Jeremy Blachman's Weblog: 2012

Book Thoughts: Forgive Us Our Spins

The subtitle of this book is "Michael Moore and the Future of the Left."  As opposed to a typical screed against Michael Moore from someone on the right, it's a screed against him from the left.   The basic premise: His films are dishonest, and by making himself a representative of the political left, he makes it too easy for people on the right to marginalize the liberals and dismiss even the thoughtful ones, by lumping them together with Moore.  And besides his films being dishonest, he's a hypocritical jerk who has his flannel shirts custom-tailored to look crappy, is greedy and selfish, and treats people -- including the victims he uses in his manipulative films -- badly.  There's an itemized critique of the dishonesty of Bowling For Columbine here, and it's an entertaining read.  But, look, I don't really have a position for or against Michael Moore.  I saw Bowling for Columbine and Farenheit 9/11 and found them both compelling but also obviously misleading.  The idea that people watch his films and think he's being intellectually honest and fair seems silly to me.  Of course he's not.  But I don't have any venom for him.  And that's not why I read this book, or why I liked it.  I liked it because the author has a real agenda here, to take down Michael Moore, and does it really well.  Whether he's being as dishonest as his subject, I don't know or care.  But it's an entertaining read.

One quote from the book:

"Once, convinced that someone was sneaking into his office and reading his e-mails, he had the locks changed; only he and [executive assistant] Vogt were to have a key. This meant that the cleaning staff couldn't get in to clean his office. Moore informed Vogt that in addition to her other duties, she would have to clean his office. This irritated Vogt, but she did her best. She would put his wastebasket outside his office at night, so that the cleaners could empty it, and she would then put it back in his office before he returned the next day. Once Moore came in early, before Vogt, so the wastebasket was still outside his office. When Vogt got to the office, Moore told her: "My wastebasket wasn't there, so I spit my gum out where it usually is and now it's on the rug. Can you clean it up?"

[To avoid retyping this, I've taken it from here.  There's also an interview with the author over here.]

Three Sides

This Saturday at 4:30 is the only performance left for a terrific musical I saw yesterday.  Ticket info here. Show website here.  I'm leading with that information because I don't just want to bury it at the end, and I'm not sure there's anything I've seen recently that I'm more eager to push than this.

I had no real reason to see this show.  I was playing around on the New York Musical Theater Festival website a few weeks ago and listening to sound clips for a bunch of shows to see if anything jumped out at me.  Not much did, but this one absolutely stood out, and I bought a ticket.

Plot-wise, this is not revolutionary, but it's simple enough and the characters are each developed enough to hook you in.  A woman is dating two guys at the same time, and they don't know, and it grows into a real problem as they both fall in love with her.  The dramatic scene you hope for as an audience member -- when she tells them what's going on and you get to see them react -- never really happens, and the resolution of everything feels rushed and not terribly real.

But I forgive that, without a second thought, because the lyrics are smart and the music is absolutely terrific (both are written by a guy named Grant Olding).  I didn't write about some other musicals I've seen recently because there was nothing worth writing about.  I'm not that often blown away by a writer's talent, and by the execution of craft in a musical, but this is one of the most rewarding shows I've ever seen.  It's a three person cast, they're all appealing singers, there's a lot of really awesome vocal harmonies going on, and almost all of the songs hit exactly the right spot -- they're melodic and tuneful, but at the same time they're advancing the story and providing character moments.  They don't all sound the same, and, even better, they don't all sound like they were written by some sort of generic musical-writing computer program that so much ordinary theater music feels like it comes from.  These songs stick in your head.

A bunch of music clips on the site linked above.  I'm not sure why I'm as enthusiastic about this show as I am.  I have no reason to be.  I just really hooked into the music and feel like the writer might really be someone spectacularly talented, and seeing this makes me want to hear some other stuff from him.  Cool.

The Last Kiss

Saw "The Last Kiss" on Tuesday, the new Zach Braff movie written by Paul Haggis, who wrote "Crash."  I think I'd describe it as a perfect anti-date movie.  If you're looking to break up with someone, this would be a good movie to take them to, and just pretend you're going to the bathroom and leave them there in the middle sometime.  They won't care, because the movie will convince them all relationships are doomed to fail anyway, and life is sad and pointless, and the world is bleak.  And all people are liars.  And no one ever smiles, at anything.

Basic plot summary without giving anything away: Zach Braff and his girlfriend are in a long-term relationship, not married, but she's pregnant.  He's worried this is the end of anything surprising that will ever happen in his life.  Meanwhile, he has a band of sad friends, one whose wife/girlfriend has just left him, one who's married and has a kid but wants to leave, and one who needs a haircut.  And the girlfriend's parents are having marital problems too.  And everyone is very sad and frustrated, all the time, including the weather, which is way too prone to heavy rain.  The end of the movie involves some mysterious timeline-funkiness where it's hard to figure out how long things are going on for, and how someone who's sitting on his porch for days ever goes to the bathroom.  Also, some wacky neighbors make one or two appearances, but seem to either be from another movie or must have had scenes and scenes left on the cutting room floor.  On the plus side, no suicide anywhere in the movie.  That's the plus side. 

This is not a bad movie, but it's not going to cheer you up.

Book Thoughts: James A. Garfield by Ira Rutkow

I have an idiosyncratic interest in President Garfield.  I did some ghostwriting a couple of years ago for a book about events of presidential courage, and one of the chapters was originally supposed to be on the death of President Garfield.  I wrote about 25 pages on it, and then the chapter got scrapped (apparently surviving for 80 days after being shot is not in fact all that courageous), so it lives on my hard drive alone.  But the story was actually pretty interesting -- crazy man is convinced he helped Garfield win the election, and feels entitled to become ambassador to Paris; when he's not offered a job in the administration, he decides Garfield is corrupt and must be removed; he shoots Garfield but the bullet lands in the muscles of his back and if left alone would have healed and Garfield would have lived; but doctors probe the wound with their dirty fingers, and keep poking around in there until he gets an infection which festers and spreads until he dies.  In the process of writing the 25 pages I did, I read pretty much every book out there about Garfield, including a fascinating little book from a couple of years after his death that contained dozens of poems published in newspapers around the country celebrating Garfield.  Because that's what newspapers apparently did back then -- run poems.  So when I saw this new book about Garfield in the library, I wanted to read it.  And it's great.  It's very much about the medical aspects of the incident, and how the doctors didn't yet believe in Joseph Lister and the idea of keeping things clean and avoiding contamination; and how they thought pus was healthy, and a sign the wound was healing... and all sorts of fun facts like about how one of the doctors arrived by horse and was covered in horse manure when he put his finger into the bullet wound and played around with Garfield's broken rib.  If this is more interesting than it is nauseating, you should check it out the book.  It's probably the most cogently written thing out there about Garfield.  I recommend.

Book Thoughts: Built to Win

Another baseball book, so everyone who doesn't care can skip.  And maybe everyone who does care too.  Built to Win is an autobiography by John Schuerholz, the longtime general manager of the Braves.  You learn that Kenny Lofton and Deion Sanders are selfish, but pretty much everyone else who ever wore a Braves uniform is awesome, and every trade the Braves ever made is awesome, and it takes more than just statistics to make a team.  The Braves have been really good for a long time, so I'm sure Schuerholz is actually pretty smart, and clearly he's good at putting together a baseball team.  But you wouldn't know it from reading this book.  I'm tempted to blame the ghostwriter for most of this, but, really, I came away from the book pretty unimpressed by Schuerholz.  The book is basically the opposite of something you'd want to read about a baseball general manager.  It doesn't help that the book spends a bunch of pages explaining how Moneyball was wrong but gets the ideas espoused in Moneyball completely wrong, but even without that part, this just isn't a very worthwhile book.

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip

Saw episode 2 of Studio 60, Aaron Sorkin's new show.  Here's a negative review from someone else (the Star-Ledger TV critic, on his blog).  I don't disagree with anything in the review except that I really liked the show, and even though I see all of his criticisms, they didn't make me dislike the show overall.  I like Sorkin's writing, and I like the arena that Studio 60 is playing in, and even though I'm not blown away yet, I think it's as compelling as anything on TV and I was disappointed when the episode was over.  Thought this episode was stronger than the pilot.  And it's inspired some pilot-script-writing on my part, which is good, since most of my day I was pretty much useless.  Eh, it happens.

Freddy Ferrer at Gray's Papaya

On the way back to the subway tonight after going somewhere, I was a little hungry, and walked around a couple of blocks hoping to be inspired before reluctantly settling on a hot dog from Gray's Papaya on 72nd and Broadway.  And in front of me in line was Fernando Ferrer, the guy who lost the mayoral election last year against Bloomberg.  Star sighting of the week.  Cool.  I didn't catch what he ordered though.  Probably a hot dog, since I don't think they have anything else.  But I mean I didn't see if he got sauerkraut, or mustard, or what. 

Happy 5767

Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, was this weekend.  So, happy new year, if that applies.  And happy first weekend of fall, regardless.

Another Interview About My Book

Over here, at Internet Law and Strategy.  Nothing revolutionary, but figured I'd flag it.

The Mets Clinch!

I meant to write a post about the Mets clinching the NL East last night.  Pretty cool.  I lost the playoff ticket lottery, unfortunately.  Didn't get to watch the game last night, but I watched the post-game celebration on MLB.TV this morning and it was really awesome.  A friend I had lunch with today was at the game and said the crowd was really into it, really loud.  The clinching celebrations always seem to look exactly the same.  Lots of champagne poured on top of people's heads, people being interviewed getting surprised by champagne being poured on their heads, reporters getting ambushed by champagne being poured on their heads, and lots of interviews about how this team is special because everyone is so close in the clubhouse, chemistry is amazing, every player has really contributed, they have a hunger to win more than any other team, everyone is selfless, humble, and just trying to "stay within themselves," whatever that means.  Never anything about having more talent than the competition, or even about being luckier than the competition, or about the unbalanced schedule.  "We probably don't really deserve to be here, but sometimes you just get lucky, and we're hoping our luck continues through the postseason."  I guess it would take the wind out of the celebration to hear something like that.

In any case, of course none of this applies to the Mets, since obviously they're not only more talented than their competition, but are also better people, who like each other more, and want to win more than anyone else. Of course.

--end post--

Voice Inside My Head: They can't read your mind.

Other Voice Inside My Head: What do you mean?

Voice Inside My Head: You know exactly what I mean.  Not everyone's going to realize that this post is a clumsy attempt to get someone to think of you if they happen to find themselves with an extra playoff ticket and think you'd be a pleasant companion.

Other Voice Inside My Head: Which I am.

Voice Inside My Head: Of course you are.  But not everyone is going to realize that's what you're hoping for.  And they're definitely not going to know you'd (obviously) be happy to pay a small premium over the ticket price, plus a signed book and even the chance to have your name mentioned somewhere in a future book (if you get so lucky as to write one), and whatever else you could possibly offer, to anyone who could help make that happen.

Other Voice Inside My Head: No, no, my readers are smart.  They know all that.

Voice Inside My Head: Even if your readers are smart, they can't read your mind.

Other Voice Inside My Head: No, they can.  You'll see.

Voice Inside My Head: Sure I will.  AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Other Voice Inside My Head: What are you screaming about?  What happened?

Voice Inside My Head: Brain freeze from my Jabana Juice smoothie.

Other Voice Inside My Head: You mean Jamba Juice?

Voice Inside My Head: Do you even READ my posts???

A few links and brief reviews

Really interesting (short) interview in the Times with author Alain de Botton.  I had to read some of his stuff for a law school class on emotions and psychology and the law, and it was a little too highbrow for me, but I took another book of his, Status Anxiety, out of the library last week and am hoping to get to it at some point.

Saw the shows Smoking Bloomberg, Flight of the Lawnchair Man, and Captain Gravy's Wavy Navy at the New York Musical Theater Festival in the past week.  Captain Gravy would be a cool show to see especially if you've got kids you want to expose to theater -- it's basically a cartoon on stage, with some nice music and colorful characters.  I think there's a Friday and Saturday show still to go.

Read "The Reach of a Chef" by Michael Ruhlman the other day.  I'll add it to the sidebar.  It's a nice book about the celebrity chef culture, a bunch about Thomas Keller (Per Se, where two friends of mine ate this past weekend for their 2nd anniversary and enjoyed) and Emeril and Mario Batali and a bunch more chefs.  I liked it a lot, it's a good read if this stuff appeals, but I don't have a lot more to say about it.  Also read Anthony Bourdain's "The Nasty Bits" last week but forgot to blog about it.  "Kitchen Confidential" is Bourdain's hit book.  I liked that one a lot.  This one is a collection of columns.  It wasn't bad but read Kitchen Confidential instead.  Or The United States of Arugula, or Heat, or The Omnivore's Dilemma, or The Reach of a Chef, all of which I found more enjoyable.

I think that's the last of the food-related books on my reading list, which is probably a good thing because mostly they just make me hungry.

I did get to try a dessert last week at a place called Room 4 Dessert, which was written up in the New Yorker a few weeks ago.  Interesting.  Sesame flavored gelato and raspberry foam and something else I can't remember.  Strong flavors.  I'd go back, but I'd get something else, and I'd hope that once again someone else was paying, since $12 is expensive for a few spoonfuls of dessert.

An update on some stuff from last week: my mom had a follow-up surgery on Monday to make sure the cancer is all gone, and we're waiting on pathology results, hopefully it'll come back clean, and then she'll start treatment.  And my first day tutoring at 826NYC last Thursday was cool, helped a bunch of kids with their homework, found it fairly rewarding, excited to go back this week.

A Times magazine article about satire that I keep meaning to read, but haven't yet.  If anyone else has, feel free to tell me if it's worth reading.

Liked the season premiere of How I Met Your Mother a lot.  Wasn't really into the show for most of last season, until the last couple of episodes, which I watched mostly just because a bunch of friends kept saying they liked the show.  I could see why.  Season finale last year was great, and the season premiere last night just as good.  Check it out if you haven't, perhaps.  I didn't watch the Studio 60 premiere last night, but only because I watched it on YouTube a few weeks ago.  Looking forward to checking out the new episode next week, I think it's the show I'm most excited about this season.

Jabana Juice

Not a typo.  Passed a store called Jabana Juice tonight, in a similar font as the Jamba Juice stores.  I wonder how many people a day are fooled. 

TJ's Double Play

There's a new UVA Law Student blog that I was going to link to anyway, but they just posted a review of my book, so that's an even better reason.

Here's an amusing post about how to be a gunner, from their archives.

Drift

Yesterday afternoon I saw the show "Drift," part of the New York Musical Theater Festival (NYMF) going on this month.  It's a musical about divorce.  The lead character, David, leaves his wife, goes to group therapy where he meets other men going through the same thing, fights for custody of his 5-year-old daughter, struggles to find success as a musician, and they all sing some songs about all of it.  I saw a bunch of shows in last year's NYMF; this is the first one I've seen this year but I'll probably see at least 3 or 4 more.  They're hit or miss, but that's the cool thing.  There's always the chance to find something with some real spark of greatness.  Drift has that spark.  It's not consistent throughout, at all -- the show can't decide whether it's about the man and his wife, or about the guys in therapy, and that hurts the momentum, and means that in a bunch of cases threads about the characters don't really have time to develop and come to a resolution.  The choreography is mostly distracting -- characters throwing chairs, jumping in the air for no reason.  The book is merely OK.  But I thought the actors -- even the ones with throwaway parts -- were unusually excellent, made me forget they were acting, and some of the songs (music and lyrics by a guy named Jeremy Schonfeld) were even better than that.  I didn't like every song -- but there were two or three really excellent ballads, and a bunch more that stuck in my head as well.  And they worked for the characters, and they communicated what they needed to, and, most importantly, for whatever reason I trusted the writer.  I trusted he had something to say, that these songs emerged from something real and weren't just trying to be shtick.  One of the festival musicals I saw last year, called Monica The Musical, about the Monica Lewinsky / Bill Clinton stuff was on the opposite end of the spectrum.  It was shtick, badly done, and ended up really unwatchable.  Thirty seconds in, you knew there was nothing there worth hoping for.  Watching Drift, even when something wasn't working, I was able to hold onto the hope that something worth seeing was coming just after the next chorus.  So I liked it. 

There's a review from Talkin Broadway over here.  And the composer's solo versions of a majority of the songs are on a concept album that's streaming on the Internet over here.  Ghost of a Chance, State of the Heart, and Drift are my favorites.  Didn't really expect when I watching the show that I would go home and Google to find it, but I did.  Very tempted to buy the songwriter's solo album, but I like to give myself 24 hours to make sure I actually want a CD before I buy it, because otherwise I would buy more things than I want to.

Okay, I Guess That Wasn't The Last Post

Thanks for the e-mails and comments about the previous post.  I appreciate it, a lot. 

I don't disagree with the couple of comments about how the blog was more focused and better when I was in law school.  Of course it was.  Law school gave me lots of stuff to write about and think about, and the ambition to do what I've gotten to do was a tremendous motivator as far as making me try and be clever and funny and good at this.  There's a sidebar interview in New York magazine this week with Mark Haddon, the author of the mega-success "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time" about his new book, which is getting mixed reviews.  The interviewer asks about a sophomore slump, and his answer is: "I feel it mostly as an absence of that grinding ambition which used to be there all the time."  That resonates.  I very much -- and sensibly -- had a fear in law school that I was putting myself on a track to be a lawyer, and it wasn't the track I wanted to be on, and I knew that to get myself off that track, I had to do something.  I had to write as much as I could, as well as I could, and really push to get my material out there, and take every opportunity I could think of.  I felt a great pressure on myself to stumble into something.  I like to think I'm a relatively laid back person -- and in a lot of respects, especially compared to a lot of my classmates, I think I am.  But in terms of ambition, I'm as bad if not worse than my classmates, merely channeled in this direction as opposed to in the legal field.  So I put a tremendous amount of pressure on myself to make something happen.  And while I don't for an instant feel anything but lucky and fortunate that this bizarre stuff with the blog happened and I got to write a book, it has absolutely relieved a lot of that pressure, and without that pressure I haven't yet figured out how to be as prolific, as creative, as good at all this as I was with it.  That's not entirely true.  I know part of the trick.  I've always worked best when I'm trying to impress someone.  When there's someone in a mentor role, in an older-person-I-respect-and-want-to-please role.  That gets my wheels turning a lot better than I can do it for myself.  My editor filled that role for the book.  There are people filling that role for the TV project.  But there's no one filling that role for the blog, or for the 2nd book without a deal in place that I have yet to start writing about a subject I have yet to discover, or for the screenplay I would perhaps be smart to try and write, but I don't even have a file open for it yet.   This is something I'm trying to solve for myself -- how to stay motivated when the fear that I would never even get to this point just isn't there anymore -- and it's probably my biggest source of personal frustration that I'm doing a crappy job of solving it, and nowhere is that more apparent than on the blog.

But -- believe it or not -- writing last night's post really did help me, I think.  Just to feel like I cleared a lot of this stuff from my head.

Unrelated to anything here, there's a hilarious video on YouTube of the characters from the upcoming sitcom (I think it's coming midseason to NBC) "Nobody's Watching" watching the premiere of "Til Death" last week.  Here.  If you read my post about Til Death, you will see why I like this video.

And a few book things if you want to read:
I wrote a piece from Anonymous Lawyer's perspective for the Harvard Law Record.  It's called "How to Get a Job At My Firm" and it's here.  Keep in mind the audience is Harvard law students.  There's also an interview with me at Blackstone Audio, which is the audio publisher for my book.   What's weird about the audio book is that this interview is the extent of my involvement -- my agent sold the rights, and I didn't even know until I saw it come up on Amazon that they'd found a voice to read it, and when the release date is (I think it's this week).  I haven't heard the CDs yet, have no idea what the guy sounds like, don't know anything about the packaging, nothing.  So that should be a fun listen for me, whenever it comes out and I get my hands on it.

And, just in case anyone out there is looking for breast cancer info, for someone in their lives, I thought it might be useful to post some of the more informative links I've found as I've been reading.

National Review piece about recent strides in treatment
Treatment primer for Stage 1 Breast Cancer
Chemotherapy info
More chemotherapy info
National Cancer Institute breast cancer page
National Cancer Institute page on adjuvant therapy
Herceptin
Tamoxifen