Skip to content

Coyote Mercury Posts

Pants on Fire

February 1, 2006 • • 2 Comments

I keep hearing about the “controversy” surrounding James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces. I just don’t get it. I first heard about this at the Kathy Griffin show that I posted about last week when she mentioned Frey getting chewed out by Oprah. The next day it was in the paper. What I don’t get is why this should be such a big deal. Many people (not me, I haven’t read it) seem to feel betrayed because they read and liked the book only to find out that it was – gasp! – made up.

Why should this bother anyone? We aren’t talking about historical events, scientific discoveries, how to safely dismantle a bomb, or anything that’s really important. It’s about one guy’s drug problems. Does the book’s veracity really change whether or not a person enjoyed reading it or learned something from it? I suppose for some people it must, but for me it seems sort of irrelevant.

This reminds me a friend who claims that Jesus never existed and never said all the things he is supposed to have said so therefore we should just disregard the Bible altogether. Putting all the obvious problems with disregarding an ancient and influential book like the Bible aside and accepting his claim that there was no Jesus, we’re still left with the fact that somebody somewhere had to write the Gospels and make all that stuff up. It’s quite a feat and still gives one much to think about, whether it’s literally true or not. I wish I had the talent to invent dialog such as Jesus had with his detractors.

I don’t suppose anyone will be L Ron Hubbardizing Frey any time soon, but it seems that a reader’s interaction with a text shouldn’t necessarily depend on whether or not it really happened as stated. This leads to Oprah’s choice to replace Frey’s memoir with another memoir: Night by Elie Wiesel. If it came out tomorrow that Wiesel never experienced the horrors he so eloquently describes and instead spent World War II living in a Manhattan penthouse, he would certainly lose credibility as a witness to the Holocaust, but Night would not be diminished one bit for me, and I would still have my students read it.

I do think Frey should have presented his work as fiction, and the marketeers who have helped him sell it have a right to be mad that their work, the image they so carefully crafted – or dare I say, made up? – is now shot, but I suspect that had he tried to sell it as fiction he would probably still be trying to sell it.

UPDATE 2-3-06: This discussion is also going on at Dem Soldier’s blog where you can see some truly beautiful photography as well. I was commenting there as I was working up this post, so links seem appropriate if a bit belated.

So Long, Saradora’s

January 31, 2006 • • 6 Comments

I learned today that the cool little coffee shop on Round Rock’s main drag is no more. Saradora’s has closed up shop. Based on the article in the paper, it sounds as if there weren’t enough people in Round Rock who were interested in drinking coffee in an eclectic local hangout. That isn’t surprising. The many chains on I-35 leave very little in Round Rock that’s independent. Except BBQ, of course.

Admittedly, I was not a regular at Saradora’s since there are cool little coffee joints much closer to home, but I liked knowing it was there, and when I lived closer I sometimes went. It always seemed like a mark of progress for Round Rock to have an indy coffee shop considering that there was really nothing but fast food there in 1988 when my New England eyes first beheld Austin’s northern neighbor.

Location might have been a factor. It’s a few miles from the interstate in Round Rock’s historic downtown near where Sam Bass was gunned down in 1878. The downtown area is a scant few blocks long and while charming and well-maintained, there isn’t much there. I guess people mainly went to Saradora’s if they were going to Saradora’s as opposed to stopping off on the way to or from somewhere else.

I realize that I hadn’t been there for quite some time, but the last time I was there, I did memorialize the event. A few years ago, when I discovered BookCrossing, I left a copy of my book with a bookcrossing ID number inside at Saradora’s to see where it would go. It’s in Houston now, in the possession of attackedbynones who seemed to enjoy it.

Meat and Potatoes

January 30, 2006 • • 2 Comments

I’ve now added “Meat and Potatoes” to the stories and poems page. It’s pretty funny. Feel free to comment here if you like.

Here’s a bit of background:

I originally wrote this as part of my application to NYU’s film school. They wanted a story about gluttony. I sent them a story about giant hamburgers in a Texas BBQ joint. I don’t know what they thought of it, but after choking in my interview, they wait-listed me and then accepted me a few months later. By that time, I was working in the Austin film scene and leaving to rack up huge student loan debts wasn’t so appealing anymore. When I finally did go to grad school at UT, I rewrote the story into its present state for a writing seminar. The teacher, a serious and talented writer named Zulfikar Ghose, asked me to read this to the class at the end of one meeting. I read it, wondering why he had selected this one. By the end, everyone was laughing and Ghose was in tears from laughing so hard. Over the next few semesters, it wasn’t uncommon to be approached by people who were in that class and would laugh when they saw me and reminisce about the day I made Ghose cry.

Enjoy.

The Sky is Falling and Other Unrelated Things

January 28, 2006 • • 4 Comments

This morning, I went outside to get the paper, which wasn’t there, but I noticed that something amazing had happened. It seems that last night free water fell from the sky. This is exciting since we haven’t had substantial rainfall in over a year. The lack of rain and our non-winter winter have conspired to create a dangerously dry situation here. It’s supposed to rain throughout the day today, but I don’t know if that will be enough to end the arson/burn ban that I mentioned last week. Speaking of that post, it was listed at Austinist as one of the Best of the Austin Blogs: Week of January 16, so thanks to them for that honor.

And since we’re on last week’s posts, I’ll mention the “winner” of my secret contest. I had used Talking Heads titles for my posts last week (This Must Be the Place, Burning Down the House, Don’t Worry About the Government, Drugs, Animals) and decided that I would do so until someone noticed. The honor goes to Austin blogger Kramer Wetzel of Astrofish/Xenon, whose blog is most definitely worth a read. I probably could have gone on for a few more weeks with the ‘Heads titles, but I’m glad I got to stop because I could tell that I was trying to find topics that would fit within the titles. I also think it was kind of a cop-out to use Fear of Music titles such as “Drugs” and “Animals” since they don’t really stand out as TH titles.

So on this rainy day Saturday, I think it’ll have to be a day of Outlaw Golf on the PS2.

Kathy Griffin at The Paramount

January 27, 2006 • • Leave a comment

Last night, we saw Kathy Griffin’s sold-out show at The Paramount. It’s been quite a while since I’ve gone to see a stand-up comedy show, and I’d forgotten how fun it is to spend an evening laughing.

I’ve caught bits and pieces of her routine on TV and seen part of My Life on the D-List, and I’ve always liked her. She has a wonderfully breathless I’ve-just-got-to-tell-you-this kind of delivery that draws the crowd into her show by creating the impression of a friend sharing wild secrets and gossip. Her act focuses on ripping certain celebrities whom she often then meets leading to situations in which she has to deal with having put her foot into her mouth. I don’t watch much TV so I sometimes didn’t know who she was talking about (Clay Aiken? Lindsay Lohan?) but the jokes still worked and her delivery – sometimes self-deprecating, sometimes ridiculously assertive – is great fun. It’s not all celeb-bashing, though. There’s plenty of good pissed-off liberal political commentary and family stories that are completely over-the-top.

My favorite aspect of the show was her willingness to share the kind of embarrasing moments that we’d all just as soon forget. Her stories are wild and – true or not doesn’t matter – had me laughing the next morning while making breakfast.

Overall a great show, probably one of the funniest I’ve seen.

Kimberly Road

January 26, 2006 • • Leave a comment

As part of my site redesign, I’m reposting all the short stories I had up on the old site, but because of some reformatting, I’m doing them one at a time and adding some commentary about them as well. I’m starting with “Kimberly Road” because it seems to get the most traffic. It comes up when people ask Google or Jeeves how to compose blues songs, which surprises me. But it is about the blues, so I guess it fits.

The idea for “Kimberly Road” came to me as I was driving from Dallas to Austin back in 1994. I was listening to a Lightnin’ Hopkins CD and the story just started forming. It was one of those instances where I stepped on the gas to hurry home and get to my computer while the story was still coming together in my head. I worked on it for a few days, and the day I finished turned out to be a good day. It was the day I met a woman who would introduce me to one of her co-workers whom I would eventually marry.

I picked the story up a few years later and re-wrote the character of Jake, basing him heavily on a man with whom I worked for a short time. His name was Willie and almost everyday he’d say, “Now see here young man, der’s two kindsa people out there. Them that’s happy at home, and them that ain’t. Them that ain’t is about ten percent and they like to make ever’body else unhappy. So you got to watch out for that other ten percent, see?” Everyday. Some days it would go up to 20%, but usually it hovered around ten.

Actually, A Very Good Day

January 24, 2006 • • 1 Comment

CookiesYesterday afternoon as I was coming up the hill at the end of my run, I noticed that Mrs. Next Door Neighbor and her daughter were walking away from my front door pulling a wagon. On Saturday I had seen them unloading boxes from a van outside their house and now these same boxes appeared to be in the back of the wagon. They noticed me approaching and stopped on the sidewalk by my house. I then realized that despite the calculations of the mood scientists, yesterday was not to be the worst day of the year. In fact, it was one of the best. It occurs on different days for each of us, making it something of a moveable feast, but yesterday – for me, anyway – was Girl Scout Cookie Day.

I’ll buy anything from a kid just to get the little urchins off the street and back to their XBoxes, but I usually only get a small something unless the kid goes beyond staring at the ground mumbling, “I’m…. selling… for sch…” at which point I just ask to see the catalog. If the kid actually pitches something and really tries to sell it… well, I’m a sucker, which is why I have a pantry full of wax-tasting candy, caramel popcorn, and excessively strong candles.

The exception is Girl Scouts. They need money. I need cookies. It’s perfect. The cookies sell themselves. I always splurge, and at three bones per box, that’s a lot of cookie. This year there are even two new flavors: Reduced Fat Cartwheels (“cinnamon oatmeal bites”) and Thanks-A-Lot (“crunchy fudge-coated treats that say thank you on them in five languages.”) Next Door Neighbor’s daughter proudly pitched the new items. How could I resist?

I haven’t tried the new ones yet since I had to immediately sample the Thin Mints. I’m happy to report that this year’s vintage is exceptionally good. They are suitable for aging a few days in the freezer and perfectly compliment a sparkling clementine Izze.

Melancholy Monday

January 23, 2006 • • 1 Comment

According to an article in today’s Austin American-Statesman (which requires a subscription so no link) entitled, “In mood science, today = bluest of 2006” today is supposed to be a gloomy day based on the calculations of one Cliff Arnall, a health psychologist at Cardiff University in Wales. He uses the following formula to calculate the year’s “emotional low point”:

1/8W + (D-d)3/8 x TQ/M x NA

The variables are weather (W), debt (D), monthly salary (d), time since Christmas (T), time since failure to quit a bad habit (Q), low motivation levels (M) and the need to take action (NA).

I’m not a mathematician, and I’m not sure how to assign the variables, but I tried to work it anyway.

It’s beautiful today in central Texas and even 1/8 of that is still a pretty fine day. I got lost on failure to quit a bad habit. Are we measuring minutes or years? If I just quit a bad habit or never failed to quit a bad habit, then does Q=0? If so that could throw the whole equation out of whack. We could wind up with gloominess essentially being 1/8W + 0. As stated earlier 1/8 of a beautiful day ain’t bad. I also realize you’d need to make a major adjustment for the southern hemisphere since large swaths of the planet could be enjoying a perfect summer day.

Basically then it seems that if you quit a bad habit on a reasonably nice day (or in the southern hemisphere), you’ll have no call to worry about your debts, income, motivation or the fact that Christmas was a month ago.

Fortunately for me, I had a non-melancholy Monday and was able to maintain all of my bad habits.