Back!

So, it turns out that having a wedding and Christmas in the same week makes you very busy. Who knew?

But it has all gone off like a charming charm, except the part where I got a cold. We have had all the peeps here, and a good time has been had by all, what with the board games, and the card games, and the books and the conversation and the monkey tubes. (What is a monkey tube? A long long thin balloon you have to tie at both ends. The ones we got have monkeys on them, so...monkey tubes!)

If you are reading this and have not heard me say it, well, I hope you had a Merry Christmas! And will have a Happy New Year!

We'll see if I make it...

Being home for the holidays and attendant events (sis is getting married, hooray!) may prevent the one-a-day plan for the next little while. I feel like I've got a good head of steam, though, so I will try to plow on through.

Friday's restaurant: the Subway in my apartment complex. Man, I eat there so often that if you really were what you ate I would carry people around underground for two dollars a pop. There is nothing particular about it; it's just a Subway. The pizzas are surprisingly good though.

Saturday's restaurant: The Mandarin! In Bountiful, Utah. We ate there tonight, in fact. It is, by acclamation, the best Chinese restaurant in Utah. Some might say this is kinda like being the world's tallest short man, but whatevs, as the kids say these days. I seriously doubt it could be considered "authentic" in any ordinary sense, but it's darn good eatin'. Spicy shrim and Thai coconut curry and black bean sauced green beans! Hurrah!

ARRGGH I AM BUSY ARGGGH

So!

Yesterday's restaurant! Carmack's! The old one with all the grease!

It was one of the great delights of my childhood and teenage-hood to go to Carmack's and get their greasy burgers and greasy fries and glazed donuts. Oh. So delicious.

Sadly, it burned down. Too much grease, and I wish I were kidding. Even more sadly, when they re-opened in The Building That Cannot Sustain a Franchise, it was not nearly as greasy or delicious. To cap the sadness, it then went out of business. (As you would guess from the building name.)

Alas, Carmack's. We hardly knew ye.

Today's restaurant: Pancho Villa's! It is actually not my favorite-favorite burrito place in San Francisco, but it is much bigger and better known. And they win prizes for their salsa, and they have a big picture of Pancho Villa looking like a ridiculously baby-faced cartoon villain. He really did have a pretty round face, but not like in that picture.

Anyway. Burritos! Delicious and oh-so-filling! And full of rice and beans! One more would make it a theme, but it may not happen. It all depends on what I'm hungry for tomorrow. (Home cookin', most likely. Hooray!)

Restaurant the Third!

NAMA, which has kinda gone downhill a little bit since they stopped giving the combo dinner in the bento box and started giving it to you in pieces. :( Very sad. But I ate there tonight and the sushi was superb, so I am willing to forgive the decline of the beef teriyaki over the last three years.

Restaurant the Second!

I did not eat at restaurants much in Venezuela. We did not get nearly enough money. (Food was expensive, relative to how much money people made--at least if you bought stuff in cans, which we Americans mostly did, being Americans and accustomed to things in cans.) One evening, though, my companion and I decided to splurge, and we had a big chicken dinner at a Venezuelan grill-barbecue place. It was pretty good...grilled chicken, some kind of salad which we probably weren't supposed to eat, rice and beans (ubiquitous in Venezuelan cookery), arepa on the side...all the good stuff. I actually remember it more for our waiter than anything else, cuz, wow, that was weird. But that story will be held for another time!

That's pretty much Venezuelan food right there, by the way, except that they eat a lot of pasta too. (2nd in the world for pasta consumption per capita, after Italy, I was told. I wouldn't be surprised.) It's not exactly adventurous, although if you are a glutton for punishment many families have home-brewed hot oil (like hot sauce, except what you do is put peppers and things in a bottle with vegetable oil and let the capsaicin leach out into the oil) on the table. I was never much for that stuff, though, it was usually very hot indeed.

I first ate a shawarma in Venezuela, too, actually, from a street vendor in Cumana, if memory serves. It was one of the best shawarmas I've ever had, actually. The lavash there is better than it is here; either that or I was just hungrier back when I was a missionary and it made everything taste better.

Except when I do the best first!

(See last post for relevance of topic.)

I have had a request for Seven Restaurants I Have Known and Loved and Eaten At. And I am going to begin with the site of one of my finest eating experience ever: Thep Phanom.

It's a Thai restaurant across from what used to be my domicile in the lower Haight, and it is full of wonderful things! The first time I went there might have been the first time I ever went to a Thai restaurant, and we got carry-out to take to the Mad Dog in the Fog trivia night. I got the beef and spinach in peanut sauce and said to myself as I ate the first few bites, "This is delicious, but it is much too rich!"

I did not know that you must eat it with rice! That is the right way.

When my family came to visit me in San Francisco for the second time we came back to the apartment after gallivanting about the city all day. So we were peckish, and perhaps because of that the food was especially delicious. We had beef and spinach in peanut sauce on that occasion too, and a prawn dish, and another fish (I think), and satay skewers (again, I think), and other good things, and we had little dyed-paper placemats that we took away with us (we got permission). It was a great triumph; all of my family went away saying that they must eat the Thai Dinner from this time forward.

And we still do!

The Wizard Knight, by Gene Wolfe

I save the best for last! Or try to.

The Wizard Knight might be my favorite fantasy novel set (The Knight, followed by The Wizard) ever. And I have read lots and lots and LOTS of fantasy novels. Many many. At least five in the last month, and that was without trying.

Gene Wolfe demands a lot of the reader, and it doesn't always turn out well. (Free Live Free and Castleview being the best examples of "not well", in my opinion.) But he also gives an unusually high rate of return for your work, in the stories that work. In addition to exciting events, sharp writing, and interesting characters, he has interesting things to say about science, engineering, politics, and morals. Much of his work is informed by Catholic theology, and reflects it in interesting ways; he also has characters who are really good, in ways that show he has a good idea of what good people are like. (Many authors--even great authors, like Milton, to give a classic example--have a hard time making their "good" people more interesting than their "bad" people, and have to resort to anti-heroic figures as protagonists. Gene Wolfe does not have this weakness.)

It's a great story. The ending makes me cry every time. I recommend it to everyone who reads this blog; I can't be sure you'll like it, but I hope you will.

I didn't have a novel for Tuesday!

Eek!

OK, Tuesday's retroactive novels will be the Amber Chronicles of Roger Zelazny.

They decline in quality a bit as they go along, but the first five or so are real ripsnorters, and the conceits of Amber, the Pattern, and the Trumps are all-timers.

Well, they deserve better, but I am in a hurry, so let's flip forward to today and talk about...Jack Vance's Lyonesse trilogy! Vances does very little fantasy, although much of his science fiction is highly fantastic (The Book of Dreams, anyone?). The Lyonesse books are, however, a very notable exception. Set in the (mythical) island of Hybras and its lesser surrounding isles, west of France, it is chock-full of fairies, wizards, princes, Ska (vikings, not musicians), and even stranger things. Like all Jack Vance stories it is intensely weird; like most it is often laugh-out-loud funny; and it is perhaps the strongest of all his books for characterization and plot. It might be my favorite work of Vance's...'nuff said.

A Song of Ice and Fire, George R.R. Martin

Look, it's another R.R.! (Apparently Mr. Martin added this lagniappe de plume--I mean the R.R.--to distinguish him from all the other George Martins out there; also, as he says, it worked for Tolkien.)

A Song of Ice and Fire is a (planned) seven book series, currently at four books, which is almost as good as its dust jacket blurbs make it out to be. Which is about all you can hope for in a book, really. This is a good example of fantastic events handled realistically; there are important supernatural elements in the story, but not that many of them. Magic and magical creatures are rare and not well understood; most of what happens is just the (gripping) story of a medieval-technology civil war. In a way, this realism is the biggest drawback to the story for me; people really talk like that, and really act like that, but, well, must art imitate life at quite that level of detail?

On the other hand, the realism of the story has some great strengths. For one thing, the story is written from multiple points of view, so there is no "hero" and no guarantee that any particular good guy will not have his career suddenly cut short by one of the bad guys. Even better, it is not by any means clear who the good guys and bad guys are; you spend the first book hatin' on one character, only to have gained a great deal of sympathy for him by the end of the fourth. Very few of the characters are really good, and none are wholly evil (although at least one comes pretty close).

A complicated story, then, and a moving one, and with its share of rip-roaring adventure, tragedy, and comedy (take a bow, Dolorous Edd!). Whether or not Mr. Martin will ever finish the fifth book is a hot topic of speculation among fans of the series, but assuming he does I will toddle down to the bookstore and buy it.

If you know about me and bookstores you know how strong a recommendation that is.

Let's try this.

Acronym madness! My self-imposed rule: no word may be used more than once. First ten acronyms for the letters NCA:

National Christian Association
Northern California Admirers
Norse Caledonian Amalgam
Narrow Crypt Assistance
Nine Color Adjustment
Nifty Cringeworthy Allophony
Not Commonly Acknowledged
Noteworthy Calumnious Acclaim
Niflheim Cardboard Asset
Never Create Acrimony

From the rational to the bizarre to the at least explicable!

Gormenghast, by Mervyn Peake

Another series, of which the last (Titus Alone) can safely be ignored if the reader desires; it is very different from the first two books, adds little or nothing to them, and was never really finished.

The first two, though...wow. Weird, weird stuff. Titus Groane and Gormenghast are unusual as "fantastic" literature in that they have no element of the supernatural; everything in the book is at least theoretically possible. But the overall impression created by the books is intensely fantastic...much more so than in many novels in which there are lots of supernatural things which are considered prosaic by the people to whom they happen (the Harry Potter books are one example; the Weasleys are an ordinary English family who just happen to be wizards). There is pretty much nothing "normal" about anything in Gormenghast. Possible, yes. Normal, no. The atmosphere of highly codified strangeness Peake generates in his careful description of Gormenghast, its traditions, and its inhabitants is perhaps the best thing about the book.

It also has wonderful names, and a truly chilling villain (and some unlikely heroes). I think a lot of people would find these books dull or simply unintelligible , but I loved them. (Again, the first two; the last is a different kettle of fish.)

Addendum

I didn't say much about Hart's Hope, in a way (or about The Lord of the Rings, although I don't expect my audience to be unfamiliar with that one, whereas I will bet I have only one reader who's read Hart's Hope, unless they are random people wandering in off the Interweb). These aren't going to be book reviews in any ordinary sense; I just want to put the novel's name out there and tell a little bit about why I think it's worth mentioning.

Also,

It's been really cold here! I mean, by the standards of the place. 42 degrees at present, which is no joke in houses as badly insulated as many are here. (My first apartment, for example...brrrrrrr.)

Hart's Hope, by Orson Scott Card

So, the 800 pound gorilla got an eight hundred word blog post. (I don't know if that's really how long it was, but it was a biggie). Today we will do something shorter.

Hart's Hope is, in my opinion, one of Orson Scott Card's best novels. That doesn't mean it's an easy read--rather the opposite. (I find that there's often an inverse ratio between "quality" and "ease of reading" for Card's novels.) By saying it's hard to read, I don't mean it's boring...again, rather the opposite. It has a lot of cruelty, a lot of sadness, and a lot of moral ambiguity. It is also a rich supply of food for thought and perhaps the most intriguing world created by Card, who does an excellent job of laying out specific details that give the reader a flavor of the culture, religions, and worldview of the characters without falling into dictionary didacticism. It's not the novel that I would choose to introduce a reader to Card's work (that would be Ender's Game, an easy choice if ever there was one) nor the novel that affected me most deeply (that would be Red Prophet, an even harder read), nor the book I would take to a desert island (Maps in a Mirror, because of his endnotes, because short stories are awesome, and because it's huge). But I think it may be the most complete of his stand-alone novels.

The List.: Seven Awesome Fantasy Novels

So, I talked about this last week, except it was just six. But that does not fit with the theme! We would have to do a book twice!

Fine, so let's get the 800 pound gorilla accounted for first: J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Few indeed are the who essentially invent genres, and John Ronald Reuel Tolkien is one of them.

The Lord of the Rings is not quite perfect; it has longeurs, it has some odd structural conceits, and in the case of Tom Bombadil it has both at once. It is remarkably free of romantic love and women generally. Some feel the idea of dark-skinned southrons in the service of a Dark Lord is indicative of latent racism. Such are the classic complaints, in order of how seriously I think they should be taken (which is to say, 1) true enough, 2) true but not that important, given the purposes of the book, and 3) are you kidding me?).

Against which we set...well, for one thing, inventing a genre--the modern epic fantasy. Inventing a world, with languages, history, peoples, and mythology (Tolkien was one of the first to do this, as well). This is more or less de riguer for modern fantasy novelists, who go forth in battalions like locusts, and who all* look back to Tolkien. The story is gripping, with any number of iconic elements (the Ring itself, Sauron, the Nazgul, Gandalf...oh, heck, name just about any important character, all the important peoples, most of the geographical features and cities...you get the idea) and well-written, too, although there are the previously mentioned longeurs.

One of my favorite things is the inclusion of the hobbits, because I think that it is through them that Tolkien invites the reader into the story. No human being could even approximate the grandeur, the grace, or the sheer power of Gandalf, Galadriel, or Elrond; Aragorn and Legolas, though much less in stature, are still superhuman; Boromir and Faramir, although now not beyond a human stature, are still heroically proportioned as princes and warriors.

But Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin are like us. They worry about breakfast, complain about the walking, and are generally only given any attention because of the company they keep (and, in the case of Frodo, because of his exceedingly unfortunate heirloom). There is nothing heroic about them as they begin their journey; they spend their time fleeing the Ringwraiths, getting cold and wet, being set upon by barrow-wights and Old Man Willow, and escaping principally through the intervention of others. They are literally small, often silly, and relentlessly quotidian in their outlook as they pass through their many adventures.

But, in the end, everything depends on them. The Ring, in the hands of a hero, would prove an irresistible temptation; it is, in that sense, Frodo and Sam's very ordinariness that lets good triumph over evil. No human could be as wise as Gandalf, as agile as Legolas, or as kingly as Aragorn; but we would all hope to be as persevering, as sensible, and as courageous as Merry and Pippin prove themselves to be. We admire Gandalf and Aragorn, but we empathize with the hobbits, and their inclusion in the tale is, in my opinion, the greatest stroke of genius in The Lord of the Rings.

*I presume that not all consciously do, but I think it is pretty much impossible not to be influenced by Tolkien if you write fantasy.

Sleep spot the Last

I lived for three years on Treasure Island, which sounds rather romantic but isn't. The Navy used to own it and I lived with three roommates in one of their multiplex housing units--multiplex in that they are like duplexes, but six in a row usually. (Hexiplex?) Sorta like the Beatle's "houses" at the beginning of Help!, except it was not a single dwelling of sybaritic luxuriance on the inside.

Anyway. There was a big tree just outside my window that would flower every year with big red puffs; it was a southern exposure, so it was bright and cheery, and my bed was right under the window. There was a lot not to like about that house, but the prospect from my bedroom window was by far the finest of any I've had in San Francisco.

Sleep spot #6

The night of my arrival in Barcelona, Venezuela, it was desperately hot and humid. October is a good month for rainfall and the weather was getting its licks in...a regular "stick of water", in the Venezuelan idiom ("un palo de agua"). There were some large number of us...fourteen? Sixteen?...and, if I remember correctly, there was trouble with transportation. It was late late late by the time we got to the apartment where we would spend the night.

We slept on bare mattresses in our skivvies, six or eight of us in the room, and there were MOSQUITOES!!! there as well. (A running theme, perhaps?) We had one or two fans for the whole room, and they did their best, I'm sure, but there wasn't much to be done. I mostly slept very well indeed in Venezuela, but that night was an exception.

The next morning we were packed off to our various final destinations, and my apartment in Maturin was the site of an unpleasant but amusing sleep-related experience too...but we'll save that one for "bug stories" and stick with that first night in Venezuela with the rain pouring down and the bare mattress and the mosquitoes and the room full of breathing.

Sleep spot #5

How about a FAIL-to-sleep place? Namely, the train from London to Edinburgh? This is something that was actually chronicled on the former iteration of The Blog, so I will refer you there for details. Oh, that horrible orange light!

I then made up for it, in part, by zonking out in the Scottish National Gallery, much to the amusement of my friend, who found me in rapt contemplation of...the inside of my eyelids, seated bolt upright in from of a great big mural. I believe the painting in question is whatever hangs on the left-hand (east?) wall of room A3 on the second level there.

That's as much as I remember about it, unfortunately.

Sleep spot #4

Now we will combine the camper and mountains! To get the night we spent in the camper in Loa, Utah (the site of the ancestral home, in fact, where my grandfather grew up, which has now passed into the hands of strangers if it still stands at all, but still represents for me "where my ancestors lived").

I forget why we had gone there, but I think I will always remember how bright and how clear the Milky Way was that night. You will never see a night sky like that one except on a clear night in the mountains.

Speaking of Lev Grossman,

I finished his book The Magicians yesterday. It was kinda like three parts Harry Potter in College, one part Narnia, and another three parts Catcher in the Rye, with maybe just a little of Jack Vance's Green Magic for astringency.

I don't think I can give it a whole-hearted endorsement, but it was certainly an interesting combination.

In the meantime,

I have slept in a tent in the High Uintahs. 10,000 feet of elevation or so. It was our "not at a scout camp" summer camp, which was, I think, the summer I turned 13. We hiked in on Monday and out on Saturday and carried all the food and what-not with us, and got sleeted/snowed upon in July. 10,000 feet will do that to you. We slept by little lakes, fairly warm and shallow, and at dusk the bats would come out and eat mosquitoes and flitter across the surface of the lake...we were big fans of the bats, because MOSQUITOES!!! We would stand in the smoke from the fire, and that helped some, but we would get bitten through all our clothes.

It was really a pretty awesome experience. Makes me wish I still did that kind of stuff, although how I will find a week to wander around the Sierra Nevada (and in preference to all other activities that might fill that week) is beyond me.

I dunno. My friend B. tells me I am due to be a scoutmaster for about ten years because of my ride karma; maybe I'll get back to camping then.

A subject for debate!

From Lev Grossman, the Six Best Fantasy Novels Ever Written (via the Volokh Conspiracy).

It hits some high points, to be sure, although the Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser stories are not novels, per se (he quibbled).

My own thoughts turned quickly to the subject of "What novels qualify as 'fantasy'?" Would Dune? The Book of the New Sun? What about The Stand? Or One Hundred Years of Solitude? I would say "no" for each of them, but it's not necessarily easy to parse. One commenter on the VC thread, for example, placed Dune firmly in the category of fantasy because of the precognitive effects of spice consumption, although faster-than-light travel itself would not have been considered "fantastic".

At any rate, you are probably dying to know (ahem. Play along with me, here) what my Six Best Fantasy Novels Ever Written are at this point. I am too. The Lord of the Rings must figure on the list, and the Narnia books and Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell are also strong candidates. Jack Vance's Lyonesse trilogy would probably figure in it, and Zelazny's Amber books might too.

I'll give it some thought.

Sleep Spots #2

It is harder to think of cool sleep spots than I thought it would be at first. :(

Here is a slightly alarming one: I once fell asleep while stopped at a stoplight in the family minivan. (It was the stoplight at the top of the Orem freeway exit that puts you on University Parkway.) I was not asleep for very long--just long enough for people to have started to pull around me to go through the light. I suppose it was their Utah politeness that no-one honked, although it would have been better if they had!

K.J. Parker

Writes amazing stories, but I think s/he (the author is deliberately, even provocatively, unforthcoming about his/her identity; if I ever have cause to mention her again, I will mix my pronouns indiscriminately just to amuse myself; you have been warned) hates the human race. Or at least his characters.

Sleep spots #1--Alberta, Canada

Just before I started elementary school (I think...it might have been the summer before I went to first grade) my immediate family vacationed with my extended family, Canadian Division--that would be my paternal grandmother's relations. My parents borrowed my maternal grandfather's camper-truck and off we went. Considering how long ago it was, I remember the trip quite distinctly...especially driving on crazy Canadian highways with, in Arlo Guthrie's words, "a mountain on one side and on the other side there was nothin'...just a cliff and some air."

So, we camped in the camper up in the beautiful Canadian woods, and I was fortunate enough to sleep in the camper! Up in the top, in the special little bedspace! I thought myself very fortunate. I liked just about everything about that camper; the whole "miniaturization/maximize the use of space" has always been attractive to me, and a "car you can live in" seemed to me to be the height of fine living.

Jerusalem redux

After posting on "Jerusalem" (which is NOT the title of Blake's poem...at least, not that poem--he has a different, longer poem with that title, but the hymn made from the poem is usually called "Jerusalem", so there you have it) I went and looked around for versions of the song on YouTube, and I came up with this.

You will notice that it is rather silly (also, Lady #2 would qualify for the "They Sing Funny" list), and yet I found it strangely moving. So I offer it for your consideration.

The secrets of pop stardom.

Yesterday I noticed, all of the Beatles had really, really good teeth. Especially for Englishmen of that generation.

I'll bet it was a factor!

The Second Coming, by W.B. Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre,
The falcon can no longer hear the falconer.
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold,
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world;
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand--
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly is that phrase out
When an image out of Anima Mundi arises to trouble me.
A desert scene: A shape with lion body
And the head of a man
Is moving its slow thighs, its gaze
Blank and pitiless as the sun's, as around it reel
The shadows of indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle.
And what rough beast, its hour come at last,
Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?
***
Again, I am a bit fuzzy on the middle. But there it is. This might be my favorite free-verse poem ever. I'm not sure I know what it means to me (Yeats intended it as a sort of prophecy of the transition out of the age of Pisces into the age of Aquarius, I think), but it's gripping.

La Belle Dame Sans Merci, by John Keats

Oh, what doth ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge is withered from the lake
And no birds sing.

Oh, what doth ail thee, knight-at-arms,
So haggard and so webegone?
The squirrel's granary is full
And the harvest's done.

I see a lily on thy brow
With anguish moist and fever dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.

"I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful, a fairy's child;
Her hair was long, her step was light
And her eyes were wild.

I set her on my pacing steed
And nothing else saw all day long
For sideways she would bend and sing
A fairy song.

I made her bracelets for her wrists
A girdle too, of fragrant zone,
She looked at me as she did love
And made sweet moan.

She fed me roots and fairy food
And quenched my thirst with manna dew.
And sure in language strange she said
'I love thee true'.

I took her to her elfin grot,
And there she sighed and wept full sore,
And then I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.

And there she lulled me asleep,
And there I dreamt--ah, woe betide!--
The latest dream I e'er dreamed
On the cold hill's side.

I saw pale kings, pale princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all,
They cried 'La belle dame sans merci
Hath thee in thrall!'

I saw their starved lips in the gloam
In horrid warning gaped wide--
And then I woke and found me here
On the cold hill's side.

And that is why I tarry here,
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is withered from the lake
And no birds sing."

***
Phew. Perdonen lo malo, as they would say in Latin America; part of the game is not to review the poem before I take my crack at it, and I am fairly sure I am missing a stanza and have done some strange things to this one.

I think this is one of the greatest poems ever written (short lyrical poems category). It manages both to be incredibly direct and intensely lyrical and ambiguous; the author implies so much so successfully that it's a little surprising to go over it and see what isn't there. It's also set at roughly this time of year, which makes it extra appropriate for present purposes.

From the preface to "Milton", William Blake

And did those feet in ancient times
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the very Lamb of God
In England's pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon these clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold,
Bring me my arrows of desire,
Bring me my spear--o clouds, unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!

I shall not stay from mental fight
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
'Til we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.

***

William Blake is one of my favorite poets, and this might be my favorite of his poems. Just to offer a little background, one of the (many, many) legends about what Jesus did between the ages of 12 and 30 is that he came to England and lived in Cornwall; that's the story Blake is referencing here. This poem has been set to music and is sung as a hymn in Anglican services, which I think is pretty cool. (Obviously, it would have much less emotional resonance outside of England, which I would suppose explains why I have never heard it sung here.) The movie Chariots of Fire takes its title from this poem (which gets it from the ascension of Elijah into heaven in Kings, of course.)

Song, by John Donne

Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are
Or who cleft the devil's foot.
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
How to keep off envy's stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.

If thou beest born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights
'Til age snow white hairs on thee,
Thou when thou returnst will tell me
All strange wonders that befell thee
And swear
Nowhere
Lives a woman true and fair.

If thou find'st one, let me know;
Such a pilgrimage were sweet.
Yet, do not; I would not go,
Though at next door we might meet.
Though she were true when you met her
And last until you write your letter
Yet she
Will be
False, ere I come,
To two or three.
***
John Donne with his inimitable skepticism of women (people generally, but women in particular). I saw his portrait in the National Portrait Gallery in London and felt immediately that he and I would have been friends if we had ever met. (I've only ever felt that way about the subject of one other painting...one of El Greco's portraits of a young priest.) The poem is titled "Song", so I invented some music for it; I can't write music well enough to write it down, but I can sing it for you if you ask me nicely. ;)

From "The Jungle Book", Rudyard Kipling

What of your hunting, hunter bold?
Brother, the watch was long and cold.

What of the quarry ye went to kill?
Brother, he crops in the jungle still.

Where is the power that made your pride?
Brother, it ebbs from my flank and side.

What is your haste as you hurry by?
Brother, I go to my lair--to die.

***
I like Disney's Jungle Book fine; when I was young we had an LP (!) of the soundtrack, and I can still sing along with King Louie and Baloo's scat singing pretty much syllable for syllable. But the real Jungle Book is about a gazillion times more awesome. I especially like "The Miracle of Purun Bhagat" (which does not have Mowgli in it at all), but there are so many good stories in it that one is spoilt for choice. The poem above prefaces "Tiger! Tiger!", in which Mowgli has his final confrontation with Sher Khan.

Next week's list!

I have received a suggestion, and it is an interesting one: Seven Places I Have Slept. Watch this space for next week's revelations on the subject!

Fire and Ice, by Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire,
But I have known enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

***
I like this poem, and Robert Frost's poems generally, because he's not afraid to rhyme nor to use simple diction. He also has a gift for very striking images (Mending Wall is good for this) and clever juxtapositions. I wouldn't say this is his best poem, but I only have one other of his memorized...I think. (It's "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening", and we were made to memorize it back in 5th grade; a process of engraving into the memory so laborious that its traces remain still.)

Nobody had suggestions for a list,

so I will have to decide for myself.

By the way, Real Salt Lake are the champions of Major League Soccer! Hoorah! Nick Rimando is the hero-man for the second week running!

How about...Poems I Have Memorized! I will write them out here and if I make mistakes the Gentle Reader (*cough*Val*cough*) can point them out, for the edification of all.

Boy, I hope I can come up with a full seven here.

Let's start with a classic:

"My Mistress' Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun", William Shakespeare

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red.
If snow be white, why then, her breasts are dun,
If hair be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks--
And in some perfume there is more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, but well I know
That music has a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, walks on the ground.

And yet, by heav'n, I think my love as fair
As any she belied by false compare.

We cap our list with

Miss Joanna Newsom!

She swears it's not an affectation, she just sings like that. In case the harpischord is too distracting, you can try this.

Going over the list, we have one novelty act (Tiny Tim), one Beatle (hi Ringo!), and five songwriting geniuses/near-geniuses/evil geniuses (you may categorize according to your own preferences and tolerances). I guess the lesson to take from this is that if you are a genius songwriter you don't have to actually be able to sing to make your fortune as a singer.

This gets us into the question of whether the Beatles did a disservice to popular music by fixing the idea of the "singer/songwriter" in the music-listening public's consciousness. But we'll reserve that for another time.

And now,

the first of two musicians who got me thinking about this particular List of the Week...Tom Waits!

His singing is often very expressive, and this song, for example, I think is beautiful. But...yeah.

He can sing tunefully, when he has a mind to, but...he usually doesn't!


While we're on this subject, I am not the first to note that these guys talk funny. (WARNING: Tom Waits takes the name of the Lord in vain at the very end....sorta...you'll see. Or, if you would rather not see, you can close the tab when Mohammed Ali comes in.)

You knew this one was coming.

Bob Dylan! Come on down!

And, in the "Christmas" category...I cannot quite understand how this happened. It doesn't beat Bing Crosby and David Bowie, but it's up there.

No comments + no e-mails=no readers?

:-/

Very well! Though I amuse only myself, I press onward!

I was going to link to "Comfortably Numb" on YouTube, but the video is...a little freaky. Talk about Reasons Not To Be a Rock Star.

It's actually a pretty impressive video in terms of adding another dimension to the song, but, given that the first two dimensions are "I am clinically depressed" and "I am being exploited by the people close to me"...well, it's very dark!

And today we are not in for the darkness. No! We are not! Tell 'em, Israel!

I need someone who sings funny; neither Roger Waters nor Israel Kamakawiwo'ole qualifies. H'm...

Heh.

So, tell, me, what would you think if I sang out of tune?

By the way...

I have reports that there are those who wish to comment and have been unable to do so. If you read this, could you please attempt a comment and write me an e-mail if the comment fails to appear? Thanks!

What time is it, kids?

It's time for blogging! YAY!

In the continuing list of pop vocalists who sing funny, let's hit a high point (ahem). Tiny Tim! It's your turn on stage!

Just to prove he can sing strangely in more ways than one, here he is exploring the other end of his range.

Second Contestant

Pop Musicians Who Sing Funny (At Best) continues!

Everything Don Van Vliet (better known as Captain Beefheart) does is weird. His singing is no exception. Here he is singing "Ant Man Bee".

This is, at least, recognizably a song. The same cannot be said for all of his, uh, performances.

It's not fair.

All of my great punchy ideas for blog posts occur while I am not at my computer, and disappear by the time I get here. I'll have to start writing them down on 3x5 cards or something. The ephemera must be preserved!

This week's List of Seven...h'm...I am not willing to commit myself to long posts, but let's try Seven Pop Musicians Who Sing Funny (At Best).

Leading off...Neil Young, singing Hey Hey My My (Out of the Blue).

Prophetic subject line!

I missed on Friday! It was a big day...I gave a research talk in the afternoon to a (potentially) UCSF-wide audience (actually about 40-50 people, mostly Tetrad graduate students, I believe) and then went and played D&D with the D&D peeps. The talk went well and a good time was had by all.

Today I saw the Utes get devoured by a band of ravening Horned Frogs. It was very sad. Fair play to TCU, they were the better team on the night by quite a bit. However, Real Salt Lake won the Eastern Conference Finals on penalty kicks, so the evening was saved in terms of sports cheering. (Why Eastern? Because the last two spots in the Major League Soccer playoffs go to wild-card teams, and if they are both from the same conference the 8th and last seed must go into the "other conference" for its games. That would be RSL, who squeaked into the playoffs on the last day of the season, then proceeded to beat Columbus (last year's champions and the #1 seed this year) 4-2 on aggregate, then beat the Chicago Fire tonight on penalty kicks after a 0-0 draw, Nick Rimando the hero of the hour as he saved 3 of 7 penalty kicks to put RSL through.)

This has been the sports update. On to

Memory #6 My Uncle J is only about five years older than I am, so he was the universal favorite (both of my siblings and pretty much all our cousins) to play with when we were young. He put up with it pretty well, all things considered, but he did like his tricks. On one occasion he got an egg out of the fridge, closed one eye, and then came in to tell us that he had extracted his eye bone (showing us the egg).

I was pretty dubious, since, well, it looked like an egg to me! And I was pretty sure eyes did not have bones (I was probably 5 when this happened.) But he was awfully convincing. He had a pretty formidable deadpan even then. He also had a pin-swallowing trick which was impressive.

Memory #7 My grandmother has Seasonal Treats. Over and above Thanksgiving (I understand this is to be her last year as hostess, which makes me sad, since Thanksgiving at her house was one of the touchstones of the year for me until I left home), which was, of course, a cornucopia of delicious things, my favorites are the individualized sugar cookies at Christmas and the chocolate cupcakes with American flags on toothpicks for the Fourth of July.

It is hard to write a nice long blog post every day!

Memory #4: One late summer Saturday I rafted down the American River near Sacramento with some friends. About halfway through the trip we passed a huge dead tree--an oak, maybe?--with what must have been at least forty turkey buzzards sitting in it. Like this times ten, except the vultures weren't impatient. They were just...sitting. Watching us.

It was really impressively creepy.

Memory #5: This is not a one-time memory, but a composite. My family would go to see our grandparents in Utah Valley and often return fairly late at night, and somehow it became a tradition to sing folk songs as we went home. (We never sang on the way there, for reasons passing understanding...perhaps because we usually traveled there in the daytime and many of us were reading.) My parents taught us many songs which I have never heard anyone not in my mother's family sing. I have no idea who else knows them--if they can be found in books, when they were written or who wrote them...

In these days of Google I am sure I could find out, but I rather prefer the mystery.

Here is one:
Lady moon, lady moon,
Where are you going?
Over the sea, over the sea.
Lady moon, Lady moon,
Who are you loving?
All that love me, all that love me.

Fourth memory

Is going to have to wait.

Today I had dinner at a friend's house and we got to meet and talk to Hartman Rector Jr., an emeritus General Authority and a man with a gazillion interesting anecdotes. He told us, for example, all about how Harold B. Lee hated the Church Office Building, opposed its construction, and refused to use it even after its completion. He was the first convert in 86 years to become a General Authority!

A very fine evening, but it puts me back on the memories; I will do two tomorrow.

Third Memory

My mother used to play soccer in the back yard with me, with a black and yellow foam ball. I did not know of any other moms who played soccer and it was pleasing to me that mine could.

Second memory

[This was not posted last night because I went to see Ian Anderson play at the Warfield, which deserves its own post--not that it will necessarily get its own post. We have a schedule to keep, people!]

The winter of the year I was in second grade it became a fad to play kickball. Our school's blacktop playground was laid out with this game in mind, providing a large square, the corners of which served as bases. (Just in case kickball doesn't bring any organized sport to mind, the kickball we were playing was essentially baseball, except a) you kicked a large rubber ball instead of hitting a small string-and-leather ball with a stick, and b) you could put people out by throwing the ball and hitting them if they were not standing on a base.) We divided into teams, one in the field, one lined up to kick, and I somehow found my way into line.

It came to be my turn, and the "pitcher" rolled the ball to me. I think everyone there expected me to be an easy out, since I was one of the youngest, smallest players there. I rather thought so myself. But there I was, and here comes the ball...

I stepped forward and belted it, and it went up shockingly far and fast. I still can feel an echo of my astonishment as I watched it cross the leaden sky and be momentarily obscured by the pale sun. I realized that there was a fielder in position to catch it, but he looked more desperate than confident...and the ball struck him in the chest and bounced away.

Only at this point did I realize I ought to be running to first base. (I think there were people yelling at me to go for several seconds before I started running.)

I made it just in the nick of time, and there was an argument about whether or not I was safe which I was too diffident to participate in. In the end I was allowed to keep my base, and the game went on--I am fairly sure that in the end I didn't score. (I was still pretty fuzzy on the rules and might have been put out at second base, but that could have happened on another occasion.)

It was beginner's luck; after that first bold stroke and an even more successful second kick, for which I actually remembered to run, I was never much of a kickball success in second grade. That, I believe, is my first memory of the joys and perils of playing sports.

First memory

This is one of my earliest memories; I think it must be from the spring of 1982. It is more two mental images than a sequence of events.

In the first image I am in my father's arms, patting at the wall of the house with a paintbrush loaded with nice green paint. In the second, I still in my father's arms, but now we are indoors and I am being washed at the sink.

I have reconstructed or perhaps confabulated a sequence of events--asking to "help" paint the house, my father's handing me the paintbrush and lifting me to reach the appropriate place, a few daubs at the wall in my father's arms, the inevitable mess, and then inside to wash the paint off (I have a vague notion I made a pretty big mess pretty quickly, and my house-painting career was a brief one).

Other than the visual images (the green wall of the house, the paintbrush, the sink) my principle impressions are, in the first place, being surprised that the painting is not going better--a sort of non-verbal it's harder than it looks!, and, in the second, surprise verging on awe at the comparison between my father's big hands and my little ones as he cleans them at the sink.

The persistence of memory

People often remember the same event so differently as to call into question what actually happened; it's also pretty easy to get people to confabulate events that didn't happen and could not have happened (the classic example is meeting Bugs Bunny at Disneyland). It's an interesting problem, especially for historians and policemen. Eyewitness accounts are notoriously subject to post-hoc modification, usually without the witness even being aware of the changes in the story.

And now, for this next week I bring you the Blog Project: seven memories, ranging from the earliest of childhood in Milwaukee to last month's trip to Chicago. Remember, I'm an unreliable narrator...but so's everyone.

In search of the perfect neuron.

I like neurons. I like taking pictures of neurons. I even like analyzing pictures of neurons.

However, trying to find the perfect picture of the most-beautiful-ever neuron for publication is EXTREMELY TRYING.

That is all.

Thought of the day

There are days that change your life that you see coming a long way off: graduation, weddings (usually), retirement.

Others just appear. You wake up expecting things to go along as they have been, and they don't. One can't expect them; unexpectedness is their defining characteristic. But they are coming.

Maybe tomorrow will be one of them.

Today's snippet:

One of the coolest music videos ever. Not many music videos are a) coherent stories that are b) visually striking and c) add something to the song, but this one does.

And it's a great song, too.

This Blog Moves At The Speed of Life:

Generally a mosey verging on a dawdle; now and again with appalling swiftness.

Jazz hit sour note, hands go over ears...

Time for a True Confession!

I am a bad sports fan. It could be worse; I am not, for example, a Sports Bigamist. But when my team starts to fail (and, in the case of the Bengals, fail, and fail, and fail) I turn away pretty quickly.

It's just no fun watching your team gack away games they have no business losing (to return to the reason for the title of this post). It's no fun knowing that only one of 30-ish teams is going to win it all, only one of five teams is at all likely to win it all, and your team is not among the elect. It's even less fun having your sports heart ripped out and stamped on, knowing how hard it was to get that high and how unlikely it is for Your Team to get that chance to win it all again.

Of course, sometimes you do win it all. Or at least a sizable fraction of it all. And it feels pretty darn good.

But...losing by 17 at home to Houston? (We will not even get into Houston's injury situation.) Not-expected-to-make-the-playoffs Houston?

Someone get me a cold compress; this music is giving me a headache.

Pre-made omelette.

I got one at Subway a few minutes ago. That's the march of progress for you...scrambled egg in a plastic bag, waiting for a few microwaves to heat it up so it can form a part of this fast-food breakfast.

I was two-dimensional for Halloween.

See?


[Picture courtesy of Silvia Vargas. Thanks, Silvia!]

David Bowie Day!

That's what we call All Hallows' Eve 'round these parts.

Here he is at his most Halloweeny: click

...
No wait, wrong video! (I never get tired of that one.) Try this: click

Edgar Allan Poe

He wrote many stories which are tremendously appropriate for this time of year, of course. He also wrote humorous things. Like this.

...

There is a reason we remember him for "The Raven" and "The Tell-Tale Heart", and not as a great American humorist.

Mondegreen of the day

The Song: "Say You Will" by Fleetwood Mac

What I Heard: "It always seems to be bad news/If I can't get you to dance"

What It Really Says: "It always seems to heal the wounds/If I can get you to dance"

So. I was close! And two wrongs, in this case, get the gist of it.

One per day

Blog posts are like multivitamins!

Or not.

Today's List: People widely acclaimed who I think are just not all that: Pablo Picasso, Frank Sinatra, Isaac Asimov.

Birds!

A snowy egret, I believe, which we met at the Palace of Fine Arts.

The rise of the new Sealion!

Powerblogs, I learn, is discontinuing its services. Therefore, I am beginning anew here.

Here is a picture to prove it! This is the Palace of Fine Art (swans optional).