And When I Die
Not far from my neighborhood stands a handsome, two-story, brick house on an expansive corner lot bordered with dozens of trees. I've passed it on many evenings, admiring the warm glow of a lamp in the front window and wondering whether the interior is complemented by genuine wood floors, rectangular archways, built-in bookcases, or any other such quaint details. It looks like that kind of place. Should the house ever go on the market, it would be hard to resist, especially because the price would likely be very reasonable. After all, it is the sole residence on the grounds of a cemetery.
Many people would consider the location to be a deal-breaker, but not me. Just the opposite, in fact. You mean, I get to have a house like this, and I get to live in a cemetery?! For anyone who appreciates the splendor of solitude, it's the ideal place to get away from it all. Sure, you would have to put up with the occasional mourner, and teenagers might breach the gates on a dare every now and then, but for the most part, it would be the ultimate peaceful neighborhood.
The Troubling Truths Of Huckleberry Finn
By the end of this post, you will never again be able to look at this illustration with innocent eyes.
In 1885, one hundred twenty-six years ago today, Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was finally published for the first time in the United States. The U.S. debut arrived two months after publication of the first Canadian and British editions, a curious arrangement that was not a calculated promotional strategy but rather the unfortunate consequence of sabotage. The first printing run was deemed unsuitable until a slyly added obscenity was removed. It was an oddly appropriate beginning for a novel that has been subject to censorship ever since.
This year has brought us news of a forthcoming edition of Huck Finn that aims to resolve the controversy that has kept an American classic off the shelves of many a school library. Newsouth Books, under the editorship of Auburn University English professor and Twain scholar Alan Gribben, is attempting to make Huck Finn palatable to a much broader audience by simply replacing the words nigger and injun with slave and indian. While the change may indeed spark a Twain renaissance among institutions that have hitherto banned the work, does making such an edition available make much sense?
Back From The Dead
One of the things that I love about the Internet is the way that it snatches dormant media from obscurity, allowing us to experience anew that which hitherto existed in the far recesses of our minds as the merest fragments of memory. Whether it's a long-forgotten commercial or pages from an old Christmas catalog, it seems like everything that was ever broadcast or printed is being digitized, tagged, and archived for our instant access. Can't get a fragment of an ancient advertising jingle out of your head? Google a few words, and you'll likely hear it in its entirety. Thinking about the colorful cover of a paperback you once owned? Someone, somewhere, has scanned it, along with the artwork for every other known edition of the title.
Thanks to that other resuscitator of bygone entertainment, Netflix, I recently followed a trail of mental breadcrumbs back to one of my earliest memories. I was watching Who's Minding the Store, a seldom-seen (and justifiably so) Jerry Lewis vehicle from 1963. Released just five months after Lewis's brilliant The Nutty Professor, the Frank Tashlin-directed Store is a cinematic abomination that is nevertheless worth watching for its immortal typewriter routine as well as the sheer, audacious chutzpah of its star's performance. What caught my attention, however, was the unique diction of supporting player John McGiver. I knew I had seen him in other productions, yet I could not name any.
IMDb to the rescue! Soon I was poring over McGiver's filmography, and while searching for movies and television shows in which I was likely to have seen him, I was absolutely gobsmacked by the presence of a film I had certainly never seen. In fact, I had wondered whether or not my mind had made up this curious title I recalled being promoted when I was quite young. But there it was: Arnold, released in November of 1973. For years I have carried around in my mind the latent trauma of being exposed to its advertising campaign, which scared the hell out of me as a sensitive and neurotic five-year-old.
Innovation And Inception
"Fear not! It's only a picture of a train!" Learning the language of cinema in 1895.
SPOILER ALERT! If you are like me and prefer to know as little as possible about a movie before seeing it (I don't even like to watch trailers for this reason), then be forewarned that the following post discusses key plot elements of Christopher Nolan's Inception. Furthermore, if you haven't seen Inception, I recommend that you read no further and see the movie at your earliest convenience, before someone tells you all about it. Just think about how much more fun Psycho would have been if you hadn't already known what was coming. You'll enjoy Inception more going into it blind.
A cartoon I remember from years ago depicted a couple leaving the cinema. The man opines, "I didn't care much for the plot, but I did enjoy the illusion of motion created by the projection of still frames in rapid succession." I still smile whenever I think of that cartoon, because not only is it funny, but it also it also says something about the way our minds are accustomed to films and television. That anyone should go to a movie and simply appreciate the technological trickery that makes our brains perceive moving images is laughable to us now. What we often do not recognize, however, is the sophistication of our collective perception, that we understand what we watch because we have learned the conventions of cinema.
There is the famous apocryphal story of the audience reaction at the premiere of Auguste and Louis Lumiere's 1895 short The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station. Running only 50 seconds, the pioneering film's documentary content is aptly summarized by its title. According to legend, viewers were so alarmed by the moving image of an approaching train and so unaccustomed to cinematic illusion that they reflexively took evasive action so as not to get run over. You can judge for yourself by viewing the original footage, which wouldn't hold a modern audience's attention for half its length. At the end of the 19th Century, though, content hardly mattered. Just watching projections of apparently moving images was captivating.
Funny Places
Tee-hee
My brother Brian once encouraged me to tag along on a social call that did not appeal to me. My reluctance was born from a previous visit that lasted much longer than I had anticipated. Even though Brian assured me that we would leave for home whenever I liked, I wasn't convinced that I would have the opportunity to express that desire without offending our host. Somehow we arrived at a clever solution: a code word, one unlikely to come up in normal conversation yet not so obscure as to raise suspicion, would be my subtle signal that it was time to go.
"What's the code?" asked Brian.
"Put-In-Bay," I declared instantly. Why the name of a village on Lake Erie's South Bass Island should spring to my lips remains a mystery, though I suspect my brain subconsciously fetched the handiest noun that might elicit a laugh. Indeed, it did bring forth a chuckle from my brother, partly because the phrase Put-In-Bay is naturally funny and also due to the potential awkwardness of inserting the unwieldy moniker into casual conversation.
First in Flight
We Ohioans like to claim Wilbur and Orville Wright as our own, and why not? They began their pioneering aviation work in Dayton, birthplace of Orville and the final resting place for both brothers. Their Wright Flyer III was built and flown in Ohio. We've honored them with the establishment of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and Wright State University. Still, the fact remains that our favorite aviators were out of state when they achieved their most notable success. One hundred and seven years ago today, the Wright brothers achieved the first controlled, powered, manned flight near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
This is a big deal to North Carolinians, whose license plates bear the slogan, "First in Flight." I can't blame them for displaying a reverential pride regarding the momentous event that occurred within their borders. I also appreciate the measures they have taken to preserve the historic site in such pristine condition that it is easy for visitors to visualize the original Wright Flyer skimming the windswept plain of Kill Devil Hills. But "First in Flight"? Just remember that it was a pair of Ohio boys who got you there.
Smile!
If I look wooden and stupid, there's a good reason. Besides being wooden and stupid.
It neither bothers me nor excites me to be photographed. You won't see me rushing to insert myself in a hastily posed group picture, nor will you hear me begging to be excused from becoming the subject of an unexpected snapshot. Like most people, I appreciate a portrait that makes me look good and wince at those that do the opposite. But whether my likeness is captured thousands more times or never again, it's pretty much all the same to me.
However, there is one photographic ritual that I have always disliked, and that is the annual taking of school photographs. I don't recall enjoying the experience much when I was a student, and I have no enthusiasm for it as a teacher. Now in my tenth year as an educator, I have learned to simply grin and bear it. And that is exactly what I appear to be doing in most of my teacher portraits: grinning and bearing it.
Still Standing Tall
Street Player, the new autobiography from former Chicago drummer Danny Seraphine, immediately grabs the reader's attention with a riveting introduction: the frantic musician's arrival at the tragic aftermath of bandmate Terry Kath's self-inflicted, fatal gunshot. Following the conventions of modern memoir, this fascinating glimpse is only a snapshot of what is to come, and the clock accordingly winds backward to the author's birth so that we may get all the details of his formative years. Many autobiographies stall out almost as soon as they begin by using this familiar template, and the reader is left fighting the urge to flip through the pages until the story becomes interesting. Not so with Seraphine. Focusing on his upbringing is not a personal indulgence but rather a necessary exploration in order to understand the man. By the time he helps found the band that will bring him international success, he has cemented a confrontational philosophy that will ultimately lead to his devastating downfall.
"From the time my parents brought me home from Oak Park Hospital in the late summer of 1948, I was a wild child with a constant need for movement," Seraphine begins. "I had a tendency to run toward the flame." And so he did, evolving into a defiant delinquent who once pushed an aggressive nun with such force that she staggered down a small stairway. At the age of 15, he became a father, and soon afterward he was getting into violent street fights as the member of a gang. Seraphine's Chicago was an urban nightmare ruled by mob mentality (literally, as it was customary for members of Seraphine's gang to work their way up to the local Mafia). His talent for drumming and a dogged persistence helped him escape from an existence that had a strong likelihood of ending early and violently. Yet to paraphrase an old axiom, you can take the kid out of the streets, but you can't take the streets out of the kid. Seraphine's past would cast a long shadow.
Sunday With Art And Barack
Maus creator Art Spiegelman in an appearance at The Ohio State University
“Have you ever been the opening act for the President of the United States before?” asked David Filipi, Director of Film and Video for the Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University. Sitting opposite him on the stage at Mershon Auditorium was Art Spiegelman, the esteemed comics artist who won a Pulitzer Prize for his unique depiction of the Holocaust in the graphic novel Maus. Last Sunday afternoon's audience laughed at the reference to the imminent appearance of President Obama on the Oval, a literal stone’s throw from Mershon.
“Well, I’ll tell ya’, I feel like a garage band,” quipped Spiegelman. “On the other hand, in honor of the occasion…” Reaching toward his open laptop, he summoned forth upon a projection screen the image of Barry Blitt’s infamous 2008 New Yorker cover that satirically depicted Barack and Michelle Obama as Muslim jihadists sharing a fist bump in the Oval Office as an American flag crackles in the fireplace.
Whatchoo Talkin’ ‘Bout, Willis?!
Gripe all you want about the name change, but Sears Tower never had the Ledge.
I assume that the majority of humanity sympathizes with my distaste for the proliferation of corporate naming rights and the way this trend has altered tradition in the name of better market branding. Whether it's a renamed annual event or a rechristened sports venue, I resent having the identities and logos of corporate America shoved in my face simply because the offending companies forked over enough dough to make it so. For example, one used to be able to go to downtown Cleveland and enjoy a game at Jacobs Field or Gund Arena, two facilities with nondescript names that did not overshadow the entities of their famous residents, the Cleveland Indians and the Cleveland Cavaliers. Now, however, sports fans must tolerate the dumb moniker Progressive Field and the even worse Quicken Loans Arena.
There is a certain chutzpah to waving a magical monetary wand and renaming cherished landmarks, a crass practice that I pondered on a recent trip with my family to Chicago. Short on time and wanting to make the most of our moment in the Windy City, we decided to ascend Sears Tower. Only there is no Sears Tower, technically speaking. A British insurance broker, Willis Group Holdings, became a major tenant in 2009, long after the folks from Sears had literally left the building. The owners threw in naming rights as part of the deal, and just like that, Sears Tower became Willis Tower. I don't know what annoys me more, the fact that yet another architectural icon has been renamed by a big insurance company, or the insult that the tallest building in America now bears the name of a foreign corporation. If I have an anti-corporate sentiment, at least it's patriotic.