A Duckumentary on PBS

The PBS series Nature only runs a few new episodes a year but when they do it is often must see television. A couple of weeks ago one of those episodes aired. The title of this show called, in a very punny title, A Duckumentary. Hosted by Paul Giamatti whose voice is perfect for voice-overs this was a very enjoyable show.

Speaking of many different duck breeds but focusing primarily on a pair of wood ducks as they make their way through a full year. Filmed perfectly we see the beauty not only of the ducks themselves but there surroundings and learn many interesting facts. My wife, who unlike me and my daughter, is not exactly a nature buff, watched this show with interest which tells you all you need to know about how entrancing this show was.

We learned that ducks spend hours each day on the maintenance of their tail feathers, that they produce the ointment that they treat their feathers with, that the female chooses the male for her mating season before the winter, they spend their winter together before mating in the spring, and, this seems unfair, if she wishes at the last minute she can dump him for another male late in the game.

The most stunning visual, the one we were talking about days later was what happens to wood ducks right after they are born. Mother to be Wood Ducks make a nest in a tree, in a tree that is high, very high, off the ground. The day after the chicks arrive the Mother leaves the nest and goes out into the nearest body of water and calls the ducks. The ducks inside a tree, sixty or seventy feet in the air, then have to go to their mother. Did I mention that ducks cannot fly when they are born. The baby ducks, a day old, then jump out of the tree to the ground, in the video we watched seventy feet. The idea of this is amazing. And yes, baby ducks bounce. Incredible.

It is easy to say, when you enjoy these shows, that more people should see them, that the garbage that is on most networks at most times should be replaced by these shows. Perhaps that is true but for me the fact that this series is available to contrast with those less reputable shows makes it succeed even more so in the contrast.

Take a moment and watch these shows, if you have kids you have a built in excuse. If you do not have kids you might have the time to actually enjoy it.

Lincoln

Lincoln has been as well received as any movie in years. Directed by Stephen Spielberg, based on the Doris Kearns Goodwin book Team of Rivals most consider Spielberg and much of the cast to be Oscar worthy.

The movie, unlike the book, which examines the whole Lincoln Presidency, centers on the last four months of Lincoln's life. At this time Lincoln is working feverishly toward getting the 13th amendment, that which bans slavery, to be ratified by the House, the Senate having previously done so. Lincoln's fear is that with the war coming to an end that the Emancipation Proclamation might be somehow reversed as an executive order under the War Powers Act. He himself admits to the plausibility of it being reversed due to the murky process by which he was invested with such powers.

One would think this would be an easy thing, the North after all was against slavery. However Democrats, still in sympathy, with their Southern brethren, and if not for slavery against anything that might indicate an equality between the races had consistently held any thought of the amendment at bay. With the war coming to an end Lincoln has a limited time frame. He knows he needs to have the law passed before it can be used as a negotiating point for any Southern delegation.

What follows is a legislative battle that most folks today would not have presumed taking place in that long ago time. We have visions of Lincoln being all powerful, at least in the North, when in actuality he was not a popular figure to some, we think of the North holding hands and freeing the slaves in unison, this also was far from the truth. What transpired was bare-knuckled politics. A lobbying group was contracted by Secretary of State Steward to try to convert the necessary lame-duck Democrats ( those who would be leaving office in March of 1965) to change their previous votes. Nothing was above these men. Bribery, Patronage, even blackmail if necessary. It becomes evident that in the case of the thirteenth amendment one must hope that the end justified the means because it was not a pretty process.

In the end Lincoln who, while it had been attempted to insulate him from the dirty politics of the lobbyists) worked hand in hand with them in gaining the votes necessary. Lincoln was a consummate politician. He knew what buttons to push in almost every case. One gets a strong sense of his personality and also the exasperation of those around him. Always quick with a story, sometimes frustratingly so to those who revered him, and wished him to be more forceful he ran the country like I sometimes think I parent. Trying to show examples that deliver the message in a nice way but never being afraid to deliver the message as poison if need be.

Spielberg's direction is flawless, the soundtrack is elegant and the acting is the best you will find.

Daniel Day Lewis might well earn another Best Actor Oscar. None of us ever saw Lincoln in the flesh or even on video but one cannot walk out of the theater without feeling like you saw a genuine glimpse of the man.

Sally Field is wonderful as the harpy wife Mary Todd Lincoln. With stresses all her life the death of her son in the White House two years ago is a sadness that never leaves her.

Tommy Lee Jones as Thaddeus Stevens continues his string of improbable rolls. It has been a long way from Woodrow Call to this but Jones never misses a step.

Hal Holbrook, still alive, I did not know, plays Francis Blair, a pivotal Republican, not in office, but controlling a large block of votes who Lincoln must win to his cause and then manipulate the events and timing of the bill to stay the course and not lose his support.

Everything about this movie is first rate. The only caution I can provide is that because the movie centers on just one short time period, primarily on one piece of legislation, and the battle to get that bill passed, for those without much of an interest in politics, the process as it were, the movie can get long. For those of us who love history, are political junkies and appreciate a beautifully filmed movie it does not get better than this.

My highest recommendation for this movie.

Everything Must Go

I have watched quite a few movies lately as I have been consistently under the weather and have not reviewed any of them. We will attempt to begin the process of correcting that with a review of the under appreciated Will Ferrell movie from 2011 Everything Must Go.

Based on a Raymond Carver short story Why Don't You Dance. When one says based on, in this case they mean that there is an ever so slight similarity, mainly that both lead characters have a yard sale of their belongings. The story which I had recently read is much shallower in depth and understanding than the movie.

Will Ferrell plays Nick Halsey a salesman who is also an alcoholic. As the movie begins we see Nick being fired from his job for an incident that occurred on a business trip in Denver. After vandalizing his Supervisor's car on the way out of the parking lot and then stopping to buy beer on the way home Nick arrives home to find out that the locks have been changed and his belongings are all over the yard.

Nick settles in to his easy chair in the yard. The next morning when he goes to get more beer he returns to find his company car being repossessed. Life is getting worse. Soon the police show up and Nick when confronted with trouble has them call his sponsor in AA, a Frank Garcia, who is a detective. The detective comes by and gets Nick a three day ticket for a yard sale which will buy him sometime to figure things out.

Over the course of the next few days Nick develops a relationship with a young boy in the neighborhood who is apparently unsupervised for much of the day and a new neighbor across the street who has just moved in and is waiting for her husband to arrive. Along the way we learn more about Nick's relationship with his wife and his sponsor and how even that is not as simple as he might like it to be.

The movie did not do well, being a change of pace for Ferrell perhaps people did not get what they expected. That said Ferrell was cast perfectly in the role. Exceptionally believable as the typical frat boy turned professional but still drinking his life away, this man suddenly hit in the face with reality and the world of grown ups and not knowing how to handle it except to do what he has already done, crawl deeper into his immature ways and drink it away. Ferrell provides depth here one does not expect. One wonders if he ever will get a chance for a serious role or if he is so typecast that can never happen for him. If so it is a loss for as funny as he can be one gets the sense that there is much more talent in Ferrell than we expect in our physical comedians.

This is an interesting, sweet in its own way, dark in another way movie. It is not in anyway like any of the broad comedy one expects from Ferrell. Be warned and enjoy it for what it is.

Judges Judges Everywhere

As I have discussed before our house is doing it's part to keep every singing competition afloat. From Monday to Thursday from Christina to Brittany and back again my wife loves singing shows. Kids need to have their homework done, dogs need to be fed and walked and husbands need to be quiet before the eight o'clock hour strikes.

I do not mind the shows, some performers are better than others but overall it is fine and if she gets enjoyment out of it I am fine with that. What is hard for me sometimes to watch are the judges. I know I have commented on this before so I am not going to revisit their contradictory advice and things of that nature.

I do however want to give a brief rundown of my perceptions of these people we invite into our homes each week.

Starting with The Voice first on the list would be Adam Levine. Truthfully Levine comes off as extremely likable and surprisingly genuine. He is a very good singer, gives solid advice and his back and forths with Blake Shelton seem real and not forced.

Blake Shelton also seems genuine and likable. One gets the sense that Shelton knows that this ride will be over soon, he will be supplanted by the next young gun in the Country line and he is determined to enjoy it. We never really see much more than extremely generic advice from these folks, they are rarely negative, and their exchanges with each other comprise the biggest part of their contribution to the show.

Ce Lo Green is just an odd duck but he is harmless and surprisingly talented. With Green more than any other judge it becomes apparent that he has a great deal of advice for his team members. Christina Aguilera, when I have commented in the past, has been bitchy and generally not nice quite often. This seems to be a bit less this year, she still is a prim a donna but overall she too has been nicer this year.

Overall The Voice is a good show, its singers are good, the premise of picking the team members without seeing them is interesting, and the fact that no truly terrible singers are allowed to audition make the show less exploitative than it's counterparts.

The Fox series X Factor in it's second season added two new judges. Demi Lovato and Britney Spears. Simon Cowell remains Simon Cowell and with that he can be nasty and cutting but this behavior has modified a great deal since this Idol days. LA Reid might be the most pompous man on television but he does know his stuff. I do not find him anything but there on my screen, to me he is not a draw or a reason not to watch. For better or worse the two girls are what brings the audience or drives the audience away. Brittany Spears has been the subject of much comment. In our house we always comment on how she looks that night. It is not always a positive picture. Still an attractive woman, still a talented singer Spears looks extremely uncomfortable in her role. Last week we noticed that in many of her exchanges with her team members she seems to physically recoil from contact with them. Who knows what is up with Brittany.

Still Spears seems like Einstein when compared with Lovato. If I hear her comment one more time that a performance is boring I might have to grab the remote from my wife's hand. It is not her fault. She is in no way a realistic judge. Everything she has sung has been overproduced by mentors, her helping and judging other singers is just a ridiculous notion. I do not know her, she is probably a fine person, she is, however , doing nothing in this show to shine a positive light on her personality or intelligence.

And just think, we are just six weeks from American Idol.

A Walton Family Thanksgiving

In the first half of the nineties CBS returned to Waltons mountain for a Series of television movies. The Waltons, of course, had been a staple of the networks lineup in the seventies and the timing of nostalgia made the movies a good bet to garner a dependable audience.

The first movie in that series was A Walton Family Thanksgiving centering on the family as they gathered together for the holiday in 1963. As any history buff knows this year also coincided with the Kennedy assassination which allows the series, while catching us up with the family members, to show their reactions to the events of that fateful time.

One thing must be said, most child stars do not become great actors and actresses. The young people who played the children on The Waltons certainly are of that group. It would seem that a good portion of them have done no acting whatsoever, not a bad thing, they have moved on and lived there lives, it does however mean that the acting in this sort of a reunion show will be stilted.

Everyone that is remembered from the series makes an appearance. Ike and Corabeth, their daughter Amy, Verdi the black person on Walton's mountain, even Yancy Tucker. With the exception of the departed Will Geer the whole cast returns.

One has to put away the calculator to make this work. The characters of the show, primarily the children, are played younger than they would be in a direct timeline from the original show. At one point even John thinking of Grandpa says to himself Pa, you have been gone 15 years and it seems like just yesterday. Actually on a strict timeline Zeb has gone been gone about twenty years.

Watching Ben try to cry about baby Virginia (somehow she died) or Jim Bob show sadness after a rebuke from Mary Ellen, it is clear that great acting will not be on this show.

Still Ralph Waite is extremely likable and I cannot tell you how much seeing the very old Ellen Corby ( she reminds me of my Mother who died at 88 a couple of years ago) and the show just works.

When we were young it was the family we as kids made fun of while we secretly wanted to be a part of. I grew up a country kid and I could understand a bit of the life these people led and knew that it was a blessed existence if only a life that was lived on a television screen.

As the episode ends and all the family troubles that the children have been struggling with are resolved , as John Kennedy has been laid to rest, as John Boy sits out front with his lady friend and they all say goodnight like they have on every episode one thing becomes clear. For this person, me, this sometimes sarcastic, usually cynical ( though I try not to be as much) person one thing is clear. I still would like to be part of that family. That is why bad acting will make not a hoot of difference to anybody who grew up with this show.

It is a chance to revisit not only our own childhood but for many of us a childhood we dreamed about whilst in it. How many chances do you get to do that in your mid forties.

Pete Townsend on David Letterman

Pete Townsend was on David Letterman last night promoting his new auto biography. I have to say that with a reputation as being a bit of a hard case I was surprised to find him very charming, demonstrative, and overall an excellent interview. Letterman himself seemed surprised to see Pete so willing to tell stories and anecdotes including a very funny discussion of Keith Richards and his inadvertent origination of the Townsend windmill guitar move as well when Keith Moon blew up his drum kit and set Pete's hair on fire, literally.

Who fans, Stones fans, even just David Letterman fans should get online and view this clip.

Fall TV Update

My daughter has always been one who was willing to try new foods. When she was six or seven she would take a bite of something and exclaim how good it was. She would proceed to tell her older brothers that they should try it too. She would keep eating and almost always by the mid point of her serving one noticed her starting to pick at it. Eventually at the end of the meal a good portion of the new food she had treated like the greatest thing since sliced bread would still be on her plate.

When I asked her about this the answer was inevitably a variation on " It was good Daddy, I just got full."

I think that in a sentence sums up not just what I find with most new shows that I originally like and have high hopes for but how the great proportion of people end up when it comes to new shows. What starts out as exciting and promising soon just turns into another vegetable dressed up to look more new and different than it really is.

In the fall I felt that The Last Resort, Vegas and Revolution were well on their way to success. Interestingly the show that I had the least hope for seems to be the only one I am still with, the only show whose ratings are successful.

The Last Resort was the show that started out with the biggest bang. It's original episode was explosive but eventually it became soon apparent that the series just could not maintain the bar it had set. When the show had to develop a plausible plot line about the crew of a nuclear submarine forming their own nuclear armed nation entity it just could not be done. Soon enough ABC was preempting the show and the shows ratings faltered even more. Being placed against the X Factor and The Big Bang Theory it was felt that an audience, a different audience could be carved out. It just did not work. With low ratings and high expenses per episode ABC has cancelled the show and the three episodes sitting on my DVR have been erased. There is no need to invest in a show that is doomed.

Vegas the CBS entry seemed like a sure thing and in fact it is doing well in the ratings and with Dennis Quaid and Michael Chilkis there is no reason to think the show will not be around well after this season. The show with all its promise however has lost this viewer. The payoff of a slight advance of the long term storyline that one receives each week while sifting through a tedious murder mystery is just not worth it. The series might well have been a different show on a cable network. It is not that one needs to extra blood, violence, sex and gore of the cable version, it is just that the weekly story-lines might not have to be so prevalent in a cable series. For that reason this show has lost this viewer.

Revolution continues moving strongly toward it's mid season break. This weeks episode was a little contrived, coming through a Philadelphia subway tunnel suffering from a lack of oxygen the main characters experienced hallucinations but the payoff at the end of the episode was well worth it. A great choice this week too with the featuring of some Led Zeppelin music as well. The ratings have slipped a little recently and one wonders if the show will continue to maintain if not expand it's audience, NBC needs to be sure to not have the upcoming break go too long as viewers have short memories but this series still offers something worth watching each week. As show after show falls off my radar as the season digs in Revolution remains strong with The Walking Dead as the only two series that are must see each week.

The experience of these three shows does however explain in a nutshell why it is so difficult to launch a series and have it be successful on network television. It is a terribly divergent culture, incredibly competitive and with viewers with more options and shorter attention spans than ever before. Instead of bemoaning the number of series that fail perhaps we should stare with wonder that any ever succeed at all in gaining a loyal viewership.

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

Some books age well. This classic by Erich Maria Remarque is a novel that does just that. Perhaps it is because the experience of war, of combat, the soldier in the battle never really changes that much. The weapons can change but the experience of killing your fellow man has much in common.

I was telling a friend of mine that I would think that one of the most rewarding courses to take and or teach would be a wartime literature course. Comparing the works of Hemingway, Mailer, and recent efforts by Tim O'Brien, Denis Johnson, and Kevin Powers with the book of Remarque would be very rewarding.

In this book we meet the narrator Paul Baumer. Baumer, at the onset of World War I joins the German army at the age of eighteen. Encouraged by a schoolmaster to join with his classmates Paul and a group of friends join the army with all good intentions. Like many young men they join for reasons of patriotism, the glory of the Fatherland, and expect glory and thrills.

By the time we join the characters in the book they are no longer besot with these images and ideas. The book was controversial upon publication, the book was burned by the Nazi's in Germany, it did, after all, not glorify war. Speaking of war as meaningless and as something that nothing good comes out of we see Paul and his friends decimated by the war.

At age 20 he has been in the military two years and seen his friends die, he has seen troops gain and lose, gain and lose, the same land over and over. To him the enemy becomes the leaders in the military. He begins to realize that the French troops on the other side of the lines are no different than he. They are young men and boys, husbands and fathers, men who have been taken out of their lives and told to kill men and boys, fathers and husbands who they have no grudge with.

Paul is given a leave and at home feels completely out of place. He is told by a neighbor in town that he only understands his little piece of the war, that the real strategy and goal can only be seen as a whole. In effect his ambiguous feeling is only because he does not understand the war that he is living every day. His father, seeking to connect, asks about the battles. Paul cannot share, it is not something a man talks about.

Paul is injured and we see scenes of the hospitals, the overworked nurses and nuns, the doctors who amputate constantly and Paul imagines thousands of hospitals just like this across all of Europe and wonders why.

After seeing his friends die one by one Paul knows that peace is about to happen. In the fall of 1918 no one wants to be the last one to die. With peace on the horizon Paul lets up his concentration and the inevitable happens. We are told that on that day the war is so meaningless, that so little matters that the only bulletin on the condition of the war that day is that the situation is All Quiet on the Western Front. His death, any death has really meant nothing.

A brilliant book, as relevant today as it was eighty years ago.

Cathedral by Raymond Carver

Continuing my journey through the short stories of Raymond Carver this collection would win my vote for the best of them.

Carver's characters continue to introduce us to flawed characters, characters who steal and cheat, drink to excess, and who find themselves disillusioned and challenged beyond their means.

The beginning story Feathers features two couples having a dinner party. Strange story points such as a mold of crooked teeth, the world's ugliest baby, and a peacock with the run of the house. Carver write with vigor and vulgarity too, certainly one of the more modern writers in that regard but this story was strong.

In Chefs House a separated couple has a rebirth in their relationship when the man is fortunate enough to rent a small ocean side cabin. He quits drinking, and their days together are simple and happy. Their hope for the future is bright but it all fades when the Chef advises that his daughter will need to rent the house. With this news reality sets in and the husband reaches for a drink.

A Small Good Thing is another take on the story The Bath in a previous effort. Unlike the first version this story expands and has the parents of the injured boy confronting the baker of the birthday cake. This ending is far superior to the other and is quite moving.

Careful becomes the only story I have ever seen centered on Earwax while Where I'm Calling From is another strong story centered on two men who form a friendship while they are in an alcohol rehabilitation facility.

Fever is the story of how a man, abandoned by his wife with his two kids comes to grips with taking care of his life. The Bridle tells the story of a farming couple from Minnesota who after losing their farm end up landing at a hotel in Arizona. How their presence ripples those staying at the hotel makes for an interesting story.

The last story is the title story. In Cathedral a man suffers a visit that his wife has engineered with a former employer of hers, a blind man. Uncomfortable at the prospect of a blind man in his house , his attitude changes when, like it seems all Carver characters they over-imbibe in alcohol.

Seriously Carver's characters need to go on a serious wagon.

The stories in this collection were all of a better level than some of his others though the number of standout stories were smaller. Consistently good rather than excellent and mediocre. One has to decide from themselves which they prefer.

Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone by Hunter S Thompson

About a year ago a collection of the writings of Hunter Thompson for Rolling Stone, edited together by Jann Wenner was published. Considered the father of Gonzo journalism Thompson wrote with a style all of his own.

This collection of his writings centers mostly on his infamous Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 1972. Following the election from Muskie to McGovern, Nixon to the seeds of Watergate this was Thompson at the peak of his writing.

Reading Thompson is like looking through the looking glass. When he writes that as the campaign progresses reporters all self medicate themselves to be able to live with the constant array of bullshit that is part of a Presidential campaign one has to wonder if for once we are hearing the truth.

If one takes a real look back to forty years ago and pictures Thompson's writing through the prism of what reporting looked like at that time one gets a sense of what a revolutionary he was.

The candidates themselves, Nixon, McGovern, all seemed to have a sense that Thompson was different. Surely they thought he was crazy, but all in all one guesses that talking with this crude example of reportage was if nothing else a novelty.

I enjoyed this section of the book immensely as well as I did like his later writings on Watergate, Nixon, and the election of Jimmy Carter. His later writings on subjects such as a late infatuation with polo, and a crazy story about a supposed encounter with Judge Clarence Thomas ( pre Supreme Court nomination) in the Nevada desert when the judge's limo crashed into a hard of sheep and overturned and out came tumbling the judge with a couple of matching hookers. Thompson write this story at the time of Thomas confirmation hearings and said he realized in watching that this was the judge he had met years ago but I, in reading it, could not bring myself to think it anything close to a true story. If it was shame on us all for putting this man on the bench but that questioning, in the end, became the problem with later Thompson reporting. That is, where does the unfiltered truth end, and the exaggeration and Gonzo begin.

I read the book through but would not recommend it. What I would advise someone who wants to gain the full Hunter experience is to have them read just Fear and Loathing on the Campaign in 1972. This is Hunter at his best, when he was on that fine, almost indistinct line between genius and crazy. It is not a line one can stay balanced on for long.

The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck

This 1961 was the last novel Steinbeck completed before his death. In 1962 Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize for Literature, not for this book but as was stated by the Nobel Committee at the time this book made clear that his greatness had not diminished and cast a bright light on his great works of the late thirties and early forties.

As to the reviews at the time of it's publication they were not their kind. Over time this book has been reassessed and now is considered along with the Steinbeck classics East of Eden, Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath as one of his best.

For me, personally, this book was one of, if not the most affecting, of the Steinbeck books. The conflict between ethics and money, contentment and coveting, the internal heart and the external desires was so well portrayed in this book that if one allows it they feel this story to their bones.

Ethan Allen Hawley lives in a fictional Long Island town. Ethan's family goes back centuries, his grandfathers and great grandfathers were sea captains, captaining whaling ships and owning much of the town of New Baytown. While Ethan was away serving his country in World War II Ethan's father made some poor investments and lost everything except the family home. When Ethan came home he was reduced to becoming a clerk in the grocery store that the family previously owned.

Ethan is a rare man however. He would like more things, to have wealth, but he is a content man. He understands what is important and holds onto his pride in his family and family history. He conducts himself with kindness and a sense of ethic that he feels, he knows is rare in the world.

Still Ethan has troubles and his heart is aching. His wife whom he loves aches to " hold her head up", she is tired of being poor and in moments of sharp pointed jesting refers to him as a grocery clerk. His teenage children would like more money, his son Allen consistently pointing out all the things they do not have, first and foremost a television. Ethan feels the pull of wanting to be more if only to try to settle his family. Every man wants to feel like a provider and Ethan is no different.

Still Ethan persists. He runs the store for the owner, an Italian immigrant named Alfie Marullo. Working next to the bank he is consistently badgered by the banks owner Mr. Baker to put the money in his bank account, received by his wife upon her brothers death. Ethan suspects that Baker feels guilty over whatever transpired during the war years when he was away and his father was losing all the family assets, he does not know how Baker was complicit but feels he was. Even more assuredly Ethan believes a family rumor that his Grandfather and Baker's forebears had a falling out when partnering on a whaling ship. The ship burned to the hulls in the bay, deemed an accident the insurance company paid but Ethan's grandad always suspected the Baker forebear of arson.

Ethan talks to the cans and vegetables on the shelf in the store. He visits daily with Joey Morphy the bank teller next door and Ethan begins to wonder if he should not suspend his ethics for a few minutes, a few hours, a few days, so that he can jump ahead in the town. He assures himself that in the war he killed people without being a killer, so could he not be unethical for a short time to get ahead and then resume to his natural bent.

Ethan concocts a plan and while it does not go as planned eventually his fortunes do change. He is not thrilled so much as glad to be able to resume his ethical course, his anger at Baker is given a tangible release, and all seems well. His son, the materialist, however has had his own ethical crisis and the fruits of that are coming home. Unlike Ethan however he feels no remorse or need to justify, he just wants to look out for number one. This causes a crisis of faith Ethan felt he had long ago resolved.

A couple of quotes in this book are for the books. Speaking about a house with teenagers in it who are being quiet Ethan advises that being in a house with teenagers not physically present is much quieter than being in a house with teenagers in it that are being silent. Why? Because teenagers even being quiet roil the air in a way that can be deafening. It is so true.

More perceptive even is the claim that people never want advice, they only want corroboration and I will tell you from a lifetime of experience both professionally and personally that nothing truer has ever been said. When you find someone who asks your advice and truly wants it embrace that person, he is rarer than a buffalo nickel.

I cannot speak highly enough of this book but I will caution that it is not a book to just read for the story, be prepared to have your mind and reason challenged. Steinbeck wanted to right a book about the struggle to maintain personal morality in a materialistic world. For ones sleep patterns he might have accomplished his goal all too well.

Revisiting The Yellow Birds

I wrote a few weeks ago about this debut novel by Iraq War Veteran Kevin Powers that has been called the best book of the year. When I read the book I was moved and amazed at how wonderful the book is.

For a person such as me who is always reading something it sometimes is hard to take a step back and say this is an exceptional book. Not just a great book like I am always saying a book is, but a very outstanding, an exceptional book.

The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers is exceptional. It is Hemingwayesque. The author appeared on Morning Joe this morning and he was soft spoken and understated. The group around the desk was all in agreement at how wonderful the book was and as Joe Scarborough read the first paragraph it became clear that this book is something rare, something that will become part of the literature of the American canon. With a first line " The war tried to kill us in the spring" what becomes immediately clear is that the blurb on the cover by Tom Wolfe that this is the All Quiet on the Western Front of America's Arab wars is not hyperbole. It is simply the truth.

If you read one book this year. This is the one. There are not enough positive adjectives for how meaningful this book is.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver

Short stories are my thing. As much as I love all types of books, literature and biography I am a big fan of the short story. In the second half of the twentieth century Raymond Carver was one of the Masters of the form. As John Cheever wrote often about the characters of Long Island, New York City and suburban Connecticut Carver too writes often about the same characters. Carver's however are darker, often plied with alcohol and often with violence just below the surface.

Not all of Carver's stories work for me. However when his stories work, they work extremely well. Gazebo is the first of the winning stories in the collection. A couple with dreams of improving their lives remembers a gazebo they have seen in the past and pictures that as the epitome of married bliss, while they deal with the troubles in their young marriage.

I Could See the Smallest Things in just four pages expresses the under the radar pain of a friendship between two working men, neighbors, who have fallen out of friendship. Only Carver could have a man out digging night crawlers at three in the morning speak to his neighbors wife out to close a forgotten gate and convey so much with a message to her husband that he says hi.

In this stage perhaps Carver had a thing for the subtext of water. In perhaps the most famous story from the collection, " The Bath", features a family celebrating a young boys birthday. When the boy is injured and in the hospital with a life threatening injury the world outside keeps turning and in " So Much Water Close to Home" a group of men who discover the body of a drowned girl they are not prepared for the anger directed at them when they finish their fishing trip before reporting it. Clearly cell phones would have been a huge asset to these gentlemen.

The title story is a bit longer and features two couples discussing love. All four middle aged, at one point they were all married to others, have differing opinions as to the meaning of love. Just under the surface the differences between the characters opinions are a bit more in conflict and as the gin flows the conversation does too. In the end nothing really happens, the more they try to express what love really is, the more they cannot speak to it. As the story ends the couples, drunk before it gets dark are hungry and would like to go get some food. Still, thinking in their interior about what is love, no one moves and the story ends.

An uneven collection, still with some very valuable stories.

Cities of the Plain by Cormac McCarthy

This book ended Cormac McCarthy's Western Trilogy with it's release in 1998. McCarthy over my reading of this set of books has become one of my favorite authors. It is impossible to read his work without seeing a straight line from Hemingway to McCarthy and for someone who considers Hemingway his favorite author this is a road I am glad to travel.

In Cities of the Plain we revisit a character from each of the first two books in the series, John Grady Cole from All the Pretty Horses and Billy Parham from The Crossing. The year is 1952 and though Parham is nine years older than the nineteen year old Cole the two have developed a brotherly relationship. Certainly with Billy's loss of his brother Boyd in the previous story this in understandable.

The major events in this book take place South of the border in Ciudad Juarez a border town across from El Paso. As the boys from the ranch go across the border one night and go into a brothel John's friends encourage him to partake of one of the women who catches his eye. He declines however and as the story we see the cowboys doing all kinds of cowboy things. Roping cattle, catching wild dogs bringing down calves keeps the boys busy. Unbeknownst to his friends however John Grady Cole has returned south of the border and has started spending time with the young prostitute who has moved to a different brothel, one owned by a very dark character named Eduardo.

Soon Billy Parham and the rest of his friends know that John has a problem and it is becoming bigger and bigger. No longer in lust, he now is in love and he wants to bring this girl out of the brothel and marry her. Eduardo however has no desire to let that happen, he will not let Cole buy her out, it is all complicated by the fact that Eduardo is in love with the young prostitute as well.

This book captures all of the glory of the first two books and brings the characters into the twentieth century. McCarthy's talent is on display here on every page. The scenes that he depicts are beautiful and clear. The relationship between the cowboys is so attractive to someone watching in modern times, the simplicity, the honesty, and the lack of sarcasm and easy rudeness is as attractive as the vivid scenery that the author describes.

Other characters in the book are deeper than any we have seen even in the first two books, at least in terms of secondary characters. On his travels South of the border John Grady meets and establishes a friendship with an elderly blind musician. He also is reverential in his dealings with Mr. Johnson, the elderly patriarch of the ranching family for whom he works. Sitting on the porch with Mr. Johnson as he has wandered out in his long underwear and hearing the stories of the old man's days on the plains driving cattle north, days that he calls the best of his life.

Billy while not the major character in the story, is still a big part of the story and his ultimate decency makes him the most unsullied character in the story. He is a friend in need and a friend indeed as cliched as that is. When the book ends the sorrow he feels over the end we see coming is palpable.

Upon the completion of the book we are given an epilogue. In this we see what happened to Billy in the second half of the century. He travels the country, finding ways to earn a living, as the ranching and cowboy life that he has known ends under his feet. In the final scenes of the epilogue Billy in his seventies is staying dry under an overpass when he spies an old Indian man on the opposite side. The man comes to sit with them and as they talk he tells Billy a story about a dream he had and a dream the character in his dream had. In the end he offers thoughts and questions about what is life and where is reality and where does it end. As McCarthy spins the vision we are allowed to be amused by Billy, even in his seventies playing the innocent asking questions that have more to do with the logistics of the vision than the hidden deep meanings. Later we are told that Billy continues to wander until following the river he is taken in a by a family who find in him something special, he greets the children as they come home from school, teaches them how to ride and feels a level of being home one senses he has not felt for a long time.

As the story of Billy finally comes to an end he is having a very vivid dream and wakes the wife of the family with whom he is staying. She asks him if he would like a drink and reading Billy, an almost eighty year old man still uncomfortable with women saying " Yes Ma'am " with his best manners one is struck by the anomaly of one of the cowboys of lifetimes ago coming to the end of his life in the new millennium. He tells the woman of his dream of his brother Boyd, long dead, and says he wishes everyday that he could spend some time with him, see him ride, one last time. After the woman settles him he tells her that " He is not who she thinks he is." The wife counters will a self assured " We know just what you are." By the end of this story we do to.

Billy, is one of the most enduring characters of twentieth century literature, and perhaps McCarthy's greatest creation. Understated in everything he does, and a hero we would all be proud to know. Yes Billy we all know just who you are.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

I remember in high school having to read this book in Junior English class and then we subsequently watched the movie. At the time most of what I remember of the movie is that we thought that some of the characters in the mental hospital were quite funny.

Recently I watched the movie for what was the first time in thirty years and it really was quite a revalation. Not just the movie itself but a few different things.

The movie based on the book of same name by sixties icon Ken Kesey won multiple Oscars in 1975 including Best Picture, Director, Actor and Actress. Louise Fletcher playing the terrible nurse ratchet won the Best Actress Oscar. Her portrayal upon this watching is for me offers more depth and is not a totally unidentifiable character. Jack Nicholson for as long as I can remember has been considered a great actor, but with at least to my estimation no real movies to back that up. Sure he was over the top good in A Few Good Men but that role was all but a caricature.

In One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest however we see a shining example of Nicholson's talent. Playing Randle McMurphy he is a tour de force. McMurphy in prison is tired of the work farm and is pleased as punch to be getting what he calls easy duty at the nuthouse. As he makes friends with the various inmates in his ward he comes to feel sadly for them and also angry at what he deems the pointless intransigence of Nurse Ratchet. In one early scene he steals out the gate, commandeers a bus that has come to take the better behaved inmates on an outing and loading the bus with his friends, after picking up a party girl friend of his takes them fishing on a stolen boat. As he says however what can they do to him. What he does not understand and soon finds out is that now that he is in the mental health system he is not automatically released at the end of his scheduled prison sentence.

This, as one might expect, does not sit well and McMurphy causes as scene that eventually leads to him and two other patients being taken upstairs for electroshock therapy.

Watching the movie this time I could not help but but be stunned at the performance of Will Sampson as the Chief. The Chief is a towering man, close to seven feet tall who is , as the saying goes, deaf and dumb, consequently spending his days pushing a broom aimlessly. Early in the movie McMurphy, wanting to use the Chief's height for easy baskets attempts to teach him to play basketball. It does not work. Eventually however as Randall treats the Chief with respect the Chief comes to trust Randall and the next time we see a basketball game on the court. Something magical happens in this game. Randall again sets up the Chief under the hoop and when he passes the ball to the Chief he, without jumping, just pushes it to the hoop for an easy basket. One could call it a an early sixties flatfooted alley oop and it works. After a couple of these the Chief, if it is possible, grows even taller, and you see him not stumble down the court but run the length of it to set up for defense. As one might imagine a seven foot Indian is quite a presence in a pick up basketball game at a mental hospital. From there the Chief still not speaking and unable to understand language grows close to McMurphy to the point where he is one of the three sent upstairs for shock treatment as he had defended McMurphy when his trouble turned physical.

After returning from shock treatment McMurphy would like to be good but his distaste for Nurse Ratchet makes that impossible. He sets up an escape plan that is a little too efficient and leads to some events that will change everybody's life forever. The ending of this movie is sad and moving and again we are left with the understanding that The Chief is the moral center of this movie in ways that are not understood with a passing viewing.

I mentioned Nurse Ratchet as not, in this viewing, to me at least being the all evil character we often think about when we think of the movie. One must understand that in 1962 the world was a different place. Kesey was one of the major counter cultural figures of the sixties and there was not much room for nuance in his portrayal of Ratchet but nuance there is. You could realize that here she was a nurse running a ward, trying to follow a schedule, and you get this career petty criminal who comes in and causes trouble. Clearly she reacted in a way that was authoritarian but I do not think in a real world situation she was necessarily evil.

It was Kesey's story and of course Milos Forman directed the movie the same way and Ratchet has become an iconic example of a dictatorial, by the book, female authority figure.

Now that my commercial for understanding of Nurse Ratchet is over the one thing that one should take away is that this is a great film. Lasser as Ratchet has depth, Nicholson fills the screen in every scene, and many of the actors, including a young Danny Devito became faces that we are all well familiar with. And of course The Chief.

A great film.

All the King's Men

This 1949 movie based on the Pulitzer Prize winning book of the same name mirrored that success with an Oscar for Best Picture.

Very few, if any, Pulitzer Prize winning books have become best picture winners in the film version so this should stand very well that the movie is a winning effort.

For me however this is just not the case. The movie to me started very strongly and I was very interested in the character Willie Stark as he suffered indignities as he strove to improve himself. The movie however did not improve from there. Clearly the movie follows the book and the book is a thinly veiled representation of the real life demagogue Huey Long of Louisiana but it seems to me that the movie made everything just a little too simple.

Perhaps having a short time frame to tell a movie in just does not compare to the nuanced views we can see today in shows such as Boardwalk Empire and earlier The Soprano's. Good men with evil in them or evil men with good in them. The transformation of Willie Stark however does not brim over with complexity.

Started in politics as a " dummy", that is a hick to split the vote that would have otherwise have gone to a feared challenger so that the establishment candidate can win Willie learns of the plot and rebels. He becomes a populist demagogue calling his target audience that they are hicks and only a hick, like he Willie Stark, can help a hick.

Once in office Stark has very redeemable goals. Free health care, accessible free education, good roads for farmers to get their product to market, all of these and more are certainly commendable. To make these things happen however Willie will make deals which are not clean. Moreover for Willie politics becomes blood sport, those that get in his way are removed one way or the other. Eventually as one might expect Willie's downfall comes. Leaving one to wonder what might have been had he lived, and if it is possible for anyone to have clean goals and accomplish them in clean ways.

Broderick Crawford won an Oscar for his performance and deservedly so. With his large forehead free of hair with his hairstyle I chuckled to myself waiting for him to do a Jackie Gleason impression but of course this movie was well before " The Great One's " debut.

This movie was solid but I must admit it is nothing close to an Oscar Winner and when one realizes that just a couple of years later Hitchcock was making his stunning run of movies in the early fifties one sees how this movie came at the tail end of a production era that was just abut done. This in itself might well be why this movie seems so dated but for whatever reason this movie can be deemed nothing more than a disappointment.

Uno by Green Day

This past September Green Day released this album which we are told is to be the first of three releases over a period of just a few months. With Dos out soon and Tres not soon after over the last few days I have listened to this the first record a few times and would have to color myself unimpressed.

Truth told I have never been a big fan of the band so this is no surprise. I think that American Idiot was a good album and certainly Wake Me Up When September Ends was a great song and a powerful video but the truth is that song was a bit of a departure from much of what the band has done.

As the band settles well into middle age they, to my uneducated eyes, seem to be struggling to stay relevant. Certainly Billie Joe Armstrong's meltdown at a recent charity concert leads one to suspect that perhaps being a punk band twenty five years after it's beginning is a perplexing thing.

The album itself is pretty bland. A few driving beats, some naughty words, and Armstrong's unique voice can still barely make your foot tap. It is just all so predictable, nothing is new, it has all been done a million times. There is just nothing original in the sound.

That is not to say the band has no merit. Some songs are better than others on every album and this one is no different. The second song on the album is called Stay the Night and certainly it has some appeal. Perhaps my big issue with Green Day is that same damn speed guitar riff over and over. It all seems so forced, all the songs with f2*k in them like it was off a checklist.

Kill The DJ is a neat little number in that it is slightly different and if nothing else expresses a sentiment that we have all felt, certainly if we have gone to any club where all they play is that awful dance music. Better than that is Fell For You which sounds a bit like a cross between The Ramones and a fifties band if, that is, a fifties band was talking about pissing the bed.


The first single, and as the albums are so close together in their release dates, the song that might well be most remembered in this whole three album production is called Oh Love and it is certainly superior to the rest of the albums. With that in mind however it still is nothing special and after four listenings you really do not care if you ever hear it again.

Perhaps the second and third albums will be better, they are supposed to each have a theme so there is hope. If not however it seems to me we may be looking at a band that has stayed too long at the party.

The Shootist

With some time to myself this afternoon I was going through the Tivo to see what I had recorded to watch. I started the movie Diner but fifteen minutes in realized that, at least today, I was not interested in teenagers in 1959 Baltimore. I gave Network some attention, this had Faye Dunaway( looking twenty years older than her role in Bonnie and Clyde ten years earlier ) and great reviews but a half hour in, that I will never get back, it seemed dated and frankly a little too inside the bubble for my tastes and that too was discarded.

As I took the television out of Tivo mode the channel had been left on AMC. Lo and behold what was just beginning but The Shootist. A 1976 movie known as John Wayne's last movie the film caught my interest and I watched the entire thing.

I have to say that I am not a huge Wayne fan but have enjoyed some of his movies. This movie was different. Centering as much on issues of mortality and dignity at the end of it this movie is stunningly strong. Watching the scene between the Doctor who confirms for the aging gunfighter Books that Wayne plays and realizing that in this very scene we see perhaps the two biggest screen actors of the last fifty years acting out a scene acknowledging mortality is very powerful. Jimmy Stewart as the Doctor gives one late example that he might well be incapable of a poor performance and Wayne is perfect in his role.

The cast in this movie was directed by Wayne. Wayne wanted Lauren Bacall who, playing the boarding house matron, is understated and thus uncommonly affective. The scene of Bacall and Wayne out for a Sunday drive is very well done. Ron Howard also appears in the movie as Gillam Rogers, son of Bacall's Bond Rogers. Howard is wonderful in the role, caught between little boy fantasies of gunfighters and wanting to protect his mother and his feelings of sadness at the pending demise of this figure from an old west that is ending as the twentieth century begins.

Wayne went so far as to have a part wrote into the movie for a specific horse. He wanted his favorite horse, Dollar, in the movie.

If your looking for a typical Wayne shoot them up movie this is not it. There are some gunfights at the climatic end but this movie is as much a thought piece on mortality and how it affects us all, even those of us who seem bigger than life and thus bigger than death. In the end none of us are as Wayne himself found out three years later when he died.

This is an excellent, and very underrated movie.

Revolution Gets Better and Better

It is time for a full on endorsement of this television show. Each week it gets better and better and if you have not yet joined the show it is now time.

JJ Abrams, using his Lost formula, with back stories abounding while the story continually moves forward appears now to have every chance of success and will certainly be renewed for another season. With that guarantee of time the show now has the challenge of not bogging down and keeping the story moving.

With his background with Lost however, there is no reason to think Abrams cannot succeed.

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Things Fall Apart was the first book written in what has become known as The African Trilogy was released in 1958. Earning respect as one of the first African novels, by an African author, written in English the book has become one of the most widely read books of the African experience.

The book begins in the period of time of the 1890's. The main character is Okonkwo, one of the titled men and leaders of his tribe, the Umuofia. The tribe, while fictional, is modeled after the author's own tribe. Some of the experiences of the characters are also reflective of things that Achebe saw in his life in his village.

The book is divided into two parts. In the first part we learn much about the Tribal life if Okonkwo and his people. We learn about his compound, a part of the village carved out specifically for his family. In this compound he lives in his obi, which is the man's hut surrounded by his three wives, each of who have their own tent. We learn about his daily life and the life of his tribe.

While we read about some abhorrent practices of his tribe, such as when twins are born the still breathing infants are left in the woods as they are thought to be evil, we also see that much of the tribe's life is caring and gentle. The yam is the main foodstuff of the people and all work in their family plots in the garden area to grow them.

The author mixes many local lessons of tribal life into the the story with legends and sayings which correlate with their life but are not a stretch for ours either.

At the end of Part 1 an accident occurs and Okonkwo must pay the penalty. Still as he is exiled from the clan for seven years it is interesting to note that the same people who at daybreak will, by custom, burn his buildings and tear down the walls of his compound, will come the night before and help him to pack up his things and transfer his yams to a friends barn. In short custom must be followed but it is not personal. Perhaps we could learn from this.

In Part two Okonkwo travels to his mothers home village. Here he is welcomed by a cousin, his mother being long dead. It is interesting that when he hears of his cousin's exile he is welcomed with open arms. It was a female offense, that is one that does not result in a permanent exile. It again shows that in only modern civilization is prison considered an answer to a crime.

Part two predominantly shows us the influence of the white man on the tribes. A missionary appears and in a great shock to his system Okonkwo's oldest son becomes a Christian and is thus disowned by his father. Eventually seven years pass and when he returns to his home village, looking forward to earning his titles again, planting his crops, and in general rejoining his life where he left it Okonkwo is shocked at how much life has changed. A great deal of the tribe has either joined the Christian faith or become accustomed to living side by side with the Christians and their new adherents.

Eventually a crisis occurs and Okonkwo's part in it will again change his life forever. The book is well written and offers an unfiltered look at both the culture of the African tribes as well as how these same tribes were affected and changed forever by the influence of the white men and Westerners.

The Cure's Greatest Hits

80's music nostalgia is rampant these days. For someone like me who graduated in the early eighties that makes sense of course. The eighties certainly saw a great variety of music. The early eighties for us cool kids meant Van Halen before Jump brought them to the whole world's attention, Bruce singing Nebraska and not Born in the USA, and of course the first last album by the who It's Hard which featured Athena and Eminence Front. The ultimate test of course is did you buy The Final Cut by Pink Floyd and if you did, did you get it?

With all that however what I find one of the more enjoyable trips down 80's nostalgia is the melancholy music of the second half of the eighties. On the First Wave satellite station it often seems between The Cure and The Smith's with a little Thompson Twins thrown in they have time for little else. And surprisingly for me, that is just fine.

Maybe it is because while I was aware of these bands the first time around they were not overplayed on my floor in college. Whatever the reason The Cure in recent weeks has certainly become turn it up music in my vehicle. My kids look at me and say " Really Dad?" It is kind of a two fold look. Not just this is awful but this is not your normal awful music. So I will be the first to admit it is a stretch.

However as the saying goes the heart wants what the heart wants. Listening to The Cure's Greatest Hits album this morning there is no doubt of my being dead on in my assessment.

I cannot listen to Close to Me without tapping my foot. The stomp beat, post Clash and the absolute unique voice of Robert Smith on Why Can"t I Be You is infectious. Now truth be told this music is not for everyone. I have a friend who I am sure would revoke my membership in the he man club if he read this but I think it is well known I am pretty open when it comes to music.

Eventually The Cure went a tiny bit more mainstream or mainstream went a tiny bit more Cure and songs like Just Like Heaven became a success on the mainstream charts. Smith's vocal is a little clearer but he still had the breathy quality you either appreciated or did not. He certainly was not going to change. The peak of the mainstream success, rightly so, came about with " Lovesong" which by any standard is a great performance.

Also on the greatest hits album is one of my favorites. Lullaby, perhaps because it does not make any effort at being liked, it is odd, and Smith's voice is the voice that we remember when he was just the hardcore groups. The Cure really never got enough credit for the cleverness of their songs, the beats, the music itself, much stronger than was thought. Smith's voice, so original, tended to dominate everything else.

One cannot neglect the poppy " Friday I'm in Love " which appeared like a bolt of sunshine in the early nineties. You had to sing along, it was infectious, but the question for most Cure fans was what the hell is this. Did Mr. Smith finally get some anti depressants. No matter the song was one of their most popular and with the contrast to previous records it certainly was original.

I have to offer however that a couple of songs are inexplicably missing. Fascination Street which featured Smith in full Smith voice and has been offered in multiple versions for the hardcore fans certainly should be on this compilation. The obviously missing song in any collection of The Cure's Greatest Hits however is not including Pictures of You. When I think of everything that makes one think of music from The Cure this song has it. When Smith sings" I've been looking so long at these Pictures of You that I almost believe that they're real" captures all the sadness and depression that good or bad encompassed so much of the music of The Cure.

This band made many memorable songs, when you look over a list, you are shocked to realize just how much music they made. With Morrisey touring to stand out reviews in the states right now one wonders if a reborn Cure might not be far behind.

Brownville Girl by Bob Dylan

Brownsville Girl is one of those songs that Bob Dylan could record. Appearing on his Greatest Hits Volume III as well as appearing originally on the 1986 album Knocked Out Loaded the song was co written by Dylan and the playwright Sam Shepard.

While the album itself was not received that well the song is regarded as one of Dylan's best epic songs. Epic being one of the best of the many story talk songs that Dylan has recorded over the years.

Dylan sings about a girl that he still remembers, we assume over the passage of time, and in the course of telling the story of that girl we hear some lines that are classic Dylan. We hear the line " you always said people don't do what they believe in, they do what's most convenient and then they repent." If you think about that line it is as close to the truth as you will hear in a song.

Early in the song we learn about Henry Porter, who while the hero of the song waits for him to return, his woman tells him that " even the swap meets around here are getting pretty corrupt."

Most noted in the song is Dylan's continual references to a movie that he saw and remembered starring Gregory Peck. Throughout the song the protagonist keeps coming back to this point, that he remembers the movie, would see it over and over, and how he would see Peck " in anything, I'll stand in line."

The song will occasionally find it's way out of a playlist of mine or on a special day perhaps even on a satellite channel I am listening to. It is one of those songs that you never turn off, it is a sit in the car and listen to the end kind of song. How many songs can you say that about.

For me a great deal of those songs come to us from Bob.

Red by Taylor Swift

The music industry has seen it's profits continually shrink over the last decade. The answer is evident of how to solve this. Simply put the industry needs a few more Taylor Swift's.

Her fourth album debuted recently and shot to the top of the charts with sales of over a million in the first week. Compared to what other acts are selling over the duration of their albums runs this is remarkable.

It is not news that Swift is popular, ever since her single Tim McGraw took off a few years back her career has just gotten bigger and bigger. In our house my daughter knows all her songs and sings them constantly. I should say that there is a comfort in the fact that I can know my thirteen year old is listening to albums that I need no fear of the content.

With her fourth album Swift has not really broken any new ground. One song is a bit more adult, she sings " you can say anything as long as you say it with your hands" but that is about as risque as it gets. Of course much of the persona you see could be contrived and she could be a drug swilling, promiscuous twenty two year old but nothing seems to indicate this to be the case. Her appearances on television shows are cute, laughable, and her songs and voice match the personality shown.

She sings about her past relationships which are many, in ways that makes you think these could have been the same things she would have written in her journal were she not a successful recording artist.

The new album finds Swift branching out a bit more. The single State of Grace has U2 style guitars and could easily be a song a " real" singer sings.

Songs like I Knew You Were Trouble are among my least favorites but are unbearably catchy, in fact it gets my daughters highest approval.

Swift does not record songs that are not catchy. It does not seem like there is any filler on the album. On first listen I identified a few songs I thought that were just filler but on second and third listen to write this I realized that could not be said. In short her voice, her sense of melody, and one must not forget the songs she sings and writes are like earwigs. You cannot get them out of your head.

Begin Again is a song any teenager wanting to get back with her old partner can appreciate, a few adults could as well and the first single is perhaps the most infectious single of the year. When Swift sings We are never getting back together it is impossible not to sing along.

Other songs include the title cut Red which appears to be the second single but with a Swift album it is hard to know what are really the singles. Treacherous could easily be the flip side to Begin Again, same tone, could even be part of the same relationship.

The song that might be the most easily missed in relation to it's future success is called All Too Well. This is a sweet song, Swift's breathy voice fits it perfectly. The fact is all the songs have merit and one could review them all with a smile.

This girl is incredibly talented. Will she as he approaches her late twenties feel the need to sex it up so that she can be taken seriously. Let us hope not. Her songs are sweet, her personality ( that we see ) is sweet, and honestly, even if it is an illusion, does not the world need a little more outward sweetness.

I like the album but I love to hear my daughter singing the songs. That is worth more than one can realize until they witness it.