Lan D. Ho!

December 30, 2005

One good effect of postmodernism on criticism is the acceptance of so-called alternative media as legitimate art forms. Time voted The Watchmen as one of the 100 best English-language novels since 1923. Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth won the American Book Award. The Return of the King, which is not really an example of an alternative medium but is an example of an alternative genre, won eleven Oscars. Which is not to say that recognition by mainstream critics is absolution, but it undoubtedly means something.

Unfortunately, this is not without cost. I hesitate to use this term, but there are many bandwagon critics who are eager to promote so-called alternative media in order, I suspect, to legitimize their own critical standing. This may seem innocuous because it is so transparent, but it is not. What you have now is the case of previously neglected media now being overvalued because of their previous neglect! You have Alex Robinson's Box Office Poison, which is enjoyable in its own right, being called the equivalent of a great American novel. It is not. It is simply an enjoyable story. You have critics lauding Funeral as one of the seminal works of our time. It is not. It is simply an immensely enjoyable album and a very impressive debut.

The real problem with the overstatement of the value of these media is that it causes a sort of public backlash--no one wants to be told that something is the greatest thing ever only to find out that it's merely OK--which, ironically, causes legitimately great art of these media to be (once again) undervalued or even neglected. The more Alex Robinson and Adrian Tomine (Summer Blonde) are lauded, the more Winsor McCay's (Little Nemo in Slumberland) and George Herriman's (Krazy Kat) high critical standing seems illegitimate. The accolades given Kayne West will only arouse skepticism for something truly great, like Nas's Illmatic. (Or, ironically, Nas's later work will arouse skepticism of Illmatic's greatness.)

Some critics, in an effort to "inform" the public about "alternative" media, try too hard and end up promoting artists that don't really deserve the attention that they receive. Some will suspect that the hoopla was all smoke and mirrors.

"Real life isn't always funny, I guess," BK said.

I agreed. "Sometimes it's embarrassingly mundane."

"My greatest fear," MO said, unintentionally echoing the words of a professor that we had together, "is being misunderstood."

MO was talking about his art, specifically. But the nature of art is that it's misunderstood. It's impossible to communicate anything perfectly, and when you're communicating obliquely, as artists do, then somewhere between the creation of the message and its reception a misunderstanding must occur.

I've always maintained that the goal of good writing is to transcribe as closely as possible what you are thinking onto the page so that there is as little lost as possible in the reading; that is, for the reader to understand as closely as possible what you, the writer, is thinking. Because language is imprecise and discreet and because understanding occurs on a gray scale, good writing is no easy matter. But a good writer can asymptote toward that perfect transcription.

Not so an artist. Art is many things, but transparent is not one of them; otherwise, it wouldn't really be art. Which is not to say that incomprehensibility is an indication of art; just that art, and the best art especially, defies any sort of real explanation, stirring as it does things that are by nature inarticulate.

I had a conversation with BR recently and he chided me on my definition of understanding. "You cannot really understand something," I said, "unless you can articulate it." He said that my position was foolish and that understanding transcends articulation. But that doesn't make sense to me; a certain emotional response may be evident, sure, but what can you say about a phenomenom that strikes you dumb except for that emotional response? (I realize that I am being a bit tautological here.) It's silly and hubristic to claim such an understanding.

So sleep well, MO! Art is created by the artist but is intended for the audience, and what the audience makes of it is an intensely personal (though, admittedly, sometimes inane) thing. I cannot articulate fully what your songs mean. I can arrive at the conclusions that make the most sense to me, and when my friends ask me what your songs mean, I tell them what I think. But what I am sure of is that when I am driving along empty streets late at night listening to the end of "Handful of Billions" and I see the lights zipping past me, I am filled with a bitter dissatisfaction and a yearning that almost certainly resonates with the lyrical montage in the last minute and a half of the song. And I know that I am not the only one who feels this way. I don't profess to understand what "Handful of Billions" means, but I don't think that that's the point.

Christmas in Vegas has the unfortunate distinction of feeling neither Christmasy nor Vegasy.

December 28, 2005

"Can you use game theory when playing blackjack?" I asked Tony.

"No," he said.

"Why not?"

"Because you're not really playing against anyone. You're playing against the house, and the house's moves are predetermined. There're no real decisions to be made."

"Oh. What about chess? Can you use game theory when playing chess?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because chess is a game of full knowledge. Theoretically, at any point in the game, there should be a perfect move given the position of the board. Everything's in plain sight of all the players."

"But chess is a game, isn't it?"

"Well, yes."

"Then it should stand that there is a theory about that game, right? Isn't that why they call it game theory?"

"Game theory is the study of making decisions given hidden knowledge."

"So it's not really about games but rather about hidden knowledge?"

"That's right."

"So why isn't it called 'hidden-knowledge theory'?"

"Because that sounds dumb."

December 26, 2005

" 'Let's go [to the sauna] this very instant!' Sir shouted, marching out into the hallway.

'Don't you want to change into a bathing suit?' Charles asked. 'If you're fully clothed, you won't get the health benefits of the steam.'

'I don't care about the health benefits of the steam!' Sir shouted. 'I'm not an idiot! I just love the smell of hot wood!' " (Lemony Snicket, The Penultimate Peril, 106-107)

Tony called JAM to wish him a Merry Christmas.

A puzzled JAM called Tony back and left a message. "Hi, Tony. I don't know whether you're aware of this, but I am in fact Jewish. But a 'merry Christmas' to you, too."

December 21, 2005

Lan needs to make it to Pasadena tonight so he can make his 7 a.m. flight from Houston to Las Vegas with his family! Will he make it?

Watch as he HILARIOUSLY picks up his car from the body shop minutes before it closes!

See him WACKILY deal with the ilfe-denying bureaucrats at the car-rental agency!

LAUGH UPROARIOUSLY as he COMICALLY tries to pack and GET THE HELL OUT OF TOWN!

Lan is trying to leave Austin so he can spend Christmas in Las Vegas. WITNESS THE HILARITY!

December 18, 2005

Music was playing at Home Slice Pizza. "Do you know who this is?" I asked.

"I have no idea," Tony said.

"It's Air."

"I thought it was Air! I almost said 'Air'!"

"Why didn't you?"

"I didn't want to seem like a fool."

"Well, now you seem like a liar."

December 15, 2005

"Do you remember when you said that you loved my mother, just not 'in that way'?" MD asked me.

"I do love your mother," I said. "Just not 'in that way.' "

"Well, she loves you too, Lan, just not 'in that way.' "

"That's too bad," I said, "because I'm great 'in that way.' "

December 13, 2005

A recent fortune: "You were born at a very young age."

I am not normally one to comment on why I haven't been writing much. Usually, I don't write because I don't have anything to say.

That said, I have tons to say, copious amounts of writing laden with wit, hilarity, and insight. But I have been asked to write two books for a burgeoning publishing house that deals with a specialty subject, the first of which I am working on right now. Between this and Christmas shopping, I scarcely have time to tell off-color stories of ass-piracy. But that's the way things go, sometimes.

December 10, 2005

UT was down by about twenty points in with a little more than two minutes left in the much anticipated and very disappointing game versus number-one-ranked Duke.

JF called me. "Go UT!" he said.

"According to quantum mechanics, a UT win is still possible," I said.

UT ended up losing ingloriously 97-66. A few minutes later, JF called me back. "Quantum mechanics strikes again!" he said.

December 08, 2005

I am now driving a red Dodge Neon, my connection to the Internet has been down, and it's going to be 17ºF tonight.

December 06, 2005

"In the spring of 1960, the John Coltrane Quartet played its first engagement. [Typographer Matthew] Carter was in the audience. Over several weeks, he heard them three or four times. 'Sometimes they played the same songs in the second set as they played in the first,' he said. 'Not because they were lazy, but because they wanted to surpass themselves, or find something in the music that they hadn't found earlier in the evening. They were that acute.' Listening to them, he decided that he owed it to himself to try and stay in New York. 'Their seriousness of purpose was a lesson,' he says. 'Four great geniuses who would knock themselves out every night when instead they could have coasted. I felt I could been dishonest enough to return to England and say I hadn't seen great design. But I couldn't somehow pretend that I hadn't heard the John Coltrane Quartet.' " (Alec Wilkinson, "Man of Letters," The New Yorker, Dec. 5, 2005, 64)

"Speaking at the Osan Air Force base, in South Korea, two days after Murtha's speech, Bush said, 'The terrorists regard Iraq as the central front in their war against humanity. . . . If they're not stopped, the terrorists will be able to advance their agenda to develop weapons of mass destruction, to destroy Israel, to intimidate Europe, and to break our will and blackmail our government into isolation. I'm going to make you this commitment: this is not going to happen on my watch.'

" 'The President is more determined than ever to stay the course,' the former defense official said. 'He doesn't feel any pain. He's a big believer in the adage "People may suffer and die, but the Church advances." He said that the President had become more detached, leaving issues to Karl Rove and Vice-President Cheney. 'They keep him in the gray world of religious idealism, where he wants to be anyway,' the former defense official said. Bush's public appearances, for example, are generally scheduled in front of friendly audiences, most often at military bases. Four decades ago, Lyndon Johnson, who was also confronted with an increasingly unpopular war, was limited to similar public forums. 'Johnson knew he was a prisoner in the White House,' the former official said, 'but Bush has no idea.' " (Seymour M. Hersh, "Up in the Air," The New Yorker, Dec. 5, 2005, 44)

December 03, 2005

"I won a DVD player karaoking once," I said. Then I looked over at NL. "I'm not joking."

"I didn't think you were," he said. "That would be a pretty bizarre joke."

"Hm," I said. "My idea of a bizarre joke is 'A rabbi and Confucius walk into a bar. . . .'"

"That's a bizarre situation," NL said, "but a pretty standard joke."

December 02, 2005

"Mr Murtha and millions of others maintain that America is doing more harm than good in Iraq, and that the troops should therefore come home.

"This newspaper strongly disagrees. In our opinion it would be disastrous for America to retreat hastily from Iraq. . . .

"[T]he argument about whether America should quit Iraq is not the same as the one about whether it should have gone there in the first place. It must be about the future.

"That said, the catalogue of failures thus far does raise serious questions about the administration’s ability to make Iraq work--ever. Mr. Bush’s team mis-sold the war, neglected post-invasion planning, has never committed enough troops to the task and has taken a cavalier attitude to human rights. Abu Ghraib, a place of unspeakable suffering under Mr Hussein, will go into the history books as a symbol of American shame. The awful irony is that the specious link which the administration claimed existed between Iraq and al-Qaeda in order to justify going to war now exists....

"But disappointment...does not justify a precipitate withdrawal. There are strong positive and negative reasons for America to see through what it started....

"The cost to America of staying in Iraq may be high, but the cost of retreat would be higher. By fleeing, America would not buy itself peace. Mr [Abu Musab al-]Zarqawi[, al-Qaeda’s leader in Iraq,] and his fellow fanatics have promised to hound America around the globe. Driving America out of Iraq would grant militant Islam a huge victory. Arabs who want to modernise their region would know that they could not on America to stand by its friends.

"If such reasoning sounds negative--America must stay because the consequences of leaving would be too awful--treat that as a sad reflection of how Mr Bush’s vision for the Middle East has soured. The road ahead looks bloody and costly. But this is not the time to retreat." ("Why America must stay," The Economist, November 26th-December 2nd 2005, 11)

Notes on Me:

I love this stupid world. That said, I feel contempt more than anything else toward it and I cannot have a meaningful relationship with someone who doesn’t share that sentiment. The sublimest friendships, after all, are borne of mutual dislike.

I am sensitive but not sympathetic. I can understand intellectually what someone else is feeling but I can almost never empathize. My commonest reaction to matters of injustice or impropriety is outrage rather than compassion. I hate hypocrisy most of all and do my best not to practice it but realize that small acts of the sort are inevitable. I am morally austere. I am emotionally detached, although my demeanor has been frequently called fierce. I usually don’t compromise or make stupid concessions on matters of which I am convinced that I am right. I will admit when I am wrong. I have no patience for people who mistake an attack on their ideas or their opinions as an attack on their self. Consequently, I feel nothing but disdain for people who equate liking something with that something’s being good, objectively. I love the truth.

A friend suggested that my defining characteristic is my voraciousness. I find myself consumed by my appetites, which sometimes manifest themselves as a sort of obsessive-compulsiveness. When I really want something, I pursue it deeply. People are bound to disappoint you, but luckily the world is wide and full of wonder and wondrous things, so there is really no end to desire. Some may say that that is the worst part of being human. I think it may be the best.

I am irreverent except when dealing with those closest to me. I am flippant and am prone to being crass. I cuss a lot. I make offhand comments that arouse uncomfortable laughter from those who don’t know me so well. I comment on things that I have come to understand empirically and have been called hateful things as a result. I don’t take any guff.

I find nothing more loathsome than someone who passes him- or herself off as knowledgeable when the case is otherwise. Knowledge is more meaningful than the appearance of knowledge, and there is no easier way to arrive at that knowledge than to listen or ask questions. When I don’t understand something, I try to find out. I believe that you can’t understand something fully unless you can articulate it.

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