(Shots of muscular, heavily tattooed gang-bangers glowering, fighting, smoking pot, and enjoying super-hot twice-weekly conjugal visits)
“In a hellish, overstuffed maximum security prison in Peru…”
(Close up of Vin Diesel or Vin Diesel-type wiping away a tear as he bids goodbye to a neatly dressed, bespectacled teenage girl)
“One man will do whatever it takes to win the respect of his daughter…”
(Cut to Vin in a colorful, coordinated outfit, leading hundreds of fellow inmates in an aerobics class as they attempt to break a Guinness World Record)
No doubt it would be godawful. That’s not to say convicted kidnapper Alejandro Nuñez del Arco’s story isn’t inspiring in the original.
Colonel Tomas Garay, who greenlighted del Arco’s Full Body aerobics class back in November, is pleased by the changes in attitude he’s noticed at Lurigancho, “a branch of hell” where drugs, alcohol, and violence were previously the norm. Although the sport, a cardiovascular workout combining dance, boxing, and Tae Bo was invented by a Peruvian man, macho inmates were standoffish at first. A mere eight attended del Arco’s first class. By June 14, the date he attempted to best the Philippines’ Cebu Prison’s world record for the most people dancing behind bars, at least 1179 of his fellow inmates were raging with dance fever. Talk about transformative effects…
Hopefully not coming soon to a theater near you, unless it’s as an expansion of the five-minute documentary above.
In June 1945, the 27-year-old physicist Richard Feynman lost his wife, Arline Feynman, to tuberculosis. Only 25 years old, she was Richard’s high-school sweetheart. And yet she was much more. As Lawrence Krauss writes in 2012 biography on Feynman:
Richard and Arline were soul mates. They were not clones of each other, but symbiotic opposites — each completed the other. Arline admired Richard’s obvious scientific brilliance, and Richard clearly adored the fact that she loved and understood things he could barely appreciate at the time. But what they shared, most of all, was a love of life and a spirit of adventure.
I know how much you like to hear that — but I don’t only write it because you like it — I write it because it makes me warm all over inside to write it to you.
It is such a terribly long time since I last wrote to you — almost two years but I know you’ll excuse me because you understand how I am, stubborn and realistic; and I thought there was no sense to writing.
But now I know my darling wife that it is right to do what I have delayed in doing, and that I have done so much in the past. I want to tell you I love you. I want to love you. I always will love you.
I find it hard to understand in my mind what it means to love you after you are dead — but I still want to comfort and take care of you — and I want you to love me and care for me. I want to have problems to discuss with you — I want to do little projects with you. I never thought until just now that we can do that. What should we do. We started to learn to make clothes together — or learn Chinese — or getting a movie projector. Can’t I do something now? No. I am alone without you and you were the “idea-woman” and general instigator of all our wild adventures.
When you were sick you worried because you could not give me something that you wanted to and thought I needed. You needn’t have worried. Just as I told you then there was no real need because I loved you in so many ways so much. And now it is clearly even more true — you can give me nothing now yet I love you so that you stand in my way of loving anyone else — but I want you to stand there. You, dead, are so much better than anyone else alive.
I know you will assure me that I am foolish and that you want me to have full happiness and don’t want to be in my way. I’ll bet you are surprised that I don’t even have a girlfriend (except you, sweetheart) after two years. But you can’t help it, darling, nor can I — I don’t understand it, for I have met many girls and very nice ones and I don’t want to remain alone — but in two or three meetings they all seem ashes. You only are left to me. You are real.
My darling wife, I do adore you.
I love my wife. My wife is dead.
Rich.
PS Please excuse my not mailing this — but I don’t know your new address.
Full disclosure: I love George Saunders. Can I say that? Can I say that George Saunders rekindled my faith in contemporary fiction? Is that too fawning? Obsequious, but true! Oh, how bored I had become with fourth-hand derivative Carver, cheapened Cheever, sometimes the sad approximations of Chuck Palahniuk. So boring. It had gotten so all I could read was Philip K. Dick, over and over and over. And Alice Walker. And Wuthering Heights. And Thomas Hardy. Do you see the pass I’d come to? Then Saunders. In a writing class I took, with one of Gordon Lish’s acolytes (no names), I read Saunders. I read Wells Towers, Padgett Powell, Aimee Bender—a host of modern writers who were doing something new, in short, sometimes very short, forms, but explosive!
What is it about George Saunders that grips? He has mastered frivolity, turned it into an art of diamond-like compression. And for this, he gets a MacArthur Fellowship? Well, yes. Because what he does is brilliant, in its shockingly unaffected observations of humanity. George Saunders is an accomplished writer who puts little store in his accomplishments. Instead, he values kindness most of all, and generosity. These are the qualities he extols, in his typically droll manner, in a graduation speech he delivered to the 2013 graduating class at Syracuse University. Kindness: a little virtue, you might say. The New York Timeshas published his speech, and I urge you to read it in full. I’m going to give you half, below, and challenge you to find George Saunders wanting.
Down through the ages, a traditional form has evolved for this type of speech, which is: Some old fart, his best years behind him, who, over the course of his life, has made a series of dreadful mistakes (that would be me), gives heartfelt advice to a group of shining, energetic young people, with all of their best years ahead of them (that would be you).
And I intend to respect that tradition.
Now, one useful thing you can do with an old person, in addition to borrowing money from them, or asking them to do one of their old-time “dances,” so you can watch, while laughing, is ask: “Looking back, what do you regret?” And they’ll tell you. Sometimes, as you know, they’ll tell you even if you haven’t asked. Sometimes, even when you’ve specifically requested they not tell you, they’ll tell you.
So: What do I regret? Being poor from time to time? Not really. Working terrible jobs, like “knuckle-puller in a slaughterhouse?” (And don’t even ASK what that entails.) No. I don’t regret that. Skinny-dipping in a river in Sumatra, a little buzzed, and looking up and seeing like 300 monkeys sitting on a pipeline, pooping down into the river, the river in which I was swimming, with my mouth open, naked? And getting deathly ill afterwards, and staying sick for the next seven months? Not so much. Do I regret the occasional humiliation? Like once, playing hockey in front of a big crowd, including this girl I really liked, I somehow managed, while falling and emitting this weird whooping noise, to score on my own goalie, while also sending my stick flying into the crowd, nearly hitting that girl? No. I don’t even regret that.
But here’s something I do regret:
In seventh grade, this new kid joined our class. In the interest of confidentiality, her Convocation Speech name will be “ELLEN.” ELLEN was small, shy. She wore these blue cat’s‑eye glasses that, at the time, only old ladies wore. When nervous, which was pretty much always, she had a habit of taking a strand of hair into her mouth and chewing on it.
So she came to our school and our neighborhood, and was mostly ignored, occasionally teased (“Your hair taste good?” – that sort of thing). I could see this hurt her. I still remember the way she’d look after such an insult: eyes cast down, a little gut-kicked, as if, having just been reminded of her place in things, she was trying, as much as possible, to disappear. After awhile she’d drift away, hair-strand still in her mouth. At home, I imagined, after school, her mother would say, you know: “How was your day, sweetie?” and she’d say, “Oh, fine.” And her mother would say, “Making any friends?” and she’d go, “Sure, lots.”
Sometimes I’d see her hanging around alone in her front yard, as if afraid to leave it.
And then – they moved. That was it. No tragedy, no big final hazing.
One day she was there, next day she wasn’t.
End of story.
Now, why do I regret that? Why, forty-two years later, am I still thinking about it? Relative to most of the other kids, I was actually pretty nice to her. I never said an unkind word to her. In fact, I sometimes even (mildly) defended her.
But still. It bothers me. So here’s something I know to be true, although it’s a little corny, and I don’t quite know what to do with it:
What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.
Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded…sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.
Or, to look at it from the other end of the telescope: Who, in your life, do you remember most fondly, with the most undeniable feelings of warmth?
Those who were kindest to you, I bet.
It’s a little facile, maybe, and certainly hard to implement, but I’d say, as a goal in life, you could do worse than: Try to be kinder.
“Alan Turing, the Enigma codebreaker who took his own life after being convicted of gross indecency under anti-homosexuality legislation, is to be given a posthumous pardon,” writes The Guardian today. One of the great mathematicians of the last century, Turing laid the foundations for computer science and played a key role in breaking the Nazi Enigma code during World War II. Despite his contributions to defending Britain, Turing was prosecuted in 1952 for engaging in homosexual acts under an 1885 law that led to the convictions of 49,000 gay men, including Oscar Wilde. It’s a sad tale that gets recounted by another computer pioneer Jaron Lanier here:
For years, supporters have called upon the British government to issue a posthumous pardon. And while British Prime Minister Gordon Brown apologized in 2010 for “the appalling way [Turing] was treated,” members of the House of Lords resisted issuing an actual pardon as recently as last year. But, according to The Guardian, legislators are prepared to pass a new bill as early as this October. As many of our readers will be quick to point out, the concept of a pardon is a bit strange, seeing that Turing did nothing wrong. But the willingness of the government to effectively nullify the conviction and reject an archaic law is a welcomed piece of news.
Think growing feelings of isolation in a world of modern conveniences is a new phenomenon? Slap a dial on that smartphone, shove a collectible rocket in your kid’s cereal box, hop in a Caddy with fins and think again, pal!
Have I Told You Lately That I Love You, a cautionary tale created by University of Southern California students in 1958, is a far-from-silent film marked by a near-total absence of human speech. The little boy character seems happy enough with his popsicle and television Westerns, but his white-collar dad and housewife mom are marooned in their individual existential hells, unable to connect. Could the newfangled, labor saving devices with which their home and dad’s workplace abound be to blame?
The newsy radio report playing intermittently in the background would certainly have it so. Stories of hair loss, headaches and a kid shooting his father over a TV-related dispute suggest none too subtly that progress has long been a source of anxiety.
I might suggest that the mother is suffering more from the rigid gender roles of her era than the tyranny of an automatic dishwasher. Perhaps the suburbs weren’t offering them much in the way of community. Isn’t it possible that the relationship has gone cold due to the father’s penchant for hopping in bed with the girls from the steno pool?
That’s pretty standard behavior on Mad Men, no?
While this short film offers none of the aforementioned’s sexy, booze-soaked highs, there’s quite a bit of black-and-white design porn on display. Dictaphones, gleaming kitchen appliances, a music box that dispenses cigarettes…
Otherwise it’s a vision of an average American 1950’s family as conceived of by Ingmar Bergman.
True story — back in 2010 I bought a Martin D‑28 from (gulp) Guitar Center. The salesman rushed me out of the store and didn’t bother to tune the guitar, let alone set it up properly. When I got home, I felt immediate buyer’s remorse — remorse not that I had bought the Martin, but that I hadn’t bought it from the best little guitar shop in the San Francisco Bay area, Gryphon Strings. The next day, I did the right thing. I returned the Martin to GC and re-bought the same guitar from Gryphon. I lost a few bucks in the process. But the guitar was set up just right. And I felt unburdened. Lesson learned.
Nowadays, I stop by Gryphon weekly for lessons and occasional salivation sessions, and I get to see firsthand what this video by Cinema Mercantile lets you see all too briefly. The care, craft and emotion (note the poignant chin quiver at the 2:22 mark) that goes into working with guitars … if you’re doing it for the right reasons. In Silicon Valley, there are very few places where business isn’t the main reason for being. Gryphon offers a good escape from that sometimes soul-deadening reality. That’s why I will be heading back there tomorrow.
You can find two more short films by Cinema Mercantile here.
Click above for a larger version of page one and click here to see page two.
I recently made the mistake of crafting a letter of complaint that sounded much more temperate than I felt. On the advice of my husband, I deleted anything smacking of emotion, limiting my grievances to incontrovertible fact. A month later and I am still waiting for a reply.
Wish that I had let it all hang out, as Mark Twain did in the above 1905 letter to J. H. Todd, a snake oil salesman whose “Elixir of Life” was alleged to cure even the most terminal of medical conditions. How satisfying it would have been to indulge in phrases like “idiot of the 33rd degree” and “scion of an ancestral procession of idiots stretching back to the Missing Link”!
Having answered phones in customer service, I can attest that there are times when such phrases are misdirected. This was not one of them. Subject yourself to a thorough reading of the Elixir’s claims (a typography challenge on order of a Dr. Bronner’s label) and you will share the author’s outrage.
Charlatans could be dealt with lightly in literature—witness Huckleberry Finn’s self-proclaimed Duke—but having lost children to two of the diseases Todd’s potion purported to cure, Twain refused to let Todd off the hook in real life. His “unkind state of mind” is as bracing as it is warranted.
Though I doubt he got a reply either.
Transcription:
Nov. 20. 1905
J. H. Todd
1212 Webster St.
San Francisco, Cal.
Dear Sir,
Your letter is an insoluble puzzle to me. The handwriting is good and exhibits considerable character, and there are even traces of intelligence in what you say, yet the letter and the accompanying advertisements profess to be the work of the same hand. The person who wrote the advertisements is without doubt the most ignorant person now alive on the planet; also without doubt he is an idiot, an idiot of the 33rd degree, and scion of an ancestral procession of idiots stretching back to the Missing Link. It puzzles me to make out how the same hand could have constructed your letter and your advertisements. Puzzles fret me, puzzles annoy me, puzzles exasperate me; and always, for a moment, they arouse in me an unkind state of mind toward the person who has puzzled me. A few moments from now my resentment will have faded and passed and I shall probably even be praying for you; but while there is yet time I hasten to wish that you may take a dose of your own poison by mistake, and enter swiftly into the damnation which you and all other patent medicine assassins have so remorselessly earned and do so richly deserve.
A friend of mine rails against the New Yorker’s weekly cartoon caption contest, insisting that while the reader-submitted entries are universally bad, the winner is always the weakest of the lot.
I disagree, agog at people’s cleverness. Any line I come up with feels too obvious or too obscure. Unlike my friend, I never feel I could do better.
Cartoon editor Bob Mankoff’s recent TED Talk offers some key insights into what the magazine is looking for (incongruity, dispositional humor, cognitive mash ups), as well as what it’s not interested in (gross-out jokes, mild child-centered cannibalism) He also cites former contributor and author of my father’s favoriteNew Yorker cartoon, E.B. White on the futility of analyzing humor.
Frequent contributor Matthew Diffee’s short satirical film Being Bobsuggests Mankoff editorial selections owe much to gut response (and a jerking knee). Such intuition is hard won. Mankoff gleefully alludes to the 2000 rejection letters he himself received between 1974 and 1977, following an unceremonious dismissal from psychology school. Then, finally, he got his first acceptance.
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