I Mess With Texas, Part 8

I had promised to dial these back in the new year. Fresh start, why be so mean, you know.

And then another excuse to continue not just comes along, but begs a flogging. So I persist.

Anyhow, this one was almost a near miss. Not that it was so slight it seemed not worth mentioning, but more that it seemed like a good thing. And then, like so much about Texas, the good thing went bad. So very bad, so very fast.

From the Galveston Daily News.

On Monday, Friendswood Mayor Kim Brizendine issued a proclamation declaring Jan. 31 Galveston County Reads Day for “all citizens, teens to seniors.”

On Friday, he issued a press release that expressed concern about the content of the book.

Brizendine said he regretted endorsing (“The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time”). He also said the Friendswood library board would be reviewing the placement of the book in the library.

For those who haven't read this great, fast, delightful read, it's a mystery told from the first-person POV of an autistic teen. A dog next door is killed, and he vows to find out who did it. Along the way, he finds out a lot more about himself than he ever intended. A great, great book.

Just, not in Friendswood (ah, where to start with the ironies)?

Friendswood council member John LeCour was not happy with the selection. He said the book could “pollute” young minds.

“My main issue is the profanity in the book,” he said.

He said he had read most of the book. He said he felt the profanity did not add to the “intellectual value” of the topic.

“I personally don’t think it is good literature,” he said. “I think it will be popular for 15 minutes and than it will be forgotten.”

Don't you love the fanatics who go around quoting Andy Warhol, a guy they wouldn't have let shine their boots because he was a ho-mo-sexual?

But I digress. Invariably, we get to the censor in the story who hates the book he hasn't even read.

Councilman Chris Peden had not read the book, but he said it was more than just profanity bothering him.

He did note the profanity was not buried deep within the book. He said he was disturbed to read the “F” word on Page 4.

“Later in the book, the kid says there is no God and there is no life after death,” he said. “Clearly, these are not ideas we should promote to kids.

“I am not saying the book should be pulled off the shelves. We just shouldn’t be using taxpayers’ dollars promoting and purchasing a book the community wouldn’t approve of.”

Such a fragile, fragile religion they practice in Texas. It cannot withstand even one consideration that there is no God. For if someone considers it, they will be irretreviably corrupted. Yea, and it was so.

But wait. He's not just not read the book, he's also got his facts wrong:

Stanley said no taxpayer money was used for the books the committee donated to the council and area libraries. Private donations fund the organization, she said....

Scales said no matter how the council members tried to package their feelings, it all boiled down to censorship.

“In the country that is supposed to be the freest in the world, we are trying so hard to control our young minds,” she said. “Just because they read it in a book doesn’t mean they will go out and say it.”

She said she was almost unsure how to respond to the councilmen’s discomfort with the novel’s protagonist dealing with existential questions such as God and the after-life.

“Not every character that we read in literature — or even in real life — will mirror our own values,” she said, “What literature can do is let us see all sides of life.”

She said the book has many merits, including teaching tolerance and compassion. She said she feels often politicians look too hard at individual words without considering the whole work.

Peden didn’t buy that.

“A lot of liberal do-gooders say we should take the book in its entirety,” he said. “That’s like saying a man is a great deacon at his church, a great Little League coach, a great provider for his family, but he beats his wife. That is not a good man.

“The firestorm is all the liberal pacifists who are trying to make us out to be book burning, goose-stepping Nazis. That’s not the case at all. There are plenty of books without profanity we could promote.”

Zing! He loses; he used the Hitler reference. (As is the rule in all debates, he who resorts to the Holocaust, Hitler or Nazis -- against which of course there is no continuing the debate -- loses.)

But shit, those damn liberals. Always fouling the waters for everybody.

**********

That said, I have one nice thing to say about Texas: Kinky Friedman for Governor. He deserves our kinky love.

Matters of grave importance ... elsewhere

Not that I condone corporal punishment for children. (As a rule. There are exceptions. Oh, boy are there exceptions.) But when I saw this story, I had to say something.

**snark!**

Okay, okay. It is amusing to see one of the great news services of the world giving so much time and energy to the cause of smacking. And the BBC have done a marvelous job of giving this the full 360-degree treatment. Not only is there a video:



But there are links so you can get the view around the world -- and from experts. Thank God they called in the experts!


America has a lot to live up to, compared with the BBC. (I mean that sincerely; I listen to BBC Worldwide every morning on WNYC.) But then there are these ... diversions.

Of course, in America the story would be completely different:

Silly Me

See post before the last one, re: Oprah's book choice.

Shows what I know.

Oy.

Angler, complete

I went to Bimini in 2003 to swim with wild dolphins.

While there, we spent one evening at the Compleat Angler bar, listening to a local band and admiring the Hemingway memorabilia stationed in a separate room, and even danced a bit. Now, sadly, that seems to all be gone.



I was never much of a Hemingway fan, but -- RIP Mr. Brown. You had a fine establishment.

From the AP:

Fire razes Hemingway's bar
Mon Jan 16, 9:55 AM ET

A fire destroyed the Ernest Hemingway museum and The Compleat Angler bar on Friday on the Bahamian island of Bimini, one of the American novelist's 1930s haunts during the days he stalked big game fish.

The early morning blaze leveled the wooden inn in Alice Town and destroyed photographs and Hemingway memorabilia, police said.

They said the caretaker of The Compleat Angler, Julian Brown, was presumed dead. Brown, said to be in his 60s, alerted the inn's sole guest, who escaped though a window, but then disappeared.

A neighbor, Katherine Weech, said Brown's remains were found in the debris. Brown's father, Harcourt Brown, built the inn.

The destruction of the tiny island's biggest tourist attraction was the second major blow to hit Bimini in a month. On December 19, 11 residents were among 20 people killed when a Chalk's Ocean Airways seaplane plunged into the sea in Miami's shipping channel.

Hemingway drank at The Compleat Angler between fishing trips in his vessel Pilar in search of marlin, wahoo and sailfish in the pristine waters around Bimini.

His novel "The Old Man and The Sea" was said to be inspired by his fishing exploits in the Bahamas and Cuba, and he worked on "To Have and Have Not" in Bimini.

The Hemingway legend became a major draw and The Compleat Angler created a museum which included hundreds of photographs and artifacts of the author.

Small blue things

Various, Sundry and their sister Judy will now present: Nothing in particular.

Interesting choice: Oprah picks "Night," by Elie Wiesel. Wonder if J.T. LeRoy was up on her reading list next and her advisors said, "O, babe, look. Pick something nobody's going to ask questions about, okay? Pick the one memoir nobody's going to question. Go for Elie. Nobel Prize, you know? Besides, everybody's already had to read 'Night' in high school by now, and it's only about 100 pages long. It'll be a sorbet, cleanse the palate from that Frey dude. And then we can get the guy in the seat. Huh? Whaddya say, O?"

Next: I do not heart MyVoice right now. We are having relationship difficulties. It appears that if I have the modem connected to their little phone box, the modem has a tendency to cut out, and I lose both Internet and phone. And sometimes, I don't. But if the modem is connected to the computer and not the phone box, I get Internet without lost connection. But no phone. So, here we go again. Wherever you are, hello Patrick in Omaha. I've been calling so much that I actually got the same Tier 3 representative today, and he even appeared to recall my phone call back in November, albiet with some restrained horror that the situation remained unresolved.

On Saturday: Went to see "Brokeback Mountain" and "Syriana." I wish there had been a way to see "Brokeback" without knowing the plot first. The first scenes are when Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger meet for the first time, all laconic and marble-mouthed (Ledger the most so) and it'd have been nice to just see how the relationship developed rather than waiting for one to make some kind of move on the other -- which doesn't happen for at least a good half hour or so. Anyway, I liked the movie; the final scenes are touching and airy and literary in a way modern movies rarely are. But I never quite got what those two saw in each other. Putting aside that It's Jake Gyllenhaal! It's Heath Ledger! -- I just didn't get what was supposed to be sustaining a 30 year on-off relationship. One time, you can say it's lust. Three decades, I need a bit more than "I wish I knew how to quit you."

One question: Now, I know what the sheep herder foreman meant, but -- what does "stemming the rose" actually mean?

"Syriana" -- I remain baffled as to why people find this so hard to follow. Yes, there are a lot of intertwining stories that we dart back and forth from, but if you've seen "Traffic" (directed by the same guy) you'd know what to expect, and this was no less busy. I even had enough neurons left over to wonder where the hell I'd seen the good prince Nassir from; finally it hit: "Deep Space Nine," and I was all tweaky about that, because he's a complete geeky hottie with a British accent.



Until I got home and looked him up (Alexander Siddig), I'd always thought he was a Brit or Aussie with a good tan; turns out he's British-raised, but Sudanese. Anyway, I had that train of thought going while still pretty well following the rest of the story. "Brokeback" left me feeling sad about the small picture; "Syriana" left me feeling sadder about the big picture.

Wrote a review of the "Book of Daniel," in hopes I'll get to do some reviews for the magazine. What a silly piece of work that show is, despite that it has Aidan Quinn, who has lovely, astounding blue-gray eyes.

Oh, and the dog has gone incontinent. I swear. Pictures of her in doggie diapers to follow. Hello, 2006!

Never eat the Twinkie

Now, I loved "Grizzly Man," and its a goddamned shame it isn't in consideration for an Oscar. (I'm not clear on why, but it's true.) Anyway, scant few documentaries manage to get their own parodies -- the last one I can think of is Julie Brown's full-length "Medusa: Dare to Be Truthful" from 1992, parodying Madonna's "Truth or Dare," of course.

Now, thanks to Travis and Jonathan, we have "Grizzly Bear Man." I think it was the stentorian Werner Herzog parody that nearly made me wet myself. Or maybe the appearance of the "Da Vinci Code." Or maybe just the whole thing.

8 minutes long. Quicktime required. Via Video Dog.