My speech last night at the Block Forum in Indianapolis went well; thanks to my hosts and audience there. I started with a suggestion to the assemble Hoosiers on what they should do as their primary approaches next week; the text is after the gap. By the way, I was told on good authority, after the speech, that what they really want is their very own IKEA.

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I always tell myself I should do a better job of promoting my upcoming appearances, so here’s a stab at it. Monday night, 4/28, I’ll be speaking as part of the Block Forum in Downtown Indianapolis, talking about politics, our show, dumb criminals, reading from and signing the book, and taking your questions. If you come because you read about it here, let me know.

Is referenced, along with my book, Philip Barry, the nature of public radio fame, and other topics on my recent appearance on “The Marketplace of Ideas”, a podcast by Colin Marshall, here and on iTunes.

Some wonderful pictures of our show last week in Hartford, courtesy of the remarkable Chion Wolf, who is not, despite her name, an anime film but a real live person.

A while ago on the show, I mentioned in passing the Red Sox home opener ceremony, in which Billy Buckner, goat of the ‘86 Series collapse, threw out the first ball. I said I was moved to tears (true) and that I finally forgave Buckner (comic hyperbole.) This drew an angry letter from a Red Sox fan, that had the practiced tone of the perennially superior. It was ridiculous to “forgive” Buckner, you see, because he hadn’t done anything wrong, as the following statistics show yadda yadda sabermetrics yadda.

Of course he’s right. It doesn’t make sense to “forgive” Buckner. He was a wealthy man playing a game for his then- current employer, and meant to do well. Of course, it also doesn’t make any sense for me to care at all about any of this. Red Sox, baseball, none of it. That’s my response to those who urge me to be more “rational” about sports… I get any more rational, I’ll just turn throw away the sports section entirely and see how my mutual funds are doing.

Case in point: the profile of Yankees ace pitcher Chien Ming Wang in the current Sports Illustrated. Every author of every feature profile of a sports hero does his or her damndest to make the subject interesting, alive, admirable, fascinating, somehow worthy of the attention he’s getting in the profile at hand. And here the author, Albert Chen, comes up with… nothing. You can see him trying… somehow, trying to describe a personality… but there’s no personality there. Wang is depicted — in what should have been a standard jock hagiography — as a bland, shy, affectless man, with no real interests, no real personality or point of view or even ambitions. Chen, desperate, goes for the old standby, the locker-mate quote. This is what he shows for his trouble:

[Wang] sits there and goes through all his stacks of fan mail,” says Yankees centerfielder Johnny Damon, who has lockered next to Wang for the last two years. “He looks at his car magazines. I know he likes cars. I know he likes expensive watches. But that’s pretty much it.”

But: one day earlier in his career, a pitching coach gave him a hint: if he held the ball a different way, it would impart a different motion. And sure enough, if he “pressed harder there,” in combination with his distinct and ineluctable biomechanical gestalt, the ball would drop suddenly as it reached the plate. A wicked slider, as they say in Boston and other parts. Almost unhittable. Because he “pressed harder” along the seams of the ball.

So now he’s number one in the rotation for the Yankees, and the national hero of Taiwain. Most popular person in that country. Can’t go out in public for fear of being mobbed. More beloved than the President, anyone. Because the ball drops six to nine inches as it reaches the plate.

Rational, indeed.

But on the other hand, I really was moved to tears.

Had a very interesting and rewarding evening moderating a panel on The Long Goodbye, by Raymond Chandler. It’s the spring selection for the “One Book, One Chicago” program, hosted by the City of the Chicago, and I got to talk about the book with Pico Iyer, Judith Freeman, and Achy Obejas. Judith is the author of the remarkable The Long Embrace, a biography of sorts of Chandler, but also the story of how Judith became obsessed with Chandler, specifically his relationship with his much older, somewhat mysterious wife, Cissy, and how Judith ended up following Chandler’s path all over Southern California. It’s a great read, and after finding out about the depths of Chandler’s alcoholism, and his strange relationship to his wife and other women, it changes the experience of reading the books as much as, say, reading about Tennessee Williams’ compulsion towards rough trade changes your experience of Blanche DuBois.

That, of course, is the Biographical Fallacy… assuming that the work reflects or indicates the life of the writer. The post-modern critics I studied in college will tell you that’s a mistake… Marlowe is Marlowe, and Chandler is Chandler, and never the twain shall meet. (And Twain is not Huckleberry Finn, while we’re on the topic.) Authors will tell you that the experience of the writer is everything, even if the author himself doesn’t know it.

We finished the evening by letting Chandler speak for himself. It’s from the last letter published in his collected correspondence. Chandler died a month later, wasted from drink, anxious, and alone.

A fellow of Marlowe’s type shouldn’t get married, because he is a lonely man, a poor man, a dangerous man, and yet a sympathetic man, and somehow none of this goes with marriage. I think he will always have a fairly shabby office, a lonely house, a number of affairs, but no permanent connection. I think he will always be awakened at some inconvenient hour by some inconvenient person to do some inconvenient job. It seems to me that that this is his destiny — possibly not the best destiny in the world, but it belongs to him. No one will ever beat him, because by his nature he is unbeatable. No one will ever make him rich, because he is destined to be poor. But somehow, I think, he would not have it otherwise, and therefore I feel that your idea that he should be married, even to a very nice girl, is quite out of character. I see him always in a lonely street, in lonely rooms, puzzled but never quite defeated.

Everybody who writes a book needs some angels, and for me, there was none with a more beatific effect and wider wingspan than Carly Milne. I first found her through her much missed blog, Pornblography, about her daily adventures working as a publicist in the “adult entertainment industry.” She was funny, honest, pro-sex, anti-nonsense, and generally seemed to be kind of person that I wished Gail Palmer — the faux-porn director whose memoirs I wrote, as discussed in my book — actually had really been: a cool, independent woman working in porn.

Carly has left that industry to pursue her own career as a writer. In addition to editing an interesting anthology about women in her old line of work, she’s written a memoir, Sexography, about her own, shall we say, intimate education… a story that also includes a history of rape and abuse. So, to help raise awareness of both the book and the issue, she’s created a Blogathon: she and a partner have invited bloggers to tell their own stories about sex and sexuality, while soliciting donations for RAINN, the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network. The best writing wins a cash prize. Go here, check out the latest blog entries, and think about sending some funds to RAINN, and taking a look at Carly’s site and book.  (By the way, some of the blog entries you’ll find linked to are PG-13 or R rated.  Some go far beyond that. Be aware.)

As for me, I think I’ve said all I’m going to, for now, about sex and sexuality in my book. But I will say that Carly and I have something in common: both of us found Gene Simmons to be totally gross.

This “what makes me cry” thread is more and more interesting…

A few commenters have mentioned the great kid’s movie Babe, especially the scene in which Farmer Hogg sings his song, and dances, for Babe the pig. Personally, I made it through that scene dry as a bone, but lost it at the end, when the crowd erupts for Babe at the sheep dog trials, and the same theme (from Camille Saint-Saëns Symphony No. 3) come in via the orchestra. Then I’m the veritable Source of the Nile.

I again am intrigued by how many kid’s movies are showing up on people’s lists, especially my own. My friend Andrew tries to explicate the connection between memories of childhood and emotion here, and he’s clearly on to something, but this isn’t just about “Rosebud”-like moments of profound emotional connection to something from one’s own childhood. This is about weeping like babies to kid’s movies.

It may be that that the nature of kid’s movies, and the nature of their intended audience, allows the filmmakers to do without the murderer of true sentiment, and the gauze we put between ourselves and our weepy selves: irony.

By the way, I also used the Youtube way-back machine and looked at some scenes from Excalibur, one of my favorite movies as an adolescent, mentioned below. Oy. Some cheese tends to smell over time.

And speaking of childhood — after first hearing Wagner via that movie, I watched a telecast of Patrice Chereau’s (in)famous Bayreuth production of “The Ring” on PBS. I remember to this day sitting in my parent’s living room, transfixed by his staging of the same music, the Funeral March from Gotterdammerung. Instead of a funeral — or a march — or a parade — or any action that would seem appropriate to that Most Dramatic of All Themes, he simply arranged people, peasants, maybe, in mourning, maybe lost, on stage, staring out at the viewer as Something Important, we presume, goes by.

A few search terms in YouTube, and there it is. Whatever we have in common with all humans over time in our relationships with our lost childhood, this generation is unique in that we can pretty much look at our childhood whenever we want. By the way, I still think it’s stunning.

Walking to work from the bus this morning, and my iPod started playing “Solsbury Hill” by Peter Gabriel, a song that has meant a lot to me since forever, in the mysterious way songs do, and as almost always I began to get choked up… “Grab your things I’ve come to take you home…”

Which in turn made me think about the women who’ve written to let me know that my recent commentary made them cry, which in further turn made me think about the things that have reliably, or surprisingly, made me get all weepy. Like all heterosexual males, I am occasionally accused of having no feelings, or being afraid of them, etc. And like all heterosexual males, I am vaguely embarrassed by the feelings I DO have. So, for no particular reason, here’s a selection of stupid, juvenile, sentimental stuff that has, for whatever reason, pulled on the my reedy, fraying heartstrings:

“The Story of the Blessing of El-Ahrairah,” from Watership Down: “All the world will be your enemy, Prince of a Thousand Enemies, and if they catch you, they will kill you. But first, they must catch you…” That’s from memory. I say that to myself sometimes when I’m running, and I speed up.

The endings of The Iron Giant and The Incredibles, as discussed here.

Also, now that we’re on the topic, the ending of Toy Story: “We’re flying!” “No! We’re falling with style!”

The Tom Junod Esquire profile of Fred Rogers, discussed here.

The sight of the gleaming car rising up and taking wing at the first act climax of the otherwise lousy Broadway musical version of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

“Siegfried’s Funeral March” from Gotterdammerung.

The ending of Elf, when everybody sings and the sleigh flies again. (totally can’t explain that one… I didn’t grow up with Christmas.)

And just today, this. If you don’t understand why, I can never adequately explain.

I note that most of these things are either things from my childhood, or refer to childhood in general. Even the Wagner… the first time I heard the “Funeral March” was in the movie Excalibur, which came out when I was 15.

I know there’s more, I just can’t think of them right now. If I remember, I’ll post ‘em here.

Update: okay, first add to the list, inspired by a comment. The song “When She Loved Me,” by Randy Newman, sung by Sarah McLachlan, in Toy Story 2. I weep to that sucker like Pavlov’s dogs drooled. When Newman lost the Oscar for best song that year to some crappy cacophony by Phil Collins, I think I threw something at the TV. But once again: a moment explicitly linked to not to my childhood, this time, but (a fictional) somebody else’s. So what’s up with that? I have all kinds of enthusiastic and emotional responses to all kinds of things, but the only things that make me weepy are about children and childhood, mine or others. Is this weird? BTW, when Tom Hanks was on our show, he said that sequence in the film reduced him to tears as well. So I’m at least as weird as him. (also: why “reduced” to tears?)

Don’t know why I thought of that lyric (It’s from “On the Nickel,” one of my favorite Tom Waits songs) but that’s what came to my mind when I read this blog post about (one more time) the Horton Rant. Obviously, I think he’s overreacting… I may never have “dated a son,” but, uh, I am one. And thus, I find boys and their dramas pretty interesting. But I also find the stuff about mixed martial arts and anime in the comments a little… weird.