Lost In Translation

Podcasts

The last couple of weeks I have really been getting into podcasts. Wednesdays are my long days where I teach 5 classes at two different universities that are quite far from each other and my home, so at the end of the day when I am exhausted and embarking on my hour plus journey home, I usually feel too tired to read so listneing to podacasts from Slate has been an entertaining diversion. Here's an article that discusses some podcasts and introduces one by Ricky Gervais of The Office fame. I recently down loaded his first podcast, and the first 15 minutes or so were funny, but after that a littlle tedious--the Slate pieces usually never run more than 15 minutes. The pieces they pick are usualy ones that I didn't read on the website, so I'm exposed to some topics I wouldn't have necessarily sought out on my own and have found them intersting. Anyone else getting into podcasts, if so any recommendations? I'm guessing that NPR probalby has some good ones.

Komagome

Yet another temple in Bukyo-ku.

2 X Klosterman

In the December issue of Esquire columnist Chuck Klosterman ponders whether or not people are fundamentally rational or fundamentally irrational. It is this point that he kept gravitating to while watching a four-part documentary originally shown on BBC television in 2002 called The Century of Self, which Klosterman says looks at how consumer culture is created and manipulated by subconscious desires. “It’s thesis is that democracy and capitalism are well-crafted illusions that give people a false sense of freedom, thereby allowing a select few to passively control society.” His discussion of this issue is entertaining and full of irreverent examples as usual. I don’t think you necessary have to choose a perspective, perhaps we oscillate between the two points of view or, rather, find some things unbelievably irrational and other things completely rational and sensible.

On another tangent, my brother has pointed me to this link form ESPN about Klosterman’s views on LA Lakers coach Phil Jackson and being a great man:

But Phil Jackson has never really failed. And if you want to be A Great Man, you need to fail (at least once).

Americans don't read very much, mostly because they don't have to. But we still live in a staunchly literary world. We understand almost everything (and everyone) within the context of a narrative that's written by circumstance and reality; each person's history is a little story where they are the main character. As such, historical figures are remembered for the things they accomplish and the victories they win -- if life were a movie, the collection of those achievements would comprise the plot. But people are always defined by their greatest failure. You learn very little about a man's character from his success; truth exists only within adversity. And adversity is what Jackson needs to define himself as A Great Man; without it, he's just a tall dude from Williston High School who won a lot of games with a lot of talent.

Click here to read the rest of the column.

Book Notes: Cloud Atlas

I’ve recently read David Mitchell’s third novel, Cloud Atlas, which like his previous number9dream was short listed for the Booker Prize. He seems to display enormous growth with each novel and has presented himself as a fox (as in Isaiah Berlin’s characterization of writers as being hedgehogs-knowing one big thing, or a foxes-knowing many little things). This novel reminds me of his first effort, Ghostwritten, in that it is a series of stories that are interconnected. However, the stories are divided in two except for the middle stories that act as a sort of boundary between the different sections. Again, Mitchell is doing some literary ventriloquism. But instead of aping Murakami and Hornby, this time around he is mimicking Melville and William Gibson among others. He also does a variety of methods of story telling; third person narrative, letter correspondence, an interview, a mystery novel, and a journal are some of the styles he employs. I particularly liked “The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing”-which probably owes something to Melville, and “Letter From Zedelghem”-which reminded me of the Dangerous Liaisons although it took place much later in time. There were merits to the “The First Luis Rey Mystery” and “The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish,” as well. But I was turned off by the lengthy foray into SF in the middle section, I slowed down considerably while reading “An Orison of Sonmi 451”and “Sloosha’s Corossin’ an’ Ev’thin’ After.” The former was a dystopian story of the near future, which has precedents with Huxley and Orwell. It’S been done, and it’s been done better. I see Mitchell trying to channel Gibson here, or at least I guess that’s his influence. I must give him credit for setting it in Korea instead of Japan, despite his having lived here for a long time-but that would have been too cliché. The later is a sort of post-apocalyptic survival farce. To be honest, my interest was really flagging here, which is too bad, because I really enjoyed the first two sections. I see that Mitchell has moved form Japan to Ireland. I’ll be curious to see what he writes next. I feel inexplicably bound to him, since a book review of Ghostwritten was my first paid journalistic piece-we’re the same age and he has three acclaimed novels-d’oh!

The "Moneyball" Of College Football?

Michael Lewis, author of the engaging Moneyball, has a great feature in the latest NY Times magazine about Texas Tech coach Mike Leach, who maybe college football's answer to the A's Billy Beane. A coach who does more with less, and may eventually revolutionalize college football by changing the paradigm of conventional thinking about how football is to be played. Again, a great narrative by an excellent writer. Go Red Raiders! I think they have become the team to root for in the bowl season, after awful seasons by the UW Huskies and WSU Cougars. (If you haven't signed up for the FREE NY Times registration-it would be worth it to do so for this article alone, but if you are too lazy here's my user name and pass word: patrickmccoy0/mccoy1):

Schwartz had an N.F.L. coach's perspective on talent, and from his point of view, the players Leach was using to rack up points and yards were no talent at all. None of them had been identified by N.F.L. scouts or even college recruiters as first-rate material. Coming out of high school, most of them had only one or two offers from midrange schools. Sonny Cumbie hadn't even been offered a scholarship; he was just invited to show up for football practice at Texas Tech. Either the market for quarterbacks was screwy - that is, the schools with the recruiting edge, and N.F.L. scouts, were missing big talent - or (much more likely, in Schwartz's view) Leach was finding new and better ways to extract value from his players. "They weren't scoring all these touchdowns because they had the best players," Schwartz told me recently. "They were doing it because they were smarter. Leach had found a way to make it work."

But when Schwartz studied videotape of the Texas Tech offense, what he saw unsettled him. The offensive linemen positioned themselves between three and six feet apart - on extreme occasions, the five linemen stretched a good 15 yards across the field. At times it was difficult to tell the linemen from the receivers. Strictly speaking, they were not a line at all, just a row of dots. "The offensive line splits - you look at them, and you're just shocked," Schwartz said. "It scares people to see splits that are that wide."

The big gaps between the linemen made the quarterback seem more vulnerable - some defenders could seemingly run right between the blockers - but he wasn't. Stretching out the offensive line stretched out the defensive line too, forcing the most ferocious pass rushers several yards farther from the quarterback. It also opened up wide passing lanes through which even a short quarterback could see the whole field clearly. Leach spread out his receivers and backs too. The look was more flag than tackle football: a truly fantastic number of players racing around trying to catch passes on every play, and a quarterback surprisingly able to keep an eye on all of them.

This offense was, in effect, an argument for changing the geometry of the game. Schwartz didn't know if Leach's system would work in the N.F.L., where they had bigger staffs, better players and a lot more time to prepare for whatever confusion the offense cooked up. On the other hand, he wasn't sure it wouldn't.

Click here to read the whole story-it's not exactly short.

Recent Murakami Short Stories

A friend mentioned in passing that there was a good Murakami short story recently in The New Yorker. So I went to the website to try and see which issue it appeared in, so that I could track it down. I was pleased to find several stories availiable online. The one my friend must have been talking about was probably "The Year of Spaghetti", from the November 11th print issue. It is a textbook Murakami short story: homebody everyman, food, a mysterious phone call, akward conversation leading to ephiphany. I think it was effective and thought provoking. Although, I must say that I was much more impressed with "The Kidney-Shaped Stone That Moves Every Day," which immediately drew me in with its provocative opening:

Junpei was sixteen years old when his father made a surprising pronouncement. True, they were father and son; the same blood flowed through their veins. But they were not so close that they often opened their hearts to each other, and it was extremely rare for Junpei’s father to offer him views of life that might (perhaps) be called philosophical. So that day’s exchange would remain vivid in his memory long after he had forgotten what prompted it.

“Among the women a man meets in his life, there are only three who have real meaning for him. No more, no less,” his father said—or, rather, declared. He spoke coolly but with utter certainty, as he might have in noting that the earth takes a year to revolve around the sun. Junpei listened in silence, partly because his father’s speech was so unexpected; he could think of nothing to say on the spur of the moment.

“You will probably become involved with many women in the future,” his father continued, “but you will be wasting your time if a woman is the wrong one for you. I want you to remember that.”

Later, several questions formed in Junpei’s young mind: Has my father already met his three women? Is my mother one of them? And, if so, what happened with the other two? But he was not able to ask his father these questions. As noted earlier, the two were not on such close terms that they could speak heart to heart.

This one is from the Septembe 26th print issue and can be read here.

Mongolian Madness

Yesterday my frieind Makiko (she's the one in the lower left hand side of the photo above) had a birthday party at a Mongolian restaurant in Kameido. It was a set course meal with nomihodai (all-you-can drink). They also had traditional Mongolian wedding garb as decorations and allowed us to wear them, but not while eating of course. Real Mongolian food is quite different from Mongolian BBQ. The first courses were pickled vegetables, tofu, dumplings, followed by roasted lamb (that had to be cut with what looked like a hunting knife), and grilled lamb and onions. It was real hearty fare, the kind of stuff I imagine you'd eat in the barrens hinterlands of Mongolia, but they don't use much seasoning in the food, so I found it a bit heavy and lacking in taste, then again this is coming from a guy who loves Thai food. We tried some Mongolian vodka (moonshine? rocket fuel?) as well. All in all, a fun night out.

My camera's battery died, so here's a link to Makiko's Flckr account with more photos.

Hongodori

The leaves have changed and everywhere there's a lot of color. This was taken on Hongodori not far from Hakusan campus in Bunkyo-ku.

NY Times Top 10

The NY Times has narrowed down their list from 100 notable books to the Top 10, and Haruki Murakami has made the list.

My "Mike Yanagina"

While watching Donnie Darko: The Director’s Cut with the commentary with director Richard Kelly and Kevin Smith, Smith asked Kelly if the Cherita Chen character had some special insight into Donnie’s character or not, and he replied that she was his “Mike Yanagina.” “Mike Yanagina” was a character from Coen’s brother film Fargo, who inexplicably made an appearance in the film and wasn’t essential to the plot. It is a piece of character building in what it reveals about Marge a woman who is decent, caring, and empathetic. However, Kelly also saw his role as that of a catalyst that helped Margie break the case by providing an opportunity for an epiphany. Yanagina sees Marge on TV and calls her and they agree to meet up at a Radisson Hotel lunge and during the comic and dramatic meeting Yanagina tells Marge: “You such a super lady” and reveals that his former wife has died of cancer and breaks down in front of Marge. Later, she learns from a friend that Yanagina “ has been having troubles and has been living with his parents” and that he has lied about his wife’s cancer. This, in turn, shocks Marge who feels that she has been naive and creates an epiphany, in which she begins to second-guess Jerry Lundegaard’s (Williaam H. Macy) responses. She returns to question him further, where he gets rattled and flees from her. This in turn sets in motion a series of events, which eventually leads her to the lake cabin and the wood chipper where she solves the crime. Smith laughs and says he was oblivious to its role in the plot of the film and says he thought it was there just so that Yanagina could say: “You such a super lady.”

I liked Fargo, but it wasn’t one of my Coen brother favorite movies, so I was inspired to go back and watch it again, to test Kelly’s theory. And I think he’s perceptive and correct. Marge’s conception of reality is called into question by a newly encountered world where people lie about their wives dying and kill people for a little bit of money. And I remember the Coen brothers defending their portrayal of Minnesotans, which many reviewers interpreted as a hatred of the simple folk. But I think, aside from their obliviousness, dimness, and funny accents, they are portrayed as good, decent, caring, respectable, god-fearing, law abiding people, who live their lives the proper way. Marge is the exemplar of this decent, moral approach to life, which makes me think that her being pregnant is more than a contrivance for her to vomit inappropriately or to ask “to take a load off,” when she wants to sit down-she creates life, whereas her adversaries destroy life. It doesn't get any more life affirming than that.