July 2002 Archives

I have climbed only a few mountains in my life, but now there's one I've conquered both by day and by night. Yesterday I went on a night hike of Old Rag.

Old Rag is a bare-topped rocky peak that juts southeastward out of the main ridge of the Shenandoah National Park. Because its top is so rocky and broken, the mountain a) acquired its name (originally "Old Raggedy Mountain") and b) has become one of the eastern states' most popular hikes. I first climbed it about five years ago with our school's outdoor program and have been up it several more times, though I haven't always made it to the summit. Yesterday, at the urging of my colleague Paul, the four of us decided to climb the Ridge Trail, a steep ascent (2600 feet in about 2 miles) that's about an hour of walking switchback trails in the woods and an hour and a half of scrambling over rocks and up crevices. The scramble is by far the coolest part of the trip.

We started the climb before sunset, at about 7:00, and by the time we got about 45 minutes into the woods, I was already beat; I've climbed Old Rag before, but never in July, and thanks to Virginia's high humidity and heat, I was good and dehydrated. I actually felt light-headed a few times, but I swilled down almost all my water before we got to the scramble, figuring it would do more good in my system than out.

The good thing about stopping for water was that I spotted a young black bear while we were resting. It was about 30 feet up a tree, but the tree stood below the trail so that it was almost even with us. Paul snapped some pics, but I don't know if they'll come out well or not--it was pretty leafy up there. Our other two companions, Ryan and Jessica, were rapt; I'm not sure Jessica had seen a bear in the wild before. (I'd seen two on a hike of the SNP's northern Appalachian Trail section, but this was the first one I'd ever seen in a tree.)

By the time we reached the rock scramble, the sun had dipped behind the mountains, so we started grabbing rocks and clambering over them without direct sunlight. After reaching the first of the three rocky peaks and trying to locate our school to the east--we failed--we broke out the headlamps. The lamps were very cool & lightweight, smaller than a credit card but bright enough to show the trail in front of you for a good seven to ten feet. As the ascent got steeper, it became less of a walk and more of a climb, so the lights were necessary to find hand- and footholds Once or twice I had to back away from my usual get-leverage-and-pry-yourself-uphill method and simply bull my way up with my upper body. Considering how old and out-of-shape I'd been feeling earlier, it was a big confidence booster to be able to do that.

We hit the summit at about 9:45 and perched atop one of a circle of gigantic boulders to wolf down trail mix and water. The wind threatened to blow any loose gear off the mountain entirely, but I for one found the cooling effect more than welcome. The night sky was brilliantly clear, except for a band of haze around the horizon, and the Milky Way was broad and vivid. Since the moon hadn't risen yet, the brightest thing in the sky was Venus, which glowed in a positively uncanny way. We spotted shooting stars and a couple of satellites, but spent most of our time looking at constellations with Paul's star map and my binoculars. Scorpio hung huge and brilliant over the southern horizon; Cassiopeia to the northeast, Venus in the west. We felt as though we had guideposts on every side of us.

I learned several new tricks for finding stellar objects, including Arcuturus, the Northern Crown, the "horse and rider" in the Big Dipper, and the Andromeda Galaxy, which we couldn't quite see with the naked eye, but which showed up nicely blobby and blurry in the binoculars. "That makes three galaxies I've seen," said Paul, who spent some time in Chile last year and saw one of the Magellanic Clouds. Jessica, meanwhile, saw her first shooting star; she's twenty-one. I told her she had a good chance of seeing more over hte next two decades of her life and felt very old for a minute or two.

We rested for about an hour, then turned the lamps back on and scrambled down the other side of the mountain toward the local fire road. We spotted the reflective green eyes of a deer that was lying in the greenery a few yards away from the trail; it was eerily hard to identify, perhaps because it was so calm.

Once we got to the road, we turned off the lamps and proceeded mostly by feel. (I suggested going by taste or smell, but Paul rejected the idea out of hand.) When we reached the car at 1:00, we decided we were filthy and tired enough to need a quick dip in the icy waters of the Hughes River, which runs across the northern foot of Old Rag. Hard by the parking lot was a beautiful (if dark) pool at the bottom of a small waterfall. "Cold" does not do justice to the temperature of the river's mountain-sprung waters, but it was the perfect ending to the hike.

Well, actually, Paul's stopping by the Sheetz on the way home provided the perfect ending. I strode boldly through the doors, poured myself a thirty-ounce cherry Slurpee, and pounded it down before we got out of the parking lot again.

This morning I am very stiff and my feat are blistery and my hair looks ridiculous. I am in a stupidly happy mood.


3:27 PM

My birding life list now sits at 252 species. After picking up 40 species in Britain in 1999, I've slowed down my reckless pace a bit; in 2000, I spotted only eight new species (including one of my more spectacular acquisitions, a Scissor-tailed Flycatcher, one of a nesting pair in western Madison County). Last year I spotted only four--two on a camping trip in the Shenandoah National Park (Veery and Hooded Warbler) and two on a birding trip to the Back Bay NWR near Virgina Beach (Northern Pintail and American Bittern). With seven-twelfths of this year gone, I have yet to pick up a lifer, so perhaps it's time to take a more aggressive approach to this whole listing thing.

In less than eight months, I'll be going on sabbatical from school. Part of that time will be taken up in research, part in writing, and part in touring in support of The Verb To Bird when it finally comes out. The tour will involve traveling to parts of the country I've never visited, and that means I'll be heading into the ranges of a number of birds I've never seen. It just seems logical to take some time for birding while I'm in the neighborhood, right? Right.

So what should I look for?

I'll be traveling in the spring and/or summer, so northern birds that winter in the US will probably not be around for me to spot. That probably means I'll miss out on the Whooping Cranes, who'll probably be in Alberta by the time I head out. But there are plenty of other birds I'd love to see.

For example, I've seen every American species of heron except one: the Reddish Egret. I'd love to say I'd seen every member of the Ardeidae family, though some purists might insist I have to see "Wurdemann's Heron" and the "Great White Heron," both of which are unusual morphs of the Great Blue Heron. Either way, since the Reddish Egret, Wurdemann's and the GWH are all Florida natives, I could knock off all three with a trip to the Sunshine State. I could also pick up a few other odd species there--the Snail Kite, the Limpkin, or maybe even Florida's introduced population of Whooping Cranes.

The Southwest has dozens of species I'd love to see--the Cactus Wren, the Roadrunner, the Vermilion Flycatcher, the Red-faced Warbler--but I think the one I most long to spot is the gorgeous chocolate-and-chestnut Harris' Hawk. It's just one cool-looking bird.

California alone is going to require a whooooole lot of birding. My friend Mary once went west for a Latin symposium and got in a little birding on the side; she sent me back a postcard consisting of nothing but the names of the lifers she'd spotted. When she returned, she emphasized the need to carefully check out different terrains in the same general area; apparently the bird life differs radically with every change in elevation, foliage, or landform. Perhaps I'll start in Southern Cal and pick up a Ladder-backed Woodpecker, move into the central valley to spot a Yellow-billed Magpie, and move northward to see a Varied Thrush. One thing's for sure: I will be visiting the coast--I will have a Tufted Puffin.

But no matter what I seek out, I'm quite certain that the most interesting sight will be something unexpected--a bird whose presence comes as a complete surprise. And that's the way it should be. Birding is, after all, about seeing what's there, not finding what you seek. If a birder wants his every desire satisfied, he'd better give up birding; he'll get a lot more out of ordering from catalogues.

8:18 PM

A Thank-you Note

Dear Everyone,

I'm sorry this is so late. Mom & Dad always said it was important to thank people for what they've given you, and I realized just recently that while I've thanked everyone for the stuff they've given me, I'm badly, badly behind in thanking everyone for the information they've given me--news about books, music, restaurants, you name it. So here's a late note. Thanks to:

Dan S.--I was sitting at the computer listening to a Fountains of Wayne CD when I realized you'd introduced me to the band. What a great thing for you to do! Thanks, man! And thanks for Ascendancy, too--it's a great game even if it does have one of the most predictable A.I. opponents I've ever faced. When my tendinitis acts up from spending hours beating up the galaxy, I think of you.

Mrs. Rashkis--Ninth-grade English wasn't the half of it. The Great Books Club wasn't the half of it. Even the exchange with the Swain County High students in Bryson City wasn't the half of it. No teacher's done more for me. You gave me Romeo & Juliet, Homer, Harper Lee, Chaim Potok, and a firm belief that putting words together was a worthwhile pursuit. And that teaching was another one. Thanks.

Kristjan--Boy, do I owe you a big thank-you for sending me to Readerville.com! Seriously, the last two years would have been very different and a lot less enjoyable without the 'Ville to hang out in. The books and the dragon-shaped nutcracker are very cool, too, but the online home means more in the long run.

Rob D.--for a former student, you've taught me a lot. The list of bands you've introduced me to is enormous: Radiohead, Ben Folds Five, dada, Ned's Atomic Dustbin, Weezer, Counting Crows, the cranberries... it's a pretty long list. Much obliged, sir.

Scott M.--thanks for all the cool comics work and the secret of Queen's "'39," but thanks mainly for mentioning Fight Club to me. Boy, was that ever a rush. The ads made it look like something decidedly not up my alley, but I've rarely been that floored by a movie. I owe you one.

Sarah R.--Oh, boy, did you ever get me into trouble. I would never have known about the Gordon Avenue Branch booksale in Charlottesville without you. My shelves are still groaning with the stuff I got in 2001. By next year, they may burst. I'm very grateful.

Kevin M.--I haven't been in touch in a looooong while, but I owe you a big debt and its name is "Alan Moore." If you hadn't made me pick up the Pogo tribute Moore wrote for Swamp Thing, I'd be... hell, I'd be a totally different person. So thanks. Drop me a line if you get the chance.

Nan M.--Speaking of being a different person, Nan, where would I be now if you hadn't told me Technical Theater was a good class to take? I'd sure as hell have never learned how to drive a nail, splice a tape, quote Monty Python or bring rice to Rocky Horror. I tip my hat to you, ma'am.

Derik B.--You've pointed me toward the extremes of high and popular culture, whether it's Ovid, Queneau, or Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This whole summer's been one long wallow in the first two seasons of the latter, thanks to you...

Ginny & Flyboy--...And the Buffy tapes you guys have sent have added to the mayhem. Not only do you guys have exquisite taste, you know our tastes cold.

Readervilleans--Too many of you to name, and too many books, too. Without you, I'd have missed half the things on my shelves now: Being Dead, Ex Libris, The Wooden Sea, The Botany of Desire, The Talmud and the Internet, The Lecturer's Tale, Hope is the Thing with Feathers, A World Lit Only by Fire, The Periodic Table, Fast Food Nation, Longitude, As Nature Made Him, Salvation on Sand Mountain... And that's not counting the books a lot of you have written...

Mom & Dad--I'll just make this a quick thanks for On the Beach and John McPhee, OK? Oh, and also for Chuck Berry, Dave Brubeck, the Kingston Trio and Sgt. Pepper. You guys are really cool parents.

Kaethe--If not for you, we'd never have eaten Ethiopian. Worse, we'd have missed Good Omens, and that means we'd have missed Terry Pratchett altogether, and then where would we be? Muchas gracias.

WOCM--It's almost impossible to imagine what my CD collection would look like without your guidance. I'm betting it would have a lot more Styx, though. I thank you for that.

Karen T.--All you've done is introduce me to half of the people above, give me an online presence, and put a lot of names into my personal radar--including that of my publisher. On your personal karma balance sheet is a very big number with the initials "P.C." on it. Collect on it anytime you want.

Kelly--Sure, you've given me sixteen years of married life, two wonderful kids, and a lifetime of companionship, but I also owe you for finding They Might Be Giants, the Balancing Act, and Barenaked Ladies. And Quarantine, Microserfs, and Possession. And Northern Exposure was yours, too, now that I think about it. Thanks.

But you owe me for Robyn Hitchcock and Local Hero.

Yours gratefully,

PC

4:00 AM

I went golfing yesterday for the first time after a long hiatus, a hiatus that's kind of stupid, really, since I live across the street from the school's golf course. It's a truly bizarre sport for many reasons, most of them having to do with either sociology or fashion design. For example, at this weekend's British Open, Duffy Waldorf got a lot of press for his "outlandish" ensemble, a tropical print shirt which consisted of exactly two colors, blue and white, and a cap to match. If that's outlandish, then Newt Gingrich was a drag queen. Frankly, I think the "no shorts" rule is ludicrous, and I'm just hoping that I never have to see a golfer other than Tiger Woods or Vijay Singh at the beach; the contrast between his deeply tanned arms and face and his grub-white legs will probably cause me to stare in horror.

From a sociological standpoint, golf is in a very interesting place right now. After years of being, well, grub-white, its most dominant and popular figure is a man whose ethnic background is a veritable rainbow. Though the sport is traditionally tied closely to the most exclusive country clubs in the nation, this year's US Open was held at an actual public course, one where there are no arcane requirements for membership and anyone with a few bucks (and a car to sleep in while waiting for a tee time) can play a round. And despite its "gentlemanly" aura, the pros are starting to have to deal with hecklers on a regular basis, rather than being able to count on perfect silence as they approach their tee shots.

This last, I'll admit, doesn't bother me much. Sure, it's hard to hit a tee shot straight when someone's yelling at you--heck, it's hard for me to hit one straight in perfect silence--but it's hardly impossible. The ball is sitting quietly, inoffensively, right in front of you, and you're taking a bloody great hack at it with a big club. Compare that to the challenge facing, say, Ken Griffey, Jr.

Junior also has a big club, and he's also trying to hit a ball--a slightly larger ball, granted--but the job is rather different. For one thing, the ball is moving. If the person who started it moving is Randy Johnson, it's going to be moving at a great speed for only a short time, and in that brief moment, Junior's got to recognize the pitch, pick his spot, and make his swing--he doesn't get to walk up to the ball, waggle for 45 seconds like Sergio Garcia, and hit the ball when the spirit moves him. Moreover, while he's doing all this, he's got to consider the game situation (Is he trying to advance a runner? Is he swinging for the fences? Is he laying down a bunt? Is he just trying to make contact?) and adjust his stance and swing to produce that desired result--all with the same bat. He doesn't get to use a putter for bunts, or pull out a wedge to give him some loft over the infield. Speaking of the infield, let's not forget that Junior has eight guys in front of him (and one behind) who are going to try their best to prevent the ball from going where he wants it; Sergio doesn't have to worry about Tiger Woods standing in the fairway to seize his ball and throw it back onto the tee box.

Given all of the above, which athlete is the one most in need of total silence? Right. The one with 50,000 fans screaming at him to go back to Seattle.

Needless to say, I find some of the rules and expectations in golf to be pretty absurd, but I do enjoy going out to hack my way over the course every so often. It's a good walk, spoiled or no, and you can spot any number of bird species on your way. Yesterday's total for nine holes: goldfinch, robin, cardinal, chipping sparrow, green heron, barn swallow, European starling, blue jay, killdeer, house sparrow, eastern phoebe. Don't ask about the number of strokes.

4:07 PM

If I have a single musical hero, it's Robyn Hitchcock. Pete Townshend helped me get through adolescence and move on into adulthood, Andy Partridge of XTC has given me great amusement and enjoyment, and the guys in R.E.M. have provided comfort and inspiration, but if there's one composer/performer who's been consistently able to challenge me, intrigue me, and connect with me, it's Robyn.

Sure, he writes songs that seem primarily about fish, insects, glass and cones, but there's an awful lot of other things going on beneath the psychedelic imagery. For one, there's Robyn's extraordinary gift for melody, a gift which has remained in play ever since he got his start with the Soft Boys in the late 70s. An early tune like "Queen of Eyes" digs its hooks into your brain like a benevolent parasite and pumps endorphins straight into your hypothalamus; a recent composition such as "Alright, Yeah," does the same. Even Robyn knows this latter tune is a thing of startling beauty; he describes it in the film Storefront Hitchcock as a "comfortable song," one that's so unthreatening and tasty that "it's not even bland."

There's also his gift of abruptly bringing a song in close for a direct hit on the listener. There'll be a positive firestorm of hallucinatory images whirling around, and suddenly he'll throw out a line that speaks directly and pointedly of the truth. In "Serpent at the Gates of Wisdom," for instance, he starts playing with the Edenic myth, describing the birth of desire in Eve as "rolling down the frozen highway like a burning tire." It's a stirring and unexpected image, that tire, and you're expecting to go in all sorts of weird psychedelic directions when Robyn shifts gears: "Do you really serve the Devil if it's all God's plan?/ Good and evil need each other--honey, I'm your man." It's a marvelous twist--from surrealist to philosopher to tempter in one verse.

But my most recent Hitchcock purchase has delighted me for new reasons. It's called Robyn Sings, a title which doesn't immediately reveal that the two-CD set is a tribute by Robyn to his own musical hero: Bob Dylan.

I'd long known that Robyn was a Byrds fan, thanks to his covers of "Eight Miles High" and "The Bells of Rhymney" and the jangly guitar featured on tunes like "I Often Dream of Trains" and "Madonna of the Wasps." I could tell he was a Beatles fan, too--the quirky orchestrations and sweet-and-sour delivery of tunes like "My Wife and My Dead Wife" would evoke John Lennon even if Robyn hadn't dedicated his Respect album to the Smart Beatle. But somehow I'd missed the Dylan influence, or at least seen it only in the very real influence he had on the Byrds and the Beatles.

His versions of "Tangled Up in Blue" and "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" are marvelous, but the biggest treat for me is hearing him embrace his roots. In "Ballad of a Thin Man," the line "He says 'You're a cow! Give me some milk and just go home!'" is exactly the same kind of thing Robyn's been singing for twenty-five years in his own material:

"Something Shakespeare never said was 'You've got to be kidding.'"
"When you gonna see that love is dumb as well as blind?"
"She was sinister but she was happy, with a cheery smile and a poison blowpipe."
"And in the end, the color pink will do more damage than you think."
"And in a globe of frogs, a soul appears: the Word made flesh."

I'm very happy to know that my hero has a hero of his own, and that having one hasn't stifled his creativity one bit. Quite the opposite. It gives me some hope that I can continue to listen fondly to my twenty-odd Hitchcock CDs and still have a chance to write something that might hold up in comparison to "Cynthia Mask."

And if I ever do, you'll be the first to know.

5:03 AM

I'm very sad to report the death of an old friend, Tim McLaurin, author of Keeper of the Moon, The Acorn Plan, Woodrow's Trumpet and five other books. He was a Fayetteville boy, a Marine, a carnival snake-handler, a Peace Corps volunteer, a father, a husband, a writer, and one of the wisest men I've ever known. He lived more in 48 years than anyone I've ever met has managed in threescore and ten.

Tim and I met in the fall of 1984, when the two of us took English 99 from the team of Daphne Athas and Doris Betts. ENGL 99 was the senior writing seminar, a weekly gathering that spanned both semesters and became far and away my favorite class. I don't say that just because my wife and I first started dating while taking that class, but because the whole group of talents and personalities were so enjoyable. Daphne was kind, spacy, witty and utterly brilliant, to the point where her criticisms of a student's work would be either stunningly clear or couched in terms so theoretical that they might have been written on an Enigma machine; Doris was sharp and generous and steely-eyed and droll and cut through bullshit like a chainsaw through Jello. The students were also quite a combination; in addition to me, Kelly, and Tim, future writers like Randall Kenan, Sharlene Baker, Mimi Herman, & David Nelson were there reading each other's work, as well as future editors like Alane Mason and Sally Pont.

Most of us were barely in our twenties, but Tim was past thirty--which at the time seemed ancient--and had just come to UNC after several years in Tunisia with the Peace Corps. Before that he'd been a snake-handler in a traveling carnival, and before that a Marine. He was from Fayetteville, Kelly's home town, so the two of them hit it off; he also got along well with Sharlene Baker, who was also coming to school later in her life. During the year, Tim turned in a variety of potent and honest stories, some pretty clearly autobiographical, and some of them made their way into his books, particularly his first novel, The Acorn Plan. His comments on my own work were always kind and encouraging, even if he sometimes didn't know what the hell I was trying to do--but he always did me the courtesy of assuming that I knew. (I often didn't, but I appreciated the courtesy.)

One day Tim gave us a glimpse of his past life by bringing a pillowcase to class. He tucked it under his chair and we forgot about it, but eventually we finished discussing the day's story and Tim pulled the case up onto the table and reached into it.

And pulled out a three-foot corn snake.

Kelly was fascinated and petted it. Sharlene didn't seem quite so comfortable. Randall was decidedly un-comfortable and backed away to the farthest corner of the room. Daphne and Doris, as always, seemed bemused. I still wonder if they were in on it.

After we'd graduated, Tim was the first of our class to get a book published, but he didn't seem to change a whole lot; I'd still see him around Chapel Hill every so often, and he never looked as if being paid to write was swelling his head. Kelly and I ran into him one evening at the Flying Burrito restaurant and he told us he'd just sold his second novel, Woodrow's Trumpet. Needless to say, we were thrilled for him. He nodded absently and said, "But y'know, they only gave me an $8000 advance. I can make that much doin' carpentry." To him, being a writer was work--good honest work, mind you--but the idea that a novelist had a special calling or unusual worth would have made him laugh. Or maybe spit.

Because of the combination of illness, distance, and the press of family life, I only saw Tim once in the last decade; back in 1997, he agreed to drive up from North Carolina to sit on a panel at a colloquium our school was hosting. Michael Dirda and a couple of other writers & critics were on that same panel, and all showed up in coat and tie, looking very literary. Tim arrived in a pickup truck with one door that was tied shut with an old piece of hemp rope, and his only luggage was the toothbrush sticking out of the back pocket of his jeans. And let me tell you, he had the kids eating out of his hand--I think every student at this school must have gotten a copy of Keeper of the Moon signed.

Before he left campus the next morning, he told me to keep trying to get my bird book published; I told him I would, and I did. Because it seemed like the only way to finish the work, to see the job done. Soon it'll be in print for everyone to see. I wish like hell Tim could be here to see it, too.

3:06 AM

Not much to say today, save to note one important fact:

As of today, my marriage is old enough to drive.

(Happy anniversary, hon.)

6:41 PM

There's excitement afoot as the football season approaches. It's not so much that I'm a rabid football fan, though I certainly enjoy watching it, but that our fantasy football league is preparing to get under way again.

Last year a group of my far-flung Chapel Hill friends got together at the urging of Dan Sipp, improv performer supreme, who's now based in Chicago. Dan's thinking was that since we don't have many chances for face-to-face encounters, we need a pretext for online interactions, and thus was born the Fantasy League of Gentlemen/Gentlewomen, better known as FLOGG. Roughly half of the ten participants still live in North Carolina, but the rest of us were chiming in from Chicago, San Francisco, and of course Virginia, and we had a high old time. Part of the fun was that we chose to roleplay--not surprising, given that many in this group were also players during my Dungeons & Dragons days--and create personas for our online owner/coaches. One team, the Frumious Bandersnatchi, was coached by the Rev. Charles L. Dodgson, whose every pronouncement on the subject of American football was as full of Victorian propriety as one might expect. Another team, the Mighty Burners, was run by Daniel X. Blodgett, the Philadelphia-based cheesesteak magnate and Legitimate Businessman. My own squad, the Fighting Coelacanths, was coached by Perry Shoat Cooper, a native of Garland, North Carolina, whose interests include (and are limited to) fishing, football, and hog farming, which meant that most of his game strategies were explained in terms of plugging for bass or noodling catfish.

I took great glee in this part of the project, affecting a dialect during almost every online conversation, and also wound up contributing "news" stories to our home page on a weekly basis. (My favorite, written after the Bears won two games in a row on interception returns during overtime, concerned Chicago coach Dick Jauron, now revealed as the younger brother of Sauron, the Dark Lord of Mordor, who'd had his name changed and was using magical rings to win games.) It was also highly amusing to watch the others playing their roles.

It was good that the roleplaying was so much fun, because when it came to the games, I got stomped. Thanks to a variety of bad draft choices, injuries, and garden-variety bad luck, I ended up in ninth place, though I was able to win the three-game playoff to determine the last-place team. I don't hold any grudges about it, but I think it's safe to say that I won't be drafting Isaac Bruce or Jamal Anderson again...

The games themselves are a bizarre collection of statistical manipulations. Each coach selects a group of real NFL players to form his team; each week, his team is set against another FLOGG team, and the outcome is determined by the statistics earned by the players in the real games. For every 20 yards gained, the player earns one FLOGG point; for every touchdown he scores, he earns six FLOGG points; for every fumble, he loses two FLOGG points, and so on. The FLOGG team with the most points wins. The easiest way to win, obviously, is to have all the best players, but with ten coaches drafting them, you often have to settle for merely competent players. Moreover, you must pay attention to the schedule; if your starting quarterback's NFL team is meeting a powerful opponent, he may not score as many fantasy points that week, so it may be a good idea to play a substitute QB instead.

It can make watching the games interesting in a whole new way. Even if your favorite NFL team is hopelessly behind, you can still be happy as long as the defense that's beating up on them belongs to your FLOGG team. Moreover, Monday night games become a matter of great concern, since it's not uncommon on Sunday evening to find yourself down by ten FLOGG points with your last player still needing to play his game on ABC. The outcome of the game is no more important than the presence of Dennis Miller in the booth; all you care about is your guy--can he get the necessary points and bring you back from the jaws of defeat?

In any case, I'm once again poring over the fantasy draft reports, looking for players who seem as though they'd look good in the black, orange-yellow, and sky blue of the Coelacanths. I'm sure there must be some out there. After all, the incidence of color blindness in American men is pretty high.


4:10 PM

Yesterday my eight-year-old son and I accompanied the summer school's Civil War History class to Gettysburg. It was my first trip to the site of the continent's biggest battle, and only my second trip to a Civil War battlefield (the first being the considerably less built-up Wilderness site). It was strange to be wandering safely over dry ground that was, 139 years before to the day, still stained with the blood of the dead and wounded. I also hadn't realized the place was so liberally covered with monuments. When you stand down near the Confederate lines on Seminary Ridge, you realize that even today, the statues of Lee and his men are staring up at those of Meade and his men across the fields; it's as if the sculptors are refighting the war in bronze.

We first visited the museum, then wandered along the top of Cemetery Ridge to the Angle and the Copse of Trees, then circled around town to the observation tower near the Southern lines, and finally strolled around the summit of Little Round Top. I left 26 cents atop the monument of the 26th North Carolina on Cemetery Ridge and climbed to the battlements of the small castle built on Little Round Top in memory of the 44th New York. I wish I'd had time to visit the monument of the 20th Maine, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain's men. At the end of the day, though, here's what I had learned:

1) Cemetery Ridge ain't much of a ridge. It's high enough to shoot down, but it's not a particularly elevated piece of ground. Maybe that's why Lee thought he could charge it.

2) Union General Dan Sickles was a fuckin' loon. He pulled his troops out of the Union line, without orders, and advanced them a good 3/4 of a mile ahead of his support--without orders--and set up in the Peach Orchard. If ever a man deserved to have his leg blown off, it was Sickles.

3) The men in Pickett's charge had to know they were going to die. Crossing that mile of field, without any cover higher than a tall grass stalk, and climbing over two or three post-and-rail fences en route to boot, was sheer suicide. The astonishing thing is that they went, and some of them almost breached the Union line.

4) Little Round Top is so tall, so steep and so broken that taking it seems like a near impossibility, and yet it was taken five times by the Rebels and retaken five times by the Union. The hilltop also provided a clear shot down the Union line; if Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain hadn't rallied the 20th Maine on Day Two, Southern guns would have blasted the Federal lines apart, and Pickett would have swept up the ridge like a tsunami on Day Three.

5) It is a very odd thing to be firmly of the opinion that the South was wrong and deserved to lose, and yet to find yourself moved most strongly by the small monument to Lewis Armistead. Armistead was the North Carolinian general who led a small group of Virginians over the wall and up to the "high tide mark" of the Confederacy; he was the only Southern officer to cross the Union lines, and he was shot down while urging his men forward. Before his wounds claimed him, he entrusted his watch to the care of his old friend Winfield Scott Hancock, a Union General. In some ways, that story is the whole war at once.

Gettysburg is a strange, beautiful and contradictory place. It may be the most American place I've ever been.


2:30 PM

In the "I Knew Him When" department, I should report a sighting that took place during Men in Black II. The MIB customs agent who asks Lara Flynn Boyle whether she has any fruits or vegetables to declare is played by none other than Peter Spruyt, Chapel Hill High School class of 1980. Peter is one of the quirkiest and funniest people I know, and I'm delighted to see him getting some big-screen action at last. He's appeared in a number of commercials over the past few years, for Burger King's Chicken Whopper, for Target, for E-Trade (he was the guy who sold all his movie studio stock when the studio was promoting George Takei in "Blowed Up!") and perhaps most notably for Miller Lite in the ad where the biker goes into the Nerd Bar. (Peter played the head nerd.)

Peter doesn't exactly have a chance to show his creativity in the film, but trust me, he's brilliant, and he never stops finding new outlets for his sense of humor. I first knew him when the two of played Rainbow Soccer--and years later we coached a team together--but we became friends at CHHS, where we shared a math class and I got the chance to watch his mind at work. He xeroxed little Lacoste alligators for people who weren't preppies to affix to their shirts, brought a turtle to class one day (with alligator in place), and even got extra credit from Mr. Tomberg for devising a plan to save toilet bowl cleaner by having the janitors place a sponge at one focus of the bowl's ellipse to absorb the extra chemicals. He went to Northwestern for college, but I wonder if the people in Evanston had any idea what they were really getting. When he came back to Chapel Hill in the late 80s he was still using his sense of whimsy on both a daily basis (he bolted a copper kettle onto his car as a hood ornament) and on special occasions (at his wedding, his tuxedo's studs were actually wingnuts).

He had been almost as much fun in the plays we worked on together back in school, including Fiddler on the Roof, Auntie Mame, and the notorious musical-of-the-Plague Year Oh, Rats! But his finest hour, unquestionably, came in the spring of 1980 with the first (and only) appearance of Lawrence Elk and the Mellow-Dees.

The Mellow-Dees got their start when for some reason the two of us were playing the piano backstage during rehearsal. Peter and I are both essentially self-taught by-ear players (though unlike me, he has also learned to play at least one piece with his nose) and often tried to show each other new keyboard tricks we'd picked up. That day, inspired by I know not what bizarre and mischievous Muse, I started a Muzak version of the first verse of the Knack's "My Sharona." When I reached the "my Sharona" lyric, Peter suddenly added a high-end flourish that collapsed the two of us into hysterical laughter for a good forty-five seconds. When we got our breaths back, we worked up the entire song, altered the lyrics, and started recruiting classmates to perform with us in the spring talent show, known as the Junior Follies.

It was a big production. Our friend Alan Barry agreed to serve as the strangely-accented bandleader, while Peter lined up Allen Ashcraft to sing lead as the mellifluous "Barry Tone." They fronted an ensemble that consisted of a four-girl backup choir, drums, bass, violin, cello, trumpet, and possibly another instrument or two I've forgotten, plus Peter and me on one piano. The featured instrument was the accordion, played by Dan Goulson in full geriatric makeup; during his spotlight solo, a nurse rolled him forward in a wheelchair in which he noisily expired several bars before the last verse. Peter worked insanely hard on even the most minute details--arranging the string parts, painting the kick-drum head with a "Mellow-Dees" logo, and covering the lapels of Allen's jacket with glitter. He even went so far as to buy plastic roses in vases for the backup singers to hold. He then attached small hoops to the bottoms of their stems and filled the vases with dishwashing liquid, so that during Allen's part the singers could fill the air with bubbles. I, meanwhile, basked in the glory that Peter had attracted, a full partner in the conception but a fully-awed member of the audience when it came to the execution. It was sublime.

The movie's not as good. But how could it be?

5:28 AM

Another holiday, another journal entry.

The Fourth of July is another strange holiday for me, mainly because of my job. When you teach, the whole summer is usually a holiday--an unpaid one, I hasten to add--so there's somewhat less significance to the Fourth in terms of its effect on your daily life. I, however, am teaching summer school, so I don't even have the day off. We're rearranging the schedule a bit so that the school community can see the local fireworks tonight, but otherwise it's the usual class schedule.

I'm also not a fanatic about the grill. Sure, it's nice to have something cooked over charcoal every so often, but some of the people I see with grills and spatulas treat the whole project so grimly and reverently that they might as well be planning to retake Jerusalem from the Saracens. Besides, I'm from the South. Around here, the weather on the Fourth is usually so oppressive that going outside to cook seems less like a treat and more like a punishment.

And I'll confess it: from a purely aesthetic point of view, there is much about the Fourth that I find dull or hokey or annoying. I've never felt our flag is all that attractive from a design standpoint, and turning it into bunting or t-shirts or barbecue aprons doesn't really help matters. I also don't much care for the musical qualities of "The Star-Spangled Banner," particularly now that singing it has become a pretext for anyone with a microphone to perform vocal stunts approaching the complexity of the timeline in Memento. Even if I'd liked it to begin with, Whitney Houston's version has soured me on it for good, and hearing Mariah Carey's version at the most recent Super Bowl was like being buried in sixteen tons of Lemonheads. For my money, "America the Beautiful," "This Land Is Your Land," or even "Columbia the Gem of the Ocean" would have made a better anthem, and best of all would have been one that the people could actually sing.

So what's left to celebrate on the Fourth?

Oh, that's easy.

Fireworks. I'm not a psycho Let's-put-M-80s-in-the-toilet kind of guy, but there's a pure thrill in watching the night sky explode into fire and thunder. Even the duds that just produce a kernel of bright light and a cannonshot DOOM! are a treat. And nothing says summer like running around the yard with a sparkler in your hand.

Sousa. Marches make up a weird little subset of music, somewhere in the same not-quite-popular/not-quite-classical area as ragtime and Stephen Foster songs, but for my money, a Sousa march displays a level of rhythmic and melodic sophistication worthy of praise. Even given the constraints of the two-four march rhythm, "The Stars and Stripes Forever" or "The Liberty Bell" offers a twisted little journey across the parade grounds.

Liberty. Sure, the people who signed the Declaration of Independence were in many cases slaveowners, and most would have been shocked at the idea of women's suffrage, but the ball they started rolling in 1776 eventually rolled for Blacks and women, too. I complain about a lot of American things--our leaders, our culture's fixation on the tawdry and the foolish, our citizenry's ignorance about our history and Constitution--but one thing I never do is forget that I'm free to complain. The Declaration of Independence helped assure that Americans would never again have to speak when they wished to be silent, or remain silent about the things they loved or loathed. I do not love this land because everything in it is perfect, nor because the government forces me to love it. I love this land because it gives me the freedom not to love it.

So I say Happy Fourth, everybody! Grouse if you love America!

7:42 PM

Feelin' listy

Top 5 Songs That Don't Mention the Title Anywhere in the Lyrics
*The Who: "Baba O'Riley"
*Neil Young: "After the Gold Rush"
*Talking Heads: "Life During Wartime"
*Ben Folds Five: "Song for the Dumped"
*Bob Dylan: pretty much everything after Highway 61 Revisited...

Top Five Fast-Food Joints If You Have to Eat Fast Food
*Taco Bell
*Arby's
*Wendy's
*Subway
*Bojangle's

Top Five Time-Travel Novels
*David Gerrold: The Man Who Folded Himself
*Connie Willis: Doomsday Book
*Connie Willis: To Say Nothing of the Dog
*Julian May: The Saga of Pliocene Exile (four books)
*Orson Scott Card: Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus

Top Five Moments in Chuck Jones Cartoons
*The Grinch gets a wonderful awful idea in "How the Grinch Stole Christmas"
*Daffy's quarterstaff fight in 'Robin Hood Daffy"
*"Wile E. Coyote... Super Genius"
*"Kill the Wabbit, Kill the Wabbit!"
*All six minutes of "Duck Amuck"

Top Five Musicians Named Jones
*bandleader/genius Spike
*glam rocker David (a k a Bowie)
*arranger/composer Quincy
*country singer George
*bassist/keyboardist John Paul

9:08 PM