Joshua Malbin

Late in Book Two Günther Grass builds one of his novel’s main climaxes. World War II is ending and Oskar Matzerath, the narrator and protagonist, attends his father’s funeral. There he plays horseshoes with a metal wreath and a cast-iron cross until he finally rings the post and makes a momentous decision: he will put down the tin drum he’s been beating since he was three years old and allow himself to grow for the first time since then.

Two small lessons here. The first is, don’t worry too much about making your symbolism heavy-handed. Oskar’s father literally chokes to death on his Nazi Party pin when the Russians arrive in Danzig, and as a result Oskar stops his incessant toy drumbeat and begins to emerge from an infantile state.  (Though we soon learn he doesn’t make it all the way to normal adulthood but only to a slightly larger but now somewhat deformed midgethood. Presumably so too did Germany.) Not subtle, still satisfying.

The second is, the impact of a climax is heightened if you let the reader relax for a few pages afterward and absorb it. The climactic chapter “Should I or Shouldn’t I?” which ends with “Leo proclaiming to all the world: ‘He’s growing, he’s growing, he’s growing…’” is followed by this flash-forward to the mental institution from which Oskar narrates his life story:

Last night I was beset by hasty dreams. They were like friends on visiting days. One dream after another; one by one they came and went after telling me what dreams find worth telling; preposterous stories full of repetitions, monologues which could not be ignored, because they were declaimed in a voice that demanded attention and with the gestures of incompetent actors. When I tried to tell Bruno the stories at breakfast, I couldn’t get rid of them, because I had forgotten everything; Oskar has no talent for dreaming.

While Bruno cleared away the breakfast, I asked him as though in passing: “My dear Bruno, how tall am I exactly?”

Bruno set the little dish of jam on my coffee cup and said in tones of concern: “Why, Mr. Matzerath, you haven’t touched your jam.”

This goes on for three more pages, in the course of which we learn one or two more things (Oskar’s height at the time of telling the story, for example). For the most part, though, this is dialogue and description meant to be forgotten. Look at how that first paragraph says exactly nothing. It is filler, meant to register as filler and give the reader time to digest what came before it.

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I’m in a testy mood today, so at first Harold Ford’s self-important BS put a smile on my face.

Under assault from allies of Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, former congressman Harold E. Ford Jr. fired back on Friday afternoon, saying he would be not be “bullied or intimidated” by “party bosses” as he considers challenging her in this fall’s Democratic primary.

Mr. Ford’s interest in the race has rattled the Gillibrand camp, which has quickly sought to portray him as out of step with New York Democratic voters, and, through supporters, like Sen. Charles E. Schumer, tried to dissuade him from entering the race.

Harold Ford is anti-choice. He is anti-gay. He supported the war in Iraq and was chair of the DLC for a year. He moved to New York three years ago to go to work for Merrill Lynch. I’m sure he’ll do awesome in a New York State Democratic primary.

I have no especial love for Kirsten Gillibrand, who I would have loved to see face a credible challenge from the left. Nevertheless, my first thought was, “I’m going to enjoy watching her kick Harold Ford in the nuts.”

My second, though, was that there is a nonzero chance she could lose, which could set up a Harold Ford/Rudy Giuliani general. A cold chill went up my spine and everything stopped being funny.

If that happens I might have to protest the very idea of democracy.

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The video in Josh K-sky’s post below has the Carpenters’ “Superstar” as its soundtrack. That’s not only my favorite Carpenters song, it’s one of my favorite karaoke standbys. Others include:

David Bowie, “Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide” or “Life on Mars,” usually not both on the same night

Bruce Springsteen, “Thunder Road”

Dr. Dre, “Forgot About Dre”

LL Cool J, “Momma Said Knock You Out”

Merle Haggard, “Carolyn”

Digital Underground, “The Humpty Dance”

Eminem, “The Real Slim Shady” (Admittedly I haven’t yet sung this one in public. I’m itching to, though.)

The list reflects the implicit karaoke philosophy of the group I usually sing with: pick songs that are actually fun to perform rather than the usual 80s hair-band anthems with high kitsch value. That usually means songs that are in some way challenging to pull off. Also, always spring for the private room.

I’ll probably add more titles as I remember them. Yours?

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Via LA Observed, this video of Los Angeles buildings demolished in the 00′s:

Lost in the Aughts from curbed los angeles on Vimeo.

Given the vastness of the subject, “We’ve Only Just Begun” would be as good a Carpenters song for the soundtrack. My first job in Los Angeles, for H.E.R.E. Local 11, was at 321 S. Bixel Street, a building owned by the union. It was taken by the school district and today is Miguel Contreras Elementary School.

Following that, I worked for the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy at 548 S. Spring Street, one of many old, underutilized downtown commercial spaces. Before it was turned into lofts and LAANE had to leave, it was used to shoot the 7½th floor in Being John Malkovitch.

City Hall, the location of my last office job, still hosts the seat of governance. But a brand new jail sits on the parking lot where I left my car every day for five years, and our former field office is today a furniture store.

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Badly exhausted and jetlagged to the point of nausea. Amazing trip, though, saw 250 new species of birds in just over three weeks of travel. All those who are interested let me know and I’ll send you a link to the Snapfish album.

More when I’m saner.

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In a gesture towards a clean slate, a fresh start, and a healthy digestive reaction to the upcoming bowl of black-eyed peas, here are four quick sketches for blog posts that I started to draft but never completed. Fly free, little half-born angels.

• Great Daves of the 90′s. I read Infinite Jest as part of the Infinite Summer challenge, and David Foster Wallace’s twisting, reflexive, ouroborean self-consciousness took me back to the early 90′s. The middle year of my college career was marked by emerging consciousness of the fictions involved in pronouncements about Generation X, and the same kinds of impossibility around newness and protest that Kurt Cobain seemed to reel from in his final famous years. When Dave Eggers (whose Might magazine I had enjoyed) published A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, its hysterically self-aware style felt immediately familiar, and I put off reading it until a few years ago, when I devoured it quickly, enjoyably, and without surprise. Wallace, however, resonates with the maddening headaches of that young consciousness that everything you think is already always being said, programmed by a machine you may operate but never master. But by approaching these struggles through the character of Don Gately, a recovering alcoholic, and showing us his experience grappling with the seemingly empty but vitally true dogma of Alcoholics Anonymous, Wallace validated this familiar and vertiginous self-reflexivity while challenging and expanding it, using a feature of my upper-middle-class overeducated habits of mind to create sympathy for a broken, giant ex-con. Also noted: while I was obsessing over the meanings and traps of “Generation X” I bought a Malcolm X hat (purple X on white baseball cap) and Sharpied “Gen-” in front of the X, and added “Generation Next” to the back, a gesture which in retrospect was a bizarre fashion error.
• Where The Wild Things Are. Where The Fantastic Mr. Fox presented a fetishization of material goods behind its trumpeted wildness, the Jonzes’ Eggers’s Sendak’s wild things are figurines in staging a Oedipal passage to adulthood. Lauren Ambrose’s monster KJ is a cool babysitter, providing a mother-figure who is also a safe object for the early stirrings of sexual desire (she swallows Max whole to protect him at one point, keeping him safe in a sticky cavernous interior). The movie’s exploration of childhood sets sail from the therapist’s couch, turning Max’s inchoate childhood rages (very well represented) into figures with names before the journey home — and into healthy adulthood — can start. A delightful adaptation of a childhood story to a therapy generation, Where The Wild Things Are was good but both HJ and I wished it wasn’t the definitive take. We wanted the magnificent sets and costumes put in the hands of two or three more writers, so they could play out their own versions of WTWTA against their own idiosyncracies.
• Interzone. At the time, the Los Angeles City Council was considering the prohibition of medical marijuana dispensaries within 1,000 feet of any residence. More typically, restricted uses will be prohibited close to schools, churches, parks and playgrounds–y’know, because the children are the future– but someone went and threw residences in there as well, leaving about two or three industrial districts where dispensaries could fill prescriptions. My proposal was for the creation of an L.A. Interzone, a la the portrayal of Tunis (?) in Naked Lunch, where head shops, dispensaries, sex offenders and strip clubs could all profitably locate.
• Road Not Taken. I noticed that the people running to replace Paul Krekorian in the special election for California’s 43rd assembly district were all people that I knew and had come up with in L.A. politics. When I started working in City Hall I toyed with the idea of one day running for office, and if I had, it would be that election today. I made the choice not to seek elective office a long time before I got out of local politics entirely, but if I hadn’t, I could be out there today. Mutatis mutandis, I would have stacked up well. They’re a talented and friendly lot, and it should be an interesting race, but the Assembly today is no place for someone who wants to make a difference in California politics, sadly.

There. No more ideas! I’ll have to go see a movie or something. Big Josh, you back yet?

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