Exhibit 1.18

Stock Photography Review

From msn.com

The headline that accompanies this piece says "ARE YOU A GOOD CO-WORKER?" As I found this while at work, it's unclear if I'm even a good worker so I didn't have the heart to actually take the quiz or whatever that would let me know.

But what's fascinating about this piece--and stock photography in general--is the chameleon-like nature of these images. Whatever photographer snapped this shot had no idea what the headline was going to be, but s/he knew that A) Most stock photography uses women, B) Most stock photography is used by companies targeting middle-class salaried workers, and C) Due to the depth of the composition, this photo would likely be used online or in mail (not on, say, a billboard). That's it. However this photo gets used from then on is entirely up to the photographer's arrangement with the image provider and the company that purchases it.

Some other possible headlines that could go with this photo:

• Searching for a better snack? Try a Take Five.
• Constantly looking for a bathroom? Take Holdaprone.
• The University of Onlineville is the answer to your career worries.
• Is everything really better on the other side of the cubicle?
• Find out if you made the right career move.
• Our employees are worried about what's best for you.

And on and on.

Exhibit 1.17

I'm pretty sure that picture is from Carlito's Way. It could also be Sylvester Stallone in Cobra, I can't tell. In any case, I happened to turn on the television this weekend and stumble upon the first few minutes of Carlito's Way, which I've seen a half dozen times but now appreciate on a much deeper level. I only watched five minutes or so, and I am ready to say the movie is one of the all-time great five minute movies. No matter what five minutes you watch, you're going to be entertained by any or all of:

• Pacino actually eating the sets. He walks with so much swagger in this movie that at times he's practically horizontal. At the beginning of the movie, Pacino is an actor, but by the end of the movie he is the character Al Pacino has played in every movie since. In some ways, Carlito's Way actually ruined his career as he apparently thinks he's still playing Carlito. That Al Pacino can play Shylock in The Merchant of Venice and a Puerto Rican gangster without changing his demeanor or accent is what makes him so fascinating. I love Al Pacino.
  
• Sean Penn's character who I think is actually named Jewish Lawyer. Look at him:

• It's fun to imagine Pacino playing the lawyer and Carlito and holding conversations with himself. Does anyone else do this during Al Pacino movies? Anyone? No? Try it some time with Dog Day Afternoon. If you try it while watching Scent of a Woman, it's like watching the tape from The Ring.
  
• Penolope Ann Miller as Carlito's girlfriend/stripper trying desperately not to get eaten by Al Pacino. I'm pretty sure I've never called anyone this before, and I don't really know what it means, but Penolope Ann Miller is a drip. Her name even sounds bland. Yet somehow in the early 1990s she was in movies where Al Pacino, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Richard Tyson were madly in love with her. If at any point in her career someone had told her to go by just Penolope Ann, she'd probably be Julia Roberts right now. Keep this in mind when David Collin is winning his 2nd Pulitzer.


• Viggo Mortensen as lowlife, wheelchair-bound snitch who at one point cries hysterically and complains about how he can't "hump" anymore. Um, I'm pretty sure this performance wasn't on the reel he sent in for TLOTR.


• Carlito saying something crazy. Just read IMDb's memorable quotes page.

Seriously, it's that good. Heather and I caught it just as Pacino was doing some of his strutting and watched through when he yells, "HERE COME THE PAIN!" Needless to say, I've pretty much been saying that all day, going so far as to run it through babelfish to see if it sounds cooler in Spanish. It does.

Exhibit 1.16

Things you should be looking for in tonight's pre-season opening Dolphins game:

• John Beck's performance. Not as a quarterback--that will be fine--but as the lead in the Adam Peterson story. Look at this guy. Seeing him in a Dolphins uniform is like watching one of my dreams in the third person.

• Ted Ginn vs. Ted Ginn's hamstring. The battle no one wins.
  
• Cam Cameron's head coaching debut. He seems like a good guy, but there is no denying that he went 18-37 in his only other head coaching job at IU. Which, by the way, is his alma mater. This worries me. If/when Drake University ever puts me in charge of their non-scholarship division 1-AA football program, I'm going to do a little better than 18-37. I don't care how many times I have to run Scotty Phaydavong.
  
• Jason Allen continuing to do his statue impression when on the field. He couldn't be more of a bust if he didn't have a torso. No one can convince me that Saban didn't actually want to draft some other guy named Jason Allen Smith but forgot to write the last name on the card. Then when Tagliabue read the name, Saban just played it cool and told everyone in the room, "Well, I'm sure he's good too."
  
• My favorite sleeper player: David Sutton. He's a 6-6 ex-volleyball player who only caught 6 passes during his time at UTEP. No jokes here. He's good.
  

Exhibit 1.15

"I question your attractiveness less than anyone."

Exhibit 1.14

The kid that Odalis Perez ate and whose skin he wears Vincent D'Onofrio style.

Odalis Perez was unexpectedly bad for the Royals last night. Which is to say that he is always bad, but last night he was worse than usual, somewhat surprising considering he has developed into quite the consistent pitcher. Which is to say consistently bad.

The normal Odalis Perez start goes something like this: 5.2 IP with 4 runs earned (and sometimes, just for fun, an unearned run) with 8 hits, 3k, 2 BB, 3 visits to the mound by the pitching coach, and 1 me turning off the game until a Gil Meche or Brian Bannister start. That's not statistics based, that's just the perceived line of watching him pitch--except for me turning off the game, that I can document.

The Royals can't complain as they aren't even paying his salary (or at least not most of it). This may be one of the all-time great things about sports that, if translated to the real world, would make absolutely no sense (though we may need to do it anyway). If my company traded me to say, McDonald's, I'd probably perform pretty poorly too until I learned from my McManager that my old company was still paying my salary but just didn't want me around anymore. At that point I might start making a few more Quarter Pounders per hour just to prove them wrong, but I guess Odalis and I are just different people.

(This concept gets even more ridiculous in the NBA. Can you imagine being, say, Theo Ratliffe and repeatedly getting traded from team to team, each one of which only wants you because A. they need your awful, awful contract to make a deal for a superstar work and B. that awful contract is about to expire and provide cap relief? How could this situation possibly be comfortable for anyone. "Should I start warming up, Coach?" "No, Theo, why don't you just go sit at the end of the bench until your deal expires in 2009." The concept of the buy-out is even worse. The Portland Trail Blazers just gave Stevie Francis something like $30 million to not play basketball for them. Actually, this one we may need to institute in the real world).

Odalis's contract is somewhat understandable considering his remarkable 2002 season:

222.1 IP, 3.00 ERA, 4 CG, 2 SO, 155 K, 38 BB, .226 BA against, .99 WHIP, 15 wins and 10 losses.

That's a damn fine season. Not Cy Young worthy, but I could see it getting a vote or two (Ed note: it didn't because Randy Johnson was incredible that year). He probably should have won 20 games. He was an All-Star. Odalis was 24-25 years old throughout that season (scary considering that's my current age and an Odalis Perez-like collapse could be just around the corner) and he had never been that good again when the Dodgers locked him up in 2005 based mostly on the promise of that earlier season. Within a few months of the deal the Dodgers already regretted it, and within 18 months they'd shipped him, two legit prospects, and something like $20 million off to the Royals for a 35-year-old reliever who, ironically, had been on the Dodgers the year before but who they didn't want to resign. Ouch.

This is the equivalent of the company I work for trading me, my salary, the basket of Take Fives, my purple editing pens, and one of our data analysts to McDonald's for a number four. I don't even think they'd be able to get it super-sized unless they threw in one of the coffee pots.

Exhibit 1.13

The most shocking thing about this whole bridge collapse--okay, maybe third most shocking thing after the relatively low mortality rate and the fact that the Royals and Twins played an hour after the bridge collapsed within a few miles of the stadium--is that more bridges don't collapse all of the time. We're talking about metal and cement structures spanning hundreds of feet in the air which are nearly constantly supporting the weight of hundreds of cars and passengers. These cars run on fire! The people in these flaming death chariots atop decades old structures built by the Irish or whoever are driving at 70 m.p.h. are within a few feet of other drivers, some of whom are probably drunk or on their way home from a drug deal.

I can't believe this doesn't happen all of the time. Of course, I can't believe gas stations don't just blow up sometimes . I can't believe more buildings don't fall over in the wind. And don't even get me started on planes.

I'm not even afraid to drive or fly, yet the world as I imagine it, the world we deserve, is a wasteland somewhere between The Road Warrior and Escape from New York. I mean, the President flies everywhere. Of course sometimes his plane is going to crash and some of those times his escape pod is bound to land in a prison. I mean, do you know how many prisons there are? It's simple arithmetic. This is why we have Snake Plissken in the first place.

This kind of rhetoric is just sad, however. And I like Hillary and agree with everything she has to say about funding for our infrastructure, but nothing is wrong if in the 21st century we are scared to drive over bridges. Bridges are in the air. We should, naturally be scared of them. We should be more scared of bridges than, say, cougars.

Don't get me wrong, it is a tragedy. However, we were also pretty lucky. So far only five deaths have been confirmed. The media hasn't been this upset over five deaths since that summer everyone was afraid of sharks. We got over that, and they even have super sharks now. They killed L.L. Cool J for god's sake.

Anyone on a bridge about to collapse has the right to think whatever they want, but I imagine at least some of the people in Minnesota weren't entirely surprised. They had always known the world could turn on them like this. The sort of people who looked at the Leaning Tower of Pisa and thought it was only the natural state of a building that old. On the bridge, people like that, people like me, probably had a stunning moment of clarity where they thought Of course this was going to happen. This is the Mississippi River we're trying to cross in explosion machines. What a fucking stupid idea.

I like to think the president in Escape from New York thought something like this too as his pod spun towards an island of trashcan fires and bloodied crowbars. And I'm sure the off-screen media was clamoring on about how in 1997 surely we should be able to build a presidential escape pod that can avoid prisons. We can't. We can't.

Exhibit 1.12

Candy Bar Review: Take Five

I couldn't tell you what's in a Take Five except for a pretzel, and god knows I'm not going to look it up. If I had to guess it's: Pretzel, Chocolate made from melted chocolate Jesuses, Unicorn Laughter, Nougat, and Nugent. I also might be willing to say that it had caramel but don't want to go out on a limb. I'm pretty sure sweater vests aren't involved.

The evil-genius daughters of a co-worker have placed a basket of candy bars in the break room next to the coffee. They might as well have filled the basket with puppies for all the action this thing gets. I've never enjoyed helping someone's children raise money so much. It's for an operation or a band trip or something.

Exhibit 1.11

Saw The Bourne Ultimatum, and it was fun and exciting and a little ridiculous and super awesome all at once. A few thoughts:

Can we rethink this whole Julia Stiles thing? She's like somebody's wooden step-sister. I was openly rooting for Desh. There's a scene very much like one in the first movie where she dyes and cuts her hair while Matt Damon watches her. Instead of sexual tension, however, there is the undeniable sense that Jason Bourne is thinking Yeah, right. My last girlfriend was Franke Potente. I can do better.

Speaking of Desh, at one point in the film he and Matt Damon engage in a race to see who can be more awkward on a scooter. Who won? The audience, that's who.

My favorite thing about the Bourne movies--outside of the aforementioned awesomeness--is what they say about our government's intelligence community in its fictional world. Apparently they are capable of training one agent to be an unthinkable badass but decided the rest of their team of assassins only had to be kind-of tough. Even Desh fights like he dropped out three weeks into a month long fighting course, never getting to the lesson about battering your opponent with the textbook. I wonder if after training Bourne Albert Finney, Chris Cooper, Scott Glen, David Strathairn, and Tom Skerritt (who isn't in the movies but would surely be at that meeting) all got together and decided that Since we have Bourne, we really only need a bunch of chumps with messenger bags and designer jackets. We'll be good as long as the chumps never have to face Bourne.

Bourne is like the Dan Marino of super soldier assassins. If statistics were kept on number of arms bent at awkward angles to momentarily debilitate an Eastern European police officer, he'd be in the Hall of Fame.

Hearing David Strathairn say, "Give me a standard kill order." is like hearing Jesus sing. I wonder what other kill order options there were. King size?

At one point in the movie Matt Damon does one of my favorite ridiculous movie things. While driving a pilfered police car and needing to go faster, he shifts the car into another gear and steps on the gas so that the car speeds away. Except here, the car is an automatic Monte Carlo circa 2000. The lever is on the steering wheel for god's sake. Really, Bourne, did going from D3 to D4 really do much for you or was it more a gas mileage thing? (Ed note: I'm not ruling out Matt Damon can conjure a manual transmission just by thinking about it).

There are plenty more great moments like these, but I feel I already rehashed them in hurried exclamations after the show. That probably says all you need.

UPDATE: I have since gotten several hits by people who found this blog by googling Julia Stiles's name, and now I feel awful. I didn't want to start a blog just to be one of those guys. Seriously, she's great. I loved her in Finding Forrester.

Exhibit 1.10

Song Kang-ho

I spent half of The Host trying to figure out if the sweet, stunted father was the same actor who played the loquacious, bull-headed cop in Bong Joon-ho's last movie (Memories of a Murder). It is the same actor, and he's fantastic. So are both the movies, for what it's worth.

Memories of a Murder notable for how it re-imagines--at least to this American--the cop-drama, making it less about psychological horror and investigative brilliance than frustration and entropy. Confronted with the country's first real serial killer, Song Kang-ho's character is an aggressively cocky oaf initially more concerned with appearing to be a clever investigator than actually being one. As the murders continue and he doesn't find answers in his slapdash borrowing from film and television police procedurals, his violence becomes increasingly out of control while the killer's is undertaken with an opposite dispassion. It would be easy to say the movie is about this small Korean town's loss of innocence at the hands of "unspeakable evil," but Song Kang-ho's character makes it clear the murders--and the government's impotence in stopping them--is an inevitability of the country's rapid industrialization and erratic political situation at the time the film was set (mid-1980s). That Song--like the killer, like the government--preys on the weak seems all too natural for him.

Likewise The Host takes what is otherwise a genre movie and instills it with a political awareness, both of S. Korea's own democratization and of America's international motivations. As much as the monster, America is the bad guy here (though S. Korea's government doesn't exactly get a free pass). That said, the politics are really just background to a thoroughly engaging creature feature. Here Song plays an almost man-child whose first interactions with his 13-year-old daughter go from her telling him about parents' day (which his brother attended instead of him), her laughing at his attempts to save dimes to buy her a new cellphone, and then him sweetly giving her a beer. Both roles require an intense physical presence, but where Song's character in Memories is a leaky powder keg, his character here is so soft at times it's as if he is going to collapse, blob-like, into himself.

Much more could be said for the direction of Bong Joon-ho's direction was is beautiful, disturbing, and highly accessible. Without insult I might think of Bong as a kind-of Korean Spielberg, but I can't begin to think of an actor like Song in American cinema. Russell Crowe, maybe, but Song has more of a doughy false bravado where as Russell Crowe probably actually does believe he could take down the Roman Empire single-handedly. And that comparison only really works in Memories. I can't see Russell playing down like Song does in The Host.

Paul Giamatti? Philip Seymour Hoffman? But I can't see either of them mercilessly beating suspects and pulling it off. I'm at a loss. Would love to hear suggestions.

P.S. If you have Netflix you can stream Memories of a Murder. Do it. Now.

Exhibit 1.9

On Commas

Let's say, hypothetically, a story of mine was given an intense edit by an editor at a journal in which it will appear. Let's also say that this hypothetical story is some 27 pages long--approximately 9.7k words or so. So, as part of the intense edit, the editor made comments to the Word file, returned the file, and then I was to actually make the changes and email a corrected file back. Hypothetically. How many commas would you guess were added to those 27 pages?

If you guessed 150-some, you are correct.

Now I can't stress enough how appreciative I was of the editorial attention or how bad I felt for the (hypothetical) editor who had to insert 150 (hypothetical) commas, but it did get me thinking about the comma in prose, specifically if/when choice should trump the publication's style guide. Here are examples of the type of commas I omitted that were added:

• At home (COMMA) June baked cookies.
• He opened the door (COMMA) and the wind blew it back against the house.
• "Pick up some milk (COMMA) so I don't have to."

Now, it's not that I don't know that I comma should be after an introductory prepositional phrase or that there should be a comma before a conjunction with an independent clause behind it, but I really think there are times (apparently at least 150) when they're not necessary in literary fiction. Short prepositional phrases don't seem to even have a natural pause, sometimes the sentence needs to be rewritten so that the independent clause (and the comma) aren't necessary, and sometimes in dialogue commas seem out of character or insert an unnatural pause.

I rewrote some sentence, gladly made the changes on others, and resisted a few where I felt strongly about it. It's funny though, this is the only journal that has ever done anything like this, but I don't think it's because the others weren't doing it. I think they just did it without seeking the author's input at all. Since I never look at a piece once I check to make sure they didn't call me 'Petersen,' I really have no idea if this is the case or not, but I can imagine some poor graduate assistant pouring over my working with hundreds of commas on the table sprinkling them like pepper over my rough manuscript.

I feel intensely bad about this.

When I saw how many changes the hypothetical editor wanted to make, I wanted to email him back and call the whole thing off. If I don't have the grammar to get within at least 100 commas of correct, I probably have no business appearing in any journal. If this were a high school English class and each comma missed was minus a point, I would have gotten a negative 50, making it my worst grade since my 36 on a test in College Algebra. (Oh, and there was even partial credit points given on that algebra test.)

Now I'm on total comma lookout, having added several to this post I might have otherwise ignored. Had I known how much work commas were--and had time to run it by the ARC (Apocryphal Retort Club)--I might have just emailed back: Yeah, well, your mom needs 150-some commas.

That would have been sweet.

Exhibit 1.8

Heather is featured in this week's RealPoetik with an incredible poem with lines like:

• Up, whorish daffodils!
• The pink pill is the tear
• When spring pushes push steam

Why aren't you reading it now?

Exhibit 1.7

So Heather sent me this article which ends with the often pondered scenario of what would happen if a group of infants found themselves stranded on an island in the Galapagos (which is surprisingly specific on the location of the island of abandonment but disturbingly ambiguous on the number of children. Would some parents just not come forward when the Baby Plane crashed?) Would the children create a language? If so, how long would it take and what kind of language would it be?

Of course, nobody answers with Yes, 9 years, French which is, of course, correct.

Far more interesting to me are the other tangents here about what kind of society these plane babies would construct on a well-charted island in the middle of a tourist destination. I imagine them staring longingly at passing nature cruises but unable to express their confusion because another plane baby has the conch and is berating a local waiter in perfect French.

I'm surprised no one pointed out that these plane babies would most likely be assholes. Actually, Noam Chomsky probably did.

The question linguists should be asking--and, by the way, I think it wouldn't be all that hard to get this experiment off the ground. Babies, land, and time are pretty much our most abundant resources--is how complicated the rules governing the conch would be. The correct answer is, of course, very.

Exhibit 1.6

The Cupboard Pamphlet Volume 15

A new volume of The Cupboard Pamphlet is out with work on knickers, love, and cows. If I may say, it's one of the best ones yet. Please read.

Exhibit 1.5

The Epic Poetry of Baseball Announcing

Something tells me Fred White--Royals fill-in radio guy, corpse--either hasn't read or doesn't remember reading the Iliad. I say this because Fred White has the unparalleled ability to sound as if he is calling that day's game between bites of oatmeal, most of which his shaky hand spills onto his flannel pajama pants. They may actually just call him on the phone and have him give his thoughts from a La-Z-Boy at a nursing home, I'm not sure. I think he actually brings his own old-timey microphone with him. He probably has to crank it which is why he can only say five or six words between his phlemy, oatmeal-scented exhalations.

What I'm trying to say here is that Fred White sounds old.

Also, he's probably not familiar with Matthew Arnold or Milman Parry. Hell, I'm not even familiar with those guys and I didn't die in 1880 (Ed note: he is probably not that Fred White but we're not ruling it out). But what Fred White has in common with Homer, Matthew Arnold, and Milman Parry is a fascinating appreciation for the traditions of oral storytelling. He's not the best radio guy--in fact, I'd say he's probably the worst--but he takes my favorite Homerian-styled announcing trope to extremes. This is probably an exaggeration, but I think his call last night for Alex Gordon's game-winning 10th-inning homerun actually went something like this:

• Homerun by* left-handed* young Gordon*deep left* field over* Ford’s head
  
• Left-handed* young Gordon* gone deep*left field*Lew Ford’s*head hung
  
• Great win for*young Gordon*Bell and the*team over*Twins’ Boof* Five-Three

Now if you're reading this--and you probably aren't--you're surely thinking that my dactylic hexameter is way off. I imagine you are correct. The point is that Fred White uses these great repetitive phrases during his commentary so much that I keep expecting him to slip in a reference to the long-haired Myrmidons without missing a beat. Alex Gordon is always young Gordon or left-handed Alex. Various pitchers are either crafty or promising depending on whether they are 35 or 25 (if they fall somewhere in between they are invariably "confident").

I imagine he doesn't talk like this in real life, but I wouldn't put it past him. Without even attempting to butcher more dactyls:

• I'll have three Whoppers please Miss three Whoppers and one Diet Coke Miss

• Great burgers three Whoppers can't miss with Diet Coke too please hurry Fred White

• Hungers for three Whoppers and one Diet Coke in a perspiring cup King Size? No, Miss Thang.

It's a lost art, this oral tradition.

Exhibit 1.4

Stock Photography Review

From USBank.com

This compelling, though not particularly bold, entry comes courtesy of the banking industry which is to stock photography what the New Yorker is to line drawings, producing nearly 85% of the world's output. It's as if long ago some destined-to-be retail banking whiz snuck into his father's office, jimmied open the tantalizingly locked desk drawer, discovered a treasure of average looking people smiling back at him, and thought, "This must be sex."

Well, it's not, but that didn't stop whoever this was from plastering these pictures over every brochure, direct mailer, and website the banking industry produces. Which is good because it keeps my Louvre of Bland here running, but bad because with bank branches continuing to open at an alarm rate, we'll only be seeing more of it in the future.

This particular piece deftly manages the hard dichotomy of good stock photography: universality and anonymity. Notice the age of the woman--which can best be described as menopausal--falls between any easy classification, landing somewhere between mother and grandmother on the Child-Daughter-Young Independent Woman-Mother-Grandmother-Ruth Bader Ginsburg scale of female age. Is this woman Mom? Grandma? Me? It's the question your mind asks subconsciously, and the piece works because the answer is, of course, all of them. Ergo universality. The anonymity--that difficult quality that allows us not just to recognize the woman but to become her--is subtle. The blurred background of the piece nicely accomplishes a bit of abstract impressionism, letting us paint our own canvas behind her. Is that blob a sky scraper or a silo, a Wal-Mart or a yoga studio? It's the most interesting choice the artist made simply because most stock photography either plays in loose space (parks, fields, etc.) or tight space (kitchens, board rooms, etc.), if not eliminating the illusion of space all together by disembodying a head and painting color over the background. These Max Headroom like personae seem bizarrely natural on first glance and bizarrely unnatural on second. That line is skirted nicely here. Everything looks fairly standard until an observer notices this woman lives in a Morisot painting.

The other thing to note is the nice use of color, with the blue of the shirt fading into the bank's signature dark blue at the base with both the color of the shirt and the bar stopping at approximately the same place on the canvas. This picture was almost certainly not taken specifically for this client, so to be able to find such an easy match is fortuitous. Clothes ruin more stock photography than they help--hence disembodied heads again--and it isn't often to find the right clothes, with the right background, with the right face.

Speaking of, the woman's look strikes the right note of checking account satisfaction but cannot produce the softness the proposition seems to want. She looks like she knows a secret, an undesirable in the small-print world of banking.

Secrets this woman may know:

• What time Murphy Brown reruns are on
• Who farted
• The ending of the movie Phenomenon (Ed. note: He dies)
• What you do when alone at night
• Which margarine really is right for her lifestyle
• When the muffins are done

Still, she is a confident, successful-woman who should be proud to appear in this effective if not a little middling work.