Ad Hudler's Blog, page 19

A Giant in the Sushi House

So my wife and I were at a sushi restaurant the other night when I had to go to the bathroom. I walked up to the door and stopped.

[image error] Had someone put magic mushrooms in my dragon roll? Had I gone all Alice-in-Wonderland and instantly morphed into an even bigger Ad?
This ain't trick photography, folks. To get inside, I had to slightly squat and wiggle my way in, sideways.
And inside the bathroom: the cutest little sink I've ever seen. I felt like I was playing in a doll house.

Color me: Confused

[image error]
Sure, I know where my car is. It's on ... uhh... blue ... 3? ... uhhhhhh 43?Yeegods, this looks too much like an algebraic equation. I did not do well in algebra.I did, however, eventually find my car.

Deluxe Lodging in New Orleans

[image error] A new low for the Hilton line of Hampton Inns. I mean, I know they had a bad-ass hurricane here, but I think they could clean and fix things up a little. Please?
That's a handle to the bathroom door. We would have picked it up and put it back on but were afraid of the creatures living in the corner of grime and grit.

When it comes to words, Less is often More

Headline writing is an art form. Having grown up in a five-generation newspaper family and being a former print journalist myself, I know how difficult it is to write a headline that captures the essence of an article in a defined space. The skinny one-column heads are the hardest -- they're almost like haiku.
Well, no one writes headlines as well as The New York Times, and their one-column heads are generally poetry. In an arts section last week they posted a review of the movie "Country Strong," in which Gwyneth Paltrow plays an alcoholic country music star trying to save her career and love life.
Here was the one-column headline in the Times:
I am woman,Hear mecry, y'all
It tells us everything. We know that the Times did NOT like the movie -- and that they considered it to be sappy and over the top. The review was horribly written, but whoever wrote that headline (reporters never write their own; the job generally goes to the page designer), deserves a pat on the back. In these days of verbosity, succinct, well-thought-out messages should be appreciated and savored.
In an unrelated note: Here's a shout-out to my readers in and around Estevan, Saskatchewan, who are reading my novel "Househusband" in their Book Club in a Bag program.

Uhhh....waiter?

[image error] You've poured my beer into a WINE GLASS?!I'm really at a loss for words.

A word about the word "nigger"

In my novel "Man of the House," the daughter of the protagonist comes home to her father and explains that her teacher has banned reading the word "nigger" out loud as they study "To Kill a Mockingbird." Instead, every time the word comes up in text the students must say, only, "N."Unfortunately, it's a true story. It happened in my daughter's class at Canterbury School in Fort Myers, Florida.

I thought it was ludicrous to tone down and verbally censor one of the most important books of the Civil Rights era, so I had my protagonist father (who is largely based on me, of course) write this email to the teacher:

...By having your students say "N" instead of nigger when they're reading passages out loud, not only do you rip the balls off the prose but you also are practicing revisionist history. Whites back then said nigger. NIGGER. It's an awful word, yes, but if we candy-coat the darker sides of history then we will make them seem more palatable and, thus, more acceptable, thus increasing the chance that humanity will make the same mistakes again.

Sincerely,

Linc Menner

I write about this now because of the recent news that the publisher of Huckleberry Finn is, in the newest edition of the American classic, going to take out every occurrence of "nigger" and replace it with the more acceptable "slave."

Art's job in life is not only to elevate us but also to startle us and make us question ourselves and the paths we are taking. The word "nigger" reminds us of a very racist, dark period of our history, and if we start to censor and candy-coat the literature from that era then we will soon forget how very bad and frightening that period of American history truly was.

What if we changed the details of the Holocaust? What if we said that only a "smattering" of Jews had been killed instead of millions? It sure would make us feel better, but future generations, our children's children, would have no idea of the immensity of the atrocities that occurred.

If you don't like the book, people, don't read it. But stop re-writing dead authors' books. I'll tell you what: If you do it to me, I'll come back and haunt your ass in a big way.

Signs that your son is going to be a writer

1. He has a clown doll named Toody.
2. He starts an after-school coloring club in second grade but kicks everyone out after 30 minutes because they are not coloring in the lines well enough.
3. He spends hours playing make-believe in his bedroom.
4. He begs Santa for a nativity scene for three years, and when he finally gets one he spends hours every Christmas re-creating the manger scene in full dialogue.
5. He starts a cassette-taped "radio station" for the household, reporting menus of the day and events from work and school.
6. On "B" day in sixth grade he goes dressed as a giant banana, with black knee-high pantyhose over his head to replicate the end of the banana.
(This one's for you, Mom and Dad. Thanks for your patience all those years and for teaching me that weird = normal.)

Food Revelation #254BR5

It's hard to be visually surprised by anything in this day of the internet; we've seen and heard it all. But THIS I hadn't seen before:
[image error]Spotted in a small independent grocer's in Nashville: BRUSSELS SPROUTS ON THE COB! Don't they look a little like those hand-held jingle bells you rang at the Christmas concert in elementary school?

Art at 32,000 feet

The most curious thing on the seat in front of me on a Delta flight yesterday: Skyfitti.
[image error]Isn't it interesting? Looks like a rough illustration for an animated Disney character: Devil Bunny? Constipated Bunny? Did an entirely different person leave the red marks?
And the artist was proper enough to do it on masking tape so as not to deface the edge of this TV set.

Cool Christmas gift!

[image error] Action figures! A few years ago my daughter got me the ancient-Egypt set. This year it was the Rainforest collection.
Indiana Jones, far left, meets Queen Nefertiti.
I keep these in a vase on the bookshelf behind my desk, and when I need a distraction from writing I pull them down and play with them.