The ongoing bus strike has messed with my life in any number of little ways, but one is putting a serious dent into my reading. I've seen people applying makeup, shaving, and (I'm not making this up) flossing while driving in Los Angeles, but reading novels is somewhere beyond my own personal line. That said, I have read a couple of books in the last month or so since I last blogged on books.
Rock Springs by Richard Ford equals 42 down on The List. This is the part where I'd say something clever about it, if it weren't for the fact that I finished it three weeks ago, forgot to write about it until now, and basically don't remember much about it. I do remember thinking the title story was the best one and that the stories were Carver-esque--generally about lower-class men living lives of quiet desperation.

I have more to say about Tell Me A Riddle by Tillie Olsen, since I finished it a few hours ago. First of all, the bookkeeping--43 down on The List, 7 to go. Tell Me is a short book consisting of three short stories and the titular novella originally published between 1956 and 1960. "I Stand Here Ironing" is a strong story about the roughly 39-year-old mother of an approximately 20-year-old daughter. As she, in fact, stands there ironing, she thinks back on the type of upbringing she gave her daughter--the difficulty of being a mother so young, without a father around, the early maturity of an oldest child caring for younger siblings, the struggles of being a gawky teen, and the surprise when that gawky teen blossoms into a vibrant young adult. This story mixes pathos and positive outcomes into an emotional whirlpool in a very small amount of space.

The title story, "Tell Me A Riddle", is definitely my favorite, though. This is the story of a couple married for 47 years but now with vey different ideas about how to spend their final days. The wife wants no part of the retirement community picked out by her husband, and after she gets sick, the real tussle ensues about where they should go and what they should do. Olsen walks an incredibly fine line here in showing the ways these two people have grown apart but the ways in which love (and perhaps just being accustomed to one another) abides. This is not to say that this is a sappy story, and in fact she deeply rejects religious and familial ideals in ways that some might not find sympathetic. But I found the emotion and honesty of this story to be incredibly affecting and powerful. This story really blew me away, bottom line.

Finally, over the past few weeks I was reading John Henry Days by Colson Whitehead. Back in July I raved about Whitehead's first book, The Intuitionist. I still think very highly of Whitehead as a writer, but I agree with a number of the amazon reviewers who say that Whitehead writes better sentences than books. On a sentence-by-sentence level, some of the passages of this book are incredibly impressive, but the narrative could be stronger in many places. The general subject matter is that a magazine writer ("junketeer") has travelled to rural West Virginia to cover the unveiling of the new John Henry stamp. His fellow junketeers, stamp collectors, and the daughter of a major collector of John Henry memorabilia also descend on the town for the weekend's festivities. Additionally, we get glimpses into Whitehead's version of the John Henry story, and various moments throughout U.S. history where that story has been rewritten and re-interpreted. Like The Intuitionist, John Henry Days is a fascinating meditation on race in America when it is at its best. But it's much choppier in ways that I found distracting; I'd suggest checking out Whitehead's first book if you are choosing between the two.

So Gourab and I did in fact travel to Tempe this weekend for the titanic clash between the Cardinals and the Bengals. One of my hopes was that we would get to see the least attended NFL game this year. Sadly, according to ESPN, it was only the 2nd-worst attended game this year, as there were a few hundred less at the Seattle-Arizona tilt. Interestingly enough, the worst-attended non-Cardinal game (Chargers at Jaguars) drew over twice as many fans as either AZ-CIN or AZ-SEA. But hey, at least the new cactus-shaped stadium design looks cool.

As for Sun Devil, well, it's an adequate college stadium. There are two types of seating--bleacher with seatback and bleacher without seatback--and luckily we had the former. I like the desert scenery in the area, and the Cardinal cheer-babe scenery was excellent as well. They definitely have the highest cheerleader to spectator ratio in the league--I calculate about 14:1 for Sunday. There are swarms of them. And talented too--cheer-babe Morgan actually sang the national anthem.

Halftime entertainment consisted of a bunch of trained dogs failing to catch frisbees.

The highlight of the trip for me would have to be finally trying the sorghum molasses sundae at the Cracker Barrel in Yuma, which happens to be the nearest Cracker Barrelto me.

Sadly, it wasnt till sitting here watching MNF with Jefferson that we came up with the TV attention-getting sign that we should have taken:

C ardinals and
B engals
S uck

When I actually notice air quality, it's really bad. Let's put it this way: when I lived at USC, I was about 7 miles south of the Hollywood Hills. On a beautiful day they showed up clear as a bell. On a bad smog day, they were a wraith-like apparition. Now I live 4 miles farther north, which is about 3 miles from the mountains. Wednesday morning I couldn't see the mountains. At all. No suggestion they were there. Imagine a heavy fog but that makes you start coughing if you're outdoors for more than 3 minutes at a time. That's what wildfire smoke did here, and I'm at least 20 miles away from the nearest blaze. It's kind of disturbing.

I'm getting out of dodge for part of the weekend--Gourab the Bengali Bengal Fan and I are road-tripping out to Tempe. It kind of makes me ill that Miami-San Diego was free but they expect people to actually pay to see the Cards and the Bungles. Well, maybe they don't actually expect it per se, but it is a pre-condition for seeing the game live. So we're doing it. It could be painful--but chances are it will be less painful than not paying to watch the Steelers. Sigh.

In case anyone was wondering, I am not, in fact, en fuego. Only rich people who can afford houses in the hills normally take the brunt of these things. In this case, it seems that some non-rich people in the inland valleys are taking it on the chin as well. But here in the L.A. Basin, everything is fine. Except, of course, for the 95-degree heat and annoying ongoing strikes. But, you know, I'll take that over fiery death and destruction.

The nice thing, though, is that Santa Ana season is always one of the prettiest times of year in the L.A. Basin, because the winds blow all the smog out to sea, so it's clear as a bell. What would be really cool would be to go walking in the mountains, but, you know, bad times...

Here's a result that should be to the shock and dismay of none:

FWIW, I only watched about 8 episodes of "I Love the '80s Strikes Back" last week. Hal Sparks and Michael Ian Black still amuse, but I think they're starting to run out of good material. If there's a third version, I imagine interviewers asking questions like, "So, where were you when the movie 'Casual Sex?' came out?" "Did you see that one?", and a lot of celebrities going, "Um, it sounds vaguely familiar," or "Don't remember that one" or just, "Huh?!" And it turns out the last one was Andrew Dice Clay, who was actually in "Casual Sex?"

Two highlights of the second version for me:

2. Rick Schoeder saying that the Coreys introduced him to Billy Idol in 1984. Cut to Corey Feldman saying, "I don't remember introducing Ricky Schroeder to Billy Idol, but then I don't remember a lot of things from that year."

1. Triumph the Insult Comic Dog on "Benson": Robert Guilliame became the first African-American to star in a really shitty show. That was very important to me...as a black entertainer...who loves shit."

LSAT email came in: 169. A little less than I was hoping for, but still 98th percentile so I can't complain.

I could rant about the Steelers for a while, but I just can't deal with it right now. 2-5 sucks. Instead a random other football observation: Whenever an NFL game gets into a Hail Mary situation, the announcers always go on and on about hoping for a pass interference penalty, and how the game can't end on a defensive penalty. Has anyone ever seen pass interference called in this situation? EVER?!

A brief history of Joe's weight:
When Joe was in second grade, he weighed 101 pounds. This was discovered a few years ago from some old school record the nature of which he has now forgotten.
When Joe was in fifth grade he played his only year of organized football. Although he was only 9, he played "Mighty Mites", which was for 10- and 11-year-olds. The reasons were twofold--having skipped a grade, he was with his classmates in Mighty Mites. More importantly, "Termites" has a weight limit of 90-something pounds, which he never would have made. Mighty Mites had a weight limit of 111 pounds; Joe made weight for exactly one game and played one uneventful offensive series and an equally uneventful defensive series at tackle.
When Joe started 11th grade he weighed 295 pounds. That January he started lifting for sixth months and doing karate. He got down to 270 pounds, but was back to about 290 by the start of college.
During Joe's first two years of college he had a 19-meal-per-week meal plan with only all-you-can-eat cafeterias available for that meal plan. The less said about this the better.
During the summer after Joe's junior year of college he worked at Kennywood Park. On one 95-degree day he got a mild case of heat exhaustion and went to the hospital as a precaution. At the hospital he stepped on a scale, the upper limit of which was 350 pounds, and he was off the top end of the scale. For no particular reason, he decided in his mind that he weighed 370 pounds and considered that his weight for the next six years, during which time he did not step on a scale.
On June 21, 2000, Joe went to the USC fitness center and sought help. For the next two years he worked with a personal trainer. During the early part of that time he continually stepped on the 350-pound-limit scale with no result.
At some point in May 2002 Joe was taken into the depths of the USC P.E. Building semi-surreptitiously and put on a special scale that indicated his weight at 360 pounds. Joe and trainer Omar guesstimated that Joe had lost 50-60 pounds during the previous two years, which would have put him at a weight he doesn't even want to think about. This number is a total guess, but it seems right.
During the July 2002-August 2003 Beallsvonian Captivity, Joe did not exercise or particularly watch his calories. After the Captivity ended, Joe returned to Southern California and the gym and found that he weighed 361 pounds--a net push, although the relative fat and muscle ratios no doubt changed in very negative ways.
At that time, Joe was given a computerized readout of his projected progress if he follows his program. While Joe knows deep down that these numbers are fairly arbitrary and that the apparent "science" behind them is merely a faux precision for marketing/motivational purposes, seeing on paper a projection that would theoretically lead in 96-to-115 weeks to a 215-pound version of Joe was like a Kuhnian paradigm shift--seeing a whole new world of possibility completely changed his outlook and, truth be told, has been a major reason why he has been able to get up at 5 a.m. every weekday to do the things he has to do.
On October 21, 2003, Joe stepped on the scale after his workout and checked in at 349.75 pounds. There is nothing particularly magical about this number, except that it was verifiable proof that Joe has reached his lowest weight since he was (at the most recent) 20. Joe realizes that the difference between 349.75 and, say, 351 is a good BM and a shave, but nonetheless considers this to be a watershed day in his program.
Joe will re-emerge from Rickeyspeak mode next time, but desperately needed to get this all out and somehow found the third-person slightly less difficult.

There should be a new "memetracker" thingy where John Ashcroft used to be (if only he were so easy to replace in real life). Thanks, DEK.

In the words of Pee-Wee Herman, connect the dots, la la la-la...

• Strike 1: The LA mass transit strike has been a major disruption for me. I suppose I'm fortunate relative to many bus riders--I have a car, I just choose to ride the bus for cost and stress reasons. So it's been an inconvenience and an expense to drive last week, and possibly this week and beyond, but I'm sucking it up. At least I'm learning interesting new ways in and out of downtown.
  
• Strike 2: The LA grocery strike is a second disruption. Rather than cross the picket lines, I took the chance to do some of my shopping at Whole Foods yesterday. I enjoyed it, though I hope I don't have to do it all the time. It turns out I buy some fairly ridiculous stuff when I go to a place like Whole Foods. Yesterday's trip netted me, among other things, a bag of frozen edamame, a pomegranate, pre-packaged grape leaves, cherry cider, and green tea ice cream. Suffice it to say I normally don't end up with these things when I shop at Ralph's.
  
• Why is it that I can never remember whether music and fashion were always the passion, or music and passion were always the fashion?
  
• I wanted to buy a papasan chair on Saturday and I checked the phone book for the nearest Cost Plus, where I bought my last one. The yellow pages sent me to The Grove, one of many local examples of New Urbanism, a trend of putting semi-upscale apartments Joe can't afford, semi-upscale retail Joe can't afford, and insufficient parking all in one place. It turns out Cost Plus either was one of those places torn down in order to build The Grove or never existed in the first place and is in the phone book as a cruel hoax. So I got my papasan today in Glendale, but only after wandering around an upscale shopping plaza yesterday feeling out of place and discombobulated--always a fun afternoon.
  
• One mitigating factor/silver lining in the Thursday night broadcast of the Yankees and Red Sox--the return of WINGMAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNN!
  
• Two of the CDs I got recently from Columbia House were More Best of Leonard Cohen and Tom Waits' Used Songs. These were important purchases, because I just didn't have enough CDs that could make Mary Worth advise suicide.
  
• No disrespect meant to the stairmaster or Butt Blaster, but I have a new favorite exercise to watch at the gym. This is actually an exercise I occasionally do, but I'm not the one to watch. Here's the exercise: imagine a weight bench parallel to a wall. Sit on the middle of the bench facing the wall with your hands on the bench right next to your sides. Now, supporting your body with your arms, walk your feet out toward the wall until your butt is far enough off the bench to be clear of it. Now, working the triceps, lower and raise your own body weight as if your were raising and lowering it onto...well, whatever one might raise and lower ones body weight onto in this position. Yes, the reverse cowgirl is officially exercise. Seeing a svelte young barely twentysomething doing this at the gym the other day is one of the few things I've seen in my life that literally made my jaw drop.
  
• Jefferson (the roommate, if you didn't know) and I have a running joke based, like many of our running jokes, on a Loveline running joke. It is the misuse of the word "figuratively" the opposite of the way people often misuse "literally". Thus if someone might say, "It is literally a million degrees in here," then Jeff and I might say, "It is figuratively 74 degrees in here." Good times.
  
• Another of my new CDs is Elvis The #Ones. I can't say that I have a single favorite Elvis song, but I have favorites in caetgories. My favorite young Elvis song is "Don't". My favorite Elvis cove if Mac Davis is "In The Ghetto".. My favorite Elvis song performed to great effect on an annual Johnny Carson Tonight Show anniversary show by Sam Kinison is "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" ("I wonder if, you're lonesome tonight. You know I wonder a lot of things, like are you human or ARE YOU A LIZARD WITH A REALLY NICE HAIRDO!! OH-OHHHHHHHHH!!!!) But the most underrated Elvis song in my book is unquestionably "(Now and Then There's) A Fool Such As I". Why isn't this one of his 4 or 5 most famous songs?
  
• OK, here's one problem I have with the Elvis, though. It's the song "Teddy Bear". Yes, one problem is that I have to remember not to sing, "I just want to be your Teddy Graham." But the bigger problem is with the chorus:
  

  "Baby let me be your lovin' teddy bear
  Put a chain aroud my neck and lead me anywhere
  Oh let me be, your teddy bear."

  
  Here's the question: who treats their teddy bear like Zed treats The Gimp?!?!
  
• I watched Auto-Focus last night. That Bob Crane had issues, and they came weekly. Oh, and here's a surprise: Willem Dafoe was totally believable as a really creepy guy.
  
• I know I'd be a really bad stand-up comedian, because all I'd ever think up would be bits like this that I know no one else would find funny: So I was thinking about Kenny G and Ali G and wondering if they are related somehow. Maybe by marriage. And I wondered what the "G" stood for. So I looked it up, and it turns out that it's just like Harry Truman. That's right, the "G" stands for "S".
  
• Finally, I'd like to leave you with my impression of every Yahoo Personal ad I've read the last two weeks:
  

  (Insert number between 22 and 33)-year-old girl seeks a smart, funny guy to hang out with. I'm looking for someone who's honest, nice, won't play games, and can hold up their end of the conversation. Looks are unimportant. No, I totally mean it--it's what's on the inside that counts. I want a nice guy. Someone with inner beauty. Someone who reads, like movies, and enjoys quiet nights together. Did I mention looks are unimportant. Just nice. That's all.
  P.S.: No fat guys.
  

  
  Sigh...

Leave it to Major League Baseball to find the only matchup out of the 4 possible World Series that I had no interest in. Jesus fucking Christ do I hate the Yankees. And my other option is to root for Jeffrey Loria. How is it that I love sports so much, but sports so frequently make me hate life?