Law & Order: Voreblog Edition

You may recall that our house was broken into last March. You may also recall that last September we thought our ordeal was over once we finally retrieved our iPod, digital camera and Macbook. Although we got our things back, the case remained open while the defendant, Mr. B—–, filed appeal after appeal and, for good measure, fired his public defender. Ben went back to court again the week of Thanksgiving but the docket was so full that the hearing was postponed once more. It was rescheduled for December, then rescheduled again for this week. 

Today, nearly a year after the break-in, Mr. B—– defied the conventional wisdom which said, given his priors and the evidence against him in another break-in, he should plead guilty in exchange for four years jail time. Instead, Mr. B—– fired his public defender (again) and threatened to take it to trial, which would require that one of the Vores be present all day tomorrow and possibly into Friday. For his intransigence, the Deer Park police department thinks Mr. B—– could now serve up to sixteen years. But you probably wouldn’t expect common sense from someone who picked the snowiest day of 2008 (schools were closed) to kick in our front door in the middle of the day on a fairly busy street.

Ben relayed this to his colleague Mark Hoobler this afternoon, given the possibility he might have to miss work. It’s not really good for either of us, Ben said, since Erin’s in the middle of a crazy week too.

To which Mark replied, “There’s always one other member of the Vore household who could be present.”

Which got us thinking…

 

[SCENE: Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas. JUDGE DANIEL PHELAN presides over a subdued courtroom. Some family and friends are in attendance, scattered about the room. The defendant, MR. B-----, is led into the room in handcuffs. The bailiff escorting him in looks eerily like Nostradamus "Bull" Shannon from "Night Court."]

[JUDGE PHELAN pounds his gavel. Everyone snaps to.]

JUDGE PHELAN: I am so sick and tired of this case being dragged out forever. I mean, when will justice be served? Let’s wrap this thing up today because, frankly, I don’t like your face, Mr. B—–.

MR. B—–: Whether you like my face or not, your honor, I am innocent until proven guilty.

JUDGE PHELAN: Baloney. Let’s call the first witness.

[The prosecutor, BOB LOBLAW, rises from his desk.]

BOB LOBLAW: Your honor. I would like to call two witnesses. These poor individuals have already endured so much and can testify to the crime that Mr. B—– has committed against them. I would like to call Ben and Erin Vore to the stand.

[Everyone in the courtroom turns to watch the VORES walk in. The door remains closed. A murmur ripples through the courtroom.]

BOB LOBLAW [somewhat louder]: I said, “I would now like to call Ben and Erin Vore to the stand.”

[The door does not open. The courtroom is abuzz. Hushed whispers of "Maybe they're not coming!" and "Mr. B----- could get off scot-free!"]

BOB LOBLAW: Poop. I really am a terrible lawyer.

MR. B—–: Your honor, it appears as though there are no victims in this so-called crime. I think I should walk.

JUDGE PHELAN: Zip it. Mr. Loblaw, have you no witnesses to testify?

[BOB LOBLAW looks flustered until a man suddenly bursts through the doors. The courtroom releases a collective gasp. The man races down the aisle. He leans toward BOB LOBLAW and whispers something in his ear. BOB LOBLAW's face lights up.]

BOB LOBLAW: Ahem. Your honor, we do have a witness here. But I’ve been informed he’ll need a little help getting to the stand.

JUDGE PHELAN: Exactly what kind of help are we talking about here, Mr. Loblaw?

BOB LOBLAW: Either a small crane or the strength of four men. Whatever’s more convenient.

JUDGE PHELAN: Seeing as there doesn’t appear to be a crane in this courtroom, Mr. Loblaw, let’s go with the four men. Bailiff?

BAILIFF WHO LOOKS LIKE BULL: I’ve been told I have the strength of four men, sir.

[BOB LOBLAW looks skeptical but just shrugs. BAILIFF WHO LOOKS LIKE BULL exits the courtroom. Expectant silence. MR. B----- appears unsettled, looking from face to face. JUDGE PHELAN looks nonplussed. A menacing, minor-key synthesizer note rises in pitch.]

[Doors open with a flourish as BAILIFF WHO LOOKS LIKE BULL reenters the courtroom holding something gigantically furry in his hands. He is clearly laboring as he walks down the aisle.]

ANONYMOUS SPECTATOR #1: Dear Lord, what is he carrying?

ANONYMOUS SPECTATOR #2: It appears to be alive!

ANONYMOUS SPECTATOR #1: What an abominable creature! I can’t believe how, how … HUGE it is.

ANONYMOUS SPECTATOR #2: It’s the famed Leviathan from the Book of Job!

[BAILIFF WHO LOOKS LIKE BULL places large furry creature on the witness stand before collapsing to floor. He is struggling to breathe and could be dying.]

JUDGE PHELAN: Back-up bailiff! Help this man! And Mr. Loblaw — what in God’s name is that thing on the witness stand?

BOB LOBLAW: Your honor — I call to the witness stand … Mister Scooter Thomas.

[Gasps and frantic whispering. MR. B-----'s eyes grow very large. JUDGE PHELAN pounds his gavel, shouting "Order! ORDER!" SCOOTER THOMAS flattens his ears as the hair on his plentiful backside stands on end.]

JUDGE PHELAN: Mr. Loblaw, what is the meaning of this?

BOB LOBLAW: Your honor, neither of the Vores could be here today. However, their cat, Scooter Thomas, can testify to the hideousness of this crime, seeing as he was the only one at home when it occurred.

MR. B——: Your honor, it’s a cat! 

JUDGE PHELAN: Mr. Loblaw, you’d better not be yanking my chain. I’m going to allow this, but I warn you — you’re on very thin ice here.

BOB LOBLAW: Thank you, your honor. I won’t abuse your trust. [turning to Scooter Thomas] Now, Mr. Thomas — can I call you Mr. Thomas?

SCOOTER THOMAS: You can call me Scooter Thomas, seeing as that’s my name.

[More gasps. "It talks!" more than one spectator proclaims from the audience. "And it appears to have a British accent!"]

BOB LOBLAW: Yes, forgive me. Mr. Scooter Thomas, can you tell us what transpired at the Vore household  on March –, 2008?

SCOOTER THOMAS: Well, it’s a bit hazy. First the doorbell went off, which always scares the bejeezus out of me. I made a run for the landing on the second floor so I could keep an eye on things. That’s when some brute began kicking in the front door. At that point I hightailed it outta there and took cover underneath the bed. I’m not proud of it. I’ll come right out and say it: I wussed out big time.

BOB LOBLAW: No need for the self-flagellation, Mr. Tho– er, Mr. Scooter Thomas. Please continue.

SCOOTER THOMAS: Well, I stayed under the bed and didn’t come out, even when the bedroom was ransacked and there were drawers and clothes all over the place. I thought about rounding up some of my favorite toys, but I wasn’t going to risk my life like that. So I stayed put.

BOB LOBLAW: Did you, Mr. Scooter Thomas, get a look at the person who broke into your owner’s home?

SCOOTER THOMAS: Yes.

BOB LOBLAW: Is that person in the courtroom today?

SCOOTER THOMAS: Yes.

BOB LOBLAW [pausing for dramatic effect]: Could you please point to said individual, Mr. Scooter Thomas.

[Complete and utter stillness. The air is charged with expectation. SCOOTER THOMAS begins to lift his right paw. The spectators lean forward in their seats. His paw is almost fully extended when, abruptly, he begins licking it and trying to work something out from between his foot pads.]

JUDGE PHELAN: MIS-ter Loblaw –

BOB LOBLAW: Your honor, I’m so sorry –

MR. B—–: Your honor, this is preposterous!

JUDGE PHELAN: Mr. Loblaw! Control your witness or I’ll have you held in contempt of court!

BOB LOBLAW: Yes, sir, your honor, I’m sorry. Please, allow me a moment–

[BOB LOBLAW approaches the witness stand. He whispers in SCOOTER THOMAS'S ear. SCOOTER THOMAS nods, then unleashes a monster yawn and licks his lips. BOB LOBLAW looks at him skeptically until SCOOTER THOMAS nods again. BOB LOBLAW returns to his desk.]

BOB LOBLAW: All right, sorry. Let’s try that again. Mr. Scooter Thomas, would you please focus and point to the individual who broke into your house?

[Silence and anticipation yet again. More leaning forward. A trickle of sweat falls along Mr. B-----'s brow. SCOOTER THOMAS raises his paw, slowly, slowly, until...]

SCOOTER THOMAS: That man. [He points to MR. B-----.] He’s the one who broke into our house.

[A woman screams. Camera flashes go off. MR. B----- shouts, "Noooo!" JUDGE PHELAN whacks his gavel no less than sixteen times, bellowing, "Order! ORDER IN THE COURT!" SCOOTER THOMAS again flattens his ears and crouches down fearfully.]

JUDGE PHELAN: Mr. B—–, justice has been served! I sentence you to sixteen years for being such a dillweed throughout this whole process, not to mention making a mockery of my courtroom. Bailiff who looks like Bull, take him away!

[BAILIFF WHO LOOKS LIKE BULL is still prostrate on the floor.]

JUDGE PHELAN: Great, is the bailiff dead?

BOB LOBLAW: No, sir. But he appears incapacitated. 

JUDGE PHELAN: And why is that?

BOB LOBLAW: Scooter Thomas is sitting on his chest.

BAILIFF WHO LOOKS LIKE BULL [groaning]: I can barely breathe! Get this monster off me!

JUDGE PHELAN: Court adjourned!

 

UPDATE: The trial has been postponed until late March. No word on whether Court TV will be covering it live.

“Baby You Got a Stew Goin’!”

Carl Weathers turns 65 today.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

This was originally going to be our Best of Movies 2008 post, but we realized a few things between Wednesday and today:

• We have seen 11 movies at the theater this year. 
• Two of them (The Diving Bell & The Butterfly, There Will Be Blood) came out last year, so they’re not really “new.”
• One of them was Vantage Point.
• Another was X-Files: I Want To Believe.
• Another was The Happening.
• A fourth was Indiana Jones & The Crystal Skull.
• We really wanted to hurt someone after we paid money on two of those four films, and none of them were what one might subjectively call “good.” Especially Vantage Point. That was a steaming heap of cow dung. We wanted to punch someone — anyone — walking out of that one.

Eleven films, or just under one a month, may seem like a lot to you. But for us, it’s a significant downgrade. During those carefree newlywed days in Nashville, we’d see a movie at the theaters almost every week; if we didn’t like it, we’d go watch another one (a k a, “pull a double feature”) to cleanse the palate. This year was, in some regards, major progress for us, notably from a budget standpoint. But as movie critics, we took several steps backward. 

After Matthew Leathers expressed disbelief that we’d attempt to post a Best of 08 movies list when most of the really good stuff (Revolutionary Road; The Wrestler; Wendy & Lucy; Frost/Nixon) hasn’t come out yet, while we have yet to see the rest of what’s supposed to be the really good stuff (Slumdog Millionaire; Synecdoche, New York; The Visitor; The Reader; even Wall-E), we realized we’d be doing a disservice to our readership if we offered any definitive word now on the best of film in 2008. Thus, expect our list sometime in the new year, perhaps shortly after Matthew posts his so we can just crib from that.

Until then, some facts and figures on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which we saw today with both of our families:

LENGTH OF MOVIE: 159 minutes (a k a, “looooong”)

LENGTH OF SHORT STORY THE MOVIE IS BASED ON: 24 pages.

APPROPRIATENESS FOR VIEWING WITH IN-LAWS: Very appropriate. (Certainly more appropriate than Meet the Fockers.) Only one swear word (said emphatically by a seven-year-old); very tasteful, non-explicit love scenes.

PERCENTAGE OF MOVIE NARRATED BY SUSIE BEERS FOR THE SAKE OF JON BEERS: Somewhere around 40%.

NUMBER OF SCENES IN WHICH A MAN IS STRUCK BY LIGHTNING: Seven.

FIRST MOVIE DAVID FINCHER AND BRAD PITT WORKED ON TOGETHER: Seven.

PITT CHARACTER FROM A FINCHER MOVIE WHO WOULD CRUSH BOTH DET. DAVID MILLS AND BENJAMIN BUTTON:  Tyler Durden in a TKO.

VERDICT FROM THE WOMAN SITTING IN FRONT OF US: “That movie was endless.”

VERDICT FROM DAN VORE: “I felt like I just went fifteen rounds.”

VERDICT FROM ERIN VORE: “That old man was hot as donkey.”

VERDICT FROM BEN VORE: “Tilda Swinton is nutburgers hot.”

VERDICT FROM DONNA VORE: “That wasn’t what I was expecting. I don’t know what I was expecting.”

AGREED-UPON AMOUNT OF MOVIE THAT COULD HAVE BEEN CUT OUT WITHOUT ANY ADVERSE EFFECT:   Answers vary. Anywhere between 15 minutes (Erin) and 94 minutes (Dan). 

HOURS YOU WILL SPEND AFTER THE FILM WISHING YOU WERE A BALLET DANCER:  Approximately 3.5.

HOURS YOU WILL SPEND AFTER THE FILM INSPECTING YOUR WRINKLES AND PONDERING MORTALITY:  Approximately 3.5.

NUMBER OF TIMES YOU WILL THINK, “THIS IS AWFULLY SIMILAR TO FORREST GUMP”: Anywhere between three and eleven.

 

An early favorite for Best Movie of 2009? We’ve waited three years for this.

2008: The Year in Books

Books, more than music, TV or movies, are especially disserviced by Top Ten lists. Let’s compare them to movies. Your typical movie runs around two hours. Your typical book generally demands two to three times that time investment, longer if you’re attempting something like Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace and shorter if you’re reading Dr. Seuss or just happen to read at a blistering pace. And there are so many books. Yes, there are so many movies too. But it seems to us that it’s much easier to narrow TV shows or movies down to a shortlist than it is to corral the Top Ten Books of the Year.

We suspect many would disagree with us on this. Think of all the new music that comes out every year. How on earth do we narrow that down to the ten best? Rolling Stone engages in a particularly ludicrous exercise of ranking the Top 100 songs of the year. There may be a case for the single catchiest, most emblematic song of any given year. But after the top two or three, what differentiates song #12 from, say, #63? Or #91? What makes “Spaceman” by The Killers sixteen spots more superior than “Aly, Walk With Me” by The Raveonettes? (And RS abides by the polite notion that no band should occupy more than one spot on that list, a democratic but critically limiting gesture.)

This is all standard nose-turning at the commodification of art into tidy boxes with grades or number values attached to them. But let’s face it, we love Top Ten Lists. They’re punchy! They’re controversial! They’re conversation starters! So here we go. (We promise not to do this throat-clearing for every post this week.)

We refuse to rank these books in any order, though we have grouped them thematically and singled one out as the best. Without further ado, here are the Ten Best Books released in 2008 that we found the time to read.

 

SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS

DANGEROUS LAUGHTER, Steven Millhauser.  The weakest of our four collections, Dangerous Laughter has been earning such praise mainly as a sort of literary Lifetime Achievement Award for Millhauser. All of his standard themes — adolescence, the extremes of obsession, the strange fantastical realms of imagination cozying up to reality — show up in thirteen stories that read like spooky, sometimes comic parables. (Millhauser wrote the short story that was the basis for The Illusionist, if that gives you a frame of reference.) The first story in this collection, “Cat ‘n’ Mouse,” is a literary treatment of a Tom & Jerry cartoon. The cat and mouse become heroic, tragic figures locked in an epic contest of wills. It sets the stage for all that follows, with “A Room in the Attic” and “The Wizard of West Orange” being the standouts. While we heartily recommend this collection, we especially recommend Millhauser’s very first novel, Edwin Mullhouse, a parody biography of an 11-year-old as written by his best friend that is one of the richest, funniest and most terrifying books about childhood we’ve ever read. If you’re in the mood for something shorter, this essay that Millhauser wrote for the New York Times Book Review in October is also an excellent introduction.

OLIVE KITTERIDGE, Elizabeth Strout.  Strout is a master of the rituals and routines of small town lives, and these stories, set in Maine and revolving around the central figure of retired schoolteacher Olive Kitteridge, are rich with spiritual drama. These people love and hurt one another. Sometimes they forgive and reconcile, many times they do not. What Strout does so well is locate the humanity of her characters even as she strips them to the bone and lays them bare on the page, skeletons and all. Olive is among the orneriest and least likable figures in recent fiction, which is part of her charm. She’ll remind you of at least one of your relatives. Melancholy looms over each of these stories (the best of which is “Security”), but if you see Olive through to the end you’ll be rewarded with that rare quality only the best short stories deliver: a genuine epiphany that requires no sleight of hand.

OUR STORY BEGINS, Tobias Wolff.  Most of the stories in Our Story Begins are collected from previous editions, but they remind you of Wolff’s mastery of the form. Reading them a second, third and fourth time, you’ll be startled by the hints and suggestions of all the other stories taking place on the margins of the page. “Flyboys” is ostensibly about three boys building an airplane, but underneath that there’s a shifting allegiance of friendship as well as a prickly portrayal of class tension. While the new stories here aren’t as dazzling as his earlier stuff, they are sturdy, well-crafted stories that showcase Wolff’s skill at pinpointing how the choices people make illuminate the depths of their character, leading to self-discoveries that usually happen a moment too late.

UNACCUSTOMED EARTH, Jhumpa Lahiri.  We really hate the cover, and that’s the only thing going against the best short story collection of the year. Lahiri is firmly grounded in the mundane of everyday relationships, particularly between husbands and wives, fathers and daughters, or brothers and sisters. Her stories are simple and straightforward, and unlike Millhauser they pull no punches. Which is why it’s so startling to reach the end of them and feel genuinely transported by something revelatory that has just transpired on the page. The three linked stories that end the collection start slow but build to a harrowing crescendo, touching down in recent history by weaving one of the characters into a profound natural tragedy. Whether this collection is better than her first, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Interpreter of Maladies, is purely an academic argument. You should read them both.

 

NON-FICTION

We’ll recommend only one book here, as we dabble very little in non-fiction or generally stick to current events-related titles that typically age poorly. That said…

THE DARK SIDE, Jane Mayer  …is an exception to the rule, a timely work of investigative journalism that translates well to book form and should remain relevant for years to come. It is also a thoroughly depressing read. Mayer traces the evolution of America’s policies on torture and detainment in the wake of 9/11 as our government sought to balance the need to prevent another such attack with the mission to uphold American ideals of civil rights and justice for all. Mayer’s account is even-handed but appropriately critical: she makes no straw men, but she also drives to the heart of who authorized and shaped policies which effectively endorsed torture. Not a light read, but a provocative, thoroughly researched one. It will take a toll on you.

To lighten things up before we get to the final five fiction picks, let’s have a brief interlude with …

 

THE FUNNIEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR

ZOMBIE HAIKU, Ryan Mecum.  Few books capture the existential angst of zombie existence better than Ryan Mecum’s Zombie Haiku. His meter is both Keatsian and bone-chilling. You will laugh. You will cry. You will lock your doors and take temporary solace in the fact zombies have difficulties with doorknobs. If you have not already introduced yourself to this zombie masterpiece (and even if you have), do yourself a favor and watch this:

GRANDMA’S DEAD: BREAKING BAD NEWS WITH BABY ANIMALS, Amanda McCall & Ben Schwartz.  We’ve all had to share bad news before. But how do you tastefully convey the sentiment which says, “You’re my least favorite child?” Or, “Recycling won’t help?” It’s a tricky two-step. Thankfully we have baby animals to help us do it. This book is handily equipped with tear-away postcards that you can mail to your friends. 

GET YOUR WAR ON, David Rees.  The most profane and outrageous strip of the past six years, Get Your War On made the jump to an animated comic this year at 236.com. It was also collected in this single volume. It is extremely offensive. It is also hilarious. 

STUFF WHITE PEOPLE LIKE, Christian Lander.  Adapted from the blog of the same name, SWPL skewers a certain type of liberal-minded, “Wire”-loving, NPR-listening, “Arrested Development”-watching, indie rock-enthusing white subculture. Or, the Vores.

Now, on with the Top Ten.

 

NOVELS

NETHERLAND, Joseph O’Neill.  If you would have told us that we’d fall for a book about cricket this year, we would not have believed you. But we did. And Netherland was probably our most enjoyable read of the year. It is a book which makes you aware of the pleasure of just reading it (without doing so in a distracting or pleading way). Many books have tried to capture New York post-9/11. Netherland is not a perfect book, but it almost perfectly succeeds in just that task.

THE STORY OF EDGAR SAWTELLE, David Wroblewski.  A big, sprawling yarn roughly based on Hamlet starring a mute boy and set on a dog-breeding farm in Wisconsin. Not your typical formula for a bestseller (aside from the dog part), but The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, some fifteen years in the making, is superior popular fiction. You may have heard that Oprah recommends it too. (We’re coming around on Oprah ever since she got Cormac McCarthy to go on TV.)

LUSH LIFE, Richard Price.  Like a season of “The Wire” compressed into 464 pages. Set in the rapidly changing Lower East Side, Lush Life starts with a murder (an accident? premeditated?) and accelerates into a multi-layered, sociologically-complex thriller on class, race, justice and forgiveness. Everyone says Price writes the best dialogue out there, and we find no reason to disagree. 

(While we’re at it, who is Walter Kirn sleeping with at the New York Times Book Review that he gets to review all the best books and do such a hack job on them? His hack job on Lush Life [summary: "I'm secretly incredibly jealous that I didn't write this book myself but watch me write a tough, gritty, street-smart review that only glancingly addresses the book I'm supposed to be reviewing"] was surpassed only by his hack jobs on Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close [summary: "I'm secretly incredibly jealous that I didn't write this book myself nor am a young prodigy like Mr. Foer but I can sure take the punk down a notch or two with a snarky review"] and especially How Fiction Works [summary: "I'm secretly incredibly jealous of the esteemed critic  James Wood and I wish he would die. Therefore accept my gift of a steaming heap of sophomoric condescension"]. Stop. Giving. This. Man. Reviews. Or just assign him to James Patterson “books.” (We scare quote “books” because no one has invented the term for “paint-by-numbers-using-words” yet. Give us your suggestions!) This way Kirn would still collect a regular paycheck six or seven times a year but do no further harm.)

(Glad we got that off our chest.)

HOME, Marilynne Robinson. Home was not as rewarding as Gilead, but it’s Marilynne Robinson. She’s written three books in twenty-eight years. If she writes a book, it makes the Top Ten list.

Last but certainly not least,

2666, Roberto Bolaño.  How do you separate Bolaño’s masterwork from all the hype surrounding it? How can a dense, sometimes confounding 898-page novel separated into five parts which may or may not add up to a greater whole really deserve all the superlatives being thrown its way? Being as prone to hype as we are (and given the fact no less than six of our friends are reading this and having giddy conversations about its potential even in part one), the only way to find out was to start reading it and plunge our way through the occasional four-page-long sentence or bizarre dream sequence or tangential, Borges-esque surrealism. We’ll admit right now that we haven’t quite finished yet (we’re still in part four), which may strike some as preposterous that we’d still include it on a Best Of list. We promise a full review in the new year. But like Netherland in a quite different fashion, 2666 (a reference to the apocalypse? To the time lapse between the Garden of Eden and Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt?) is about the journey, and it’s a reading experience unlike any we’ve had in a long time. For this reason, and for the book’s open defiance of categorization or closure (what Henry Hitchings calls Bolaño’s “enthusiasm for misdirection”), we jump on the hype bandwagon and endorse it as the Best Book of the Year. 

(If you are still of the mindset that we sacrificed whatever credibility we may have had as literary critics by endorsing a book we haven’t even finished yet, we have only one question: Have you never written a paper on a book that you did not read in its entirety? Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. That said, should we encounter something so awful in the last part of 2666 that would make us regret our endorsement, we will retract its Book of the Year status and retroactively award it to Netherland. You will know if this happens.)

 

HONORABLE MENTION

THE BRIEF, WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO, Junot Diaz.  Why just an honorable mention for last year’s Pulitzer winner? Well, it technically came out in 2007, but we finally took the advice of friends who said the book demanded our attention. Talking about it just now, we can’t believe we both read this just seven months ago in the spring. It feels like four years ago and it feels like last week. You know what we mean?

 

THE YEAR’S WORST

We didn’t have to endure many stinkers this year, but one stood out: 

WHAT WAS LOST, Catherine O’Flynn.  There are few genres which make us cringe more than “literary mystery.” Why must genre fiction always aspire to “literary” standards? Michael Chabon has done much to tear down these silly categorizations, but still they persist. For us, the worst example of this recent fashionable trend was Kate Atkinson’s Case Histories, an insufferable little book which succeeded neither as literary novel nor mystery yet garnered both critical acclaim and commercial success. (Stephen King was typically hyperbolic about it. In all fairness, Case Histories may have suffered from the Rebound Syndrome, since we read it immediately after the exceptional On Beauty by Zadie Smith.) In the vein of Case Histories, Catherine O’Flynn’s What Was Lost tries to be a commentary on urban and societal change while telling the story of a missing girl who may or may not have resurfaced twenty years later. Yawn. We felt compelled to finish it to say we did. Now we feel compelled to tell you it was bad. Our work here is done.

Tomorrow: The Best & Worst of TV!

Friday Recommends: 30 Rock

“I was young and confused and your moms didn’t want me around no more.”

 

The funniest show on television right now is 30 Rock. We like it so much we want to take it behind the middle school and get it pregnant. The sooner you catch up on seasons one and two, the more prepared you’ll be for season three’s premiere on October 30. And the sooner you finish reading this post, the sooner you can start. 

If you’re still skeptical, watch this:

Now go get ‘em! (We don’t want the next Arrested Development to pull another Arrested Development.)

Stuff White People Like

If you, like us, are white, then stuffwhitepeoplelike.com will only confirm just how white you are.

The site, introduced to us by Mike Cicak and Andy Sweeney, is run by people who are apparently watching us wherever we go, aiming some kind of X-ray gun at our heads so as to understand exactly what’s going on inside our brains. We, for example, like the following things (which white people like us also seem to like a lot too):

Grammar. While dining at the Corner Bistro recently with the Cicaks, we were mortified to see not one but two misspelled items on the Dessert Menu. “Wait, ‘bannanas’ doesn’t have two n’s,” Ben said. “And that’s not how you spell ‘carmel,’” Erin added. “We have to tell them.” Ben has a (white) friend at work who carries a bottle of White Out around with her so she can correct such misspellings whenever she sees them. Man we love grammar.

Hating Corporations. We really dislike corporations. When we saw the documentary The Corporation several years ago, we spent the entire ride home earnestly discussing how depressed we were by corporations. We also have No Logo on our bookshelves and, while we no longer have recent issues of Adbusters lying around, we do have Kalle Lasn’s Culture Jam shelved right next to No Logo. (In keeping with the white-people-like-grammar-and-rules observation above, all of our bookshelves are alphabetized and arranged by sub-section, hence Klein, Lasn on our “countercultural” shelf, top left shelf, first bookcase in the dining room.)

Public Radio. We love public radio. Erin is concerned about Ben’s fixation with Diane Rehm. We think Ira Glass, Terry Gross and Carl Kasell would all have a great time at one of our dinner parties. But we do kind of despise those schlubs on The Splendid Table.

Arrested Development. We will fight you if you insult Arrested Development. Erin often tries to mimic Lucille Bluth’s over-the-top eye wink, and we’d like all of our readers to know that we at the Vorehouse run a pretty tight ship here. A gaming ship. 

Assists. Ben simply loves assists. John Stockton is, was, and always will be the greatest point guard of all time. When Ben still had hair, people often remarked how much it looked like John Stockton’s haircut. When you’re white and you can’t dunk, you do the next best thing: pass!

Wes Anderson movies. We don’t have kids, but if we did, we’d still love Wes Anderson movies more than them. (This has been a recurring theme in marriage counseling, but we don’t understand why our therapist is so concerned about it.) When, over a camp-day-off meal at The Olive Garden in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, we discovered one another’s mutual affection for Rushmore, this was literally a deal-breaker. We still hand each other notes during boring church services/lectures/graduations that say things like, “Rich kids = Bad? This guy = Best chapel speaker ever.” And in a contest of superheroes, the jaguar shark wins every time.

The Wire. Ben thinks The Wire is the greatest television show of all time. At work, Tuesday is the day everyone has a Wire character nickname on the daily schedule, so you’ll frequently overhear exchanges between two skinny white dudes like, ”What’s up, Slim Charles?” “Not much, Bunk. I’ve got some WMDs coming off the boat today if you need a re-up.” “Solid. I’m in.”

If you are a white person too, you can find out more about yourself in print form on July 1. But don’t buy it on Amazon or at one of the big boxes. Support your local independent bookstore!