Thomas Pynchon's "Mason & Dixon"

The first time you read one of Thomas Pynchon's epics you can barely grasp the substance of the story. Each paragraph has the potential to throw you off. You flounder and sputter, your only sustenance the undeniable beauty of his style (and the odd slapstick moment).

The second time, you get a grasp for the characters; you remember their names and their roles and you recognize them when they resurface throughout the book. You get a better sense of what the longer digressions are about, and you begin to acknowledge the themes, though most of them remain obscure and difficult to integrate into the book.

On subsequent readings, however, the real joy begins. Now that you know the characters and have a better sense of the book's structure, you can pay closer attention to what it all MEANS. You stop skimming over the inscrutable bits and realize that there's something buried deep inside them. Gradually you tease out those pieces of meaning and you recognize the book as a whole. No longer distracted by confusing surface details, you understand, appreciate, and enjoy.

This is the second time I've slogged through "Mason & Dixon" and I'm very much on track. What I got out of it this time was the complexity of the characters of Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, the themes of loss and regret, the division (in this case with the Mason-Dixon Line) which serves as a conduit, enclosure, and barrier, with all the attendant opportunities (the search for power, ownership, exclusivity, and -- ultimately -- civil war).

I also better understand when Pynchon is bullshitting me. Talking dogs, self-organizing automata (the Duck who searches for love, the organic perpetual-motion watch), The Ghastly Fop's endless publication, all the impossible creatures that Mason and Dixon hear about during their survey (the Black Dog, the invisible golem, the were-beaver, the Lambton Worm, assorted ghosts and spooks), and -- most significantly -- the paranoid mysteries of the Jesuits which I realize now were taken quite seriously at the time (William T. Vollmann's "Fathers and Crows" takes a more realistic look at Jesuit paranoia).

What's the book "about?" I don't know if there's any answer to that, but the Mason & Dixon wiki might be a good place to find out. Myself, I'd rather find the meaning on my own, because it's bound to be a very individual thing.

If you're looking to tackle the book, you might do well to learn a bit about the longitude problem, and reading up on the line itself (and its geography) might help you keep your head. Since the book is written in 18th century idiom and style, keep in mind that "huz" means "us" and "Phiz" means "face."

I'd Buy Anything By...James

First James were uncouth, experimental post-punk rockers, then they became shoegazers...then Brit-pop stars, and that's when I first heard them. Wow, did I ever hear them.

In 1993 was spending a week in Toronto, staying with a good friend in her enormous apartment. My friend -- always on the college radio cutting edge -- had just discovered the single "Laid" by James, and every morning she would play it...over and over again...on repeat...jumping around and around on the other side of the wall.

To this day "Laid" is the only James song that really broke into the consciousness of anybody in this area. It's an exceptional song, but it wasn't until a few years ago -- thanks to a greatest hits compilation -- that I realized that James was a FACTORY for exceptional songs, and that -- in context -- "Laid" wasn't the dumb college sex-rocker that it appeared to be.

Here's the video for "Sometimes," a song unlike anything thing else that pop radio was playing then (or now), a strangely chugging song without bridges or transitions, just one long story that culminates in amazing James harmony (this is an edited version of the song, missing a verse and rushing headlong toward the climax...but it's still greatness).



So you've got these Manchester pop darlings being nursed along by Brian Eno, playing legendary live shows and putting out hit after hit...but eventually lead singer/songwriter Tim Booth decided he'd had enough. One of the final concerts was filmed and put on DVD, showing -- among other things -- the tightness of the band, and the oddness of football hooligans shouting along with sensitive lyrics about dolphins.

Case in point, here's the title track from that DVD, "Getting Away With It," a song from one of their two final albums (which their record company never bothered releasing in North America). I love the bassline, I love the plaintive quality, I'm less of a fan of Booth's dancing, however.



Yup, they split up. Booth released a solo album (and a lacklustre collaboration with Angelo Badalamenti) before everybody decided to get back together again. Their new album is due for release next month. James is alive!

Must-have albums: to be honest their albums tend to have a high number of throw-away songs on them, but the sublime moments make each one worthwhile. I like "Whiplash" myself. Albums to avoid: I hear their first two albums were pretty shoddy, but I've never been able to dig them up. For fans only: "Wah-Wah," a collection of improvisational pieces recorded during the "Laid" sessions, and the perfect way to kill a band's marketing momentum. Silly, James.

Nightmares About The Old Homestead

Whenever the holidays creep up on me I am besieged by nightmares about living "at home."

In these dreams I am back in my old bedroom -- though it's somehow mixed with my current bedroom -- with all the old (long-dead) pets and problems. I am always an adult, but all my family members are the same age they were when I left home fifteen years ago.

I wake up wondering if this is some sort of "arrested development" thing, like I'm still the person I was back then, or still clutching the apron strings. This makes me nervous.

But last night I woke up and had a sudden revelation: I don't dream about "the old home" because I somehow wish I were back there...I dream about it because it is still accessible. The lines of influence between me and the family are still there. I'm just a phone call or a car ride away, so even though I'm no longer physically INSIDE the house I am still connected TO it, and these dreams about "the old homestead" are really just dreams about the continuing relationship that I have with my parents...the house itself is merely a convenient setting, the old bedroom a symbol for my own apartment here, the hallways are places where my family and I meet again.

So I'm NOT necessarily regressive or conflicted, I'm just dreaming about meeting my parents again. Whew!

This doesn't, however, explain all those dreams about being naked in highschool.

The Winter Threshold, 2008

Each winter there comes a time when I can no longer handle it; I get edgy, hateful, and obnoxious to be around. I look at weather reports and I want to scream. When I open the curtains I curse the fickle whims of nature, then close the curtains again and collapse into a furnace-dried, hot-headed, untidy heap.

This year it happened on March 18th, the day when I became so fed up with the weather (and the prospect of working with RoboHelp) that I couldn't even drag myself out of bed to go to work. Yessir, the winter blues have got me bad.

I know that I documented this threshold last year as well, and I'm amazed to learn that it happened EARLIER in 2007...I officially got sick of winter on March 8th then, which is weird because last winter was comparatively mild.

But I can explain. In psych class we learned about "Approach/Avoidance Syndrome," which explains why certain tasks become most intolerable just before we're finished them: we don't mind suffering through something as long as there is no end in sight, but once we think that the end is near -- the end of a prison term, the end of a chapter we're studying, the end of a work day -- we can perfectly imagine what it will be like when the task is over...and we can't stand the task any longer. Our anticipation begins to torture us.

This year my winter edginess started immediately after the beautiful thaw we had last week; snow was melting, sun was warm, birds were singing. Now that the snow is falling again and the birds have shut the hell up, the continuance of winter is UNBEARABLE.

What Went Wrong with "Twin Peaks?"

The generally-accepted story about the decline of "Twin Peaks" is that David Lynch went off to work on "Wild at Heart," leaving the show without any ultimate direction during the second season. Now, over fifteen years after I last watched the show, I find myself wondering if there was really any hope to begin with.

The second season starts off well. Lynch was still involved at the time and the episodes he directed -- not surprisingly the most pivotal ones -- still stand out as distinctly "Twin Peaks-ish."

But the show's tone was significantly affected by the revelation of the long-standing mystery: "Who killed Laura Palmer?" When we finally found out (and got over the shock)...well, what else was there to care about?

I'm over halfway through re-watching season two and I've seen the show slide into a self-made mess. Part of the problem is the vacuum left by the resolution of the central mystery, which the writers tried to fill with a sudden surge of new storylines and characters. Another part of the problem is that, in the process of resolving the "Laura Palmer" storyline, they'd altered (or outright killed) many of the programme's most notable characters.

So, while slowly leading into the season two "Windom Earle" theme, we were left with conflicts that were either blood-curdlingly silly (Nadine's mental regression and anything involving Little Nicky) or utterly banal (The Endless Angst of James and Donna in a World Without Pity).

There were still highpoints -- Agent Cooper's drug charges and the wonderful "Shelly-Bobby-Leo" scenes in particular -- but everything else was just a bunch of "Windom Earle is capable of things you'd never imagine" dialogue and more of Josie's terrible acting.

I'll come right out and say it: I think season two, by the halfway point, had become Bad TV. It lacked consistency, the characters had (mostly) become cardboard cut-outs, and any attempts at "Lynchian" touches had become forced and embarassing. In their desire to provide the audience with a few resolutions, they'd turned the whole "Bob" mythology into a boring battle between Good and Evil (and Owls). Sigh.

I do remember, however, that the final episode -- the only other one directed by David Lynch -- was a brutal, beautiful tour-de-force. I look forward to that, but I'm really tired of the start/stop music cues, and I don't anticipate the number of times I'll need to see James on the verge of tough-guy tears.

(David Foster Wallace, in his behind-the-scenes essay about David Lynch and the making of "Lost Highway," had this to say about season two of "Twin Peaks":

...Lynch is way better at deepening and complicating mysteries than he is at wrapping them up. And the series' second season showed that he was aware of this and that it was making him really nervous... Part of the reason I actually preferred Twin Peaks's second season to its first was the fascinating spectacle of watching a narrative structure disintegrate and a narrative artist freeze up and try to shuck and jive when the plot reached a point where his own weaknesses as an artist were going to be exposed...

It should be remembered that Lynch wasn't the only writer for the series, but I imagine he had most of the responsibility for the Laura Palmer resolutions at least).

"My Papa's Leg"

As of October 20, 1928 it seems The New Yorker is starting an "Ad of the Week" feature.

As if the regular ads within the magazine weren't enough fun to the 21st century reader, they're now giving us advertisements from other magazines that THEY thought were bizarre even at the time. Bliss!

So here's to the Universal Artifical Limb Co., Inc., and their "sad child with leg" advertisement, which sure makes ME want to buy a false limb and donate it to an orphanage.

"I Can't Stand My Husband's Snoring Since We Bought an Electrolux"

The fake lady pictured in this advertisement -- apparently the wife of Rasputin -- has this to say:

Dear Sirs:

Can't yo do something to make our Electrolux just a little noisy? I can't sleep at night with everything in the apartment so terribly quiet--everything, that is, except my husband.

He snores.

When we used to own one of the old-fashioned mechanical refrigerators with things inside that rattled, I never minded his snoring. In fact, I couldn't hear it because the sound blended perfectly with the noise of the icebox machinery. I know the Electrolux has no machinery, but isn't there something I can do? I haven't slept soundly in weeks and I'm growing desperate.

This is part three in the "Electrolux Complaint" series of clever reverse advertisements. Homeowners -- represented by mannequins for some reason -- write in to complain that their Electrolux icebox is too quiet.

This, sadly, is not a problem for me, which is why I don't keep my fridge in my bedroom.

Fred Waring: "In My Arms"

If you're a fan of old time radio you simply MUST pick up the (almost complete) collection of "Command Performance" episodes. Smarmy at times and often sounding somewhat rushed to air, it featured ALL of the best-known and best-loved performers of the era, spitting out strings of silly GI mailbag names, along with heavily scripted puns about killing Hilter and Tojo.

The music in "Command Performance" is particularly good, with at least one gem per show. During the special "Broadway edition" of December 21, 1943 the gem is provided by Fred Waring and His Pennsylvanians in the form of a song called "In My Arms."

I don't know how other people arranged this Frank Loesser wartime waltz, but Fred Waring has packed it full of disconnected vocals and that odd "funny frog-voice" that you often hear in novelty songs of this time. Since one of the dialects is a silly Irishman I suppose this counts as a St. Patrick's Day treat.

I've put an mp3 of the song here for your puzzled, kitsch-hungry enjoyment.

That song link is bound to disappear eventually, probably two months after this posting. Get it while it's hot!

The Last 24 Hours

No I'm not being stylistic, I just can't bring myself to write this in "prose" (which requires some sense of meaning, direction, and endings).

* Greyhound bus terminal, standing in the cold, wondering why bus drivers only arrive at the last minute. This route to Toronto is the "molasses" run, which stops at all of Guelph's most picturesque locations along the way. The 130-minute trip should give me lots of time to find an iPod soundtrack but for some reason I can't choose one.

* I have decided at the last minute to bring Thomas Pynchon's novel "Mason & Dixon" with me, because I am so involved with it that I can't picture myself reading anything else. But it weighs at least ten pounds and is huge and unwieldy, and difficult to concentrate on when the guy in the seat behind you is talking about his favourite "keggers." "Dude, Cathy was GREEN, man. I mean GREEN. What? Like, she was SICK, man, Cathy was GREEN."

* At the Toronto Bay Street terminal I pile up all my luggage and begin the trip to Chez J&C. It is very cold, Sunday afternoon, downtown Toronto relatively unpopulated. In the lobby of J&C's apartment, two parents are trying to wrangle a stroller, an infant, and a toddler into the elevator, meanwhile retrieving the mitten that a man had dropped while exiting. Their hands full and their baby-equipment blocking access to all but the smallest person, they send the toddler in to find the mitten, which he is unable to do. The doors keep closing, the parents lunging in to knock the doors open again, the man with one mitten stands with me and we watch the show.

* Jason greets me and we begin the relatively mechanical process of getting into drag. Fortunately the Chez has two bathrooms. Both have been newly renovated in honour of the night, and the hard-working renovator -- Craig -- soon joins us to mix the cocktails. Craig doesn't fool around with cocktails. When Craig makes a cocktail, it is "a glass of vodka with a shot of Diet Pepsi." This explains why, when we leave the apartment, I tell the cab driver to take us to "Queen on Play."

* At Play on Queen -- the venue for the night -- I make myself comfortable in the change room and re-meet both Teran Blake and Fahrenheit. Not only do I not instantly recognize Fahrenheit, but I happily tell her that she "made fun of me once," failing to provide context or explain that I wasn't lodging a complaint with her. This is why my Facebook "agreeableness" score is at 25%. Setting up a sort of Marx Brothers situation, the bar staff begin to pile tables and chairs within the change room. Soon the room contains two small islands, each with a mirror, tenuously connected by a narrow path. When the flock of hispanic queens arrive this becomes particularly surreal.

* Still coming out of a week of insecurity and general "off-ness," I perform two shoe-in numbers that I know I can ALWAYS do well: "Don't Tell Mama" and "Love and Truth." The response is good, as far as I can tell through the blazing spotlight, though the crowd is hardly demonstrative. I make the silly move of trying to pick up tips while wearing well-worn gloves, which results in a spray of coins on stage. Craig cheerfully documents this with his video camera.

* As a whole, we raise a substantial amount of money for the TICOT charities. This is a good feeling indeed. My blood sugar has remained PERFECT all night. Plus, through some accident, I get not one but TWO free drinks. My good feeling knows no bounds.

* After the wonderfully-brief show I begin to understand the bar dynamic a bit more: at 11pm the TICOT performers are followed by a regular show put on by 10,000-volt hispanic queens, a subculture notorious for its crowd loyalty. While watching their show I have my second great bar-stranger conversation of the night, followed finally -- on the way out -- with a nice chat with Michelle DuBarry, who recommends that I improve my diet.

* Back at Chez J&C we review the night's documentary evidence, and Jason informs me that I do a trademarked maneuver with my bum but I'm not sure yet exactly what that is yet. Pizza at 1am. The John Barrowman Experience. A tranquil sleep only once interrupted by the garbage man.

* 8:30am, I assess the situation; Jason has gone to work and Craig is still asleep. I suffer typical morning restlessness and decide I should at least transport my luggage to the Greyhound station, leaving all future possibilities open. As usual when I visit J&C, I exit the apartment with more things than I came with. It's like magic!

* Another cold walk with lots of luggage. A suitcase full of feathers is surprisingly heavy. At the bus station I realize the only "good" breakfast option is an eggs & bacon thing at "Kramden's Kitchen," which I'm sure Michelle DuBarry would berate me for. Nevertheless it is good. My bus will not arrive for ninety minutes.

* I sit and read "Mason & Dixon." This book, along with the constant lifting and pulling of my luggage, is turning my hand into a burning witch's claw. The old lady beside me is very angry about the pigeons, which appear to spend their entire lives inside the terminal. Pigeons are very individualistic. They make coordinated "sweeps" periodically across the floor, and though they look intelligent they keep pecking away at the same specks of indigestible dirt.

* I decide to find a bathroom so I can get some paper towels to wipe my nose with. I take the elevator down to the terminal basement and discover that the bathroom there is a "closed for cleaning." A sign directs me to use the bathrooms in the adjacent Ainsley terminal. I take the elevator back up and pull my luggage across to Ainsley -- which is always deserted, disgusting, and post-apocalyptic -- and discover that the bathrooms there can only be reached by going downstairs. I will not carry my luggage down and then up again. My hand would not survive. Instead, my nose must drip.

* My iPod soundtrack is easier to choose for the ride home: The Fall's "Infotainment Scan." The bus takes a strange and unexplained detour through Mississauga via the mostly-vacant toll roads. The outskirts of Mississauga are surrounded by lakes, barely frozen with patches of rotten ice. These lakes are everywhere and they do not look natural or healthy. Trees are buried within them, their branches poking out. Beyond the lakes, the biggest and most generic suburb of semi-detached houses I have ever seen. I suspect that the lakes are just house foundations waiting to sprout.

* As always when I drive past the Niagara escarpment, I wonder what that huge gouge in the rock is, which you can see going west on the 401 past Halton Hills. Some sort of footpath appears to cross the vast canyon, but it's so far away that you can't see what's really happening. I vow that when I get a car I will investigate this.

* Home. A feeling of goodness, both from the going away and the coming back. My hand will ache for days, burning while I work. The cat is aloof at first, punishing me for leaving her alone for the night, but soon she has come around and we are watching "Constantine." Even she dislikes Keanu Reeves, but she's too polite to complain.

"Invasion" and Horror Now

My general dislike of Nicole Kidman aside, I think she can sometimes be an effective actress. And yeah, she's good in "Invasion." And she's so gosh-darn willowy.

Now that I've got that out of the way, I have to ask why every second horror movie nowadays must focus on a single parent and their single, traumatized, super-cute, intelligent, eight-to-ten year-old child. Are we so desensitized by violence against adults that we can only be frightened when CHILDREN are menaced, and only when those children appear old before their time?

This theme is an effective one in itself, but when spread across SO MANY MOVIES it becomes more than a little tiresome. Why just one parent? Why only single, lovable kids? What's going on here?

Anyway, I enjoyed watching "Invasion." I particularly like the "body snatchers" movies which involve large cities, because you get wonderfully paranoid shots of groups of menacing people standing in solidarity amongst bustling, chaotic, disconnected crowds.

It always seems necessary to provide a topical subtext for these movies, so I suppose this 2007 remake is about a distrust of government motivation -- the officials only invite reporters into press conferences so they can vomit in the coffee -- and the idea that we might be better off WITHOUT emotions such as jealousy, fear, and hatred.

So yeah, it was fun, but I have no urge to see it again (let alone watch the featurettes). And the happy ending was particularly blah.

If *I* were writing the next installment of this pseudo-series, I'd want to explore what happens after the body snatchers have taken over. I want to know what their television programs will be like. I want to know how they reproduce. Do pod-people have fights about money problems? Can a pod-person pay to have her husband "re-grown?"

PS: When I made a generalization about "half" of today's horror films being about single adults with single children, I intended to say that the other half tend to be about a bunch of unlikeable young adults getting abducted by a subtle, methodical, coldly logical maniac and then tortured one-by-one in a grimy institution that is strangely desaturated. This is very different from the slasher films of the '80s, wherein the maniac was simply out to kill people for little or no reason, and torture rarely occurred, and the colours were garish, and the kids were asking for it anyway because they were all having premarital sex (except for the lone survivor).