BlackChampagne -- no longer new; improvement also in question.: May 2009
Friday, May 29, 2009
Why Clothes Suck
I bitch fairly regularly (perhaps more often via Twitter than the blog) about the difficulties I have finding clothing that fits. For this problem I blame... everyone else. Yes, very political of me.
This photo was taken today, in the dressing room at a Ross (or possibly TJ Maxx or Marshall's -- they're interchangeable). It's me trying on a pair of linen pants, and the operative word there is "trying." As you can see, it's not going real well. Admittedly, I'm fairly unique amongst American men in not carrying around a spare tire, so I'm not surprised that clothing is no longer made to fit me, since it wouldn't fit 90% of the other guys my height. But it's still kind of annoying when I shop. And fail. These pants are an extreme example, but far from unusual.
What makes it funny is that they aren't even my size. They're too small for me! A "32/34 Medium" was what the tag said. (I forget the name, but they were some designer brand, and had an $89 suggested retail tag. Ross wanted $12.99 for them.) I wear 32 waist pants, or "large" when pants, such as elastic waist sweat pants, gym pants, etc, are sized in that nomenclature. Mediums are (used to be) better for my waist, but the legs are too short so they leave me high waters'ed. And it's not that I'm freakishly sized; I'm about an inch under 6 feet, and fairly uniform in my proportions.
Furthermore, I've got plenty of pairs of "large" gym pants that fit fine. None of them were bought recently though, and it's looking like few will be bought in the future, unless I become pregnant. Que? Cause the "large" they make these days are about 6 inches bigger in the waist than they used to be. I tried on some polyester gym out pants at an Old Navy a few weeks ago, and the large were LOL-able. At least that's what the IG did when I paraded out of the dressing room to show her. I could wear them, since they had a drawstring, but they were just giganticly large in the waist; at least six inches bigger than I needed, and with the draw string pulled tight they were ridiculously bunched up and doubled over. And uncomfortable. The mediums of the same pants were also too large, but more reasonably. The legs were way too short, though. I didn't bother to try the smalls; they'd have been like culottes on me.
Today's pants, featured in the above photo, were labeled (by the manufacturer) as a medium, 32/34. They were about medium in length, but were far, far larger than that in the waist. At least 38 or 40, judging by the fact that all of my other pants/shorts are 31 or 32 waist. (Not that those numbers mean anything absolute. The values are entirely relative, as I'll discuss in a moment.) Better yet, the store today had the exact same pants, make/color/etc, in "Small, 30/32." I tried those on and they fit even worse. The waist was only slightly too large, perhaps equivalent to a size 34, but they were about knee length, and fantastically tight on my thighs. I'm talking sausage casings.
I had a similar problem while shopping for jeans a few weeks ago, and I'm taking that to mean that I've done so much stepmill and rowing machine and elliptical and weight machines at the gym that my thighs are now considerably thicker than those of the average male. At least the average male with a waist anywhere near his actual skeletal structure. I'm not the girl in the photo, but the concept appears to be the same.
That curious, unintentionally-arrived at destination is making things even worse. Now the average pair of pants is way too big for my waist, too short for my legs, and too tight for my thighs. At this rate I'll have to embrace the Scottish heritage my last name hints at, and start wearing kilts. If only the Clan Bruce tartan colors weren't that hideous, discount Xmas wrapping paper, color scheme.
The real amusement with male pants size is something I noted on this blog long ago, but don't care enough now to find a link to. (It's not like anyone would click it anyway.) It's that the inches listed for pants waists are nowhere near the actual measurement of said waist. I wear 31 or 32 inch pants. All different makes, brands, designs, etc. Yet my waist is actually around 36 inches, measured just now. I can go down to 35 if I squeeze. And yet 35 inch waist pants would fall off me like a hula hoop.
It's not some sort of error either; all my dress slacks and jeans state their size as 32 waist/32 inseam. The inseam is exact: I just measured it and it's 32 inches. So it's not like the garment industry has decided to add 4 or 6 inches to all pants measurements. Inseams can be verified by any carpenter's tool, while waists are understated by 4-6" as an industry standard.
I want to talk to a tailor about this some time. I know that for expensive clothes they actually measure you and make things to order. (I'd love that, if I could afford it.) But what do they tell their clients? If I'd never measured my own waist as part of my clothing size lies obsession, I'd think I had a 31 or 32" waist. That's what all my clothing says, after all. So if I told that to a tailor would he/she know to make me pants that were actually 36" at the waist? If that tailor measured me would he/she note the actual 36" waist, and then put a 32" tag into them, so I'd know what size pants to look for in a store if I wanted to replicate the fit?
This sort of secret inflation (which is epidemic with the even more arbitrary sizes of women's clothing) is, I think, to blame for the occasional starlet faux pas. Every few months some celebrity female balloons up, gets photographed in something unflattering (i.e. that shows her actual size, instead of camouflaging it), receives nasty gossip news coverage, and issues an indignant statement about how she's been a size 4 since high school and if that's too fat then America is unhealthily obsessed with weight, etc. (Which we clearly are, in a self-loathing sort of way, but that's another issue.)
What makes it so funny is that said female (I remember this happening with Jennifer Love Hewitt, Jessica Simpson, JLo, and Kim Kardashian in recent years.) is obviously at least a size 12 or 14, to the eyes of anyone who knows a woman who really is a size 2 or 4. I get to hug and eyeball the IG on a regular basis. She's tiny, weighs around 110 pounds, and wears size 2, or sometimes 0 (zero), from the petite section. Sometimes the girls section. You could put 2 of her into any pair of Jessica Simpson's mom-jeans.
So yes, the claims of size 4ness from those women are absurd, but I don't think they're lying, anymore than I would have been if I'd told you I had a 32" waist. The difference is that I actually investigated, and measured, and looked at it objectively. If I (or you) were a rich celebrity living in a flattery-inflated bubble of self-absorption, with stylists and consultants and tailors bringing us our clothing, telling us we looked great, and putting "size 4" tags into our customized clothing, we'd think we were size 4s.
Or... maybe not.
I think people realize that they're steadily gaining weight, even if they're in clothing-assisted denial about it. Still being able to get into the same size pants (even if we know the listed size is probably bullshit) makes us feel good. So as the average male in the US steadily increases in girth, today's "large" drifts up to what was yesterday's XL, or XXL. The other sizes also increase proportionately, and everyone's happy. Clothing still sells, pudgy guys feel less pudgy, most clothing fits adequately, and it's only occasional contrarian workout freak (like me) who notices. Or cares. Mine is a lonely session of windmill tilting.
I returned from my week in Kauai last Friday, and no, I've not gotten around to blogging anything about the trip yet. It was enjoyable and quite active; lots of swimming and hiking and snorkeling and hiking and more swimming. I managed to get badly sunburned only once, when I wore a sleeveless shirt on a long hike and didn't put on any suntan lotion since the hike began with heavy clouds. I thought I was under trees almost the whole time, but somehow I had glowing red shoulders and upper arms that night.
The damage has mostly faded and peeled away since then, but I still have clear demarcations between my slightly-browned upper arms and my white chest. For the first couple of days after I returned I had a visible tan across my chest and stomach; there was a whiter line below my waistband, but that's since faded as I return to my usual cave-dwelling self.
It's hard to believe it's been almost a week since I got back; my re-immersion into website work and several hours of fiction each night was so rapid that it already feels like I never left. In a good, but also bad, way.
I've sorted through about half the hundreds of photos I took, and will post a bunch at some point. It's slow going since it was so frequently cloudy that the pics are desaturated. The intense greens and colors of the garden isle are wasted with gray skies, so on the bigger photos, such as the ones I took from atop Wiamea Canyon, I'm going through and magic wand selecting the sky, then reversing selection and adjusting the levels on the hills/trees/ground, so their colors return. A better camera would probably have captured the pretty colors in the first place, but I didn't have one, so that's neither here nor there.
On Thursday I took a break from my photo sorting to hang for a while with the IG and show off my tan lines. She's recently started taking some yoga classes, of the Birkan style, in the super-heated room. I'd read about it but never tried it before, and after a 90 minute session today I can safely say... it's fucking hot. I've probably sweated more than that at some point in my life, but I'm sure it involved a lot more exercise. Just last week in Kauai I jogged most of the 4 miles back from the Hanakapi’ai Falls to the trail head, and when I arrived I couldn't tell which foot had stepped in the river and which was just swimming in sweat. Everything in my backpack was soaked, to the point that brochures and trail maps were disintegrating, and that was all sweat. But I still think I dripped more at yoga class today.
When approaching a session of Bikram Yoga, you want to bring two towels. One to stand/sit/pose on, and another to dry off afterwards. Spare clothing is, of course, also essential. I took a big beach towel to stand on in class, put it into a plastic bag afterwards and brought it home, and several hours later when I pulled it out to hang it up, there were literally puddles of water in the bag. The towel wasn't wet, it was actually dripping. I'm talking "just out of the washing machine" wet. Actually, wetter than that, since washing machines do a spin cycle and wring out most of the water.
I don't know if that's a warning or an enticement, but just be aware that you will sweat like you have (probably) never sweated before, even while your physical activity isn't stressful enough to do more than slightly elevate your heart rate. I never felt like mine was beating hard, but I work out almost daily, so it takes a lot for me to feel my pulse maxing out. I wasn't short of breath, but I did feel like I was on the verge of passing out a few times, after holding various poses for the full 30 or 45 seconds of stress. From the heat, not the stress of the movements, which weren't very stressful at all.
My surprise from it was where I was tight. I hardly felt any stretching in my legs, which is what other people were usually clutching, and what the IG said she was getting pulled in. I would have, but I could never bend far enough to get to my legs, since my back/shoulders/neck always drew tight first. I assume all the weight lifting I do is to blame, along with my generally non-flexible body, but it was surprising how much it kicked in. I stretch my legs and hips all the time at the gym, but I do most of it with my back straight and head up. Most of the Bikram yoga stuff had me bending over and curving my back, with arms extended upwards, and that's where I was getting tight.
It was funny, the most basic movement, one you do first and then repeatedly through the class, is a pose with your arms straight overhead and your palms clasped together. You hold that in the middle, stretch to the sides, as that hideously contorted man is demonstrating. That pose is returned to frequently throughout class, as a sort of bridging movement between the other 25 poses.
That was literally the hardest thing for me to do in the entire class. Well no, it wasn't hard. I just couldn't do it. My shoulders won't go up that way, the right one especially. I can hold my arms over my head, but straight up is really an effort; I have to strain and it's a painful, tiring stretch for my shoulders. I simply can not do it as demonstrated, since it's impossible for me to touch both my upper arms to my ears at the same time. It was funny, since that's not even supposed to be a stretch. It's just how you hold your arms while doing the back/side stretch. Those I could do fine, I just couldn't keep my arms straight overhead while doing it. Shooting pains down the top of my right shoulder and the outside of the arm.
So everyone else is effortlessly holding their arms like that and doing the stretches, and I've got my arms at this diagonal angle, the elbows bent and sagging near my ears, and I'm killing myself to get to that point. There was another one, demonstrated by the hottie in this video, that was even worse. Laughably impossible for me. I'd need a scalpel to get my palms flat down on the mat in this pose. The fact that I strained my left wrist on some rocks in heavy surf at Kauai didn't help, but there's just no way my shoulders will turn as required. I couldn't even sort of approximate that pose.
You know all those jokes about body builders who can't reach up, or wipe their own asses? Um... yeah.
Amusing difficulties aside, the class was pretty good. I felt totally wiped out afterward; hardly able to walk, stomach rumbling hungry, and I just thanked Dog that it was cool outside, since the chill was all that kept me moving for the block and a half to my car. Half an hour later, once I'd cooled down and bought a big bag of frozen rats for Snaker noms, I felt like I was pretty much back to normal. And then I got to the IG's apt and almost couldn't make it up two flights of stairs. After a shower and a decent pasta dinner I was okay, though. Eight hours later I feel fine; less tired than I would half a day after one of my usual workouts. I think it's mostly the heat that makes it such an ordeal; 90 degrees wouldn't be so bad, but 105 is just crazy. Humans aren't meant to exist in such temperatures -- this one certainly isn't. I'm uncomfortable over 80, in most situations. 105 with high humidity and BO stinks is rough.
If I go again, and I probably will, in part since the IG really enjoys it and wants me to go with her, I might smear some vapo-rub on my nose, like Clarice during the autopsy. The sodden floor of that place was just rank with body aromas, even through my own towel and yoga mat. The heat steams them out, and that on top of the temperature was what had me woozy a few times.
There are tons of Bikram yoga videos and guides online; check out youtube for some videos of the sweating that goes on. And yes, everyone in class was dressed like that. Most of them you'd rather they had more clothing on, since there were hairy backs and poking little penises and saggy spare tires (on both genders) on display, but the guys were all in just shorts and most of the women in spandex pants and a sports bra or a bikini top. Way, way, way too hot to think anything that sexy, but a couple of the women were fairly attractive, in the class I attended.
I blogged about recent albums to my liking while in Hawaii, but I saw this link tonight and wanted to pass it on. One of the better songs on the very good Green Day album, and transcendentally-clear sound quality for a live show. I like the opening minute, with just the guitar and the banging drums, while Billie Joe monologues. Such a simple, punk-style riff and percussion, but perhaps all the more effective because of it?
Finally, the upcoming Sherlock Holmes movie with Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law sounds great on paper. I'm not sure about this trailer though. I like the look of the characters and sets, but is this Sherlock Holmes in the Matrix, or what? He doesn't need to be entirely erudite, sitting around smoking that big ass pipe; I'm fine with some comedy and action too. But in theory he's a brilliant detective, not Charlie's Angel: London 1843. He solves things with his brain and wits, with a dash of action. Not vice versa?
I'm still spending too many hours on "catching up" surfing after spending a week engaging in some real life (body) surfing on Kauai, and I saw a link to this one from a James Wolcott post from last week. I'll go so far as to call it extraordinary.
It's a compilation of roundtable discussions on various financial shows, mostly on CNBC and FOX News from 2006-2007, in which Peter "Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned" Schiff goes toe to toe with the various market cheerleaders those shows employ to talk up whatever element of the US economy their plutocrat overlords have deemed insufficiently-enriching. I know nothing about this Schiff guy, but he prognosticates on numerous issues: the coming recession, the imminent busting of the housing bubble, the coming stock market crash, the coming credit crunch, etc, and at least in the clips shown in this segment he is 100% prescient about everything. And in every case the show hosts and other guests literally LOL at his pronouncements.
They're all but spilling beer as they congratulate themselves on their "everything is wonderful" forecasts, which is of course what their paychecks require of them, but it's still kind of shocking to witness the idiocy and disinterest they show in even considering the actual economic underpinings of the issues of the day.
There are lots more such examples in the related clips; watch them if your stomach is strong enough. I only made it through 2/3 of this one before I had to give it up. I was losing all the late lunch, nachos + rum/coke buzz that's helping me recover from a long morning of D3 site work.
The books I brought along have been okay; I read 2 whole mystery novels on the flight(s) out here, and started on a funky book about traveling in India that the IG gifted unto me. The music I brought, on the other hand, has exceeded expectations.
I didn't plan it out; it was mostly happenstance brought about by my not paying any attention to recent musical releases, but by hook or by crook (mostly crook) I downloaded obtained the new(ish) albums by Eminem, Green Day, and The Prodigy virtually the night before setting forth on this glorious voyage.
The Green Day is fairly new, just released a couple of weeks ago (I guess). I was tipped to its existence after seeing a "B" review in Entertainment Weekly. I didn't read the review, I think album reviews (as presented in popular media) are useless, for reasons I've previously elaborated on. But I know I like Green Day, so I immediately set out to find it. It was easy; music that's just been released always is, and while nothing on the album leaped out at me on the first listen, I'm liking it more each time.
It's not another American Idiot; the overarching story is not included this time, and none of the songs are long, multi-part masterpieces like a couple of tracks were on their last album. The overall sound is pretty reminiscent of American Idiot, with more melodic/slower songs, though they're not outright ballads. It's not a return to their earlier days of catchy 3-minute bangfests. If you've liked past Green Day, you'll like this one.
The Eminem album, Relapse, was an early leak, I think. I've had it for a couple of weeks, at any rate. It's pretty good; I don't think any songs are as bouncy/catchy as some of his biggest early radio hits, and there aren't any longer, deeper, emotional masterpieces like "Stan," but all of the songs are pretty entertaining and have good beats and rhythms and such. There's not that much variety; the beats are interchangeable from song to song, and the subject matter is familiar and somewhat repetitious.
It's very dark in subject matter; I don't know how many songs can be first person accounts of a serial killer before you start to worry about the lyricist, but Eminem's probably over that line with this one. They're mostly about celebrities and hypothetical situations, at least; not about Kim or his mom this time. There are another 4 or 5 songs about being a junkie and nearly dying from overdoses and how drugs have ruined his life. And then 2 party-type songs feat. Dre and/or Fifty Cent, when they talk about how great it is to smoke pot and drink. So um... yeah.
At this point I wouldn't put any of the songs in my hypothetical top ten Eminem songs list, but I've listened to the album 10 or 15 times haven't removed any of the songs (except the four short skits) from the playlist, so if they're not brilliant, they're all quite listenable.
The Prodigy album was actually the hardest to find, hunting for it as I was the night before my departure. It was released back in February, and despite the fact that I'm a fan of techno/electronic, and The Prodigy, I never heard a word about it. I don't recall where I heard about it just before I left on this vacation, but I had to dig down quite a few pages of "invaders must die rapidshare prodigy" to find a link to the full album (not just the single, or the promo mini-cd) that hadn't been deleted (from the file host) by now. It would have been easy back in February when they all went live (as was the case with the Green Day album.
As for the album, it's really nice. I think the best Prodigy Album thus far. There's a big caveat on that; not one of the songs is really leaping out at me as a great single. No Firestarter or Spitfire or Fire (Sunrise Version). But there aren't any suck, too-slow/repetitious songs either, a sin most Prodigy albums are inflicted with. Most of the new tracks are fairly short, and they're all very electro/dance, and they all work together. They don't actually lead into one another, like a concept album (one of which I'll mention next), but listening to the whole CD at a go is better than listening to just one or two songs mixed in with other stuff. It creates a mood and a coherent vibe; the whole is > than the + of the parts, etc.
One thing I often with with Prodigy is that they were as organized on releasing their remixes as NIN has always been. Most of the NIN remixes are downgrades, but some of them are pretty good, and releasing them on conveniently-numbered "Halos" makes it fairly easy for fans to keep track of them. Especially back in the pre-internet days, when remixes were very hard to track down. NIN has taken the remix concept to a whole new level with the remix.nin.com site, where I play from time to time. I like to set it to play the top rated remixes (fan only) and hear new stuff that's been more or less vetted for quality. The problem with most fan mixes there is that the high rated ones are almost invariably slow, "Still" type stuff, and msot of them are too conservative -- tethered by their need to preserve too much of the original song, more like reshuffles than actual mixes or mashes, where new life can be breathed into the original tunes.
Yes, I'm rambling on tangents.
The last recent album I wanted to mention in positive terms is the Chris Cornell album, Scream. I knew nothing about it in advance, and only heard it since I happened to see a download link for it when it was new. I was dubious of the concept; a Chris Cornell album produced by one of those Justin Timberlake DJ club hit type guys? One that they wrote in collaboration, that promised to mix Cornell's strong vocals and lyrics with club beats? It sounded like an unholy marriage; those DJ producer guys do great work creating non-talents like Britney Spears, and keeping aging creatures like Cher and Madonna relevant, but taking Cornell's amazing voice to the techno mix seemed like a recipe for an abomination.
Much to my surprise, I really like the album. Like the new Prodigy album, it's best served as an entree, rather than a snack. Listen to the whole thing in a row and turn off your delay between songs, since it's meant to work like one whole 50 minute song. The individual tracks all blend into each other with (more or less) seamless transitions, and while it's not exactly a showcase for Cornell's raspy baritone (or alto or tenor or whatever kind of voice he has; I've never been able to remember what type of voice those terms refer to) he's not buried by the type of overproduction required to make Britney's cawing screeches listenable. That said, you've definitely got to like uptempo techno and electronic to enjoy the album. If you're sitting there waiting for Black Hole Sun or Rusty Cage, you're going to have a long wait.
I meant to post something before I left, but there was the usual pre-trip rushing and busyness, and other priorities took precedent. That's all meaningless now, since I'm in paradise! The Hawaiian island of Kauai, staying at this luxurious hotel. It's very nice; in fact I can safely say it's much nicer than the pictures they have online. Which are small and taken from inopportune vantage points.
I have little to say about it yet; Kauai is gorgeous and jungily, the ocean is warm and inviting, and so far it's mostly worth the 10 hours traveling to and between and sitting in airports that were required to reach this destination. I'm here with my mom and stepdad, they had a timeshare they had to use and this was one of the options, and they invited me along, so here we are. The IG was unable to accompany me, tragically. I'm therefore sending her photos and raving texts about every 15 minutes. Purely for informative purposes, of course.
The room is amazing. Well, it's a suite actually; full kitchen, living room, master bedroom with a huge tub and a shower, and a second bedroom with a full bath and a little sitting area with an uncomfortable couch. And a back patio with a table and chairs and a lawn chair. Both beds are kings, there's a big dining table with chair and bench seating, 3 TVs, etc. The sort of hotel that makes you want to travel more often.
If you look at some of the online photos, you see the glorious pool area. It's an interesting double function; it's like 4 pools all in a row, moving down a hill with little waterfalls between them. And the whole thing is about 20 yards from a sandy beach and a little cove. The double purpose of the pools is thus: it's basically a giant kids wading pool in the day. All of the pools are 3-4 feet deep, they wind around corners, under palm trees, there's a little bridge to swim under, furniture all around the outside, etc. Yesterday in the day little kids were just everywhere in it.
And magically, at night all these little flood lights come on, and the secluded watery corners and overhanging vegetation becomes a romantic grotto. I was walking back from the ocean and a preliminary snorkeling session last night just at dusk, and there were half a dozen couples lazing around in the hot water, swimming/wading slowly along, faces inclined closely in conversation. And probably kisses, when they passed through the shadows. And no, there's no possible way I'd have enjoyed dragging the IG into such a pleasing scenario and seeing what happened next. (I'd have had to make my move there, since while we'd be sharing a bed, it's king size. The thing is like 2 meters wide; you could sleep 4 people in it without invading anyone's personal space.)
As for the title of this post: it's day 2 here, and after salad and pizza last night in the full kitchen, we're rustling up breakfast today. I cut up pineapple and a papaya earlier, and now mom and stepdad are making an omelet and some oatmeal. And my reply to their potential breakfast menu is cited above; albeit without quotations.
Oatmeal aside, I'm a little miffed over the breakfast options. I was promised blueberry pancakes, we picked up frozen blueberries yesterday, and yet somehow now there's no pancake mix. Mother swears she put a box into the shopping cart yesterday, but no luck. Not even after a second search of the rental car. So it's eggs and gruel. With tropical fruit. At least the scenery is nice.
And yes, this post is entirely rambling and scattered. I blame the breakfast rush. Now I must eat and then there's tennis before more beach fun and snorkeling. Enjoy your own weekend, in the manner you see fit. Perhaps refreshing blizzard.com frantically, hoping to score some Blizzcon tickets?
www.whorepresents.com -- A site to find which agent represents a celebrity. Though one that offered leopard-print spandex mini-skirts would probably be more fun.
www.expertsexchange.com -- A knowledge base where programmers can exchange advice and views. Again, the three-word interpretation of this one would be a much more entertaining address.
www.penisland.net- - They sell pens. From an island?
www.therapistfinder.com -- A site to find a mental health professional. Does not recommend that women wear very small clothing while walking around the bad part of town late at night.
www.powergenitalia.com -- Italian power company. Partially excused by the language barrier, but still amusing.
www.molestationnursery.com -- An oddly named nursery in New Zealand. You may not touch the plants!
www.ipanywhere.com -- They sell computer software. Not very well, I'd wager.
www.cummingfirst.com -- The website of the First Cumming Methodist Church. You know they've been getting jokes about their name forever, so carrying it over to the internet was nothing new.
www.speedofart.com -- An art and design site. Not something left behind by that jug-eared guy in the Summer Olympics.
www.gotahoe.com -- Move to Lake Tahoe. Find accessories for your new home at #1 on this list.
You know guys, hyphens are permitted in domain names. Sometimes they're even recommended.
I realize that this post's title is redundant, given the quality of summer movies. That said, some are worse than others.
I haven't been paying any attention to movies this year. I read a book or two a week while doing cardio at the gym, and I've been downloading and watching Anime semi-regularly (Downloading = regularly. Watching = semi.) but I've not been in a theater since seeing Milk on a date back in January. Yes, my last movie was on a date, but movies aren't something I generally do on a date. I would with a woman I knew pretty well; Malaya and me saw dozens of films a year when we were living together; but it's not the sort of thing I'm likely to do on an early date. At that point I want to get to know her (and let her get to know me), so I'll always choose something more face-to-face interactive. And sitting side by side in the darkness is antithetical to that goal. Though I suppose I'd make an exception if the movie was intelligent/interesting, and we had time for good conversation/discussion afterward.
In other words, if it wasn't a "summer movie."
Since I haven't been seeing movies or anticipating them, I've not been watching trailers. In fact, the last few weeks when I've seen the box office leaders I've felt like a parent sitting and listening to their child enthuse about the newest trend. Polite patience and attention, without having a fucking idea what they're talking about. That I find myself pleased that I don't know or care is another issue.
I did get some urge for movie trailers late Sunday night, so I headed to my usual source. It wasn't an especially lucrative visit. I like to watch trailers for big action movies or for thrillers or suspense films. I seldom bother with trailers for comedies, romantic films, or artsy stuff. This despite the fact that those types of movies are almost always superior to the crappy action movies I waste my time watching.
I was disappointed, since even though I hadn't gone looking for trailers in months, I'd seen almost all of the ones available. The T4 and Up and Star Trek trailers are very cool but I saw them long ago. Crank 2 and Wolverine have already come and gone. Angels and Demons is just rewarmed DiVinci Code. All of those films, and many others, have much more than their trailers listed; there are TV spots, 5 or 10 minute previews, etc. I never watch those, since if it's a movie I want to see I don't want any more spoilers than the trailer spilled, and if it's not a movie I want to see I don't need to waste 10 more minutes confirming that bias.
The only two I ended up clicking on were G.I. Joe and Transformers, and I watched both trailers against my will.
The trailer for Transformers 2 isn't bad, and would almost interest me in the film, if not for the fact that I still remember the improbably-profitable first one. I'd largely forgotten that movie, which I've not seen a second of since exiting the theater 2 years ago. This might be an unfair statement, given that I've never subjected myself to WaterWorld or BattleShip Earth, but Transformer was inarguably the worst movie per dollar of budget I've ever seen. And yes, I saw all 3 of the Star Wars prequels in theaters, after various relatives or girlfriends dragged me along. They were bad, Transformers was much, much worse. I just read my review from back then to remember what was so bad about it, and um... everything. Okay, then.
And no, I'm not saying the Transformers 2 trailer is any good, or that it makes the movie look any good. But lots of stuff blows up and there are pretty colors and you can almost see up Megan Fox's sweaty plastic leg into her precision-tooled plastic vagina. The movie's plot looks LOLable; scenes of that stammering, annoying kid running around doing some kind of A Beautiful Mind homage are fantastically cheesy, and the fact that the most advanced robots in the universe still can't invent non-cancer kazoo-sounding voice chips continues to be a winner. But no, I can't in good conscience imagine stting through it. Fortunately, when I date I keep rolling stuck-up bitches, the IG doesn't like action movies, and Malaya's husband isn't leaving on any extended summer trips, so the odds of one of my friends wanting to see it and insisting I go along to keep her company are quite low.
Elsewhere, the G.I. Joe full trailer is no better than the teaser was, months ago. I have no idea who the audience for this one is, and I'll be surprised if it makes good money. It looks cheap, and it's a parody of itself. If you sat through that trailer and were then told it was a spoof, a sort of viral ad for Team America 2, I would believe it. The whole trailer is nothing but action movie cliches, explosions, bad special effects, running screaming mobs of people, slow motion physical impossibilities, and unknown actors and actresses in military costumes firing guns and smirking. If there's a plot in the trailer (or the film) it's certainly not hinted at here.
Perhaps that's the idea, and they're marketing to an entirely mindless "stuff blows up" demographic, but I can't believe that's enough. There's no sex appeal, no marketable stars, no product or political tie-ins, and the property itself was last seen as an astonishingly stupid kids cartoon in the 1980s. I realize that a discouragingly high percentage of adults will spend money on almost any pile of shit that reminds them of their childhood, but isn't this one taking that too far? Inspector Gadget didn't exactly set the box office on fire, and that was a far better cartoon than G.I. Joe. Remember Speed Racer? Flop! And that movie actually had an awesome trailer. Has someone green-lit The Smurfs yet? Fraggle Rock? He-Man, again?
Finally, this would have been a great post a month ago, before the film opened to massive FAIL. But have you seen the trailer for Battle for Terra? I saw it months ago, and just started in shock. It's not an awful trailer, but it was immediately clear this movie was going to fucking crater. It's a 3d cartoon set in the far future, with the last survivors of earth sailing throughout the universe looking for a planet to call home. They find one inhabited by peaceful, hippy-like aliens. The humans decide to invade, like Cortez into South America, intending to use their vastly superior technology to slaughter the natives. And then there are lots of scenes of frightened aliens running from explosions while bloodthirsty humans laugh.
So um... who is the target audience for this? It sounds like one of those painful, "learn a lesson through your tears" type childrens books. Humans are bad, technology is evil, we're recreating the genocidal conquest of the New World, etc. I'll give them points for honesty, since peaceful Star Trek bullshit aside, that's probably what humans in space would actually be like, under those circumstances. But who wants to see an ugly, poorly-animated cartoon about it, with no A-list voice talent or even any cute sidekicks to draw in the viewer?
No one, that's who. And yes, 20/20 prognostication is pretty easy 2 weeks later. But this is exactly the reaction I had when I first saw the trailer, a month or two back. I just figured at the time that they'd been carpet bombing (so to speak) Nickelodeon and other kid's channels, and that there was successful advertising going on for this film; it was just taking place on kids' TV and other places entirely off my radar.
A cute, light, fast-moving mystery story, this one captivated and amused me for the first half, then started to drag as the relatively lack of plot became harder to overlook. I still finished the book with a good taste in my mouth, and found this one stylistically instructive. It's about very little, and has not one memorable scene, but it's a fun book to read since the characters are so vivid and sympathetic. Not realistic, but they're not meant to be. They're more like people from a fable or a tall tale -- composed of exaggerated characteristics and stylized personalities. Not to the point of being overtly or obviously fake, but it's not meant to be exactly realistic.
Though this was the first thing I'd read by this author, it's actually the ninth book in the series, all of which have "The Cat Who _____" for the title. That's what got me to pick this one up at a library giveaway; I'd seen books in the series in bookstores and on bestseller lists forever and was curious. And it came in handy to read now, since I'm working on my own mystery novel.
To the scores:
The Cat Who Sniffed Glue (1989), by Lilian Jackson Braun
Plot: 3
Concept: 6
Writing Quality/Flow: 6/8
Characters: 9
Fun Factor: 7
Page Turner: 5
Re-readability: 4
Overall: 7
The characters and overall style are what makes this book work. The plot is very sparse, and in retrospect and I'm not even sure it made any sense. But it's not about the events. It's about the style. It's kind of a Lake Woebegone Days mystery, where it's set in a small town stuffed full of quirky, iconoclastic, above average characters, and what they're doing to serve the plot is almost immaterial compared to the simple pleasure a reader gets from reading about their exploits.
The length was fine, since I got it free, but I might hesitate to pay for this one, just for the brevity of it. My hardcover copy is 207 pages, and it's got big type, wide, tall, and deep margins, and lots of blank pages that are included in the tally. It's a novel, but it's presented somewhat like a play; each chapter opens with some simple scene directions, like a screenplay. These list the place, time, and characters in that chapter, and I'm not sure why or what the point of that was, other than to be different and fill some space. I quit reading them 1/3 of the way through, and they're never necessary; they could easily have been left out, or might have been added in afterwards by an editor, since the story sets up every scene normally; it's not play-like or dependent upon those directions.
They did fill up some space though, which was not an accident. It's 207 pages in hardcover, but with maybe 2/3 or 1/2 the usual number of words per page, and tons of filler. For instance, "Act One" ends with 3 lines on page 125. 126 is blank. 127 has a paragraph summary of what's happened so far with some set up for the rest of the book. 128 is blank. 129 has just "Act Two" in large point. 130 is blank. And 131 finally starts in again, halfway down the page. That's 3 lines and a quick and unnecessary summary filling pages 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, and 130. Six pages, or almost 3% of the total book!
This is the biggest waste of space, but it's not the only one like that. I'd estimate that the whole book would be maybe 125 pages, at most, if it had normal margins and point size. Which, of course, explains why it's not. I didn't grade down for this, but honestly, this book is a novella. Sold at full price.
I'd never read any of the other Cat Who books, but I enjoyed this one enough that I might check out something else in the series. If I do I'll be sure to get a title that's at least ten years old, since according to the fans, the books go way downhill in recent years. The most recent is the 33rd in the series, and the fans are more or less united in their disappointment over it. It's got a 1.5/5 star score on Amazon, and that's shockingly low for a mainstream novel by an author with a large fanbase.
The Cat Who Sniffed Glue, the one I read, is #9 in the series, and it's got a 4.5/5 star average on Amazon. The author has resorted to doing co-author stuff in recent years, and as usual in that case, the quality has plunged. It's interesting that passed along book series are almost uniformly worse, as the kids/successors of the creator almost always lack the spark/talent/skill/verve that made the books good in the first place. It doesn't have to be that way; new directors make better movie sequels, new comic book/strip artists improve or continue seamlessly... but it seems like novels always suck. I guess a book is too pure a creative form; too tied to and created by one person, so no committee or individual can replicate that to anyone's satisfaction?
I'd think it's also tied to the quality of the writer. The best comic book writers/artists and movie directors are perfectly happy to create a sequel or a remake, and put their own stamp on it. The best authors, however, are very unlikely to work on someone else's creation. And even if the child of the creator or the hired writer isn't a total hack, they're almost always prevented from putting their own spin on or reinventing an existing book world. They're supposed to write it in the style the original author made famous, and that's almost a sure recipe for disaster.
I'm curious to see how the last Wheel of Time book(s) turn out, since they got a new guy to write them almost from scratch after Jordan died, and from the early reports he's making no bones about the fact that he's doing them in his own style. Inspired by Jordan, and going from the old man's notes and outlines, but since Jordan's dead they're not doing one of those fake co-author things, and the new guy doesn't have to try to sound enough like Jordan that fans believe he might actually be writing it himself with some help, instead of farming the whole thing out to a hired gun. (Which is the usual practice when a famous-but-aging author brings in some co-author.)
As for this cat novel, I tried to read some parts of it again a couple of weeks after I finished it (in like 2 days, despite only reading at the gym; it's short and a very fast read) and couldn't get into it. All of the characterization and quirkiness that enchanted me the first time seemed forced and familiar the second time, and the threadbareness of the plot was impossible to overlook when I wasn't enjoying the world and characters too much to analyze it. I'm kind of curious to try another one by this author now, just to see if the fun was only because I'd never read anything of hers before, or if the spell can be recast each book.
Typically great article by Malcolm Gladwell in this month's New Yorker, this time about how underdogs can triumph (quite often) by defying the rules and conventions of any field and attacking with intelligence and audacity. And effort. The main thrust of the piece is about a 12 y/o girls basketball team who succeeded wildly beyond their talents simply by running a full court press and working their tails off. There are a lot of other examples woven in from warfare and sports, and one I found most amusing; from some sort of naval military board game simulation.
In 1981, a computer scientist from Stanford University named Doug Lenat entered the Traveller Trillion Credit Squadron tournament, in San Mateo, California. It was a war game. The contestants had been given several volumes of rules, well beforehand, and had been asked to design their own fleet of warships with a mythical budget of a trillion dollars. The fleets then squared off against one another in the course of a weekend. “Imagine this enormous auditorium area with tables, and at each table people are paired off,” Lenat said. “The winners go on and advance. The losers get eliminated, and the field gets smaller and smaller, and the audience gets larger and larger.”
Lenat had developed an artificial-intelligence program that he called Eurisko, and he decided to feed his program the rules of the tournament. Lenat did not give Eurisko any advice or steer the program in any particular strategic direction. He was not a war-gamer. He simply let Eurisko figure things out for itself. For about a month, for ten hours every night on a hundred computers at Xerox PARC, in Palo Alto, Eurisko ground away at the problem, until it came out with an answer. Most teams fielded some version of a traditional naval fleet—an array of ships of various sizes, each well defended against enemy attack. Eurisko thought differently. “The program came up with a strategy of spending the trillion on an astronomical number of small ships like P.T. boats, with powerful weapons but absolutely no defense and no mobility,” Lenat said. “They just sat there. Basically, if they were hit once they would sink. And what happened is that the enemy would take its shots, and every one of those shots would sink our ships. But it didn’t matter, because we had so many.” Lenat won the tournament in a runaway.
The next year, Lenat entered once more, only this time the rules had changed. Fleets could no longer just sit there. Now one of the criteria of success in battle was fleet “agility.” Eurisko went back to work. “What Eurisko did was say that if any of our ships got damaged it would sink itself—and that would raise fleet agility back up again,” Lenat said. Eurisko won again.
...“In the beginning, everyone laughed at our fleet,” Lenat said. “It was really embarrassing. People felt sorry for us. But somewhere around the third round they stopped laughing, and some time around the fourth round they started complaining to the judges. When we won again, some people got very angry, and the tournament directors basically said that it was not really in the spirit of the tournament to have these weird computer-designed fleets winning. They said that if we entered again they would stop having the tournament. I decided the best thing to do was to graciously bow out.”
Which is, of course, how it usually goes in life. Underdogs can defy convention and win, once in a while. Their success will invariably result in the traditional power structure changing the rules to try and thwart them, and if that doesn't work the powers that be simply ban the upstart tactics. Easier to legislate than evolve. They'd rather die doing what they know than adapt to change.
That's somewhat understandable in the example I quoted. After all, they're just a bunch of grown up D&D playing mil-nerd guys who want to wear admiral hats in their simulated navy, with battleships and destroyers and all the traditional pretend pomp and circumstance. They don't want to think outside the box, or deal with radical strategies. It's a hobby and a way for a small, self-selected group to have fun. It's less defensible as a practice/strategy/hobby when it's real life, and countries or companies are dying thanks to the hidebound idiocy of their leadership. And yet it's happened countless times in history, past, present, and future.
This novel is a work of historical fiction. It purports to be a mystery, set in England during the late Dark Ages. It stars a Brother Cadfeld-esque monk/physician, Matthew Bartholomew. As the book jacket blurbs, it's 1348, Cambridge University is newly founded and struggling to survive, and the Black Plague is sweeping across Europe and England. The college has been rocked by the suicide of the beloved president, the disappearance of several other monks, wild rumors of murders and conspiracies, and an ongoing power struggle with the more-established Oxford University.
It's a historical mystery, with a likable main character who is, of course, a man out of time. He's got the only pair of eye glasses in England, he's traveled widely and developed some knowledge of germs and disease [when everyone else just thinks the plague and everything else worse than the sniffles is God's punishment to be (ineffectually) prayed against], and he's pure and right and just and noble and innocent of his scheming, malicious colleagues. Not especially believable, and the author is clearly a better academic and historian than a novelist, but it wasn't a bad read.
To the scores:
A Plague on Both Your Houses, by Susanna Gregory Plot: 6 Concept: 8 Writing Quality/Flow: 5/5 Characters: 7 Fun Factor: 6 Page Turner: 5 Re-readability: 6 Overall: 6.5
I would have bet this was the author's first book. It's very "how to write a book 101" in style and presentation, and isn't very well-edited or composed. It's too long, the plot wanders around quite a bit during the middle, the characters are all over the place, and it just didn't feel like a very coherent novel. It felt like something throw together by a newly-minted PhD, who wanted to do something with all of that historical research into the Black Plague and early Cambridge she'd done while working on her thesis.
Actually, that's not true. In that case the book would have had more passion and youthful exuberance, if less technical accomplishment. This felt like that book every senior academic has in them, extrapolated from their life's work and research in the field. More about the facts and history than the characters, who the author has had in mind for so many years that they're almost too thought out, and thus under-realized to the reader. (It can be a mistake for an author to know her characters too well, since it's easy to forget to share all that knowledge with the reader. Kind of like how you could provide a fairly good description of a new acquaintance, but would stumble when describing your mother.) In this novel the reader gets far more background info and backstory than is necessary, and knows every bit of the characters' bios, but not enough essential info about what makes them tick, what motivates them, why they're engaged in the activities they're pursuing, etc.
I stuck with that theory as I read about the book on Amazon.com, but got some confusion there, since the official description says this is the third book in the series. The book itself seems to agree; there are two other novels listed "Also by Susanna Gregory" and the book jacket blurb says that this book "continues the fascinating chronicles of a charismatic medieval sleuth." (Incidentally, he's not especially charismatic, and isn't a sleuth; he just stumbles over the solution to the mystery, largely by virtue of surviving the plague which kills off most of the possible suspects.)
However, the wikipedia page on the author lists this as the first book in the series, and nothing in the book made it sound like this was a series. There weren't any of those, "It reminded Brother Bartholomew of that strange sequence of events last summer, when..." type of remarks. All of the characters were introduced as though the reader had never heard of them before, and as I said earlier, this very much had the feel of a first novel by a non-writer. Too polished in some ways, kind of sprawling and unfocused in others.
I don't care enough to dig to the bottom of the contradiction, but I'd guess it's about publication order. This was the first book the author wrote and it was the first one published in England, but for whatever reason it was the third one released in the US, which is undoubtedly where my edition and the Amazon.com edition were published.
At any rate, it's a fairly good book, with lots of gory and very realistic descriptions/depictions of life in the Middle Ages, and especially of the horrors of the Black Plague. Filling/thrilling the reader with just how awful and miserable and ghastly things are is a bit beyond the talents of the author, but even her fairly straightforward descriptions of bodies heaped in the streets, plague pits, rotting body parts, pus-oozing buboes, etc, paint a gruesome and realistic portrait. By the same light, the characters don't quite come to life, since they're sketched in very full details, but don't really get the spark of personality or verisimilitude that characters do in a really good book. The main character always feels kind of disassociated from events, with his narrative voice somewhat distant, and the other principles feel like characters who only show up and act when they're on stage, but who don't exist in other situations. Everything revolves around Brother Bartholomew, even though he should be far on the outskirts of most of the situations.
Still, you could go worse with historical fiction. If you like this sort of book, you'll like this one. Just don't expect a romance and love story, or a real stirring adventure. It's much more history book than romance novel.
Presumed Innocent, by Scott Turow. An interesting book, more for the author's style and approach than for the story itself. Going into this book I knew nothing about the story. I knew it was a courtroom drama/crime thriller, and that the book had been a big hit, and that they'd made a movie of it at some point in the 90s. However, since I'd never seen the movie, or read anything else by Turow, I was entirely virginal in my entry into this one. Or, to be more appropriate to the metaphor, before its entry into me.
The story/mystery itself is fairly clever, and the writing style was nothing like I'd expected. I enjoyed reading the book, and it kept me occupied during my hour of cardio 3 or 4 nights in a row. It wasn't what I'd expected at all, in terms of the writing style and presentation. That said, I have to conclude that it wasn't successful as a crime thriller, or as the psychology study the author appeared to aspire towards. I'll elaborate on those issues, upon after the scores:
Presumed Innocent, by Scott Turow, 1987 Plot: 4 or 9 Concept: 8 Writing Quality/Flow: 8/4 Characters: 8 Fun Factor: 6 Page Turner: 3 Re-readability: 3 or 9 Overall: 5
I'm sure of my opinion about this book and my reaction to it, but I still had a lot of trouble deciding on the scores. I'm conflicted. That 4/9 on plot is two scores. The 9 is what I'd have given it if I hadn't caught onto the plot twist and had remained entertained and enlightened by Turow's psychologically-probing writing style. (The overall score would have been much higher as well, in that case.) The 4 is my actual score, since I did catch onto the ultimate plot twist very early on, which forced me to slog more than 200 intervening pages of non-thrilling courtroom thriller simply because I wanted to see how the author was going to reveal the shocking truth. (In a very non-shocking, somewhat reader-cheating, almost beside-the-point fashion.) The re-readability scores are the same; I'll never reread a word of it. I only got through it the first time out of curiosity and examination of the writer's craft. However, for a person who didn't guess the plot twist early on and got to page 400 and dropped the book with a gasp of astonishment, I think a reread would be mandatory. You'd be curious to see the clues you'd missed and to study how certain characters behaved throughout the story, once you knew the sordid truth about them.
Here's the basic plot, quoted from Publisher's Weekly blurb on the Amazon.com book page (where 89 readers who liked the book a lot more than I did have given it an aggregate 4.5/5 score):
...narrator Rusty Sabich, a married prosecuting attorney whose affair with a colleague comes back to haunt him after she is brutally raped and murdered. Sabich's professional and personal lives begin to mingle painfully when he becomes the accused.
The problem is that Rusty is the narrator, and it's immediately clear that either he didn't do it, or is insane and has blocked off the knowledge that he did it. Not that there are signs pointing to that, but the narration of the book is usually deep in Rusty's thoughts, and he couldn't have done it, unless the author was out to recklessly cheat the reader.
Rusty is said to be a very good DA, and a good investigator, but he does a shit job digging into the mystery when he's investigating it, and he does a shittier job defending himself when he's accused of the crime. He's fairly conscientious in following technical details, but he never thinks of the big picture. The hot blonde assistant D.A., with whom Rusty previously had an affair, is found dead in her apt. There are no signs of forced entry or rape, she was killed by a single blow to the head from an unknown weapon, she's tied up in a back-arching bondage type pose, a man's sperm is inside of her vagina, and all the doors and windows have been left unlocked. The initial assumption is that she was raped and murdered, possibly by one of the criminals she put away in the past.
So Rusty investigates fingerprints, has the sperm sample tested (this is before DNA testing, so they can't get any absolute matches), etc. But he never tries to figure out who the dead woman was fucking now (she's banged half the department, and was doing Rusty's boss after she dumped Rusty), who had a motive to kill her, if some third party might have killed her shortly after she had sex with the mystery guest of the evening, etc. It's immediately clear to the reader that it must be a cop or a D.A. or someone else inside, but Rusty never seems to consider that, and that such a killer would know more than the average person about how to cover his tracks.
The plot starts to twist when the glass found in the apartment has Rusty's fingerprints on it, the sperm matches his type (1/10 chance of that, we're told), carpet fibers match his house (and every other house in the area), etc. Lots of circumstantial that points to him, but no smoking gun. So to speak. He's got no real alibi for that night, his wife was out, he was home along with his son, and phone records show a long history of phone calls from his house to the victim's house, including one the night of the murder, which Rusty's sure he didn't make, and thinks the new prosecutor must be faking to try to frame him.
Once accused, Rusty never thinks about any big picture either. He doesn't wonder who else could have killed her, how a glass with his fingerprints got there, how there was sperm with spermacide in the dead woman's vagina when she'd never used protection when he was fucking her, etc. He's just this worrying, whining victim, delving deeply into psychological worries and speculations about the philosophical underpinnings of human behavior.
I felt that Turow (or his editor) consciously let that stuff out, since it would have led the reader to divine the mystery far too soon. But 1) I did anyway, and 2) it made Rusty seem like an idiot and lost him much of my sympathy. Mostly though, it felt like I was being manipulated by an author who hadn't constructed a mystery that was mysterious enough to sustain itself for the length of the book.
The writing style was the biggest surprise, for me. I'd never read any of Turow's stuff before this (and don't intend to actively seek out any more, though I'd read something else by him if it fell into my lap), but I expected him to be an ex-lawyer, and the story to be your typical plot-based pot-boiler. Dan Brown, John Grisham, Michael Crichton style stuff, with two-dimensional cliched character types, minimal character development, lots of courtroom conflict and scheming, and a plot that was entirely event based. I was correct that Turow was an ex-lawyer (a defense attorney and US prosecutor), but the book is more like a courtroom drama written by a grad student doing a double major in psych/phil.
Here's a bit more of the Publisher's Weekly blurb:
Turow draws the reader into a grittily realistic portrait of big city political corruption that climaxes with a dramatic murder trial in which every dark twist of legal statute and human nature is convincingly revealed... Turow's ability to forge the reader's identification with the protagonist, his insightful characterizations of Sabich's legal colleagues, and the overwhelming sense he conveys of being present in the courtroom are his most brilliant and satisfying contributions to what may become a literary crime classic.
I don't agree that this was accomplished, but it was clearly what the author was striving for.
The characters are all static and unchanging, (with the arguable exception of the narrator Rusty) but we get great chunks of the novel, literally pages at a time, delving into every main character's deepest motivations and mental states, their painful childhoods, how they coped with stresses such as the deaths of their parents, what makes them tick today, what their goals and hopes are for the future, etc. It's hugely detailed, and not at all necessary to the story; it's just the author's style and area of interest, and it's not at all what you'd expect in a best-selling legal thriller. Not what I expected, at least.
I found it interesting and inspiring for the first 100 pages or so, then gradually lost interest once the plot stagnated into the doomed farce of the trial, which I didn't really care about since I knew Rusty didn't do it and was almost certain to go free. The question became how he'd get off, and if he'd be willing to solve the crime and push forward the guilty person, who I'm not naming to avoid being spoilery. Once the plot was no longer advancing, and Rusty was seeming so dumb about trying to keep himself out of prison, I lost most of my interest in the deep, detailed character profiles, and never really cared about or feared for Rusty himself.
So it didn't work that well for me, for various reasons. YMMV, of course, which is why I've avoided giving away the twist. Honestly though, that's almost beside the point, since the book isn't meant to be suspenseful or a thriller. It's more like a long series of psychological character studies and philosophical musings, given some shape and structure by the courtroom thriller format. It read like it was outlined by an ex-lawyer, and written for an MFA senior project. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, and if I hadn't felt like must of the book was a waste of my time, I'd have scored it more charitably.
