able to find a real advent calendar in the local drugstores, so I'm going to start a Texas-themed one here to count down to the advent in Texas of my particular branch of the Devereux family. Here's the first entry, the Texas State Fair's mysterious colossus, Big Tex:

"Howdy, folks!"