In our effort to read new books while hopefully gaining insight into the various mysteries on ABC’s Lost, my wife and I are reading the books that appear on the show. We are, of course proceeding on the assumption that the books referenced and shown are included because of the way they interact with the show’s themes and not just because any given book was what the propmaster had on the truck when an actor needed something to do with his hands.

I started with Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume. It’s about a sixth grade girl whose family moves to the suburbs. She buys her first bra, discovers boys, and hopes to not be the last to get her first period. Margaret also struggles with religion. Her mother is Christian and her father is Jewish, but she’s being raised without any religion, and she desperately wants to belong to one.

Reading this as a 35 year old man is probably akin to reading the literature of space aliens, but I did appreciate it for what it was: a book for pre-teen girls nervous about adolescence, and I can see why it’s so popular with that age group. It’s upbeat, hopeful and it makes it clear that it’s okay to be who you are. It’s also very honest and realistic, which I assume is why some people take issue with Judy Blume and try to ban her books.

Okay now on to Lost.

Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret makes its cameo in the episode in which Sun finds out she is pregnant (“The Whole Truth”). Presumably, she has just missed her period. In the hope that he might have a pregnancy test, Sun goes to Sawyer, who has been hoarding everything he scavenged from the plane crash. Sawyer is naturally reading a book he found in the wreckage. The books Sawyer reads seem to reflect on the episode at hand and in this regard Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret seems a clever joke considering Sun’s circumstances.

There are two other connections that I wonder about.

The first is the way in which Margaret constantly develops the wrong impression about people. She believes the lies told by the other girls about Laura Danker, the girl in class who has clearly already entered puberty. Everyone says she’s mean and something of a slut, and all the other girls make fun of her. It turns out she’s not any of those things as Margaret learns when she hurts Laura’s feelings. The other case of mistaken assumption concerns a boy: Philip Leroy, the most handsome boy in the class. Margaret and all her friends think that Philip is quite the young gentleman, and they all list him at the top of their “boy books” but he’s really just a mustard throwing, spitball slinging, girl tormenting little turd.

This is all important to keep in mind when thinking about Lost because as all the drama of Sun’s pregnancy is being played out on the beach, Henry Gale is being held hostage in the hatch. Who is Henry Gale? He’s one of “The Others” and we are to assume that this makes him one of the bad guys, but I’m not one hundred percent certain that the Others are the bad guys. Are we misreading Henry - assuming he is evil simply because we don’t really know much about him - just as Margaret misread Laura and Philip?

The second Lost connection concerns matters of faith. Margaret wrestles with faith and her relationship with God in much the same way that John Locke wrestles with his. Every night Margaret talks to God and asks for guidance and help with her problems. Locke’s act of daily devotion is to enter the numbers into the computer and push the button in the hatch every 108 minutes. It’s his prayer and what gives meaning to his life, but events in this episode lead to the season finale in which Locke decides to quit pushing that button just as Margaret quit praying.

The issue of wrestling with one’s faith is the clearest connection between Lost and Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. It’s a central theme on the show and its treatment in Blume’s book of adolescent angst is what makes it’s inclusion in the show more than just a humorous juxtaposition created by the image of the rugged, hard, and cynical Sawyer engrossed in a book written specifically for pre-teen girls. It’s a subtle reminder of the way in which faith and reason frequently go to war with one another both in real life and on Lost.

My wife and I have become addicted to ABC’s Lost. One of the things we’ve noticed is that the characters often reference or are seen reading interesting books. Some of them I’ve read and others she’s read and some neither of us has read, but probably should have.

Wikipedia’s Lost page lists all the books that have appeared or been “somewhat mentioned” on the show, and so we decided to start a two-person book club in which we will read (or reread) the various books before the October 4 start of season three. Some of the books purportedly provide clues to what in the hell is really happening on that island. Others just reflect certain themes in the show. Either way, it’s an interesting list. I’ve put astersisks by the books I’ve already read and will be rereading:

1. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle;
2. * Watership Down by Richard Adams;
3. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume;
4. The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien;
5. The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum;
6. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky;
7. * Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll;
8. * Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad;
9. * Lord of the Flies by William Golding;
10. Turn of the Screw by Henry James;
11. * “An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce;
12. Lancelot by Walker Percy;
13. The Epic of Gilgamesh;
14. Bad Twin by Gary Troup (written specifically for the show); and
15. Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens.

It should be an interesting summer of reading. I’ll be writing about these books as I finish them (as usual) and trying to relate them to Lost. If you’ve read any of these and watch Lost, feel free to join the fun in the comments or on your own blog and let us know what you think.

I’ll be getting the shortest one knocked out of the way first: Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.

Update: Here are links to my posts about each book:

• Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret
• The Turn of the Screw
• “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”
• A Wrinkle in Time
• Lancelot
• Heart of Darkness
• Lord of the Flies
• Bad Twin
• The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
• Watership Down
• The Third Policeman
• Alice in Wonderland
• The Epic of Gilgamesh
• The Brothers Karamazov

Update 2: I am no longer updating this post. Updates are now linked to this page, which includes the season three books.

Yeah, yeah, a Monday Movie Roundup on Tuesday, but it was a long weekend so in a way this is kind of like Monday besides I’m a teacher so it’s actually kind of like Saturday for the next two months. So there.

To Kill a Mockingbird (Robert Mulligan, 1962)

I showed To Kill a Mockingbird to my classes during the last week of school. One class had read the book and I figured the rest of my classes would enjoy it as well. Many of the kids had already seen it in their regular schools, but all who had seen it were thrilled to see it again. Some even told me that it’s “pretty good for a black and white movie.” I didn’t mind watching it five times in one week either. The performances are great, especially Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch.

200 Motels (Frank Zappa, Tony Palmer, Charles Swenson, 1971)

I like Frank Zappa’s music, and the blurb for 200 Motels made it sound like a documentary about the Mothers of Invention. Sometimes a movie sounds good, but then you find that it’s really just an opportunity for someone to expose some film and try to capture all kinds of weirdness. I think the Mothers were trapped in a fake nightclub. I think it was weirdness for the sake of weirdness. Sometimes that can be okay. This time it wasn’t. I suppose some people liked Zappa for his bizarre sense of humor, but I’ve always been very impressed with his musicianship as well as that of the Mothers. Unfortunately that’s not what this movie was about. Made dinner and turned it off after fifteen minutes to watch something on the science channel about the ion engines on NASA’s Deep Space One.

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (George Lucas, 2005)

If I were to be a Star Wars character, I would - like everyone else - be Han Solo, but apparently if I were to be a Jedi Knight, here’s who I would be…

how jedi are you? :: by lawrie malen

Revenge of the Sith was the best of the three Star Wars prequels. Honestly, I think it might be a bit better than Return of the Jedi. The thing that is so frustrating about the prequels is that the ideas are great. The story is great. There’s a lot to sit around and talk about as my sister-in-law and I do on many occasions. Unfortunately, George Lucas did it all himself and I think that’s part of why these three movies don’t live up to their potential. Still, I do enjoy watching them from time to time and I like the way everything comes together in this final installment. I don’t buy everything about the story (Padme dies of a broken heart ?!?) but then this is a series of movies in which space ships make noise in the vaccuum of space so I guess I can suspend disbelief a bit here. Technically well made, but flawed in writing and direction.

X-Men: The Last Stand (Brett Ratner, 2006)

We saw X-Men: The Last Stand yesterday. Despite the lousy reviews it’s gotten, I enjoyed it. It focused on the resurrection of Jean Grey aka Phoenix, a classic story in the X-Men mythology. Once again mutants are being oppressed by normal humans who have now developed a “cure” for mutation. Magneto, the best super villian ever, builds an army of mutants to take over the world and make it safe for mutant kind. The movie is a perfect example of a smart summer blockbuster filled with interesting characters (where was Nightcrawler, though?) and dynamic action sequences. It’s a solid end to the X-Men trilogy, but leaves plenty of room to expand the franchise. Probably indefinitely. Well made, fun, entertaining.

The Endless Summer 2 (Bruce Brown, 1992)

The Endless Summer 2 follows the trajectory of Bruce Brown’s brilliant 1966 surf documentray The Endless Summer but adds modern cinematic technology as it follows the adventures of Pat and Wingnut who retrace the path of their heroes from the original Endless Summer. The two look for the best waves and surf spots in Costa Rica, South Africa, Indonesia, Fiji, Australia, and Hawaii.

There are a few changes from the original itinerary and the movie isn’t quite as a innocent as the 1966 film, but it’s still a great diversion and the cinematography is truly stunning. As with the original Endless Summer, my favorite parts are when the surfers explore South Africa. They return to the “perfect wave” from the original film, though because of development it’s not quite as perfect, and they have plenty of run-ins with the local wildlife. Apparently, lions really like to eat wetsuits.

If you like surf guitar, beautiful ocean photography, gnarly surf sequences, and a sweetly dorky sense of humor you can’t go wrong with either of the Endless Summer films.

Tail wagging, teeth snapping, legs flailing… you’ll have to imagine all that. Sometimes a girl just has to go a little crazy, right Daphne?

***

Want to make a fast friend by saving a greyhound in Central Texas? Check these pups out. Or go here to find a greyhound near you. You can also go here to find out why greyhounds are running for their lives.

If you have dogs who need proven leadership, go here to find a cat.

One thing I like about National Geographic is the Flashback photo on the last page. It’s always something interesting from many years ago. Today, I hereby steal their idea and begin Old Photo Friday in which I will post an old photo from my collection.

This is from sometime in the late 1970s taken with a Kodak 110 Instamatic, my first camera. I was at a car show in Washington, DC where I saw Greased Lightning, the Batmobile, and several other famous cars. The icing on the cake was getting to meet Batman - the real Batman - Adam West.

You could meet either him or Robin (Burt Ward), but I joined the Batman line, got an autographed 8×10 (since lost) and shook the caped crusader’s hand.

This picture reminds me of a more innocent time in which Batman could get by with nothing more than a stylish set of pajamas unlike today where he must wear a bulletproof armored Batsuit.

We have a guest speaker program at school, and last week I was asked to be the guest speaker and give a talk about writing.

I wasn’t sure what to talk about at first, but then I decided that I’d talk about the process of writing and publishing my book, which is what people always want to know about when they find out I’ve written a book (by the way - shameless self-promotion here - feel free to click over to your favorite online bookseller and purchase a copy). That led me to thinking about answering some of the questions that my students frequently ask about writing. Such things as: “Where do characters come from?” and  ”How do you make up your stories?”

I decided to talk mostly about making up stories and thought it would be useful (and hopefully entertaining) to read a short story I’d written and then use that as a frame of reference for discussing how a story develops.

The story I chose to read is called “Yawgoog.” I wrote it during the summer of 2000, and it was published in The Sound Of What?, a now vanished online literary journal/community. “Yawgoog” is about two boys who find a bunch of money out in the woods near a Boy Scout camp.

My short stories sometimes originate in real life, little moments that emerge from memory, scenes vividly recalled years later. I sometimes tell my students to try starting their stories with the everyday moments that they all know from firsthand experience and then build the story around those things. The story doesn’t have to be true; it just has to feel that way.

That’s how “Yawgoog” started. While watching an electrical strom come in one day a few summers back, I remembered another summer day, long ago, when I was in Boy Scouts. I was at summer camp, out on the pond in a canoe, or maybe a row boat, just drifting and fishing with a friend named John. An electrical storm suddenly appeared and we had to head in fast. We couldn’t make it to the docks so we put in at the nearest land, which was away from the camp and waited out the storm. It didn’t last long and when it moved out, we went back to the camp. End of story.

The scene was vivid in my mind: two guys on a canoe outrunning a storm. Generally, when I think of scenes like this I write the scene as it appeared or felt at the time, but then I usually people them with invented characters. So I wrote the scene and got to know the characters in the canoe. The storm cames up, they paddle to shore and while waiting out the storm, one of them notices an old trash bag. I was as surprised as they were when a whole bunch of money fell out of that bag, but I ran with it, asking myself what these guys would do. That wondering about what they would do with it ultimately became the point of the story. Enjoy.

“Yawgoog”

The paddle cut easily through the water, and the canoe thrust forward a few feet, as silent as a shark. The sun was high, but the air already held the vague promise of coming fall. A gentle wind blew through the trees that surrounded the scout camp on the shore of the small pond. I set the paddle across the aluminum hull and stared out over the glassy surface of the water. Closer to the shore a small fleet of dinghies set sail as boys learned the art of running and tacking. Other than the sailboats, our canoe was the only other boat out. My friend Alexander, who was sitting in the front of the canoe, and I had lost interest in scouts years ago, but we went to camp and we fished and walked around the edges of the small pond while the younger and more eager boys attended to the business of earning merit badges.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been awhile since I watched any movies to round up.

The Count of Monte Cristo (Kevin Reynolds, 2002)

I Showed The Count of Monte Cristo at school. It was in the lesson plans for one of the classes I had to take over, and the kids had been looking forward to it. It was a solid action-adventure with a little bit of romance and humor. Everything was well done. Works nicely as a school film because it gives a lot to discuss in terms of revenge, forgiveness, and perseverance. Big Hollywood action that gets you cheering for the good guys. Three and half stars.

My Side of the Mountain (James B Clark, 1969)

My Side of the Mountain is another movie that the kids in one class were looking forward to watching after finishing the book. The book, which I recently read and really liked, tells the story of young Sam Gribley who runs away from home in New York City to live off the land in the Catskills. He spends a little over a year living off the land by gathering plants, hunting (often with the help of his falcon, Frightful), trapping, and fishing. It’s a neat tale about learning to live with nature. I wish I could say the same for the movie.

Good lord, it was bad. Almost everything that made the book so charming was stripped from the movie which attempts to sanitize Sam’s experiences living off the land. Sam doesn’t hunt or trap; he only steals a deer that some poachers had already killed so that it won’t go to waste. In a particularly stupid break from the book, Frightful gets killed by a hunter who accidentally shoots her while trying to kill a game bird that Frightful was attacking. Sam calls the hunter a murderer and the hunter tells him that Frightful was a killer too. Sam is sad, but the point is made that killing animals is supposed to be wrong. Now, I’ll go with the idea that trophy hunting is repugnant, but if you’re living off the land, you’re probably going to have to hunt. And if you’re an animal, such as a falcon, hunting is probably okay. I mean, those talons and razor sharp beak aren’t there for giving hugs and kisses to smaller birds.

The movie descends further into idiocy when Sam packs it in after getting snowed in (he lives in a sort of hollowed out tree/cave) one day around Christmas. This happens in the book as well, but Sam manages to survive and learns to avoid that predicament in the future. He makes it through the winter and is able to see the mountain blossom into new life with the coming of spring. Not in the movie. Sam gets rescued by two adults and he happily goes home, thus giving up on his dream of living in nature at the moment when he finally starts to see that nature is for real.

The last thing that bugged me, though my students didn’t notice, is that the whole story had been moved north. No longer did Sam run away from New York, now it was Toronto. Instead of the Catskills, he ran away to Quebec. Oddly enough, it was a Quebec in which no one spoke French, and Sam had no problem communicating with the few people he ran into because they all - every one of them - spoke flawless English. Stupid, stupid, stupid movie. No stars.

Scotland, PA (Billy Morrissette, 2001)

Dimwitted Joe and his ambitious wife Pat McBeth work at Duncan’s, a small fast food joint in Scotland, PA sometime in the late 60s or early 70s. Joe dreams up the concept of the drive through window but he’ll never profit on it as long as he works for Duncan. Three witchy carnys and Pat all convince him that Duncan’s could be his. Pat and Joe kill Duncan and create their own fast food kingdom: McBeth’s. Everything looks good until Lieutenant McDuff (Christopher Walken) shows up and starts asking questions.

Scotland, PA is a witty and dark comedy based on Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Despite the comic tone, though, the film is not a parody. It’s a retelling in a modern context. If you know the story of Macbeth, you know this is a tragedy, and it doesn’t end well for the McBeths or for a number of the other characters. It’s funny, sad, at times grisly (interesting deaths can occur in a fast food joint), but always witty and clever. Four stars.

There’s a dining room in the front of our house, but in the year and a half that we’ve been here, we’ve never once eaten in there or even wanted to, preferring to eat in the breakfast area. The light is beautiful in that room, though. Finally we came to our senses and decided to move the table, put in shelves around the walls and give our many books a home, thus building what kids call a “Lie-berry.”

Morrison, of course, quickly discovered the quiet joy of being a library cat. He’s been reading more lately, too. That is when he isn’t catching the sunbeams that spread out over his new favorite chair.

This is Sheila. She’s a Honda Civic Hybrid (my wife and her colleagues have decided that hybrids are female) and great fun to drive.

We ordered the car in January and it arrived last week. It has that nice new car smell and it runs beautifully. We’re getting close to 40mpg in the city. The stereo sounds great.

Sheila, take a bow.

I’ve been trying to teach haiku. It’s a fun activity for when time is short at the end of the year. I especially like it because it’s simple, yet it forces kids to really choose their words carefully, something they are not often wont to do.

One student, having trouble with the form asked if I could go over it again and write one on the board for him…

First, five syllables
The second line has seven
Third line follows first

and then, this…

Haikus are poems
Usually do not rhyme
Just keep it simple

For some reason they found these amusing.