On “Problems And Other Stories”

Some years ago, when a friend showed me John Updike’s short story “Problems,” I loved it. The protagonist has left one woman for another, and he isn’t quite sure he made the right decision. His angst is presented as a series of math story problems. In what’s literally the final analysis, the narrator/test writer tallies up all the hero’s reasons to be happy, and then surprises the reader by asking: “Something is wrong. What is it?”

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Movie Review: The Little Fugitive (1953)

I might have easily stumbled across this movie while flipping channels late at night, in which case I wouldn’t have lasted through the first five minutes. And that would have been a shame.

At the beginning, Joey, who is about six, watches his older brother and his brother’s friends play games he’s left out of. The level of treacly gee-whizishnes is hard to take, and we’re acutely conscious of being inside a completely constructed world.

The older kids are annoyed that Joey’s brother Kennie can’t join an upcoming trip to Coney Island because he has to look after Joey. In order to get Joey to go away, they convince him that he has accidentally shot Kennie in the chest. Joey flees to Coney Island, where most of the story takes place. Read the rest of this entry »

War Of The Words 2010: Percolate FTW!

Satirist and comedian (and Revolving Floor contributor) Rich Zeroth is gearing up his annual War Of The Words tournament. Basically, a bunch of words compete against each other in a bracketed tournament, and fans bet on the results.  Updates will appear on the Facebook fan page, and you can sign up at Bracketmaker. It’s free to play, but the fan with the most accurate prediction wins $100.

This year, I’m betting on “percolate” to go all the way. Read the rest of this entry »

Metafilter And The Russian Sex Slaves That Never Were

I’m part of a vocal minority in a conversation over at Metafilter that has gotten a lot of attention from other blogs, and on the websites of popular print-based publications like Newsweek and Mother Jones. I’m disappointed at the lack of critical thinking and willingness to embrace the hype all round, and the mefi threads have proven unfriendly to skepticism, so I’m going to lay out my ideas here. I’ll also ping others who seem to share my concerns to some extent or other, in hope that they may see this post as a place to comment on the phenomenon, relatively unfettered by hype.

If you are completely unfamiliar with the situation, then the basic threads are here and here.

The popular narrative is this:

Two young women from Russia were suckered by a scam in which they were offered visas and good jobs in the US. Little did they know that they were on a fast track to becoming prostitutes and/or sex slaves. An American man who knew one of the women posted to Metafilter, asking for help. The community rallied, offering resources and contacting the authorities. One NYC mefite met the Russians as they arrived in the city and took them in. Crisis averted!

Taken at face value, this story has a lot of appeal, which is, I think, the main reason why so many people are already so resistant to the idea of taking it at anything more than face value. It has a sort of “we’re living in a movie” vibe to it. The clear line between good and evil; the international intrigue, the feeling of a conspiracy being foiled, the relief at seeing a group of altruistic people come together to defeat a group of selfish people, and the fascination at the idea that the benevolent people in the scenario mostly don’t know each other. Read the rest of this entry »

Movie Review: Iron Man 2

It was often said of the first Iron Man movie that it was “surprisingly good.”

It was good, because the characters were well-drawn, the audience’s intelligence was not insulted, and the dialog was terse and well-constructed. The action was terse too. Stuff exploded, people died, but one had the feeling that those things were happening exactly as much as was necessary. Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark was smarmy and obnoxious, but that was okay, because it was a set-up for him to get his world turned upside-down. Trapped in a cave with a failing heart, without access to his money or resources, Stark was forced to re-evaluate his life, and we like him better at the end of the movie than we did at the beginning.

In Iron Man 2, it’s basically like none of that ever happened, except the part where he turns his own artificial heart into a suit of armor that is also a jet plane. Read the rest of this entry »