Play Ball!

Personally, I much prefer reading books and watching movies about baseball to, you know, actually viewing the sport on television or in person. If you agree, check out Natalie's baseball reading list!

Overshadowed by the ginormous freaking scary storm is the news fact that the San Fran Giants just swept the Detroit Tigers to win the 2012 World Series. If all of that sounds Greek to you, here are a bunch of baseball books to keep your homeruns and field goals straight. 

Read this rightthisveryminute, like before you finish this post (it's ok, the post will keep): The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach: Try to keep your "F@&^, this is the dude's first novel" anger to a minimum and just enjoy this long but much too short novel about college baseball, love, and growing up on a college campus. 

Get a little multi-cultural: The Japanese love baseball and The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa displays that love through an older professor and the housekeeper (and her baseball-obsessed son) and the way all of their lives are changed. The translation is shaky and it's one that I appreciate much more after reading (rather than loving it as I read) but I think it's worth a read.

Watch a movie: Bull Durham: Maybe it's just because I spent an inordinate amount of time during my MA in Mitch's Tavern, or because I'm from NC, or because I watched loads of minor league baseball as a kid . . . whatever it is, I think it's bigger than any of those things. Bull Durham is just film gold. [Mitch's Tavern is the bar featured in the film--salty waitresses who will gradually strengthen your drinks as they realize you're gonna be a regular.]

Read a master: Don DeLillo's Pafko at the Wall (or, the first part of Underworld): "Savvy" marketing people repackaged the baseball section of Underworld into a teeny book, Pafko at the Wall. I don't really care how you read DeLillo, as long as you read DeLillo (well, not Cosmopolis; let's give the man one pass for a not-so-great book).

If you absolutely must compare your dick to a baseball bat: AND then you have to title it The Great American Novel. Your name MUST be Philip Roth. I never recommend reading Roth. Not unless someone hits me with a bat upside my head.

Huh, so that's a book?: The Natural by Bernard Malamud: So, if you've seen Robert Redford take a swing and liked it, you might have a go at this little book.

Huh, so that's a book? Part 2, the non-fiction edition: Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella: If you've seen Kevin Costner go a little batty about building a field and people coming, you might try this book. And, yeah, while you're at it, just go ahead and watch The Natural and Field of Dreams if you haven't already. Please tell me you have already...

Almost famous: Ring Lardner's Ring around the Bases: Lardner was semi-famous as a baseball writer and not-at-all famous as F. Scott Fitzgerald's close friend (and likely model for Abe North in Tender Is the Night) and even less famous as short story author edited by the famous Maxwell Perkins. But, his lack of fame speaks nothing of his writing talent.

Something of a circus freak: Wherever I Wind Up by R.A. Dickey: So, first of all this major league pitcher is missing a ligament in his elbow. Second, that lack of ligament makes him an awesome knuckleballer (the only exclusively knuckleball pitcher currently in the league). Third, he's climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro. Fourth, he was an English major who quotes Faulkner (and we're talking Absalom, Absalom!) and says shit like "Kairotic moments" like the rest of us say "ice cream." So, yeah, this is his autobiography.

Stuff of fantasy: The Universal Baseball Association by Robert Coover: If you can't join 'em, boss 'em around in a fantasy baseball league and become a tad obsessed and maybe a bit unhinged. Coover's novel follows a dude who does just that--deep, dark, black comedy here, folks.

And maybe next year, you'll be all set for the baseball season (btw, that basically starts in January with spring training).

A Devilishly Smart look at The City of Angels

The stockiest of stock L.A. photos.

As I continue to drown in a sea of composition essays, Nat continues to take up my slack with another awesome reading list, this time based on her Southland stomping grounds. 

It seems no one likes LA but there sure is a lot of interest in what we do here. Movies abound about the city paved with gold (the streets are actually sparkly—different asphalt and all) and just turn on the TV to see a skewed “reality” version of how this slice of the left coast lives. Books are a tad more difficult to come by.

See the Sights!

            A LOT of what happens in LA is sightseeing. Seriously. I have to dodge sightseers to get fish from my Whole Foods. No lie. There was a group with cameras as I waited for my tilapia Monday. Luckily for the movies, LA has more interesting things to see than fish carcasses.

            The LA River: Or, rather, aqueduct which might actually contain a fish carcass or three. See Chinatown, Grease, and, amusingly, the latest season of America’s Next Top Model for a trip down the river without banjos.

The Griffith Observatory: This place is all kinds of awesome and newly re-opened after wild fire damage and general renovation. Rebel without a Cause features this shrine to geekiness prominently.

Hollywood Blvd.: The 2011 The Muppets centers on the re-furb of “The Muppet Theater” or, as we like to call it, El Capitan. Opened in 1926 by the same dude who opened The Egyptian and The Chinese (both within walking distance of El Capitan) it’s currently decked out with a giant Wurlitzer organ on which Disney songs are played before shows. Only Disney films show now but each is often accompanied by an exhibit with props/costumes and some sort of pre-show. I saw The Muppets here and was treated to a sing-a-long with Kermit and Miss Piggy (80s kid geek-out!). The Muppets also gives a glance into the nearby sights on Hollywood Blvd. as well as Jim Henson Studios which is just around the corner on La Brea.

Chinatown: For the best Chinese food go to Yang Chow posthaste. To see the silliest pop-culture “sight” ever, look on the side of the Foo Chow restaurant.

Get Your PoMo Cred On: Thomas Pynchon isn’t known for being what might be called “readable” but his latest is the closest you’re going to get. Inherent Vice is set in and around LA and is surprisingly (to me, at least) accessible, fun, and at least partially responsible for the advent of the “book trailer.”

Under No Circumstances Should You Watch This Film: The Postman Always Rings Twice. But, James M. Cain also wrote Mildred Pierce which was recently a passable mini-series for HBO and was an Oscar winning film for Joan Crawford.

Because Everyone Expects It: Nathaniel West’s Day of the Locusts is the LA novel with literary cred. It’s short. Give it a read and toss in Miss Lonelyhearts while you’re at it (they’re probably packaged in the same physical book anyway) even though it’s an NYC book.

Because No One Has Heard of It: As the girl who never read Brave New World but has read Chrome Yellow, I prefer an oddball Aldous Huxley and his After Many Summer Dies a Swan seems the perfect retort for “You haven’t read Brave New World?!?!.”

Creepy McCreepiness: James Ellroy’s The Black Dahlia is a true crime/fiction hybrid novel. If you want to up the creep factor, check out the first season of American Horror Story and see Mena Suvari as the (in)famous actress. See also: Ellroy’s LA Confidential and the film that garnered Kim Basinger an Oscar. Meanwhile, did you know that the LA County Coroner’s Office has a gift shop? Skeletons in the Closet. Hee.

“I got friends in East LA”: For a look at the not-so-shiny side of Los Angeles, try The Revolt of the Cockroach People. Hunter S. Thompson wrote the intro because his Dr. Gonzo character is based on the author, Oscar Zeta Acosta, who mysteriously disappeared and likely died in 1971. True crime, indeed.

80s Flashback: Robert Downey Jr. brings the fabled LA drug habit and party sensibility in Less Than Zero based on Bret Easton Ellis’s book or, as I like to call it, “Less Disturbing than American Psycho.”

Hardboiled: Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep is an excellent example of  LA Noir (literature and film) but I prefer White Heat which basically gives you a car chase tour of old-town Los Angeles. See also: High Sierra, most of Chandler’s other books, and a million other noirs.

As if: LA is notorious for the air-head blonde stereotype and there isn’t a more fun film about such things (while being quite substantive, actually Kato) than Clueless.

Dude’s Got a Lady’s Name: I’ve never read any Evelyn Waugh but he wrote The Loved Ones about LA people.

Just ‘Cause She’s Awesome: You should read Anna Deavere Smith’s play Twilight Los Angeles.

The American Gangster’s Dream: The setting for Get Shorty by Elmore Leonard isn’t exclusively Los Angeles but the journey cross country makes it more of a Hollywood story. Read the book on the beach (I did, forever ago) and give the movie with a resurrected John Travolta a watch. Give the celluloid sequel, Be Cool, a skip (though the book may be worth it) and then go straight to whatever DVD/Blu Ray/streaming service you prefer and watch all of Justified. Immediately. Timothy Olyphant is yummy and says shit like “I got mad ninja skills, buddy” in a drawl slower than honey. Shut up about it not being about LA. They totally film it here.

McCool: They Shoot Horses Don’t They is a novel by Horace McCoy and a film directed by Sydney Pollack about an 879 hour dance marathon during the Depression. What?! Apparently Alexander McQueen recreated the dance marathon for a 2004 collection

Drive You to Distraction: Want to feel better about your city’s real estate prices? Or just snoop in homes of the wannabe famous (and sometimes the actually famous)? Curbed LA is all that and more of a time waster/what you might do if you won the lottery game. You’re welcome.

Want to Run Away to the Circus?

We at OMwG are all about exploiting our talented friends and appropriating their labor for our own purposes. We are very capitalist in that way. Since no one writes a syllabus like Natalie, my partner-in-crime and co-blogger over on Docs on Film, she proposed a reading/watching/viewing list on the circus. And it is genius:

When Tracy asked me if I might write something for this blog, I asked her to give me an assignment—probably so I could pretend I’m Lois Lane or Hildy Johnson and rush around the house in a fabulous hat with a pen in my mouth and a note pad in my matching purse. She said I could write something about The Marriage Proposal (because I just finished it). I said I’d think about it. So, Tracy said write about The Night Circus (because I just started it). I told her I’d make a circus “syllabus.” Then I changed that to a “reading list” and then I decided I would include movies . . . and maybe art . . . My seeming complete lack of ability to follow assignments as such is probably why I’d never make it as a Girl Friday to a big newspaper man. That and I prefer the phrase “seeming complete lack of ability” to the more newspaper-friendly “inability.” But, whatever, here’s a list of circus-related books and such.

 

The Genesis (of this list at least): The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. Hailed as “the book every Neil Gaiman-loving girl with creatively dyed hair and authorial aspirations dreams of writing” [sigh—my hair doesn’t have any pink OR purple in it right now] by Laura Miller on Salon.com, the physical book is Tim Burton-esque in design and the story is an enchantingly lovely piece of writing that every manic pixie dream girl this side of 2011 will have on her nightstand for aesthetic purposes and every smart girl will read because it’s damned good.

You Can’t Handle the Truth: The grittier look at circus life comes from Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love. By “geek” Dunn doesn’t mean your loveable nerd in glasses who watches too much Buffy (cough) and owns a graphic novel or fifty (ahem); she means the kid who eats the heads off of live chickens. The book still causes a stir and is one of the only instances where Knopf allowed its dog logo to be altered (I’ll wait while you check—see? That borzoi has five legs). Practically a classic at this point, this woebegone love story gone badly awry is one I’ve recommended to anyone who asked (or didn’t) about books, including many captive audiences of college freshmen. Go and buy a few copies (I have two, at least) so maybe Dunn will publish another novel.

Pick it up at the Airport: The book club staple Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen has much to recommend it despite the questionable film adaptation featuring one sparkly vampire and one too smart for this nonsense Blonde. Frequently billed as an “historical novel” or an “historical romance novel” neither is right; the book contains events that happen in the past and a love story—so do a lot of books (the two above for example) and are not categorized as such so don’t let those labels scare you. Don’t let the book club ladies scare you off either; just don’t read the book in public so you don’t attract their attention. Unless they have wine.

OH-MY-GOD-I-CAN’T-BELIEVE-SHE-WROTE-A-CIRCUS-BOOK, or I vowed to never read another book by Jennifer Egan: Sigh. Apparently Jennifer Egan has a book. The Invisible Circus, that may be vaguely about a circus, or not. And, yes, I’ve read enough Egan to praise the Pulitzer for taking this year off from awarding a fiction prize to think about what they did last year.

Huh, those Old/Dead White Dudes Wrote about the Circus: Apparently John Irving wrote A Son of the Circus, Robert Penn Warren wrote a short story titled “The Circus in the Attic,” and Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked this Way Comes (traveling “carnival” technically). I’m intrigued mainly because I can’t think of a circus book I’ve read written by a dude.

Buying it ASAP: Angel Carter’s book Nights at the Circus is going on my to-read bookshelf because who doesn’t want to read about “a woman who is – or so she would have people believe – a Cockney virgin, hatched from an egg laid by unknown parents and ready to develop fully fledged wings” (Wikipedia). I could make a lame joke about a “chick” here but I’m keeping it to myself. You’re welcome.

Watch it Now: Freaks. You can’t talk about circuses unless you’ve seen this 1932 (that’s right, pre-code) film of Tod Browning’s about, you guessed it, sideshow “freaks.” Browning was once in a circus and uses actual “freaks” as the cast so an eerie reality casts a long shadow over the “fiction.” Watch it with Geek Love; they pair nicely. Maybe not with a dinner of chicken though.

Under No Circumstances Should You Watch this Film: La Strada.

Root for the Clown: PBS aired a 6 part mini-series simply called Circus about the Big Apple Circus and its cast of characters. From several “first of May” performers to “troupers” you definitely find yourself caring for these people. It’s not riveting minute-to-minute but it is incredibly heartfelt. And, you can watch all six episodes online.

What the Hipsters Call “Retro”: Circus art has always been bright, fun, and a little sassy. While the originals are notoriously hard to find in good condition (yes, I watch a touch too many episodes of American Pickers) Taschen has helpfully consolidated a lot of super fun circus art into a typically heavy coffee table book, The Circus Book 1870-1950. Seriously, don’t put this on anything made by Ikea.