For now still blogging HERE

1. Lloyd Jones’ “Mr. Pip” – probably the most satisfying fiction read of the year.

2. Amelie Nothomb’s “Tokyo Fiancee” – funny novel about unusual love, that is just as much if not more also a remarkable insight into the heart of the enigma wrapped in the mystery that is Japan.

3. Dave Eggers’ “Zeitoun” – true harrowing story of living through Katrina, as a Muslim-American.

[And, way past due, if you haven't already read Malcom Gladwell's "Outliers" - fascinating book, that in typical Gladwellian fashion uses thoroughly engaging readable anecdotes to illustrate academic research about key ingredients to success.]

Me?!

But I was the lamb. I was the sweet herbivorial prey. Sweet innocent me, he says, craning his neck to daintily tooth-pull leaf from tree, I wouldn’t hurt a fly, not unless it really annoyed me or, apparently, if it didn’t seem in my righteous mind deserved enough to be part of my circle.

[For more on this, read Margaret Atwood's "Cat's Eye," to my mind it is her masterpiece. I don't believe in girl books and guy nooks, in chick flicks and dick flicks. It's all nonesense. A good movie is a good movie is a good movie. Same with book and painting and person. There. I've said it. So get over it. Yes, of course Margaret Atwood writes about women, in "Cat's Eye," it's about girls, and how cruel they can be to each other. And for all who believe it's only girls who spread cruelty, see the major events of the 20th century, or, more immediately, any school playground.]

You ever have a drawn-out fight with someone? (If yes, proceed. If no, stop reading. You’re either a liar or an angel. I say liar. Angels don’t read blogs.) But really, you ever notice how the real tricky element of a long fight is that you both feel right, both feel wronged, both feel victim, both the poor fat kid. Ever notice how much that fuels your right to believe you can breath fire?

If everyone is a victim, how to ever end the war?

Because this does of course relate perfectly to the way countries interact, just like junior high school kids. And I’m not even just referring to the obvious, to Israel and Palestine. But that’s not a blog post, that’s a blog lifetime. I prefer to try my hand at understanding one small part of the world through the way it was in our youth.

This is one reason why I recommend Spike Jonze’s “Where the Wild Things Are.” Because of how human Max is, how good and bad, how glee glad and terribly sad.

A few other reasons to see Spike Jonze’s film include:
+Heart;
+Integrity;
+Authenticity;
+Acting performances, both human and puppet;
+The puppets;
+The vision;
+The humanity (that should come earlier, if this list is supposed to be in order of importance; it isn’t);
+Catherine Keener;
+For five seconds of Marc Ruffalo (which is never enough and yet manages always to be so so much);
+For the character named Carol, to name but one of the many I fell for (and for how very far he is from the Tony Soprano voice behind him); and
+For a movie for kids that might not be entirely for kids, fine, but I took my seven year-old nephew and he wasn’t bored, he endured, he enjoyed, sitting through a movie without pyrotechnics or clever sidekicks or Disney tied in Big Mac toy treats, for a movie for kids that is actually about something, many things that include death and love and loss and sorrow not to mention what I addressed before, and that deals with them in a way that seems so real, so resonating right.

This movie, as an old creative writing classmate/poet friend of mine (Jason Guriel) so perfectly put it, will be considered a great movie ten years from now.

In “Beautiful Girls” (1996), a movie about a guy in his late twenties who returns to his snowy hometown for a high school reunion, there is a minor moment near the film’s end (this spoils absolutely nothing), when at the reunion, a short, fat man, who you know looks just exactly how he looked when he was fifteen, approaches Darian Smalls, the now bitchy blond (a pitch-perfectly cast Lauren Holly) who was of course the princess of the high school back in the day. He says to her, and I’m paraphrasing, but pretty movie nerdily closely (I’ve seen it that many times), ‘Darian Smalls!” He is clearly excited. “You were beautiful in high school!” She thanks him, shy. He is, however, not finished. He continues, “But, if I may say, mean as a snake. You were mean as a snake.”

This is not a defining moment in the movie; it is a great moment nonetheless. It always is. When the popular bitch or the prick prince of the frat boys gets his/her comeuppance from the lowly fat loser. And which of us , really, hasn’t felt like a lowly fat loser at some point(s!) in our lives.

I wasn’t the fat kid (though I managed a good bit of pudge in grade seven – not a winning year for ole Mendelsohn Jon) but I wasn’t a cool kid either.

I like to think I was a fairly nice kid, a pretty good kid. I always aimed for kindness. I hated meanness. But then I was an underdog, underdogs don’t really get to choose. They almost have to be nice. Meanness, it seems to me, was a privilege of the popular. If pretty enough, or cool enough, you need not develop a personality.

I was lucky enough to have a sufficient social adeptness to stay out of the centre when the centre wouldn’t have me. I learned quick how to not be the one to get dumped on, most of the time. If I did get too close, though, I was the victim, of course. The softer. The fucked over.

I wasn’t bullied in school, I wouldn’t say that exactly, but I certainly felt pushed pretty far outside the circle, and sometimes, just plain being left out and not included is its own kind of bullying.

Woe is me.

The thing is, though, memory is a tricky devil. Because I, like all, can recall with pinpoint precision every single moment that some kid was a jerk to me, every catcall and hated nickname, every tease and rolled eye, every kid that made me feel low, blue, dumb, nerd, etc. What I’ve not been quite as good at remembering are the kids that I pushed out of the circles that I managed to get into.

No one thinks they were Darian Smalls. No one thinks they were they were the bitchy one, the asshole one, the jerk, the bully. Me? Never!

It does, however, become hard to ignore, when one of the kids you pushed out calls you up one day, more than a decade since you last saw him (your last sighting being when you were in grade eight – that’s eighth grade in American) and after a greeting and a little small talk abruptly cuts in to ask, ‘How come you were such an asshole to me back then?’ Or perhaps it was, ‘Why did you do that to me?’

Me?!

Part II

I miss sitting and smoking out on the concrete steps in front of my parents house, or smoking in their backyard that was once mine. Getting away from the crowd, seven minutes of peace and quiet. That and the act itself, and all the chemical altering relax inducing rest of it.

Sugar’s sweet, but smoking was the loner’s real treat.

My boss, or program coordinator if we’re really getting hung up on titles, Marjatta (pronounced Mar-ee-ata; she’s from Finland originally), who has read book shelves more than me, from a far wider selection of countries, and who can read fluently in at least two languages, gets it with Jhumpa Lahiri (I won’t say it); and now, as per my recommendation, she’s become a Murakami fan.

Because she reads so widely and well, Marjatta has convinced me to tackle Salman Rushdie’s supposed masterpiece, “Midnight’s Children,” a book so Booker worthy it was awarded the Booker of Bookers (best Booker winner of the award’s first 25 years).

I’m not familiar with a great many Finnish-Canadians, but this Finnish-Canadian, who happens to be one of the University of Toronto’s truly expert grammarians of English (she teaches a course on the subject), is a patient one too; or, at least, she is a patient reader. She warned me I’d have to wait till page 250 (of 645) – that the book was a rather incomprehensible drag for her until then. But that if I could stick out through those 249 pages, that it would all be worth it after that.

Well, Marjatta, this Jewish, Edinburgh-born to South African parents Canadian is 220 pages in and hurting. He’s hurting in that ‘I think I’m just not smart enough to get this’ sort of way. So much so he’s put down the Rushdie for a while and picked up not one but two other works of fiction in the meantime (Stephen King’s “Duma Key” and Paul Bowles’ “The Sheltering Sky”).

Still, Big M (I dare, I dare – she reads this blog), because of you I will return to “Midnight’s Children” and slog through another 30 pages. But if a magic carpet doesn’t transport me elsewhere by then I’m filing a grievance.

You’ve been warned.

Thus like a fellow whose played a few seasons of somewhat serious softball and so gets how hard it really might be to hit a major league fastball, my acting experience has allowed me to be a mad lover of a great performance on screen (or stage).

And some movies are all about the great performance. “Half Nelson” (2006) is one of those. The teen-aged girl (Shareeka Epps) in it is amazing. The film’s lead, Ryan Gosling (“The Notebook,” “The Believer”), makes me want to climb up on a stage again. He is sincerity on a big screen (or small). If authenticity is the heart of a certain kind of great acting, Gosling, who isn’t yet 30, is all heart. Raw would probably be the best word to describe his performance.

That’s all I really want to say about it.

Ok, I’ll also say that Gosling plays a junior high school teacher, and you believe him as a teacher (having spent the better part of a decade in some form of a classroom as the one who gets to/has to hold the chalk, I feel like I’ve got some fair shakes at an assessment of that one), a teacher who has much passion and cares, he cares about his kids. Also, he’s a crack addict. You believe that too. So it’s not exactly a light movie. But it’s a very very good movie.

Is it odd that (in two years) I’ve listened to Radiohead’s ‘Weird Fishes’ 94 times?

That I’ve read Haruki Murakami’s “Norwegian Wood” at least five times?

Watched Patrick Swayze (RIP) in “Roadhouse” 26 times?

I’m kidding, though I’ve probably seen that classic thrice (not including countless scenes re-watched on TV).

But the fact that if the movie is good enough, an “Inglorious Basterds” or a “Happy-Go-Lucky” that I’ll watch those movies three times in the theatre? IN THE THEATRE? This during an age when most kids won’t pay to rent a movie.

And the first two in theatre viewings often occur on consecutive days.

This is weird. I know.

In my defence,
1. The arts are my comfort food (when blue, I don’t reach for something new);
2. With movies,
a) The first time it’s experience, the second it’s seeing how they did it;
b) The first time I like to go alone; the second I like to share with Ai or a friend. That pointing out the sunset thing again.
3. I’m an oddball.