New David Sedaris

Just recently I found an essay that David Sedaris wrote for The Guardian this past summer. It's called "Chicken Toenails, Anyone?" and it's one of the funniest things he's written in a long time. He comes down pretty hard on both Chinese food and Chinese people and certain people have complained in print.

In tone, the essay would've fit in perfectly in Sedaris's earlier collections like Barrel Fever or Naked.

I have no problem with people complaining about Sedaris or his writing. But I totally disagree with the critisism that he's recieved for this essay. He doesn't say anything that is untrue, and it's unfair of other writers to call him racist or even insensitive.

What I really want to write about is the piece that Alex Heard wrote a few years ago in The New Republic. Heard's essay bothered me then, and it bothers me even more now. I'm going to go into full detail later this week. If you'd like to read it yourself there's a link to it on Sedaris's Wiki page.

The Vampire's Assistant

I really like this movie. It's on now, but I first saw it last fall when I was staying at my friend's house while I had a couple days off and he was at work. I got to sit on his recliner drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. That was a good time.

Anyway, I can't stand the lead- he seems like a goody-goody in real life, Steve is more interesting. I like the monkey girl and John C. Reiley is really good.

Shockaholic

Shockaholic (2011) Carrie Fisher

This weekend I bought Carrie Fisher's new book, Shockaholic. She's already done four novels, all loosely based on her life, starting with her best known: 1987's Postcards From The Edge which was made into a movie starring Meryl Streep, Shirley McClaine, Dennis Quaid, Gene Hackman, and Richard Dreyfuss and directed by Mike Nichols (Dreyfuss is thanked on Postcard's acknowledgements page; he went through rehab around the same time that she did).

Around the same time that the Postcards movie came out, Fisher realeased her second novel, Surrender The Pink. I read in an old Entertainment Weekly interview that Steven Spielberg bought the movie rights before the book was even finished. Reading the novel you can see why there is no Surrender The Pink- The Motion Picture. I started reading with a lot of interest because the book is supposed to be based on Fisher's relationship with Paul Simon and the two of them are an odd pair that I find interesting. But the book is made up of the kind of dialogue that dragged down Postcards- the worst part of her first novel were the sections where the characters had converations about their feelings.

I haven't read the two newer novels, Delusions of Grandma from the 90s or The Best Awful from around 2005 but from what I understand Delusions is more of an invention and Awful is almost entirely drawn from real events in Fisher's life, from the birth of her daughter to her ex-husband leaving her for a man to her cable TV interview series to her opiate relapse (Oxycontin) to her stay in a mental hospital.

A couple years ago Fisher went on what she called her "one and a half woman show" Wishful Drinking and released a book based on that material. It was a great book with some interesting stories, but most people felt the same way I did: the book was too slim and most subjects were touched upon too briefly.

Her new book, kind of a Wishful Drinking II, is Shockaholic. While this one is also too slim (162 pages) it covers its subjects in more detail. In this case I wish there were more subjects and a little less detail. There are really only five main subjects: her ECT treatments, Michael Jackson, a 1985 blind date with Chris Dodd (plus Ted Kennedy), her step-father Harry Karl, and her father Eddie.

All of it is interesting, especially the MJ section, but I was hoping for more stories about the movies she made, and I don't mean Star Wars. I'd like to here about The 'burbs and The Time Guardian (though she does mention Hollywood Vice Squad and Liberty.

Anyway, while the book is needlessly vulgar in spots, it's well-worth reading and a lot of fun.



Note: The top image is the one that's on the cover of my book. Before Shockaholic was released I saw the bottom image on Amazon. I belive the bottom image was used on non-US editions of the book, but that's just a guess.

Pod (1990)

Pod (1990) The Breeders

HMV makes cool ads

Here's a little Hips and Makers and Strings.

Ramona

I love The Real Ramona and everything related to it. The other day I saw this cool promo for TRR; I wish I had it. I love the album cover, the black background with the fern, the postcard, the photo of the band at the beach, the cover photo and the way that they use that image on the inside of the sleeve- everything.

I read somewhere that Kristin Hersh was working on a follow-up to Rat Girl and it's supposed to focus on the recording of The Real Ramona. I hope it's true; that'd be awesome.

So much time on the computer

I waste a lot of time.

I'll have two days off in a row and I just sit at the computer looking shit up. Say there's a movie on, like the other night, when The Town was on TV. After I had to go to Wiki and look it up- who was in it, stories about the production, the stars. From there I go to other pages: actors, then movies they were in, then other actors.

Ben Affleck is a good director. I can't even think of any flaws. None. And he does a good job of involving the audience. You feel protective of the bank robbers, even Jeremy Renner. He's so believable and you don't notice at all that he's acting. I think he was nomintated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar. Oh wait, I thought of a flaw. I forgot, there was one thing that bothered me: I don't wanna give anything away so I'll just say that I don't believe that Renner's sister would be given the information that she has and gives to the FBI. I think it would be too risky to tell her, especially considering the heat that the robbers are under at that point. They're so careful so it seems like a huge lapse.

But anyway, it's an awesome movie. Good story, the car chases- especially the one in the middle of the movie- are unnerving and realistic (no, I've never been chased, but I witnessed part a police chase last week and it was freaky), and the breakfast scene with Affleck, his girlfriend, and Renner is wicked suspenseful.

Back to Jeremy Renner. He's the best thing about the movie; it wouldn't be the same without him. I never saw (and don't really wanna see) The Hurt Locker but I do remember seeing him years ago in one of his earliest movies, maybe his first starring role: Jeffrey Dauhmer in Dauhmer. I didn't see the whole thing but one scene sticks out in my memory. It's a scene where Dauhmer is in his late teens or early twenties and he's been living with one of his aunts and his father comes for a visit. His father goes through his closet and finds a mannequin or something and other creepy stuff and then he sees a lockbox that belongs to him and he demands to know why his son has it and what he's keeping inside. They argue and finally his father is about to smash the box open and at the last moment Dauhmer says that he's hiding porn magazines inside and he doesn't want his aunt to know and his father backs down. It's a strange scene because as you're watch you're on Dauhmer's side; you don't want his father to find out what's really inside, even though the discover would end up sparing the lives of innocent people. It's funny how movies can end up messing with your sympathies. Or scary, really.

Anyway, time to get ready for bed. If you're a loyal follower of RJ Bttles then I've got good news: I'm going to be here a lot more, maybe even everyday.

Good night.



One more thing. As you know, I don't like combovers. They're stupid and they annoy me. But I think I know the point when I became really hostile towards them- it was an episode of Dateline or 20/20 and Jeffery Dauhmer was being interviewed along with his father and the father had a total combover. That pissed me off. I wanted to punch him in the face. His son tortured and killed people and deprived families of their loved ones, and he's afraid to appear bald on TV. What a fucking dickhead. If I was the interviewer I would've brought it up. First question, probably.

Talking Heads

"Slippery People" from Speaking In Tongues.

Italian Wedding Soup

I had never thought to look before, but the other night at the store I came across Campbell's Italian Wedding Soup. It's nowhere near as good as when my father makes it, but it's good enough for a quiet November night at home. Mm-mm, good.

Comedy Central is finally showing reruns of It's Always Sunny- I'd seen a few scenes years ago but I had never managed to catch it when it was playing. I don't even know if they're making new ones but I hope they are. Mm-mm, good.

Have I ever mentioned how I used to love Talking Heads? I was obsessed with them and David Byrne's solo records. This was around 1996. I'd gone to Newbury Comics in Hyannis and they had Sand In The Vaseline on cassette for $4.99. I think I ended up loving 99% of the songs on it. I was amazed, especially by songs like "Warning Sign", "I Zibra", and "Memories Can't Wait".

Everything about the collection was awesome: it had early, unreleased songs like "Sugar On My Tongue", out-takes like Speaking In Tongues-era demo "Popcicle", newly (1991) finished songs from the Naked sessions, plus essays from each band member and stories about every song on the tapes.

And, of course, I loved the packaging since it had reproductions of a bunch of album and single sleeves.

I wish Belly's Sweet Ride packaging was done the same way. If they ever put out a box set, I'd love to see it come with a bocklet that shows all of the Belly sleeve images- front, back, and inside, plus the labels, postcards, and posters. I would buy that no matter what it cost.

How not to write

Is it better to say bad things to someone or behind their back? That's a good question, and like a lot of difficult questions, the answer is, "It depends."

Here at RJ Battles I've written some unkind things about the blog The Daily Guru. But every time I wrote one of those posts it crossed my mind that maybe I should send a message or a comment directly to TDG. Just friendly suggestions. But there's not much fun in that, plus, who knows how those suggestions might be recieved. It's been my experience that people don't want to hear anything about their work other than "It's awesome".

So I'm not going to write to TDG and point out what I think are some flaws in his writing style. Instead, I'm going to highlight them here at RJ Battles and let his mistakes serve as a lesson to other writers out there. Stephen King said that the only way to be a good writer was to write a lot and read a lot. And reading bad writing is as important as reading good writing because it shows you what not to do.

The problem with The Daily Guru is that his music reviews are locked into a basic magazine music review formula. As a result, sentences are bloated with cliches and pointless phrases.

I'm going to use two recent reviews as examples.

On October 26 he posted about The Ronettes's "Be My Baby". In the first sentence he uses the phrase "one can easily argue". Then in the third sentence he says, "and yet it can easily be argued". He also ends the second paragraph with "one can easily argue".

Like most of the TDG posts, the "Be My Baby" review is four paragraphs long, and in a piece of writing that size overused words and phrases start to jump out at the reader.

The first, third, and forth paragraphs all contain the phrase "there is no question".

In paragraph two, the phrase "completely unique" is used two sentences in a row.

In one sentence he writes, "nothing short of iconic" and in the very next sentence he writes "nothing short of legendary". In the next paragraph: "nothing short of hypnotizing".

That's bad, right? No, it's good compared to today's post, a review of Simon and Garfunkel's "Bridge Over Troubled Water".

Four paragraphs containing a total of 28 sentences. Again, there are some cases that can be argued easily. But for the most part, there are no cases to be argued- there is, in fact, no question.

Paragraph One
"there is no question"

Paragraph Two
"it is without question"

Paragraph Three
"there is no question"
then, in the very next sentence-
"Yet there is no question"

Paragraph Four
"Yet there is no question"
"is without question"
"there is no question"

I saved my favorite thing for last. This is a sentence from Paragraph Four:

"Yet there is no question that the original stands far above the reach of any imitator, as the fragile beauty that Simon and Garfunkel created here is without question one of the most breathtaking moments to ever be captured on tape."

That sentence is pretty amazing on its own, but then when you think about how many times the phrase "no question" is used- 7- in a 28 paragraph review, you wonder how the writer could avoid noticing. It's crazy if you do the math- 1 out of every 4 sentences contains the phrase (except, as we know, that isn't exactly true; the phrase shows up twice in one sentence).

Anyway, (That's one of my own overused words; I'm no great writer myself. I know.) if you go to The Daily Guru and read these posts you can see that the phrases that he overuses are not needed. If they were erased his writing would be a lot cleaner. From Strunk and White's Elements of Style: "Omit needless words".