What I learned today

For a couple of months now, I have been sloooowly working my way through a book entitled The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries. It's not so much a book of obituaries as it is a book about obituaries -- about the joys of reading and writing about people, often very ordinary sorts, who have finished with this life. Today I came across a delightful section on euphemisms and a list that one may use to decode the obituary section:

We figure that the alleged killer probably is the killer. When the obit says someone was vivacious or sociable, we can guess what's behind these chirpy, mom-approved words: the departed liked to party; she felt comfortable on the barstool. Jude Law, playing an obit writer in Closer, got points with Natalie Portman and his audience by translating the code used at his newspaper: "'He was a convivial fellow,' meaning -- he was an alcoholic. 'He valued his privacy' -- gay. 'He enjoyed his privacy' -- raging queen!"

This coded understatement is an art, and part of the pleasure of reading and writing obits. [Hugh] Massingberd spent his career at the Daily Telegraph refining that art. "We all know 'he didn't suffer fools gladly' translates as 'a complete bastard,'" he told a gathering of obituarists in Bath, England. Massingberd is a great elegant bear of a man, and in a self-penned mock obit claimed to possess "an appetite of such magnitude that friends counted him three men at their table." He smacked his lips over his list as if it were a tower of profiteroles, then read it with lusty pleasure:

Gave colorful accounts of his exploits = Liar!
No discernible enthusiasm for civil rights = Nazi!
Powerful negotiator = Bully!
Tireless raconteur = Crashing bore!
Relished the cadences of the English language = Old windbag!
Affable and hospitable at every hour = Chronic alcoholic!
He was attached to his theories and sometimes urged them too strongly = Religious fanatic!
Fun-loving and flirtatious = Nymphomaniac!
An uncompromisingly direct ladies' man = Flasher and rapist!

Crushing on . . .

. . . Raylan Givens

My, what big teeth you have

This past weekend my best pal Norman and I took three separate trips out to the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood to catch the Red Riding trilogy. I can't even remember now how we found out about the films. Maybe we just spotted them in the Egyptian's newsletter, or maybe Norman read or heard something about them somewhere -- he has a knack for running across interesting and unusual things.

The three movies are based on four novels by David Peace. They take place in 1974, 1980, and 1983. They were originally made for the BBC last year, but they work marvelously as theatrical features. One guy wrote all of the screenplays, and each film was directed by a different fellow. The second film was my favorite, and much like the second film in noteworthy trilogies (The Empire Strikes Back, Back to the Future II), it makes little sense if you haven't seen the first film and don't plan to see the third. Fortunately, Norman and I were game for all three.

It's hard to describe these movies without giving too much away. The story is inspired by the Yorkshire Ripper murders that occurred in England during the mid 1970s to 1980, but the murders are really just a jumping-off point. In fact, the first movie takes place before the first Ripper murders occurred and deals with the disappearances of three young girls who turn out not to have anything to do with the Yorkshire Ripper. The Ripper killings are prominent in the second film, and the third film ties the first two together. What all three are about is political and police corruption, as well as secrets that cannot remain buried forever.

Each of the movies presents the story in a different way, reflecting, I suppose, each director's take on things. The first movie seems more impressionistic than the others, but that may be because so much information has to be introduced that won't actually be dealt with until the later films. Here, the hero is a young crime reporter who sees a link between the little girls who have gone missing; his investigation leads him to something far different than he had expected, and he becomes a pawn in a complex web of corruption. In the second film, an outsider, a detective from Manchester, is brought into the investigation and he, too, finds himself in danger when he grows to suspect that one of the Yorkshire Ripper murders is actually a copycat killing. There are several central characters in the final movie, all approaching the case of the still-missing girls from different angles. (The Yorkshire Ripper has been jailed by this point.) The third film does a masterful job of tying the earlier movies together and filling in a number of gaps in viewers' knowledge about exactly what has taken place.

Is that enticing yet vague enough for you? Chances are you won't get a chance to see these movies in a theatre, but they're available from Netflix. If you're a fan of neo-noir or well-crafted police procedurals, I urge you to seek them out.

Literary love story, part 2

When I was in ninth grade, my family spent spring break in La Jolla. We rented a condo near the beach and spent every day lazing about, walking to the ocean, sightseeing, and shopping. One of the few places I remember visiting was a great bookstore. I like to think it was Warwick's, which is a fantastic shop that has been around even longer than I have, but I'm not sure. All I do know is that it was never difficult to talk my parents into stopping into a bookstore, no matter where we were, and I recall spending quite a long time browsing around this pleasantly-lit, well-stocked bookstore on a spring afternoon back in -- gulp -- 1981.

I spotted a book on the new release display with an eye-catching title: Maybe He's Dead and Other Hilarious Results of New York Magazine Competitions. Being a naive teenager, I conflated New York with The New Yorker and thought, "That sounds smart." I started reading and soon was laughing out loud -- this thing was both funny and smart. Dad was kind of a pushover when it came to buying books: as long as it was a paperback, it was almost guaranteed he'd buy it. So it's no surprise I walked out of that shop with Maybe He's Dead and spent the rest of the afternoon (and many pleasant hours in the following years) reading and rereading it.

I haven't looked at the print version of New York in years so I don't know if they still run their weekly reader competition. I can't find it on the magazine's website, so maybe they have discontinued it. At any rate, in every issue, it used to be that readers were invited to submit entries that followed a particular set of guidelines. For instance, one week it might be to submit an essay about "My First Day at School" written in the style of a well-known writer or celebrity. Another week, for the first two lines of a book -- the first "flavorful," the second completely deflating. Or indispensable lines from any genre of movie. You get the idea. The title of the book comes from the "What I Should Have Said/What I Said" contest:

WHAT I SHOULD HAVE SAID: "Look, there's a lot of traffic, and he's probably been stuck in a meeting all day and didn't get your message, or he'd have called. I'm sure there's nothing to worry about."
WHAT I SAID: "Maybe he's dead."

I read Maybe He's Dead over and over. It's a delightful book to dip into, reading a few pages here, skipping to another contest near the back of the book. My brother also became a big fan. We loved to read bits of it out loud to each other and crack the other one up. When I was a freshman in college, I had very little money to buy Christmas gifts, but I found I could afford to give my brother something when I discovered an enormous trove of New York back issues in my college library: I sat in a study carrel for hours, copying out in longhand onto notebook paper contest results from issues published after Maybe He's Dead came out, then took my crappy notes back to my dorm room and typed them up. I put them in a red paper binder and gave John the world's only copy of Maybe He's Alive and Well and Living in Argentina and Sending in Entries Under an Assumed Name (itself a response to a contest calling for sequels to well-known works) for Christmas that year. He still has it. Actually, I have it -- I asked to borrow it a few years ago and still haven't returned it. The entries in my cobbled-together booklet are every bit as funny as those in the original book, or at least they seemed so at the time I was transcribing them; I tried to mask my chronic giggles as coughs, and I'm sure I irritated plenty of my fellow library patrons.

Sean has read both the original and the "sequel" and has become a fan, too. Occasionally we'll toss quotes at one another. Here's a favorite:

Listed simply as a farm,
The place possessed a certain charm.
A bucket hung down in the well;
How far it hung I cannot tell.
A rustic path there was that led
To barns, a silo, and a shed.
One barn, perhaps, contained some hay,
Another cows. I drove away.

(That's from the "flat verse" competition, in which readers were asked to submit poems which "may rhyme as well as scan, but should be uncontroversial and devoid of any trace of emotion.")

In 1985, when I started working at a certain independent bookstore, one of the services we offered our customers was out of print searches. Maybe He's Dead was already out of print by then, and over the years I wrote up a number of OP searches for it; once a woman told me she wanted to find 7 copies to give to friends. That's the thing with this book -- its fans are passionate. If you click the above link on the title it will take you to the Amazon page for the book, which lists a number of used copies that are available. They are all spendy. People seem willing to part with this book only for a price.

Here's my favorite anecdote involving Maybe He's Dead:

Five or six years ago I was reading one of Nicholas Basbanes' books about book collecting (I can't remember which one -- probably Patience & Fortitude) on my lunch break. I was reading a chapter on Serendipity Books in San Francisco, a delightful-sounding shop with an arcane method of arranging books on the shelves -- the idea is that readers will discover books they didn't even know they wanted via serendipity. It was so pleasant reading about this used book shop that I closed my book and decided to pay a visit to the used book shop across the street. As I was idly scanning the shelves in the trade paperback and hardback fiction section, what should I come across but a copy of Maybe He's Dead! It should have been in the humor section, but serendipity (and five bucks, I think it was) brought us together. I gave that copy to my friend Curtis.

How to kiss a woman by Captain Kirk

Checking in

I got nothin' tonight. NaBloPoMo requires that I put in an appearance here every day this month, but I haven't got anything to say right now. Tomorrow, perhaps another book review, but tonight all I can think about is getting a good night's sleep.

Misleading book spine of the week

Can you read that? Impatient with Desire. Bright red flowers and lush greenery. I saw that spine among the advance reading copies in our store's break room and thought it might be some torrid tropical romance. I pulled it from the stack and was surprised to see this cover:

"That looks like Donner Lake," I thought, and I was right. This is not a tropical romance; it's a novel about the Donner Party. Score!

Quote of the day

"...Alcohol has so many empty calories. You get a nice little buzz from it, but I’d rather have a pork chop. It’s not the same euphoria, but it's comparable."

~ Bryan Batt

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Guinness cupcakes with Bailey's Irish Cream & cream cheese frosting
(recipe can be found here)

Where has the time gone?

Good lord. This just about sums up all I have gained by getting to level 548 in Mafia Wars.

Quote of the day

(image via Derek Cooper)

From 52 Loaves: One Man's Relentless Pursuit of Truth, Meaning, and a Perfect Crust:

"You're in an unusually good mood today," Anne noted as, whistling, I prepared to load a pain au levain into the oven.

"Parchment paper," I explained. "I can't understand why no one ever told me about this. It's like finding religion."

What I learned today

She (Cherie Currie of The Runaways) used to be married to him (Robert Hays of Airplane! fame).

Spring forward, my ass

I don't like Daylight Savings Time. (Or is it Daylight Saving Time? There seems to be some disagreement on teh internets. I favor the former.) Specifically, I don't like the night we have to spring forward. Spring forward! It sounds so upbeat and cheery! Relentlessly cheery . . . Really, all it means is that I lose an hour of precious, hard-won sleep. When I woke up this morning, my clock read 6:03, but I knew it was really only 5:03. I'll be doing that for the next week or so: "My watch may say it's 9 p.m., but I know it's actually 10 p.m., so good night." Wait. That's not right. Well, any excuse to hit the hay.

With the days getting longer, I've noticed it getting lighter earlier and earlier in the morning. I do like that it will now (for a while, anyway) be dark when I get up at 5:30 every morning. I consider myself a morning person, but I have to kind of ease into my day: I like to take it slowly, making coffee and showering in the dark, reading a book while eating breakfast, turning on my headlights on for the drive to work. But all the while I will be seething inside, thinking constantly of that hour of sleep I lost the night of March 13 - 14.

Beautiful book cover of the week

(publication date: May 1, 2010)

I love the simple color scheme, the bold typography, and the three essential story elements: one of the protagonists, his dog, and the enormous couch (a.k.a. "the Barge"). Oh, and the book itself is pretty awesome, too.

You say potato. I say, "Mmmm, potatoes!"

I'm beginning to plant my spring vegetable garden. There's not much going on yet, just some peas, lettuce, blackberries, and a few herbs. I have packets of all kinds of seeds and some onion starts just waiting to go in the ground, and I hope to get a lot of them going this weekend. The other day I decided to try my hand at something new: potatoes. I don't know how well they'll take to the Los Angeles climate, but I thought I'd give 'em a shot.

Here's their new home. Growing potatoes in the ground can take up a ton of space, so I thought a container of some sort would be the best way to go. One of my favorite gardening books, McGee & Stuckey's The Bountiful Container, explains how to grow potatoes in a garbage can. You drill holes in the bottom of the can for drainage, put some potting soil in, lay the potatoes in the soil, and put more soil on top. As the potatoes send their vines up, you continue to cover the exposed stem and leaves with more soil, until finally you have a container of dirt shot through with new potatoes growing out from the vines sent out by the potatoes 'way down at the bottom. A co-worker who has worked as a nurseryman advised me to drill some holes in the sides of the garbage can, too, to aid with aeration. (He also suggested I mix some common garden soil in with the potting soil, which I did not do. Sorry, John.) I raised the can up on some bricks to further aid with drainage, as well as covering the bottom of the inside with pebbles to keep the potting soil from flowing out of the quarter-inch holes. I am going to try growing them in the space between our garage and guest house, which is sheltered but gets some sun around midday. I honestly don't know how well they'll perform.

There they are! They are Yukon Golds, probably my favorite potato. (I say "probably," because I don't think I've ever met a potato I didn't like.) I'm already planning all the potato salads, hash browns and garlic mashed potatoes I'm going to make from them. Hmmmm, I wonder if I can freeze them? I'll have to look into that. I only used about half the seed potatoes I ordered from Seeds of Change, so I've asked my friend Sherri if she'd like the rest; if she says no, then I'm off to buy another garbage can and plant a second batch.

You can't have too many potatoes. At least, I can't.

Buttered side up

All day long I've been thinking about bread: about baking some warm, crusty, tender bread, about banishing the chill from my kitchen with a slowly preheating oven, about filling the house with the sweet, yeasty aroma of freshly-baked bread. And you know what would go really well with that bread? Some homemade butter.

It's a mad, mad, mad, mad world

The new Mad Men-inspired Barbies go on sale in July! At the very least, I would love to score one of the limited edition Joans.

Speaking of scoring, my sister's soon-to-be ex just landed a gig doing construction for Season 4 of Mad Men. I'm hoping to get an invitation to visit the set.

Literary love story, part 1

I am an avid reader and, as you might suspect, I own a lot of books. Most of my books have no special meaning to me: I read them (or, in the case of coffee table-type volumes, I paged through them), I liked them, and now they sit on my shelves as constant reminders of pleasant days past. Four books, however, I love beyond all others, and I love the actual physical copies of them that I own. I'm going to tell you about them this week.

First up: The Princess Bride by William Goldman. WARNING: Spoilers abound!

First, don't go whining, "The Princess Bride? Wasn't that some kids' movie 20 years ago?" Believe me, the movie, while an enjoyable trifle, doesn't come anywhere CLOSE to the wonderfulness of the book, despite author William Goldman's involvement in the film, and I'll get to that presently. Second, isn't that a bizarre cover? That's the original artwork that appeared on the first paperback edition in the U.S., and that was my first copy of The Princess Bride. My dad read and enjoyed it when the paperback was first published, and he passed his copy on to me. I was about eight years old at the time, and isn't that a weird-looking book for a little kid to be running around with? Also, if you're remotely familiar with the plot, you know that the artwork has absolutely nothing to do with the story. Ah, those 1970s-era graphic designers -- they were high, and thought all of us were, too.

The title page reads:

THE PRINCESS BRIDE
S. Morgenstern's
Classic Tale of True Love
and High Adventure
The 'good parts' version
Abridged by
WILLIAM GOLDMAN

In his introduction (which you absolutely must read -- it's part of the story), Goldman claims he didn't write The Princess Bride. He says his father read it to him as a kid and he loved it. How could he not? Little Billy was a sports fanatic, and when he asked if the book had any sports in it, his father replied, "Fencing. Fighting. Torture. Poison. True love. Hate. Revenge. Giants. Hunters. Bad men. Good men. Beautifulest ladies. Snakes. Spiders. Beasts of all natures and descriptions. Pain. Death. Brave men. Coward men. Strongest men. Chases. Escapes. Lies. Truths. Passion. Miracles." What is not to love, I ask you?

Well, years later Goldman gave his son a copy and was stunned that the kid couldn't get past the first chapter. Nothing wrong with the first chapter, Goldman thought, but all the really good stuff comes later. He'd never actually read the book himself -- his father had read it aloud to him -- so when he picked up his son's copy he was surprised to discover that there were a lot of ponderous historical and political passages he didn't remember. That's when he realized his own father had skipped all the boring bits and gone right for the passages that would entertain little Billy. Goldman made it his mission to abridge this fine book and make it entertaining and accessible for all.

[All of this is untrue, of course. The Princess Bride grew out of an ongoing bedtime story Goldman told his daughters when they were little. In one of his later books on screenwriting, he admits that The Princess Bride is his favorite of his own books and he has no idea how he came to write such a great story.]

If you buy a copy of The Princess Bride today, you'll notice sentences, paragraphs, and sometimes whole pages set in a fancy italic script. These are the places where Goldman "interrupts" the story to explain things or to point out that he excised a number of pages at this point and that the only thing you, dear reader, need to know is that "What with one thing and another, three years passed." That sort of thing. My first-printing paperback, and the first edition hardback I obtained many years later, don't have the fancy italic type passages. Those passages are instead printed in red, which is even fancier, especially in a $1.95 paperback. The brilliance of these fake edits is that the story keeps moving forward without any boring exposition.

The book apparently was optioned for film a number of times, and Goldman was either unhappy with how slowly its development progressed or with how drafts of the screenplay were turning out. Finally he bought the rights himself so he could have more control over his baby.

Those who enjoy the movie might be surprised at how lame some of the casting is, or rather, how very different the on-screen characters are from their literary counterparts. For instance, Robin Wright is very pretty, but she is not the most beautiful woman in the world; the entire first chapter of the novel explains how Buttercup becomes the world's most beautiful woman. Also, Wright's hair is blonde, and Buttercup's is the color of autumn, which I have always imagined to be more of an auburn shade, with perhaps some golden highlights. And finally, Robin Wright seems like a pretty smart cookie, while in the book, Buttercup is kind of dumb. She is lovable in her way, but she's not the sharpest knife in the drawer. I've always found Cary Elwes to be very bland, so the less said about his portrayal of Westley, the better. Perhaps the most egregious miscasting is Chris Sarandon as Prince Humperdinck. Sarandon is also a bit bland, and worse, he's just a lightweight kind of guy. Humperdinck is tough and mean and scary. He is shaped like a barrel and is described as walking "like a crab, side to side." Oliver Reed in his heyday would have made a fantastic Humperdinck.

One of the things I find interesting about Goldman's fiction, which is completely at odds with movies based on his books, is that a crucial plot element hinges on you not being able to see what is happening. That is, you're picturing something while you're reading, but it later turns out that you had it all wrong. In The Princess Bride, that plot element is the Man in Black. The moment you see the Man in Black, you know it's Westley -- he's wearing a mask, sure, but you'd have to be a moron not to realize it's Cary Elwes. In the book, you can't tell. The Man in Black is some scary, nameless, relentless pursuer who will stop at nothing to get his hands on Princess Buttercup, and it's a fantastic moment to discover that he is, in fact, Westley in disguise. Goldman does something similar in several of his novels, notably Marathon Man and Control, in which you picture the action occurring a certain way, and it turns out you're mistaken. It's kind of cool, actually, and it's a pity that the movie versions have to go and ruin a great thing.

Speaking of great things, my two favorite scenes from the book aren't in the movie. The first is the flashback sequence to Inigo's childhood, when his father practically kills himself trying to make the perfect sword for the six-fingered Count. Inigo briefly explains this sequence of events to Westley while they're dueling, but it's far more entertaining, not to mention detailed, in the novel. The other scene I love occurs when Inigo and Fezzik rescue Westley from the Zoo of Death. See, in the movie he's being held prisoner in the Pit of Despair, but in the book he is captive on the fifth level of the Zoo of Death. Apparently there wasn't enough money to film that sequence, which is really a pity because it's a thrilling and very funny little adventure within the larger story. I heard Rob Reiner loves that sequence, too, and was very sorry not to have the budget to shoot it.

I love The Princess Bride because it has everything (see above), yet nothing feels crammed or shoehorned into the story. It's funny and exciting and romantic, and it's as much about books and the love of writing as it is about the plot. I've read it probably 20 times, and I'm looking forward to reading it again this year. As far as I'm concerned, not to love it is . . . inconceivable.

What I learned today

When a body is cremated, it's burned at about 1500 degrees F. in an oven called a "retort." The head and the heart take a long time to burn. Gold and mercury fillings vaporize. After the cremation, there are a lot of bone fragments left, most of which get tossed out. The rest of the cremains (a great word!) get tossed into a big blender and are pulverized into a fine powder.

The adjective of the day

Definition #3 from dictionary.com: peevish; irritable; cranky.

Definition #4: How my tummy feels after being force-fed finger foods all afternoon and evening at an Oscar party.

Julie and Julia, reappraised

"These damn things are as hot as a stiff cock!"

~ Julia Child

I know Meryl's probably not going to win the Oscar tomorrow, but I'm suddenly wishing she would kick Sandra Bullock's ass.

Mission accomplished

Remember this? Done.

World traveler

Tonight Sean and I took new passport photos of each other. In fact, he's sitting next to me right now, cropping them to size on his laptop. We both need to renew our passports because we're going to Budapest in May -- Sean's latest feature film, Something Blue, is going to be screened at an international conference of public television programmers. While I'm incredibly proud of Sean, I never figured my next destination in Europe would be Hungary; I figured Germany or France, one of the major leaguers, would be my next stop. I feel both excited and confused about the prospect of this trip. I need to get crackin' with my copy of Top 10 Budapest and figure out what we're going to see and do while we're there.

I dug out my old passport earlier this evening. I'd forgotten that I'd put it in a bright purple leather passport folder. Really, what was I thinking? The photo, which was taken in 1988, is not a bad one of me. I look rather eager, as if I were thinking about my upcoming trip to England, which I probably was. The one thing I'd forgotten about, and which pretty much destroys any attractiveness I may have displayed in that picture, was my glasses, which cover half my face. I mean, I know it was the 80s, but really: what was I thinking? I'm certainly not going to reprint my passport photo here for y'all to see, but this picture should give you some idea of what I looked like then:

Lose the eyeglass leash, grow the hair out about three inches, add 30 pounds, and presto -- there I am. Or was.

The Endless Night: A Valentine to Film Noir

A long but very seductive montage of scenes from classic film noir. Watching these clips, many of them familiar but some not (whatever is that movie featuring that long, spiraling drop down a water slide?), makes me want to dive back into the shadowy, erotic, and violent world of film noir and not emerge for a good long while.

It's official: I am a dog person

Strange

Every now and then I attempt NaBloPoMo, or National Blog Posting Month, which occurs in November and is a challenge to post something to your blog every day for a month. I have been successful exactly once; I usually give up a few days in or forget to post just once and ruin everything. NaBloPoMo has become more ambitious the last year or two and now challenges bloggers to post every day, any old month of the year. They do try to help bloggers out by suggesting a theme, which is always optional and is intended to spark some creativity. This month's theme, which spoke to me as others have not, is strange. I'll bet I could write about something strange or direct your attention to something strange every day for a month. After all, there's an entire internet out there, and there's some freaky stuff hiding in its dark corners.

For instance, here's a kinda strange picture:

That is a still (or maybe a collage -- it's hard to tell) from the movie that scared the living crap out of me as a kid. My sisters and I saw part of it on TV one afternoon when I was about 6, and our screams of terror at the monk who hid behind pillars and broke the necks of passersby with his whip brought our mom running; she turned off the TV and told us to go outside and play. Since I didn't have the forethought to check the TV Guide listings to learn what we'd been watching, the movie's title was lost to us; for the next three decades Mary, Susan and I referred to it simply as The Monk. Whenever one of us would describe the movie to someone, we were met with blank stares; no one, it seemed, had ever heard of a movie about a murderous, bullwhip-wielding monk, and I'm sure it crossed all of our minds at one time or another what maybe the three of us had experienced some kind of mass hallucination. (Interestingly, none of us remember the monk's cowl being bright red, so I'm guessing we were watching it on a black and white TV. Hey, it was the early '70s -- such things were not uncommon then.)

A few years ago, my friend Norman showed up with a DVD in hand: a thriller entitled The College Girl Murders, with the red-draped monk, his whip, and a couple of scared-looking women on the cover. I think he stumbled across it at his local Best Buy. Could this be it? It was! We watched it and it was a laughably bad movie, with weird, out-of-place broad comedy interspersed with some harmless T&A and the much-anticipated monk-on-coed violence. Stranger still, the whole thing was in German! What the hell was some local Los Angeles TV station doing showing a 1960s German horror flick on a Saturday afternoon? My new DVD was subtitled, but the version my sisters and I saw must have been dubbed; none of us recall subtitles. So bizarre. Even stranger was the fact that I had had no luck figuring out what this movie was, after years and years of inquiry -- it turns out that the German title is Der Monch mit der Peitsche, or The Monk with the Whip, which you'd think I would have stumbled across somewhere.

I still have my DVD copy, if you want to borrow it.

I can relate, or, why I now want to read a book by a celebrity I'm completely unfamiliar with

From My Footprint:

"Let me explain my eating disorder to give you an idea what I'm up against. You can put me in a room. And in that room you can have the best pot in the world, the best coke in the world, the greatest glass of wine of all time, and a two-day-old grocery store sheet cake. Guess where I'm going? Half of it could be covered in ants, and I'd eat the other half. I am an addict."

A death in Dublin

Nearly every day I check Wikipedia's deaths in 2010 page to see who has died recently and to figure out where I stand in my dead pool. (I am currently in the lead, with one death to my credit. Er, I mean . . . ) There were no significant deaths over the weekend, i.e., ones that will help me pull even farther ahead in the race, but I am intrigued by the description of one fellow who died yesterday: "Niall McCrudden, 45, Irish optician and socialite." Optician and socialite? 'Tis true.

Distracted

I gave my co-worker, whose last day here is tomorrow, a copy of the new issue of New York magazine as a going-away gift, knowing his fondness for Christina Hendricks.Here is the cover, and Patrick, who left the magazine lying next to him on his desk, has placed a Post-It note over her breasts because they were distracting him from his work.

On Twitter, someone tweeted this morning, "Breaking: Christina Hendricks replaces Angelina Jolie as woman uptight straight women say they would sleep with but wouldn't really."

Targeted advertising

An ad for this item, which says "My name is Talky Tina and I'm going to kill you," showed up in the sidebar of my Facebook page recently. I much prefer it to the bail bonds ad that was appearing for a while.

Book of the week

March 2, 2010 pub date.

Fun facts: cake mix

Years ago I gave Sean a copy of The Secret House by David Bodanis, a wonderful science book about all the unseen and mostly microscopic things that go on around (and often on) you every day. This is where I learned that we're all perpetually surrounded by an invisible cloud of dust made of tiny particles of skin that have flaked off; that hairspray is basically liquid plastic that solidifies when exposed to air; how oxygen causes the pages of cheap paperbacks to yellow so quickly; and that as the temperature rises outside on a sunny day, the inside square footage of your house expands by a minute amount. See? All interesting stuff, though not everyone has viewed it as I do. I learned that Sean read some bits about microbes and bacteria out loud to his college roommate; when I asked Robert what he thought of the book, he replied, "What book? Oh, you mean that one about how tiny things are killing us?" Uh, no, but I got the picture. I think The Secret House is currently out of print, but if you're interested in this type of science you should look for it; try to get a copy with the color macro photographs so you can see ferocious-looking dust mites, ravaged beard hairs that have been shaven with an electric razor, and table salt crystals that look strangely like a space station in all their magnified glory.

I have been baking cakes all week as props for Sean's play. When I say "baking," I mean using a cake mix that I doctor up a bit with some orange extract and cream cheese. All this baking reminded me of the section in The Secret House in which Bodanis describes the history and science of cake mixes. Those of you with tender sensibilities might want to look away:

By this stage the proto-cake has 90 per cent of the ingredients the finished product you eat will have. There's pig fat, oil from crushed fish, lots of water, and lots of sugar. It's not a very palatable object, being a pasty grey in color, and oily as you might imagine a great hunk of old fats would feel, but with a bit more transformation all those irritating lacks can be taken care of. First some flour is added. As it's masked by all the fat, sugar, and water, there's no need for an especially high grade of flour to be used. Often it's the reject from bread-making factories. Even so it's expensive stuff, or at least when compared to plain water and aerated fat it's expensive, which is why only a small amount is used. All it has to do is provide a thin filler to go into some of the fat sheets that have wrapped around the air spaces, and an addition equal to four or five per cent of the total cake weight is usually enough for that. Sometimes the flour is dispensed with altogether and simple cellulose derivatives -- ground-up wood chips -- are used in its place . . .

Only a few faults are left now. The cake still looks pretty bad, and so is coated with coal tar colorants; it also tastes intensely objectionable -- soapy, oily and greasy despite all the sugar -- and is injected with some flavor to make it palatable, usually one of several hundred strong synthetic flavorings on hand . . .

There's a footnote on consumer psychology here. When the first home cake mixes using the GMS [glycerol monostearate, a diluting substance chemically similar to soap] magic were marketed in the US, they did not sell well. Consumers felt that an amorphous substance you just added water to and baked could not a true cake be. They were right, but that wasn't the issue. The manufacturers might have said that at least the powder was better than what you get in a factory cake, but that did not seem an attractive point, and anyway it was probably best to keep quiet about what went on in the factories. It looked like the product would have to be withdrawn, until an ingenious advertising man got the idea of saying that a fresh egg had to be added to make the mixture work. It didn't have to be added, the GMS chemistry worked fine without it, but it gave the housewife users a feeling of being in control, of creating a natural product, of doing good for their family; sales of cake mix went up.

A little Sunday evening baking

Sean is directing a play that includes a number of scenes in which the actors eat various desserts. Knowing my love of baking, he asked me to be food stylist and I happily accepted the position. I've been trying out recipes and sending them along with him to use in rehearsals; so far I've been successful with creme caramel and an orange-scented cake with chocolate cream cheese frosting. Tonight I made an apple strudel for his Monday night rehearsal. It was my first experience using puff pastry, and even though the above photo makes the finished product look more like a giant hoagie than a dessert, I think the results were fabulous. The recipe is from the December issue of Cooking Light and can be found here.

Please make it STOOOOOP!

Book of the week

Great reading! Mortimer's book is written as if for a modern-day person taking a visit to the 14th century. He reminds readers that we shouldn't judge things like cleanliness, good parenting, and animal cruelty by our present standards because the world has changed a great deal in the past 600 years and our own "enlightened" views may be found primitive or barbaric by future generations. His text is filled with interesting tidbits, including:

~ What must be the worst job in the world: gongfermor, or latrine pit cleaner.

~ Geoffrey Chaucer's take on the fairer sex: "What is better than wisdom? Woman. And what is better than a good woman? Nothing."

~ If you are accused of a felony, you can claim benefit of clergy, which simply means you are able to read. If you can prove your literacy by reading a passage from the Bible, you will be turned over to the church court, which may try you again but will most likely just let you go.

The author, a British historian, clearly gets that people, no doubt including many of his readers, have a sick interest in the Great Plague (the phrase "Black Death" isn't used until the 19th century). I admit that I'm one of those people, and he soberly chastises us :

"The deaths in 1348-49 are so numerous that the statistics are much easier to talk about than the individual tragedies. Looked at from the safe distance of the twenty-first century, one can see its beneficial effects -- how the Great Plague cauterizes feudalism, frees up capital, and allows society to develop in a more democratic way. But a visit to the time reminds you, with a sharp shock, of both the reality and the scale of the suffering. If anything, it proves the value of virtual history -- of understanding historical events as lived experiences, as opposed to impersonal facts. Imagine a disease were to wipe out 40 percent of the modern population of the UK -- more than 25 million people. Now imagine a historian in the future discussing the benefits of your death and the deaths of your partner, your children, and your friends . . . You would want to cry out, or hang your head in despair, that historians could blithely comment on the benefits of such suffering. There is no shadow of a doubt that every one of these people you see in 1348 -- whether they will die or survive -- deserves your compassion. When you see women dragging their parents' and children's corpses into ditches, weeping a screaming -- when you listen to a man who has buried all five of his sons with his own hands, and, in his distress, he tells you that there was no divine service when he did so, and that the death bell did not sound -- you know that these people have entered a chasm of grief beyond description."

The 2010 List

*shudder* I just added Bright Star to my NetFlix queue. Remember Bright Star? Costume drama about poet John Keats and his girlfriend, directed by Jane Campion, came out a few months ago? No? You're probably not the only person who has completely forgotten about this minor film from mid-2009; the only person I know who saw it was my pal Lucy, who I fear has a bit of a weakness for such flicks, and even she used the words "emo" and "tuberculoid" to describe it. Nonetheless, Bright Star is not only in my Net Flix queue, but has actually been moved to the top of the pile because it's on The List, and The List must be served.

The List is Entertainment Weekly's annual list of The 25 Movies You Need to See Before Oscar Night, and every year Norman and I, both of us fans of random, pointless challenges, make a point of seeing every one of those movies. This year's List appeared in last week's issue, and EW recommends that viewers "start at the top of this list and work [their] way down." Thus, you've got surefire Oscar nominees clogging the top of The List, while long shots appear farther down; Bright Star, for instance, is in spot #24, and for that reason alone I don't feel too bad about missing it. I'm pleased to note that I have already seen 16 of the 25 films (noted in red below), and I'm going to knock off another one (The Blind Side) this afternoon, so I am in a good position heading into awards season.

1. Up in the Air
2. Avatar
3. The Hurt Locker
4. Precious
5. Inglourious Basterds
6. Invictus
7. An Education
8. Up
9. A Serious Man
10. The Messenger
11. Julie & Julia
12. A Single Man
13. Crazy Heart
14. The Blind Side
15. The Last Station
16. Nine
17. Star Trek
18. District 9
19. Fantastic Mr. Fox
20. The Lovely Bones
21. (500) Days of Summer
22. It's Complicated
23. The Young Victoria
24. Bright Star
25. The Informant!

It doesn't look terribly daunting, now that I see all that reassuring red ink. I find it hard to believe that The Informant! made the list, as the best thing I can say about it is that it was a trifle. The only movies I'm concerned about, besides the dull-sounding Bright Star, are Invictus, which has a dreary, good-for-you vibe surrounding it (although I've heard it's actually quite entertaining, and hey, it's Clint!); and The Messenger, a movie I really wanted to see upon its release but missed, and now it doesn't appear to be playing anywhere and there's no DVD release date in sight.

I'm going to try to knock off at least one more flick, besides The Blind Side, by the Golden Globes next Sunday. What would you recommend?

How not to act old

Rule #1 (according to me): Do not walk slooooooowly, side-by-side with your equally old friend up a flight of stairs in a busy bookstore, not allowing anyone to pass by you on either side, then stop right at the top of the stairs to remark on how wonderful your grown daughter's new boyfriend is.

Gold Class Cinemas: Is it worth it?

First in an occasional series that dares to ask, "Is it worth it?"

I first became aware of Gold Class Cinemas a few weeks ago when I saw a full-page ad for their new Pasadena theatre in the L.A. Times. A relaxed, well-dressed couple were featured in the photo, sitting in what appeared to be first-class airplane seats, fully reclined, enjoying a meal with wine while watching a movie. The ad text touted the luxurious appointments and menu, and stated that each theatre in the fabulous new local multiplex seats only 40 people. Pillows and blankets are available, as well as a full bar; patrons can push a button on the table between the seats to summon a waitron at any time. This place was going to make the ArcLight look like the crummy second-run theatre down the street. The cost? Unclear -- there were no prices mentioned anywhere in the ad.

I decided I had to go.

Norman, Lucy and I, working off Entertainment Weekly's annual list of 25 Movies You Need to See Before Oscar Night (more on that soon), decided to take in Up in the Air last night at this schmancy new theatre. I bought the tickets online for a mere $22 plus $3 service fee per ticket. $25 for a single movie ticket?! Jeez, even Avatar, with its ridiculous extra charge for 3D glasses, didn't cost that much. Still, I got to select where we'd be sitting, and judging by the website's map there didn't appear to be a bad seat in the house. We were going to be in the second row, but since there are only four rows of seats in the entire theatre I didn't regard that as a problem.

When we got to the theatre (a converted AMC that later served, briefly, as a Laemmle), a concierge -- an actual concierge! -- checked us in at the front desk. We got our tickets and left a credit card number to open a tab for drinks and dinner. Then we took two escalators down to the lounge to wait in first-class comfort before the movie began.

Man, I should have brought a camera. Everything was decorated in sleek black, gray and dark orange -- the whole place had an elegant late 60s/early 70s feel to it, minus the cheese factor. We were shown to a corner with a couple of couches and a coffee table to relax before showtime. The three of us had the whole space to ourselves, which was lovely. On Tuesdays, at least for the present, this particular Gold Class Cinema is offering a half-price menu, with about half of their regular menu on sale, as well as a selection of drinks. Lucy went the relatively healthy route and ordered a salad, chicken satay, and berries with angel food croutons. Norman and I went wild -- we splurged on homemade potato chips with blue cheese, calamari, a small pepperoni pizza, mini burgers, and dark chocolate & peanut butter mousse, all of which we shared. I also had a White Russian and Norman a glass of wine. The girl who took our order looked as sleek as her surroundings, beautiful and dressed all in black, but she was incredibly friendly. When we laughed with delight as she explained using the button to summon help during the movie, she laughed, too, and said, "I know! It's weird, but it's really awesome."

Our drinks arrived, and then we were shown to our seats in the theatre. Sure enough, the theatre, which normally could probably seat 150 or so people, only had 40 seats, all of them plush, burnt orange recliners. We were offered pillows, which we promptly accepted, then we settled back, our feet elevated, to watch the previews. Nothing had even really happened yet, but I was pleased when Norman leaned over and whispered, "This is worth every fucking penny."

Our appetizers and dinner arrived smoothly during the movie. The wait staff kneel down next to the aisle seats and carefully place dishes on the tables so as not to block anyone's view. The food, amazingly, was excellent -- the blue cheese chips and the pizza were particular standouts.

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot about the movie. Up in the Air was terrific. The fans I have talked to about it seem to be in two completely different camps: they either think it's good but just a trifle, or they think it's good but depressing. I don't agree with either group: I found it to be a solid, really well-made and well thought-out studio film, full of great acting (George Clooney is perfectly cast, but his female costars more than hold their own) and very real moments. In some ways it is sort of a downer, but it's leavened by humor and hope. Seeing Up in the Air in a Gold Class Cinemas theatre was sort of meta, as Clooney's fancy hotel rooms and business class lounges looked an awful lot like the room we were watching it in.

As the closing credits began and the lights came up, Norman once again leaned over and confided that he had thought a visit to this new theatre would be a lark, a fun but ridiculous splurge, but now, he said, "I want to live here." Lucy looked a bit sober as she wondered how any of us can ever go back to a regular movie theatre again.

So. Gold Class Cinemas: Is it worth it? Yes. Oh, yes.

D'oh! I mean, dough!

The one resolution I made for 2010 was that I want to become a good baker. I'm already pretty good, especially when it comes to things like cookies, cakes, and other desserts. But I want to become an accomplished bread baker; I want whipping out a delicious, crusty, tender loaf of bread to become second nature to me. While I have a fair amount of experience with yeasted white breads, I'd never tackled any whole grain baking, and I decided that's what I'd devote the year to: learning the tricks (because there are tricks and pitfalls, I know) to turning out great whole grain bread. I decided to start 2010 off with a batch of whole wheat bread.

You can see my work in progress above. That line from T.S. Eliot's "Love Song of J. Alfred Profrock" should come to mind: "Like a patient etherized upon a table." Or perhaps you should be thinking of a body in a morgue. Either way, you get the picture. The results were not good, not good at all.

An unflattering close-up. Even in this photo I think you can see how dry and unflexible the dough looks. It's a rocky lump. The right end of the loaf has split, and there's so little moisture and pliability to the dough that I can't work it back into a smooth oval. I decided not to bother to bake this batch of bread because it clearly would be a waste of time.

Amazingly, I regard this failure as a good thing.

I'm used to being good at the things I do. I don't ascribe my successes to massive amounts of natural talent; I think I simply don't challenge myself very much. It's easy to be successful when I keep doing things that I have been successful at in the past. For instance, I am a fantastic cross stitcher . . . . but it's pretty easy to become a cross stitch expert, and I don't think I've improved my technique in the last 20 years. The same thing goes for baking a nice loaf of white bread: I simply use the same couple of recipes that have worked so well for me in the past, and the results are predictably good. Thus, when I jumped into baking my first batch of whole wheat bread without really doing any research or taking the time to focus on the task at hand, it should come as no surprise that I failed. If I'd succeeded while taking such a slapdash approach, I wouldn't have learned anything, and learning about and understanding the whole bread-baking process are my goals for the year.

What went wrong? I think I made mistakes at every step:

1. The water wasn't warm enough. I got it warm enough to activate the yeast, all right, but I'm always worried about killing yeast with water that's too hot. So here I've got warm water that I pour into a chilly stainless steel mixing bowl and leave to activate in a cool kitchen. The yeast may have woken up, but I think it may have drifted back to dormancy as the water quickly cooled.

2. I added too much flour. The recipe said to add the flour one cup at a time. It also said that I may not need all the flour, which was definitely true but I didn't realize until I poured in that entire last cup. Some of the flour simply would not incorporate into the dough, and the dough was dry instead of very sticky, which the recipe warned me it would be. I should have been more mindful of adding that last batch in much smaller increments.

3. I didn't knead the dough enough. The recipe suggested kneading for about 10 minutes. After 10 minutes the dough was beginning to feel pliable and a little springy, although it still seemed dry. I should have kept kneading to develop the gluten some more, but instead I chose to stop and let the rise begin.

4. I didn't put the dough in a warm enough spot to rise. I did set the bowl on the back burner of the stove, and with the oven preheating I figured the rising heat would be enough to get the dough moving. But the kitchen itself was kind of chilly, and it wasn't until I turned the central heat on and closed the kitchen door to hold in the warmth that I got any kind of rise out of the dough at all.

So. Failure all around! But I feel good about identifying every way in which I misstepped. Next time I bake bread I will keep all of these errors in mind, and I won't be distracted by laundry, putting away the Christmas decorations, and updating my blog. I'll try to take a more mindful, Zen approach to my bread baking and see if I have a bit more success.

Last year and this year in lists

Happy new year! Once again it is time for the annual round-up of What I Read Last Year. My goal, as always, is to try to read at least one more book than I did the year before, which I managed with no problem in 2009. I regret to say that I started, and made decent headway in, a great many books that I never finished -- probably at least a dozen. I never regret not finishing a book I don't like; I regret only that I initially made a poor choice and wasted time that might have been spent on something worthwhile.

1. Red Noses by Peter Barnes (finished 1/2)
Does a play count? I think a full-length play counts. This odd and challenging piece of drama, about a group of misfit clowns whose mission is to bring laughter into the lives of medieval plague victims, is one of Sean's favorites. I thought it was interesting but not terribly moving.

2. The Book of Unholy Mischief by Elle Newmark (1/7)
This novel takes place in Italy in, I believe, the 14th or 15th century, and it's about a young street urchin who gets taken into the kitchen of a nobleman's house and learns not only state secrets but also how superb food is made. Not bad.

3. Little Brother by Corey Doctorow (1/15)
At work, our webmaster Patrick read this book and held an online discussion about it. I didn't participate in the the chat, but I did pick up this YA novel and I found it intriguing. Corey Doctorow is one of the brains behind the technology blog boingboing, which I look at just about every day, and Little Brother (think Big Brother) is his take on young people, technology, privacy, how ideas spread, and so on. Most of the time I felt as if I were reading a language I only partially understood, but I'm glad I pushed myself to read this book. More than anything, it made me realize that kids and young adults have a casual grasp of technology that is very nearly beyond me.

4. Cruciverbalism: A Crossword Fanatic's Guide to Life in the Grid by Stanley Newman and Mark Lasswell (1/20)
I like doing crossword puzzles. I'd probably enjoy reading about them, too, in a book less lackluster than this one.

5. The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death by Charlie Huston (1/30)
Los Angeles. Noir. Crime scene cleanup. What's not to love? A damn good novel, and the first in a long streak of terrific books I read in 2009.

6. The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon by David Grann
(2/11)
Whaddaya know: a book I loved hit all the bestseller lists and got great reviews, too. Doesn't happen often. Percy Fawcett was a well-known South American explorer who disappeared into the Amazon basin in the 1920s while searching for a fabled ancient city and was never heard from again. Author Grann was fascinated by the mystery surrounding Fawcett's fate and himself became obsessed with finding out both what happened to the explorer and if the city of Z ever existed. Great real-life adventure.

7. The Star Machine by Jeanine Basinger (2/17)
Film professor and historian Basinger looks at the golden era of Hollywood's studio system and explains in minute detail how it made -- or sometimes failed to make -- its biggest stars.

8. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (2/20)
Yup, another outstanding YA novel, this one about a chilling competition set in a future, radically changed (yet disturbingly familiar) America.

9. The Little Sleep by Paul Tremblay (2/28)
More great neo-noir, this time about a narcoleptic sort-of private eye who ends up with a case that may be too big for him to handle. Very funny, but also dark and violent.

10. Waiter Rant: Thanks for the Tip -- Confessions of a Cynical Waiter by The Waiter (3/4)
I dunno -- I like reading stuff by put-upon service industry workers, and this guy is funny.

11. Codex by Lev Grossman (3/31)
The streak of good reads ended with this novel, which was itself a good read for about 90% of its length. But as I got closer and closer to the end, I couldn't help thinking, "How in the world is he going to tie all this stuff up?" It was nerve-wracking, so much so that I had trouble concentrating on the story. Finally, about a half-dozen pages from the end, I realized Grossman couldn't pull it off. The ending completely fell apart, and it destroyed everything good that had come before it. Far and away the most disappointing book of my reading year.

12. How I Became a Famous Novelist by Steve Hely (4/8)
Pitch-black hilarity abounds in this tale of a young man who decides to write a bestselling novel. As darkly cynical as anything I have ever encountered.

13. The Mormon Murders: A True Story of Greed, Forgery, Deceit, and Death by Steve Naifeh & Gregory White Smith (4/17)
I read this mostly because I was interested in learning how the culprit faked all kinds of historical documents, then used them to blackmail the Mormon church. Not enough forgery details for my taste.

14. The Magicians by Lev Grossman (4/23)
Recognize the author's name? Yeah, it's the same guy who wrote Codex. I decided to give his new book a chance, and I'm glad I did. It's kind of like Harry Potter for grownups: it's about a group of students at a college of magic in upstate New York, complete with drugs, drinking, sex, boring lectures, magical spells, and so on. Grossman must have had trouble with this ending as well, as he seems to have gone to extreme lengths to tie up every conceivable loose end; but, miraculously, he pulls it off this time.

15. The Language of Bees by Laurie R. King (5/2)
The latest in the Mary Russell-Sherlock Holmes series. Entertaining as always.

16.The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters (5/7)
A doctor in post-war England becomes entangled in the lives of a crumbling old family and their crumbling old country estate . . . which may be haunted. Eerie in great part because much of the details are so mundane. Exquisite writing.

17. Columbine by Dave Cullen (5/27)
Cullen, a journalist who has followed and researched the tragic events at Columbine High School for a decade, presents an almost minute-by-minute account of what happened that day, as well as a detailed analysis of what led up to the shooting. Fascinating stuff, much of it new to me because I didn't really follow these events when they occurred.

18. The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larsen (6/8)
I described this book to several people as a graphic novel for people who can't read graphic novels (I count myself in this group). T.S. Spivet is a brilliant boy, possibly somewhat autistic in his obsessions, who keeps detailed notes and drawings on everything around him, both at his rural Montana home and when he hits the road for a solo trip to Washington, D.C. Handy arrows in the text point out when you should be looking at the drawings and diagrams in the margins. Very odd but also very entertaining.

19. Everything Matters! by Ron Currie, Jr. (6/23)
Best book I read all year. Junior Thibodeaux is still in utero when he receives a prophecy that the world will end on a certain date. He must live his entire life with this knowledge, and the question becomes, Does anything really matter when you know it will all -- every bit of it -- end? Funny and smart and so, so sad; just wonderful writing.

20. The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession by Allison Hoover Bartlett (6/24)
Here's how much of an impression this book made on me: about 3 months after I finished it, I couldn't remember whether or not I'd read the whole thing and took it on a weekend getaway with me. Boy, was I disappointed that I hadn't brought something else along to read.

21. Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer by Novella Carpenter (7/7)
Novella Carpenter's farm is in downtown Oakland, CA, in a none-too-savory neighborhood known as Ghost Town because so many of the buildings are abandoned. Here she has created a green oasis amid crack pipes and freeway onramps, and her story is both funny and inspiring. If you ever get a chance to hear her speak or do a reading, jump at it.

22. Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane (7/13)
I read this in anticipation of the movie's fall opening. Now the movie's been pushed back to February and I've forgotten most of the details . . . but I can still recall the delicious creepiness of the unfolding story. Lehane has an unparallelled ear for dialogue.

23. The Indifferent Stars Above:The Harrowing Saga of a Donner Party Bride by Daniel James Brown (7/17)
Can't get enough of that Donner Party, and this new book explores, in part, what must have happened physiologically as well as psychologically to the hapless emigrants trapped in the Sierra Nevadas that cruel winter.

24. My Life in France by Julia Child (8/4)
Absolutely charming -- just what you'd expect from Julia Child!

25. Miss Conduct's Mind Over Manners by Robin Abrahams (8/10)
I like reading etiquette books; I find them strangely soothing. This book had some good information for the modern age, but I was irritated by two things. First, the author converted to Judaism when she married her husband, which doesn't bother me in the least, but she constantly references her faith and tosses out nuggets of Jewish wisdom as if she's a rabbinical scholar and not just, ahem, an etiquette columnist. Second, she devotes far too much time to pet etiquette; it's quite apparent she's a dog lover and she can't stop talking about her dog as if it were her child. I really don't care much about Ms. Abrahams personally and feel her writing would improve if she were to cultivate some distance from her subject.

26. Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins (8/15)
The great sequel to The Hunger Games. I gotta admit, I did not see where this one was headed and was completely caught off-guard.

27. The Guinea Pig Diaries: My Life as an Experiment by A.J. Jacobs (8/20)
These month-long experiments were fun and entertaining, but I prefer Jacobs' long-form immersions in crazy projects (e.g., The Year of Living Biblically).

28. The Lexicographer's Dilemma: The Evolution of "Proper" English, from Shakespeare to South Park by Jack Lynch (8/31)
I wrote a proper, full-length review of this book here.

29. Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay (9/5)
I love Dexter, the TV show, so I thought I'd finally tackle Dexter, the novel. Some of it made me laugh aloud. And some of it made me very, very glad Showtime made some changes to the original plot.

30. I Am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want to Be Your Class President by Josh Lieb (11/5)
Strange and funny, especially once you grasp that the main character really is an evil genius and is not just some picked-on loser who escapes into a fantasy world.

31. Righting the Mother Tongue: From Olde English to Email, the Tangled Story of English Spelling by David Wolman (11/19)
How sad: I've barely finished this book, yet I can hardly remember it. At least I don't recall disliking it.

32. Fantastic Mr. Fox by Roald Dahl (11/29)
I read the book many times as a kid and loved it. But you know what? I liked the movie even better.

33. Cherries in Winter: My Family's Recipe for Hope in Hard Times by Suzan Colon (12/29)
What a pleasant way to end the year! Suzan Colon and her husband must cut way back when she gets laid off during the current recession, and she turns to her mother's and grandmother's stories and recipes for inspiration. Charming and thought-provoking.

***********

And now for the results of last year's dead pool. The winner was Norman, with three deaths to his credit! (Perhaps I'm not phrasing that as well as I might.) I thought I had a shot at the title when two people on my list (Patrick Swayze and Mary Travers) died in the same week, but no, it was Norman all the way. Sean, Lucy, Norman and I all came up with fresh new lists for 2010 (Curtis resubmitted last year's list, the lazy git). I cannot possibly reveal all of the prognostications at which we arrived, but I'll toss out a few names as teasers: Arlen Specter, Lesley Stahl, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Lil Wayne, and Nelson Mandela, you'd better watch where you step.