Leaving Las Vegas, Leaving For Good …

No, not me, but my Pop Matters colleague Aaron Knier frankly discusses how reading John O’Brien’s “Leaving Las Vegas” convinced him he had a battle with the bottle going on; the unresolved issue, however (which I chime in on in the comments), is the role of the enabler:

I took a train to New Orleans to visit the enabler, a bipolar alcoholic bartender—a match made in heaven.  We drank just about every moment we were conscious in a city that breeds and cultivates such behavior.  We took every pill we could find, and along the way, fell back into a sort of love.  After a few days, we went back to Tallahassee for another solid week of similar behavior.  When she finally went home, I thought I’d seen the bottom, but she’d only shown me a glimpse. 

Read Leaving Las Vegas and Leaving for Good.

Subversive Pinocchio

As Hurricane Shirley notes at Boil Some Water this morning, one book that I need for my personal research in writing my next novel is the new translation of Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio (New York Review Books) with an introduction by acclaimed author Umberto Eco.

From John Powers’ NPR essay, Collodi’s Brooding, Subversive Pinocchio, demonstrating that while the terrain may be a bit familiar, it sure as hell is not Disney’s Pinocchio:

Collodi’s book is, from the beginning, a very different — and much wilder — experience. Gepetto isn’t a kindly old man — he’s hot-tempered and grindingly poor. There is a talking cricket, but it’s not named Jiminy, doesn’t wear a top hat, and gets squished by Pinocchio 12 pages in when it tries to give him advice. This lack of sentimentality runs through the book, whose sense of reality reflects the harshness of life in Collodi’s Tuscany. This is a place driven by hunger, brutality, greed and social injustice.

Which isn’t to say that the book is depressing. In fact, it’s filled with wonderful surreal touches, many involving animals, like the huge snail that offers to let Pinocchio into his house then takes nine hours to reach the front door. A similar anarchic spirit infuses Pinocchio himself, who’s not the cute, anodyne figure we remember from the movie. He’s a selfish, unruly, sometimes cruel puppet — the very soul of childhood.

The Toaster Has Landed!

Palm Apodaca: Fantastic that you could figure that all out and lie that down on her so you could come up with a way to get your toast. Fantastic!

Dupea: Yeah, well, I didn’t get it, did I?

Palm Apodaca: No, but it was very clever. I would have just punched her out.

(Carole Eastman, Bob Rafelson, Five Easy Pieces, 1970)

An Unintended Modern Times Satire

Courtesy of our friend Zel-Kun in Chicago:

This morning Zai was not feeling well, she was in pain and had symptoms I won’t mention here.  I went to work and received a text that she was getting worse.  I ordered her to call the doctor, and she set off to find her insurance card.  She sends me another text saying it looked like her insurance lapsed.  She had assumed her insurance covered her through November… and that’s a dangerous assumption to make.

Read Medical Stuff

 

Good News Update

Through some stealth eleventh hour negotiations — namely, a terse reminder that my contract had been breached — a new contract plus two weeks advance against future earnings is being overnighted to me.

As Hemingway said, never bet against a man who has nothing to lose in a pugilistic contest.