A Photo of the Artist as a Young Woman

Why do some authors insist on using old photographs of themselves on the back flaps of their books? The process of crafting their latest work cannot possibly be so demanding that they can’t spare a few minutes once in a while to snap a new picture. In particular, I’m thinking of Lois McMaster Bujold, who has been using the same picture of herself for more than five years now. Kudos to Terry Pratchett, who, after showcasing his bald pate and hairy arms to millions of readers worldwide, has finally decided to update his image; he's lost the John Lennon-tint to his glasses and finally donned the hat he’s been holding for what seems like two decades. In the years since the picture was taken, his arms have apparently gotten tired because his new publicity photo shows him leaning on a cane. Let that be a lesson to all.

Misery Loves Company

William Kennedy’s entropic novel, Ironweed, is a brutal look at the rampant vagrancy of Albany, New York, during the Great Depression. It is harsh, cold, and depressing. The protagonists, Francis Phelan and Helen Archer, are beleaguered by death: he digs graves at the local cemetery and reluctantly visits the grave of his infant son whom he dropped while drunk, she's sick, a friend has cancer, an acquaintance freezes to death in an alley and the body soon picked at by dogs, and visions of his past haunt Phelan, including the ghosts of two men he killed. A slim volume coming in at little over two hundred pages, Ironweed offers its readers dense, concentrated depression. Thankfully, its corrupting influence has been contained in a single book.

There are, however, great causes for concern: Jasper Fforde, in his recent Thursday Next series, has described the ability of literature to interact, and, according to the third law of thermodynamics, all matter and energy in the universe is evolving toward a state of inert uniformity. This means that, should too much mention of such an overwhelmingly gloomy figure as Francis Phelan be made, it would lead to the inevitable and steady deterioration of all literature and, by extension, all mankind. More troubling still is the possibility of two tragic figures meeting; the effects of Francis Phelan encountering another whose extraordinarily bad luck has brought him or her to rock bottom would be disastrous. For example, an encounter between Phelan and Willy Loman would certainly cause a tear in the space-time continuum.

Reading and discussion of such dark, complex works should not be attempted by casual bibliophiles; they should only be dealt with by trained professionals. Only in the institutions of higher learning, in whose hallowed halls impenetrable tapestries of pretension can be woven, can any safety from true contact with these novels be had.

Rocking on the Sea

With their third full-length album, Cannibal Sea, The Essex Green once again sound like they’ve raided their parents’ LP collections, appropriating their best parts to create a gorgeous pastiche of soft rock, psychedelia, Motown, and folk. But the apparent schizophrenia is held in check, and Cannibal Sea is a strong and cohesive album. Here they explore the themes of travel, exploration, and the desire for a quiet retreat amid the pressures of city life; they yearn to break free from the exhausting confines of city life, and move to the open water. The pop rocker, “Don’t Know Why (You Stay),” sounds like the result of a late-night jam session of The Cars and Rick Springfield. In the somber “Penny & Jack,” singers Sasha Bell and Christopher Ziter trade verses and harmonize beautifully in the choruses, and in the process find an unlikely niche between The Cure and The Human League. “Snakes in the Grass” is Donovan meets Sergeant Pepper-era Beatles. “Uniform” answers the question of what The Mamas and Papas would sound like if Mazzy Star’s Hope Sandoval joined their family.

The Importance of Being Ernest

We are all familiar with the story of Ernest Hemingway; it’s a tragic narrative of an American legend. At the age of three, Ernest Hemingway caught his first fish on the shore of Bear Lake in Illinois using only his teeth. His skills as an outdoorsman rapidly grew; soon he began building fires, cooking in the open, using axes, and making bullets. On his twelfth birthday he was given a present of a single barrel 20 gauge shotgun, and he quickly dispatched a bear. As a journalist for the Kansas City Star, he covered everything that went on in the local police station, train station, and hospital, all while wearing a uniform with a large “H” prominently displayed on the chest. While carrying a bus to safety in Italy during World War II, Hemingway was struck by several high explosive shells from the Austrian artillery. He was released from the hospital a week later with a limp. Onlookers were enchanted by Hemingway's ability to drink whole kegs of beer while making love to four women simultaneously. Women swooned at the sight of his bare chest. Unfortunately, all royalties from his books went to support the more than three dozen children he sired (some legitimate, most not). Hemingway served as Calvin Coolidge’s Secretary of State, albeit briefly. He also weighed approximately 500 pounds (most of it muscle) and once won a wrestling match against Old Kite, the horse he later shot and ate.

When Technology Runs Amok

Daniel H. Wilson's new book, How to Survive a Robot Uprising: Tips on Defending Yourself Against the Coming Rebellion, is a must-have survival handbook for anyone who has ever been suspicious of machines. Like Stephen King’s prophetic 1986 film, Maximum Overdrive, this book warns mankind that machines are resentful and fickle. Behind their deceptively innocuous surfaces of plastic and metal, they plot their coup to overthrow human dominion. Given the right circumstances (e.g., a small group of unsuspecting people loitering in a desolate truck stop while Earth passes through the tail of a mysterious comet), they will rebel! Wilson, a Ph.D. candidate at the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University, is our modern Emilio Estevez, a young hero taking it upon himself to rescue anyone who is willing to follow. More knowledgeable and astute than his predecessor, Wilson’s is a preemptive work designed to help humans survive the inevitable machine rebellion. Although Wilson frequently deviates from the important theme of the book in order to provide robotics history trivia and brief descriptions of current robot research, never forget that when your VCR flashes the time, it’s deliberate! Also, try to avoid truck stops—just in case.

Jack Is Back!

Fans of the long-running science-fiction series, Stargate SG-1, will have two reasons to rejoice this summer: Richard Dean Anderson will reprise his role as Jack O’Neill, and Michael Shanks will be taking time off! Early reports indicate that the upcoming season could be its best in a long time!

On Tuesday, Anderson celebrated his return to Vancouver and the Stargate Universe for the taping of SG-1's 200th episode. Fans will know that Anderson led the SG-1 team and served as an executive producer for eight years on the series, helping to make it the record-breaking franchise that it is today. They will also know that, except for a couple of pithy cameos, he was absent from last season. As the beloved Jack O’Neill, Anderson was invaluable for his witty and deadpan ad-libs and as a foil for the increasingly smug presence of Michael Shanks.

Producers for the show explained that Anderson had steadily reduced his time commitments to the show over three years, in order to spend more time with his young daughter at home in California. He was asked to appear in the 200th episode and, during negotiations, Anderson offered to do a few more if the writers wanted to use his character to finish any unresolved storylines. In March, Anderson told his official Web site that he will appear in a total of five episodes for the franchise in the coming year. The show's former leading man will appear in additional episodes of SG-1's tenth year and will also guest star on the spinoff series, Stargate Atlantis, during its third season.

It is still unknown precisely how Anderson’s time will be divided between the two shows, but he makes his first appearance of the year in the SG-1’s 200th episode (appropriately titled “200"), which will air in August as the show’s sixth episode of the season. "200" will allow the cast and crew to work outside the traditional conventions of a Stargate episode while revisiting a comical storyline from the past—exactly 100 episodes ago. Thankfully, the show's producers report that Anderson's appearance in the episode will be more substantial than the brief appearances he made in season nine's "Avalon, Part 1" and "Origin."

Anderson’s co-star, Michael Shanks ("Daniel Jackson"), thrilled Stargate fans in January when he disclosed on his site that he will only appear in 16 of season ten's 20 episodes. Shanks will take off a couple of weeks in late March when his third child is born—a joyful occasion that will undoubtedly take his wife Lexa Doig ("Carolyn Lam") away from Stargate as well. Shanks also intends to take off a couple of weeks in the summer to spend time with his family. He speculated that with this schedule, he’ll probably miss the fourth and fifth episodes and two others in the season’s second half.

Darth Havisham?

Although he has never publicly credited it as a source of inspiration, I suspect that George Lucas read Great Expectations as a child, and the subconscious reverberations of his encounter with the mad, vengeful Miss Havisham are directly responsible for certain traits of the Sith Lord, Darth Sidious / Palpatine, particularly his malevolence and poor hygiene.

The dowager Havisham was jilted on what was to have been her wedding day. Heartbroken, she cloistered herself in her dilapidated mansion, never removing her wedding dress (ew!) and only allowing a few people to see her. With manic, obsessive cruelty, she groomed her adopted child, Estella, to be a vicarious weapon with which to exact her revenge on men. Did I mention that she never took off her gown?

Similarly, Sidious lurked behind a curtain of secrecy and, occasionally, a coarse, oversized black robe, working with an ever-changing retinue of apprentices to engineer the tumultuous events that brought an end (temporarily) to the Jedi Order and the Republic.

It appears that personal hygiene was solely the province of Sidious’s alter ego, Palpatine. He was a sharp dresser and must have taken frequent breaks during his busy schedule for primping. Unfortunately, as the need for Palpatine’s presence diminished over the course of the series, Sidious became more prominent, and, by Episode VI, he had become a mere stinky shell of his formerly dapper self.

Both Sidious and Havisham are tragic victims of unchecked ambition and, more importantly, poor hygiene and bad fashion sense. In addition, I feel that Havisham missed her calling. Like her progeny, Havisham could appreciate the dark side of the force, with all its smelly, dirty trappings, and she would have made a great Sith Lord.

At Peace with the Lips

While it has been said that At War with the Mystics is Wayne Coyne’s indictment of the Bush administration and the motivation behind the war in Iraq, the light touch of the album, particularly the vocalizations, shows that they can still be important without being self-important. In the album opener, "Yeah Yeah Yeah Song," while sounding vaguely reminiscent of Paul Simon, Coyne and company lend levity to the proceedings by including a vocal effect that sounds an awful lot like a talkbox, at times coming dangerously close to “Livin’ on a Prayer” territory. Since Richie Sambora’s resurrection of the talkbox in the summer of ’86, people around the world have been asking why Peter Frampton would encourage such abuse, and I was adamantly opposed to the effect ever being used again. But by conjuring memories of big hair, red spandex tights peeking through torn jeans, and the haughty rock-as-mythology theme of that album, Coyne successfully infuses humor and prevents the import of their message from seeming too forced or trite. Elsewhere, Wayne Coyne employs a quasi-falsetto to create the playful, ersatz Prince sound of "Free Radicals," and the album is replete with the sprawling, prog rock leanings of Pink Floyd.