Henry Frickin' James

As an English major, I had no guilt about skipping over the works of Henry James. I tried to read The Bostonians and settled on the movie for an exam back in he late 80s, and more than a few critics write that James was an acquired taste.

So it's odd to report that I have read Daisy Miller and Washington Square and have my sites set on The Wings of the Dove. To bone up on my James -- you said bone up -- I have been reading Colm Toibin's The Master, the recent novel about James living in Europe around 1896. It's a fine novel once you realize there is absolutely no action. Zilch. Instead, you get to see an artist search for his stories and attempt to live his cloistered, stuffy life.

I only wish it came with hyperlinks. Toibin goes through James' life and offers episodes where real life inspires novels and stories. Thank to the Barnes & Noble introduction to Daisy Miller and Wings, I have a decent sense of his life and literary output but it would be great if I could click on a word, a name or a passage and be able to read where this fits in the writer's life and cannon. That would be neat.

One enterprising editor/publisher should release an annotated copy of this novel with information on James and his works. Think of it like the director's commentary on a DVD.

The Wings of the Dove, on deck after The Master.

Raunch Dressing, Not on the Side

The review of Ariel Levy's Female Chauvinist Pigs in today's NY Times Book Review triggered some thoughts. Levy expands her New York Magazine article on the rise of Girls Gone Wild, magazines like Maxim and Stuff, and porn stars appearing everywhere outside their movies on regular shows and music videos as if it were normal. Well, according to Levy, it is normal: America has been pornified.

Jennifer Egans' review mentions one omission of the book's argument and might have missed another. Egan says Levy spends scant time on Madonna, who turned sex into self-empowerment ever since 1984. That's sad. Because the singer/video star has done a lot to move the ball down to the end-zone. No one exploits me but me, was her mantra. (Or is that womantra?) Also, I wonder if the young's acceptance of this lite porn stems from the shrill, humor-free days of the late 80s and 90s when people were politically correct to a fault.

I took three feminist courses at SUNY New Paltz in 1988-89, and these were deadly serious areas unless you were mocking men. So far, so shrill. After the Anita Hill hearings, lawyers and human resource consultants entered the fray. Telling a woman she looked nice in a sweater could be a litigious offence and the days of humor were over. I sat in on my share of HR seminars on how to be a sensitive co-worker and managers. Thank goodness the Internet boom rolled around so we could concentrate on making money.

Egan's review does not mention the feminist left's melding with the Christian right in its views on pornography. Even though both sides have different views on modern women -- kitchen vs. the board room -- they could both easily hate Hugh Hefner, Howard Stern, and even Victoria's Secret. Like the flimsy bras in the pages of those monthly catalog, something had to give.

The so-called third wave of feminists hated Christian prudes and the smelly feminists of yore. Howard Stern was a free-speech liberator, Hugh Hefner made sure his Playmates were treated well, and a whole raft of magazines from London came in with bad jokes and pics of models and actresses in bra and panties. Where was the victimization? Jenna Jamison looked healthy, drug-free and all-American to most people.

The Man Show debutted and rose in the ratings around the time that America read The Starr Report and expressed shock and acceptance. Bill Clinton looked like a serial humper from Day One and besides, the economy was roaring. Why jinx it? The Man Show was fighting against the notion that being a guy had been a bad thing for more than a decade. Pictures of cleavage, bodily function jokes and reviews of beer seemed almost elevating back then. It was.

There is a downside, though. I like my subscription to Stuff and one day would like to write captions for those magazines, but why is it so hard to find clothes for my daughter that doesn't like the laundry pile from a Vietnamese brothel? Does my listening to Stern and Opie and Anthony's antics mean that my daughter has to dress like a hooker?

Parenting Chronicles - Volume XII Chapter XXXVII

Driving back from my nephew's party on Long Island, Nora complained that she had to go the bathroom. She was whining and in deep distress that she might wet her pajamas and car seat. We were on the Sprain Book parkway, probably the darkest busy road in lower New York - no lights but the full moon. Again she said she had to go and bad. It was going to be a disaster.

I spotted some lights behind some black trees and got off. Couldn't name the town but there was a gas station nearby. We ran in and asked for the bathroom key.

We have no key, the attendant said. "I asked the owner four times and he won't drive the key over."

We left for McDonalds, which was down the road from the gas station. I backed into the guard rail that protects the pump and made sure I didn't hit a Lexus or that gas was puring out of the stall.

Nora was crying and moaning.

But when we pulled into the McDonalds' parking lot, she started to giggle. "I have to tell you guys something," she said between laughs.

Regina knew the answer but I was already unbuckling my seat belt.

"I PEED my car seat!" she squealed and out came peals of laughter.

I got out to check the back of the minivan -- perfectly fine in the parking lot light.

Back in the car, the two boys are asleep and Regina and Nora are laughing at her accident.

We drove home and she relieved herself like a racehorse outside the car door. More giggles.

Good times.

Falconer

Before leaving for Lake George, I looked for a book to take with me. It had to be slim, smart and I didn't mind if it was something I had already read. I brought John Cheever's Falconer, which is supposed to be his great novel. That's not much of a stretch because he will always be known as a short story writer thanks to his epsiodic novels. All in all, Falconer was good, if strange. It definitely probably read better when it came out in the mid-70s and if I remember the glowing reviews, it might have been over-praised for two reasons: Cheever had finally quit the sauce and delivered a full-length novel that didn't read like a collection of short stories. It was compelling and it was always nice to be in the hands of a writer who knows what they're doing. The scene where Farrugt realizes that he has beaten his drug habit without even realizing it -- the prison medical team had been feeding him a placebo -- was wonderful and quiet in this loud rambunctious novel.

Lake George, Late Summer

After two weeks of humid weather, high temps and some awful news from New Orleans and Mississippi, it's great to be back at Lake George with the family and Regina's sister, her two nephews and one girlfriend. The weather has been amazing and we spent the day switching between the pool and then to the lake and then back to the pool again.

This morning, Regina took Nora and Timmy to the local pancake house while I watched Matthew swim in the pool. While he was wading in the whirlpool, a plane flew overhead at around 150 feet. Then a helicopter flew along the lake at seagull altitude. If that weren't entertaining enough, I saw an Indian with full headgear and war paint in a canoe by the motel's dock. He lifted his musket and BOOM fired into the air. The ducks in the water didn't seem to like the entertainment. The Indian then chatted with a few people on the dock before paddling off.

Tonight we played miniature golf. Nora and I both had a hole in one -- the triumph of luck over skill!

Speaking of skill, both Nora and Matthew can doggy paddle like champs. It's been a good summer.

Hillary -- Too Conservative?

Cindy Sheehan's main target just might be Hillary Clinton and not W. The grieving mother of a fallen Iraqi soldier has stepped to the head of the line of the anti-war movement and she could be the face for this growing and passionate crowd. And the people behind her -- Michael Moore, MoveOn.org, Air America, et al -- realize that for every person who agrees with them, three people are repelled. Cindy is the face of this movement, which could break big.

Why is this bad for Hil? Easy: the anti-war left won't vote for another Washington candidate who supports the war. Liberating 25 million citizens from a brutal dictator and building a democracy in a region that only knows theocrats and dictators isn't worth the lives of US soldiers to these people. If this movement gains momentum, the next Democratic candidate had better be against the war from the beginning. Paging Dr. Dean.

Sheehan has incredible stamina. She has turned her grief into a megaphone against this president, but so far, the mainstream media's coverage has been fawning. She will have to either stand by or explain her remarks that her son died for Israel, OBL is an alleged terrorist, and the war in Afghanistan was a mistake too. If she loses the loony left-speak -- seriously, can anyone stand next to Michael Moore and not spout this paranoid nonsense? -- she could be the Martin Luther King Jr of the antiwar crowd. With a book tour, a glowing documentary, honorary Ivy League degrees and the money of Lefties, she could win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Instead of the man who liberated the Iraqis and tried to bring democracy to the oppressed.

Not Very Christian

It's been a pretty bookish summer, so far. I've knocked off John Updike's Marry Me, Alana Feurst's The Polish Officer, Elmore Leonard's Toshamingo Blues, as well as Gore Vidal's Julian and Henry James' Daisy Miller. The last two were startling. Julian was terrific though not nearly as great as I, Claudius but as the young emperor who tried to bring back Hellenism while his nation was in the throes of Christianity, he made some strong arguments for his faith. I've made a point of not reading James and I don't feel bad about my decision at all. After finishing Daisy Miller, however, I can't wait to go onto Washington Square and then onto Portrait of a Lady. I also have my sights on The Wings of a Dove because I loved the film version with a rather nekkid and racktacular Helena Bonham Carter. Man, I am so deep.

For the Birds

Nora and I checked out March of the Penguins and had a nice time yesterday. Didn't love it but liked it enough. Some of the shots were gorgeous and I kept seeing the closeups of the emperor penguins in my dreams last night. It's amazing that this movie is the sleeper hit of the summer and is beating out flops like The Island, Bewitched and the Jessica Simpson Daisy Dukes film. Although the music and photography are fine enough, Penguins feels like a well-made documentary that would play in the multimedia room of a big city aquarium. You can imagine it playing on monitors while kids run from bench to bench and tired mothers change diapers and nurse their newborns.

After the movie I bought Nora a $4 slurpee and asked her what she thought of the movie.

"Short," she said.

That's my girl.

The Updike Summer Book: Marry Me

Every summer I read a novel or short story collection from John Updike. A new work usually appears in the fall so it's always nice to have a novel I haven't read for a decade back in my hands. I chose Marry Me, his romance from 1976, the year he married his second wife, I believe. This is a virtual companion piece to Couples, his sprawling book about affairs in tiny Tarbox. While Couples needed a scorecard to keep track of the, well, couples, Marry Me has only four people, Jerry sleeping with Sally while married to Ruth who has a brittle affair with Sally's Richard. Got that? It's set in 1962 but the people seem oddly ahead of our generation of adults. They sat down, hashed out the affair over drinks, went to partiesm etc. Today, there would be slashed tires, threatening emails and "no she didn'ts" yelled at the top of their lungs.

I've reread Couples, A Month of Sundays, The Centaur and the novel that actually improved the second time, the brilliant Rabbit Is Rich. Like that installment, Marry Me held up even better than the first time I read it.

On deck: Gore Vidal's Julian, Anne Tyler's When We Were Married, and James Salter's Light Years.

Matthew, On a Tear

It's been a good few weeks with Matthew, the four-year old master of his universe. His therapies are going nicely and he is responding more and more lately. He categorized some cards in a different colors and he is repeating more words. This morning he called me Dada to my face -- this might be the first time in more than a year that I heard this. Words cannot describe how much I missed that. Yesterday, he called Regina 'Mommy' when she asked him if he wanted to play downstairs. I may be supersitious but I woneder if this has to do with his diet. Getting an autistic child to eat anything substantial is a chore and he only likes chicken in the form of Wendy's chicken nuggets and from the local Chinese place. Everytime we have one of these boosts in word skills, it seems to coincide when he is enjoying protein. I'll never forget the week he ate scrambled eggs for an entire week -- it felt like he added a dozen new words to his language list.

Tim the one year-old is happy to prove that he is more like his older sister Nora than the Mighty Matthew. He can say dada, mama, baba for bottle and hi, which he does with a wave. Oh, and he clearly knows the meaning of the word No, especially when he hits he offswtich on the power strip for the TV. So far, he big trouble in a little package.

More Chainsaw Guitars, Please

Bob Mould is back with a new album Body of Song and he brought his guitars with him. I haven't bought a Mould record in ages and I always meant to pick up his electronica album although friends warned me off. Even in his so-so records, there's still some great fret work and plenty of painful lyrics for the morbid English major in me. Body of Song marries his buzzsaw guitar with some tasteful bloops and beeps and the result is quite warm. If I had a convertible, I'd blast this entire record while driving up Route 9 and over the Bear Mountain Bridge with a kid in the baby seat.

And for such a notorious sourpuss, Mould sounds happy these days. The titles aren't as dour as those from Beaster or Hubcap, and he has done a ton of radio interviews where he sounds like he's in a good space: out, happy, creative, and at peace with his place in rock history. Get Body of Song, play it loud.

And checkout his Boblog and also this killer interview on Minnesota Public Radio. Your computer's sub-woofers will appreciate the workout.

Growing On Me

The Will Farrell epic Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy is all over HBO and it is growing on me. We rented it last fall and it was stupid and immediately forgettable. Now that I've seen it three times this weekend, it's becoming a better movie. Nora caught the anchorman rumble with cameos from Vince Vaughn, Luke Wilson, Ben Stiller and a surprisingly un-annoying Tim Robbins. Wilson gets his arm lopped off in a fight and now Nora says, "Man, I didn't see that coming." It's good for a goof.

Mr. Roberts

Nothing to add to the commentary but isn't it funny that Bush's bold, thinking-outside-the box-choice was a 50-year old white guy?

He'll be approved with minimal fuss, if the Rove-hungry Dems are smart. Oh, and I love this picture. Man, have I been there, except for the President nominating me on TV and all.

London

It's been more than one week since the wave of bombings in London. I saw the reports on TV while dressing for work that morning and I immediately hoped that no one in the London office was hurt. When I made it into the office, the quiet and stillness was like a brick wall. Right, I thought, this could be very bad. I opened my e-mail and saw a message from the HR director in our London headquarters stating not to panic and all Incisive Media staffers were safe and accounted for. I then tried to call my co-worker, who was out that day but the lines were down. It was like the first week when I started at RiskWaters after 9/11: the sad blanket that covered us all. Thankfully, my reporter was safe and sound.

News reports now say that the bombers were not only suicides but were British-born. London is now the first European city to be the victim of suicide bombers. We can only hope that this does not become a trend there, here or anywhere else.

No Drama Queens

The press and the Libs want to get Karl Rove so bad that they are starting to get sloppy. Recently, NY Senator Chuck Schumer held a press conference attacking Rove and the White House for the leaking of Valerie Plame's name to the press. So far, so goo. The Dems are keeping the message clear and uncluttered. In other words, no John Kerry droning. But then Joe Wilson, Plame's blow-dried husband, took the podium to demand Rove's resignation. Uh boy. I hate this guy and Tucker Carlson nailed it when he called Wilson a drama queen.

If the Dems want to fail -- like they always seem to want to do -- they will keep Wilson on-camera yammering away about himself and his wife. Remember: This is not about them, although it kinda is. This is about the leaking on a CIA agent's identity for political payback. Keep the self-aggrandizing Wilson away from the cameras because he elicits no sympathy and wins no friends in the undecided column. He loves his victimhood too much to make things easy for the Dems.

Mickey Kaus, my favorite skeptic, asks one important question: Is Wilson partly to blame for his wife's outing? If you're married to a spook, should you accept an assignment to go to Africa and then blab about it in a New York Times Op Ed piece? The sooner the Dems realize that Wilson is a D lsit celebutante -- his memior is 528 pages long! -- and keep their message simple, the better.

Rove revealed the name of a secret agent -- YES!
Rove revealed the name of a CIA agent who was married to that whiny guy who loves to have his picture taken in Vanity Fair and goes on The Daily Show and Meet the Press and ...

Judith Miller in Chained Heat

This is a rude question to ask but is Judith Miller an ass? The reporter for the New York Times is going to jail - Jail! The big house. The stony lonesome -- to protect a source that she never called and never wrote about! It's pretty clear that the source is a member of the Bush White House -- my guess is Scooter Libby, the chief of staff for the vice president -- and this person tried to kill two birds with one stone: Take down whiny diplomatic asswipe Joe Wilson and someone from the media elite. And after all the heavy-lifting she did for the WMDs-littering-Iraq stories she wrote before the war.

Judy, Judy, Judy: liberal reporters hate you and conservatives all know you were set up. Speak, already!

If that weren't enough, "secret" agent Valerie Plame looks none-the-worse-for wear in the pages of Vanity Fair and at a recent book signing in Georgetown. I hope Plame and Wilson's smiles warm you during shower time.

Not On My Watch

A good if somber speech from the president last night from Fort Bragg. If you told George W. Bush on the deck of the aircraft carrier two years ago that he would have to convince his fellow Americans that the war is still – still! – worth fighting, he and his staff would be dumbfounded. Still, it was impressive when Bush ticked off the countries from which the insurgents are flowing: Jordan, Syria and Saudi Arabia. If only this president could bring down the boot on the Saudis to clean up their backyard or lose their pampered status but this is the tragic blind spot of this president. Although there is good news in Iraq, the carnage from the insurgency drowns it out. One part of the speech struck a wrong note: for some reason, I hate when politicians give out web site addresses. It seems jarring and not very presidential. And why does the America Supports You Web site seem like a Band-Aid on a major chest wound? Does this administration think that we need more yellow ribbons on the back of SUVs? Clearly, we need more troops, better armor, a secure Iraqi border and some better PR. And don’t forget luck.

Run, Katie, Run

Attention all People, US magazine and In Touch staffers: don't make any vacation plans for the last weekend of the summer.

With a psycho-boyfriend melting down before our very eyes, Katie Holmes is going to cancel her engagement to Tom Cruise and head for the hills. The bug-eyed Runaway Bride from Georgia can breathe easy as every tabloid and infotainment show calls the overwhelmed actress the New Runaway Bride when she comes to her senses and flees for her life. Her publicist will announce that the engagement is off on the Saturday of the Labor Day weekend and although Katie and Tom remain friends, she is enjoying some quiet time in the Rain Forest or serving as a medic in Iraq.

You have been warned: Labor Day weekend. Get those photographers and cheesy headlines ready.

Must-Watch Character: Drama

There are quite a few pleasures on HBO's feather-light sitcom Entourage. Along with a never-ending parade of lithe LA beauties, Jeremy Piven's Raptor-like agent Ari, there is Kevin Dillon's Drama. Dillon plays the older and slightly more experienced actor brother to the main star's Vincent. Drama came to Hollywood sooner, landed some roles on a grade-C cop show and is now struggling to find work and not appear to glom off his red-hot younger brother. You can see the frustration and the sheer desperation in his eyes, his walk and hear it in his voice as he tries to revive a mediocre career that might be replaced with a new job that could easily be titled "trim coordinator." He is desperate and charming: during one episode he was convinced he wasn't getting roles because he has skinny calves. For the rest of the show, he checks out every waiter/surfer/gym trainer for their leg muscles.

Kevin Dillon's Drama. Funny and one character that makes me smile when he walks on screen. Check out Heaven Help Us from a billion years ago to see this guy in action.

Game Rover

Did Karl Rove play the Senate and House Dems like a piano with his speech in NYC the other day? He told the conservative audience that while conservatives wanted action after 9/11, some liberals wanted to offer therapy, self-reflection and lay the blame with the US. A sweeping generalization but not without a grain of truth, all in all.

Senate and House Dems responded with indignant fury at the Bush Mastermind's remarks and demand Rove's resignation. In their outrage, they remind journalists and their constituents that they voted for the war on terror, the liberation of Iraq and their support for the men and women in uniform.

Brilliant, Karl.