The Way We Live Now

A Flickr portrait of July 2007. Last night I started the book myself.
































































































Of course, some kids are too busy doing other things.

Gregory Smith: "Getting to Be Kind of Bad"

Here's material from an MTV Movie Blog interview with Gregory Smith, who plays older brother Max Stanton in his next movie. (Thanks to Bookshelves of Doom for the warning.)

MTV: Tell me, then, how does Max - how does he fit into this epic battle of Light versus Dark?

Smith: Max comes home from college and he is acting a little strange and you’re not really sure what is going on with him but you know that something is a little wrong. It turns out he has been kicked out of college. He is ashamed and doesn’t want to tell his parents and is trying to hide it. The Darkness senses that insecurity and weakness and they sort of use that to their advantage.

MTV: So he becomes a tool of the Darkness, against Will in his quest to find the Signs?

Smith: Yes, I am trying to get the Signs before he does. I am trying to stop him from his quest and get the Signs for the Darkness. I have a foray into the Dark Side. But my character is redeemed before the end.

MTV: That’s kind of cool for an actor[,] isn’t it?

Smith: It’s totally awesome. Like, there is one sequence where Max chases his little brother through time. So on top of getting to be kind of bad there were all these special effects, all these fights that we choreographed.

MTV: Tell me about that big fight.

Smith: It was basically a choreographed karate fight scene, but the director [David Cunningham] set it on top of a vegetable cart. He had the entire cart surrounded by peasants and gave them bread, or rotten pieces of fruit, or carrots, or hay, or whatever.

And now a pause while we remember critic Robert Ebert's definition of a "Fruit Cart Scene", especially in connection to chases.

Rather than continue the pretense that this movie has much to do with Susan Cooper's novel called The Dark Is Rising, today I feature a photo of Smith as Harriet's friend Sport in Harriet the Spy (1996). Another beloved children's book, modernized for the movies a generation after publication. But not one that strayed aggressively far from the plot, themes, or spirit of the original.

The Bags Swipe at Tolkien-esque Narrative Heavy Metal

Bookshelves of Doom spreads the word of the recording called "L. Frank Baum" by the Bags, a Boston rock group.

How had I missed this in my own back yard? I wondered. But I found two good reasons. First, the recording dates from fifteen years ago, when I had other things to obsess me. And second, it's quite bad. Intentionally so.

Here's the Boston Phoenix review of the song from early 1992:

“L. Frank Baum” (previously released as a single) is the cleverest swipe at Tolkien-esque narrative heavy metal since Spinal Tap’s “Stonehenge.” The Bags actually one-up Spinal Tap by playing this metallic version of The Wizard of Oz with impressively precise technical proficiency, including thunderous double kick drums, a well executed Van Halen guitar lead, and some truly beautiful screaming falsetto vocals. It almost makes you think these guys could make a living as a cheesy heavy-metal band, though they would need new haircuts.

The track really does answer the burning question, "What would result if David St. Hubbins were inspired by the MGM Wizard of Oz?" All we need is an ominous voice intoning, "Oh, how they danced, the little people of Munchkinland..."

A bit of the song can be heard by scrolling down this page to the "L. Frank Baum" title. A video from last year's Bags reunion is on YouTube; you can also click on the thumbnail above. Bookshelves of Doom has the lyrics. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Should You Address Prof. Snape with Respect?

From Geek of All Trades I learned about this Times of India profile of Sudhir Dixit, the literature professor who translates J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter books into Hindi.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone wasn't published in Hindi until after the movie adaptation had become a hit in translation. Before then, it appears, publishers thought Indian readers were satisfied with the English-language book. (The latest title in English has already sold well in India, both officially and in pirated editions.) Curiously, the article suggests that Prof. Dixit's best-selling translation job is not HP1, but Who Moved My Cheese?

As the professor notes, most of the Potter books' spells have Latin roots. He chose to seek Sanskrit equivalents since that ancient language has similar connotations in Indian culture. (Ironically, the professor's own surname would translate from the Latin as "he says.") Another way that choice is easy: since the spells don't actually have to work (SPOILER!), they could be written any way an author or translator chooses.

The article offered this cross-cultural snapshot:

What bothered him more was the moral and literary dilemma within him. For instance, in Hindi, unlike in English, expression of respect is unambiguous. So, Dixit had to decide if the character of Snape had to be addressed with respect or with disdain. Dixit would take a long time to decide between 'kar raha tha' and 'kar rahe the'. He eventually decided to treat Snape with respect, "because, he is after all a professor".

And so is the translator, who would not like to be disdained.

Choosing how to refer to Snape or other characters isn't just a matter of how his students or colleagues address him. Hindi has three second-person pronouns for different levels of intimacy or respect (standard English has one choice of second-person pronoun; French and Southern American English have two, but only the French forms can also imply intimacy or respect). Furthermore, respect can also inflect third-person forms. Therefore, it was necessary for Rowling's generally detached narration to become a voice that expresses some value judgment about each character.

Dixit's work and background have given him an unusual perspective on Rowling's storytelling:

"I don't think she intended Harry Potter to be a children's series. It's much too advanced and dark. Children pick it up because she makes them feel like adults. The way she writes about love and death in her books is amazing."

Also, Dixit says, "Everything an author has, he or she uses in the first book best."

Junie B. Jones and the Judge

In a controversy-stirring article on Barbara Park's Junie B. Jones books yesterday, the New York Times quoted Elizabeth Bird of Fuse #8: "There are parents who will defend her till their death and those that call her loathsome. It’s unusual to find that sort of divide for early chapter books. They’re just not the sort of books that usually get much attention."

Certainly I hadn't paid attention to this controversy. I had no idea Park's series was unpopular anywhere, nor that its unpopularity focuses on, as the Times would have it, narrative voice. Specifically, Junie B.'s improper use of the past tense in irregular verbs, adverbs, and other grammatical niceties.

Child-development experts have actually studied how young children learn irregular verbs. It's a predictable process that shows them grasping the rules of English grammar ("adding ‘—ed’ to verbs produces the past tense") before moving on to our language's exasperatingly long list of exceptions. Junie B. is a little behind her peers--most kids catch onto common irregular verbs by kindergarten and first grade. But it's those verbs that break the rules, not her.

(For a different quibble with the Times article, see Language Log's objection to its parallel to the phonics v. whole language debate.)

I suspect Junie B.'s detractors actually dislike having to read the books aloud in what sounds like baby talk. All the more reason to make them transition books: "Daddy has to, um, change the paper towel roll now. Do you think you can finish this chapter all by yourself?" But the critics seem to complain that books like Park's confuse readers about proper grammar and lower our standards.

As a test of whether popular children's literature has the power to warp readers' ability to spell, I give you The Real Diary of a Real Boy, by Henry A. Shute:

Father thot i aught to keep a diry, but i sed i dident want to, because i coodent wright well enuf, but he sed he wood give $1000 dolars if he had kept a diry when he was a boy.

Mother said she gessed nobody wood dass to read it, but father said everybody would tumble over each other to read it, anyhow he wood give $1000 dolars if he had kept it. i told him i wood keep one regular if he wood give me a quarter of a dolar a week, but he said i had got to keep it anyhow and i woodent get no quarter for it neither, but he woodent ask to read it for a year, and i know he will forget it before that, so i am going to wright just what i want to in it. Father always forgets everything but my lickins. he remembers them every time you bet.

Shute (shown above) claimed this book was his own childhood diary, but it was fiction. It fits into a literature of "typical" American boyhood that had its highest moments in Thomas Bailey Aldrich's The Story of a Bad Boy, Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer, and Booth Tarkington's Penrod.

Shute published The Real Diary of a Real Boy in 1902, and by 1906 it had gone through twelve printings. For the rest of his life he wrote sequels in the voice of young "Plupy" with titles like Sequil, Brite and Fair, and Chadwick & Shute: Gob Printers (our wirk is equil to none).

Shute (1856-1943) was an educated man: a graduate of Exeter and Harvard who became a municipal judge in New Hampshire. His books were undoubtedly popular. So if a widely read book series with deliberately bad English could really destroy American letters, that would have happened before June B. Jones's critics were born.

Might as Well Jump

(Click on picture for video.)

Ah, those crazy Dutch.

First they were competing at dangling off bluejeans over canals. Then they were collecting shiny rocks in shiny boxes. And now they've taken the lead over shorter nations in "jumpstyle" dance.

There have been many styles within jumpstyle since it first arose in Chicago almost two decades ago: "stamp," "kick," and my favorite to watch, "duo." There are now tutorial videos to explain it all--in Dutch. To judge by other YouTube offerings, the Benelux countries are seeing a small craze for recording "jumpen" in public places, including train stations, malls, and retail establishments.

Two young enthusiasts named Ahmed and Sven demonstrate several styles in this video. At about the one-minute mark, they move into a book and stationery store. At two minutes, they demonstrate their "duo" moves there. But the best performances come from the shoppers who try to ignore the lads.

Who You Gonna Call?

Last month New York-based schoolteacher Monica Edinger blogged about her unit on The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. In addition to Baum's original novel and its sequels (optional), she shares the Dreamer of Oz biopic with John Ritter; the famous MGM movie; and its depressive sequel, Return to Oz.

One assignment for the fourth-graders is to post their thoughts on the MGM movie. Is it a good adaptation or a bad adaptation?

Only one blog posting? I can do an hour on that topic! In fact I did, at a gathering of New England Oz fans a few years ago.

Past Ms. Edinger classes have also created their own Oz boardgames, like "Witchbusters" above.

Hunger for Books, Desire for Martyrdom

Somini Sengupta's article from Pakistan in today's New York Times struck me for the familiar details of its portrait of teenaged girls. The article quotes nineteen-year-old Hameeda Sarfraz lamenting:

“My contact with books is gone. At home the only thing for me to do is take care of my parents. I clean the house. I cook.”

The Sarfraz family lives in rural Pakistan, where opportunities for a young woman to either read and escape household tasks seem thin.

And then there's this scene:

Up the road from Miss Akhtar’s home, in a village called Kotla,...four girls, ages 15 to 18...sat in one girl’s home telling their story. . . .

Mohammed Matloob, the father of one of the girls, walked in. . . . His daughter, Nagina, 16, ordered him to leave the room, which he did, with a surprised shrug.

I could almost hear the girls scolding, "Daddy!"

What's startlingly unfamiliar about these scenes is that these are young female Islamists, teenagers who attended the Jamia Hafsa Islamic school for girls associated with the Red Mosque in Islamabad.

The students of that mosque bullied their neighborhood, taking over a public library and kidnapping some women to accuse them of prostitution. The mosque and its schools contained enough weapons to produce a gun battle with police that stretched over days and took many lives.

The female students brought the Red Mosque's version of Islam home to their villages. Sengupta's article starts with Sarfraz teaching the value of martyrdom to local children, both girls and boys. The four girls interrupted their conversation not just to tell the father to leave, but also to cover their faces with scarves.

At core these young women seem to want the same things we can find many other teenagers wishing for: books, privacy, respect. But they're not finding those things in their villages; they're finding them in a form of their faith that praises intimidation, suicidal gestures, and even stricter gender segregation.

Constabulary Notes from All Over

From a story by Michael Jones in the 20 July Observer-Reporter of Washington, Pennsylvania:

McDONALD - Follow the yellow-striped road through McDonald, and you'll see the characters from the "Wizard of Oz" greeting visitors at the borough's entrance.

But a few brainless mischief-makers seemingly committed a cowardly and heartless act two weeks ago, when they stole the head of the Cowardly Lion, one of four metal statues standing in a line.

The Lion, Scarecrow, Tin Man and Dorothy were built in recent years by Richard "Herky" Kendall of Candor, who died in April at age 69.

The foursome face east along Noblestown Road in the Allegheny County portion of the borough. The maniacal Wicked Witch of the West, with glowing red eyes, rides her broom next to them.

Kendall's widow, Loretta, said he originally made two tin statues and named them Mr. and Mrs. Valvoline - a tribute to their daughter's instant oil-change garage - and placed them on the family's farm for their grandchildren. Soon, he turned them into Dorothy and the Tin Man, and erected them in public.

But some residents eventually asked Kendall, a construction worker for 47 years, to build the remaining Oz personalities. Loretta Kendall said people are still waiting for a metal-forged Toto . . .

The head was discovered missing two weeks ago during the borough's McSummerfest activities. Police have no suspects, although a gang of flying monkeys is being sought for questioning.

The Lion appears to have been an easy target because - besides his reluctance to fight - the head was never riveted to the neck. Instead, it swung freely from side to side.

I haven't been able to find any online photos of this artwork, before or after defacement.

Ironically, in chapter 21 of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the Lion becomes King of Beasts by knocking the head off "a most tremendous monster, like a great spider, with a body as big as an elephant and legs as long as a tree trunk."

(Thanks to Scott Hutchins for the original tip.)

Wholly Nine Yards

Last month Language Log spread the word that the phrase "the whole nine yards" can now be dated as early as...1964. Yes, I can now be confident that it's older than I am.

There have been many explanations of the origin of that phrase, most of them involving long-ago or not-quite-so-long-ago-but-still-quaint technology. As Michael Quinion wrote at World Wide Words:

I’ve seen references to the size of a nun’s habit, the amount of material needed to make a man’s three-piece suit, the length of a maharajah’s ceremonial sash, the capacity of a West Virginia ore wagon, the volume of rubbish that would fill a standard garbage truck, the length of a hangman’s noose, how far you would have to sprint during a jail break to get from the cellblock to the outer wall, the length of a standard bolt of cloth, the volume of a rich man’s grave, or just possibly the length of his shroud, the size of a soldier’s pack, the length of cloth needed for a Scottish “great kilt”, or some distance associated with sports or athletics, especially the game of American football.

But none of those theories hold water, especially when we consider the relative youth of the expression.

A couple of the theories Quinion chronicled involve American military aviators, which connects with the 1964 translation that Language Log quoted. So I'm leaning toward .50-calibre machine-gun ammunition belts as the source.