Sue Lange's Blog, page 9

Subtle and Outrageous: Nick Mamatas’ Love is the Law

Subtle and outrageous? Sure. Why not? If you’re balls-to-the-wall intelligent, no problem. Love is the Law is and it is. I’m glad I bought an ebook so I could look up the big words as I went along. I’m still trying to digest “perseverate” and the concept of “antinomian praxis.”

But a smart novel doesn’t live on big words alone. There’s got to be depth and feeling and maybe even a little bloodshed. There is some bloodshed here, but not much, considering it’s a horror story. It’s much more subtle than a typical slasher type vehicle. There’s stuff about the world and capitalism and Nazis going on here. Connections between disparate things like the falling of the Berlin wall and the falling of the Twin Towers. And yes it’s outrageous, too. How could it not be considering the main character is a disaffected punk?



I had a hard time decidng exactly where the horror lay. The pentagrams and satyrs and sacrifice of the first born were lovely, but what I found even more chilling was the culture of Long Island. Here is where the upwardly mobile landed after they made their escape from the noise and confusion of Manhattan sometime after the entire spit turned into Levittown. The kids here grow up bored and so make their own escape into hardcore punk. When Dad gets downsized he escapes to crack cocaine and human sacrifice. Everybody is escaping to something but what happens when you’re at the very end of the continental shelf? There is nowhere else to run. Long Islanders are forced to stay in their own self-created hell. They will remain.

Love is the Law is firstly a murder mystery. The corpse shows up in the first chapter, but it’s not much more than an accoutrement. We don’t get a lot of details or clues. Most of the text in the first couple of chapters is taken up with describing the story’s two main characters, one of which is the dead man. The infodump is an egregious consumer of page space so brilliantly done I couldn’t put the book down until I finished the whole thing.

It’s not that it was fast-paced, action-packed, or laugh-out-loud funny. It was captivating in other ways. Not because the characters were likable either. The one, Bernstein, is a lunatic communist: a lone crank, cranking out manifestos and shouting at commuters on the platform at rush hour on Thursdays. He’s brilliant, rich, and out of his mind. He’s also dead. The main character, Dawn, is an orange-haired punk so antisocial she admits she’s only living with her grandmother for the social security check. Despite the fact that these are the people you cross the street to avoid, you can’t help following along on their sick journey. You don’t like these people but are fascinated nonetheless.

That’s the surface story. The real story is the story of Long Island as model of America and how it suffers from its proximity to Manhattan. Everyone on LI knows where the repository of American highbrow culture is, but no one ever goes there. They exited New York City years ago when they first got a taste for upper middle classhood. They’d love to go back for a visit but they never do. Wir bleiben hier (we remain here) is one of the themes of the book.

It’s not just Long Island with the problem, it’s elsewhere. New Jersey comes to mind. People in New Jersey suffer from that same identity crisis. If you could plop these characters somewhere near the Jersey shore, they’d wind up in a Kevin Smith movie. It’s the culture of those living in a nightmare of their own creation; the type of dream that you don’t know is a dream and so you don’t know all you have to do is wake up to escape. These people will not wake up. It’s true across the nation. We’re all seeking the occult to solve our problems.

Like all genre work, there are lapses of logic. It wouldn’t be genre if it was all believable. If it was believable it would be mainstream. Right?

I can buy the magick. I can even buy the fact that Dawn can track down Bernstein’s killer using the weakest of connections; that always happens in murder mystery stories. But when Dawn connects one unbelievable dot by deciding to go to a hardcore show thinking she’ll run into the killers because Nazis hate Jews, I take a dim view. Sure, the skinheads are into hardcore, but not all hardcore is Nazi hardcore. Okay the name of the band is Abyssal Eyeballs which Dawn realizes is a reference to Nietsche. So that’s okay. But I’ve never met any hardcore punks that were capable of anything, let alone murder. There’s too much planning involved.

And only one band at a hardcore concert? I can’ swallow that. I’ve never seen a punk show that didn’t have at least five bands on the ticket. How else can you get an audience? Five bands each with three people in the lineup gives us 30 parents. Now you’ve got an audience. You see the lapse of logic?

Joking aside this is sparkling prose with big ideas. Like this:

“The few friends I had in high school—punks like me, and the one kid who loved Lovecraft and didn’t try to hit on me—were all off to their little petit-bourgeois college experiences in Massachusetts or California. That’s how the system parcels out culture and cultural capital, to reproduce the class system.” [poster’s note: Heavy.]

“The best thing to do with an agitated moron is to fan the flames, so they do something exceptionally stupid.” [poster’s note: I’ve been guilty of doing this myself which is why I love the statement.]

“He just laughed and told me that most Marxists who take it seriously—‘and who aren’t in a political cult’—end up rich sooner or later. ‘We understand capitalism so much better than anyone else, after all.’ “ [poster’s note: Now that I think of it…yeah!]

“Even Nazism, that great bellow of rage and resentment from the disaffected…” [poster’s note: poetic]

“When a tower collapses, all of it falls to the earth, eventually. Flying, screaming people, the great clouds of dust that shoot into the air and cover the sun, the flames that rise high and burn out—we’re all ultimately headed straight down.” [poster’s note: a beautiful depiction of our national tragedy]

“Capitalism requires the power of the occult to win.” [poster’s note: This may very well be the main theme in the book. Nicely done.]

And the winner for its sheer beauty:

“Manhattan wasn’t a Big Rock Candy Mountain with nothing to do all day but hang out in Washington Square Park and wait for Joey Ramone to show up with a free pizza. It was Wall Street. It was Central Park West. The Twin Towers. The very center of world capitalism. With the implosion of East Germany, it was only a matter of time. The little nooks and crannies in which people like me dwelled, in shitty roach-strewn tenements with bathtubs in the kitchen, were about to be gentrified or torn down completely and utterly replaced by condos for the children of the bourgeoisie. There was no place for me in the city.”

Speaking as one of those people that got lost downtown waiting for Joey, I can only say, “Right on with the description, Mr. Author.”

There’s much more. Every chapter has a shining bit that, depending on your world view, either rings true or pisses you off. You’ll either laugh or throw your Kindle at the wall. Either way, you will be entertained by this novel.

The plot? Yeah, sure, there’s a plot. It’s the story of America: subtle and outrageous.

Sue Lange

This essay was first posted on October 25th at the Book View Cafe blog.

Government Fail

Here’s something I posted over at Book View Cafe last week during the crisis. It’s old news now, but something to think about nonetheless.

As I write this partisan politics is still holding sway and holding the government hostage. There is a bright spot. According to Forbes, “More red states are affected by the government’s relentless shutdown than blue states.” So if the red states are starting to get pissed, I can only imagine a few Republicans may be rethinking their positions. Small businesses are hurting too. They usually go red. Maybe with pressure on at least one side of the argument a compromise can be reached.

Meanwhile, what exactly does it mean that the government is shut down?



I was traveling last weekend by plane and the TSA was in full force as evidenced by them spot checking at midnight at the South Bend airport.  This was a tiny airport, hardly significant in the spin of things, but the TSA was there ransacking our underwear and other unmentionables in search of guns, cocaine, and Burmese pythons.

My mail is coming to me regularly. It hasn’t even been late.

It makes me wonder how exactly the man in the street is touched when the government is shut down.

According to CNN, a lot of offices are only partially closed or even  fully open. Most offices you’ve heard of are partially open: Treasury, Commerce, Education. The unlucky, non-essential agencies that are totally closed include the Election Assistance Commission, Export-Import Bank, FDIC, EEOC, FCC, Smithsonian. The big one that’s got everyone’s panties in a bunch is the national park system. They’re all closed. Sounds silly that we’re upset. But because America doesn’t make anything anymore, a lot of us depend on tourism. So closing our parks is not just a quality of life problem. It’s the economy, stupid.

Of course shutting the FCC down can’t be all bad. Maybe we’ll be able to pirate some bandwidth now. Redistribute it to people with taste and overpower all that damn classic rock that’s polluting the airwaves.

What worries me is the offices that are currently partially closed but will be totally closed if the impasse is not solved. This includes such things as the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. That’s scary. There’s so little oversight now. Not much more than Officer Obie and Deputy Fife stuffing hardcopy into filing cabinets no one will ever bother to look through. What will happen on the exchanges when it’s total anarchy?

I’m thinking this whole government shutdown is a plot hatched by the banks. They can’t stand all that mean-spirited regulation. They’d like to play even faster and looser with our money than they have been. I wouldn’t put it past them to orchestrate something like this. They’ve got all the power, right?

The NRC and OSHA are already closed down. Not that they make such a big difference in the day to day operations of anyone’s life. But they do make the huge corporations that run those big scary power plants and factories (what few there are)  safe. And if you live by a nuclear plant (which almost everybody does, considering the nature of the atmosphere, the jetstream, and prevailing winds) that’s something to think about. Do we really want those things operating without someone occasionally checking their crossed t’s and dotted i’s on the official reports? These things are run by the  whatever-you-can-get-away-with crowd and that worries me. Have you seen the power that exists inside a radioactive atom? Me neither and I don’t want to.

That’s just a start. Take a look at all the agencies and government people getting our backs or conducting research on our behalf. You may think that cutting these employees loose is not going to have much of an effect. What’s a few more hundred thousand unemployed? It’s a big country and we always need more chambermaids. But it’s not just the hungry mouths added to the mix that makes a difference to you and me. It’s the fact that they are, or were, providing services. I’m not talking about just arts and daycare for single mothers either. There are major operations involved. Immunization, cancer research, homeland security, tax collection.

Okay, forget I said that last one.

Of course it might be fun to go all anarchic. We can loot the Smithsonian and steal stamps from the post office. Then again, how much will a stamp be worth once we’ve reverted to Pony Express?

Still, I can’t wait.

Sue Lange

Find more of Sue Lange’s scathing satire in her latest novel, The Perpetual Motion Club.

Craigslist: The Unexpurgated Truth

You want the truth? Can you handle it?

Truth is, Craigslist is great. Contrary to popular opinion it is not a den of pedophiles, thieves, and draft dodgers.

Not to belittle anyone’s tragic experience, but I’m wondering if the horror stories aren’t a bit exaggerated. Haven’t these muggers and rapists been with us all along? Soliciting in whatever nefarious way they can? Is all this really Craig’s fault?

All I can say is my Craigslist experience has been wonderful. I’ve listed 53 items, mostly in the $25 to $100 range, and so far I’ve made over $1000. The only crime I’ve witnessed is the ridiculously low price on my stuff. (set of 3 wicker laundry baskets $2, analog photo enlarger $50, etc.). Murder on my porch? Nah. Nobody has so much as leered at me let alone exhibited threatening behavior. I have nothing but good things to say about Craig and his list.

Am I so naïve that I believe predation and prostitution simply don’t occur on Craigslist? No. In fact, one of my ads resulted in multiple offers for “dates” from beautiful Russian women. One offer even came with provocative pictures. What was it that got me so much attention? My “manual sprayers.” You know those backpack units you use with Roundup to kill poison ivy.  I guess the image of someone decked out in full hazmat gear and sweating like a pig gets them Eastern bloc girls all creamy or something.

At any rate this ad just keeps on giving. I sold the dang things two months ago. I immediately took the ad down, but I’m still getting offers from people who want to meet me.

Other than that, though, this whole Craigslist experience has been on the up and up. I got rid of a farmload of used junk in a relatively painless way. There’s one item left: the irobot rumba vacuum cleaner. $25. In good condition. Works like a charm. Let me know if you’re interested. And no, I don’t think we should get together for a date. On the other hand, the rumba does get a lot of suction.

Sue  Lange

This essay was posted first at Book View Cafe on 10/11/13.

The Michigan Problem

This post is dedicated to my great friend Karyn Ridley whose passing on September 30th has left me with one less reason to go home.

Michigan has a problem: it has a bad self-image. It’s had a bad self-image for as long as I can remember. That’s why they keep changing the state slogan. They keep trying to perfect its image.

When I was a kid living somewhere in the northern section of the Lower Peninsula, the slogan was “Water, Winter, Wonderland.” That is a great slogan because, let’s face it, Michigan and winter go together like ski lodges and hot wine.

It was a great slogan, but when I was young I didn’t like it. I lived in the north of a northern state and winter represented the worst thing Earth offered. My shoes had holes, my boots were cracked, my coat cheaply padded and mostly torn. And I hated wintertime activities. I was scared of sleds and the aggressive children who rode them. Forget snowball fights. Snowballs are either pie-in-your-face slushy or ice hard. Either way they hurt. While other kids enjoyed the snow, making forts and igloos and snow mazes, I shivered in the doorway of the school, praying for the end of the day when my misery and recess would be over.

Spring brought the big thaw. It only made things worse. The schoolyard became blanketed in two inches of thick mud that would suck off your shoes, exposing the big toe in its holey sock to the jeers of your classmates—a group not known for its sensitivity.

Winter was unquestioningly evil, and yet in that slogan was an unapologetic depiction of a land full of magic and promise. Despite my narrow mind and frozen toes, I got it. I saw the beauty: light dancing off eaves-to-ground icicles; frost swirls of snow dust blowing into the air from harvest equipment stored for the season next to the barn; swarms of geese honking high above as they flew in formation to who knows where. Supposedly north in the spring or south in the fall, but to me they looked like they were just flying around in circles warning us of impending doom.

From the window of my parents’ basement home with its two oil burners for toasty heat, winter was truly a wonderland: beautiful, magical even. In wintertime you got spoiled with hot chocolate and apple cider. Mom and Dad seemed to cuddle more as the storms raged outside. Yup, winter could definitely be a lovely time.

But you wouldn’t want to be out in it, that’s for sure.

Halfway through childhood, my family’s lot improved. My dad got out of private education. He got a job in the public school system and we moved to the southern edge of the state, the hem of the mitt if you will, Chicagoish way. Not only was the pay better down south, so was the weather.

Oddly, the state slogan changed about that time to “The Great Lake State.” I didn’t then, and I don’t now, approve. What exactly does that say about our home? Nothing. Whoever came up with that was a mere armchair observer. They consulted a map, distilled the state’s character down to a simple statement, and sent the result over to the license plate factory in Jackson. What this person saw was a piece of geography that was almost, but not quite, surrounded on all sides by big bodies of inland water. “I got it,” he or she then said. “It’s a great lake state!”

Whatever that means.

Using this same technique we could help other illustrious states improve their slogans too. For instance:

Texas: The Large Misshapen State.

New York: The Big Place With a Long Spit of Land at the Bottom.

Pennsylvania: The Keystone State.

Oh, wait a sec. That is Pennsylvania’s slogan.

Anyway, the point is, while Missouri has always been the “Show Me State,” indicating the mood and character of the inhabitants there; and New York gets to be the “Empire State,” advertising its facility with grandeur, hyperbole, and horse patooie, Michigan was defined by a map.

Where was the relentless individualism with hints of a proud red neck bouquet and trashy finish I knew the inhabitants of my homeland to embody? Not in the slogan. There are no people in that slogan. Not like in Missouri’s or New York’s.

Sometime during that slogan’s tenure, the state’s economy went into free fall. The auto industry oxidized into the rust belt and people moved south for work to states like Kentucky and West Virginia. Places that historically had no employment whatsoever. For years the hicks of Appalachia and denizens of Chicago’s slums had moved to Detroit and Flint for high-paying jobs with benefits. The legacy of that great migration is evidenced in pockets throughout the mitt. To this day there are counties in Michigan where the entire population uses the word “y’all” and insists that the south gon’ do it agin.

The great migration had happened during Michigan’s salad days. A time of prosperity and optimism. Then, during my college years, it all came to a grinding halt and people left Michigan in droves for lucrative opportunities elsewhere. Our politicians and deep thinkers blamed it on the Great Lake State slogan. Rightly so. What kind of a state could possibly thrive with such a vacuous statement about itself?

So the deep thinkers changed it again. They were inventing a tourist industry and thought the slogan would be the centerpiece of their efforts. Unfortunately they didn’t return to Michigan’s greatest asset and use “Water, Winter, Wonderland.” Michigan has always attracted droves of ice fishermen, who, while never known for their extravagant vacation allowances, are consistent. You can always count on them as soon as the lakes and ponds freeze over hard enough to hold a shanty. Despite whatever privation the southern half of Michigan endures, the bait shop owners of northern Michigan always remain flush.

But the deep thinkers had more than a group of crusty cold weather fish eaters to chase after. They wanted the big buck spenders. The Chicago boat owners, the Toledo elk hunters, the people that shopped at boutique stores while on vacation buying junk they wouldn’t look twice at if they were at home. They thought and thought and hired experts and came up with an exciting marketing campaign complete with a sparkly new slogan: “Say Yes! To Michigan.”

Wow. I couldn’t imagine that they’d come up with something less descriptive of Michigan than “The Great Lake State,” but they did it. I was never sure what question Michigan asked that needed to be answered so emphatically in the affirmative. The only thing I ever witnessed Michigan ask about was for help.

And I never understood Michigan’s attraction to a tourist. I’ve travelled all over this country and seen the same sorts of things Michigan has elsewhere. We have big lakes sure, but so does Wisconsin, Ohio, and Canada. The same big lakes, actually. As far as I can see, the skiing is better in Colorado and Vermont. The mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina dwarf the Porcupines. And those in Montana and Colorado dwarf the Smokies. There’s more snow in Alaska, more flowers in Hawaii, more guns in Texas. Berkeley and NYU are more radical than U of M, Chicago’s bigger than Detroit, the rivers are wilder and cleaner out west. And the famous auto industry? There are no more cars in Michigan anymore. Even Motown, the record company named after that industry, moved. There’s no more Dancing in the Streets in Michigan. Why would anyone say yes to us now?

But that’s just my opinion. Fifty million tourists buying up lakefront property and forcing nature to higher ground beg to differ.

The state’s slogan today is “Pure Michigan,” which I refuse to comment on. I have no idea why or when it changed. From what I understand, the state rallied after the Say Yes! Campaign. Of course then it bottomed out again. People can only take so much cute. Saugatuck isn’t the Jersey Shore after all. There’s such a thing as being too far north, and Traverse City, despite it’s amenities, good taste, and fine restaurants, is just that: too far north. The UP? Ugh. Still full of trappers, hunters, and college students. You really don’t want to get caught out with that bunch after sun down.

It’s been a while since I left Michigan. I’ve lost track of unemployment, the car companies, and people from Chicago that come up and despoil the dunes. I left a bad marriage back there right along with about five pairs of child sized shoes in the hardened muck of the Northern Michigan Christian Elementary schoolyard. They’re probably about twenty feet down by now, preserved for a future archaeologist curious about our life and times.

My best friends in the world are still there in Michigan. I hear they get great Internet service. I might go back some day. With global warming being what it is, it won’t be water, winter, wonderland, though. Water, sure: the lakes will abide, but winter? Nah. That might be it for the wonder too.

Sue Lange

Get Sue Lange’s latest book of scathing satire, The Perpetual Motion Club, at your closest Amazon outlet.

This essay was first posted at the BookViewCafe blog on October 4, 2013.

I am an Anti-Socialist

It’s not that I’m a wealthy capitalist, no. I’m not indifferent to the plight of the working poor, homeless, sheltered, or otherwise left behind. I don’t have a trust fund or hidden wealth in the Caymans. I’m not talking about that kind of socialism. I’m talking about social mediaism. I hate it. What was so wrong with email that we had to invent Facebook?

I have a couple of friends I can only contact through Facebook. I could email them from now until Doomsday and it’ll be like shouting into outer space. The message just doesn’t travel. Send half a message to them via Facebook and I get an instant response. What the… are they doing on Facebook every minute of the day?

Don’t get me wrong. I have the coolest friends in the world. They’re witty and ready at a moment’s notice with a twelve-pack or fresh out of the oven funnel cake the minute anyone mentions pulled pork party. But I’m not sure I want to hang with them on Facebook. For me that feels like going to POTS, and by that I mean Plain Old Telephone Service. You know, the way we used to communicate.

Email was a giant leap in the right direction: shoot off a quick note, get a response in a few hours or at most a day. You’ve got your party booked, reservations made, and casseroles coordinated.

Now we have to Facebook. It’s back to hour-long discussions just like when we had to make a phone call. Because it’s never just about a quick question. Now it’s catching up with your buds, hanging with your peeps, chillin’ with your pals. You make a comment, they make a comment, you comment back. It’s all too tantalizing to let drop. Because, like I said, my pals are quick-witted and we know each other’s soft spots and politics. We can go on for days. And we do.

I have to nip this in the bud, so I’ve become an anti-socialist. I’m not going to hang out at Facebook, even though I know that’s where the party is. Parties include coleslaw and pigs impaled longitudinally and rotating above a flame. If there’s no Frisbee, it’s not a party.

Not only am I boycotting Facebook, I’m not going to comment on great blog posts, even if it’s an opportunity to insert a link to my BVC bookshelf.

And hyperlinks? Sending people off to prove your point? Why? Can’t make the argument on your own? What kind of writer are you, anyway? Those hyperlinks are damned dangerous. They keep you floating in the Interstream for hours. You just can’t help clicking. Next thing you know your boss is looking over your shoulder reading right along with you about death and destruction in Cleveland. Only he’s the boss and can do what he wants. You’re supposed to be working.

I refuse to contribute to the truancy of office workers everywhere. From now on my hyperlinks are going nowhere. I’m going to insert links to the exact same article that’s posted elsewhere. It’ll be a practical joke which no one will appreciate because it will be damned annoying being caught in a loop. You’ll read up to the point of the link, click, and start reading. About half way through the fuzz in your brain will clear and you’ll say to yourself, “Damn, this sounds familiar.” About that time you’ll get to the link. You’ll click and start reading. Pretty soon the fuzz in your brain…

I’ll lose a lot of readers. They’ll move on in the way of that bovine Internet reader we’ve all become. That cow that just chews its cud as its eyes slowly glaze over yet another tragic story unfolding at the news station websites.

It’s going to be lonely without my Facebook and links and blog commenting. That’s okay. I’m an anti-socialist.

Sue Lange

I am an Anti-Socialist

It’s not that I’m a wealthy capitalist, no. I’m not indifferent to the plight of the working poor, homeless, sheltered, or otherwise left behind. I don’t have a trust fund or hidden wealth in the Caymans. I’m not talking about that kind of socialism. I’m talking about social mediaism. I hate it. What was so wrong with email that we had to invent Facebook?

I have a couple of friends I can only contact through Facebook. I could email them from now until Doomsday and it’ll be like shouting into outer space. The message just doesn’t travel. Send half a message to them via Facebook and I get an instant response. What the… are they doing on Facebook every minute of the day?

Don’t get me wrong. I have the coolest friends in the world. They’re witty and ready at a moment’s notice with a twelve-pack or fresh out of the oven funnel cake the minute anyone mentions pulled pork party. But I’m not sure I want to hang with them on Facebook. For me that feels like going to POTS, and by that I mean Plain Old Telephone Service. You know, the way we used to communicate.

Email was a giant leap in the right direction: shoot off a quick note, get a response in a few hours or at most a day. You’ve got your party booked, reservations made, and casseroles coordinated.

Now we have to Facebook. It’s back to hour-long discussions just like when we had to make a phone call. Because it’s never just about a quick question. Now it’s catching up with your buds, hanging with your peeps, chillin’ with your pals. You make a comment, they make a comment, you comment back. It’s all too tantalizing to let drop. Because, like I said, my pals are quick-witted and we know each other’s soft spots and politics. We can go on for days. And we do.

I have to nip this in the bud, so I’ve become an anti-socialist. I’m not going to hang out at Facebook, even though I know that’s where the party is. Parties include coleslaw and pigs impaled longitudinally and rotating above a flame. If there’s no Frisbee, it’s not a party.

Not only am I boycotting Facebook, I’m not going to comment on great blog posts, even if it’s an opportunity to insert a link to my BVC bookshelf.

And hyperlinks? Sending people off to prove your point? Why? Can’t make the argument on your own? What kind of writer are you, anyway? Those hyperlinks are damned dangerous. They keep you floating in the Interstream for hours. You just can’t help clicking. Next thing you know your boss is looking over your shoulder reading right along with you about death and destruction in Cleveland. Only he’s the boss and can do what he wants. You’re supposed to be working.

I refuse to contribute to the truancy of office workers everywhere. From now on my hyperlinks are going nowhere. I’m going to insert links to the exact same article that’s posted elsewhere.] It’ll be a practical joke which no one will appreciate because it will be damned annoying being caught in a loop. You’ll read up to the point of the link, click, and start reading. About half way through the fuzz in your brain will clear and you’ll say to yourself, “Damn, this sounds familiar.” About that time you’ll get to the link. You’ll click and start reading. Pretty soon the fuzz in your brain…

I’ll lose a lot of readers. They’ll move on in the way of that bovine Internet reader we’ve all become. That cow that just chews its cud as its eyes slowly glaze over yet another tragic story unfolding at the news station websites.

It’s going to be lonely without my Facebook and links and blog commenting. That’s okay. I’m an anti-socialist.

Sue Lange

Perpetual Motion Club Launch at Wise Owl

The Perpetual Motion Club is almost here! Yay!

I’ll be launching this book at the Wise Owl Bookstore (625 Penn Ave., West Reading, PA) on Friday, August 16, 6-8pm.

We’re going to have all kinds of fun stuff happening: top notch readers of prose and poetry, giveaways, booby prizes, and of course the after party at Wine Down next door. This is a free event. Stop by; maybe you’ll get lucky and win one of the following:

Hegemonic, Imperialistic Slaveowners Gift Basket

Uncontrollable, Half-assed Tinkerer’s Gift Basket

Gift Basket for the Hobo with Excellent Taste

Free signed copy of The Perpetual Motion Club.

We’ll also be shooting a Jetstream Soda commercial. Jetstream Soda: Très chic; very unique.

See you Friday!

This is Why I Love Vonnegut

From Bluebeard:

“A moderately gifted person who would have been a community treasure a thousand years ago has to give up, has to go into some other line of work, since modern communications put him or her into daily competition with nothing but world’s champions.”

According to my Kindle version of Bluebeard, that little bit above has been highlighted 94 times.

Amazon’s public highlighting function is their way of bringing back that fun little extra you got when you bought a used book. Remember finding the underlined passages and notes in the margins? They were like  messages from previous readers. You didn’t know who they were but for a special moment you shared their intellect. 

A stranger  revealed him or herself  in those charming notes. They communicated their feelings about a passage, or passed on  information to you, the reader further on down the road. The practice may have despoiled an otherwise pristine book, but often it was helpful. Like if the previous reader explained an idea that you would have otherwise misunderstood or not even noticed at all. The Kindle highlight functionality is the best facsimile we have of those long lost marginal connections.

At any rate, 94 people highlighted that paragraph up there. I would have too if I’d read the Kindle manual and knew how to do it, but I didn’t, so I didn’t. But that doesn’t change the fact that I love that paragraph as much as the highlighters did. What they missed, though, was the rest of the passage, which to me is just as important and I would have highlighted it, had I the power to do so. But I don’t, so I didn’t. Here it is:

“The entire planet can get along nicely now with maybe a dozen champion performers in each area of human giftedness. A moderately gifted person has to keep his or her gifts all bottled up until, in a manner of speaking, he or she gets drunk at a wedding and tap-dances on the coffee table like Fred Astaire or Ginger Rogers. We have a name for him or her. We call him or her an ‘exhibitionist.’

How do we reward such an exhibitionist? We say to him or her the next morning, ‘Wow! Were you ever drunk last night!’ “

Does that not just about make you cry? It does me. The first bit  is common knowledge for the most part. We all know talented people are underappreciated because, well, because we have Justin Bieber and we just don’t need anybody else. But this second bit is infinitely more interesting because, considering the amount of hangovers in the world, we must have a lot of talented people. And they’re all frustrated.

What’s amazing is that Vonnegut understood this frustration even though he was in the class of world’s champions. He was up there. How did he know about the muddling talent pool down below? How was it he could feel the pain?

Who knows? But that is why I love him. He was up there, but he stayed connected. He paid attention. I’m sure he was approachable.  I might have had a drink with him at the Lonestar if the situation arose. We probably liked the same music.  At least once we got drunk and started tap dancing on the coffee table anyway.

Sue Lange

world’s champion exhibitionist

Mary Tyler Moore Redux

Saturday night is date night. Everyone knows that; it was always that way. I freely admit that during my dating years I was at home on Saturday night watching Bob, Mary, and Carol. It was the hottest line-up at that pre-cable, pre-SNL time: Bob Newhart, Mary Tyler Moore, and Carol Burnett. I was thankful for such edgy programming in those post-Gilligan’s Island and I Dream of Jeannie days. Saturday was so good I gave up my date night for it. Well, I wasn’t actually giving anything up, I simply had nothing better to do than stay home and watch TV. Still, it was a pretty hot line-up.

Those shows, of course, are tame by today’s standards. But back then, we had morals, dad gummit, and our tv was a reflection of that. Bob, Mary, and Carol pushed the moral landscape of television pretty dang hard.

Bob made fun of psychiatric patients. Ooh naughty. Bad taste. But deep down inside we all know crazy people are funny. Bob was just capitalizing on that universal truth. He made fun of that one looney-tune family member we all have and want to laugh at but can’t because it’s not nice.

MTM (Mary) was a single girl making it on her own and only a scant 50% of the jokes had to do with finding the right man.  That was pretty risqué for back in the day when all we girls wanted out of life was to get married. Now we’re all liberated. Now we don’t just want a man. Oh no. Now we want a rich man, because we’ve come such a long way, baby.

The edgiest part of MTM was Rhoda Morgenstern. She was funny and ethnic. She had two jokes: “I need a man” for the traditionalists in the audience, and “I’m fat” for the forward-looking audience members that knew some day we’d have to confront  body issues head on. Okay so the writers didn’t give her much to work with,  but her delivery was spot on. Today we watch and see a stereotype, but Rhoda was fun and maybe even groundbreaking in her own little man-chasing way. By the way when I watched MTM back then, I never thought Rhoda was fat. She had a strikingly thin face, and  I lived in the Midwest where  everybody has big thighs. Only in New York are women pencil thin. It’s all that walking. In Michigan no one walks and big thighs are a sign of affluence. Got a big butt? Must have a car. Very sexy.

Carol Burnett was unique in that she took questions from the audience at the beginning of her variety hour. That takes guts because you never know when a fan has an ax to grind. You open yourself up to the kind of dialog that we see now on the Internet with its flame wars and trolls and people just looking to trip somebody up for “good one” points. Of course audiences in the 70s were polite, not like today’s hip, harsh, and un-shy spectators. We’re all  just waiting for a chance to rank out on the man on the stage. But Carol had no fear. She was the originator of social media if you think about it: engaging her audience and making herself approachable.

She was also unladylike. She’d belt out her signature Tarzan yell at the drop of a hat. I read somewhere that the original Tarzan yell was made up of three or four sounds: car horns, elephant calls, whoopee cushions, maybe even a trumpet or tuba. The sound guys mixed them all together to get that characteristic roar that carries through the jungle and lets the natives know that no one, but no one, is to touch Jane. It’s a formidable call and Carol Burnett did it all by herself without elephants and trumpets. Her audience members asked for it often. I dare say today, even with the bodily fluids and flatulence so prevalent in our entertainment, few handlers would allow their female stars to yell like a wild animal. It would not be good for their ladylike image. Carol Burnett was ahead of her time and had no shame.

I got to thinking about the old Saturday night line-up and decided to do a little binge-watching. So far I’ve only sampled MTM. And only five episodes at that. That’s as much as I could take. TV has so moved on. The old morality laws are gone and there are damn few things you can’t discuss in the open now. As a result TV writing has gotten much better. People like to say things were simpler back then, but they weren’t. They were just as sticky and smelly and boxed in as they are today, but TV was definitely simpler. The jokes were bland, we knew all the punchlines they were so overused. Everything was pretty vanilla. Today’s audience is sophisticated. We demand and get civil rights; we demand and get answers to questions; we demand and get cable TV.

Those old half-hour plots don’t age well. I remember idolizing Mary Richards. She had a cool apartment, cool clothes,* and a cool best friend. I now know what an apartment in a trendy town costs, even if it’s a studio. Clothes are no longer the route to happiness they once were, and best friends move away and become best friends of others. Those shows were shallow. The half-hour formula just doesn’t allow for a full-bodied script. I know now why I stopped watching television after highschool: it just wasn’t any good.

So no nostaligic binge-watching for me. I’ll stick to Mad Men and The Wire.

But then again, I see Netflix has a couple of Ernie Kovacs DVDs. Maybe when I’m in the mood for content before my time I’ll check it out. I hear he was the edge in the 50s.

Stay tuned; we’ll be right back after this commercial break.

Sue Lange

*Most of the time anyway. But sometimes, just sometimes…well, see for yourself over on the left. No, that’s not a bedspread she’s wearing. Or a table cloth. That’s an actual skirt.)

Drawing a Bead on Sunday Morning

There is a honeysuckle vine that grows from the garden alongside my porch up a trellis and on to the deck outside the bedroom window. Like all vines this honeysuckle sends out shoots that reach for the next support on which to extend its existence. It’s voracious and parasitic and grows really fast. The only thing more frightening than this plant is the huge bunny that I’m sure is living inside of it. More on that later.

The bulk of this plant, this honeysuckle, is a jumble of leaves and branches that make up a huge thicket that is  taking over the deck like an encroaching civilization in the New World. A trumpet vine grows alongside the honeysuckle and adds to the jumble. It’s a totally integrated, politically-correct, diversity-sensitive community. On the edges of this mass is where the honeysuckle sends out its shoots that relentlessly seek rails and posts and sills, anything to encroach upon.

In the morning after a rainy or just plain humid night, the cool air forms droplets on the underside of the honeysuckle’s overreaching shoots. On these overcast and misty days, the droplets remain for most of the morning, catching what little sun is available and magnifying  it to electric proportions. There are ten or so of these shoots and the effect is dazzling, almost gaudy, in a Broadway sense.

The metaphor is appropriate because inside the jumble is a world of dramatic life. A soap opera of bugs, spiders, caterpillars, and small birds at love and war. I believe there’s a rabbit living in there too. A few months ago the cat caught a baby bunny and neglected to dispatch it. He was probably saving it for me to do the dirty because he knows I like my baby bunnies as fresh as possible. Very thoughtful of him. Being a little slow on the uptake, however, I allowed the little bugger to escape to the thicket in the corner of the deck where the honeysuckle and trumpet were just then establishing outposts. The cat lost what little respect he had for me at that point and slunk away, the way cats do, with a disgusted look on his face. I never saw the bunny leave the thicket and I believe it’s survived there these past few weeks on honeysuckle nectar. I’m sure it’s disgustingly fat  by now. It could probably safely leave, but why would it, what with the  unending supply of nectar from the honesuckle blossoms. And you know how bunnies are: fat and lazy. And you know they’re mean when they get fat like that. You saw Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Aren’t I mad at myself now for not dispatching that monster when I had the chance. I can’t possibly get near the thicket now to trim it because, you know, there’s that, that rabbit!

So I guess I’ll just need to leave the trimming for a later time. When it’s safe.

At any rate, the material for a Broadway tragedy and/or comedy, or Hollywood swashbuckler for that matter,  is developing in the honeysuckle hive just outside my bedroom. Scandals and death of insect proportions, ponzi schemes and terrorism on a natural scale. It’s all there in this microcosm ruled by Bugsy.

While the tragedy unfolds in the jumble, I stay in bed and watch the water beads on the vines. I need to witness the exact moment when they disappear. It’s important to document that sort of thing. If I don’t do it, who will? Who else has access? (or the lack of ambition to do anything else?) I’m the one with the window and the thicket and the honeysuckle. It is my duty to stay and watch. It takes a long time. Watching water dry might seem like a pointless waste of time, but really it’s quite beautiful.  And what else is Sunday morning for but to experience beauty in its rarest form? It’s also pretty cheap entertainment. When you get to be my age it doesn’t take much.

Here’s to life on the edge. Of the thicket that is.

Sue Lange