Some Other Guy’s Anecdote

My high school friend Mark went off to Oberlin College in Ohio. One day his roommate came in and said, “Hey, want to go to a Simon and Garfunkel concert?”

“Sure,” said Mark.

The concert was in Denver.

So they got into the roommate’s car and drove, non-stop to Denver, saw the concert and headed back. College students do that sort of thing. It’s part of the educational experience.

In Kansas, one of them fell asleep at the wheel.

“So that,” explains Mark, “is how I wound up walking down Main Street in Russell, Kansas carrying a radiator. Did you know that Russell was home of the National Spelling Bee Champion? They had a big sign, just on the edge of town…”

Kid, don’t try this at home. Or anywhere else, for that matter.

Women and Snakes: Collier and Rubens

Lilith, by John Collier


One of my commenters suggested that the last bit of "Women and Snakes" artwork I posted did not meet his standards of artistry. That's okay; I can handle dissent. However, I pity anyone who cannot appreciate either of these two, for whatever reason.

Adam and Eve, by Rubens


Two different artists, and the only commonality is the snake, really, as Lilith only appears as a woman apocryphally, and not in the Christian Bible as such.

I'm tempted to let my own projections run a little while. Lilith, Adam's first wife (apocryphally), embraces the snake, and makes him her own. There is a small suggestion of this with Eve, but her downcast eyes are looking not at the snake, (who is above her in the tree), but rather in avoidance of Adam's scolding. Hmmph. No wonder Lilith left him, the jerk.

In the great folk engines, Lilith is related to Circe, Kali, and all the other female powers that were driven into darker aspects by...something. What this something might be I leave as an exercise for the reader, acknowledging that the entire thing is just a stroll around the litoral regions of Lake Id and Superego Cove.

Noted, with Previous Observations

Another example of neo-colonialism in America:

Like many immigrant families, he notes, his parents took education seriously. His brother, now a property developer in Britain, went to UCLA; he went to Oxford, where he earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy, politics and economics, going on to the London School of Economics for a master's degree and earning his doctorate from Cornell University's department of development sociology .

"At home, we had nutritious food, mostly Indian food," he says. But soon, long working hours and busy schedules made convenience foods appealing. "Sometimes we ate in the car," he admits.

"When I explain to people outside the U.S. that 20 percent of American fast-food meals are eaten in cars, they are absolutely gobsmacked," Patel says. "They ask me, 'Is it because Americans love their cars so much?'

"I explain that Americans are working so hard in order to access the things people in other industrialized nations take for granted - health care, education, a pension, a living wage," he says. "And increasingly, communities of working people can't afford to live where they work. They're holding down two jobs - we shouldn't be surprised that people are forced to eat fast food in their cars."
--Raj Patel, author of Stuffed & Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System

Maybe It's That Simple

I'm having more of a slog through the latest issue of Helix than usual, partly because of a recurrent back spasm that renders me intermittently immobile, but also because I usually start with the John Barnes column, The Well-Bitten Hand, and there's a lot to gnaw on this time. To begin with, Barnes is telling us what being a semiotician means to him, and since he gets paid to be one, it's a good thing to pay attention to what he says, money being what it is and all.

Also, in the first part of his essay, he's dealing with some of the issues that are often trotted out when people discuss science fiction, and, more specifically, why some people don't like science fiction, and perhaps why some people have trouble reading science fiction. This is often summed up in the phrase, "The door dilated," which is supposed to signal the savvy SF reader that we're not in Kansas anymore, but which troubles the regular reader, because, perhaps, we're not in Kansas anymore.

I'm actually giving away a bit of my own argument here with that last sentence, because the sort of literary analysis that Barnes is critiquing calls these things "reading protocols," and suggests that non-sf readers either do not possess the protocols that make sf readable, or they do not enjoy using those protocols.

My own suggestion, which Barnes does not really mention (though I'm sure he's considered it), is that some people just don't like science fiction. It's not as if this is a feature of the landscape that is confined to literature; there are plenty of sf movies, tv shows, comics, etc., and there are many, many people who simply don't care for them. The same is true of various sorts of fantasy. A friend of mine had a long-running (and joking) argument with his wife and daughter about Buffy, the Vampire Slayer. They loved it; he refused to even watch it. He preferred The Sopranos, which is a different kind of wish fulfillment fantasy, but a fantasy nonetheless. He even agreed with this when I pointed it out. However, he still preferred The Sopranos.

Similarly, there are currently entire genres that are, by classical standards, science fiction, but which regular science fiction readers disdain because they don't speak to whatever said sf readers really want. I'm thinking here of the cross-genre romances, the paranormal romances, the time-travel romances, and so forth, which spoil all the good sf action with that "chick lit" stuff.

In any case, I'm pretty sure that Barnes skips over this part of the argument because he wants to get on about reading protocols generally, and what he calls "dip and flip," as a result of a series of observations he's made of people reading in public places:

One thing stood out vividly: about half the observed readers who appeared to be under 35 began each new page by looking at the center, scanning outward from there in a sort of loose clockwise spiral, and then beginning to read left-right-diagonal-down once they had found something of interest. From eavesdropping I could tell they were looking for a word or phrase to catch their attention, checking back to contextualize it, and then reading only as long as the text was still about that word or phrase (or until another word or phrase took over as focus of interest). And like many of the ad-readers and sentence-excerpters, their conversation indicated that for them, that word or phrase was what the article was "about."

(I put "about" in quotation marks because in different reading protocols "about" seems to mean something different to some readers than it does to others.)

Barnes correctly notes that the "dip and flip" protocol screws up any attempt to convey ordered information, so it is particularly vexing to technical writers and the writers of clean, linear fiction. Indeed, as a card carrying member of both groups, let me suggest that Barnes is being very kind by not suggesting the traditional label for such reading protocols: functional illiteracy.

Of course this is an argument that goes back forever, and includes the Evelyn Woods "Speed Reading" controversy of decades ago.

"What is astonishing is that they think that 80% comprehension is enough. Kennedy was a speed reader. 'Bay of Pigs?' That must have been in that other 20%." –The Firesign Theater.

Barnes spends the rest of the article on providing some tips for how stodgy old linear writers can tap into the "dip and flip" market, primarily by telling their stories in small, bite sized chunks, each of which must have a sugar glaze and a crunchy center. And, truly, I'm pretty much fine with that as far as it goes. Make the scenes shorter, put in some self-contained vignettes, make both geography and point-of-view less static, and more energetic, sure. I'd have done even more of that in SunSmoke, if I'd thought I could get away with it.

But, ultimately, I don't think that there is as much gold in them thar hills as we'd like to think. It's true that the number of casual readers dwarfs the number of dedicated ones, but it's not obvious that one can make all that much of a cake from crumbs. And if I want to really connect with a readership, I think I'll go after readers who want to connect back.

Rick or Ricky?

Persons of a certain age, the first chunk of the Baby Boon generation, in fact, have a good part of their childhoods projected against television images of the "perfect family." These are almost entirely sitcom families, and the titles of the shows are chatchphrases: "Leave it to Beaver," "Father Knows Best," and "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet," are the canonical Trinity. The movie "Pleasantville" over on my newsgroup, which hinges on a fictional TV program that is something of a distillation of these 50s sitcoms, but it is looking through a different end of the telescope, or maybe a different imaging system entirely, than what I'm using here.

The breakout star of "Ozzie and Harriet" was Ricky Nelson, sometimes billed as "Little Ricky Nelson." He was one of the prototypes for the "smart mouthed sitcom kid," who we see in practically every other family sitcom that has ever swam the airwaves. Then he became a teenager, and discovered rock and roll. Not all by himself, of course. There was an entire generation of kids discovering rock and roll at about the same time. But he was on television, his dad had been a bandleader, and "Little Ricky" got himself some regular prime time exposure. He was also gorgeous, and just enough of a rebel to make the girls swoon, but white/safe enough not to scare off the parents. Hell, Ricky was on television, as part of an ideal family.

There are all sorts of downsides to being a child star, one of them being that children take their responsibilities very seriously. And Ozzie Nelson used that as yet another tool in the parental control toolkit. There are literally hundreds of people who depend on us for their livelihoods, the father told his son. So don't screw this up for them. Keep in line. And so on.

I knew none of this at the time, and paid little attention to the O&H show, or, for that matter, "Leave it to Beaver," and "Father Knows Best," although there are a few episodes lodged in my head for each, so I must have watched them occasionally. I just didn't buy into the sitcom family notion, and I'm sure I had Ricky Nelson pegged as another incarnation of Pat Boone, translating real rock and roll into sliced white bread.

I'm not sure how I ran across "Another Side of Rick" and album released in 1968. Memory suggests that a cousin left it after visiting our house; perhaps it was too different from what she expected. As the name suggests, it was Little Ricky trying to grow up a bit, or out, or something. The song that struck me was "Dream Weaver," written, as were many of the songs on the record, by the producer, J. Boylan.

Little girl what's that look clouding over your eyes
Little girl what's all this about life tryin' to pass you by
Yes I'll listen and try to be kind
But remember I'm only a thought in your mind

And I'm a dream weaver
A love receiver and I get around
Yes I'm a dreamweaver
A word deceiver look up and down
Dream weaver's comin' to town

--J. Boylan

Sorry I can't find a video for it. So let's use this one:



Rick continued on his folk-rock trajectory with his Stone Canyon Band, which leaned heavily on the country side of folk, unsurprising for someone with rockabilly roots. But, bills to pay, mouths to feed. It was the same old sitcom grind, only this time it was also his own family to support. So Nelson came to one of the "Rock and Roll Revivals," at Madison Square Garden, and after playing "Hello Mary Lou," went into "Honky Tonk Woman." Oops. Boos and catcalls followed. Then he wrote "Garden Party" about the incident and scored his last Top Ten Hit.

If you gotta play at garden parties, I wish you a lotta luck
But if memories were all I sang, I rather drive a truck…

And it's all right now, learned my lesson well
You see, you can't please everyone, so you got to please yourself.

It strikes the right chord, and informed many a boomer caught between desire and duty. But, there were still mouths to feed, and alimony to pay, and by the 1980s, Rick was backed by neon that said "Ricky." Still, if you listen, you can hear more than memories in his singing. He loved rock and roll to the end, dammit.



There are still stories that the fire that caused the plane crash he died in were from freebase ether. The official FAA investigation suggested that it was really an electrical fire, probably from a defective heater. But when drugs enter the narrative, the narrative becomes all about the drugs. Rick Nelson deserved better than death at 45 and idiots making jokes about his demise.

Little girl I could tell you the places I've been
But my words are just whispers that lean on the wind
You must listen and try to believe
And I'll give you a dream I've been meanin' to weave

I could love you, if you want me to
That won't be what it seems
Yes I could love you, if you want me to
Then again I'm just a weaver of dreams

Yes I'm a dream weaver
A love receiver and I get around
Well I'm a dream weaver
A love receiver comin' to town

Pleasantville

[This essay originally appeared in my newsgroup on Feb. 25, 2007. I'm uploading it here because I'm about to post an essay on Rick Nelson, whose early life appeared on a sitcom.

Note: the first couple of times I began this essay, it dissolved into failure, mostly because I was attempting to synopsize portions of the movie. Big mistake. Movies are experiential, Pleasantville even more than most; if you haven’t seen it, you should might want to skip this essay, not so much because of “spoilers” but simply because what I’m saying may not make much sense. If you have seen it, but need some reminders, there is a pretty good synopsis on the Wikipedia.

Also, Roger Ebert wrote a decent review.

My take differs, of course.]

Old black-and-white sitcoms do tend to blur together in memory. I can locate the episode of “Father Knows Best” where Mr. Anderson gives Bud a $10 a week allowance (quite a sum in those days) with the stipulation that Bud can only spend the money on himself. He soon finds that it alienates him from all his friends, so he goes back to doing chores for a smaller allowance that has no strings. It was an interesting little parable on the downside of wealth, among other things, and I pinched the seed of the idea for my story “Heart’s Desire/Anything You Want.”

I remember the next one also as being “Father Knows Best,” but it could have been “My Three Sons.” The teenage son (Bud? Chip?) is experimenting with ham radio and talking to his friends, when a mysterious (and sultry) female voice shows up, teasing them etc. They rig up a direction finder and track her down—discovering that she’s the shy girl they all know with the bad stammer. She’s mortified, and can’t talk in person without the stutter—until they ask her about her radio rig, and suddenly the speech impediment disappears. Yet another bit of proto-nerd chic.

I can easily remember a dozen 50s-early 60s sitcom plots that could never have appeared on the imaginary Pleasantville. But that’s because Pleasantville isn’t about 1950s sitcoms, any more than it’s really about suburbia, or the 1950s generally, or even about childhood and adolescence. It’s about memory, memory and its bastard cousin, nostalgia.

Current nostalgia for the suburban 1950s targets the memories of boomers such as myself, but it depends upon the coincidence of those memories with the more general phenomenon of childhood memories. “Those were simpler times,” is how it is often put, but they were simpler only to children, because children are simpler beings. In truth, the 50s were no more simple to those who had to struggle for their lives and livelihoods than any other era. It’s simpler only if you had no responsibilities to bear.

Moreover, the suburbs themselves reflected a sort of nostalgic longing for something that never existed: the idealized remembrance of small town, rural America. Some suburbanites came directly from the rural towns and tried to reproduce their own histories in that way. Others came from the cities, fleeing modern life, with all its temptations, temptations they themselves had already sampled, but, well, best to protect the kids from them. Kids do all sorts of crazy things.

As indeed we did, as we were bored beyond imagining, hoping to get the hell out of there so our lives could “begin.” Jean Shepherd used to start up his college gigs by asking his audience, “How many of you out there believe that your life hasn’t started yet?” He mocked the raised hands as being naïve, or worse. Life is life; if you haven’t figured out that it’s already begun, then you’re doomed to be waiting for a long, long time.

So the outsiders show up in Pleasantville and things begin to change. Jennifer/Mary Sue is rebellious from the start, introducing her first date, Skip, to sex, and bringing the first bit of color to the scenery (a single red rose). Skip misses a basket during basketball practice and everyone treats the ball as if it were radioactive; no one had ever missed a basket before, nor had they ever lost a game. But sex spreads and saps the energy from the hitherto perfectly sublimated athletes, and they lose a game, again, a first.

Then Mary Sue teaches her Mother about sex (a deliberately ironic role reversal), including how to masturbate, which turns Mom technicolored and lights the tree outside afire.

But it’s David/Bud who turns out to be the real subversive, despite his love of the television show, though maybe because he likes the characters. He introduces his soda fountain boss to Art, and the boss’s artistic tendencies blossom. Bud has read the books that have previously been blank, and as he recounts the stories, the pages fill in with text. He shows the fire department how to put out the fire that his Mother has caused (yeah, yeah, “burning bush” joke) and in doing so, becomes a town hero and gets the cookies that Margaret was supposed to bake for another boy. He he helps his mother cover up her color change with makeup. Bud is the really dangerous one.

The color change is the central visual conceit of the movie, and various notions have been argued for what causes it. “Epiphany” is offered. “Change” is another theory. “Strong emotion,” yet one more.

Mary Sue changes color not when she has sex, she’s done that plenty of times in the “real world.” She changes when she dons her Pleasantville glasses and begins to read (D. H. Lawrence, it’s true). She breaks stereotype. Bud changes color when he slugs Whitey (who then bleeds a bit of red blood). Again, when he acts against type.

It’s not just the violence or strong emotion. The crowd that throws rocks through the painted window of the soda shop doesn’t change color; the scene is taken from news footage of civil right riots. It may not be “pleasant,” but it’s entirely within the character of those character types in the 1950s. The book burners are also in black and white; the scene has been compared to 1930s Germany, but burning Beatle albums are just as good a comparison.

The Mayor never gets angry; when he does, he loses his shades of gray, and loses control of the town as well.

As they lean about sex, the soundtrack spouts rock-and-roll. When Bud explains that there are places where the roads don’t just run in a circle, “Take Five” begins, a late night radio piece that promises a road to the Great Beyond. They’re all looking for a way out, and they finally find it, in sex, in art, in the act of becoming more than what they are supposed to be.

So we were children and our world was small, narrowly circumscribed. Then it became larger as we grew. It was several concerted accidents of history that made it all seem of-a-piece. In fact, everyone has that journey offered to them; each of us takes it to varying degrees. Pleasantville should be a reminder of that journey. I hope it has resonance for a broader group than us aging Boomers. It seems more universal than that.

But I do so wish, given the wry ironies about Bud’s “colored girlfriend,” and the use of images that obviously emanate from civil rights marches and sit-ins, that there had been some actual black people in Pleasantville at the end. Try as I might, however, I couldn’t think of a way to do that without it seeming forced. There were no black families living in Donelson when I was young. It was only my thrice weekly trips to downtown Nashville that let me view the world in black and white, and not just white.

Women and Snakes: Steven Stahlberg's "One Last Time"

Part of this "Women and Snakes" series thing is that I do the web searching so you don't have to. There are some really bad photos, artwork, and other crappy images involving women and snakes on the web. There are also some very nice ones, and the one above is one of the the best. The artist is Steven Stahlberg, whose web site is http://www.androidblues.com/.