James Maguire's Thought Circus

You know, I try to be very disciplined with my use of exclamation marks. Unlike most people – you know who you are – I try to limit myself to one. You know, as in…great! As opposed to this: great!!!!!!!!

But tonight, New Year’s Eve, I’m allowing myself a double. I know what you’re thinking – that I’m a wild man, unrestrained, maybe even a little kookie. I mean, a double? But I won’t be deterred. So here goes…

Happy New Year!!

Oh c’mon, what the heck, let’s let it all hang out…

Happy New Year!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted by James Maguire at 05:05 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Not everyone in my household had seen the Da Vinci Code movie, so it was recently rented, and I caught a couple lines in the background.

There is one unintentionally funny line right in the middle. Tom Hanks and the lovely Audrey Tautou are fleeing across Paris. Tension is high. Suddenly, Tom Hanks realizes he needs help with a clue. He looks up and exclaims:

“Get me to a library!”

Naturally, the filmmakers exorcised the library scene from the film (though it’s in the book). They knew that inserting a library scene would murder the movie as surely as curator Jacques Sauniere was laid out at the Louvre. High drama doesn’t go with the Dewey Decimal system.

Still, I’d like more thrillers to stop in the middle and have the characters shout out similar comments.

“No, please – please – I’d like some quiet time!”

“Wait! Oh no! I think I left the casserole in the oven!”

“Oh God we can’t go on! I need to…go play some golf!”

Posted by James Maguire at 09:33 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Below is a sketch of a flying machine made by Leonardo Da Vinci, probably in the early 1500s. I’m guessing the horizontal bars would have been filled in with fabric to create two wings, and the levers would have allowed the pilot to flap them like a bird. (Or perhaps stay in glide mode if the winds allowed.)

I love it that Da Vinci was imagining methods for human flight 400 years before the Wright Brothers. The human mind, if used creatively, is capable of incredible things.

Posted by James Maguire at 08:42 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Think of all those unfortunate people, all over America, forced to – yikes! – spend time with their families.

Like, Uncle Harry with his damn cigars (why won’t he take them outside!). And Timmy, who plays his video games so loud (why won’t the kid speak to us!). And Hilga, who’s glowering in the kitchen – she’s mad about something – probably some remark by that damn Mark.

And then there’s cousin Rick, who won’t stop trying to sell everyone aluminum siding. (God, when do we get to go back to our jobs?!)

Don’t worry, the holiday is almost over. January, with its blessed relief, is just around the corner…

Posted by James Maguire at 08:58 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

From me and my better half on Christmas Eve:

All our love and Happy New Year to all!

Posted by James Maguire at 04:12 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Have you seen them? They’re a regular feature in my neighborhood: the inflatable Christmas decoration. On front lawns, big bulbous Santas are pulled along by oddly plump-looking reindeer. Mickey Mouse in Christmas garb smiles, as a little blower keeps him upright (keeping these things inflated is a drain on the electric bill).

There’s an argument, so far fairly quiet, about how appropriate the inflatables are. Some call them tacky, still more crass consumerism.

That’s probably true, but I have to admit I like them. They’re tacky, sure, but they’re also cheery. They’re fun and colorful. What the heck, for two weeks a year, why not?

Merry Christmas!

Posted by James Maguire at 08:18 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Help! Hilary Duff recently announced that she’s releasing her own perfume.

That might seem like just more commercial flotsam, yet another ton of garbage we can heap on our rotting mountain of spangly cultural detritus.

But, oh, this is worse. Think of it: Hillary Duff, teenaged-star of TV and the pop charts, has been carefully groomed to reach a fabulously lucrative market: tween (and now teen) girls. What Britney use to be (before she got into the serial marriage business) Hilary is even more so. She is a marketer’s dream.

Now, with her new perfume, Hilary is marketing…herself. Britney used to sell Pepsi. That was the old paradigm: manufactured pop idol sells consumer goods. But Hilary’s perfume is the cutting edge of the New Consumerism: manufactured pop idol sells her own image.

The image was created to sell, and now it’s turning around and selling itself. It’s a closed loop: a marketing tool that markets itself. Genius, really. And if the perfume isn’t enough for you, she also has her own line of clothes, called, appropriately, “Stuff by Hilary Duff.” There is always more stuff to buy.

Posted by James Maguire at 07:31 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Watching the trailer, this looked to be a painfully predictable little heart-string puller. A man, down on luck – even homeless, for God’s sake – enrolls in a trainee program to be a stockbroker, working to pull himself up by his bootstraps. Will he make it?

Adding the requisite pathos, he’s a single father. So his unswerving dedication to his son makes him even more of a sterling character as he proves that, through sheer hard work, someone without a college degree can become a stockbroker at Dean Witter.

Oh goodness, cue the triumphantly swelling strings. No need to get my usual box of Raisinettes – there’ll be enough saccharine up on screen to satisfy even the most earnest sweet tooth.

Despite all that, this is a surprisingly good movie. Its goodness comes almost exclusively from Will Smith, who proves that, through sheer hard work (and enormous talent), a truly superior actor can rescue even a threadbare script.

Smith, who’s in every scene, is letter perfect. Never maudlin, though the script begs him to be. He turns this Hollywood fantasy into something real, even gritty. He takes the movie’s basic message – that if you’re willing to work hard enough, you will succeed – out of the realm of treacle and turns it into a satisfying affirmation.

As a major added plus, the film highlights the plight of the homeless, so it brings a much needed social conscience to the multiplex.

Posted by James Maguire at 08:13 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

It must be one of the great joys of Christmas: the joy of generosity. Isn’t there a special charge that the gift giver gets? Forget the recipients – it’s the givers who have the most fun at Christmas time.

Knowing they’ve lined up a special array of gewgaws, the anticipation of it, even knowing what order they’ll give the gifts in. Knowing that there are special smiles of delight on the way. Knowing, perhaps, they’ve blown their budget, but what the hell – the thingamajig is worth it, or at least it will be in the eyes (and hopefully, the heart) of the receiver.

Gathering gifts to give is like putting a bottle of champagne in the fridge to chill. You put it in at room temperature, but you know that it’s quietly chilling, soon to burst open in a joy of bubbly. How delicious.

Posted by James Maguire at 08:21 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Here’s Picasso’s Three Musicians , from 1921. What I love about it – besides the riot of color and shape that feels like music – is the sly joke on the far left side. Notice the wild animal back there. It seems to be Picasso’s way of describing the unbound energy of the players, something totally free, maybe even demonic. The piece is an inspired depiction of a hoppin’ jam band.

Posted by James Maguire at 07:50 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

T.C. Boyle is one of America’s best prose stylists. In his eleventh novel, Talk Talk, the story is quite good, but it’s Boyle’s vibrant, fresh style that makes the book a great read.

Talk Talk is a dual narrative, alternating betwen the story of an identity thief, Peck Wilson, and his victim, Dana Halter, a deaf woman who’s fiercely independent despite her handicap. When Dana realizes that Peck has stolen her identity, using it to commit crimes, she sets out to avenge herself. Peck notices he’s being pursued, and the chase is on.

Boyle uses the concept of identity theft as a vehicle to explore identity – what it is, how it’s “owned” or “stolen.” Interestingly, Boyle portrays Peck as something of a sympathetic character, and Dana as sometimes so ornery and difficult (in her relationship with her boyfriend) that the strict white hat/black hat dimension is blurred.

Here’s the first paragraph. Notice all the details Boyle includes. Like exactly where Dana found her coat (underneath her blue corduroy jacket on the coat tree in the front hall), and how authentically he puts us inside Dana’s mind as she hurries. The effect is to submerge the reader in Boyle’s invented world, which he does wonderfully:

“She was running late, always running late, a failing of hers, she knew it, but then she couldn’t find her purse and once she did manage to locate it (underneath her blue corduroy jacket on the coat tree in the front hall), she couldn’t find her keys. They should have been in her purse, but they weren’t, and so she’d made a circuit of the apartment — two circuits, three — before she thought to look through the pockets of the jeans she’d worn the day before, but where were they ? No time for toast. Forget the toast, forget food. She was out of orange juice. Out of butter and cream cheese. The newspaper on the front mat was just another obstacle. Piss-warm — was that an acceptable term? Yes — piss-warm coffee in a stained mug, a quick check of lipstick and hair in the rearview mirror, and then she was putting the car in gear and backing out onto the street.”

Posted by James Maguire at 08:09 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Plenty of people snicker about vocalist Barry White – those basso profoundo celebrations of carnal love, his roast beef ‘n’ gravy gravely voice, his boundless yearning for more. Sometimes called “The Walrus of Love,” the large-girthed White seemed to have enormous appetites – for everything.

But thank God for Barry. He could really, really sing. And all that half-whispered, half-moaned stuff about love, his need, which seemed so corny as he was cranking out the hits, now seems incredibly authentic.

A dose of the Barry’s big voice and big heart:

Posted by James Maguire at 07:38 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The Census Bureau just released its 2007 numbers, with a passel of statistics about American life. Not surprisingly, we’re the fattest humans on the face of the earth, even porkier than our closest competitors in England, Mexico, and Australia.

We drink more bottled water per person than beer (but still we’re fat?) and we love high fructose corn syrup, consuming more than twice as much as we did in 1980 (okay, no wonder we’re fat).

We watch a lot of TV (64 days a year) but we’re watching less than in 2000, (about 110 hours less per year). The extra time is spent on the Internet, with total hours zooming from 104 hours in 2000 to 183 hours in 2005.

The most telling statistic concerns college freshmen. Amid the heady idealism of 1970, a whopping 79 percent said their goal was to develop a meaningful philosophy of life. But in 2005, 75 percent said their top priority was to be financially very well off.

I understand today’s freshmen. Facing tuition costs of $40,000 a year for four years (is that…$160,000? Oh my God!) they can’t afford to be philosophical. Plus, the job market ain’t what it used to be. In 1970, a college degree opened a lot of doors. Today, not necessarily.

But I have a theory – based on no facts whatsoever – that today’s freshmen will at some point encounter that same heady search for meaning as their 1970 forebears. After all, the spark that drove 1970’s idealism hasn’t been erased from the human race, perhaps just submerged by the heavy weight of financial pragmatism.

Someday, today’s freshmen will look up. They’ll have enough to make their monthly credit card balance, and the battery on their iPod will run low, long enough for them to hear a few moments of silence. In the shocking quietude of their mobile office, they’ll wonder: isn’t there something more than this?

Then what’s going to happen?

Posted by James Maguire at 09:19 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

Here’s the :30 second opening to the Flintstones, from the early 1960s. Two things I’ve always loved about the Flintstones theme song. First, it’s simply a good piece of music, with an interesting melody that has a real identity – it’s not just TV shlock.

Second, you can hear that they hired a Big Band musician to write it. Although pop-rock was on the rise, the people in authority had been raised on the music of the 1940s. So the arrangement is very Big Band, with brassy horns and a syncopated feel.

Take a listen:

Posted by James Maguire at 07:42 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (2)

Over at Dictionary.com, they’re having a vote for 2006 Word of the Year. You can vote online here

My vote for this year’s word of the year goes to Truthiness, coined by the inimitable Stephen Colbert. It refers to a form of truth created strictly by emotional feel, usually a feel informed only by a barrage of spin-meisters and over-inflated talking heads.

The power of Truthiness has been in full force the last few years – we even went to war based on it. But if I’m sensing the national mood right, we’re getting a little tired of Truthiness. We’re hungry for a dollop of rational decision making based on adult-level thinking, the kind that acknowledges verifiable facts, along with gray areas, doubt, and sometimes even – gasp – compromise.

Posted by James Maguire at 08:21 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Why exactly Bing Crosby was so famous will remain a mystery. To later generations he appears as a bland, likeable-enough fellow, with a dulcet singing voice and an upbeat, “it’s good to be normal” attitude. He wasn’t particularly good looking, nor funny, though he did have a casual, thrown-away charisma.

Yet back in the 1940s Crosby was like the equivalent of the Beatles to another generation. A poll taken in the ’40s declared him “the most popular man alive.” Go figure.

But Der Bingle, as he was lovingly known, does have one saving grace for later generations. When he croons “White Christmas” in that warm-blanket voice of his, you can almost see Santa coursing across the sky. (Oh, and Crosby’s version sold more than 30 million copies.) So here it is, your dose of Der Bingle:

Trivia point: “White Christmas,” probably the most popular Christmas song ever, was written by a composer who happened to be Jewish, Irving Berlin. There’s a great charming irony in that. And Berlin, who lived to age 101, also wrote “Easter Parade.”

Posted by James Maguire at 06:49 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Question: Is eating one vegetable stir-fry along with 35 cookies considered good nutrition?

Hoping to get more good nutritious greens into my diet, I ate a veggie stir-fry. I felt very good about myself. But vegetables don’t keep the engine running. So later on, I devoured about, oh, I don’t know, 25 (35?) chocolate chip cookies. (The cookies were really good, by the way – far better than the stir-fry. Why can’t cookies be good for you, and veggies be the junk food we’re supposed to avoid?)

At any rate, it appears I’ve fallen from dietary grace. But I need to pick myself and keep climbing.

I think I can, I think I can…

Posted by James Maguire at 07:53 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

In my travels across the Internet I came across this wonderful site, Project Gutenberg, which offers free downloads of eBooks. The 20,000 books are all classic titles that aren’t copyrighted in the U.S.

The titles range from The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (text only, unfortunately, so we miss Leonardo’s fascinating sketches) to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

I tried a few titles and I found that when you first click on the download link, it doesn’t download to your computer. Instead, you see the complete text in your browser. Then, I’m assuming (I didn’t try it) you can do a “Save As” to bring the text to your hard drive, if you’d like to load it on to your portable.

Or, you can skip downloading it and just print out the text and read it on good old fashioned paper.

I clicked on Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities, with its classic first sentence. I love the sense of rhythm in his long and windy open:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”

Posted by James Maguire at 10:47 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (2)

Normally I delete all my spam – all 1.5 billion pieces a day – with hardly a glance. But this one caught my eye:

I don’t know any Deans, but I’m happy I could have such a profound effect on his life. Whatever I did, I’m glad I did it.

Significantly, the time stamp shows I received it at 2:38 AM. I can just imagine what happened. Dean was having what F. Scott Fitzgerald calls “a three o’clock in the morning of the soul.” Unhappy, sleepless, restless. Probably pacing to and fro.

Finally, it came to him: his big moment. His eureka of clarity – with help from me, of course.

At that moment, he wiped the sweat from his brow and dashed me off a grateful missive. SInce I deleted his e-mail without opening it, I’ll never know the full depth of his gratitude.

Still, Dean, wherever you are: Buddy, it’s okay. I’m happy to help. No problem. And you’re very welcome.

Posted by James Maguire at 10:18 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

We decided to go to a movie but the new releases offered some grim choices. There’s Mel Gibson’s Mayan gorefest, Apocolypto, in which a jaguar gnaws off a man’s face (yikes! talk about a filmmaker with demons), and there’s Blood Diamond, in which Leonardo DiCaprio squints and sprints amid the endless bloodshed of African civil war.

So, wanting to avoid the horrible realities of life – after all, we were going to the movies – we opted for the cotton candy romantic comedy, The Holiday. It’s a thoroughly enjoyable chick flick.

Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet play lovelorn women who decide to trade houses for the holidays. Diaz, who’s character is very Type A, goes to a bucolic English cabin, while Winslet, a self-depreciating Londoner, moves to posh Hollywood digs. To their utter surprise, each finds a love interest in their new locale.

Jude Law is funny as the good-beneath-the-cad Englishman, and Jack Black steals whatever scene he’s in as a film composer who learns that beauty is sometimes only skin deep. (The scene in which he walks through a Blockbuster, picking up videos boxes and singing their movie themes, is hilarious.)

Nothing all that fresh here, but the humor combined with the heart-warming quality will make this a solid hit for the holidays. The audience laughed throughout, and I could feel them sighing. Some actually clapped when the film ended.

Posted by James Maguire at 09:41 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

According to Janet Bodnar, author of Money Smart Women, men and women see money far differently. She might have a vested interest in the topic – she’s got a book to hawk. But at least a couple of her points are interesting.

She claims that in a study by Oppenheimer Funds, 41% of men said they didn’t know how mutual funds worked, versus 60% of women. I’m guessing this is a straight case of male ego – more men simply won’t admit they don’t understand mutual funds, regardless of the truth of the matter.

Which relates to point No. 2: Bodnar cites a study of investors at a large discount brokerage firm in the ’90s, done by two professors at U.C. Davis. The study found that the women’s portfolios earned an average of 1.4 percentage points more per year.

Apparently the women’s greater success was due to greater research. Whereas men were willing to shoot for the moon with investments they didn’t really understand, women took a more considered approach. In other words, the dudes foolishly believed their own wild ideas.

Ah, male ego. It’ll get you every time.

Posted by James Maguire at 08:54 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The newly released Iraq Study Group’s finding that the situation in Iraq is “grave and deteriorating” is a welcome splash of cold water on Bush’s absurd assertions that we’re winning. The guidance provided by the Study Group seems like our best hope for extricating ourselves from this mess with a minimum of additional loss.

But I think the group’s help is coming too late. Iraq looks like it has devolved into such chaos that no combination of diplomacy and phased withdrawal is going to keep the country from collapsing when we leave.

Worse still, our inglorious exit will create a power vacuum: an oil rich country, with no central power of its own to defend it, as Iran (and other countries) look on covetously. God, what a conflagration that could be.

I’d love to be wrong about that – in fact I really hope I am. I hope we can pull out and, through some unforeseen sleight of hand, enable Iraq and the region to muddle through more or less intact. But I’m afraid the ultimate result of our Iraq tragedy will be to turn a state once headed by a secular strong man (Saddam Hussein) into a state headed by an Islamic theocracy (Mokhtar al-Sadr and his cohorts).

To think, thousands of American lives were lost and billions of dollars were spent to accomplish that. It’s no surprise that many Americans are disgusted and furious with the “leadership” that got us into this hole.

Posted by James Maguire at 08:51 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Interestingly, Kerouac created a list of 30 essential guidelines to writing what he called “spontaneous prose.” Here are a few:

1) Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy.

3) Try never get drunk outside yr own house.

(Clearly Kerouac couldn’t follow this one.)

4) Be in love with yr life.

6) Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind.

(I love this one. He invented the word “dumbsaint,” but I think I know what he meant.)

7) Blow as deep as you want to blow.

20) Believe in the holy contour of life.

(You know that’s a good one.)

29) You’re a Genius all the time.

(This one has its limitations, but it’s an encouraging sentiment when facing a blank page.)

Posted by James Maguire at 08:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Published in 1957, Jack Kerouac’s On The Road is the seminal beat generation novel. I’ve always loved how it mythologizes outsiders, groovy dreamers who live outside staid, conformist society.

According to legend, Kerouac wrote it in three weeks, fueled by coffee and benzedrine. (In reality he revised quite a bit, and had written preparatory material for years.)

An excerpt:

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars…”

Unfortunately for Jack, he lived a little too madly. He died in 1969, at age 47, of complications from alcoholism. But On the Road is still being read. A recent check of its Amazon ranking put the book at #1,063 – an astonishingly high rank for a book that gets no fresh publicity.

Posted by James Maguire at 08:38 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The moment when Marlon Brando howls “Stella!” in “A Streetcar Named Desire” is one of the most visceral moments in film history. With one impassioned scream, Brando forever issued a challenge to every actor who came after him: Can you be this compelling? Can you be this authentic?

Here’s the moment:

Posted by James Maguire at 07:33 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Eminem’s “Without Me” shows the rapper at his most brilliant, bobbing and weaving with a sheer joie de vivre that allows the tune to go far beyond the narrow confines of rap.

The track is so stream-of-consciousness it’s almost hallucinatory – jumping from politics to Elvis to the Batman theme to a Wal-Mart-esque announcer voice – but somehow Eminem pulls it all together.

Topping it off, the chorus has the catchiness of a traditional pop tune, and the beat is lively kick ‘n snare concoction with an enchanting little saxophone accompaniment.

And it’s funny. On the surface the tune is standard rap braggadocio – the world is centered on him, his lyrics claim. But the wacky wordplay seems to mock the self-aggrandizement. And it’s so clever we end up laughing along as he brags.

Here’s a snippet in which he tweaks Dick Cheney:

Posted by James Maguire at 09:55 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (16)

With the turn of the calendar to December, it’s no longer possible to deny it: the holiday season has arrived. Which means certain things are true:

• There’s a little vibratory buzz in the air. Energy levels increase about five to ten percent. We’re happy! (Or hopefully we can fake it.)

• People appear to get friendlier, unless you’re in a department store, in which case they exhibit an elbow-in-the-eye “survival of the fittest” mentality.

• It’s very hard to hang on to your wallet. If flies out of your pocket of its own volition. That’s not necessarily a bad thing – in fact, what the hell, spend that money!

• We live in a state of complete denial about January. In January, life falls off to a wintry sameness, without a vacation as far as the eye can see. But for now, who cares? It’s the holidays!

Posted by James Maguire at 08:51 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

“Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.”

~ Mark Twain

Posted by James Maguire at 07:54 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (2)