Friday Review:Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills

This is kind of a cheat, as I saw this documentary a while back. But it's relevant as ever today, and not just because it popped up on Morgan Spurlock's countdown of 50 Documentaries to See Before You Die that's running on the Keith Olberman Netwo . . . I mean Current TV.

On May 5, 1993, three 8-year-old boys were reported missing in West Memphis, Arkansas. The next day, the bodies of the three boys were found in a ditch, stripped naked and hogtied. From the beginning, there was a dispute about whether the boys had been killed there or the bodies dumped there after killings elsewhere.

Suspicion fell on three teenagers - Jessie Misskelley, Jr., Jason Baldwin and Damien Echols - who were outsiders in the small town. Each had been in trouble for minor crimes and two had dropped out of high school. They shared an interest in heavy metal. A theory developed that the murders had been committed as part of some sort of occult ritual.

The three teens went to trial and were convicted. One, Echols, was sentenced to death. You can read more details about the case here.

As all this was going on, filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky were covering the investigation. They even became a part of it when a knife that may have been involved in the killings was delivered to them. The result of their work, Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills, not only became a powerful documentary of a heinous murder case, but kicked off a nationwide campaign to have the convictions of the teenagers, labeled the West Memphis 3, reversed.

Paradise Lost is a compelling piece of work (it's sequel somewhat less so, if only because we sort of know what's happening going on). It doesn't come to a conclusion as to who killed the three 8-year-olds, but it certainly leaves the impression that something was rotten in the trial of the West Memphis 3. For years, they've fought to get out.

Today, the West Memphis 3 walked free. Sort of. As Jerlalyn sorts it out, the state agreed to a plea agreement by which the three pleaded guilty using a process known as an Alford plea, meaning they do not actually admit guilt, but admit the state could prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. Although they were all sentenced to, essentially, time served sentences, they are subject to 10-year terms of what look like something akin to unsupervised probation. So any little fuck up could send them right back.

Paradise Lost didn't lead directly to exoneration of an innocent man the way Errol Morris's The Thin Blue Line did.  But it certainly raised the profile of the case to a level that made it impossible for authorities in West Memphis to just sweep the whole thing under the rug.  The West Memphis 3 will never get back the hunk of their lives they spent in prison.  And, at least for a little while, they're not really "free."  But it's certainly an improvement.

Details
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Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills, followed by Paradise Lost 2: Revelations
Released 1996
Directed by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky

"I Don’t Know" Only Goes So Far

Penn Jillette, half of the famous magic duo and a co-host of Showtime’s mostly brilliant Bullshit!, has a new book out called, God, No! Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales. So he’s been making the rounds on the TV book circuit. Last week, he went on Piers Morgan’s show and was grilled about his atheism and libertarianism. In this column at CNN’s website, he follows up on that conversation (at least he didn’t walk off in a huff like Christine “I am not a witch!” O’Donnell did last night).

Jillette’s main point is the power of being able to say “I don’t know” about something and how that lead him to both be an atheist and a libertarian. I certainly agree that not only recognizing that you, personally, are ignorant of some things (in a humble sort of way), is important, but so is being comfortable with that fact. After all, there are a lot of “God of the gaps” arguments deployed be believers that basically comes down to their inability to accept “I don’t know” as an answer for the universe’s big questions. Atheists and agnostics, on the other hand, don’t have that problem. I can see the intersection there.

I’m not convinced that what applies in one arena applies in the other. Questions about the existence of God, how the universe came to be, or why we’re here are important (and fun!) ones to consider, but they’re also largely irrelevant to daily life. God or no God, everybody’s got to find food, shelter, clothing, sex, and provide for the needs of their families. That I don’t believe in God impacts the rest of the world not at all.*

Here’s how Jillette explains it:

What makes me libertarian is what makes me an atheist -- I don't know. If I don't know, I don't believe. I don't know exactly how we got here, and I don't think anyone else does, either. We have some of the pieces of the puzzle and we'll get more, but I'm not going to use faith to fill in the gaps. I'm not going to believe things that TV hosts state without proof. I'll wait for real evidence and then I'll believe.

And I don't think anyone really knows how to help everyone. I don't even know what's best for me. Take my uncertainty about what's best for me and multiply that by every combination of the over 300 million people in the United States and I have no idea what the government should do.

That argument doesn’t really lead to libertarianism, though, or any other political ideology. What it really leads to is political disengagement. It’s somewhat similar to what Ilya Somin often writes about at the Volokh Conspiracy – the rational ignorance of voters (put simply, that a single vote means so little that the voter casting it has little reason to educate himself before casting it). Staying out of the political process because “I don’t know” makes some sense in that case.

But it’s not a persuasive reason to become a libertarian. Libertarianism isn’t disengagement with the political process. It’s an affirmative ideology that holds certain base principles and applies them to the real world. You’ve got to “know” stuff in order to sign on to those base principles. The same is true of any political ideology.

If anything, a rigorous adherence to a skeptical “I don’t know” position should lead one away from a fixed political ideology. Dogmatic adherence to ideology is rarely the best answer to every question, regardless of the venue. Politics is no different. Skepticism would counsel questioning all the first principles and examining the evidence of how a particular problem has been solved (or not) in other places.

We’d all be better off if we could get ourselves comfortable with giving “I don’t know” as an answer to questions big and small. It would lead to people being more open to rational solutions to problems and less reliant on the knee-jerk responses common to ideologues of all stripes. So I applaud Jillette for embracing his not knowing. I’m just not why it leads him to drink the libertarian Kool-Aid.

* Acting on beliefs, regardless of what they are, is a different story, of course. But we’re just talking about belief itself, or lack thereof, right now.

The Neverending Campaign

I don’t remember when the 24-hour news cycle kicked in. My big reference point is the days after 9/11, once the actual news died down, when the tickers that CNN and the rest started running along the bottom of the screen held on and became fixtures. But I’m sure it started well before then.

Likewise, I’m not certain when the political realm kicked into perpetual campaign mode. Nobody actually governs anymore, they just lurch from one electoral contest to the other. Maybe it’s always been like that and I was once too young to notice. Maybe it took the 24-hours news cycle to feed it. After all, when you’ve got no other news to digest, handicapping the presidential horserace is an easy way to fill time. Even if the first real vote is months away.

Which is a long way of saying I agree with just about everything that Glenn Greenwald had to say in his column yesterday. Far from simply noting the ongoing campaign season and bemoaning it, he does a good job of arguing why it’s actually bad for the country as a whole.

For one thing, Greenwald argues that the near exclusive focus on the campaigns helps obscure what those same politicians are actually doing in office. It also impacts the way the news media treats the whole business, turning into just another reality show that’s more focused on style and personalities rather than substance. That the bloviators are often wrong when it comes to the handicapping of the race in which they allegedly have some expertise (Greenwald mentions a Washington Post columnist who three weeks ago argued that questioning Tim Pawlenty’s chances was “silly,” but said of his withdrawal from the race over the weekend that it was “no great surprise”) is icing on the cake.

More detrimental, in my eyes, is how the relentless campaigning feeds the political tribalism that forms the debate in this country. Elections are either/or affairs (for the most part) and the constant campaign drumbeat makes it easy for people to slip into “my team rules, your team sucks!” positions without much thought. As Greenwald points out, that makes criticism of “your guy” more difficult and, therefore, less frequent and less helpful to the overall discussion.

And it goes beyond that:

Those depressing, destructive trends are exacerbated by the manipulative fear-mongering that drives these campaigns. Every four years, The Other Side is turned into the evil spawn of Adolf Hitler and Osama bin Laden. Each and every election cycle, each party claims that -- unlike in the past, when Responsible Moderates ruled and the "crazies" and radicals were relegated to the fringes (the Democrats were once the Party of Truman!; Ronald Reagan was a compromising moderate!) -- the other party has now been taken over by the extremists, making it More Dangerous Than Ever Before. That the Other Side is now ruled by Supreme Evil-Doers means that anything other than full-scale fealty to their defeat is viewed as heresy. Defeat of the Real Enemy is the only acceptable goal. Election-time partisan loyalty becomes the ultimate Litmus Test of whether you're on the side of Good: it's the supreme With-Us-or-With-the-Terrorists test, and few are willing to endure the punishments for failing it. It's an enforcement mechanism for Party loyalty that -- by design -- breeds slavish partisan fealty.

None of this has anything to do with reality.

How to solve the problem? I have no clue. Greenwald doesn’t offer any ideas, either. I sometimes hear people ask why we can’t have short to-the-point campaigns like they do in, say, the United Kingdom. That overlooks the wholesale differences in political structures and the presence of the First Amendment. It would be nearly impossible (and clearly unwise) to try and muzzle a potential candidate, or media outlet willing to cover her, for a certain amount of time before an election. We could always rely on the good taste and common sense of the American people, but only if we’re willing to ignore the fact that it’s what got us here in the first place.

The one place I disagree with Greenwald in this piece is the lament (as I’ve read elsewhere) that Ron Paul is being unfairly ignored in the wake of the results in Iowa last weekend. Greenwald argues he’s being made “all but an ‘unperson’ in Orwellian terms.” John Stewart, of course, makes the case in a more amusing way:

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

I think that overlooks two things.

First, the Ames Straw Poll is of dubious use as a predictor of electoral success. Of the five prior winners only one-and-a-half (Bob Dole and Phil Gramm shared the title in 1995) went on to win the GOP nomination and only one of them, Bush the Younger, went on to become president. It’s not quite the curse of death that the Best New Artist Grammy is, but it’s not much better.*

Second, the nature of the straw poll is that it serves candidates like Ron Paul, who have small but dedicated followings, very well. He’s done well in such forums before, as when he won the CPAC straw polls in 2010 and 2011, but those results never materialize into wider electoral support in caucuses and primaries. In other words, the media has seen this story before and knows how it ends. If there’s one thing the news media doesn’t want, it’s old news and Paul appears to be it.

I’m not saying the media should ignore Paul while he’s still in the race. The coverage would probably be richer for it. But it’s not “unfair” and I understand why they’ve moved on to newer, shinier people to cover.

Which, I suppose, goes back to Greenwald’s main point. So maybe he’s right after all. Fuck.

* Ironically enough, today at work I was listening to a lot of stuff from Frank Zappa’s 1988 tour, which including lots of digs at the idea of a Pat Robertson presidency. Robertson won the Ames poll in 1987. He didn’t get the GOP nomination.

Spoilers Are Good for You!

All right, well, maybe not "good," but not nearly as bad as some people make them out to be.

A couple of years ago, over on the old blog, I took aim at people who bitch and complain about "spoilers," information that discloses crucial plot twists or endings of movies, TV shows, or books.  As I said at the time:

if the only thing that moves you about a movie or TV show is the mechanics of the plot, you're pretty much beyond hope.

Or maybe it says more about what you're watching/reading.  But, honestly, if this is your impression of Citizen Kane once you know the big secret:



I'm afraid I can't help you.

But not to fear! New research from UC San Diego shows that the presence of spoilers doesn't really impact a reader's enjoyment of a particular story.  Researchers took several short stories with "twist" kind of endings and had some people read the original and others read a version with spoilers in the introductory paragraph.  The results:

Subjects significantly preferred the spoiled versions of ironic-twist stories, where, for example, it was revealed before reading that a condemned man’s daring escape is all a fantasy before the noose snaps tight around his neck.

The same held true for mysteries. Knowing ahead of time that Poirot will discover that the apparent target of attempted murder is, in fact, the perpetrator not only didn’t hurt enjoyment of the story but actually improved it.

Subjects liked the literary, evocative stories least overall, but still preferred the spoiled versions over the unspoiled ones.

A brief aside as the genre writer in my notes that even when they know the ending, people still don't like the high-brow stuff as much. Ha!

Why, exactly, would people prefer the spoiled stories?  That's beyond the reach off the study itself, but one researcher speculates that:

'Plots are just excuses for great writing. What the plot is is (almost) irrelevant. The pleasure is in the writing,' said Christenfeld, a UC San Diego professor of social psychology.

'Monet’s paintings aren’t really about water lilies,' he said.

I wouldn't go quite that far.  Plot surely isn't nearly irrelevant, but perhaps the brutal outline of the story - the Joe Friday version, if you will - is.  It's really only an excuse to get characters moving, talking, and thinking about things.  In other words, coming up with a story isn't the hard part.  Telling it is.

*gulp*

Second City Visions

Last week, K and I spend a few days in Chicago in honor of her birthday.  Birthday trips have become a sort of tradition for us.  We'll load up the car, head for a not-too-far-away metropolis, plop down in the middle of it, and enjoy ourselves.  We chose Chicago because K had never been there and I really enjoyed the couple of days I spent there while I was in law school.

Here are some pics to give you an idea of where we went and why.  Unless otherwise noted, they were all taken by K, the official photographer of Feeding the Silence.

Of course, we were not alone in our travels.  Maia, the One-Eyed Wonder Pup, and Uzume the Perpetual Motion Pup came along, too.  This was Uzume's first big city trip.  She adjusted pretty well.

She even found time for one of her favorite pastimes - sitting and growling at her food for no apparent reason.

We stayed just north of the river, near Trump Tower, and so had to navigate down to The Loop on foot.  Here's a shot down river from the North Street bridge.  We had dinner that night at the restaurant on the right.

We only had two real targets for this trip, one of which was The Art Institute of Chicago, famous home of Seurat's Sunday Afternoon . . ., Hopper's Nighthawks, and, as of 1999 when I was last there, a bizarre installation called "Clown Torture."  Sadly, that last one appears to have gone away.  Regardless, the building is still guarded by a a pair of sturdy lions.

K took several pictures of interesting paintings and others things you can see in the set on my Flickr feed.  Here are a couple of the more gargantuan pieces.

I have no idea who sculpted this guy, or who he is supposed to be.  He's just plopped in the lobby of the Institutes's modern wing.  It called out for photography.

This stairwell (which has several different bits, as you can see), contained an installation called Public Notice 3, by Jitish Kallat, which takes the words of a speech given at the 1893 First World Parliament of Religions urging the end of fanaticism and emphasizing tolerance of all beliefs and lays them out under the steps.  K posed for this one, so I must have taken it.

As I said, we dined that night in a restaurant right on the river beside the North Street bridge.  Here's a picture I took from our table up North Street.

Our other "must do" was a concert on Wednesday night at Ravinia Festival, Chicago's big outdoor concert venue in the northern suburb of Highland Park.  We decided to take the scenic route up there and catch a couple of interesting sights along the way.

The Bahá'í Faith emerged from 19th-century Persia and teaches a  message of the unity of mankind and its religions.  If you've never heard of them, don't feel bad - they claim only 155,000 adherents in the United States (we marginalized atheists, by contrast, can at least muster a few million).  Regardless, their house of worship in Wilmette (one of only seven in the world and the only one in the United States) is a breathtaking building.

As you can see, the architecture carries on the unity theme, incorporating several religious symbols.

Photography of the dome inside isn't allowed, but apparently that doesn't stop everybody.

Photo by ctot_not_def, taken from Wikimedia Commons

The Arabic script at the top translates to "O thou glory of glories."  Here's an arty shot of the sun peaking out over the dome.

From the Bahá'í house of worship, we proceeded to the Chicago Botanic Garden.  Unlike the Phipps Conservatory in Pittsburgh, the Chicago Botanic Garden is mostly outside and covers a lot of ground.  They've got water lilies.

And a waterfall.

And some lovely sculptured islands for the Japanese portion of the gardens.

A portion of the Japanese section include some willow trees that hung out over the surrounding water.  K took this really neat picture under one of them.  Check out the full sized version in the Flickr feed.

No pictures of the concert, featuring Los Lonely  Boys and Los Lobos.  It was excellent, with the end of each set evolving into a jam session featuring both bands.  Good times.

The next day, we took a tour on the river given by the Chicago Architecture Foundation.  It's a great way to get a feel for the city's history and see some pretty neat buildings.  Like the Tribune Building, built for the newspaper, which tops a high rise with a Gothic temple type device.

Or this building (it lacks a cool name, just has an address) of with curved green glass that matches the bend in the river.  It also reflects the buildings across the river.

This is part of the Boeing headquarters, which has both a tall tower and this shorter annex.  The superstructure at the top there isn't ornamental - it's actually the support from which the rest of the building hangs.  Traditional underground supports wouldn't work because the train runs underneath.

And then we came home.  It was a wonderful little trip with lots of cool things to see.  But with all the pictures, this one is my favorite.

Friday Review: I, Claudius

When modern TV critics write wistfully of the good ol' days, when high-class miniseries produced for broadcast networks roamed the Earth, they'll inevitably cite Roots and I, Claudius as touchstones. After spending a few days working my way through the 13-episode British tour of the early Roman Empire, I can see why.

Produced by the BBC in 1976, and brought to the US by PBS a year later, I, Claudius roams well beyond the life and times of Rome's fourth emperor. In fact, were it not for a clever framing device lifted from the novels upon which it's based, we wouldn't even see Claudius until the third or fourth episode. Instead, the run covers Rome's first four emperors, including the illustrious founder Augustus and that batshit star of 1970s high-form porn, Caligula.

The frame device that allows Claudius, and Derek Jacobi (in a career making role), to show up from word one is that the story that follows is a history of his family that Claudius himself wrote. He cleverly buried a copy to avoid the destructive fires of other (his successor, Nero - you know what happened to him) so that the truth can be known to posterity. That device also allows a clever out for anything presented that might not be faithful to the historical record - it's only the word of Claudius, who might not be the most reliable of narrators.

And what a story Claudius tells. Over the first six episodes, things are driven by Livia, wife of Augustus and grandmother to Claudius. She has but one goal in life - to see her son, Tiberius, follow Augustus as emperor, preferably to exercise unquestioned authority (whether Rome's lost republic will rise from the ashes hangs over the entire series. She lets nothings stand in her way and gets her hands pretty bloody (metaphorically - she's a champion poisoner). Livia, at least as presented here, makes Cersei Lannister look like the MILF who brings the orange slices to soccer practice.

Those first several episodes set the tone for all that comes after. Alliances wax and wane, the inconvenient are killed for that sin, and occasionally there are orgies. History, as we generally learn it, goes on off set, but usually only mentioned in passing. The scheming lives of the imperials is the focus here. Unfortunately, that means that once Livia dies (Claudius later makes her a goddess), things get a little repetitive. Nobody who comes after is as compelling a focus.

What saves the series is an unholy collection of British acting talent, many of whom would go on to prominence in the sci-fi/fantasy world:

Sian Phillips - Clash of the Titans, Dune
Brian Blessed - Flash Gordon, Dr. Who
John Hurt - Alien, 1984
Patrick Stewart - Star Trek: The Next Generation
George Baker - Dr. Who
John Rhys-Davies - Lord of the Rings, Sliders

Even Derek Jacobi himself wound up on Dr. Who (there may be a BAFTA bylaw requiring every actor in Britain to be on that show, or a spin off, at one point). Watching Vultan and Picard plot and scheme is just fun on a bun.

That being said, the series shows some signs of age. Aside from technical issues (it looks pretty good, but the sound needs remixed), the biggest drawback is that the whole spectacle is obviously playing out on sound stages. It works, most of the time, but it leads to scenes where we only know the characters are (say) at a gladiatorial contest because they're in the stands reacting to what they're seeing. There's no outside location shots and no real attempt and creating a "realistic" feel. The result is more like an extended theater piece than modern historical series like (obviously) Rome or even Game of Thrones. That staginess sometimes carries over to the performances, which can go overboard at times.

In fact, given the juiciness of the material, I'm surprised HBO or even the BBC hasn't made a remake yet. The script lends itself to the type of stylized debauchery that's so in vogue today. This version isn't even the first attempt to put this story on the screen. In 1937, Alexander Korda started production on an epic movie version (with Charles Loughton as Claudius), but it fell apart only a month into shooting.

Thankfully, the original is still eminently watchable. It lacks the spectacle of its 21st-century decedents, but, at bottom, it tells a simple story. In the end, it's all about power, what people will do to get it, and what it does to them. You don't need a big effects budget to pull that off.

Details
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I, Claudius
Originally broadcast 1976
Written by Jack Pulman
Based on I, Claudius and Claudius the God, by Robert Graves
Starring Derek Jacobi, Sian Phillips, John Hurt, et. al

The Sweet Sting of Rejection

I spend my free time over the weekend trying to get my writerly life organized, at least somewhat. Figured now as as good a time as any to take stock of things.

The motivating event for that organization was that I finished the second draft of my 2008 NaNoWriMo project, Plausible Reliability. I had started to revised it once before, but couldn't slog through more than about 80 pages. What triggered the second (successful) attempt was getting a red-penned copy of the first draft back from my father. He handed it back to me with some kind words of encouragement, so I took another whack at it.

Second draft finished, I went out Saturday and had it printed up and collected in a spiffy three-ring binder. Then I stuck it in a box. And put the box in the closet. There it will moulder forever, or at least until I kick the bucket and my executor decides to ignore my wishes and try and publish it anyway.*

That second pass through, unfortunately, reinforced my conclusion that Plausible Reliability sucks, and sucks pretty hard. It's slow, nothing really happens until the final fifth of the book, and then when it does it's kind of an anticlimax. I still like the general idea, and might return to it someday. But for now, it's into the box it goes.

That's not an entirely bad, or even unusual, thing. Nearly every writer's first novel sucks. Many of them wind up "trunked," which is just a shorter way of saying "dumped in a box in the closet for eternity." Plausible Reliability will always be a milestone for me because it was the first novel I finished and let me prove to myself that I could string together a long-form story. The fact that I can look at it now, see that it sucks, and figure out why will only make things easier going forward with other projects.

Speaking of other projects, my attempts to sell one my short stories continues to be like bashing my head against a brick wall. Since January I've shopped around six different stories to 24 different markets and received . . . 23 rejections! The only hold out right now is Tor's website, which takes forever to get back to people. I sent the other five, and a new one, back out last night, all to new (to me) markets, to change things up a bit.

I know, logically, that this sort of rejection is par for the course for writers, new and unpublished ones especially. It's one of the gauntlets you have to run in order to break into the biz. Sort of like why I had to take a tax law course at WVU even though it wasn't on the bar exam - everybody else had to suffer, damn it, now you will, too!

Nevertheless, it can get disheartening. I take some comfort in the fact that, in spite of what seems like a lot of shoot downs, I haven't even been at this for a whole year. So, I'll keep plugging away at it, at least until my email account is overrun by rejection notices so that the entire system crashes under their weight.

Hey, that gives me an idea for a story . . .

* Did I just compare myself with Kafka? Maybe, sorta. I've got some nerve, huh?

Don't Trust, Just Verify

Back in 2007, I wrote about how conflicted I was over the issue of criminal defendants "rolling" on one another in order to try and get a lower sentence. In other words, "snitches." As I said back then, cooperating with authorities is often the only way a defendant in the federal system can reduce his sentence, so defense attorneys are bound to pursue that option when it presents itself. On the other hand, when someone else is doing the cooperating against our client, we rail about the unreliability of testimony bought for a reduced sentence.

With that in mind, I'm intrigued by what might come of a law California Governor Jerry Brown just signed that takes aim at jailhouse informants:

Jerry brown jailhouse informant law signed The new law requires prosecutors to present forensic evidence or uncompromised testimony that corroborates information provided by in-custody witnesses who claim to have been told or overheard incriminating statements by the defendant.

In other words, a jury could not convict someone on the word of a snitch alone. According to Scott at Simple Justice, the law is a stricter version of one passed in Texas (and was vetoed by Cali's interim governor in 2008 because it would make it too hard to convict people). Scott also has some of the evidence that shows how unreliable snitch testimony can be.

Since snitches get a benefit for their testimony, in at least the possibility of a reduced sentence, doesn't that quid pro quo raise other questions? For a while late in the 20th century, one court said it did.

In 1998, the Tenth Circuit, in a case called US v. Singleton, held that such arrangements violated a federal statute providing that "whomever . . .directly or indirectly" gives "anything of value" to a witness based on his testimony commits a crime. The court specifically rejected the Government's attempt to read a "law enforcement exception" into that statute and held that the testimony of Singleton's codefendant at her trial, produced as result of a plea agreement requiring cooperation, should have been suppressed. I was in law school when Singleton came down and remember what a shock wave it sent through the legal community.

Of course, such a ground breaking precedent couldn't stand. The entire Tenth Circuit reheard the case en banc and decided, 9-3, that the statute did not apply to snitch situations. "Whomever," the court concluded, did not include prosecutors acting in their official capacity. Crisis averted, things returned to normal.

But, as Scott points out, the status quo has serious problems. Maybe laws like California's will help change it.  Not every snitch is unreliable, but the nature of the beast is that there is motive to make stuff up.  As usual, skepticism is the best bet.  Don't trust, just verify.

Know Your Regionalisms

Over the weekend, Britain's The Telegraph newspaper had an article about the strange case of DB Cooper, who disappeared after he jumped from a plane he hijacked in 1971.  Along with $200,000.  It's still and open case and, according to the article, the FBI is even tracking down a potential new lead.

That's fine and all, but one line in the article made me nearly laugh Diet Coke out through my nose.  Writer Alex Hannaford is trying to establish just how fascinated some folks are with the case, even all these decades later, when he writes:

As one person told me, Cooper is the Bigfoot of the Pacific Northwest. He is an enigma and a huge subculture has sprung up devoted to sleuthing his story.

Ahem.  Actually, to be completely accurate, you know what the Bigfoot of the Pacific Northwest is?  Bigfoot!  The legend dates back to Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest, although there have been sightings in other areas.  And, of course, Bigfoot has an Asian cousin, the Yeti.  He does get around.

I wonder who the Loch Ness Monster of Scotland is?

Tossing a Mokney Wrench Into the Machinery of Death

West Virginia has it's issues, but one thing I take a great deal of pride in about my home state is that we got rid of the death penalty in 1965. Although there are some occasional rumblings about bringing it back, it never really gets anywhere. Why should it? The state has one of the lowest crime rates in the nation and couldn't really afford the cost of actually implementing it, anyway.

But the state's law isn't the final word on whether somebody in West Virginia might face the death penalty. The feds can step in and prosecute a case that falls within their jurisdiction and can, if they so desire, seek the death penalty. They did just that a few years ago in the case of a Mingo County man charged with killing a drug informant.  After securing a conviction and death sentence, the conviction was tossed out due to some issues with a juror. The retrial ended in another conviction, but no death sentence. The feds squandered millions of dollars in the effort.

That case sprang to mind when I read about a battle of wills going on between the governor of Rhode Island, Lincoln Chafee and the local United States Attorney over the fate of Jason Wayne Pleau. Pleau is serving a state sentence in Rhode Island that's set to expire in 2028. He is also charged, in federal court, with a robbery and murder for which the feds could seek the death penalty.

The feds submitted a request to the governor under the Interstate Agreement on Detainers Act asking for Pleau to be turned over for proceedings in federal court. The governor said no:

Chafee based his denial, believed a first in the nation, on Rhode Island’s longstanding rejection of the death penalty. Chafee said Pleau’s lawyers told him their client would agree to plead guilty in state court and face life without parole, the maximum penalty under Rhode Island law.

Undeterred, the feds went to the federal district court and applied for a writ of habeas corpus ad prosequendum, which is the usual means of bringing someone in state custody into federal court to, say, testify in someone else's trial. Chafee's lawyers (and Pleau's) argued last week to the First Circuit Court of Appeals that the feds couldn't get the writ because, once they invoked the IADA, they were bound by Chafee's decision to not hand Pleau over. The IADA does give a governor that power, but apparently nobody else ever thought to actually exercise it.

Chafee's argument has some gut appeal, but I'm not sure it will ultimately prevail (it didn't in the court below). For one thing, I'm not sure that Congress ever intended the IADA to act as a permanent bar on transferring someone from state custody. For another, it seems that if Chafee prevails it means that, in the future, the feds should just avoid the IADA all together and apply for the writ. Cut out the possibility of gubernatorial obstruction completely. If that happens, what's the point of the federal government being a part of the IADA?

That being said, the IADA provision allowing Chafee to decline the feds' request has to mean something, too. After all, he can't prevent Pleau from being tried by the feds completely - they'll just have to wait until he's released from the Rhode Island prison. And given the difference between the feds and Rhode Island when it comes to the death penalty, isn't that a legitimate basis to deny the request? Other countries, when dealing with extradition matters, can force the feds to take the death penalty off the table before they turn over a defendant, why shouldn't the states do the same?

In the end, I expect the First Circuit (and maybe the Supremes afterwards) to hold that Chafee has to turn Pleau over. But I'm willing to be pleasantly surprised if it turns out otherwise.

Friday Review Double Feature: The Wicker Man

Here's the sum total of what I knew about The Wicker Man prior to this week. I knew that the original British film, from the 1970s, has become a cult classic. That it stars Edward Woodward, who was the lead in one of my favorite flicks, Breaker Morant. That it involved some sort of weird religious rites and a twist ending. That it was remade a few years ago, with Nicholas Cage taking over for the Breaker and that the remake was universally panned.

I had put the original version in the Netflix queue because of Woodward and general curiosity. After I finally got around to watching it this week, I had to follow up with the Cage version. It's an interesting case study in how Hollywood can take something that earned goodwill the hard way and piss it all away in under two hours.

First, the basics. The Wicker Man is about a cop dispatched to a remote island to investigate the disappearance, or maybe the murder, of a child. The island's inhabitants have, to put it mildly, some non-traditional religious beliefs. The cop tries to get to the bottom of the mystery, only to find himself . . . well, I won't ruin the big twist for you. I'm not generally big on avoiding spoilers, particularly for flicks that are as old as I am, but this one went somewhere I wasn't suspecting, so I'll give it some credit.

The release of the original film was bungled by the studio, which forced some cuts and didn't give it any publicity upon release. In spite of that, it's gone on to achieve such cult status that it's been dubbed the Citizen Kane of horror films. I wouldn't go nearly that far - it's sluggish, silly, and not really all that horrific. But it's also unique and fun, in it's own peculiar way. It's cult status is no doubt helped by the difficulty of its release and how that lent it an air of mystery. I can certaily see why some people really love it.

And I can see precisely why any big budget Hollywood remake was doomed to failure. Everything that makes the original fun to watch disappears. Yes, the plot is basically the same, but the ambiance of the whole movie is quite different, not to mention the execution. So to speak.

Take, for instance, the odd religious society into which our hero cop is thrust. In the original, it's old European pagans (Druish, for most part), who, for all their weird ways, are at least fun to hang around with. They drink. They sing (the film has several musical numbers). They wander around nekkid. Watching that libertine lifestyle bump up against Woodward's rigid (but sincere) Christianity is actually interesting.

For the remake, however, the fun drunken pagans are gone. Replaced, inexplicitly, but a dour colony of joyless matriarchal scolds (the only men on the island are used for manual labor and breeding). They're like something out of Rush Limbaugh's nightmares. Cage, meanwhile, has none of the religious background of his predecessor, so it really doesn't do anything for the film.

I can understand why merely transporting the pagans to Puget Sound (where, inexplicitly, Cage's California cop tries to wield the same legal authority as Woodward, who was actually in his jurisdiction, did) wouldn't work, but is a bunch of murderous shrews the best Labute could come up with?  Maybe. After his excellent debut, In the Company of Men, and pretty good follow up, Your Friends and Neighbors, his film career has cratered. Certainly, his rebooted version of The Wicker Man did not right the ship. It does give Cage an excuse to beat up several women, though. If you've ever really wanted to see that kind of thing, this movie is for you.

In the end, the remake of The Wicker Man is a series of poor choices, summarized neatly by Brett Cullum from DVD Verdict:

LaBute's final insult to injury? He dedicates the film to the memory of Joey Ramone. Joey would have at least had the good sense to make this remake fast, loud, and two minutes long.

No doubt. I wanna' be sedated . . .

The Details
-------------------
The Wicker Man
Released 1973
Directed by Robin Hardy
Written by Anthony Shaffer
From the novel Ritual, by David Pinner
Starring Edward Woodward, Christopher Lee, Britt Ekland, et. al.

The Wicker Man
Released 2006
Written & Directed by Neil LaBute
Starring Nicholas Cage, Ellen Burstyn, Leelee Sobieski, et. al.

Who Dictates Meaning?

The other day I stumbled across this article at Cracked, which deals with a bunch of books “everyone (including your English teacher) got wrong.” Considering the source, I’m not all that certain of the conclusions (the one about Alice in Wonderland seems particularly out there), but I do know of one that is on the money.  Kind of.

Contrary to everything you’ve ever thought after reading Fahrenheit 451 (or seeing Truffaut’s film version), Ray Bradbury insists that it’s not really about censorship. Rather, it’s about how television would destroy the will and/or ability of the populace at large to read and what that meant for society. At least that’s what Bradbury says now, as he slides into grumpy old man ludditehood. In earlier years, however, he’s played up the censorship angle.

But what Bradbury says the “true” meaning of Fahrenheit 451 isn’t really what I’m interested in. What I’m interested in is who gets to make that decision in the first place: us as readers/viewers, or Bradbury (and Truffaut, for that matter) as the creator?

Take a less literary example, “Uninvited Guest,” from Marillion’s first post-Fish album, Seasons End:


Some fans dealing with the song latched onto this bit of the bridge:

I'm the evil in your bloodstream
I'm the rash upon your skin
And you made a big mistake all right
The day you let me in
And you can fly to the other side of the world
You know you'll only find
I've reserved the seat behind you
We can talk about old times

They concluded that the song was about AIDS, it being a nasty infectious disease with moral overtones (particularly back then). That came as a surprise to Steve Hogarth and John Helmer, who wrote the lyrics. The song’s not about AIDS, it’s about your conscience. But, as I recall, when discussing it, neither H said to the AIDS group "you're wrong" when it came to their interpretation. They seemed to recognize that, once a creator lets a work out into the wild, his interpretation is no more "correct" than any others.

As a reader/viewer/listener, I appreciate that approach. Art is so subjective it's nearly impossible to define the correct reaction to a piece of it. It's one thing to say that my take on, say, Slaughterhouse-5, is in the minority of opinion on the novel (I have no idea if that's true - I just pulled that example out of my ass). It's quite another to say it's "wrong." After all, perceptions of art change through time. Context matters, and all that. It would be odd if we in the 21st Century got the same thing out of the Illiad and the Odyssey as the audiences to whom Homer first told them.

As a writer, it doesn't seem as if I have much choice. Writer of fiction, at any rate. It's not as if I'm trying to persuade readers about a certain topic. I'm just trying to persuade them to keep reading. If someone comes up to me one day, love my work, and thinks "Fine Print" is a parable of man's relationship with nature in the 21st Century (it's not, but that's not important right now), it would be rude beyond belief to say, "thanks, but you're full of shit." Readers are entitled to their opinions, after all.

Which is not to say I'd go so far as to gut this kind of classic call out:


If you're writing nonfiction and a large hunk of your audience don't get what you're trying to say, that's a whole different problem. If I had a judge tell me that the brief I'm filing tomorrow is a parable of man's relationship to nature in the 21st Century, I still can't say "thanks, but you're full of shit." It's up to me to make sure she gets the point I'm trying to make. if she doesn't, what's the point of making it in the first place?

The bottom line, then, is that when it comes to what art is "about," everybody gets to have their own idea and line up however they want. What the creator thinks is an interesting data point, but it's not the last word on the subject.

The Big 5 and the 5-Album Test

Any measure of "greatness" when it comes to music comes with risks and, ultimately, devolves into personal opinions about what's good and bad. Nevertheless, trying to find a way to measure that kind of thing makes for some interesting arguments, if nothing else. Thrown into the mix now, from Steven Hyden at the Onion AV Club, is what he calls the 5-album test.

Emerging from a heavy rotation of Queen's 5-album run (Queen, Queen II, Sheer Heart Attack, A Night At The Opera, and A Day At The Races), it's a measure of sustained excellence. As Hyden puts it:

Lots of artists have five or more classic albums (not including EPs or live records), but the ability to string them together back-to-back means being in the kind of zone that’s normally associated with dominant college women’s basketball dynasties.

As he admits, some heavy hitters, and some of his personal favorites (Dylan, the Stones) can't make the grade. So, I thought I'd apply that test to the Big 5 of the Prog world - King Crimson, Genesis, ELP, Yes, and Pink Floyd - and see if they can make the grade.

First off, Hyden includes Floyd in his list of 5-album wonders for the run of Meddle, Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals, and The Wall. I'll take that one as a given, since I'm only partly familiar with Meddle and Animals and can't really argue with him. I will point out, however, that after Meddle actually came the soundtrack album Obscured by Clouds. Whether that needs to be dealt with, I can't say.

While I've always found Emerson, Lake, & Palmer to be the most frustratingly inconsistent of the Big 5, there's no denying that for classic albums, they hit their stride right out of the gate with their self-titled debut, Tarkus, Trilogy (my favorite whole album), and Brain Salad Surgery. After that, however, things went downhill. I don't think anybody, when pressed, would call Works, Volume 1 a classic, although it has its charms. And nothing afterwords would come anywhere close to classic. So, sorry, ELP, but you fail.

Given their leading role in the prog world since the beginning, you'd think Crimson would easily pass the 5-album test, but I don't think so. Granted, I'm not that familiar with the work between their debut and Islands, but I think at least that one would keep the first five from passing the test. What about what came after? Lark's Tongues in Aspic? Absolutely classic. Starless and Bible Black? Arguable, but let's say yes. Red? A classic, no doubt. Next up would be Discipline, which, while completely different from what came before, is a classic in its own right. Unfortunately, they fall at the fifth post with Beat, arguably the least impressive of the early 80s trilogy. So, I'd say "fail" to Fripp and company, but I could be convinced otherwise.

Yes suffers the same fate, although whether you agree depends wholly on your perception of 1973’s Tales from Topographic Oceans. There’s a consensus that the three albums before that one – The Yes Album, Fragile, and Close to the Edge – are classics. Most would agree that Relayer, which followed it, is, too (I certainly would). But opinions are split on Tales, a sprawling 4-sided opus inspired by Jon Anderson and Steve Howe’s fascination with some Hindu holy book or another. It’s either a pretentious, bloated, confused work that's the epitome of all that prog's detractors said of the genre, or it’s a pretentious, bloated, confused work that's the epitome of all that prog's fans love about the genre. I fall into the group that things it falls short of what came before and after, though it has lots of strong bits. Regardless, I wouldn’t call it a classic, which means Yes fails the 5-album test.

That just leaves Genesis, of the Big 5, to potentially join Floyd in passing that test. Do they? With room to spare, as they band went on a run of classics from 1970 to 1986: Trespass, Nursery Cryme, Foxtrot, Selling England by the Pound, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, Trick of the Tail, and Wind and Wuthering. That’s actually seven albums, so you could lop one off from each end and still make it. I wouldn’t necessarily argue with that. I love Trespass, but it’s still very proto-Genesis in parts, and while Wind and Wuthering has some great bits, it also has “Your own Special Way,” which sort of hinted where the band could end up in the next decade.  Regardless, it's a hell of a run, particularly considering Gabriel's departure along the way.

So, there we go. Two out of the Big 5 make the grade, although they all come close. Not that it matters, of course. Still fun to kick around, though.

New Tunes in a New Place

Last month when I put up a song I'd done for the Genetic Music Project, I threatened that there would be more to come as I shifted from ACID Planet (which has been very good to me) over to Soundcloud.  One of the reasons I wanted to do that was because Soundcloud is designed to more easily interact with blogs and Facebook and the like.  So, here's some new tracks.  Let it never be said that I don't follow through on my threats . . .

Another nice aspect of Soundcloud is that you can arrange songs into "sets" and ensure a correct running order. These three songs don't really work as an integrated whole - it's not really an epic - but they do run on one into the other. Pretty well, I think. So here is my first set, "Nonsense Suite." The nonsense is pretty easy to find - the individual song titles. Two came from Spam email subject headers, the other from some commenter's handle on a blog I read regularly:

Nonsense Suite by Infinity Ranch

When I go to Richmond to do an oral argument, I've got 20 minutes to argue with the judges. Normally, I use up all that time. But one trip, the law had changed so massively (in my client's favor, for once!) since the briefs were filed that the result was pretty much a given. I was at the lectern for less than a minute. Thus, "50 Seconds Over Richmond":

50 Seconds Over Richmond by Infinity Ranch

For some reason, I woke up one morning with the pounding rhythm of Adrian Belew's "Young Lions" in my head. I tweaked that a little bit and came up with this, which I could only call "Gish Gallop." It's less synthy that normal - dig that dirty organ, man!

Gish Gallop by Infinity Ranch

And, just to round things out, an easy-to-play version of "Errors of Avoidance," the GMP track:

Errors of Avoidance by Infinity Ranch

Enjoy!

Friday Review: If

It’s hard out there for a Yes fan. Jon Anderson, whose voice is for many a de facto requirement for Yes, is out, having been replaced by Canadian soundalike Benoit David (from the band Mystery, who aren’t all that bad on their own terms). They’re touring with those musical giants Styx – on equal terms. There’s new album, Fly From Here, but it’s based around a decades old leftover from the Drama days and is not being all that well received. To top it off, Geoff Downes, who’s back for another stint on keyboards (as the Wheel O' Keyboard Players spins), has decided that the proper media strategy is to confront the critics and call for their mass murder.*

Fun times. Fun times.

But what if you’re in the mood for something very Yes-ish in the classic sense (and want to avoid forking over you cash to douchebag Downes)? You’re in luck my friends – Glass Hammer has you covered.

Glass Hammer is sort of like a Steely Dan of prog, as it’s the brainchild of two guys, Steve Babb and Fred Schendel, who bring in a revolving roster of folks to fill out the band from album to album. After a brave, but not too well received attempt at a more mainstream approach, they roared back to their very Yes-influenced roots with If in 2010. To do so, they recruited an entire new slate of collaborators, including a vocalist, named Jon, who sounds an awful lot like that other vocalist named Jon (who guested on 2007’s Culture of Ascent).

Seriously. If you didn’t know Anderson was on the outs with Yes these days and somebody played you "Beyond, Within" and told you it was off the new Yes album, it would be hard to argue with them. Which isn’t to say Glass Hammer is just ripping off the classics. They have that muscular edge to them that many American prog bands seemed to have absorbed from their arena-rock neighbors (look at Kansas or Spock's Beard, for example).

Glass Hammer doesn't really break any new ground, but they do what they do very well. If you cut your teeth on the symphonic prog of the 1970s and want to hear more of it, with a little modern sheen, check out If. You won’t be disappointed.

Details
-------------
If, by Glass Hammer
Released 2010

Tracks:
1. Beyond, Within (11:44)
2. Behold The Ziddle (9:11)
3. Grace The Sky (4:29)
4. At Last We Are (6:46)
5. If The Stars (10:25)
6. If The Sun (24:02)

Players:
Fred Schendel (keyboards and steel guitar)
Steve Babb (bass and keyboards)
Jon Davison (vocals)
Alan Shikoh (guitars)
Randall Williams (drums)

* I've got nothing against Downes as a player and I quite like Drama. But it's bad form to launch into your critics with such vitriol. He deploys the Ann Coulter defense (it's all in jest, I'm just kidding), but it won't work for him, either.

Truth or Justice or the American Way?

Marge: I don't mind you boys doing this in the living room, but in court, doesn't Bart have to tell the truth?

Lionel Hutz, Esq*: Yeah, but what is truth, if you follow me.

- "Bart Gets Hit By a Car," The Simpsons (1991)

In the wake of last week's verdict in the Casey Anthony case, several notable legal voices, including Jeralyn at TalkLeft and Alan Dershowitz at *choke* HuffPo, made the point that in the United States, trials aren't really about finding out what's "true." In criminal cases, the only issue is whether the defendant did whatever the state is charging her with beyond a reasonable doubt. Whatever the ultimate "truth" is really doesn't matter.

It's the nature of the system. Rather than a free ranging pursuit of the facts, to be followed whereever they lead, it's a contest between two opposing theories. There will be a winner. There will be a loser. Juries aren't free to pick some other choice. Civil trials, where the burden of proof is more lax, may actually get closer to actual truth, in the end.

Beyond that, rules of evidence and other procedural issues often keep juries from hearing all of the facts that might be relevant to the truth. Doesn't matter if the defendant had a gun in his car if the cops searched it in violatio of the Fourth Amendment, because the jury will never hear about it. Hearsay? Deemed unreliable enough that we can't trust jurors to parse what's true from what's false (judges, on the other hand, get to do it all the time).

Which is to say that anybody who looks to trials, criminal trials in particular, to define truth for them is on a fool's errand. Unless you're in Florida, ironically enough:
A Miami-Dade judge on Tuesday denied a lawyer’s request to remove a courtroom sign that reads, “We who labor here seek only the truth.”

Defense lawyer Louis Jepeway Jr., representing a man accused in a 2006 triple murder in Miami, had sought to remove the sign. He said it was improper because jurors aren’t always allowed to see the whole truth — meaning some evidence collected by police. He said the sign may spur jurors to wonder what evidence was being omitted from the trial.

The signs, which hang above the benches of most Miami-Dade judges, were introduced in the 1940s.[/quote]
Admittedly, I don't find the defense argument al that compelling. Not because he isn't right about what that phrase might cause a juror to think, but because I doubt any of them ever notice it's there. A slogan over the bench is precisely the kind of thing that blends into the background of the courtroom.

Besides, since courtrooms aren't a place to pursue the truth, what the harm in telling a little white lie about that?

* Esquire, for those not in the biz, means "law talking guy."

On Trilogies (and Beyond!)

Today's a big day in the sci-fi/fantasy world.  After years of waiting and several false alarms, volume five of George R.R. Martin’s dark epic fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire, arrives in stores today (I’m downloading my copy from Audible right now).  A Dance With Dragons drops nearly six years after volume four, A Feast for Crows, even though in an afterward Martin promised that the next volume was practically already written. 

Obviously, it wasn't that easy.  The ensuing delay left a lot of fans pissed, both due to the teasing nature of updates about the next volume, but also out of a fear that Martin might go the way of Robert Jordan and never actually finish the series in his lifetime.  A Song of Ice and Fire is only scheduled to be seven books (compared to the sprawl of Jordan’s Wheel of Time series - 14 books and still carrying on posthumously), but still, with so many years in between, who can be sure?  The level of disgruntledness got so high that Neil Gaiman stepped in to inform everyone that "George R.R. Martin is not your bitch."

That’s part of the problems with books that are part of a series, particularly these days.  Although I'm enthralled by Martin's work, my one gripe is that the first four books in the series aren’t really self-contained units.  It’s more like the story progresses along until it reaches book length, find a stopping point, and that's it.  Sort of like a TV series that just keeps going without any rigid idea of where it’s going from season to season.

I got the same feeling during the book I just finished, Robert J. Sawyer's Wake.  First of a trilogy (naturally), it’s a pretty disappointing execution of a really neat idea (once blind girl becomes a mentor to a nascent consciousness that’s developed on the Web).  But more than that, part of the frustration was that Wake is really only interested in setting up the pieces to play around in the next two volumes.

As a reader, I find that very frustrating, particularly for something like Wake.  It's easier to overlook in something you really enjoyed and know you’ll continue on to the next volume.  But if the first book doesn't hook you but doesn't tell a complete story in its own right, it feels like a colossal waste of time.

As a writer, I hope I can do a little bit better.  The Water Road, my 2009 NaNoWriMo project (revision of which will be my big job for 2012), is designed as the first part of a trilogy.  But I hope it tells a story in its own right, while pointing the direction in which the second book will go.  If nothing else, when the movie rights get picked up but only the first version gets made because the box office sucks (a fantasy world with no humans in which one of the heroines beats her mentor’s skull in – it’s box office gold, Jerry!) I’d like to think it was "complete."  At least to a point.

But, anyway, I'm hardly one to talk from a position to authority.  Now, if you’ll excuse me, I've got some dragons dancing over here . . ..

Justice! Sweet Juicy Justice!

Two hours into the US quarterfinal against Brazil this morning, staring down the barrel of a 2-1 loss, I was contemplating a post about how we were beaten by an Australian, even though we were playing Brazil.

And then, this happened:

The irony being that we only got that much added time at the end due to Brazil's appalling play acting and time wasting.  We sought it out through PKs.  We go on, Brazil goes home.

Bring on the cheese-eating surrender monkeys!

Friday Review: The Man in the High Castle

I tend to run hot and cold when it comes to alternate history stories. Some are brilliant and really make you think about "what might have been." ("The Lucky Strike" by Kim Stanley Robinson comes to mind). Others seem to turn the alternate version of our world into just another fantasy world. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, it just seems kind of pointless to me.

Having said all that, leave it to Philip K. Dick to take the entire concept and turn it on its head. The "twist" in the world of The Man in the High Castle is that the Axis won the Second World War. The United States has been split into pieces, with puppet governments on the coasts run by Japan and Germany and a quasi-independent buffer zone in the middle.

Which is a neat enough idea, but what Dick does is tell several stories tied together by a common factor - another alternate history novel. In that world, a novel called The Grasshopper Lies Heavy is a best seller, banned in Nazi controlled areas, naturally (the Japanese take a more hands off approach). It tells a story of a wild alternate history in which the Allies win the war. It's a brilliant device, allowing Dick's characters to talk about their world and (sort of) ours without turning into huge info dumps.

There are a couple of other things I think Dick was getting at with this novel-within-a-novel. Or at least a couple of things I got out of it.

One was that, while The Grasshopper Lies Heavy gets the big question right (the Allies win rather than the Axis), the details, compared to the real history, are pretty far off. To me, that's Dick's way of saying that alternate history stories - or any speculative fiction, really - shouldn't be seen as predictive. There's simply no way to get it right enough to make the exercise worth it. It's also a cool way to insulate Dick from the inevitable second guessers who would argue that the world he portrays wouldn't have been how the world would really look if the Axis won the war. He essentially concedes the point.

That leads to the other thing I got out of the novel-within-a-novel device. Near the end of The Man in the High Castle, one of the characters gets to have a meeting with the author of The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. Along the way, she realizes that the novel isn't really about the "other" world, but about there own. That seems like a meta commentary on speculative fiction which, at the end of the day, works best when it says something about how we live in the real world.

Having said that, the revelation the character has is probably not the one I read into it. I won't ruin the ending, but suffice to say it does call into question a lot of what came before. I'm not really sure it works, but I'm open to being convinced. Hell, even Dick blames the I Ching (a major recurring theme in the book) for the ending. Who am I to argue with thousands of years of Chinese woo?

The Details
-----------------
The Man in the High Castle, by Philip K. Dick
First published in 1962
Winner - Hugo Award, Best Novel (1963)

Number 9 . . . Number 9 . . .

Five years ago, 2006, was the high point of my autocross career. At the time, I was driving a car that, while not prepped to the limits of the rules, was as close as I’m likely to come for a while. I was committed enough to schlep a set of “sticky” R-compound tires to every event, swapping them on the car in the morning, off in the evening. The effort paid off. I swept my region’s trophies – class, PAX index, and both “driver of the year” style cups – which I’m unlikely to do again. I also went to my first SCCA National Tour event in Peru, Indiana.

I. Got. My. Ass. Kicked. Seriously. I wasn’t DFL overall, but I came dead last in my class by quite a margin. It was a humbling experience. So why would I do it again?

Good question! For whatever reason, I decided that five years had been enough time between exposure to the real hard core autocross experience. So, this past weekend, I loaded up the WRX and headed to suburban Toledo, Ohio, for another Tour event, which doubles as the Northern States Championship. How did I do?

I. Got. My. Ass. Kicked. Again. But that’s OK. I expected it this time and knew I was, literally, bringing a dull knife to a gun fight. See, when I got the WRX last year I decided I wanted to tune it a little bit. But it’s my daily driver and needs to handle a half-hour commute twice a day, plus 3.5-hour trips to K’s every other weekend. Given that my car is driven on the street every day of the year, but only autocrossed a dozen or so times during the same span, real race-prep was out of the question.

So, I’ve stiffened the WRX up a little bit with a set of springs and matched Bilstein dampers from GTWorx. I went with this setup based on a review from a fellow WRXer who noted its livability on the street while making the car a more enjoyable autocross platform. That’s certainly true. It looks damn good, too:

Photo by K.

Photo by Martin Valent.

That mod alone kicked me into STU ("Street Touring Ultra," for those not familiar with the SCCA's alphabet soup of autocross classification). However, aside from the springs/dampers, the only other mods I had heading to Toledo were fresh brake pads and tires. My competition, for the most part, took full advantage of the STU rules, which allow for more serious, if less streetable, modifications. As an example, one co-driven STi in the class needed to repeatedly slam on the brakes on the way to the starting line, presumably because the pads it had were of the type that only work well once heated. Such pads aren't really workable on the street, unless you live in an area where it’s summer all year ‘round.

If you want to get a feel for what a "real" STU car looks and sounds like, check out this video of one of the Sunday runs of the class winner at Toledo:

UPDATE: Per the driver in the comments, that car is actually his daily driver - he even has snow tires for it!  Makes me feel even slower.

Given all that, I’m happy with how the event turned out. I beat the other guy in STU who was in the non-top-of-the-line car (another 2.5 liter WRX – we’re really stuck between classes right now), which is about all I could hope for. I was ninth out of ten – not DFL! A step up from 2006, a least. I had fun, in spite of the oppressive heat over two days. Met some good people, saw some killer cars, and took part in some awesome competition, if only from a distance -the top 5 in my class were covered by less than 1/2 a second after two days of competition.  The guy above won out by 0.007 of a second.  That's close, no matter what you're doing.

Along the way I got a reminder of how different and intense national-level competition is. To be honest, I simply don't have the stomach for it. Autocross will always be a fun diversion for me, not the kind of thing I can get seriously worked up about.  I lack the drive (so to speak) that the drivers around me had to push themselves and their equipment to the limit. That means I won’t cover myself in glory very often. But I’ll have fun. I’m OK with that.

On Celebrity Defendants

So, Casey Anthony has been acquitted of murder and other more serious offenses. She still faces sentencing on four counts of lying to police, but that’s a far cry from the trip to the death chamber the state of Florida was gunning for.  I know very little about the case (and care about it even less), aside from what I saw about it on 48 Hours months and months ago.  But I do know one thing for certain – a large group of people in this country, who have been tied up in this case for months, are going to flip their shit once they learn of the verdict.

Which is, of course, their right.  It’s a free country and everyone’s entitled to an opinion, even an uninformed one.  An uninformed opinion is the only kind that the public in general can have about a case like this.  I don't care how much TV coverage it gets or how apoplectic it makes Nancy Grace, the general public simply can't make an informed decision about whether the jury got it right in this case.

Or any other celebrity case.  It’s impossible for regular folks to keep up with all the minutiae of a trial.  Did you sit through all the testimony from every witness?  Did you listen to all of the instructions given by the judge?  Did you pay attention to all of the closing arguments (occurring on a Sunday, of all bizarre things)?  Outside of the jurors who heard the case, who would?  Sooner or later, no matter how interested you are, you’ve got to go take a shower or shuttle the kids to soccer practice or go to work.  The actual jurors aren't saddled with such distractions.

None of that means the jury in this case got it right, or got it wrong, for that matter.  But whether it's Casey Anthony or OJ Simpson or Lizzie Borden (pick your "Trial of the Century"), the only ones who have all the relevant facts and the tool and time to analyze them are the jurors who hear the case and render the verdict.

In a much less high-profile case (a smaller story, but I know you’ve been following it), I won a pretty big case before the Fourth Circuit today.  The court refused to go along with other courts on the issue, creating a circuit split which could mean a full en banc rehearing or even an appointment with the Supreme Court.  We'll see.

Friday Review: Hybris

Although the argument about what the first real progressive rock album was is a long and ongoing one, most people will agree that the first real definitive work of prog – it’s mission statement, if you will – was King Crimson’s debut, In the Court of Crimson King. Likewise, I’m sure there are multiple candidates for albums that kicked off prog’s third wave in the 1990s, but Hybris is probably as good a benchmark as any.

In the 80s prog, to paraphrase Frank Zappa, wasn’t dead, it just smelled funny. The genre leaders from the 70s were either defunct or morphing into slickly competent posters or mega sellouts (your millage may vary, of course). The briefly cresting neo-prog wave produced music that was more direct and friendly to pop conventions. Which is not to say it sucked (some of my favorite bands are neo), but to a certain segment of the fanbase it’s not really "prog." Sure, there were a few still pushing the genres of music into the unknown (the aforementioned Crimson for one). But all in all, the heady days of majestic epic music filled with odd meters and weird sounds appeared to be a fond memory.

Then a funny thing happened on the way to graveyard – modern technology stepped in and allowed a revival of the 70s style. On the one hand, recording and distribution technology (CDs, in particular) allowed more bands to produce more albums without the backing of major labels or any label whatsoever. On the other hand, the emergence of the Internet allowed a small but passionate group of prog fans spread all over the globe to find each other, share their enthusiasm, and, most importantly, turn each other on to new bands.

Into that world came Änglagård, the first of many bands from Sweden that have been at the forefront of the modern prog movement. Which is odd, because there’s nothing at all modern about their sound. Honestly, Hybris could have fallen through a time warp from 1973, with the exception that it sounds crisp and clear. Aside from that, the fusillade of Hammond, Mellotron, and Frippish Les Paul definitely evokes a bygone era.

Which is not to say Hyrbis, or the band’s follow up Epilog, isn’t an excellent record. Nor is it to say they sound like copycats of any particular 70s group. Instead, the band sounds like it came of age during that era and let all those influence seep in. Änglagård does what they do better than anyone else. To complain about it sounding dated is to miss the point.

Hybris is one of the definitive symphonic prog albums of the modern era. Thankfully, after several years out of print, it’s available now in revamped form from the band (with a bonus track that first appeared on the After the Storm benefit album). More thankfully, they’ve working together again and promise new music in the near future.


Details
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Hybris, by Änglagård
Released 1992

Tracks:
1. Jordrök (11:10)
2. Vandringar i Vilsenhet (11:53)
3. Ifrån Klarhet Till Klarhet (8:04)
4. Kung Bore (12:57)

Players:
Thomas Johnson (keyboards and synths)
Jonas Engdegård (guitars)
Tord Lindman (vocals, guitars)
Johan Högberg (bass, bass pedals and Mellotron effects)
Anna Holmgren (flute)
Mattias Olsson (drums and percussion)