Deeds & Words

I haven’t complained about spam comments much recently but I just have to share some today.  They are hilarious. 

Basically, one percent (1%) of the comments I’ve received over the life of the blog have been real comments by people who had read a post and sincerely responded to the contents.  And for the caliber of those comments it’s worth wading through the others, especially since I usually use the Bulk Actions button to spam them and it goes pretty fast. 

I’ve learned that the purpose of many of the general comments is to get someone to click on the website attached to the comment, to see if it’s a real comment.  The companies that get paid to do this contract for so many “hits” per month.  Also, if I go ahead and post one, then maybe some other commenter gets curious and clicks on it as well.  Everybody wins but me. 

Most of these fake messages are bland and silly, but sometimes they’re just fun. These two came in this week. 

This, in response to Defining Decadence:

“You lost me, buddy. I mean, I suppose I get what youre saying. I get where youre coming from. But you just seem to have forgotten that there are people out there who can see this issue for what it really is and may not agree with you. You seem to alienate a whole bunch of people who might have been fans of your blog.”

Oh, no.  Noooo!  I’ve lost lots of readers because of my critique of designer dog food?  What was I thinking? How will I survive? Especially knowing there are people out there who see this issue for what it really is. (And what is that, exactly?  Please share, because I sure don’t know.)

And this one, simply because it ran through one of those translation programs.  Have fun deciphering it!  I am pretty good with some of these because I know lots of synonyms, but I have to admit, this one is beyond my powers.

“Reputable an ideal blog website. I noticed where it people have was. My partner and i always aspired to purchase the woman’s to execute to a lot of our situations which helps me when i say so you may guidance families common.”

On his blog Fiction is So Overrated, Chad Hull recently posted an essay on well-made books—the physical book. He was evaluating  Easton Press. He discussed the merits of hand-sewn signatures rather than glued-in pages, the importance of low-acid papers and other things that make a book an object of quality or even art, beyond the printed words it holds. 

The Sig-O and I have been having experiences at the other end of the quality continuum. Two weeks ago I picked him up a Simon Green book.  It wasn’t one of that British author’s series with which we were familiar; it looked more like traditional fantasy.  It’s called Hawk and Fisher; a collection of novellas and short stories featuring characters with those names.  The Sig-O said he would have liked the book better if twenty-five pages hadn’t been missing in the center.  This was a trade paperback, purchased new.  It didn’t come from a used book store where the pages could have been torn out, or where the book got wet and the glue softened, or so on.  This is a new book. In production, one signature did not get glued into place.  If it happened to one book, odds are good it happened to a thousand in that particular print run. Or, I don’t know, maybe it is just a hiccup in the machine and it just happened a few hundred times in some random order. 

I told him that between the two of us we broke even, because  one of the Cherie Priest books I had purchased, as new, had twenty-five pages repeated in the first third.  The whole book was there; I had just gotten a bonus—twenty five pages I could read again, after I had just finished reading them. 

These are quality control problems that shouldn’t happen.  I won’t go so far as to say they never happened in the good old days.  I read plenty of paperbacks in the 1970s that had typographical errors in them, at least (although, I have to say, not as many as today).  And I remember being horribly disappointed by a copy of DH Lawrence’s book The Rainbow, which I did buy used—and rather battered—when I got to what I thought was going to be the end and found that 30 pages had fallen out before I purchased it. That was a used book, though. I paid a buck-fifty and I knew the risks when I bought it. 

Paperbacks in the 70s were made on bad paper that already looks a hundred years old, with cheap covers that tore and split.  They weren’t meant to last, but they were usually intact when you got them at least.  

Apparently the companies marketing fantasy and science fiction now don’t care whether you get the entire book you bought.  I suppose these errors could just be an effect of automation—clearly there is no human entity checking the books at the end of the assembly line.  This may be unfair, but I can’t help thinking that when books were produced by publishing companies, rather than conglomerates that got started making shoes, there was some tiny spark of pride in what was being produced.  Clearly that is not the case now.  

Caveat emptor, with books, used to mean that you might not agree with what you read; that you might find the work offensive or poorly written.  It really didn’t mean, “Good luck getting the whole thing you purchased!”

Restating the disclaimer.

THIS IS NOT MY GARDEN.

They have squash starting!  And the tomato plants are spangled with flowers.  Definitely progress, although I am still worrried that the squash plants will start crowding out the tomatoes.

This garden inspired me to pick up a couple of tomato plants.  I have never had good luck with them, partly because of a largely shady back yard.  The plants I got were on sale (as in “Priced to Move Before They Die”) from a local nursery.  I paid $4.50 for three.  One sits in a new ceramic pot in the front yard, that gets more light, one is in a pot on the  bak deck and one is in the ground next to the potatoes.  They all look pretty pathetic.  I had to resist the temptation to buy a lush, dark-leaved plant at the farmers’ market yesterday.  I’ll give the three burnt and half-dead plants a try.  If I get a tomato, it will be a triumph, and if I don’t, well, they were cheap.

This time of year I can go to a festival of some kind every week.  Let’s see if I can name five without thinking too hard: Jazz Festival, Garden Festival, Fisherman’s Festival, Mustard Festival (in a neighboring county, but still,) Roma Fest, and the Lavender Festival, and that isn’t counting the ones that are Fairs. 

This weekend I went to the Lavender Festival.  I went primarily because the fund-raiser portion supported Voicing Our Independent Choices for Emancipation Support (VOICES); a great non-profit project founded by and working for former foster youth who are transitioning into adulthood.  Eight wineries and five eateries donated their time and imaginations.  The wine was traditional Sonoma Valley best and the food was inspired by lavender.  

The Festival is held at Sonoma Lavender, a lavender wholesale company that also makes lavender scented spa items and some culinary products.  They sell culinary lavender to stores like Andronico’s in Berkelely.  Their lavender farm is nestled in the valley at the feet of Mount Hood, next to Chateau St Jean, embraced by the winery’s vineyards, sheltered by valley oaks.  They have a lavender barn that is painted lavender (the upstairs is their drying room) and a house surrounded by a beautiful landscaped garden. . .  and then there are acres of lavender. 

In addition to the food and wine-tasting there was a guided tour of the lavender plantation and the new specimen garden.  Gary, one of the owners, was our tour guide.  We started at the formal specimen garden with its varieties of lavender planted in pots, the musical fountain at its center.  Gary informed us that there were 500 cultivars of lavender worldwide.  This is because lavender grown from seed mutates successfully about 1% of the time; usually this means a change in color of the flower.  There is white lavender, pink lavender and he said a woman told him recently she had grown chartreuse lavender.  Since lavender is grown mostly from cuttings, these mutations are instantly “cloned;” which is why there can be 500.  Sonoma Lavender has about 32 varieties. 

Their three biggest for production are Provence lavender, grosso lavender (dark bluish in color with a larger bloom than Provence) and Hitcoat Giant, developed for its long bloom and high volume of oil.  Lavender essential oils are used primarily in perfumes, he said, even if you don’t notice the scent. 

They harvest the flowers early in the morning.  During the day, bees and sunlight extract about 40% of the volatile oils from the plant, but these replenish during the night, so the best hours to harvest are from about six am until nine.  From the long undulating rows of blue flowers in which we stood, Gary said his harvesters would get about 4,000 bunches of flowers for drying.  

He also showed us how to take cuttings for planting, but I left the group before I could learn how to prune a bush back at the end of the season.  I realized later that my plants had taken a major beating during our long wet season, so the pruning thing would have been helpful. 

I left the tour before that, though, and went to talk to Alissa Gentile, who works for VOICES.  She was taking tickets but we managed to chat for a few minutes.  I went to the VOICES booth and talked to the two young people who were staffing it at that moment.  Poised, friendly, knowledgeable; kids who came through some tough times and are developing into the kind of adults and citizens we want everyone to be.  Then I went to check out the food.  I had wine-tasting tickets—part of the cost of the fund-raiser—but it was barely noon, and I was driving by myself, so it didn’t seem too practical.  (Driving out, I had seen hand-lettered signs on posts along the way saying, “Hire a designated driver!” with a local phone number.  Some enterprising person giving the limo companies a run.  Wish I’d hired them.)  Eating?  Well, that was no problem! 

I had dessert first.  Sift, a local cupcake bakery, had vanilla and lavender cupcakes with honey buttercream frosting.  The cupcake was an oatmeal color instead of white, yellow or brown; not necessarily the most attractive color, but the pillow of frosting looked like a cloud.  The cake wasn’t too sweet, which was good, because the frosting. . .  just about a perfect mix of flavors.  Cupcakes are usually either too rich for me, or not satisfying enough.  This one was exactly right.  I followed it with a crostini from Jackson’s Bar and Oven.  Lavender, goat cheese and strawberries.  Just when it seemed like this might be really too sweet, the earthy goat cheese would mellow it out.  

Thai Sea Bistro had lettuce cups.  I didn’t have one but they looked delicious; silver noodles, a little bit of chicken, I think, vegetables and Thai spices wrapped in a lettuce leaf.  Very refreshing.  I tried Syrah’s cold carrot and lavender soup.  It had the obligatory dab of crème fraiche on the top.  Quite good, but the lavender was barely an aftertaste.  Not complaining, just saying. 

I brought water, and that was a good thing, although they did have lavender lemonade at the other end of the field.  I walked back up there and went through the lavender marketplace to pick up some souvenirs.  Then I went out to where the bee hives are—bees are not needed for propagation but they also sell lavender honey—and bought some honey and two plants to add to my lavender border. 

The event had quite a good turnout and it continues on Sunday, except for VOICES fundraiser. Here are some other lavender facts Gary shared with us: 

• 30,000 acres in Provence are planted in lavender.
• One “mother plant” can create 2,000 cuttings.
• Lavender plants don’t need soil amendments.  In their native state they grow in rocks.  Local soil is rich enough to make them happy.  If you need to break up clay, he recommends gravel instead of compost.

No time off for good behavior?

I think I’m seeing a design flaw in the garden.  Both the tomatoes and squash are growing great.  Squash get huge leaves and one of the beneficial things they do is provide shade, holding in valuable moisture.  That’s the up-side.  The down-side is that they can shade plants that need a lot of sun, like tomatoes.

Still, it’s a great garden!  Look how lush everything is.

Well, my one burning question is answered.  Jonah Hex is steampunk, sort of.  Jonah has two mini, semi-automatic Gatling guns mounted on his horse’s harness (apparently no cranking required).  The villain, General Turnbull, builds a secret weapon, a “nation killer” that is catalyzed by orbs filled with a glowing golden plasma.

 It’s also dark fantasy because Jonah can reanimate the dead and talk to them. 

It’s a comic book. 

A brief bit of background; the time is shortly after the American Civil War.  Hex and the Turnbulls, father and son, fought for the Confederacy.  General Turnbull chose to kill civilians, so Hex betrayed them to the Union; the General’s son Jeb was killed by Hex.  Turnbull took a terrible revenge upon Hex, including branding his face.  Hex nearly died and in the twilight lands between death and life picked up this talk-to-the-dead thing, which could, I guess, come in handy. 

The movie has that excellent comic-book-to-big screen look.  It’s sweaty and gritty when it has to be—Josh Brolin as Hex is sweaty and gritty most of the time—lush and colorful when it has to be, and imposing and Victorian when it wants to be.  Establishing scenes could have been lifted straight from splash-pages or centerfolds (I’m sure that’s not the technical name for a close-up that covers two pages).  Most of the action sequences involve blowing stuff up, but there’s a weird prize-fight scene that’s kind of cool.  Nothing blows up, but a lot of stuff burns.  For a man whose family burned to death and who was branded, Hex is remarkably comfortable around fire.

 The movie’s fine cast and good looks can’t quite lift it into the Success category.  John Malkovich plays General Turnbull with a fine, measured malice.  For me, 40% of a Malkovich performance is voice, another 40% is eyes.  Eyes and voice get a workout here, but there’s only so much he can do with the material.  In the early sequences when he is taking his revenge on Hex, he is a compelling villain; the rest of the movie he’s an Evil Overlord.  The screenplay never bothers to tell us what drives Turnbull.  The death of his son?  The failure of the Confederacy?  Maybe, but in the movie’s “real time” plot, Turnbull is willing to blow up anything and anybody, attacking towns in former Confederate states.  What’s that about?  The screenplay tries to address this by calling him a terrorist.  Sorry, not good enough. 

Lilah, or Talullah, played by Megan Fox, is the cleanest prostitute anywhere in the whole wild west.  Even though she sees many sweat-and-whiskey soaked men in the course of her profession, and works in a dusty two-horse town, her hair and clothes are always perfect.  Even at the end, when she is running through the steam-powered warship, shooting and cutting people, her cute white cotton batiste bloomers and camisole remain pristine.  I find when I’m thinking, “Gosh,she’s so clean,” every time a character appears, that I’m not very engaged with the story. 

The movie is short.  The plot is linear, with no surprises.  Michael Fassbender is entertaining as Turnbull’s second villain.  He has Maori tattoos, an Irish accent, and no backstory.  Brolin, of course, is good and growly as Hex. Aidan Quinn does a nice job as president if he is some generic president.  If he is meant to be U.S. Grant, then not so much. 

The film is 90 minutes long.  If you see it at a matinee you will have invested exactly enough money and time in it.  If you wait for Netflicks, you’ll be getting a bargain.

In 2008, the Church of Latter Day Saints, the Catholic Church and an American Baptist Church (I don’t know which one) descended on California and spent millions of dollars to withhold the right of marriage (and I meant “right,” not “rite;” it isn’t a typo) from adults who love one another, if they happen to be of the same sex. 

They were successful.  Many older voters, some of them ethnic minorities, went out to the polls for the first time in years, and resoundingly voted in Barack Obama.  At the same time, they voted to support discrimination, because their pastors convinced them that somehow marriage was “threatened” if gays could do it too. 

No, I don’t get it either. 

The California supreme court upheld Prop 8, and it is now in the U.S. district court.  The federal judge heard closing arguments yesterday. 

Last night the Sig-O and I went out for Chinese food and we were talking about the case.  He said, “Who cares what the judge decides?  He should just flip a coin.” 

I was outraged.  “What?  How can you say that?” 

“Because–” he swirled his crisp spring roll through the sweet and sour sauce, “–no matter what he decides, it’s going to the Supreme Court.  His decision doesn’t matter either way.” 

Flip a coin. 

He’s right, of course.  

I wonder how U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker feels about that.

I don’t like how my comments on books have been going lately.  They’re too long and I don’t seem to have much to say.  To jump-start myself I gave myself a writing challenge:  A ten-minute capsule review.  Here are three books in thirty minutes: 

Rude Mechanicals: Kage Baker, Subterranean Press, 2007 

The book is a beautiful artifact with a great cover and delightful J.K Potter illustrations.  I can’t tell if they are photorealism or just very good pencil drawings but they enhance the book.  This is the first Subterranean Press book I’ve purchased and it makes me anticipate my copy of “Clementine,” which I’ve pre-ordered, even more. 

Unfortunately, like movies or plays, excellent production values cannot always save a performance.  Rude Mechanicals is billed as a “short novel of the Company.”  At 114 pages and a large font size it is more accurately described as a novella or even a long short story.  People who have not read previous Company works, and who do not understand about Baker’s immortal cyborgs and their mission to go back in time, find objects of value, and hide them so they can be “discovered” in the future, should not start with this story.  While I love Lewis, the Roman immortal who collects works of art and literature, and always enjoy the wily Joseph, this story is too determinedly madcap, too episodic.  Baker tries to make each adventure, as Joseph attempts to retrieve a legendary lavender diamond, spring organically from the last mishap, to up the ante and heighten suspense, but it doesn’t work.  By far the best part of the story is Lewis’s relationship with Max Reinhardt.  Even at the end, Baker convinces us of her love for Shakespeare, but doesn’t convince us why we should love it.  Baker’s trademark humor and love of the golden age of Hollywood stand out here. For people who are captivated by the “Company” books, this would round out the collection, but it’s not for the casual reader. 

Split Image: Robert Parker, Putnam, 2010 

The latest and probably last “pure” Parker book is a Jesse Stone novel.  Jesse Stone is Parker’s flawed character, a man who wrestles with his devotion to his faithless ex-wife and his addiction to alcohol.  In Split Image, Sunny Randall, another Parker series character, joins Stone in the town of Paradise and they work on parallel cases.  Hers involves a pair of social climbers whose daughter has joined a religious organization, while Jesse’s has a murdered Russian mobster in the trunk of a car.  Jesse’s search leads him to a pair of retired gangsters and their gorgeous identical twin wives, while Sunny and gay-guy-pal Spike break the daughter out of a draconian “de-programming” center.  Appearance is not reality; Jesse uncovers some startling truths about the twins, and Sunny discovers that the religious cult is not as benign as it first seemed.  Both Jesse and Sunny struggle with their feelings of attraction and their issues with the fantasy of a relationship versus the reality.  I breathed a huge sigh of relief at the end of the book, because Jesse’s ex-wife Jennifer did not ever make an appearance.  The book is slight, but has that great Parker dialogue and the usual “Desperate Housewives” suburban hijinks that mark the Stone novels.  Since it will be the last book written entirely, solely by Parker, I was pleased to see an ending that was, at least, optimistic. 

Wings to the Kingdom:  Cherie Priest, Tor, 2006 

This is the second in the Eden Moore trilogy.  Reviewers have called the trilogy urban fantasy and Southern gothic.  Take your pick. 

I liked Eden better in this book than I did in Four and Twenty Blackbirds, where her callousness got a little hard to take.  The book has its flaws.  It is too long for the plot, and unless they exist to set things up for events in book three, several characters and events (Malachi and his crazy friend Kitty, for example) don’t need to be here.  It is an axiom of writing that the stronger and smarter you make your villain, the stronger and smarter your hero becomes by comparison.  This is bad news for Eden in this outing, because her villain, while probably realistic, is pathetic.  Eden’s do-it-because-I-can morality gets called into question by another character, the professional ghost hunter, but nothing in the plot forces Eden to confront the logical consequences of her beliefs.  There’s a scary moment for her, but then it turns out everything’s all right, so never mind. 

Balancing out those problems, however, is a wonderful supernatural character called Green Eyes, and a terrifying, suspenseful run through a haunted Civil War battleground, that is as strong as Priest’s work in Boneshaker. I plan to read the third book, in spite of my irritation with this character, because I want to see if Eden Moore, gifted with virtual immortality and the ability to see ghosts, will ever put aside childish things and live up to the power of her supernatural gifts.