Books: The Given Day

…by Dennis Lehane

Every so often you read a novel that re-affirms your belief in the strength of good fiction writing.  Dennis Lehane’s The Given Day is such a novel.  It’s a book about love, loyalty, and sacrifice.  It features compelling, realistic characters and a fascinating setting with parallels to our own time.  And Lehane is an excellent writer with a great sense of timing, dialogue, and narrative structure (No wonder guys like Eastwood and Scorsese make movies from his books).

You could say it’s historical fiction, as the story takes place in 1918-19 Boston.  The sense of history and place seems palpable, genuine.  And what a fascinating, chaotic moment in America.  World War I is nearly over, and the boys are about to come home to high unemployment and low wages.  The great Flu epidemic spreads fear and death.  Prohibition is on the horizon.  Lenin and the Bolsheviks have only just taken control of Russia, and Europe and the States are on guard against the spread of Communism.  Anarchists, Communists, and honest-to-God terrorists live among the ethnic slums of the cities, spouting rhetoric and occasionally setting off bombs.  In Boston, the ward bosses still reign and Babe Ruth plays for the Sox.  America is struggling to become the great power of the century, and it’s off to a messy and dangerous start.

Pentagram – Illini Gameday Win

Mike D adds the final bucket

With the much-hyped ESPN Gameday crew in the house, with a brutal stretch of Big 10 road games looming, and with Illinois in desperate need of a signature win to go on their tournament resume, Coach Weber’s team answered the call with a 78-73 win over the Spartans.  What an awesome atmosphere at the Assembly Hall!  Wish I could’ve been there…

You can’t blame the fans for storming the floor after the gut-wrenching conclusion of the first Illini win over a Top-5 ranked foe since the Final Four Season.  Just like you can’t blame the students and the Orange Crush for not booing Digger out of the building (the Venerable One reminds us why).

Now the Illini need to build on this and somehow beat a few more of the top conference teams to avoid the NIT.  Five points to your Gameday Pentagram…

Random Wednesday

The primary is over and it looks like Quinn v. Brady for the Governor’s post.  If you’re counting, that’s a pair of longtime professional politicians, neither of which are likely to have many new ideas.  Expect possible recounts, at considerable expense and with excessive bureaucratic delays, as the Board of Elections attempts to deal with the close statistical proximity of Hynes and Dillard.  For the U.S. Senate seat, it looks like Giannoulias v. Kirk.

In other news, Illinois Football greets national signing day like grim Russians en route to the gulag.  It’s the weakest class since Ron Turner, and the Zooker has already been making noises about how ‘we didn’t need a lot anyway because our last two classes were so strong’.  OK.  I was hoping the new assistants could pull in a surprise or two, but it was not to be.  If the Illini don’t  manage to win some games next year, this could get extremely ugly.

And finally, a video pick:  Coraline. This movie is stop-motion animation by Henry Selick based on the Neil Gaiman graphic novel.  It’s the kind of weirdly creative fantastical tale that we just don’t see enough of in the current climate of paint-by-numbers screenplays being greenlit in Hollywood.  It’s also been nominated for the Best Animation Oscar. Coraline is scary and strange and definitely not for little kids, however….

Primary Tomorrow

The political winds have been blowing harder than ever tomorrow in Illinois as the Primary Election is nearly upon us.  After a couple of weeks of those fun attack ads, all the endorsements, the personal appearances (mostly up north, we’ll grant you), voters can begin exercising their democratic rights and Throw The Bums Out.

At stake we have the Governor’s Office, the U.S. Senate Seat of Burris/Obama, several U.S. Congressional posts, and a host of state offices.  More importantly for Illinois, we find ourselves in a deep financial crisis aided and abetted by the myopic kleptocratic politicians who are more interested in entitlements and re-election than effectively managing the state.

So, please, do take the time to vote in the Primary tomorrow.

We submit the following friendly guidance when choosing your particular candidate.  Check your local newspapers as well as the State-Journal Register, Chicago Tribune, and Daily Herald for the lowdown.  Illinois’ election bylaws are here.

• Get rid of the incumbents. Unless you have ironclad personally validated reasoning to keep them.
• Look for the candidate with ‘ethics reform’ chops. In the wake of recent events, a lot of these people are claiming to endorse ethics reform.  One good litmus test would be to learn their position on the recent legislation passed by the State:  do they claim this bill was too weak (and it was)?  If so, that’s your candidate.
• Be wary of the Chicago Machine. Look, we’re not saying you shouldn’t vote for candidates just because they’re from Chicago.  That would be silly, and well, myopic.  I mean Chicago is a great city and we’ve had many great leaders from the northeast corner and…

The 23 – January Edition

The January friendly against Honduras told us little other than our MLS depth ain’t what it used to be.   It would have been nice if the ref had chosen to not give a pair of soft yellows to Jimmy C., and then we might have learned a little more about those last few spots.

In other news, Clint Dempsey’s knee did not require surgery, but we’ll all still be wondering what kind of shape he’ll be in come summer.  Oguchi Onyewu is rehabbing well, and even Charlie Davies is showing signs of  a borderline miraculous recovery.  On the flip side, Jermaine Jones still hasn’t kicked a ball in anger since last Spring.  As the outside man in a deep midfield, you’d probably need to rule him out at this point.  Also troubling is the lack of playing time for Jozy Altidore, Carlos Bocanegra, and Mo Edu over the last month.  That said, here’s our 23 for South Africa, January edition…

Books: The Zombie Survival Guide

…by Max Brooks.  The Zombie Survival Guide came out in  in 2003, a key component in what some have dubbed the Zombie Renaissance in horror writing and other media.  With this book and his novel, World War Z (which is on my reading list), Brooks both took advantage of and helped spur on the profusion of undead fiction.

The ZSG is exactly what the title says it is : complete protection from the living dead.  It’s written as a handbook or manual in the tradition of outdoor, disaster, and yes, nuclear survival guides of years past, and Brooks’ commitment to the material is complete.  There are no ironic twist or humorous winks in this book (despite the fact it may be found in your book store’s humor section).  The guide begins with a description of the virus Solanum, which causes humans to become zombies.  These zombies have no respiration, metabolism, or higher brain functions.  Their only instinct is to feed – preferably on human flesh.  They aren’t the fast zombies of 28 Days Later or the mystic zombies of Caribbean and African mythology.  They are single-minded feeding machines in vaguely human form.  They survive until the flesh falls from their bones or their brains are severely damaged.  Thus does Brooks define his monsters, which seem most like the zombies of older movies and most notably, Robert Kirkman’s Walking Dead.

He is the Darkness

Last week the boy insisted his mother make a tag for him out of paper and scotch tape with the label, ‘DARK ARTIST’.  He wore this on his shirt for two days until it fell apart.  I didn’t think much of it until today, when he told us in complete earnestness, and without a hint of melodrama:

“I am the Dark Side!“

These Guys Need Help

Of course he later threatened to stink his enemies to death, which, while gruesome, does not fall into the realm of traditional Sith powers (at least to my knowledge).  It’s true that his Darth Vader shirt is currently the #1 wardrobe choice and that Modok is one of his favorites on Super Hero Squad.  Also, when playing with his sister of late, I’ve noticed that make-believe foes tend to die.  A lot.  On the plus side, maybe he’ll be ready to watch Dethklok with me sooner than anticipated.  As a negative, the Dark Arts and Dark Side are not to be trifled with.

Obviously his mother and I and the rest of the Jedi Council will need to monitor this situation closely.

Books: Beyond the Shadows

…by Brent Weeks.  Beyond the Shadows is the final book in the Night Angel Trilogy, a series I earlier characterized as more Sword & Sorcery in its feel than a mainstream fantasy (Book 1 Review, Book 2 Review).  However, in this final chapter for Kylar, Vi, Logan, Dorian and company, Weeks turns away from the grit and urban grime of the first two books in favor of the (overused) conventions of epic or high fantasy fare.  Too bad, really, because we’ve seen much of this before and it actually ends up detracting from some of the more enjoyable aspects of the earlier books.

Most of Beyond the Shadows points towards the final showdown to prevent a renegade wizard-priest or Vurdmeister from raising the goddess Khali and accompanying undead army to sweep across the civilized world.  Arrayed against him are the aforementioned heroes of the first two books, some of whom know and have befriended one another, some of whom have not.  Weeks splits chapter between half-a-dozen p.o.v characters as he builds towards the final battle.

By far the most interesting of these is Dorian, one-time seer, mage, and heir to the former Godking Garoth Ursuul’s throne of Khalidor.  Dorian, having gone north to infiltrate his father’s city, falls in love with Jenine (true heir to Cenaria, Logan’s wife, thought dead in the first book) and through a couple of clever twists finds he has no choice but to assume the mantle of Godking.  He does so with the idea of eliminating the oppressive legacy of his ancestors and freeing his people for good, but finds the mantle or rule and the ruthlessness it demands of him is difficult to escape.  I liked Dorian’s narrative because there was real struggle here, real evolution of character, and you were never quite sure what was going to happen.

Pentagram: Boilers @ Illini

The 84-78 loss to Purdue last night puts the Illini on a giant precipice heading into the next couple of weeks.  Road games against Northwestern and Penn State are certainly winnable, but Illinois could just as likely lose both and spiral towards the bottom of the conference.  It’s too bad the Orange and Blue couldn’t bring that level of effort and intensity earlier in the year, which probably would have been enough to ensure victories over most non-conference opponents.

Meanwhile, Dave O’Brien still continues to yammer about the technical foul on John Hart and how that brought the Boilers back to life, yada-yada-yada.  No Dave, how about, Purdue hit 9 of their next 12 shots after that (including some contested ones).  Five points to the pentagram…

Thoughts on Avatar

We finally (finally!) made it down to the movies to check out James Cameron’s Avatar yesterday.  What a great cinematic experience, what scope, what vision!  Such technical achievement!  And yet the storyline was as clichéd and recycled as you can get, with a paint-by-numbers plot, and the kind of Lowest Common Denominator political messaging best left to documentaries.

None of this should be news to anyone, as virtually every movie blogger out there has checked in with a similar critique.  Sill, the Hollywood Foreign Press thought enough of Avatar to give it the Golden Globe for Best Drama and Cameron the Best Director prize.  The movie has stirred up some political controversy, busted box office records, and elicited feelings of depression in industrialized youths across the planet.

The wife and I enjoyed the movie quite a lot.  Cameron has always been a great visual storyteller, and time away from the camera has done nothing to diminish his ability.  There’s just so much coolness in it.  And yet, as my sister remarked to me, “with a budget like that, couldn’t he have hired a writer or two?”