All texted up with nowhere to go

Throughout high school and a little bit into my first year of college, I kept a pretty regular blog over on Xanga, as did many of my close high school friends.

It’s beyond weird to look back at them and see what I thought were the big issues back then, what everyone else thought were their big issues, etc.

But as I looked over some past entries today, I started to wonder why we blog in the first place. I keep an extensive personal journal on the computer and have amassed nearly 600 pages chock full of tiny text and it’s great that I’ve been as diligent as I have because I can wonder what was going on five years ago and find an entry and read what I was thinking at the time. It’s pretty cool.

But what of this public blogging business? For the Xanga era, it was before any of us had a Facebook (back when Facebook was only for college students) or Myspace (hell, before Twitter even existed) and it was a nice way to get thoughts down on “paper” and get feedback from your friends. Looking back, it’s a time capsule, yes, but it was more of an of-the-moment thing that doesn’t really have all that much meaning.

The purpose of this blog is evolving as I waver between levels of commitment to updating. For the most part, it’s essentially a more informal version of What Ben Watches, a place where if I want to write a two-sentence review of a movie, I can and if I want to talk about music or books I can. It’s just a broader outlet.

Reading through some of my old Xanga, though, I started to wonder about five years from now and if I’ll look back on A Good Talk or Pancakes and think it was a waste of time or if it was useful. Who knows, of course, but for me, I think these sorts of personal blogs are a double-edged sword. They ostensibly keep us in touch with each other more, but at what cost? Twitter, I fear, is the most double-edged of them all. Every time I tweet or get a tweet from friends/family, it makes me feel more connected and up-to-date.

Is this a good thing, though? I’m curious to see what Web 3.0 is gonna look like, because it feels like the Web 2.0 thing is over the hump of relevance and is gonna start petering off soon. We all had our Myspaces, and at least in my social circle, we’ve ditched them. Facebook used to rule all, but I find myself using it less and less and finding it less and less useful, and I’m sure Twitter will run its course in no time and we’ll all stop using those, too.

And then what will we be left with? Massive archives of entries and responses on some server in some remote storage facility. I’m sure this is an overly pessimistic view of Web 2.0, but I feel like I’m getting to a point where I just want to throw everything out of my online routine and cease being so damned tied to my computer, y’know? Easier said than done.

I’m sure this was meandering at best, but… well, I’m curious what everyone thinks about this. Is Web 2.0 a permanent fixture in our lives or simply a step in an evolution of communication?

My one worry about American Idol

…is that if Kris Allen wins, the media will latch onto some false notion that Adam lost because he’s (supposedly) gay.

I’m gay. I voted for Kris. Theory debunked. :-)

Seriously, though, the finale was just alright. Everyone’s already fired up about how terrible the Kara-penned “No Boundaries” song was and while I’m not about to defend it, I will say that it came across as a really difficult song to sing, chord-wise and word-wise. So many words to get in and a lot of weird chord modulation stuff going on, so they basically stacked the cards against Adam and Kris (though I thought Kris did marginally better on the song than Adam).

Anyway, that’s about all I want to say about the show. It probably speaks to Glee’s strength that most people are buzzing about that than about Idol. I can’t wait to catch up with it on TiVo.

Trailer: Precious

Holy shit, guys. At the very least, Precious boasts an amazingly effective trailer (click the pic above to head over to Trailer Addict to have a look). Other notes:
–Mo’Nique apparently has Oscar buzz for this from people who’ve seen it (at Sundance and other venues). The trailer doesn’t disappoint – looks like a meaty role and she looks credible. Good on her after slumming in Phat Girlz and Soul Plane. ::shudders::
–Mariah Carey looks to FINALLY have an acting role that she can deliver on. Looks like she has a smallish role as a welfare office counselor, and as is usually the case with these deglam roles, it feels a bit like “LOOK AT MARIAH CAREY STRIP OFF ALL THE GLAMOUR AND BE REAL Y’ALL” but she looks good. At the very least, I doubt she’ll embarrass herself.
–Finally: HOLY SHIT this looks intense. Jesus Christ, y’all. I was at a near Dancer in the Dark level of tears by the end of this thing.

Just watch the trailer, everyone. Great trailers can be made from bad movies, of course, but I tend to think that emotionally-effective films are the only ones that can warrant emotionally-effective trailers. This can only bode well for the film’s Oscar chances next year.

Star Trek in a nutshell

It was basically everything the Star Wars prequels could’ve ever dreamed of being. And it was damn good. Full review soon on WBW, but… just wow. A whole lot to really really like (and every cast member was like… super hot omgz).

Cannonball #5: The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon

All I have to say is: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay better be a hell of a lot better. God DAMN is this a frustrating book. Author Michael Chabon’s first novel is a hodgepodge of various tropes we’ve seen before all muddled together into an unsatisfying mixture that doesn’t even resolve by the time it’s all through. It’s not particularly bad, but it certainly isn’t satisfying. Like a meal of powdered mashed potatoes when there was access to a gourmet Thanksgiving feast.

I’ll start with the good, as I usually do: Chabon is clearly a gifted writer. Every ten pages or so, there seemed to be a phrase that popped out at me that I wanted to write down (as well as an entire passage that I think is perfectly written). Lines like “I was a fool for a girl with a dainty lexicon” or “Solace is in the fabric of sweatshirts” had a nice ring for me, and Chabon consistently impresses with his writing. The book tells the story of an Eventful Summer After College where Art Bechstein works a nothing job at a chain bookstore and dates Phlox (ugh, what a literary name) and befriends her co-worker Arthur. Art’s dad is a mobster in Pittsburg (Pittsburg has organized crime?), and Arthur’s friend Cleveland starts working for him. Oh, and Art may or may not be in love with Arthur, who’s gay.

It’s all a weird mixture to handle. The Phlox/Art/Arthur triangle is enough for one novel, but Chabon has this weird tacked-on mob thing going on that never quite gels with the love story. Cleveland, in particular, feels like he’s from a completely different novel and I found his chunks of the narrative to be a chore to read. Chabon is much more successful with the central love triangle, though I never particularly bought Art’s conflict about his bisexuality. Maybe Chabon is trying to make a statement about the fluidity of sexuality, but Art instead comes off as frustratingly indecisive. Simply having Art acknowledge that he’s conflicted doesn’t provide a satisfying conclusion to this element of his character for me – throughout the novel he wavers between the two, never deciding if he likes guys, girls, or even if he definitively likes both.

And then there’s the open-ended finale. In a word: frustrating. It seriously leaves so many questions open that it almost reads like Chabon had his deadline for the publisher and hadn’t finished writing so he wrapped things up as best he could in time to send it off at Kinko’s. If this were a Lit class, I could pull some analysis out of my ass about the open-ended nature of the novel mirroring Art’s open-ended feelings, but this isn’t a Lit class: I literally finished the book and scowled with dissatisfaction. Not because the book was particularly terrible (like I said: Chabon is clearly gifted and I look forward to reading something else of his), but because I felt like Chabon had let me down as a reader. For me, stories need endings. They need catharsis. Having Art close the book by essentially saying that he looks back on That Summer and thinks “boy golly gosh, what a wacky summer!” is not satisfactory for me. There’s some interesting stuff going on in The Mysteries of Pittsburg, but it’s buried in a wholly infuriating package.

Cannonball #4: Silent to the Bone by E.L. Konigsburg

Silent to the Bone is E.L. Konigsburg’s follow-up to The View from Saturday. If pressed to choose a favorite book, I would pick The View from Saturday for several reasons. Though it’s a children’s book, I think Konigsburg doesn’t write as if she’s writing for children – there are poignant moments throughout the book that I think would be lost on a younger audience, and at a svelte 160ish pages, the novel packs a lot of story and characterization into a small space. If the Cannonball Read allowed for <200 page books, I’d be all over rereading that and singing its praises in a heartbeat.

Alas, we’re left with Silent to the Bone, which doesn’t reach nearly the same heights as Konigsburg’s previous novel. This is the story of Connor, a 13-year-old who pairs with his older half-sister Margaret to uncover the truth behind Connor’s best friend Branwell’s turning mute after being blamed for an accident that has left Branwell’s baby sister Nikki in a coma.

There’s a lot that Konigsburg does fairly well here, most notably through the use of Connor as first person narrator. She does a nice job exploring the idiosyncrasies of Connor and Branwell’s friendship and the nuances that are involved at that age when you’re friends with the weird kid at school. The family dynamics at play with Connor, his mother, Margaret, and their dad are also handled effectively and with subtlety.

The book’s primary problem is a big one, though: the central mystery and ultimate resolution to Branwell’s slip into being mute is essentially linked to shame that Branwell feels about an incident that Connor uncovers over the course of the book. And I’m sorry, but when your infant sister is in a coma and you’re shouldering the blame and you hold the key to the ultimate truth behind what happened, I take a lot of issue with that silence. On top of that, Konigsburg establishes an effective system that Connor devises to communicate with Branwell, so it’s never quite clear why he can’t spell out what happened (for those who have read the book: no pun intended).

Ultimately, though the central mystery is largely unsatisfying, Konigsburg brings her usual deft hand with characterization and a few poignant moments to the table, and that’s always a pleasure to read. The View from Saturday, though, soars with its narrative while Silent to the Bone ultimately trips over itself.

On a wholly superficial note: look at how ugly that cover is. Now look at how lovely the cover from The View from Saturday is:

A quick Cannonball note…

Man, how behind schedule am I??!!! Shit, man. Three books in four months? That is shit pace, y’all. I never said I was gonna be great at this. I’m reading a 250 page children’s book next. It has REALLY big type. And I powered through a 900-page book. I’ll count that as an accomplishment as someone who until finishing that book would have to answer Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix if asked what the longest book they’d ever read was.

Cannonball #3: I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb

There’s a rote, rampant, and ongoing debate that I first became a part of in my high school freshman English class. For summer work, we were given various lists of books with cute headings (10 Books About Love, 10 Books About Brothers, etc.) and we had to pick something like two, read them, then do some writing exercise where we talk about why we thought they were included on the list. One of the lists was 10 Candidates for the Great American Novel. The only one I can remember being on there is The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but every bit as worthy for inclusion on that list is I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb.

The book is, simply, an astounding achievement. Every minute detail seems to be thought through, conceived brilliantly, and executed brilliantly. A few pages shy of 900, it’s a hefty book to carry around, but it is never a chore to read, and the pages fly by so smoothly that once you’re around page 700, you look around and think hunh, where’d all those pages go?

The simplified plot description concerns Dominick Birdsey and his struggles involved with caring for his schizophrenic identical twin brother Thomas. In the first dozen pages of the novel, Thomas is released on a day pass from his current mental hospital and swiftly goes to the public library and chops his right hand off as a protest against the impending Gulf War. From there, Lamb gives a thorough look at the brothers’ lives growing up with a submissive mom and abusive stepfather, as well as a cast of supporting characters who shape these brothers’ lives.

Essentially, the book tells what seems to be a wholly American story, which is why I think it’s such a great contender for The Great American Novel. At its core, the book is about Dominick and his struggle to reconcile his responsibility to his brother with his responsibility to himself. But by using this central story about brothers, Lamb is able to branch off and address basically anything and everything: family, marriage, fatherhood, the AIDS crisis, immigration, domestic violence, child abuse, war, politics. Another success of the book is the economy of characters that Lamb employs here. Just when you think that we’re getting a little too much backstory for an inconsequential character, Lamb blindsides you with the real importance for the character in the first place.

That’s the thing about Lamb’s pacing here: the book is an epic 900 pages, but the pace never slows down, and after two powerfully moving opening chapters that hook you into the saga of these characters, Lamb never ceases to amaze with the twists and WTF-inducing moments he weaves into the story. There are entire chapters towards the end devoted to recounting Dominick’s grandfather’s autobiography that I could’ve done without, and that’s probably my only complaint with the novel. Aside from this one qualm, I Know This Much Is True is worth every second it takes to read. It’s a magnificent achievement and a great American novel – maybe even The Great American Novel.