Novel, Part #9

Our chief characters, Paul and rock star Rory, meet. To read the start of the novel, go here.

Chapter 5

“Hey kid, you from around here?” I heard a voice say from behind me.

Turning around, I said, “Yes, sir.”

The man looked to be in his early 20s, but I couldn’t completely tell because he looked so different from the kind of person we see around Papersville on a daily basis. He had long blond locks flowing past his denim vest that opened to another flowing area of blond hair on his chest, along with tight leather pants and black boots beneath. And even though I was cutting the grass on the shady side of the Universal factory that day, it was still a surprise to see what could only be a real rock star now standing virtually face-to-face with me. The factory was really just that – a factory. It was not a place ever frequented by the untouchable music legends who appeared in the grooves of what that factory produced.

“Thanks a lot for cleaning it up around here for me,” the man said.

“You’re welcome, sir.”

I’ve got this signing thing here starting in an hour or so.”

“I know. My boss told me to make this area look real nice.”

“Well, thanks again,” the rocker said. “So you’re from around here, you say. What street?”

“East Lake Drive.”

“Hey, I grew up on West Lake. Small world. We don’t have the house anymore. My dad died and my mom is in a nursing home over in Mayfair. I split my time between my penthouse in the city and my ranch house out in L.A.”

“Are you here to visit your mom?”

“Well, yeah. But I’ve got a lot of fans in these parts, so it seemed like a good idea to do a little something special for them. I’m going to sign autographs and then play some songs on the acoustic guitar right here.”

“I’d like to see that,” I said.

Pop Culture Lunch Box Goes For-Profit

The blog has done well enough that now seems like an appropriate time to take it into the big leagues. Hopefully the advertising you'll now see on this popalicious resource will be tasteful and even useful.

Please let me know your thoughts about advertising at PCLB. If you like it. If you love it. If you will never visit again. Mostly, you'll probably just realize it's the way the world operates. I am a bit of a publicity man myself, so I'm pretty happy to have advertisers and want to thank them ahead of time.

Have a great Memorial Day weekend!

What Will the Gulf Look Like When the Oil Stops?

Here's my weekly environment column for NetGreen News. You can see all my columns here.

The Washington Post has reported the latest estimates of animals dying from the oil volcano beneath the Gulf of Mexico. Nearly 400 dead birds and dozens of dolphins and some of the world's most endangered sea turtles have all perished.

Experts claim this is really a smidgen of the total species kill that is unfolding in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon spill. Many of the animals will be so weakened by their coatings of toxic oil that the fierce carnivores of the region will have a feast.

Other than the fact that all these dead animals are terrible for biodiversity and BP's image, what would be the actual real-world results of a Gulf with little or no life?

For starters, the beaches that are slowly being contaminated by oil will become a low-priority destination for beach-going vacationers and their tourism dollars. For those who do venture onto the beaches, there won't be much wildlife to see. So birders and swimmers need not apply.

The Gulf used to be known as one of the most productive fish and shellfish catching grounds in the world, largely because fish dwell along its broad continental shelf. It would routinely pull in about 2 billion pounds each year. This amounted to a fifth of U.S. catches and a fourth of revenue generated from domestic catches. These numbers don't include the massive attraction to recreational fishing in the region, which will remain depleted for the foreseeable future.

The $300 million annual trove of oysters for Louisiana fishermen appears to be a lost cause. Although the oysters themselves may survive the oil toxins, they will not ever be edible. Same goes for the region's shrimp.

The already endangered Gulf whale population is likely to expend unusual amounts of energy to swim away from their polluted natural habitat. Experts are unsure how these migratory patterns for whales and other species will affect the area in the long-term.

In the end, the Gulf may be slightly ahead of the curve. A major global study published in the journal Science found that all the world's commercial fisheries would be gone by 2050 anyhow. That means our over-fishing of the past 50 years is creating the extinction of all fish - and fishing - within most of our lifetimes. One author of that study said that "our wild seafood will be little more than sea squirt soup."

On the flip side, the now-notorious Minerals Management Service claims that offshore operations in the Gulf produce a quarter of the U.S. domestic natural gas and one-eighth of its oil. Not that we should believe this agency, but gas and oil exploration is certainly something energy experts, environmentalists, and politicians can't rule out.

Let's hope Congress takes this opportunity (unlike Obama) to begin debating the merits of fossil fuel use versus protection of a beautiful domestic resource like the Gulf of Mexico and its surrounding coastlines.

Jason Bateman Adds Comedy Flavor to Extract

Director and animator Mike Judge would always be legendary even if his only creative work were Office Space. So Extract is really just icing on the cake.

Jason Bateman is legendary comedy gold for Arrested Development, arguably the greatest sitcom ever. So this movie is likewise icing for the former teen idol who made it big in the 1980s with roles in TV shows like Little House on the Prairie, Silver Spoons, and Valerie.

In Extract, Bateman continues his winsome streak as the founder and owner of a vanilla extract company. He sets out to fix all the horribly wrong things about his life, and one can't help but cheer for the guy.

Ben Affleck is hilarious as his bartender friend (in a Marriott sports bar) who is full of endlessly bad advice. Mila Kunis is her usual adorable self as the crook who sets out to bring his company down. SNL's wacky Kristen Wiig is perhaps a bit underused and a bit too lacking-in-wacky as Bateman's sweatpants-wearing wife, but she's still likable. And Gene Simmons of Kiss, Dustin Milligan (formerly Ethan on 90210), and David Koechner as boring neighbor Nathan each play perfectly dumb supporting roles.

This came in as a late contender in December as one of the best comedy movies of 2009.

**** out of ***** stars

The Good and Bad of Where the Wild Things Are

Where the Wild Things Are from 1963 is definitely in my top five children's books of all time. So I was excited about the movie that was released last year.

Author Maurice Sendak has one of the most wildly creative minds. If you don't believe it, just check out the video below of a dad doing a hilarious reading of his bizarro story In the Night Kitchen.

Sendak's strength is capturing children in all their unpredictable, boundary-less inner fantasy minds, and film creators Dave Eggers and Spike Jonze (with consulting from Sendak) do a great job of capturing the wild young insubordinate Max.

The scenery and cinematography in the land of the Wild Things is gorgeous. The music by Karen O of Yeah Yeah Yeahs is perfectly off-kilter and often carries the movie in its many relatively slow stretches.

The sparse short story obviously needed major embellishments to fit into 90 minutes of screen time. It is clear the filmmakers struggled with this point.

But the theme of how hard it is to work to build a strong family is touching. And the film's emotional weight is quite heavy considering all the goofy monsters running around.

The decision to have muppet-like, sport-mascot Wild Things instead of computer-generated ones was perhaps the wisest decision of all. The monsters feel real and become captivating as the story unfolds. Max Records as Max is also really intriguing is his first major role, albeit more of his backstory would have fleshed this lovable movie out considerably.

*** out of ***** stars

The Lonely Polygamist Takes a Lazy View of Mormonism

Hard to believe, but there really haven't been that many portrayals of Mormonism in pop culture. The HBO series Big Love and the Jon Krakauer book Under the Banner of Heaven. So that's why it seemed the new novel by Brady Udall, The Lonely Polygamist, would be captivating.

Udall has an interesting resume. He was a faculty member at my alma mater Southern Illinois, is a member of the big Western Udall political clan, has a previously published book being optioned for film by R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe, and comes from a large Mormon family himself.

Unfortunately, after sludging through the first several chapters, I had to abandon this book. Golden Richards grows up in Louisiana as a shy, lonely boy with dysfunctional parents. Somehow he became "an apostle of God, the husband of four wives, and the father to 28 children."

His father left for months at a time to prospect for oil, and similarly, Golden leaves for long stretches to do construction work on the road out west. We know that home life is exhausting for him and that it will eventually lead to him having an extramarital affair.

His kids predictably have names like Fig Newton, Darling, Jame-o, and the Three Stooges, and one of his wives is named Rose-of-Sharon.

Reviews claim that this is slapstick and a light-hearted look at polygamist life. I found it a bore and a bit simple-minded. I chuckled a bit when Golden comes home to find his dog wearing underwear and some of his children not. But any novel that is 602 pages had better grab me a little more intensely if I'm going to devote a good chunk of my life to it. This one doesn't cut it.

Is Shrimp Less Tasty Than It Used To Be?

Here's my weekly column for the exciting media start-up NetGreen News. You can see all my columns here.

There are more important environmental issues to write about today, like three major new reports on climate change from the authoritative National Academies, but something else is on my mind.

I was getting my haircut the other day when my stylist Patrick mentioned that he loves shrimp but refuses to eat the tails. That reminded me how much I loved chomping mass amounts of peel-and-eat shrimp when I was a kid on vacations in Louisiana and North Carolina. But I don't really enjoy shrimp anymore. Why is that?

Do shrimp taste worse now than they did 20 or 30 years ago?

The BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is not going to help the taste of the famously delicious Gulf shrimp. It will most certainly drive prices up as supplies become more scarce this summer.

That means disgusting eateries like Red Lobster will have even more incentive to get their shrimp from faraway fish farms, which produce cheap and endless supplies. Nearly all of the shrimp consumed in the U.S. originates from farming in Latin America and Asia. These farms are rarely inspected or certified and produce up to 18,000 pounds of shrimp per acre in three to six months -- extraordinary yields when you further consider that most shrimp farming is done in water pools that are typically no deeper than four feet. Yuck.

So farming practices are certainly one reason to at least be aware that we may be eating some suspicious crops. Add the ecological damages reaped from shrimp-boat trawling and removal of forests for shrimp aquaculture, and our collective conscious about eating these bottom-feeders can grow heavy.

I never did figure out why my hairstylist doesn't like shrimp tails. And although I haven't found overwhelming scientific evidence that shrimp is less tasty, it's pretty safe to assume that the domestic, wild-caught shrimp of my youth are becoming more of an expensive delicacy and are the only kind we can consume in good health.

Blogwatch: Rock 'N' Roll Metro Map

Because there are so many great blogs out there like Pop Culture Lunch Box, this is a new regular feature that will give these unheralded journalism enterprises a little love.

I would actually remember whether I'm supposed to be going in the direction of Shady Grove or Glenmont on DC's Metro if this were the map.

Click here to super size it.

And while this person's Flickr account may not necessarily be considered a blog, theonlyone's photostream has some great art nonetheless.

Mountain Biking Ends a Beautiful DC Weekend

It was a perfect weekend and I took advantage by BBQing with friends on Friday night, hanging out at Eastern Village's happy hour on the roof Saturday night, playing tennis with neighbor Steve, and mountain biking with neighbor Mark and other friends.

Just another example of how great it is to live in cohousing, where there's always someone nearby to share adventures. The mountain bike trails at Fairland State Park, just 10 minutes north of Silver Spring on Highway 29, offer enough rolling hills through the forest to have me physically exhausted this Sunday night.

New Song: Prison Walls Keep Smiling

I realized it's been a while since I posted a new song (or even wrote a new song, for that matter).

Not sure if this counts. I sort of cheated. I wrote one verse and added two cheesy covers in the middle. See if you can tell what songs they are.