Paul's Thing

You Can’t Read That! is a periodic post featuring banned book reviews and news roundups.

Arizona:

Here’s a good summary of the prejudices and fears behind Arizona’s ethnic studies ban and the removal of certain books from Tucson high school classes.

Elsewhere:

“I know up on top you are seeing great sights, but down here on the bottom, we too should have rights.”  Dr. Suess’ Yertle the Turtle sounds like some kind of hippie troublemaker, eh?  Ban him!

The Pennsylvania school district that banned a children’s book called The Dirty Cowboy has a long history of banning.

Keeping an eye on right wing groups dedicated to organizing parents who want to dictate what we, and our children, can read.

Here’s one Wisconsin school board standing up to organized would-be book banners.

But there are always more would-be book banners … here’s a Virginia couple who want their child’s school to ban M.T. Anderson’s YA novel, Feed.  I reviewed this book a while back … I’d recommend it to anyone, young or old.

My banned book Google alert summaries are clogged with links to stories about libraries jumping on the anti-Fifty Shades of Grey bandwagon, refusing to stock it on the grounds that it is erotica, not literature.  Interestingly, some readers are fighting back.  Must take guts, being willing to be publicly named as a supporter of “pornography” (and notice, the local newspaper does name names).  Everything old is new again, isn’t it?  Lenny Bruce and Henry Miller must be laughing.

We said goodbye to children’s author and illustrator Maurice Sendak last week.  Did you know his books were … and still are, from time to time … challenged and even banned?  Sad but true.

Last month I did some geocaching, going out with a hand-held GPS and looking for hidden stashes of goodies.  Last week I read an article about a Seattle library hiding books around town and challenging young readers to find them.  Now I’m having a peanut butter/chocolate truck collision moment.  How about hiding banned books for young geocachers to find, read, and hide again?  Anyone up for that?

The book I’m reviewing below is a YA novel aimed at middle and high school girls.  Before I get to the review, here’s an article from The Atlantic containing recommendations of good YA books for girls (and yes, almost all of them have been challenged or banned at one time or another).

You Can’t Read That! Banned Book Review

Gossip Girl (Gossip Girl #1)
by Cecily von Ziegesar

I read Gossip Girl because it keeps appearing on the American Library Association’s annual top ten list of frequently challenged books. These are books that are challenged by parents and religious groups who want them removed from school libraries and reading lists, often for brief mentions of sex or masturbation. Generally, when I read such a book, I find it to be honest, well written, and moral. Many are written with a young adult audience in mind and are meant to teach teenagers to think critically. They abound with valuable life lessons and are just the sort of books I wish I’d have read back in junior high … I come away scratching my head, wondering if these parents and religious groups ever read past the offending passage.

Alas, this is not the case with Gossip Girl. I read this slim volume, the first in a series aimed at young adult readers, in six hours. Finishing it, I felt as if I’d emerged from a hellish wait in a dentist’s office with nothing to read but back issues of People and Teen Beat. Shallow? My god, if you took out the celebrity name-dropping and references to expensive brand name products, glamorous vacation destinations, and tony Manhattan addresses, what you’d have left would be a pamphlet.

And what would be in that pamphlet? Bitchy WASP prep school girls and their date-rapey WASP preppie boyfriends, gossiping, cutting each other down to size, plotting vengeance over minor slights, drinking, taking drugs, cutting school, lying, fucking, and having their anuses photographed. No damn wonder this book gets parents and religious groups riled up … it’s nihilistic, bereft of a moral compass, dedicated to greed and vindictiveness.

I kept asking myself if there was some joke I wasn’t getting. Was I supposed to hate these characters? Were my lips meant to curl in disgust? Is Gossip Girl a subversive tract to be studied by proletarian youth so they’ll know who to drag to the guillotine, come the revolution?

Who reads this stuff? If J.K. Rowling’s heroes had been Draco Malfoy and his band of bullying shits, she’d still be languishing in obscurity. Yet the Gossip Girl books are quite popular, I understand, mainly with young girls. Are girls really this shallow? Well, someone must buy those celeb lifestyle magazines!

I suspect parents and religious groups go after the Gossip Girl books because they depict teenaged kids having sex and taking drugs. Personally, I’m far more upset by the characters’ lack of values and the absence of moral direction from the author. Would I want copies removed from the local junior high school’s library? No, of course not. But if I had a teenager at home, this is the last book I’d recommend.

I am “kind and broad-minded.”  So says the fortune cookie that came with last night’s Thai takeout.  The provenance is shaky at best (Thai food & fortune cookies?), and it’s not really a fortune, but I’ll take the compliment and answer, “Thank you, I try to be.”

I’m expecting a call from the Ducati dealer any moment now, giving me an estimate on getting the project bike running again.  The price will no doubt test my broad-mindedness.  And yes, now that you mention it, it is kind of me to fix up that old Duck for my daughter.

A more useful cookie would have come my way on Saturday and said “Beware the Ides of March,” except the last three words would have been scratched out and replaced with “Bees of Sunday.”

I went out with my hashing group Sunday morning for a little trail through the desert south of Udall Park in Tucson, and found myself back by an old landfill the city of Tucson is slowly trying to reclaim, several hundred fenced off acres with some old concrete pilings along the northwest corner.  We’ve done trails in this area before (I should know, I’ve set many of them), and the last few times we’ve been by those pilings we heard bees buzzing and knew there was a hive nearby.  Sunday morning I’d gotten separated from the pack and was by myself, walking and daydreaming, when I looked up, saw where I was, and remembered the bees.  And then there they were, just one or two at first, then lots and lots of them flying all around me, and suddenly I was stung, once, twice, three times: forehead, ear, left forearm.

They say all wild bees in Arizona are killer bees now, mixed in with that Africanized strain everyone was so worried about years ago.  Well, our worries were justified.  I immediately remembered reading about a maintenance worker who was killed by them when he came upon a hive while working on the roof of a Ramada Inn not half a mile from where I was.  All I could think to do was to stay calm and try to get away from the area as quickly as I could, without making sudden movements or batting at the bees with my hands.  I did a quick one-eighty and walked away as fast as I dared, keeping my arms still at my side.  The bees kept flying around my face and arms, getting up under my hat and buzzing by my ears, even landing on them, and I felt many more landing on the back of my t-shirt.  They stayed with me for a quarter of a mile, only leaving when I got back to the ball fields in the developed area of the park.

Once I was out of danger I pulled out my cell phone and called one of my friends in the pack, still on trail.  They must have walked by the hive moments before I was attacked, and I wanted to make sure everyone was okay.  They were, and not one of them even knew there were bees in that area.  Now that I think about it, I suspect the bees were just doing their own thing when the pack walked through and stirred them up.  And then I came along … Paul the target.

Based on what I read about killer bee attacks in and around Tucson, I got off incredibly easy.  By rights I should have been stung hundreds of times.  Some people say the best thing to do is to run away as fast as one can.  I can’t run for shit any more, so I chose to walk.  Resisting the urge to flail, as so many of us do when attacked by bees, undoubtably helped, but they also say killer bees really start to attack when they smell their friends stinging and dying, and three of their buds had just committed suicide by stinging me, so why they let me go is a total mystery.  Well, no, actually … they didn’t let me go, did they?  No, they stayed with me for a quarter of a mile, flying around me and even landing on me, almost as if they were escorting me away from their hive, prepared to attack the entire time.

Maybe they let me off because they sensed my kindly broad-mindedness.  Maybe these bees were Democrats.  Maybe I’ll grow gossamer wings and fly to the Moon.

You know what?  I’m lucky to be here, sitting comfortably in my home, writing on my blog.  You won’t catch me back in that corner of the desert again!

Here, for Mother’s Day, a short and self-indulgent list of concerns:

Suspending hashing for the summer.  Several years ago I founded a small family hare & hounds running group.  Starting three years ago, we quit setting trail during the hottest months of summer.  It was too hard to find volunteers to lay trail in 100+ degree heat, and even when we did find a hare only one or two diehards would show up.  So … here it is May.  There’s a hash later this morning, and the forecast is for 100 degrees.  Should I try to recruit a hare for June, making next month’s trail the last before the summer hiatus, or should I just call the finish today?

I always feel guilty when I don’t finish a book I’ve started.  Last night I gave up on a fantasy novel 200 pages in, with 200 more to go.  Nevertheless, I wrote a thoughtful review.  Why?  Why does this bother me so?  There are some things I am just not interested in, and fantasy is one of them.

I order movies on DVD from Netflix and review almost all of them.  There are movies I would never knowingly watch; occasionally I misread a Netflix blurb and order one.  Within the first five minutes I realize my mistake and eject it.  As with the books, I feel as if I should write a review, even if it’s only one sentence long.  In cases where I feel Netflix deliberately misleads its customers to get them to order certain DVDs, I think I’m right to write a short review and call Netflix out for false advertising.  But sometimes the mistake is entirely mine.  Should I just ignore the movie?  Probably, but it’s hard.  I see myself becoming obsessive and compulsive about writing reviews of books and movies.

I took the project bike in to the Ducati dealer Friday.  He’ll get it running again, and though it won’t be cheap I should still be able to sell the motorcycle and come out ahead.  But my daughter wants it.  She doesn’t have a car and can’t afford one.  She could, though, pay me back for the repairs, and I told her she could use it if she does.  She wants to use it for daily transportation to & from school and work.  That’s a lot of exposure, and Polly has no motorcycling experience.  I’m worried; Donna even more so.  Yeah, yeah, people all over the world ride motorcycles and motorbikes for transportation, and it’s dangerous everywhere.  Still, given Polly’s lack of experience I’d feel better if the Ducati at least had ABS brakes … maybe I should sell it and help Polly find a motorbike or scooter that does have ABS.

I have three blogs (and three separate Twitter accounts) for three identities: the everyday me, the hasher, and the cook.  There’s not much bleed-through (true, I did lead off this post with a reference to hashing, but I don’t do it often).  On Facebook, though, I make do with one identity, probably because that’s how everyone else does it there, or at least my fellow hashers.  I don’t know about the cooks.

That’s my mom there, and my dad of course.  I’m the one in my mother’s lap.  Mom died a long time ago but my sisters and I think of her all the time.  She was happy, and funny, and wasn’t afraid of lizards or snakes, and no one could possibly have had a better mother.  She was the rock our family rested on.

A long-forgotten friend from junior high school found me through Facebook a couple of months ago; after saying hi the first person he asked about was my mother.  She had that effect on people.

I was lucky enough to find a girl like mom, and she is the rock our family is founded on.  She’s in Las Vegas this weekend, watching our granddaughter Taylor’s last high school fast-pitch games, attending our grandson Quentin’s first communion.  I wish she was here, but she has momly obligations, and she doesn’t stint on those.

Well.  Happy mother’s day.

What does that title even mean?  Is the cat named Wednesday?  Sure, why not?  Let’s go with that.

My son can’t believe I haven’t said anything about the F-22′s oxygen problems, or about the two whistleblower Raptor pilots who appeared on 60 Minutes last weekend.

My first excuse comes easy: I know very little about the F-22′s oxygen system.  In the F-15 (and all the other jets I flew), the oxygen we breathed came from a liquid oxygen reservoir and was delivered to our masks through time-tested oxygen regulators dating back to the 1950s.  The advantage was that the O2 we breathed was clean; the disadvantage was that the LOX had to be replenished between flights, and on a really long flight you could conceivably deplete your supply.  The F-22 uses an onboard oxygen generating system (OBOGS) that extracts O2 from engine bleed air.  The advantage is an unlimited supply of oxygen (as long as the engines are running); the disadvantage, it seems to me, is the possibility of contamination.

Military pilots visit the altitude chamber every few years to relearn their hypoxia symptoms.  My symptoms were always the same: lightheadedness and dizziness.  I valued the training and believed that if I ever had an oxygen problem in flight I’d recognize my symptoms and do something about it.  But there were always one or two guys in the chamber who didn’t recognize their symptoms and would keep trying to put the pegs in the holes until they passed out … or until the chamber safety monitors clamped the masks back over their faces and set their regulators to 100% O2.  The good thing about hypoxia is that when you start breathing oxygen again you’re instantly cured; the bad thing is that if you’re alone in a single-seat fighter you might not recognize your symptoms until it’s too late to do anything about it (those guys especially).

One of the two 60 Minutes whistleblowers said that when it happened to him he recognized the symptoms and wanted to do something about it.  There’s an emergency oxygen bottle on the side of the ejection seat: when you activate it O2 under pressure is forced into your mask for about 10 minutes, plenty of time to descend to a lower altitude.  But one of his hypoxia symptoms, frighteningly, was that he couldn’t remember where the emergency oxygen bottle was, or how to activate it!

As for my opinion on the whistleblowers, well … civilians may cheer when a CIA whistleblower steps forward to expose abuses and wrongdoings within the agency, but fellow agents close ranks against the whistleblower.  And that’s before the higher-ups retaliate.  The military is no different.  These guys spoke out of school, and they’re going to pay a price for doing that.  Never mind whether they’re right or wrong.  It’s just the way things are in tight-knit professions.

On to North Carolina and the state constitutional amendment voted in yesterday, the one limiting marriage to heterosexual couples only.  One of my favorite bloggers, Nancy Nall, had this to say today:

Looks like the North Carolina gay-marriage thing went down (snerk) too. This is bad news, but not the worst news. I feel, more than ever, that this issue is over, and what we’re seeing now is just the final skirmishes. But never say never.

Doesn’t this remind you, just a little, of Rumsfeld and Cheney back in 2004, describing the first of what became thousands of Iraqi resisters as dead-enders?  When it comes to gay marriage, America is full of dead-enders.  Actually, though, I agree with Nancy.  The day is coming when same-sex adult couples in America will be able to marry or enter into legally-recognized civil unions granting them the same rights as married heterosexuals.  When?  I think another couple of decades, and that’s if we re-elect Obama.  If we elect Romney, add another decade or two.  Remember, in his first term Bill Clinton wanted to remove restrictions on military service for homosexuals.  Intense public and political reaction forced him to settle for Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and nearly two decades passed before President Obama ended DADT.

People who think embedding anti-gay marriage prohibitions into their states’ constitutions is some kind of unbeatable trump against gay rights need to take at look at Article One, Section Eight of the Constitution of the United States of America; you know, the one that grants Congress, not the Executive, the power to declare war.  No one’s tried to play that card in years (least of all Congress); I doubt any recent occupant of the White House has lost so much as a minute of sleep over it.  Women thought the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision guaranteed them the right to choose whether or not to abort a pregnancy; states all over the country are carrying on as if Roe v. Wade never happened, and no one in the Department of Justice is doing a damn thing about it.  Just sayin’, constitutions are increasingly seen as mere pieces of paper.

In the wake of the latest underwear bomb plot, is there any doubt those naked body scan machines will now be installed at every airport and we’ll all be forced to walk through them? You can bet that if you’re young and sexually attractive, regardless of gender, the men and women of the TSA will find excuses to make you walk through twice. At last, being old, fat, and ugly will give me a slight advantage: I’ll get to the gate before all you good-lookin’ youngsters.

Personal stuff: actually there is a cat in today’s bag, our daughter Polly’s late Buckley, who was put down today.  The poor thing started getting skin tags a couple of years ago, and after Polly took him to the vet to have them removed they came back as horrible swollen cancerous lesions.  He was covered with them, and left blood stains wherever he went.  He couldn’t tell us whether he was in pain, but he sure looked miserable, and Polly finally came around to the thought that he was only going to get worse, so she hired a vet to come to the house today to euthanize him.  He’s buried in our back yard now, the second of Polly’s pets to come to rest there; the first was her cherry-headed conure Skipper, who lived almost 30 years before dying of a stroke.  It’s all very sad, and everyone has a long face today.  I know I’ll be a basket case when my dog’s time comes … our beloved pets have such short lives.

End on a downer?  Not if I can help it!  Donna’s hosting her bridge group tonight, which means I get to watch whatever I want on TV.  What I really want to watch is the American version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which arrived today, but Donna leaves tomorrow morning for a four-day trip to Las Vegas and wants to watch it too, which means I have to hold onto it until she gets back, so I guess I don’t get to watch whatever I want after all, so, shit, I’m back where I started.  Let me try again.

Pratt & Whithey R-4360 Wasp Major

Behold the pinnacle of reciprocating aircraft engine design. They called it the Corncob: 28 cylinders in 4 rows, 4,360 cubic inches. Early versions produced 3,000 horsepower; later versions 3,500; one version put out 4,300 hp. This is a cutaway engine used to train mechanics; it has a hidden electric motor to turn the crankshaft so that all the connecting rods, pistons, and valves operate. I want this so bad. I want it in my living room. Imagine six of these at full throttle, lifting a B-36 into the air. Windows would break for miles around. If they’d had car alarms back in the day, a whole city’s worth would have gone off all at once, whoop-whoop-whoop. Giants walked the earth.  Damn.  Just damn.

“I dreamt about Jews every night for years and years. Fortunately I have never met one….”
– Umberto Eco, The Prague Cemetery

	Red Plenty by Francis Spufford Not exactly a historical novel, more a novelized approach to writing history. The distinction is a real one. The history in question is that of the Soviet Union during the time of Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and Kosygin, and it’s a specific slice of history: the USSR’s drive, from the late 1950s through the 1970s, to create a society of consumer abundance equal to or surpassing that of the USA. This is what Khrushchev meant when he said “we will bury you”: he wasn’t talking about military might, he was talking about economic might. Through centralized economic planning and careful allocation of resources and management of industrial production, he wanted communism to live up to its promise, a good life for all its citizens.  Spufford tells the tale through the eyes of fictional comrades strategically placed in Soviet scientific and planning organizations. His history comes alive through these believable and sympathetic characters, whom we first meet in the 1950s when they are young and full of dreams, following them up the arcs of their professional careers and back down again, as in middle age they come to realize the system has not only failed but personally betrayed them. Mixed in with these fictional characters are actual players in Soviet history, from the aforementioned leaders to computer pioneers, academicians, state planning commissars, and economic planners … historical figures who actually led the effort to create a society of plenty in the USSR during the Khrushchev era. Khrushchev’s dream was probably always impossible, but Spufford almost makes you believe it had a chance … certainly the characters in Red Plenty believe in its potential. But of course it failed in the face of Soviet realities: the leaders’ reluctance to risk loss of power and privilege, the triumph of ideology over reality, political infighting, widespread cheating on state-imposed delivery and production quotas, and … always and forever … inertia. Interspersed with chapters told through the eyes of fictional and actual Russians, the author inserts short chapters written from an omniscient third-person historical perspective … you would think that approach too textbook-like, but it provides necessary perspective and is curiously fascinating. I loved the book, but then again I’m fascinated by Soviet history. The USSR loomed large in my generation’s life, and I was a cold warrior with more than a casual interest in what was going on behind the Iron Curtain. I hope younger readers will pick it up and read it. Francis Spufford has a fascinating story to tell.
	Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend by Susan Orlean When I was a kid, I didn’t know TV’s Rin Tin Tin was the great-grandson of a silent movie star. I assumed the dog I knew was the one and only Rinty, just as there was only one Lassie. I knew nothing of the first Rin Tin Tin or the long history of canine movie stars. Now I know rather a lot, thanks to Susan Orlean’s engaging biography. This is the story of Rin Tin Tin: his discovery, adoption, training, career, and life. It’s the story of Lee, Rinty’s owner, stage mother, tireless advocate. It’s the story of Bert, who got Rin Tin Tin’s successors on TV. His fans and all the people who have tried to preserve his legacy, as well as the few who tried to cash in on it, including the lawyers who to this day squabble over who owns “Rin Tin Tin,” not the animal, but the concept. World War One. The movie and television business. Dog breeders. The history of the German shepherd in Europe and the United States. See? I told you I learned a lot from reading this book! As a boy I favored TV’s Lassie over Rin Tin Tin. I wasn’t a fan of westerns, and Rin Tin Tin’s show had a western theme. I remember, though, thinking both dogs were noble, smart, and handsome, and longing for a collie or German shepherd of my own. A few years later, when Bull Connor’s attack dogs tore into the black citizens of Birmingham, Alabama, I no longer wanted a German shepherd. Interestingly, Susan Orlean touches on this dark chapter in the history of the breed’s popularity, and apparently I was not the only one so affected … suddenly, no one wanted a German shepherd, and decades passed before they became popular again. Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend will go a long way toward putting the German shepherd back into the public’s affections. Rinty would never have helped the likes of Bull Connor! I can honestly say that after reading this wonderful book I once again long for a German shepherd of my own! I don’t think I’ll share that thought with my dachshunds, though….
	The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach To gather my thoughts before reviewing The Art of Fielding (after all, it was a book club assignment), I started reading other reader reviews. I quickly realized that was a mistake. I don’t want to know about the literary community of young writers Harbach comes from, how much of an advance he got, or how jealous other first-time novelists are of his success. I returned to a blank page and wrote this review with an unsullied mind. I loved The Art of Fielding. It’s a straightforward story, centering on five main characters, told in a refreshingly old-fashioned linear fashion, moving from A to B and on to C. No flashbacks, no flashforwards, no sudden jumps into parallel story lines filled with people you haven’t met before. Reading Harbach’s novel, I thought of Philip Hensher and The Northern Clemency. I thought of Jonathan Franzen and Freedom. But mostly I tried not to make comparisons and just enjoy the story. I’m a sucker for colleges, liberal arts, and literary references, so I loved everything about Westish College and its affable president, Guert Affenlight, a Melville scholar (I especially loved the Melville references). I believed, almost to the end of the novel, that there really was a major league shortstop named Arapacio Rodriguez, and that he had written a Zen-like book titled The Art of Fielding. I did believe … and still do … in Henry, Mike, Owen, Pella, and Guert (well, maybe not so much in Owen, who is essentially a foil for the stories of Henry and Guert). I was enthralled. I hung on every element of the story. I cared about what was happening and what might happen. I whispered mental advice to every character, trying to help them along. Some parts of the novel are less than perfect. Guert’s sudden death is too convenient, almost as if Harbach decided to cut off the problematic but fascinating subplot of Guert’s and Owen’s affair rather than take it to its conclusion. Henry’s worsening inability to throw and his fall into incapacitating depression is believable; his unasked-for return to the team during a championship game, not to mention his game-winning hit, is not. But I forgave these sins because I bought everything else; and hell, if they ever make a movie out of this novel, these cinematic shortcuts will fit right in. A comment from one of the reviews I tore myself away from keeps coming back to me. That reviewer said you need to love baseball to love this novel. When my book club selected The Art of Fielding, that was in fact a concern of mine. I was a lousy athlete in elementary and high school, particularly lousy at baseball, and I had no love for the game. By the time I got to college I had resolved never to think about baseball again. Until I started reading this novel, I had stuck with that resolve. And now I’m here to tell you this: you don’t have to love baseball to love this novel.
	Distrust That Particular Flavor by William Gibson I feel let down by this short collection of William Gibson’s speeches, magazine articles, and book introductions. If you’ve read my reviews of Gibson’s fiction, you’ll know I’m a Gibson groupie. His genius comes across strongly in his fiction; alas, his non-fiction is tepid and only slightly interesting. What is collected here is skimpy and padded out to make it seem book length (the text is double-spaced and there are blank pages between entries): I’m glad I ordered this one from the library and didn’t spend money on it. When Gibson writes another novel I will instantly order a copy from B&N. In the meantime I’ll do my best to forget this lukewarm collection of non-fiction, lest it make me any less a Gibson groupie.
	The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco Eco starts this novel by introducing us to a most unsympathetic character, Captain Simonini, a bigoted misanthrope who despises all races and nationalities (including his own); a man eager and willing to believe conspiracy theories, the more lurid and improbable the better; a man with a deep-seated fear and hatred of Jews … the inheritor of centuries of European anti-Semitism, most of it learned at his grandfather’s knee. Simonini fears women. He has no friends. He would kick a dog. The only trace of humanity he shows is his love of food, which emerges in detailed descriptions of meals he’s eaten. Simonini is also, in his cynical estimation of his fellow man, invariably right. He learns early on that telling people what they want to hear is the ticket to success, and he milks that insight for all it’s worth, making his living as a forger of letters and documents. Sometimes his forgeries are commissioned by family members hoping to cheat others out of inheritances with falsified wills, but he is often paid to create documents designed to undermine the reputation of individuals and groups. Among those targets: the Catholic church, the Jesuits, the Freemasons, and … always … the Jews. Eco’s novel, as you may have heard, is a fictional treatment of the creation of that infamous forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the tract that did so much to fan the flames of 20th century anti-Semitism, said to have become the second most-read book, after the Bible, in history. Simonini begins forging documents early in life, making a niche for himself by helping powerful groups and governments with the dirty work of discrediting enemies and rivals, often working for two and three masters at a time, each trying to harm the other. Along the way he helps the Prussians and the Russians create a domestic enemy for the people to focus their hate on, namely, the Jews. As he immerses himself in the creation of the Protocols, Simonini becomes involved with other late 19th century forgers, conspiracy theorists, and anti-Semitic writers. These characters, Eco informs us in an afterword, are real, as are the tracts and books they wrote, which make up some of the backdrop to Simonini’s story. Most of the incidents that occur in the novel are actual ones. The fictional Simonini, for example, forges the letter that was the main evidence in the trial and conviction of the real-life Captain Dreyfus, a letter paid for by shadowy government figures who wanted to reduce the number and influence of Jews in the French officer corps. Some incidents are perhaps more fanciful; in one, Simonini shares a meal with, and supplies cocaine to, Dr. Freud. The fictional aspect is what keeps this novel going, and Eco introduces mystery and thrills to keep us turning pages. Simonini tells his story through a diary, and it quickly emerges that two different people are writing it, Simonini and Abbé Dalla Piccola. It only gradually becomes clear that the abbé is an aspect of Simonini’s split personality. There is also a third party, a nameless narrator, who helps us make sense of the bifurcated diary entries, where Simonini remembers some things and not others, where Abbé Piccola helps fill in some blanks but introduces others of his own, where the two aspects of Simonini’s personality frequently disagree. Is the narrator, too, an aspect of Simonini’s increasingly troubled mind? And lest you fear you’re going to get bogged down in purely mental mysteries, Eco throws in bombings, sabotage, riots, and murders, several of them committed by Simonini and Abbé Piccola in an effort to cover their own tracks. Now I know anti-Semitism remains a potent force in the world. I know that the trauma and catharsis of Hitler’s Holocaust — an almost direct result of the publication of the Protocols — didn’t end it, and that there are still plenty of people who pine for a “final solution.” But the pervasiveness and virulence of anti-Semitism still has the power to shock, and Eco’s novel shocked me. Early in the diary, as Simonini recounts one of his grandfather’s anti-Jewish rants, it hit me forcibly that none of this crap has gone away. In Simonini’s grandfather’s voice I heard Pat Robertson. I heard Rick Santorum. I heard Michelle Bachmann. I saw the nest of snakes that is at the heart of religious fundamentalism and reactionary social movements everywhere. It hit me like a brick. Umberto Eco throws that brick, and in my case at least, his aim is deadly.
	Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey I must say, I thoroughly enjoyed this example of good old-fashioned space opera. It’s set in a distant enough future that mankind has spread through the solar system, inhabiting the Moon, several asteroids, Mars and its moons, and some of the moons of the gas giant planets. There are three major political alliances, all at odds with each other: the Earth and Moon, the Belters, and the Outer Planets (led by Mars). Although Mars is being terraformed, it is centuries away from being able to sustain human life on its own, and of course inhabitants of the Belt and outer-planet moons depend on constant resupply to stay alive. The story itself is quite dramatic, involving the discovery of a hostile alien lifeform capable of wiping out — or drastically changing the very nature of — humanity, and a growing war between the three alliances. One plucky space freighter crew is at the center of the action, and they will remind you of the crew of the Nostromo in Ridley Scott’s seminal movie, Alien. Need I say more? The story will grab you by the nape of the neck and pull you along. One note for Kindle and Nook readers: my electronic copy of the book said it was nearly 1,000 pages long. Along about page 400 I began to sense that Leviathan Wakes would soon have to end, barring a total change in the direction of the narrative, and somewhat to my relief it did end just short of page 500. It turns out that when you purchase this ebook, you get a separate 500-page fantasy novel with it, The Dragon’s Path, written by a different author, Daniel Abraham. Oh wait … Daniel Abraham actually wrote Leviathan Wakes, along with co-author Ty Franck, together writing under the pen name James S.A. Corey. Why? Who the hell knows? I’m a sci-fi fan, but fantasy rather leaves me cold, so I may not read the second book. If I do, I will review it separately.

- See all my reviews

Apropos of nothing, two thoughts on nakedness and sex in HBO’s Game of Thrones.

Game of Thrones, where actors are either grossly overdressed ... or not at all.

One, typecasting. Take British actress Esmé Bianco, who plays the prostitute Ros.  When on camera she’s often nude, sometimes fully so, even, in one scene, simulating lesbian sex with another female actress.  By taking this role, has she limited her career options? Will future directors and producers see her as a sex scene fill-in? Friends who watch Game of Thrones say no, the profession has moved beyond that. I have my doubts.  One actress, Lisa Nolan, gave up a role in Game of Thrones after being asked to simulate a sex act in the nude.  ”People could have taken snap shots of the show and every time I did a shoot people would remember that scene,” she explained.  Yeah, that’s kind of what I was thinking.

Two, where’s the outrage from the religious right?  Where are the boycotts, the petitions, the letter writing campaigns, the attempts to restrict access to HBO?  I’ve been writing about book bannings for a few years now: parental and community attempts to ban books from school reading lists and libraries, frequently over brief passages mentioning sex or masturbation.  Almost all of these campaigns are organized by the religious right. The religious right targets TV networks and sponsors for employing gay spokespersons such as Ellen DeGeneres.  The religious right pushes for state laws forbidding mention of homosexuality in public schools.  The religious right wants to eliminate sex education altogether, save for the baseline message of abstinence.  So how come they’re not going after Game of Thrones, a popular, prime time cable TV show featuring frequent nudity and at least one soft-core depiction of heterosexual or homosexual sex per episode?  Google “right wing opposition to Game of Thrones” and see what you get.  I get zilch.  What am I missing?

I know, I said two thoughts.  But here’s a third, anyway.  I know the world of Game of Thrones is not meant to be our world, but its time is equivalent to our own medieval period, right?  So how come everyone has such good teeth?  And why aren’t they hairier?  And why, getting back to the original theme of this blog post, are certain characters seemingly exempt from the requirement to strip and dry-hump one another?  What kind of actors’ caste system is in play?

Route 66 near Seligman, Arizona

Yeah, that’s what I’ll call it, a mini-gypsy tour, and add 2012 because it’ll probably be the only big ride I’ll take this year.  A friend of mine rides coast to coast, 5,000 or more miles at a whack, at least once each year.  What can I say?  I am not worthy.  The last time I put in a series of 8- to 10-hour, 600-mile days was during my California gypsy tour in October 2010, when I had a revelation: I’ll never be a member of the Iron Butt Association.  For me, this is a more realistic motorcycle excursion: a 5-day, 2-state ride to Flagstaff, Las Vegas, and Laughlin, with a return leg back through Flagstaff, close to 1,400 miles in all, around 300 miles per day.

The (not yet dirty) Wing near Clint's Wells, Arizona

Wednesday I rode from Tucson to Flagstaff via back roads, aiming to stay well clear of Phoenix and up in the high country, following two-lane highways to Globe and around the Mogollon Rim on the way to Flagstaff.  Thursday was cold and rainy, and it wasn’t much fun riding down I-40 to Kingman (it’s a good thing I brought along a bad weather helmet; surprisingly my pants and boots stayed relatively dry).  From there to Las Vegas, though it stayed cold, at least the clouds broke up and I finally saw some sun.  Friday, in beautiful and still-cool weather, I took a side trip from Las Vegas to Laughlin.  Saturday was meant to be an extra day in Las Vegas, with an all-day putt home on Sunday, but the forecast called for a return to the high 90s in Arizona and I decided to break the trip home into two days, Las Vegas to Flagstaff on Saturday and Flag to Tucson on Sunday.  Good decision … I stayed cool right up to the end of the ride, only beginning to feel the heat during the last 100 miles into Tucson.  I was home by noon on Sunday, back in our air-conditioned house, unpacking in comfort.

The occasion for this mini-gypsy tour was the annual Laughlin River Run, one of the larger motorcycle rallies in the western USA.  When I attended my first River Run several years ago the event was geared to a catholic crowd of motorcycle enthusiasts: all the major manufacturers had tents and displays up and you could see the latest from Honda, Triumph, BMW, et al.  Since then River Run has devolved into a American V-twin event; this year, disappointingly, non-American manufacturers stayed home.  Who was there?  Harley-Davidson, Victory, some after-market chopper builders; plus vendors of leathers, T-shirts, chrome doo-dads … if I had been looking for “biker life” accessories, I’d have loved Laughlin.  As it was I stayed only two hours, as long as it took to find a T-shirt for my son.  As I was leaving, a drunk in his fifties stumbled up and told me I had a lot of courage, riding a Honda to a Harley event.  Jesus.  I probably have more saddle time on Harleys than that guy and all his middle-age-crisis-suffering orthodontist pals put together, but I held my tongue.  At least my ride was filthy, a sign to the cognoscenti that it didn’t arrive by trailer (like most of the barely-rideable bar-to-bar choppers in evidence).

Biker lifestyle accessories at River Run

In Las Vegas I spent most of my time with the kids: our son Gregory, daughter in law Beth, granddaughter Taylor, and grandson Quentin.  I got to watch Taylor play her last home game of the season and be honored as a departing senior; it was icing on the cake that she also made the game-winning play.  We made plans for our grandson’s summer visit and dropped by Hooters for the traditional photo op.  I had breakfast with an old hashing buddy.  Since I don’t gamble, I stayed away from the Strip … the Vegas I see, whenever I visit, is a pleasant town of families, homes, schools, playgrounds, and parks … as long as I avert my eyes from the ever-present video poker arcades in convenience stores, gas stations, and supermarkets.

Taylor & family, last home game

The first thing I did upon riding into Las Vegas from Boulder City was dial in KNPR, the local public radio station.  What do you know, KNPR was having a pledge drive … oddly, I’ve never been to Las Vegas when KNPR wasn’t conducting a pledge drive.  It’s possible I inadvertently time my two or three yearly Las Vegas visits to coincide with KNPR pledge drives, but the more logical explanation is that KNPR begs for money more often than other NPR stations.  And their drives are the most intrusive I’ve ever heard.  I timed them during the Morning Edition news Friday morning while riding from Vegas to Laughlin: four minutes of news, ten minutes of pledge drive, repeat ad infinitum.  Unbelievable.  But still not so bad that I’d ever consider listening to commercial radio!

How is it that KNPR is so needy?  When I lived in Las Vegas in the mid-90s, KNPR became the first NPR station in the country to air outright commercials.  Oh, there weren’t very many, and they were produced in a droning soporific NPR-ish way, but there was no denying you were listening to an pitch for a local law firm and not an intro to Elgar’s Cello Concerto.  Clearly, if KNPR still has to conduct pledge drives, it’s not charging advertisers enough!

Traditional photo op: the boys at Hooters

It’s good to be home.  Click here to see more mini-gypsy tour photos at Flickr.

In my day, the only video cameras we could use to film our own air-to-air flying were hand-held devices.  USAF pilots weren’t (and aren’t, AFAIK) allowed, for safety reasons, to use cameras or video recorders in single-seat cockpits.  If you were flying a two-seater, which you might do once a month or so, and you had a fellow pilot for a back-seater, maybe then … but pilot-produced cockpit videos were a rarity, and there aren’t that many good ones out there.

Until now, that is, thanks to the availability of small video cameras you can position here and there around the cockpit and operate hands-free.  Like this cockpit video, produced by members of my old unit at Kadena Air Base in Japan.

People are always asking me what it’s like to fly air-to-air combat in the Eagle.  Minus actual missiles in the air, this is what it’s like.  This is what it looks like, this is what it sounds like.  This is just what it’s like.  And I’m proud that pilots and airplanes from one of my former squadrons, the 44th FS Vampires, are featured here, along with the 67th FS Fighting Cocks, our old Kadena rivals.  There’s even a shot of one Eagle I remember from the early 1990s, the one with the mismatched radome … you’ll know it when you see it.

The only thing here that’s less than realistic is the pilot’s view through the HUD, the head up device.  In the two brief HUD shots you see in the video the only thing showing is a standby gun reticle, not the array of performance and weapons information the pilot actually sees.  That’s because the USAF has classified most of the information projected onto the HUD and we can no longer share it.

Update (4/30/12): New to me are the odd-looking helmets with the protruding visors, which I learn are JHMCS (Joint helmet mounted cuing system) rigs, which project weapons aiming and some flight information onto the visor in front of the pilot’s eyes, bypassing the HUD, though to what degree I don’t know.

Everything else in the video is … as I may have mentioned earlier … just like what it’s like.

If this video doesn’t explain the concept of Shit Hot to you, nothing will.