Insta Rating: 4 out of 5

OK, it’s a little odd to be reviewing a movie when I’m supposed to be off on a wonderful cruise. But as mentioned before I was pretty wiped out, so I decided to take advantage of the onboard movie theater and catch Next starring Nicholas Cage and Jessica Biel. I remember when this came out but I never got to see it, despite being a sucker for a Philip K. Dick movie

Nicholas plays Chris something, who was born with the very Dickesque talent of being to see the future but only his own future and only two minutes ahead. He’s making a living as a second-rate Vegas magic act and just trying to have a normal life. The only exception to the rules of his talent is that he saw Liz (Biel) at a diner some indeterminate time in the future. He’s been visiting that diner for a week trying to meet her, which he does, acting in a manner which he hopes isn’t too creepy (but which kind of is).
Unfortunately for Chris, there’s an FBI agent who’s somehow become aware of his talent and wants to use it to track down a missing Russian nuclear warhead which has been smuggled into the US. The movie is about bringing Chris around to the greater good and stopping the bad guys.

More below the fold.

Actually, I liked this movie quite a bit. I’ve never read the associated Dick story (“The Golden Man”) so I can’t say how well it conforms. But unlike most Hollywood adaptations of the author’s work, this one feels like a Philip K. Dick story (except not quite so psychoactive). The talent is done well – the camera gives essentially no hint that Chris is “in the future” until it stops and rewinds. Despite knowing the trick, the viewer is lulled several times into believing something horrific has occurred.

This is used to fantastic effect in the film’s “gotcha” ending, which was entirely worthy of Dick’s brand of madness. I won’t give anything away but suffice to say, the metaphysical rug is pulled out from under the viewer in the last two minutes of the film. Surprisingly this wasn’t frustrating or irritating; the scriptwriters have gotten the viewer to a place where this sleight-of-hand is acceptable. And for all the nay-sayers: There is a visual cue earlier in the movie that sets up the gotcha, if you’re paying enough attention. It has to do with the pupils in Cage’s eyes after a tender scene.

A lot is left unexplained – who stole the bomb? why are they setting it off in LA? – and that’s all to the good. Dick’s stories tend not to give you all the answers; sometimes they don’t give you any. And there are moments when the film bogs down into a standard find-the-bomb thriller. But the depiction of Chris’ ability, and the clever ways he learns to exploit it, make up for these deficiencies. It’s a pretty decent effort at a strange sci fi story, and well worth the eyeball time.

Edited for grammar 2007 Dec 16.

I just finished watching my TiVo’d copy of “What Kind of Day Has It Been”, the 22nd and final episode of Aaron Sorkin’s Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Studio 60 was highly touted as the Next Big Thing in TV drama, opened with a stellar pilot, and then faded out over the course of a season. A while back, NBC made it clear that it would not be picked up for a second season; the word was out early enough for Sorkin to adjust the storylines for the last few episodes.

Short version: Like most of the post-hiatus episodes, this one was pretty good. It had flashes, at least, of the brilliance that Sorkin brought to Sports Night and of course The West Wing. Much like the rest of the season, alas, it had only flashes. The episode was bittersweet, in that you can see where this might have gone with another season’s chance. There really was potential for a break-out, smart, important TV show, but Sorkin never quite found his feet.

More below the fold.

So what went wrong? And what, if anything, went right? I’m no professional critic but I have some opinions. (Shocker, that.)

The first and overwhelming failure, in my opinion, was the absolute lack of any identifiable musical signature. Sorkin went with W.G. “Snuffy” Walden again, as he did on Sports Night and The West Wing. But Snuffy didn’t come through this time, or, at least, the music never “hooked” the viewer. Again, there were flashes — the end of the pilot, the Christmas episode — but it never gelled. As goofy as it sounds, I think Studio 60 was doomed by its lack of opening titles and most importantly, of a theme. There was just this generic background music that never gave the show a feel of its own. Walden never gave us that infectious theme that you could hum in anticipation of the credits rolling.

Secondly, Sorkin’s writing just wasn’t up to snuff. Although he is still the master of quick-paced dialog, the characters he created just didn’t connect. We should have cared more about Harriet and Simon and Jordan; we should have been invested in Matt and Danny. I don’t think he ever made the case, though; Sorkin just assumed we would care, because they were the frontliners. Ironically, it was only the “smaller” roles (Lucy, Tom, Jack) that seemed to work. A lot of the time I found myself wishing the “stars” would get out of frame so that these background characters could shine through.

Third, Tim Busfield and his great character of Cal ended up generally wasted. In the episodes that focused on him (“The Harriet Dinner I” and “The Disaster Show”), he was absolutely brilliant. Cal brought the funny like no one else on the show (which is odd, considering it was about comedy). Busfield did much the same with his recurring character from The West Wing, and it was a pleasure watching his craft again.

Fourth, it was painful to watch the slow lobotomization of Jordan McDere. Amanda Peet’s character started off as the spunky, fiery network president who could handle anything Danny or Matt could throw at her and could dish out worse. Then she got pregnant and Sorkin got stupid. She wilted into a typical pregnant TV character — soft, moody, and most of all, boring. The metamorphosis was, ironically, one of the easy TV cliches Sorkin was using this show to rail against. It was interesting to have a strong character whose motives was as noble but whose opinions were different from the two anointed stars.

So, did Sorkin do anything right? Actually, yes. For the most part, the banter between characters was sharp and engaging. Even though characters took themselves too seriously, they spoke well and made interesting points. Also, from my (admittedly limited) experience, entertainers in hot properties actually do tend to take themselves a little too seriously. On the other hand, I liked that Sorkin’s TV professionals understood the power and importance of television — and if you hold yourself too highly to be a TV watcher, if you categorically dismiss it as a medium, well, the past few elections must have caught you off guard. TV does wield a huge influence in this country, and more so because we pretend it does not.

The visual look of the show was spectacular. Unlike early seasons of The West Wing, the lighting level was dead-on each episode… no more squinting into shadows or shielding your eyes from glare. The Studio 60 set was improbable but lush and comfortable. There were, of course, plenty of long winding paths to allow the patented walk-and-talk, which was generally used to good effect.

When the music worked, it worked really well. Although some on the Net decried the use of “Under Pressure” in the pilot, calling it trite and cliched, I thought it worked very well. Yes, it’s used a lot, but that’s because it’s a song that works. Someone who can write can still evoke the power that inspires everyone to overuse it. Likewise, near the end of the season, as the world falls apart (because in Sorkinworld, it is May that is the cruelest month), the overlay of scenes of growing desperation with John Hiatt’s “Have a Little Faith” worked perfectly. And if you weren’t stirred by the New Orleans jazz tribute during “The Christmas Show”, well, I hope you at least got top dollar for your soul.

Most of the acting was superb, especially in light of Sorkin’s uneven writing. From The West Wing, I expected Bradley Whitford (“Danny Tripp”) to be brilliant, and he was. Perhaps the best testimony to Whitford’s acting is this: Many of the more rabid WW fans turned off S60 in disgust because “Josh wouldn’t act that way”. In other words, because Danny Tripp was not the same likable earnest character as Joshua Lyman — because Whitford brought a different character to life — they couldn’t bear to watch.

I’ve already mentioned Busfield, also not a surprise, based on his West Wing performances.

Matt Perry (“Matt Albee”) was outstanding. He did two stints on The West Wing toward the end of Sorkin’s tenure there, and he was superb. I think a lot of people assume he can only be Chandler Bing, but he’s demonstrated a tremendous range. Matt Albee was a likable but flawed character, overly sure of his opinions, not-so-secretly terrified that other people didn’t like him. He was clearly the kid who learned to use sarcasm and comedy to hide the fact that he felt overwhelmingly vulnerable. Matt Perry brought that across completely. The end of “The Focus Group” sticks with me. Everyone is excited and happy that the numbers are up; Harriet and Danny are dancing; the cast is celebrating. And Matt heads out, alone. He works the fan line, his eyes alight. And then, just as the last strains of Dave Mason’s version of “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” come crashing down, he stops at the door of his car and looks over the line of screaming fans again. And there is sadness and even terror in Matt Perry’s eyes. It truly gives me goosebumps.

And that scene is the metaphor for the entire series run. Matt Albee is, quite transparently, Aaron Sorkin’s version of himself. That episode was heavy on meta, in no small part because after the expected huge opening of the real Studio 60, everyone wondered if Sorkin could keep those numbers. (In the real world, alas, no.) When Sorkin wrote about himself as he wanted to be seen, the show dragged and stumbled. When he wrote about himself as he is — sharp, driven, but also more than a little afraid and desperate for public acknowledgment — the show soared. It’s a shame it took him too long to understand that, so long that the ratings spiral couldn’t be staunched.

But, flawed as it was on many levels, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip was a work of love and a work of art, and I for one will miss it in the fall schedule.

Today, there’s a piece by Maya Jasonoff in the Sunday magazine of the New York Times on the Americans loyal to Britain during the Revolution, and it has me irked. It’s not the thesis, which I agree with, that we should be more aware that the “self-evident” truths were anything but, to about 20% of the population. It’s not the timing, the seemingly-obligatory article near July 4 warning us that it wasn’t all fireworks and oratory. That’s a useful exercise, too, especially in an age of unquestionable jingoism. No, what has me irked is the following statement:

Yet in all, more than 700 people put their names to the parchment — 12 times the number who signed the Declaration of Independence.

“The parchment” referenced here was a petition by the royalist Americans to their king, declaring their loyalty and dismay at the Revolution. Despite the inherent strength of her arguments, Ms. Jasonoff appears compelled (by insecurity?) to puff up the popularity of the Tory case by a specious popularity contest. She must know better: The Declaration was signed by members “in Congress assembled”; it was not an invitational and the grouping was by design small in number. To compare it to an open petition left out in a New York tavern for three days, is simply absurd. How many roaring patriots would have signed the Declaration (had it be a petition) is unknowable but certainly vast… more vast than 700, if one can judge by how rapidly and how widely it was reproduced.

Ms. Jasonoff’s editorial choice doesn’t really undercut the article and in some ways it’s a tiny thing. But it’s another example of a growing carelessness we display with our rhetoric, a growing willingness to compare apples to oranges and act as if the comparison meant anything. It’s intellectually sloppy.

The Book of Lost Things
a novel by John Connolly
InstaRating: 5 (out of 5)

This is simply a good book. I would not have thought anything would rank up next to a new book by Guy Gavriel Kay (Ysabel, which I’ll review some other time), but this one easily meets that standard. One of life’s greatest treasures, for me, is a book that compels me to keep reading at an ever-more-breakneck pace. I love a book that gives me the sensation that I’m missing details because the vision is so extravagant and the journey so enthralling that there just isn’t time to savor everything. I love a book so good that, around page 50, I start calculating how long I have to wait so that it will be fresh when I re-read it.

A short summary: David is a pre-teen in World War II Britain, who loses his mother to an unnamed lingering disease and his father (as David sees it) to a stepmother and half-brother. David starts to hear books whisper to him and then, in an ancient house, hears his mother’s voice calling to him. He ventures into the garden just as a Luftewaffe bomber crashes, propelling him into an alternate world where strange versions of well-known fairy tales seem to be true. He meets a kindly Woodsman and a questing knight, but is menaced by the half-wolf Loups, by harpies, trolls, and above all by the Crooked Man, an indistinct but terrifying menace who wants, for reasons left unexplained, for David to tell him the name of his half-brother. At the suggestion of the Woodsman, David travels east toward the castle of the ailing King and his magic Book of Lost Things. What he discovers — there and along the way, in the King and in himself — ends up changing everything.

More detail will inevitably involve spoilers, so I’ll hide them below the fold. If you’re looking for whether this book is a good read, but you don’t want to know the ending, stop here and take my word for it: This is a good book. It will richly reward you for reading it. Connolly shows himself to be a master of atmosphere and foreshadowing. If you need to hear more, and don’t mind knowing what’s coming, read on…

Connolly’s greatest strength is his command of atmosphere. This book really pulls you in and makes you live in its world. The landscape is both majestic and bleak, and like all good High Fantasy, there is no doubt that the physical world reflects the underlying moral order: The King is weak (both physically and morally) and the land suffers. Bizarre new creatures, such as the Loups and the worm-like Beast, have begun to plague the country and change its very nature. The light is bleak and dim, even at highest noon. Eventually winter comes on and deadening snow blankets everything — as much as I’ve ever seen, Connolly competently weaves despair into the very texture of his prose.

There’s really only one character, David. Everyone else is a sketch, sometimes a caricature. This is in part deliberate, because David’s new world is clearly woven from fairy tales. The characters are expected to be stock and archetypical. Throughout the novel Connolly interleaves several tales that are almost, but not quite, traditional fairy tales. For example, the story of Little Red Riding Hood ends quite differently in this world (and not entirely in a family-friendly way). And his spin on Cinderella and the Seven Dwarves is outright hilarious. The Dwarfs especially hit the mark as a Monty Pythonesque communist collective.

This is explicitly a quest journey and the point is David’s transition from boy to man (commented on explicitly several times by the narrator). He starts off as mildly unlikable, a boy who has (admittedly) suffered some terrible things but who is unable to move past them. During his journey he is forced to rely on himself more and more and also to come to grips with what he wants, what he’s lost, and what he might be missing in his blind searching for a past that’s gone.

Connolly is quite coy about whether David’s new land “really” exists or not. Certainly, the transitions between our world and the fictional one all seem to imply that he is merely entering a delusional state. He never carries anything from the fictional world to ours, indeed even to the point of re-donning the pajamas and dressing gown he’d discarded upon his arrival. He wakes up in a hospital bed, having been “discovered” in a coma. In the end, the reader is left with an ambiguity worthy of Stephen R. Donaldson and the Thomas Covenant Chronicles — and just as unimportant to the larger meaning.

The book’s major weakness is that David’s overall arc is clear from the outset and remains dismayingly predictable. Who the King is and his connection to the Crooked Man, though coming as a surprise to David, is blindingly obvious no later than a third of the way into the book. The ultimate resolution is pretty much what one expects. Perhaps this too is a facet of the heavy integration of the fairy tale milieu into the story’s structure.

The pleasant surprise was the incredibly detailed backstory eventually given for the Crooked Man. Connolly here invents a modern yet timeless bogeyman that could serve to terrify generations of young readers. Although unique in literature, I think, the Crooked Man easily fits in the rogues’ gallery of all the dark and disturbing Others out there in the pages of fairy tales. He is genuinely creepy and menacing — and, amazing in a world grown too jaded for such things, he is convincingly evil. Without getting absolutist or black-and-white, Connolly manages to come down squarely on the question of whether evil exists.

A warning to those looking to gift this to younger readers: There is some sexuality in the book, some potentially-controversial topics (such as gender identity), and much uncensored violence. The beasts are truly beastly; and not all the people are much better. Young children could easily take away nightmares from this book, not least because Connolly is explicitly focusing on themes (such as death, abandonment, and aloneness) that most upset children.

This really is a book I look forward to re-reading and, perhaps, passing on to my younger relatives. It’s the sort of book I thrilled to discover when I was younger. In the media-saturated and ink-drowning world we occupy today, I’m not sure any book is “destined to become a beloved classic”, but if any book is, it’s this one.

The third in my shameless padding series on my recent experience at Lunacon 50. This episode: Sci Fi TV 101, or Why All Your Favorite Shows are Doomed. More below the fold.

First thing I learned: The Nielsen company, which possesses a de facto monopoly on compiling ratings (for TV, radio, and Internet) currently polls about 8000 households — this to cover the roughly 120 million households in the American TV market. This is actually an improvement; until recently, the number was around 5000. I am well-trained enough to comprehend the validity of statistical sampling but I was still blown away: Here is a market worth on the order of tens of billions of dollars, and they can’t be bothered to sample even a percent of the viewers. It’s mind-boggling, really. Although I’m sure the Nielsen people would disagree, I think this is amplified by the exacting care with which they build their sample. It’s not really a “random” sample; it’s designed to capture at least one person from hundreds of different demographics.

The progress of technology has not been kind to Nielsen. Sure, the computerized set-top boxes gives them accuracy undreamt of in the 1970s. On the other hand, there are now a myriad of ways in which one can watch a TV program — live, live-delayed, TIVOd, taped, purchased on iTunes, etc. — and capturing all of them is hard. Even if you can, it’s not clear how to interpret the numbers or (most critically for them) how much to charge for a given slice of time. Any stream not accounted for becomes a frictional term that messes up their models. What I took away was this: Even if you concede that the Nielsen way of rating TV shows once worked well — say in the Silver Age of TV, the 1970s — it’s increasing clear that the system is broken now and is ever-more-wildly misrepresenting the actual market for creative product. The Emperor’s clothes are getting threadbare.

Our moderator performed a great service by relentlessly — nay, even ruthlessly — reminding people that “show business” is a business. If your favorite show keeps getting canceled, it’s because the network people know (or think they know) that they can’t make money off it. Sometimes they are spectacularly wrong (Star Trek stands out as a classic example) but usually they are right. In any event there most likely is not a conspiracy to keep good sci-fi off the airwaves.

Well, except maybe at Fox, but what would you expect?

More on my experiences at Lunacon 50 (the beginning of which is also here at The Mongrel Dogs). This time up: Joss Whedon Must Die!

That was the evocative title of the second panel I attended. Despite appearances, it was run by (and attended) by devoted fans of the aforementioned Joss Whedon, creator of

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer
• Angel
• Firefly
• Serenity

and a bunch of comic books and other media, and some rewrites and punch-ups of Hollywood scripts. And it was clear that the people at this panel loved Joss Whedon and his works. But they take issue with his disturbing tendency to kill off beloved characters, often in random acts. For the addicted, the sudden loss of a favorite character (Tara? Cordelia? Wash? Book?) can be traumatic.

Really, it turned out, people mostly wanted to share their pain and vent their frustration. Since (I suspect) that frustration is indeed part of his evil plan to use art to teach us about life, I’m not sure Whedon would feel remorse. “Life can be hard,” he might tell them, “and even the happiest endings aren’t ever-after. Everything carries its cost.” To be fair to the fans, his telling of this message is somewhat, well, relentless. If you watch the entire corpus of Whedonia, it can be downright depressing. The good guys win, in the end, usually, but not all of them are there to share the joy. And it generally feels like all the good guys have really won, in the last analysis, is a short respite and a chance to fight the good fight all over again. Forever. And ever.

Despite the bloodthirsty title, everyone seemed remarkably open and friendly, and nary a battle axe was brandished. Even though there were at least three distinct major factions — each with their own reason why Joss Whedon Must Die! — they got along pretty well and conceded the opinions of the others to have merit. The tongue-in-cheek solemnity of the panel was really quite amusing and was the first sign I had that I wouldn’t regret hiking up to Rye, New York through the Snow Storm of the Apocalypse.

This past weekend, I attended Lunacon 50, a science fiction convention held annually in Rye, New York by the New York Science Fiction Society. I wanted to attend “a con” this year and I chose Lunacon because, of the Northeast conventions I could find online, it seemed the most writer-friendly and writer-centric. Appropriately, for the next few days, I’m going to type up my thoughts and impression.

Our story begins with an epic tale of travel and travail.

However, I remain a New Yorker at heart despite being an ex-patriate of many years. I knew I could hop the A train at Penn Station, ride north one stop to Port Authority at 42nd Street, walk the pedestrian tunnel to Times Square, and hop the S (“shuttle”) over to Grand Central. Mildly annoying, well within my capabilities.

When the time came to leave on Friday, a sudden snowstorm had arisen. Really. Everyone thought we were done with winter but apparently it wasn’t done with us. Most of what I’d heard was clear that we should expect snow showers or a quick snowfall. And that story was maintained until about noon on Friday when it suddenly became known to me that we were in for a real winter storm. Of course it started coming down hard just as I called for the cab over to Princeton Junction station. *sigh* It wasn’t so much that snow was falling. I was riding a well-maintained train in relative comfort. It was that the storm has (a) delayed my departure slightly and (b) convinced many many people to call it an early day and head home. All told, it meant I would be traversing Manhattan during the upsurge tide of a Friday rush hour. And it wouldn’t get better on Metro North, either, since many of those commuters would be taking that train.

The thought almost convinced me to bag the whole weekend and just head home. But I’d paid for the hotel anyway and I did want to get away at some point during Spring Break. So I bound up my courage, hefted my bag, and plunged onward.

By the time the train pulled into Tarrytown, New York (the station closest to my hotel), the snow was coming down very hard and had been for some time. At least four inches had fallen since I first disappeared into subterranean Manhattan. Earlier in the day I had made the strategic decision to wear my springtime leather jacket (though with sweater) instead of my Michelin-man winter coat. At the moment I began to regret it. Despite the advertisement of the hotel, there was no shuttle available. I was forced to take a cab … and the cabs were not running with any regularity. Indeed, standing in the thin halo of light under a streetlamp at the edge of the station, I began to worry that cabs weren’t running at all anymore.

Happily for me, one did trundle by. It was a quick ride over to the Westchester Mariott, which unfortunately was not the hotel where the convention was being held… But that’s a story for another day.

I am not really much of a “joiner” and I don’t have many entertainment things about which I get passionate. Long ago, however, I decided that I would pick an artist and follow them closely. I chose Marc Cohn, whom you might remember from a 1991 hit “Walking in Memphis”, which still gets significant airplay, at least on the sort of stations I listen to. Anyway, Cohn has continued to release albums at a gushing dribble (three in fifteen years) but also tours a lot and plays intimate, small venues.

Last night I rode NJ Transit up to NYC to catch his show at Zankel Hall, a small 600-person adjunct to Carnegie Hall.

First, the main play list:

• “Ghost Train”
• “Ghost of Charlie Christian”
• “Giving Up the Ghost”
• “Dance Back from the Grave”
• “Becoming Gold”
• “Listening to Levon”
• “Walking in Memphis”
• “Miles Away”
• “Blow On, Chilly Wind”*
• “Strangers in a Car”
• “Dig Down Deep”

followed by an encore:

• “Silver Thunderbird”
• “Paper Walls”
• “Witness”

followed by a second micro-encore:

• “One Safe Place”

He only played the opening bars to “Blow On, Chilly Wind” (of which I’d never even heard before — indeed, Cohn seemed surprised when someone in the audience called it out). Mostly he used it to bridge to “Strangers in a Car”, which he wrote after waking from a rough dream. After penning the words, he was looking for the right music and decided to recycle the motif from “Blow On, Chilly Wind”.

This brings out the main reason I keep going to see Cohn whenever he’s within a practical distance. His shows are always excellent, chock full of humor and detail. He always seems to get a thrill from the crowd itself. I find it tough to imagine that he is still caught off guard by the enthusiastic response to “Walking in Memphis”… but it appears he is, every night. This is a guy who still hasn’t quite gotten his head around his supernova-like moment of fame. And I like that a lot.

A quick look at the playlist reveals that of the 14 songs he played, six of them have not yet been released. He did confirm that the recording is done for his oft-promised, oft-delayed next album, whose release date he would only give as “this fall… hopefully”. He said that his part (making the music) is done. Then he recounted a tale about Duke Ellington, who was apparently dropped one time by his label because (he was told) “You’re not selling enough records anymore.” To which the Duke replied, “It’s my job to make the records. It’s your job to sell them!”

Cohn also related the tale behind “Dance Back from the Grave”, which is a tribute to New Orleans after Katrina. It’s a heartwarming tale — he heard a poet reading a moving piece days after the disaster and he felt compelled to set the lines to music. Using his “connections in the news business” (he’s married to Elizabeth Vargas of ABC News), he tracked down the poet and arranged a co-writing of the song. All that being said, I’ve heard the song four times now and it’s consistently failed to grow on me. It’s possible that Cohn isn’t compatible with other writers, even ones he admires.

That was the only flat patch in the evening, though. The opening song (“Ghost Train”) included Shane Fontayne’s patented liquid guitar work. It’d be a truly haunting song except for its location at the start of the set. If he ended with it, it’d be in everyone’s head for days (and probably lead to depression, but hey…)

He told us about his early days with Atlantic, when they’d just signed him for the first album. He flew out to LA to work with the producer he’d been assigned, someone who’d just produced a 20-million-sold album. (No names were named.) But when Cohn sat down to work out the album that eventually became Marc Cohn, they just didn’t click. The music coming out wasn’t anything like what he wanted. So, after just signing his first contract, this 29-year-old singer called up his label and said he couldn’t work with the producer — in essence, the whippersnapper fired the industry veteran. It was a nerve-wracking moment, apparently, and on the plane ride back to NYC, Cohn bolted out “Miles Away”, because he thought at that moment he’d lose the contract and sink back into obscurity. (Ironically, he then apologized for the mundane inspiration for the song, saying “I know a lot of you think it should mean something deeper” — ironic because the song itself has the lines “There’s always something we have to go through // that has some deeper meaning but // right now I just can’t say.”)

“Becoming Gold” is perhaps my favorite Cohn song of his whole repertoire, and it did not disappoint last night. Again, Fontayne captured the melancholy aura perfectly. Though Cohn doesn’t generally tour with a band, he does have regular opening acts. Tonight there was no opener, so he brought them on stage as his “band”. Sadly I didn’t catch either singer’s name (obviating, I suppose, the whole point of bringing them on stage) but the female vocalist, in particular, moulded her voice well to Fontayne’s guitar and really add richness to the refrains.

My other favorite song is “Dig Down Deep”, which he never fails to embellish somehow. Tonight, his recently-usual injection of Van Morrison (“no guru, no method, no teacher”) somehow didn’t end up at “I was only eleven years old when I heard that but I knew I wanted to ‘make love behind the stadium’.” Indeed at the Morrison bridge Cohn seemed about to lose the thread of the song, which I’ve never experienced at one of his shows. But in fact he rallied and went acoustic for a minute, then brought the band back in spectacularly. It was the sort of rendition to bring down the house and close out the show, and it did so nicely.

Of course in the game played by artists and fans, the first ending is never really an ending. So we had an encore set, with one song from his debut (“Silver Thunderbird”, in part in response to audience requests), one from his second (“Paper Walls”), and one from the coming album (“Witness”). An astute reader might notice that neither then nor earlier did he play anything from the most recent release Burning the Daze. Since the album’s release in 1998, I’ve noticed, Cohn has been playing less and less from it. I’m not sure if he finds it unsatisfactory or if he senses that his listeners did not respond to it. There are quite a number of good songs on it, in my opinion, and it’s a bit of a shame he doesn’t cover it.

On the other hand, I was underwhelmed by The Rainy Season when it came out. But after attending these concerts I’ve gained a whole new appreciation for it. Some of it is just growth and some of it is the better arrangements he pulls off live. Last night, he played “Paper Walls” as a sultry jazzy thing, with a fantastic bit of double bass viol played by someone who’s name I also did not catch. The studio version of the song leaves me dry but it has always stirred me in concert.

Shockingly, despite many cries from the audience, we did not get any rendition of “True Companion” or “Perfect Love” — and I for one was just as glad. They’re workable songs but a bit cloying and bit heavy-handedly melodramatic. They’ve never been hits with me, even though apparently they are tops for many people, and I wasn’t sad to miss them.

Cohn ended the night with “One Safe Place”, which is just one of those haunting melodies that won’t let go. I expect this will be the closer on the new album because, so far, he’s always closed with a bittersweet yearning song, and this fits the bill more than any of the other new songs he showed off. (Of course, together, they’re only half an album so who knows what awaits in the other half.) It was a really nice way to close the show (for real).

Overall, another fantastic outing by Cohn, Fontayne, and the others. It certainly justified the late-night train ride and the walk through surprisingly brutal winds on Broadway.

Echelon
a novel
by Josh Conviser

InstaRating: 2 out of 5

This book\’s title caught my interest because I keep up with surveillance tech and its social implications, and ECHELON — the alleged US NSA electronic sifting program — is the monster of all surveillance programs. Although I knew this was a spy thriller, I thought there was a chance that it would delve deeply into some of the issues revolving around the invasive new technologies coming online. Alas, it didn’t pan out that way.

More below the fold — warning: Spoilers to come.

Oh, and he dies in the first chapter — a somewhat unusual development for the main hero of a spy novel.

It comes in the form of a fall from a cliff face; Ryan is an obsessive and expert rock climber and was trying to work through some conflicting emotions after killing a computer company CEO at Echelon’s command. It’s not made clear why this particular murder hits him so hard or why the expert climber fell… at least not at first.

Rest assured, his death is temporary. He is injected with experimental nanotechnology “drones” on the orders of the head of Echelon, a guy named Turing (aside: Yes, Conviser has the gumption or the hubris or the cluelessness to name the head of his super-hi-tech encryption collective “Turing”. I can’t tell if he was intentionally paying homage to Alan Turing or if he’s being cutesy or if he didn’t even notice.) The drones, though a riot of input and noise, do repair his body and return him to the land of the living.

After recovering (including learning to control the drones via the voice of his manager, Sarah Peters, Ryan goes back into the field. His advanced abilities are being used mostly for surveillance now but he longs for the Action. So he ignores a direct order, moves against a pirate “data haven”, and discovers something he wasn’t supposed to see. Oh, along the way, he gets himself killed again.

This time when he awakes he is grilled by Sachs, head of internal security at Echelon. Sachs says that there’s a vast conspiracy to uproot Echelon and take control, led by none other than Turing. Ryan doesn’t think ask how this even makes sense, since Turing is already in undisputed control of Echelon. Sachs recruits Ryan to keep his eyes open to discover the truth.

Meanwhile someone has murdered Sarah’s band partner (oh, yeah, when she’s not “in the flow”, she plays bass guitar in a neo-punk group) while trying to get Sarah herself. She is saved at the proverbial last moment by none other than Turing.

Then someone ambushes Ryan in his dilapidated old LA apartment, and after all the dust settles, Sachs arrests Turing (just as Ryan figures out, at last, that Turing isn’t the traitor). But a-ha! Turing has encrypted “the Key”, the algorithm that gives Echelon access to all electronic data. “The Key” just appeared one day nearly a century ago, a quantum leap forward in encryption/decryption that allowed ECHELON’s original NSA workers to launch their stealthy coup. Without the Key, Echelon is nearly powerless. Immediately the world starts to slip into chaos. It just could be The End of the World.

Hilarity ensues.

Well, no, not really. What does ensue is a run-of-the-mill thriller with obligatory sci fi motiffs. Ryan’s “drones” give him near-invincibility (except when they inexplicably fail to). Sarah is a net-hacking genius who can’t seem to trace anything. She does get her own “field moment” in a goofy sequence in the Arctic, where she recovers the last surviving hard disk of the listening post that first discovered and transmitted “the Key”.

Long before she figures it out, it’s painfully obvious that “the Key” is a viral meme sent by radio from Out There, allegedly to prepare the human race for conquest by some alien species (which, mercifully, makes no actual appearance in the book). Sachs is redundantly revealed to be the traitor (along with a computer industrialist whose complicity is obvious on the first page we meet him). Sachs injects himself with even more of the drones in a quest to transcend and become the Lawnmower Man. Oh, wrong book, but it’s the same idea.

Together Ryan and Sarah manage, at the last moment, to take Sachs down, re-initialize Echelon, destroy the viral key, kill the other traitor, and get reborn as near-godlike. Oh, and fall in love (of course). Almost all of that happens in the last five pages of the book. It’s almost painful to consider how much this reads like a storyboard for a movie. Clearly Conviser hopes someone in Hollywood reads the book and makes him a multimillion dollar offer.

It might actually be tolerable as a two-hour live-action Matrix-esque throw-away. As a book it was Not Good. Mildly diverting, it doesn’t really reward the time spent reading it. It throws a few Big Ideas into the air but, too distracted by hackneyed convention and safe action-thriller idioms, it fails to catch any of the Big Ideas before they splatter onto the ground and make a mess.

Major peeve: Oh, my goodness, it seems like Conviser just now learned the meaning of the word “subsumed”. It pops up every twenty pages or so, then really ratchets up in the final chapters. I counted eight uses within the last five pages alone!

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
by Max Brooks

InstaRating: 5 out of 5

After the debacle that was The Stonehenge Gate, I was looking for something good to read, to wash the taste of failed prose from my mouth. Happily I picked up this piece of psuedo-history. Written by the author of the offbeat, tongue-in-cheek The Zombie Survivor’s Guide, this book purports to be an oral history compiled and published ten years after the end of The Zombie War, a global outbreak of the undead as in The Night of the Living Dead.

Spoilers and more after the break.

The origin of the zombie plague is left appropriately mysterious and unclear, even to the people in the book. It began, it seems, in rural China… but maybe not, as other cases pop up far too swiftly to be easily understood. It’s caused by a virus transmitted by bites; in other words, it’s weird but entirely natural. Except, zombies underwater survive pressure and chemical corrosion far better than any human flesh could, so maybe it’s supernatural. Even a decade after “the War”, no one knows for sure, and so the reader doesn’t, either.

That’s OK. This book isn’t really about the zombies; it’s about the humans. Mr. Brooks sprinkles skin-crawling episodes of horror and despair throughout the book, tales of flesh-eating unstoppable killing machines pursuing mindless but gruesome ends. That’s his hook and he’s true to it. But he also lifts a curtain on what it would take to survive the initial Great Panic, or to fight block by block across zombie America to reclaim the United States.

As the title indicates, the book is presented as an oral history, a collection of excerpts from many thousands of hours of interviews with many hundreds of people. Most of them we meet only once; a handful are revisited in the final pages to see how their lives have continued. The conceit is a difficult one to carry for 250 pages but Mr. Brooks pulls it off. Each interviewee comes across as a unique person with a unique story; there is extremely little “bleed” among the characters. Amazingly, Mr. Brooks is able to sharply define his characters in the course of no more than a paragraph or so each. The French characters feel French; the South Africans feel different from the French. Heck, he even manages to make the Dominion types — Brits, Canucks, Aussies — feel authentic, and authentically distinct. You can easily imagine a Ken Burns documentary being made from this material, including homespun soundtrack and lingering visuals.

Mr. Brooks’ “history” is every bit as sharp as his characterization. He has meticulously worked out the details of the global crisis; he lays it out logically but not monotonously. The book is divided into eight sections, which cover three distinct phase: the early epidemic (“Warnings”, “Blame”, “The Great Panic”); the desperate attempts to stabilize the situation (“Turning the Tide”, “Homefront USA”, “Around the World and Above It”); and the endgame (“Total War”, “Goodbyes”). By the time the reader is done, a whole new world has been sketched out and filled in.

His world is nuanced. The Battle of Yonkers is the almost-mandatory initial military screw-up that nearly costs the war. (Doesn’t every American war have one?) Soldiers are betrayed by the high tech weapons and outmoded doctrine handed to them; it’s a slaughter. But this isn’t an anti-military rant, some 60s fantasy about how all soldiers are idiot killers who can’t adapt. By the end of the book, the armed services have adapted, fostering tactics and strategies matched to the radically different enemy they fight. Nor is it an anti-technology screed. Sure, the tanks proves useless and the warrior-mounted-Internet a liability. But in addition to the “Lobo” polearm, the infantry carry new rifles with ammo specifically designed to kill zombies without splattering infectious brain matter everywhere. Mr. Brooks handles the political, logistical, technical, even propaganda angles, and he does so exceedingly believably.

I particularly enjoyed the many different nicknames for the zombies, invented by the grunts and adopted by everyone: G (for “ghoul”, I assume); “Zack” (joining Charlie and Ivan and Jerry); and even the British “Zed-head”.

For the concerned, let me put your mind to rest: We (humanity) do eventually win the Zombie War, or at least, the much-depleted survivors do. Twenty years of alternate history (or possible future history?) have been scribed, stretching from the first cases through the ten-year war and the decade of reconstruction. The reader is left with the conviction that this is a world that could be.

Is there a message in the book? Maybe. Many times characters speak of the need for us to rediscover our humanity before we could conquer the undead. The reconstructed world is, comparatively, underpopulated, more intimate, less materialistic. Perhaps something larger is intended. There are appropriately uplifting and soaring tales of human spirit. I’ll write elsewhere on possible reasons why this book, and its genre, exert the pull they do on our imagination. At any rate, Mr. Brooks never lets his message (whatever it might be) overwhelm his narrative. This is a thought-provoking book but it’s also a great read that — for me, at least — flew by.

If post-apocalyptica appeals to you at all, consider picking up World War Z. You won’t be disappointed.