Video Fun

Absolutely ridiculous. Utterly stupid. In no way advantageous to the advancement of the public discourse.

But damn, it's the funniest thing I've seen all week. God love ya Dave.



I especially like the bit where the guy in the dog suit joins the gaggle of Sarah Palins.

Did everyone enjoy the Barack Obama variety half hour show the other night?



But this one takes the cake I think. Fantastic.

New Glasses

Selecting a new pair of glasses is probably the most difficult task any individual faces. It's not like buying a shirt, which can be impulsive, or buying music, which springs out of a hobby or interest. Glasses, if you're so burdened to require them, are an accessory that is probably more vital than anything to how you are perceived by the world.

Going along with my trait of indecisiveness and guarded action, I had quite the time attempting to pick out new glasses in the last week or so since my old ones finally succumbed.

I have to say, it was bittersweet when they broke. I mean, these are items that I've had on my face for the better part of 3 years or so. When I look back at photos of myself in my college glory years, be it traveling Europe or playing trombone or whatever, I'm wearing those glasses. That's saying something, you know? But it was time to execute some sort of change anyways. The lacquer was starting to wear off, which isn't quite as desirable on glasses as it is on trombones. Mellower sound, you know?

Far more than any other accessory, glasses need to say something fundamental about who you are as a person. As such, any potential glasses-buyer needs to walk into the vision store with some set of requirements to be fulfilled. A list, if you will, of things the glasses need to say about your persona. Or at least, how you want your persona to be outwardly projected.

My list, you ask?

1- I listen to lots of jazz
2- I listen to lots of other music too
3- Slightly pretentious/sophisticated
4- Grounded in reality
5- Normal
6- Individual
7- Of course I'll take you (insert beautiful woman here) to the concert
8- Dammit, I'm socially incompetent, but try to ignore that

As you can clearly see, buying glasses is an exercise in contradiction. Because people are inherently contradictions, at least the people I know. You think they feel one way, and then it turns out completely the opposite. Whilst you remain supremely oblivious.

So basically you want your glasses to showcase different and conflicting sides of your personality, while still unifying those different sides under some common theory. Maybe it's an exercise in futility, like Einstein trying to find a single unifying theory to nature. But I can go through my realistic life without knowing a unifying theory to nature. The same cannot be said for glasses that make me look like a douchebag. And if you take a look at people around you, I think there are many people who could have spared a little more time and thought process into the purchasing of glasses.

Anyways, to tie this up, the glasses I showcased here last week are alas, not to be mine for much longer. Through the fortuitous blend of ill fit and the voice of God booming from burning bush in the middle of Pearle Vision, I upgraded my new glasses to rimless frames. Rectangular ones. The sort of pair I used to drool on while browsing the eyeglass stores in Nottingham. And yes, that most assuredly played a role. Glasses just wouldn't fit on me if they didn't contain some sort of half pained yet still real memory of a far off home. Anyways, they had to be sent away to be made, I'll attempt to post photos once they show up again. Maybe the internet void can match them against my list.

Album of the Week: Symphony No. 9

Evening folks. There are some things in the world that are so significant, it really doesn't do much good to "review" them in the traditional sense. In a natural sense, it's rather worthless to write out impressions of the Grand Canyon. There's a hugeness to it, a complexity that is so incredibly beautiful and mind boggling as to nearly touch whatever man considers to be the sublime. But people try, nonetheless. There are man-made artifacts that approach this level of complexity, albeit on a much more mortal scale. I think of buildings like the Hagia Sophia or the Colosseum. Or maybe monumental paintings, works of literature, etc. Composers attempt this sort of task as well. But as far as I can tell, out of all the combined wisdom of humankind and all the genius of its brightest minds, one item seems to stand above the rest in touching the sublime. That would be Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.

It's a strange existence, being a monumental piece of art. On one hand, you're revered. On the other hand, by no fault of your own, you become a piece of pop culture, far removed from the fluffy red pillows and gilded concert halls that you're used to. Folks use your image to decorate their trendy loft apartments, they nod off references to you in order to appear more "cultured," your own integrity sometimes seems worn away by overexposure. I mean, most everyone in the world has seen photos of the Mona Lisa. It's ubiquitous. So when you would actually come across it, you're so desensitized that you don't even quite know what you're looking at. Reminds of Platonic forms and such. You think maybe the scales will fall from your eyes and you will observe the "true" Mona Lisa. But instead, no matter how hard you try, you still see the shadows on the wall of the cave. Such is life also for Beethoven's masterwork. It's become so infused with our society that no one in the general public knows what the big deal is anymore.

I could rattle off a whole bunch of shit that I learned in classical music history about Beethoven. I could talk about him "flexing his musical muscles" and nearly single handedly changing the course of Western musical expression, yada, yada, yada. But most people, unless you're a music geek, don't care. Most everyone knows my fondness for "integrated" works of music. I love pieces and albums that are interconnected. A few months ago I wrote a review of "Abbey Road" that focused almost exclusively on that fact. Well, Beethoven's Ninth is like Abbey Road. Integrated musicianship at its finest.

The kicker to Beethoven's Ninth of course, is the monumental final movement. The choral movement, the one with the "Ode to Joy" theme. Most people don't pay attention to the beginning of the movement, where the orchestra basically recaps the first three movements in a little dialogue between the cellos and the remainder of the orchestra. Just as you would read personification into great literature, you can read it here, as each section of the orchestra becomes a distinct personality, coming alive in either acceptance or rejection of the prior three themes. Quite ingenious, when you think about it. It's sort of like a movie trailer, previewing what's going to happen next.

Eventually, the "Ode to Joy" theme wins the cello's approval, and the rest of the orchestra tosses it about for a bit. And then a very odd instrument picks up the musical football: a voice.

Never before was anyone stupid enough to write a voice into a symphony, much less an entire chorus. The world of the symphony was a segregated one. The voices picked up their proverbial lunch at the rear of the proverbial orchestra. Mixing voice and orchestra together in this manner was akin to the four Greensboro boys sitting down at the lunch counter at Woolworth's and refusing to get up. The "color line" in orchestra music was broken, and it afforded a new intermingling of colors and musicianship to the symphonic repertoire. Jackie Robinson stepping onto Ebbets Field. Martin Luther King Jr. speaking at the Lincoln Memorial. Barack Obama (fingers crossed) winning the Presidency. Voices singing along with orchestra in a symphony. All the same.

But there's so much more to this than just a couple singers sitting in with an orchestra! The poem that Beethoven chose for the 9th Symphony was written by a German fellow by the name of Friedrich Schiller, who was widely known as an intellectual, philosopher, playwright, and advocate of natural rights. The poem, "Ode to Joy," did not just mean something so prosaic as odeing to joy. "Joy," in the early 19th century meant a lot more to the general populace than it does today. Basically, it was a buzzword for "freedom." And in the aftermath of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, a lot of folks had freedom on their mind. Freedom from centuries of feudal government and class dominated social structure. Beethoven, who was himself something of an outsider, couldn't get enough of this idea. And this dude lived it, he was the first major freelance composer, beholden to no noble or other princely figure. In fact, he got pretty pissed off when you talked about aristocracy. In essence, the liberation of the symphony from the traditional chains of form and expression, the setting of the Schiller text, the addition of the human element in voice, Beethoven created a musical establishment of his utopian idea of universal brotherhood. No barriers, no classes, nothing.

This piece is an absolute behemoth. It clocks in near an hour. And every nanosecond of it is a masterpiece of the highest caliber. In my opinion, which I will shove down your throats since this is my blog, this is the single greatest piece of music ever created by man. In fact, it almost seems so magisterial that it could not have come from man, that instead it was only transmitted through a mortal's pen from the gods. I don't know what other explanation there is. It's a tribute to Beethoven's genius, that this came from the pen of a deaf man. No way a mere human creates this sort of thing. No way.

Not to pour on the sap or anything, but this is also one of very few things in life that almost without exception, brings tears to my eyes. I listened to the fourth movement as I wrote this post, and I did tear up. Like I said, it's incredible. I would get the manuscript tattooed around my leg.

I don't care what recording you get, but make sure it's a quality one. I have the London Symphony Orchestra recording of the entire Beethoven symphonic cycle, and they do a fantastic job. Our own Minnesota Orchestra also has an extremely highly regarded Beethoven cycle out there, in fact it's kind of freaking the classical music world right out. But make no mistake, this is a piece of art that you absolutely must own. I mean, damn it, we should be having to pay Jesus a thank you tax or something every time this is played. Or we should have to put on tuxedos whenever we listen to it. But we don't. Artwork this amazing is available to us for a one time purchase fee, and after that, it's always there.

Cut through the popular caricature. Buy this symphony, put it on in a darkened room, and just sit and listen. I don't care if all you listen to is horrible punk music, or KS95, or jazz, or Broadway shows, or whatever. Listen to this whole symphony, the whole damn hour. Do not do anything else. Don't talk, don't even think. Just listen. And play it real loud, especially the fourth movement.

You'll thank me for it.

Jewish Glasses

I had an interesting cross cultural experience tonight.

By luck of the draw, I was one of 9 students picked from a signup sheet to have dinner at my civil procedure professor's house. But this was no ordinary dinner party. Rather, my professor is a fairly devout Jew who constructs his own sukkah in his backyard each year to celebrate the Jewish festival of Sukkot. Basically, the sukkah is a temporary wooden shelter, where the family eats its meals during the festival. It's meant to remind Jewish folks of their ancestors wandering 40 years in the wilderness following the exodus from Egypt. Needless to say, I got chosen and I went. Conveniently enough, it turns out he lives about a block and a half from my place up here in St. Paul. So I walked. Literally maybe 3 minutes away.

And you know, it was really insightful. His wife cooked an amazing meal which the 11 of us shared outside in the sukkah. Some great salad, sun-dried tomato/pesto lasagna, and this amazing apple cake with cinnamon ice cream for dessert. It reminded me a lot of our family meals in Nottingham, where 11 of us would gather around a table to eat and share stories with each other. In fact, I daresay it reminded me how much I missed those times. Food has to be one of the most powerful tools of unification in the whole of human existence. That's for another blog post though.

Anyways, his wife spent a lot of time explaining the customs to us, attempting to parse out the various blessings that she and my professor laid upon the food for those of us who don't understand Hebrew. Needless to say, I was incredibly moved, in an odd way. Here were two extremely intelligent individuals, people who have devoted their lives to teaching others. Prof. C was a teaching fellow at Harvard. His wife was a Jewish school principal for her whole life. They lived in the sort of house you expect intellectual people to live in: hardwood floors, art on the walls, a sort of soft dim light pervading, books strewn everywhere. Their front yard was festooned with Obama and Al Franken yard signs (much like the one that was heinously stolen from me), and Mrs. C. proudly displayed an Obama-Biden button on her coat as she talked about canvassing for votes in Mendota Heights. She talked about local food and environmental sustainability in a most thoughtful way that would probably make my friend Benjamin's eyes well up with pride. Proudly she remarked about the completely local aspect of our meal, she having purchased nearly all the ingredients either at farmer's markets or her local co-op. Prof. C. drives an electric car to school everyday that doesn't travel over 30 MPH.

In short, they were the epitome of the cosmopolitan liberal intelligentsia that is so often ridiculed in mainstream society. The kind of people that I can only assume, do not live in Gov. Palin's "pro-America" parts of the country.

But yet, they exhibited a faith and sense of their own place in creation that astounded me. One of the first things Mrs. C. did was let us know that the Jewish people have been performing these rituals for thousands upon thousands of years, and it comforted her to have that sort of historical precedent. She said that it was a connective trail to generations of people seeking to touch the transcendent. I mean, here are these sorts of people that we are usually trained to think of as godless, and they exhibited the sort of faith that is so real you don't even think it could exist.

It's a sad critique on society, I think, when we are trained to compartmentalize people into these small boxes. You're the liberal one. You're the godly one. You're the environmentalist. You're the soldier. And this sort of ideological block is only furthered by a power establishment that has sought to the best of its ability to expose and exploit for 8 years. It's as if people who are both simultaneously progressive and religious are an anomaly. Like you can't be an outdoorsman and still care about climate change. Life cannot be so black and white.

Anyways, I had a good time eating in the sukkah. I don't anticipate a pending conversion to Judaism, but I really appreciated the opportunity to participate in some Jewish customs and gain such a stunning peek into the lives of two folks who really seem to get what it means to be Jewish. I remember back in Nottingham, I knew a guy in my American History seminar who was a Belgian-Spanish-American Jew. One day, he invited me to come up to the Jewish Fair that the Jewish student group was holding in the union. So I went, and Daniel was manning a booth promoting travel to Israel. Bemused, I asked him what Israel was like, since he traveled there at least once a year. I distinctly remember him saying, as I ate a piece of baklava, that he didn't get what the big deal was, because you walk down the street in Jerusalem and you think, "Hey, everyone's cool." Or something to that extent. If that happy Jerusalem street in my mind is populated with folks like Daniel and Prof. and Mrs. C., I have to go take a trip.

This was a scattershot post, but I'm tired. I must alert my loyal readership though to the fact that I finally possess new glasses. The photo below doesn't quite distinguish them too clearly, but they're quite nice.

Frightening.

I don't know what else you can say about this. I realize not all Republicans are racists who take pride in their ignorance, but man, this is scary.



BTW, some asshole stole my Obama/Biden sign out of my front yard the other night. What sort of person does something like that? Some dude down the street had a McCain/Palin sign up, but you didn't see me go and steal it in the middle of the night like some sort of juvenile. Grow up people.

Album of the Week: The Red Door (... Remember Zoot Sims)

Alright world, you win. I've been oppressed by hate mail, desperate pleadings, and mental screams, all yearning for the same exact thing. Put your angst to rest. This week's album is "The Red Door (... Remembering Zoot Sims) as performed by Scott Hamilton on tenor and Bucky Pizzarelli on guitar.

As an exciting aside, I should let you folks know that I've actually had the privilege of hearing Scott Hamilton live. I caught him at London's prestigious Pizza Express Jazz Club in January of 2007. So I know what I'm talking about.

What's really interesting about Scott Hamilton is that, unlike nearly every other sax player post WWII, he has largely rejected the styles promulgated by greats such as Charlie Parker and John Coltrane. Meaning, Hamilton does not play bebop. For those of you who didn't take History of Jazz with Juan Tony Gúzman, let me quickly explain.

When you think of swing music, you think of Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Glenn Miller, etc. From a musical standpoint, swing is pretty straightforward. It doesn't place great focus on virtuosity. It's dance music, and the purpose of the music was to entertain. After WWII, people like Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie started playing extraordinarily fast solos over a complicated framework of chords. This style came to be known as bebop, and it basically signaled in the "modern" era of jazz music. Instead of music to entertain, bebop was "art music" which was made primarily for listening rather than dancing.

So it's quite odd that Scott Hamilton eschews the mainstream of jazz and basically plays a style that many people feel is outdated. I mean, swing is probably the most "accessible" of jazz styles, but it has not been at the mainstream of jazz since the Great Depression. In fact, this album is dedicated to the memory of Zoot Sims, a prominent swing era tenor player. And Bucky Pizzarelli is actually an old timer contemporary of Zoot Sims. So basically, this album is kind of like those retro-ish t-shirts that sell for $40 at Urban Outfitters. It's old, but it's new.

This album consists solely of tenor sax, guitar, and the occasional burst of vocal encouragement. That's one of the reasons I'm a big fan. It's so simple. There isn't anything to clutter up the melodies. And damn, Scott Hamilton really does weave some pretty incredible melodic solos here. That's one of the great beauties of swing soloing, they tend to focus on creating a beautiful melody instead of blowing your mind with waves of sixteenth notes. The word that comes to mind from this album is "loom." Partially because "loom" is a funny word, but mostly because Pizzarelli cranks out some really interesting chordal changes (a loom, if you will) upon which Scott Hamilton "weaves" some incredibly interesting solos.

And you know, these two guys are not chumps. They might not be playing as fast as Charlie Parker, or doing crazy stuff like John Coltrane, but this is music making at its finest. I think my favorite track is "Jitterbug Waltz," which I've been a big fan of for a long time. I think it should be a constitutional requirement that everyone listens to a jazz waltz every morning. They're just good ideas. And this version of "Jitterbug Waltz" might just take the cake. I love how Pizzarelli does this sort of stride pattern with his guitar strumming. I mean, it happens throughout the disc, but it stands out here with the 3/4 waltz especially.

Another good track is "It Had To Be You." Makes Harry Connick, Jr. look like a hack. Meg Ryan, eat your heart out. (Who can guess that movie reference?)

Hamilton plays with this fantastic breathy style throughout, quite reminiscent of Lester Young. Some of his swirling little bits also remind me a lot of Coleman Hawkins. And of course, Pizzarelli chomps away like Freddie Green would want him too. But it's not quite so simple. You usually associate interaction in jazz with a trio, or quartet. Bill Evans comes to mind for me, with his Village Vanguard sessions. But there is a very real and tangible interaction here between the two performers, and there's something about that nakedness of sound that makes it incredibly poignant. Two performers, and nothing to hide behind.

See folks, this is the beauty of jazz. There's no limitations. You can do anything.

"Hey Bucky, you're real old, and I play music that no one else takes seriously. How about we get together and play some of this old music that everyone thinks is a big laugh and not worthy of title of "art," and try to make it cool?"

"Well, gee, alrighty there Scotty, but goll darn it, you've got to be off your rocker if you think some poor sap is going to buy this fossil of an album. I mean, damn, what sort of poor graduate student is going to drop money on this?"

I picked up this album at Half Price Books (brand new, I'll add) for something like $7. A very productive day at HPB, I must say, look for another album review from this haul after Thanksgiving. But anyways, it's definitely worth the regular price. Highly recommended.

And I saw him play, so I know what I'm talking about.

Grocery Stores

I was at a Caribou Coffee tonight, doing some homework. Then I was at a liquor store, purchasing a bottle of imported English ale. London Pride, if you must know. After that, I decided to come home. But I was suddenly stricken by the sight of a great spotlight in the sky...

Drawn like a moth, I drove over to the light and saw that it was promoting the GRAND OPENING of a brand new Rainbow grocery store. Seeing that I was done with homework (I don't have Civil Procedure tomorrow because it's Yom Kippur), I figured, what the hell, I'll go check out the new Rainbow. I couldn't help but think a bit about my grandpa, whose favourite thing to do in his last few years was to go to the "new" Rainbow in Bloomington. He could barely walk anywhere else (he weighed near 400 pounds), but you gave him a cart and a deli section and the dude just flew.

Just to clarify, the new Rainbow I went to looked nothing like the Rainbow in the photo above. Instead, it looked like a giant Northwoods hunting lodge, resplendent with pumpkins, Indian corn, and other autumnal decor. That sort of Minnesota-y looking building that all of us like to think we live in, or at least want to.

Now, you have to understand, I have a strange fascination with grocery stores. I don't know what it is, human frailty or a personal foible or whatever, but I could spend hours wandering around in grocery stores. There's something so bombastic about the sheer quantity of food available when you think about how some kid in Africa lives on a bowl of rice a week or something.

When you think about it, your typical American supermarket is probably the preeminent shrine to capitalistic excess. The coffee and tea aisle was ridiculous. And I mean, I love coffee as much as any self respecting organic Ecuadorian grower, but it seemed a bit out of control. Especially since half of the coffee was sludge like Sanka or industrial fire cans of Maxwell House. But seriously, I walked down a frozen foods aisle that consisted almost entirely of various forms of potatoes. Steak fries, shoestring fries, french fries, hash browns, little smiley face fries, waffle fries, home fries, mashed potatoes, crinkle fries, shredded hash browns, double baked potatoes, etc, etc, etc. I felt like I was walking through that scene in Forrest Gump where Bubba talks for days about the different ways to make shrimp. Compare that mile long frozen potato aisle with the actual potatoes being sold in the produce section. Amazing, simply amazing.

So anyways, I wandered around Rainbow for probably about 25 minutes or so in a daze, stupefied at the sheer quantity and variety that surrounded me. And a grocery store is basically a gigantic sensory overload. You have these relatively narrow aisles, crammed with shelf after shelf of different products, each screaming for your attention. People rushing everywhere like maniacs with large carts. Consistently faced with decisions of infinite possibility, like what sort of fried frozen potato to purchase. There are so many options that it's almost impossible to make a rational decision. Eventually, you get to the brink, where it's a choice between having a freakout and knocking everything over whilst screaming or just grabbing something and running like hell. Going to a grocery store has to be the suburban equivalent of smoking crack.

The other interesting part of a grocery store is the fact that it is a social melting pot. I mean, everyone needs to buy groceries, be they black, white, big, tall, whatever. It's too bad they don't have benches just to sit around and people watch, preferably with bench-side coffee service. Maybe some of those two-way mirrors or something. I was quite confused by the woman shopping who was decked out in St. Paul Co-op gear. Seemed like sort of a conflict of interest to me. There was this one dude who looked like the only reason he was there was to enter to win the camoflauged ATV. Without going into extensive detail, it's sufficient to say that a lot of people there confused me.

I thought my trip would have been simple enough, I just wanted to check out the place and maybe grab some salsa. But like I said, it ended up an ordeal. Everything about it was so insane. I suppose, all grocery stores are the same way, but still. When you think about what a grocery store is actually like, it's absolutely insane. Why the hell would you ever need a sub sandwich the size of a small nuclear weapon? It was unbelievable, simply unbelievable. Seriously, if you dropped this thing off a building, it probably would have cratered the sidewalk.

Anyways, in a flash of panic, I grabbed some queso dip, waited impatiently for the ignoramus ahead of me to operate the self check out with her 50 children in tow, paid with my Discover card (cashback bonus for groceries), and got the hell out of there.

Food

I usually think I'm a fairly competent person. Fairly competent at the act of living life. Which is why cooking for me is an incredibly humbling experience.

My cooking skills are bad at best, horrible from an objective standard. I was always quite fearful, cooking in Nottingham, as my group tended to select elaborate and complicated dishes to make. My inherent inefficiency meant that practically anything I was assigned took about 4 hours, wiping out my afternoon with nerve-wracking culinary toil. Who can forget the episode where we attempted to grill chicken for an hour on a grill that wasn't actually lit? Brilliant.

My dad is in the Cayman Islands this week, leaving me to fend for myself in regards to food. I decided the lack of preprepared food for a week was a perfect opportunity for me to rise to the challenge and fend for myself. See also, I decided to cook.

So I biked over to Cub the other day and bought some groceries. And yes, I did feel superior for biking.

Last night I attempted to make chicken curry. I figured it was going to be interesting when I realized I made enough rice to feed a small Asian nation for a week. It only got better when it became apparent the rice was woefully undercooked. I splattered hot cooking oil all over myself and the rest of the kitchen attempting to stir fry the chicken. And of course, I ended up with a plethora of cooking implements coated with an impenetrable sealant of burnt rice and curry paste.

Needless to say, it didn't quite taste like the chicken curry that my mind's eye had envisioned when I decided to make it. But all in all, I suppose it could have been worse.

Remembering the wisdom of Mrs. Roorda in my 8th grade F.A.C.S. class, the best thing to do with old rice is to make fried rice. So, that was my burden today. And I must say, it was marginally more successful. I don't have second degree burns all over my forearms, nor did I spend 5 hours scrubbing pans. It did suffer from a lack of fresh vegetables though, and it seemed a titch bland. But life is full of small challenges.

I don't know what I'm going to attempt tomorrow, but I bought some pasta and some Cuban beans and rice. I don't quite think the two go together, so it's looking like pasta. As you can tell, with the pasta and the rice, it's been a carb-tastic week. I'm getting ready for a double century ride this weekend, so you know, it's all good.

That's a lie.

Book Review: The Lost Continent

I know, I know, everyone wants to know where the Album of the Week is. You have no idea how much hate mail I've received in the last week. But truth be told, I've been listening to quite a bit of music, but no one album has quite stuck out to me lately. I must be in some sort of slump.

So instead, I thought I'd review a book I just recently finished: "The Lost Continent" by Bill Bryson.

I'm quite fond of Bill, as is evident by at least one other review on this site and frequent references. He has what is best described as a unique flair for observation, and in this book, he turns it on small town America. He decides to take a few months away from England for an old fashioned cross country road trip. About two thirds of the book is devoted to the East, while the last third is to the West. That doesn't make as much sense to me, because the West is huge, certainly it warrants more than a third of the book.

One thing Bill is really fond of is bitching, which he does to great extent. Bitches about rude waitresses, bitches about ugly developments, bitches about "losing" some intangible element of "Americana." He spends most of his trip in the East searching for that mythical small town America you always see in old movies. Where everyone is well dressed and happy, where there's a cheery little town square with a clapboard church, a brightly painted post office, and some classic Cadillacs. As you might assume, he never actually finds such a place. Which is fairly understandable, being that no such place exists, except in the movies.

That's part of what is so fascinating to me about Bill's thought process. The man grew up in Iowa, the most Midwest of the Midwest, then goes off to live in England. His brain is literally trapped in some sort of freeze frame. And he seems loathe to admit that. So while he has one of the most astounding talents for people watching, he filters it through this bizarre I'm-American-but-wait-I'm-not-but-everything-should-be-as-American-as-I-remember-it lens. That Hollywood small town doesn't exist, there isn't some sort of remaining objective standard to judge how "American" a small town is. The beauty of small towns is in individual reactions, to people living there. It's entirely subjective, I think. So I sometimes think Bill is a bit harsh.

It is funny as he travels about, encountering different geographic regions and such. We forget just how big this country is. It is big, real big. And there's a lot of diversity. I enjoyed the part where he tries to communicate with people in Mississippi and can't understand a damn thing.

One other interesting thing, going along with the paragraph before, is how he travels with a certain degree of unconfronted melancholy. As stupid as he thinks small town people are, in a sense, Bill wants to be one. As arrogant and fat as he claims Americans are, deep down, he knows he's one of us. And whenever people pick up on his English accent and note how he must not from around there, he gets a little sad. The part at the very end when he returns home to Iowa is pretty indicative.

All in all, I'd recommend this book. I mean, it's good for a laugh, but it's also a pretty interesting survey of the country from a pretty interesting viewpoint. People watching is a lost art. Good thing Bill is here to help if we need it.

I promise, my next book review will be from another author. I do need to branch out a bit.