Next

I just finished reading Michael Crichton's newest book, "Next." I've been a big fan of Michael Chrichton since I was eleven years old, which was the same time the movie "Jurassic Park" came out. Coincidence? I think not!

Although "Next" came out over a year ago I've held off on reading it because of overwhelming negative reader reviews on amazon.com. So, I decided to wait until I could find a cheap, used copy before I would read it. The other day I found such a copy at a used book store. It costed $1.50 and it smells like its last owner was a chain smoker. I wrote a review on amazon.com so I could add my two cents about the book. Usually I don't feel a need to do that, unless I think I have something new to add to the discussion.

So, to save you the effort of hunting down my review on amazon.com which I'm sure all of you were so anxious to do, I'm posting a copy of it here. The following is my review, titled "A Crichton Storytelling Experiment Gone Amok." I gave it three (out of five) stars. Here it is:

***

About a hundred pages into "Next," I started to get worried that this book would be like Chrichton's Airframe, a book that really disappointed me because a dinosaur didn't eat the airplane. Crichton's stronger stories usually follow a small group of people (usually, but not necessarily scientists) who face off with dangerous byproducts of the irresponsible use of technology, like dinosaurs, killer nano-robots, medieval knights and giant squid. In "Next," Chrichton tries a different story structure that was successful in movies like "Crash" and "Traffic," where several stories are told simultaneously, with the only connecting tissue between them is a central theme. In "Crash" the theme was racism, in "Traffic" it was drugs, in "Next" the theme is genetics. This could have worked really well, except for the fact that the characters were overwhelmingly unpleasant and membrane thin. The theme could just as easily have been slimy lawyers, or cheating married people that hate each other, without much of a stretch.

Chrichton's strong point was never characterization, but that never bothered me before because where Chrichton's characterization really shines is not with the people, but with the dinosaurs, the nano-robots, the medieval knights, the giant squid and all the other strange creatures irresponsibly used technology can conjure up.

"Next" does have its share of said creatures. The thing that made this book worth reading (and which earned it three stars instead of two) was Gerard, the super intelligent parrot, who can do math, but even more surprising can quote movies that I never dreamed would be quoted in a Chrichton book. And Dave, the humanzee boy, who bears a lot of resemblance to bat boy, except he's half chimp, not bat. Not to mention an orangutan who can also talk, but only likes to say French swear words. The humans, on the other hand, like to say lots and lots of English swear words. Had the book put more focus on these characters, instead of the humans, I would have been a much happier reader.

Spiderwick in Labyrinth, Frankenstein Puppets

Yesterday I took my nephew and his friend to see the movie "The Spiderwick Chronicles." Here's a brief synopsis: Freddie Highmore (Charlie from "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory") plays twins. One of the twins finds a field guide to the magical creatures that live in their back yard, written by their great grandpa. One of the twins reads it, and in doing so unleashes a whole bunch of nasty goblins, and a malevolent ogre, that they must defeat.

I will say up front that I loved it. My nephew said he liked "The Golden Compass" more, but why compare the two? "Spiderwick" reminded me of those classic Jim Henson movies "Labyrinth" and "The Dark Crystal." There are creatures both good and evil, all on various levels of grotesqueness (I'm glad that my spell checker informed me that grotesqueness is a real word). Of course in "Spiderwick" the creatures are CGI, not puppets like Jim Henson used to make. But I thought their design and their personalities were similar enough that a character named Hogsqueal from "Spiderwick" could wander into Labyrinth and not look or act out of place. Or that David Bowie could show up during a scene with the Freddie Highmore twins in "Spiderwick" and say: "You remind me of the babe."

CGI can be cool, and the creatures in "Spiderwick Chronicles" were cool. But I do love puppets. Sometimes I think that puppetry is a dieing art, the puppeteers forced to work at Wal-Mart because they can't get a job using their puppeteering skills. I hope I'm wrong.

A couple of years ago I tried to make a puppet. It was going to be a Viking, but I gave up before I could bring it to life. It was like when Frankenstein (and here I am referring to Mary Shelley's book, not any of the movie versions) made his creature. He wanted his creation to look beautiful. He made it tall, gave it black hair and red lips. Only he did not know what he was doing. When he brought the creature to life his efforts to make it look beautiful ended up making it look hideous beyond imagining. Have you ever tried to draw a picture of a beautiful person and have it turn out looking awful? (If you haven't, just remember the scene from "Napoleon Dynamite" when Napoleon gives summer the picture he drew of her -- "I spent four hours shading your lip" -- and I think you will get a good image of what I'm trying to say here.) Well, that is what happened to Frankenstein's monster. Frankenstein did not realize his lack of artistic talent until it was too late, and the monster was off on a murderous rampage because he was too ugly for anyone to love him.

I'm pretty sure the same thing would have happened with my puppet. Lucky thing I realized that I didn't know what I was doing before I could complete my hideous creation. Maybe someday I will try again.

What's Mysterious

A couple days ago I read that the teaser trailer for the new Indiana Jones movie would be coming out today (you can watch it at indianajones.com, you should watch it now). So when I woke up this morning, that was what I was most excited about. Rather pathetic for Valentine's Day, I know, but when you're single, like me, on this blessed day you must find something to keep you going. So in my case, it was a happy jaunt back to my boyhood days before I ever cared about girls and watched "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" or "Raiders of the Lost Ark" at least once a week. For many years I heard rumors from friends that they were going to make another one, but I never believed them. Harrison Ford kept getting older. Spielberg's movies contained less and less the whiz bang excitement and sense of awe that his eighties movies had. And Lucas, well, Lucas was doing . . . something. But somehow, after all these years, they all pulled together and made a new Indiana Jones movie. How did it happen? I don't know. But let this be a lesson to all those who disbelieve. Just because you don't believe something will happen, that doesn't mean that it wont happen.

The movie is still forthcoming, I will doubtless have more to say about it come May 22. But we do have a trailer (which can be found at indianajones.com and before you do anything else, if you have not already done so, you should go over there right now and watch it) and I am excited beyond belief.

It reminds me of the same giddy feeling I got when the trailer to Star Wars Episode I came out. Before you roll your eyes, remember that this was back in the spring of 1999 before anyone had seen it and had any reason to complain. Star Wars was still the awesomest thing ever. They showed the Episode I trailer on the news, and we recorded it onto a VHS tape. I wore that little spot on the tape out from watching it, and rewinding it, then watching it over again. This was also in the days when we had a dial up connection for the internet and the only videos you could get online were tiny. I think the first trailer I ever watched online was for Harry Potter, but I digress.

I hope this new Indiana Jones movie (have you watched the new trailer yet? you really should) keeps the sense of mystery and danger that was so gripping in the other movies. Star Wars also had that sense of mystery and awe. But as it turns out, as we discovered in the prequels, there really isn't much mystery in galactic politics (actually there is, because it's a mystery how Jar Jar could convince anyone, let alone the entire galactic senate, to grant emergency supreme almighty powers to Palpatine, allowing him to position himself to become Emperor and therefor take over the entire galaxy, but that's not the kind of mystery I'm talking about). It's that sense of mystery and awe that you have when you're a kid, when you go on vacation to a place you've never heard of before, and it is all strange and new yet at the same time ancient. Then when you get older and learn about geography and global studies and all that, the sense of mystery fades. I hope that this new Indiana Jones movie will give me back a piece of that.

And if you've read this far without going to indianajones.com and watching the new trailer, than all I have to say is, you're already on a computer, what's stopping you?

Goldman

This week I re-read "The Princess Bride," the book, S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure abridged by William Goldman. This is one of those books that it is impossible to stay unhappy while reading, which is a very good thing because this week was worse than usual (come to think of it the first week of February has always been consistently the most awful week of the year for me, 2008 proves to be no exception, but that's another matter). I suppose there is some literary critic out there who can stay unhappy while reading "The Princess Bride", but I do not envy that person.

One thing that I find endlessly delightful apart from the story and all those lovable characters is Goldman's commentary. When I read this book before, his quirky little interjections made me laugh, and then I went on my merry way. This time they still made me laugh, but during this horrible, awful, no good, very bad first week of February, one thing that Goldman had to say stuck out to me.

Life is not fair.

While I was reading and being delighted by the book, all the while the details of this bad week still swimming around the back of my mind, a weird type of communication occurred between me and Goldman. Not William Goldman, the novelist and screenwriter, per se, but the Goldman that lives between the pages of "The Princess Bride." This Goldman could read my thoughts the way I was reading his book. I could imagine Goldman nodding his head knowingly as he listened to my thoughts while simultaneously entertaining me, and then say, "well, life ain't fair."

I don't know whether to find this knowledge liberating or oppressing. After giving it some thought, I suppose that if I dwell on it too much it becomes oppressing, but then if I get over it, it becomes liberating. That's the trick though. So, that's my job for the next few days. Life is not fair, get over it.

Interesting Resumes

A few summers ago I was riding the bus (good old reliable public transportation) on my way home from work. I had a very monotonous and unpleasant job which I really hated, and my whole life was in a rut. It was about 2:45 in the afternoon and an unusual thing happened. At a bus stop a group of at least 20 youngsters got on. I would say they were all about nine or ten years old. One sat down in the empty seat beside me and a couple of others sat in the seats behind me. I didn't talk to the kid who I was sitting next to because he probably wasn't supposed to talk to strangers, and I was a stranger. One of the kids sitting behind me, though, was quite the chatter box and talked the whole time while I had the privilege of being in his vicinity. I put it that way because something he said struck like a great hammer of wisdom. After I heard him say it, I turned around in a nonchalant manner so I could get a good look at him. Who was this kid, anyway? He was skinny, had spiky blond hair, and glasses (kind of like that kid on "Meet the Robinsons" come to think of it). The part that I remember of the conversation he had with his friend went something like this:

Kid With Spiky Blond Hair: I went to my friends house and his house was huge! And he had everything! But all we did was watch TV for eight hours.

Kid With Spiky Blond Hair's Friend: Yeah, some kids are like that.

Kid With Spiky Blond Hair: Not me. I want to be interesting.

When he said that I laughed. But then I thought about what he said for the rest of that day. And now, two and a half years later, a week hasn't gone by when I haven't thought about what he said. In fact, it's become part of the driving force behind my life. I want to be interesting, too. So I've tried to do some interesting things in the past couple of years, somethings were more interesting than others, and some may be interesting to no one but me. This brings me to what I was wanting to talk about when I started writing this post: Resumes.

But before I do that, I'd like to pay tribute to that kid with the spiky blond hair. He didn't know it, and I probably wouldn't recognize him if I passed him on the street today, but he changed my life. Have I ever changed anyone's life like that? If I have, then I'm probably as clueless as he is about how he affected mine. But even so, may all who read this, and walk in the street and ride the bus every day have such a chance -- when they least expect it, and don't even know it -- to change someone for the better, and take it.

Ok, back to resumes. When I was first introduced to the concept of resume writing I heard things like: write the resume that stands out above the rest, or, make your resume grab the employer's attention. Naturally when I heard this I thought, I've tried my hardest these past couple of years to be interesting. Of course I could come up with a resume that would stand above the rest and show how interesting I am. I wanted my resume to be interesting, too.

But then I learned about resume scanners, HR departments, and it's no wonder that my incredibly interesting resumes have not gotten me any results. Resume writing is actually an elimination game. The whole point isn't to stand out, but to not get eliminated. It's like the TV show Survivor. Except it's an office person that votes you out, without an island ceremony and flaming torches. And instead of competing for $1 million, you're competing for a job that will only make you $1 million if you work there for 300 years. Well, maybe not so long, hopefully.

So now, trying to be interesting is secondary. I haven't been doing such a good job at that in recent months, anyway. More importantly, I try not to get eliminated.

Before I go back to my job hunt, if any of you out there have come to this blog post looking for resume writing wisdom and are disappointed, but are still reading for reasons unbeknown to me, I thank you for your patience in reading my spontaneous thoughts. For your trouble here's a couple of web sites all about resume writing and job hunting which I found helpful: jobhuntersbible.com and susanireland.com. Good hunting!

Overture and Jazz

Yesterday, at around Super Bowl half-time, I went to pick up my parents at the airport. They went to San Diego for the weekend and had a wonderful time. But this is not their story. Nor is it my commentary about the Patriots and the Giants. It is the story of my drive to the airport.

It had snowed the day before, which quickly turned to slushy dirty wet stuff. The weather had been wet and miserable for most of the week. Add to it the fact that it was another week in my so far fruitless job hunt, and I was feeling down. I'd been feeling down all week, all January, in fact. But, weather-wise, by Sunday afternoon the clouds had scattered a little and the sun cut through enough to light up the world just a touch.

As I drove up the freeway I had the radio tuned to the classical music channel. I make no excuses for listening to the classical music while the super bowl was going on, I simply was. And then a marvelous thing happened. They played what could possibly be the greatest recording of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture ever performed. I didn't recognize it at first. I'll admit I'm not well versed in the classics, and have never recognized anything I've heard on the classical station. But that never stopped me from listening. The music began to built on itself and the horns played the famous melody of the 1812 Overture. That sounded familiar and it reminded me of Frank Capra movies. Then a children's choir started to sing. By this time the music hooked me. The freeway flew by under my feet.

When the music reached its climax, just at the moment of the first sound of canon to fire, the sun hit just the right part of the sky to shoot its rays in between the clouds and illuminate everything from a gray world -- the road, trees, other cars, the sky -- in golden light. What a glorious moment. Canons fired, children sang, and I felt as if I were soaring as I drove over an overpass.

After it ended the announcer even said it was probably the greatest recording ever of the piece. And who could say otherwise? I felt moved and invigorated in that way that celebrations of music and long dead composers by talented musicians you listen to while driving to the airport to pick up your parents has a way of doing.

For this wasn't the first time that a perfect meld of music and environment moved me while I was on my way to pick up my parents from the airport after their vacation.

About two years earlier my parents went on vacation to Hawaii, and I drove to the airport to pick them up on their return home. The night was warm and I had the windows down. This time I was listening to the Jazz station. I had already left the freeway and was on the long straight road that leads directly to the airport. The lines in the road, lit up by the cars headlights, ran together in the distance. At the point where they met I could see the control tower, standing like an obelisk. Directly aligned above it was the moon, a shimmering crescent on its way back from being a new moon, And surrounded by stars.

I felt the wind coming through the open window, moved my head to the rhythm of the jazz, looked at the road, the control tower, and the moon, all in alignment, and I said "cool." A word that's been overused, but invented for moments like these.

So all this to say, not just to my parents but to everyone, that when you're on vacation, the world has a way of welcoming you back. Now it's time to work again.

Before I sign off I must give credit to the performers of the 1812 Overture. After doing a bit of digging on the classical station's web site, I can give the statistics. It was performed by the Cincinatti Pops Orchestra with the Kiev Symphony Chorus and the Cincinatti Children's Choir, conducted by Erich Kunzel. Bravo.