Merry Third Day of Christmas!

Xmas gifts included gift cards (always useful); DVD’s (of tv stuff I do watch – always a good good to give to a tv person); and some books (Al Gore’s book, the tie-in to the documentary – should be an interesting read).

December reading included:

“The Great Game: The Myth and Reality of Espionage” by ex-inspector general of the CIA Frederick Hitz, on the literary nature of books on spies and how the history of real spies is that much more crazy (or just plain more human in a dimwitted kind of way) than what LeCarre or Tom Clancy or even Ian Fleming may devise. An interesting read, consistent with my whole spy reading kick of late. The book kind of made me want to read more LeCarre, if nothing else; on the other hand, it also felt like the author was still dancing around the flaws of espionage (like, how can a democracy justify clandestine operations or acts of subterfuge that seem to undermine the very ideas of democracy, including – say – accountability?) – but, considering that the CIA had to clear the book – well, I was impressed by the candid tone and that someone with this Ivy-League-trained-lawyer/ex-spy bureaucrat’s credentials actually seems to enjoy reading spy fiction (of the LeCarre or Graham Greene variety, anyway; couldn’t tell if he cared for James Bond stuff at all).

“The Myth of Moral Justice: Why Our Legal System Fails to do What’s Right” by Thane Rosenbaum. A rather irritating read; he’s a law-and-literature professor at Fordham; he’s also a novelist. He writes very well, but he’s clearly bitter about having been a lawyer; having been through a bad experience with the legal system (bad divorce? Bad anything?); and so he goes on this tear over why can’t our legal system be “moral” (but doesn’t really define what is “moral” – maybe he means the Judeo-Christian Western culture sense of it?), with references to how the lawyers on tv or literature are so much more noble with their sense of justice and angst and devotion to “truth.” Rosenbaum didn’t exactly come up with solutions (no one’s saying the system’s perfect; morality is not the same as legality, as they taught us in law school; and I thought he’s a little nuts to suggest abolishing statutes of limitations), but I guess he’s trying to be provocative to get dialog in the legal profession. Oh, well. It’s a different kind of reading to have tried.
“The Hero With a Thousand Faces” by Joseph Campbell. Very good reading on comparative mythology. A classic book that inspired Bill Moyers to interview Campbell and produce the series “Power of Myth” (which I’m currently reading). Campbell focused a bit much of psychoanalysis as a way to analyze myths (too much for my taste, anyway, even if he did have a point that psychoanalysis can be insightful), but his storytelling was superb.
In time for the New Year: January is “Get Organized Month.” Interesting NY Times article by Penelope Green – messes may actually be ok. Considering that I’m a horrific clutter person, I find some sense of consolation in this. Quotes:

“[….]But contrarian voices can be heard in the wilderness. An anti-anticlutter movement is afoot, one that says yes to mess and urges you to embrace your disorder. Studies are piling up that show that messy desks are the vivid signatures of people with creative, limber minds (who reap higher salaries than those with neat “office landscapes”) and that messy closet owners are probably better parents and nicer and cooler than their tidier counterparts. It’s a movement that confirms what you have known, deep down, all along: really neat people are not avatars of the good life; they are humorless and inflexible prigs, and have way too much time on their hands.

“It’s chasing an illusion to think that any organization — be it a family unit or a corporation — can be completely rid of disorder on any consistent basis,” said Jerrold Pollak, a neuropsychologist at Seacoast Mental Health Center in Portsmouth, N.H., whose work involves helping people tolerate the inherent disorder in their lives. “And if it could, should it be? Total organization is a futile attempt to deny and control the unpredictability of life. I live in a world of total clutter, advising on cases where you’d think from all the paper it’s the F.B.I. files on the Unabomber,” when, in fact, he said, it’s only “a person with a stiff neck.” [….]

Stop feeling bad, say the mess apologists. There are more urgent things to worry about. Irwin Kula is a rabbi based in Manhattan and author of “Yearnings: Embracing the Sacred Messiness of Life,” which was published by Hyperion in September. “Order can be profane and life-diminishing,” he said the other day. “It’s a flippant remark, but if you’ve never had a messy kitchen, you’ve probably never had a home-cooked meal. Real life is very messy, but we need to have models about how that messiness works.” [….]

Last week David H. Freedman, another amiable mess analyst (and science journalist), stood bemused in front of the heathery tweed collapsible storage boxes with clear panels ($29.99) at the Container Store in Natick, Mass., and suggested that the main thing most people’s closets are brimming with is unused organizing equipment. “This is another wonderful trend,” Mr. Freedman said dryly, referring to the clear panels. “We’re going to lose the ability to put clutter away. Inside your storage box, you’d better be organized.”

Mr. Freedman is co-author, with Eric Abrahamson, of “A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder,” out in two weeks from Little, Brown & Company. The book is a meandering, engaging tour of beneficial mess and the systems and individuals reaping those benefits, like Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose mess-for-success tips include never making a daily schedule.

As a corollary, the book’s authors examine the high cost of neatness — measured in shame, mostly, and family fights, as well as wasted dollars — and generally have a fine time tipping over orthodoxies and poking fun at clutter busters and their ilk, and at the self-help tips they live or die by. They wonder: Why is it better to pack more activities into one day? By whose standards are procrastinators less effective than their well-scheduled peers? Why should children have to do chores to earn back their possessions if they leave them on the floor, as many professional organizers suggest?

In their book Mr. Freedman and Mr. Abrahamson describe the properties of mess in loving terms. Mess has resonance, they write, which means it can vibrate beyond its own confines and connect to the larger world. It was the overall scumminess of Alexander Fleming’s laboratory that led to his discovery of penicillin, from a moldy bloom in a petri dish he had forgotten on his desk. [….]

According to a small survey that Mr. Freedman and Mr. Abrahamson conducted for their book — 160 adults representing a cross section of genders, races and incomes, Mr. Freedman said — of those who had split up with a partner, one in 12 had done so over a struggle involving one partner’s idea of mess. Happy partnerships turn out not necessarily to be those in which products from Staples figure largely. Mr. Freedman and his wife, for example, have been married for over two decades, and live in an offhandedly messy house with a violently messy basement — the latter area, where their three children hang out, decorated (though that’s not quite the right word) in a pre-1990s Tompkins Square Park lean-to style.

The room’s chaos is an example of one of Mr. Freedman and Mr. Abrahamson’s mess strategies, which is to create a mess-free DMZ (in this case, the basement stairs) and acknowledge areas of complementary mess. Cherish your mess management strategies, suggested Mr. Freedman, speaking approvingly of the pile builders and the under-the-bed stuffers; of those who let their messes wax and wane — the cyclers, he called them; and those who create satellite messes (in storage units off-site). “Most people don’t realize their own efficiency or effectiveness,” he said with a grin.

It’s also nice to remember, as Mr. Freedman pointed out, that almost anything looks pretty neat if it’s shuffled into a pile.

That’s right – no anti-biotics would have been discovered if the scientist hadn’t a slob!

And, last but not least: the passing of Gerald Ford. Interesting details on his life; people have this view of him as the not-so-bright man, but he did go to Yale Law for Pete’s sake. And, his historically not-so-smooth actions arguably took courage and ended up not having terrible consequences (pardoning Nixon may have helped the nation move on from the deceitful past – at least, I don’t hold it against Ford for doing it). Heck, apparently Ford’s telling NYC to “drop dead” as the Daily News always had it in the infamous headline ended up being a good move – Ford was apparently trying to tell NYC to get its fiscal act together before he would agree to give financial assistance, which may have led us out of the fiscal basement. Maybe Ford’s legacy may have something to teach a certain current administration? Well, as a student of American history, I’m always happy to keep learning anyway.  Time moves on, and it’s the time of year to reflect.

Christmas Eve 2006

Belated, but not forgotten: the passing of Joe Barbera. Considering how much Saturday morning cartoons I used to watch… Well, salute to the Barbera of Hanna-Barbera.

The soon-to-be-closing of Murder Ink, a NYC mystery bookstore; the NY Times prints the observations of the owner, Jay Pearsall:

A customer who worked at Carmine’s once said it seemed that bookselling must be a lot like tending bar, without the vomit. It’s true that we work hard and fast, serving up recommendations for customers, who sometimes tell us their problems (like the older woman who informed us that the elastic in her underwear had lost its stretch).

But the game couldn’t go on forever. Over the last few years, it didn’t seem to me that there was much that I could do to control the closing of the stores, except to keep adding more flaming torches to the juggling act and await the inevitable crash and burn. It’s become a sad, familiar song on Broadway, and far beyond, that a small, independent store can no longer keep up with the rent. That is why we are closing our doors for good on New Year’s Eve.

Every now and then I comb our apartment shelves for books that I can add to the inventory at the stores. Recently, when I grabbed a copy of “The Plot Against America” by Philip Roth, I noticed one of my scribbled notes sticking out of it: “Every night, just before I leave the store, I take a seat on one of the rolling library stools and reflect on what a great place this is and how I won’t have it much longer.” There’s also written on the slip, in quotation marks (from the Roth book?): “One can only do so much to control one’s life.”

The soon-to-be-closing of La Rosita, on 108th and Broadway – had passed by it many times. Man, what is happening in NYC? Things closing, but what’s opening?

A Brooklyn Heights story, related to our alma mater law school.

I guess during the holidays, there’s much sadness and happiness, and thoughts abound.

And then there’s this: the Yule Log. Channel 11 aired a great documentary on how it came to be – a little Christmas card to New Yorkers everywhere.

A bit of joy – or humor anyway

I’ll post a little joy here:

Before he was Dr. House, he was just Hugh Laurie, British comedian, and they’re releasing DVD’s of his old show “A Bit of Fry and Laurie.” I liked the review NY Times’ Vincent Cosgrove made of the DVD – and it sounds like it’s a great DVD with a fun bonus of Laurie’s days in Cambridge with Emma Thompson and the others:

LONG before Hugh Laurie was captivating and galling American television viewers as the prickly Dr. Gregory House on Fox’s “House,” he was half of the acclaimed British sketch comedy team Fry and Laurie, along with his fellow Cambridge graduate Stephen Fry. (That’s right: Dr. House’s American accent is fake.) Their collaboration began more than 25 years ago, when both were members of the Cambridge Footlights troupe. They went on to team up on numerous TV shows in Britain, but for American audiences they were perhaps best known as Jeeves and Bertie Wooster on the “Jeeves and Wooster” series on “Masterpiece Theater.” [….]

Thankfully, there are recently released DVDs of the first two seasons of “A Bit of Fry and Laurie,” the duo’s inspired sketch comedy series, originally broadcast in 1989 and 1990 on BBC2.

Mr. Fry and Mr. Laurie wield words — real or nonsensical — with a precision Henry Higgins would admire. Skewering language, they also conjure a Lewis Carroll-like world. While there are moments of physical comedy, the pratfalls that produce the most laughs are verbal. Sample this prime example of Fry-Laurie gibberish: “Hold the newsreader’s nose squarely, waiter, or friendly milk will countermand my trousers.” [….]

Lamenting TV censors, the two explain that in their next sketch — set in a courtroom — they must use made-up words to describe a crime. Portraying a police officer, Mr. Laurie declares that the defendant called him a “fusking cloff-prunker.” When the judge expresses ignorance of the term, a lawyer (Mr. Fry) defines it as “an illicit practice whereby one person frangulates another’s plimp, my lord. He or she gratifies the other party by smuctating them avially.” Eventually, the bailiff faints.

A bonus on the DVD of the second season is the “Footlights Revue,” first broadcast on BBC in 1982. The performers — including Emma Thompson — are so young that you can imagine them still clutching their diplomas. In one sketch, Mr. Fry, at his mellifluous best, reads from a letter relating his encounter with Count Dracula in Transylvania. Mr. Fry recalls that when the “mighty oaken door” of the castle opened, he beheld the ghastly sight of Dracula’s manservant: “Of all the hideously disfigured spectacles I have ever beheld, those perched on the end of the man’s nose remain forever pasted into the album of my memory.” It’s enough to make the count whirl in his coffin. The rest of us can just have a good laugh.

The most entertaining thing about the Times’ posting this review on-line – well, they put in this clip of Laurie’s singing this hilarious love song (“Mystery… You remain a mystery to me… Different Country. You and I live in a different country… Estuary. I live on a house boat on an estuary…. [You’ve been d]ead since 1973…So why do I still long for you…”). Oh, and trust me – Jeeves and Wooster – too funny. Laurie was great as the total English gentleman idiot Bertie Wooster. Umm, no offense meant of course; just that Bertie really was an idiot… or, as the article notes, Laurie was quite a hoot indeed.