CumulaTest—The Solution

Here are the answers to last Friday's quiz:

      Archtophile:   teddy bears
      Bestiarist:   medieval books on animals
      Bibliophile:   books
      Deltiologist:   postcards
      Discophile:   phonograph records

      Gnomologist:   aphorisms, proverbs & short poems
      Labeorphile:   beer bottles
      Lepidopterist:   butterflies
      Notaphilist:   bank notes or checks
      Numismatist:   coins

      Philatelist:   stamps
      Phillumenist:   matchbook covers or matchboxes
      Philographer:   autographs
      Vecturist:   subway tokens
      Vexillologist:   flags or banners

Let's face it, that one was pretty damn tough. Even I could only score ten correct today and I researched the damn quiz. So score yourself thusly:

    0-3: Discarder: You throw everything away.
    4-6: Collector: Terrific job! You must live on eBay.
  7-10: OmniGatherer: There's nothing you won't save.
11-15: Websterer: You must live with your nose in the dictionary.

For the record, I found many other unusual terms that I could have included, but most of them were copies of one another's trivia terms. To make it in this quiz I had to be able to locate at least two credible sources. (This ain't no amateur blog, baby!)

Having said that, I decided to have some fun and coin a few new terms of my own. The following list contains fifteen new or redefined terms for collectors with the objects they collect. Here then are my neolgisms for collectors of the world:

      Barbierian:   dolls
      Soilsport:   dirt
      Onomatapianist:   word sounds
      Pathologist:   mental disorders
      Digicuticlist:   fingernail clippings

      Scatinarian:   animal droppings
      Memoirist:   recovered memories
      Dominatrix:   victims
      Omphaloskepticist:   dubious navels
      Agememnonist:   troyfuls

      Omniprocurer:   everything
      Notathingman:   nothing
      INM8:   license plates
      Judithsistist:   popsicle® sticks
      Oneliner:   first sentences

Congratulations, Red Sox!

Was that a wicked unbelievable postseason or what?

I thought it was a miracle when the Red Sox returned after the 19-8 pounding by the Yankees in Game 3 of the ALCS to come within three outs of an inglorious end to their season, yet somehow win a twelve-inning, five-hour marathon game. And it took real guts to come back and prevail in an even longer fourteen-inning showdown the next day.

But who could have imagined that when they got up off the mat after that massacre, that they would also have the moxie to take all four straight against their Yankee nemesis, winning the final two battles in Yankee Stadium? That feat alone guaranteed them a place in Red Sox legend and baseball record books, but no one could have anticipated that they would also go on to sweep the Cardinals in four games, becoming the only major league team ever to win eight consecutive games in the postseason. Fan-tastic!

I was heartbroken in 1967 when my heroes lost game seven to the Cardinals. I was stunned in 1975 when after that amazing game six ending with the memorable Carlton Fisk home run, they again lost game seven. I watched in shocked disbelief with my future wife in 1986 when they booted the Series. But I was thrilled nearly twenty years later to watch the 2004 World Series with her children and to hoot and holler like fools when the Red Sox took the Series in four straight.

Kevin commented during the Division Series that he wanted the Twins to defeat the Yankees so the Red Sox wouldn't have to face them again. Pretty intuitive for a seven-year-old. But I wanted the Red Sox/Yankees matchup just as I wanted a Red Sox/Cardinals rematch. If 2004 was to become the year they finally went the distance, I wanted no doubts from anyone that they had beaten the two best teams in baseball to do it.

And to my extreme delight, they did.

Congratulations Red Sox players and fans everywhere!

The Improbable Dream

Twenty-odd years ago, as a sort of experiment, I kept a dream log for a month. Dream journals can be fascinating...at least to the dreamer. (Sort of like this blog.)

I haven't recorded my dreams in years, but last night's dream is worth recounting.

I won't bore you with the early details: the barbeque, the banter, the funnel cloud, the geeky reactions to watching leaves falling from an odd looking tree. Let's skip right to the end when I was sitting under a large pine tree and was startled by the sight and sound of a large red bird landing in its highest branches.

"Watch out for that one," the man closest to me commented.

I barely had a chance to reply when the cardinal flew down, landed on the back of my right hand and bit me. Hard. Then it grabbed a piece of lettuce I was holding (this is a dream, remember?) and flew off.

My subconsciousness must have disapproved of that scene and began editing it and replaying it, the cardinal returning again and again while I grabbed at it, swatted, swung, fought back. When the dream became more violent I awoke with a start. A few moments later while replaying the dream sequence, I was startled by its unlikelihood.

The neuroses of a native New Englander run pretty deep, I guess.

When I told the boys about the dream at breakfast, Andrew was easily able to interpret it for me. "What do you think it was about?" I asked.

"Defeating the Cardinals," he answered.

Go Red Sox!

TBNT

One of the recent small publishers in New York was very quick to reply:

Thank you for sending us your manuscript, The Search for Plupreme.

Though it is interesting, it is not quite what we seek. Therefore we are returning it to you with wishes for success in placing it elsewhere.

Sincerely,
[unsigned]
Children's Book Department

Theirs was the first to actually include the title of my work in their form letter. Nice also of them to address me by name, describe my work as "interesting," and to take the time for properly entering my name and address into the letter (and presumably their database).

In my software publishing days I sent out many form rejection letters. We even had a key for different letter types, such as "NT" for "No thanks," and "TBNT" for "Thanks, But No Thanks," a slightly more encouraging rejection. Now I cannot help automatically coding each rejection I get as the publisher's version of an NT or TBNT reply.

Meanwhile I continue to hope for the WCWTPY ("We Can't Wait to Publish You") letter.

Birthdaze

Justin, Kevin, and Andrew turned seven today, but I mark the time in "parent years." I figure one parent raising one child for one year equals one parent year, so a couple raising three kids over seven years has logged 42 parent years. That seems a better measure of the energy expenditure over the last seven years and could help explain why silvering temples have so quickly extended to cover far more geography than any customary definition of temple.

I asked the boys what they remembered of this special occasion seven years ago, and their answer roughly translates to "not much." Of course, I suspect that would be close to an accurate answer for Kathy as well. She admittedly had a lot going on that day; she can be forgiven for being less exacting in her recollection than I.

We have replayed the day together many times, no doubt rewriting the events, misrecalling many critical details (were there eighteen people in the delivery room or more?), overemphasizing others, and for damn sure forgetting the amount of fear that was stirred into the emotional cocktail of suddenly becoming the parents of three premature babies in intensive care.

But our collective memory—altered and repeated over the years, and now including the boys' reactions as they look at their infant photos and repeat parts of the experience they've heard about and ask questions about details they've only recently become curious about—is a valuable trust and the family mythology that evolves is fascinating, evolutionary, and invaluable.

One detail that Kathy and I agree upon, and that the boys have begun to understand (yet one day will re-examine with philosophical urgency), is their naming. We had three pairs of first and middle names selected (luckily we knew their gender early so we hadn't had to agree upon twelve names), but we still had the task of matching the names with the babies. You can only look at the Baby A, Baby B, and Baby C labels on their isolettes for so long before you are eager to give them the gift of their own identity.

But it was at least three hours after their birth before Kathy could be wheeled into the NICU on her gurney to get her first look at her babies. It's an emotional moment to become the first time mother of one baby, more so of a tiny preemie you can't even hold, lying in an isolette with all manner of tubes and leads attached to him; who can say how it feels to experience that for the first time in triplicate while drugged, exhausted, and recovering from surgery? It was not an ideal moment for naming them.

The nurses had kindly snapped three Polaroid shots of the boys, so later I was able to bring those back to Kathy in her hospital room while able to freely return to the NICU myself as often as I liked. When the naming topic first came up that day I told Kathy I thought I knew which boy was Kevin (I did not tell her that it was in part because he looked most Irish to me and hence the name Kevin Patrick seemed a good fit; ironic now because he is such a little John clone that he's never described as favoring her side of the family). Kathy agreed, held up one Polaroid, and said she thought this baby was Kevin. We had made the same choice.

It took longer to name the other two. I returned to the NICU and made my selections, but expected that this time Kathy would suggest the opposite. But when she had more time to think about it and to see them again she made the exact selection I had. We concluded that the boys were named properly and were meant to grow up with the names we'd given them.

I've asked them whether they want to swap names and the answer is always a resounding NO from all three. So we'll consider it unanimous.

Seven years ago our boys were born; but it has been worth every moment of forty-two parent years.

Happy Birthday, Boys!

Cumulatist Quiz

Several months ago I mentioned that people collect all kinds of things. That reminded me that there are some terrific words for different types of collectors.

Here are fifteen of them:

      Archtophile
      Bestiarist
      Bibliophile
      Deltiologist
      Discophile

      Gnomologist
      Labeorphile
      Lepidopterist
      Notaphilist
      Numismatist

      Philatelist
      Phillumenist
      Philographer
      Vecturist
      Vexillologist

Now that list makes for an especially challenging quiz, so here are thirty collectable items to match with the above list (twice as many as you'll need):

aphorisms     autographs     bank notes     baseball cards     beer bottles
beer coasters     bookmarks     books     bottle caps     butterflies
cigar boxes     cigarette lighters     coins     dirt     dolls     flags     jokes
license plates     matchbook covers     medieval books on animals
phonograph records     pornography     postcards     recipes     shells
stamps     strings     subway tokens     teddy bears     trivia

We'll see how well you did next week.   (No fair consulting a dictionary or eBay.)

Dust Bunnies

My goals when I first began writing children's stories were modest.

My first goal was to finish. I decided I didn't want to leave a few incomplete stories on some forgotten computer files before I lost interest and moved on to some other project. I reasoned that, "if nothing else, I want to be able to print three copies of a finished book, put them in a drawer, and give them to the boys when they are old enough to read them."

My second goal was to write a story that touched one child. I didn't care about bestsellers, or even about publication. I wanted only to succeed at delighting one child with something I had written.

Last week Kathy signed us up for volunteer duties in the boys' classrooms. This included a few half hour reading slots. She suggested I read one of my stories, "Dust Bunnies," about a little boy who is afraid of the dark. "It's too long," I warned her, "nearly 6,000 words, as long as a whole Jack & Annie book." But she thought I could do it. She reread it to the boys and their friend Ashley and had them illustrate it. She proved to herself that it could be read in the allotted thirty minutes.

So yesterday I went to Andrew and Justin's first grade class to read. Right up until I left for their school I was still editing Dust Bunnies, trimming words wherever I could and improving the ending. I timed myself and discovered that if I read at an uninterrupted 183 word-per-minute clip and asked the children to hold their questions and screams of terror until the end, I could finish in time.

Mrs. Doolin had Justin and Andrew introduce me. They were very proud, as was Ashley who had drawn some marvelous illustrations for my story. Twenty kids gathered around and I glanced nervously at my watch only to discover that we were beginning five minutes late: already I was three and a third pages behind schedule. I wasn't nervous any longer, but I was anxious. I wanted to read with enthusiasm, but I had to trim words and ad lib as I read.

I kept looking into the eyes of twenty children who gave me their rapt attention for thirty minutes as I speed-read my story to them. They giggled at times, missed the more sophisticated jokes at others, and grew wide-eyed when I tried teasingly to spook them. I reached the climax, little Timmy's moment of heroism, and turned to Justin to allow him to recite Timmy's line. He declined, but Ashley eagerly pinch-hit and shouted the line gleefully.

I finished the story and the class ended. Mrs. Doolin led the class in polite applause and choruses of thanks. One girl in the class, whom I'd only met once before, proudly boasted that she knew me from visiting our house on a play-date and she hovered near me like a groupie. But there was no time for feedback or questions. The kids had to empty their cubbies and line up for dismissal.

Of course the question I keep getting is, "Did the kids like it?" And the honest answer is: I think so. After all, they sat still and listened for thirty minutes. They giggled. Their eyes got big. But at the pace I read, it wasn't as though I had them all mesmerized. Still, I'm satisfied. It was fun. Plus I had the relief of having a Red Sox game to go home to.

After school I ran into one mom outside the classroom. She asked how the reading went and I said I thought it went okay. "I'd like to read it some time if you don't mind," she said.

"Here," I said, thrusting my binder at her with relief. "I'm finished."

This morning she emailed Kathy, who forwarded her note so I could read the following:

Matthew talked of nothing else last night except the story John read to the class. He spent the entire evening creating his own book and talking about how Mr. Cardozo had actually written the book he read to the class. I heard about each character in great detail, how funny certain parts were and how the boys did all the pictures. This from a boy who rarely speaks about what happens in his classroom. Please give John this feedback for me. He should feel wonderful about the effect his writing had on Matthew!

So except for the fact that Matthew should have been watching Game Seven of the Red Sox/Yankees playoffs, I couldn't be more pleased.

Come Back, Baby, Come Back

Who'd've thunk it after that 19-8 drubbing on Saturday? The Red Sox coming back to win two back-to-back extra inning marathons and tonight putting a stitched-together pitcher on the mound and getting two unheard of umpire reversals in their favor to take the playoffs to a seventh game? Incredible!

I went ballistic in the bottom of the eighth when on an easy come-backer, Arroyo failed to get A-Rod out at first and Jeter scored. "You cannot blow that play! You practice and practice until you can make that play every time even in Little League!" I complained (okay, I was shouting), while the boys looked on with concern. "A major league ballplayer cannot mess up that play!"

Oops, not the best object lesson in sportsmanship and fine parenting. Then I saw the replay again and again, showing not only that Rodriquez had swiped at Arroyo's glove, knocking the ball from his hand, but that the first base umpire was waving him fair when he hadn't come close to touching first base.

Unbelievably, the umpire crew reversed the call, sent Jeter back to first, and called A-Rod out. I was flabbergasted. I had never seen the umpires make a reversal like that. Like millions of Red Sox fans, I expected that play to be the beginning of the Red Sox predestined unraveling. I had seen it too many times before.

I explained it all to the boys. They looked relieved to see Dad not only calming down, but approximating the father they know. Well, at least until the Red Sox won and we all started screaming and dancing and giving high fives while Justin chanted, "Reverse the curse!" and mooned the Yankees.

Also not our greatest display of sportsmanship.

But mighty satisfying, nevertheless.

How Do You Spell TiVo?

One of the unavoidable detractions to viewing televised sporting events with young children is the commercials. So far during the playoffs I haven't seen too many gruesome ads for CSI and their ilk, or previews for frightening R-rated slasher flicks, but the boys are getting inundated with gratuitous advertising messages, no doubt about it.

After the third viewing of a commercial promoting the upcoming reality series, "My Big Fat Obnoxious Boss," Justin expressed his frustration, "That's just mean. How would you like it if you thought you got a job and then were humiliated on TV while millions of people were watching?"

Jumping on the Bandwagon

I'll always remember being in Fenway Park for Game 6 of the 1975 World Series when Carlton Fisk launched that memorable game winning home run during the bottom of the twelfth inning, the one he dramatically waved at in a desperate attempt to will it from going foul.

Okay, okay, I was actually with a bunch of friends screaming up a storm in my parents' living room at 12:30 a.m. while my father attempted to sleep two rooms away. I just thought I'd lie since everyone else claims to have been there—even Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting during a dramatic exchange with Robin Williams seems to be recalling a game that occurred before he was born...one more bit of evidence of the genetic memory of all Red Sox fans.

(On the other hand, I honestly was in the upper deck of Candlestick Park exactly 15 years ago during the Loma Prieta earthquake that preceded Game 3 of the Giants/A's Bay Bridge Series, but that's another story...)

Tonight's twelfth inning game-winning home run in Game 4 of the playoffs, this time by David Ortiz, keeps the Red Sox chances alive, at least for a few more hours. When Ortiz came to bat, I briefly considered waking Kevin, who has shown extra interest in the games, and bringing him out to watch. But it was nearly 10:30 already—and that was on the West Coast. I can't imagine the problems faced by parents of loyal Red Sox fans on the East Coast where it was nearly 1:30 a.m.

I watched the faces of the fans in Fenway—the television producers kept returning to dozens of reaction shots of pained Red Sox fans during the waning moments of the game—and saw myself and my friends. Of course, you could make a good case that watching the Red Sox playoffs and cheering for them now after not catching a single inning of play during the regular season is jumping on the bandwagon. But that would be missing the point. It's hard for any Red Sox fan who has lived through the heartbreak of previous seasons, even if only last year's dismal postseason defeat by the Yankees, to resist the call to witness their October struggles. I see on those faces all the hope and pain I remember so well.

David Ortiz kept that hope alive at least for fifteen more hours. Most likely it will just increase the bittersweet pain that awaits the Fenway faithful. But you hope against all reason that it will give those true believers, the fans who followed the entire season and who last night could be seen braving the forty degree temperatures at 1 a.m. while still waving their "I believe" placards, a turning point to forever remember in a dream they cling to against all odds.

No Author Left Behind

This is not a political blog. You can find plenty of those elsewhere.
But with the presidential election less than three weeks away, the competition for one's vote is getting louder and the lobbying from special interest groups more frequent.

One ad in particular caught my eye. It's a poster of "a child’s face behind hundreds of author and illustrator names... [and] headlined 'We Create Children’s Books Because We Care About Children—That’s Why We’re Voting For John Kerry.'"

With a list of over 360 published children's authors and illustrators, you know you're going to discover many of your own favorites, and I did. I quickly recognized the following twenty from my own bookshelves or recent library visits:

Avi   Judy Blume   Susan Cooper   Bruce Coville
Tomie dePaola   Kate DiCamillo   Jeanne DuPrau   Sid Fleischman
Jack Gantos   Dan Greenberg   James Howe   Gail Carson Levine
Jane Langton   Linda Sue Park   Katherine Paterson   Tamora Pierce
Louis Sachar   Maurice Sendak   Jane Yolen   Laurence Yep

I've already mentioned about a third of those in previous posts and I hope I'll get the chance to discuss at least a third more. You could do worse than use those twenty authors as the starting point for creating a reading list for your child (Ella Enchanted, Holes, Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key, Dragonwings, The Tale of Despereaux, etc.)—unless, of course, you now decide to boycott them.

I also noticed the conspicuous absence of Lynne Cheney, author of America: A Patriotic Primer and A is for Abigail,—an oversight, no doubt.

(For the record, scanning the list was worth it just to discover the unfamiliar name, Crescent Dragonwagon.)

"Who's Your Daddy?"

The late Bart Giamatti had it right when he said of baseball:

"It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone."

No one knows this better than Red Sox fans.

I first learned it as an eleven-year-old during the "Impossible Dream" pennant race of 1967. I stubbornly—indeed, naively—followed my team's storybook drive from their ninth-place finish in 1966 to the nail-biting four team race that wasn't decided until the final day of the season when the Red Sox became the American League Champions. I recorded every Carl Yastrzemski home run on one sneaker that summer and every Jim Lonborg win on the other. I sat faithfully by my radio even when the Sox were down 8-0, believing they might still rally and win, as indeed they did.

But then came the World Series against the Cardinals and when it came down to game seven, I watched in stunned disbelief as my hero, Jim Lonborg, pitching on two days rest, finally proved to be mortal and my team lost and taught me what an older generation of Red Sox fans already knew: Baseball will break your heart.

Red Sox fans learn this lesson time and time again. There's the heartbreak of 1975 when—despite Carlton Fisk's dramatic game winning home run in the twelfth inning of game six of the World Series (still considered one of the best ballgames in major league history)—the Red Sox choked and lost game seven to the Cincinnati Reds. And there's 1986 when four times the Red Sox were one strike from winning the World Series, only to self-destruct, forever immortalizing the names Bob Stanley and Bill Buckner, and eventually losing the Series again, this time to the New York Mets. One could go on and on, but it's depressing and it's all too often replayed in postseason summaries anyway. (However, if you insist upon recalling each year of heartbreak it is well documented at www.soxsuck.com.)

You would expect that by moving to the West Coast and raising Giants fans I could free my sons of The Curse and the annual disappointment of cheering for the Red Sox. Not so. It is their birthright, after all, and so they know all about the decades of disappointment that follow the Red Sox. Last year, we picked four teams to root for in the post-season, and watched as they got picked off one by one. This year when the Giants folded and fell one game shy of making the post-season, we had only the Red Sox to cheer for.

Kevin gets it. He wisely expressed his hope that the Yankees would lose to the Twins so the Red Sox wouldn't have to play them again this year. Pretty intuitive from a seven-year-old who hasn't known the October frustration of growing up in New England.

But the ACLS is underway. The boys are fully engaged. They ask in private whether Eric, a soccer teammate, is really a Yankees fan. And they were irate, as I knew they would be, when they had to listen to the mocking jeers of "Who's your Daddy?" issued as taunts to Pedro Martinez. They would like payback, but they are anything but cocky. During one inning, Kevin literally stuck his head behind a sofa cushion when the Yankees had the bases loaded and told me to let him know when he could look again.

The way things usually go, that may not be until next April.

First Line Quiz—Kid Stuff: The Solution

OK, here are the answers to last Friday's quiz:

1. I am Sam.
   --Dr. Seuss, Green Eggs and Ham
   
   
2. Kidnapping children is not a good idea.
   --Eva Ibbotson, Island of the Aunts
   
   
3. I went to sleep with gum in my mouth and now there’s gum in my hair and when I got out of bed this morning I tripped on the skateboard and by mistake I dropped my sweater in the sink while the water was running and I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.
   --Judith Viorst, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
   
   
4. There is no lake at Camp Green Lake.
   --Louis Sachar, Holes
   
   
5. I am commanded to write an account of my days: I am bit by fleas and plagued by family.
   --Karen Cushman, Catherine, Called Birdy
   
   
6. Now, the Star-Belly Sneetches had bellies with stars.
   --Dr. Seuss, The Sneetches
   
   
7. The day she was born was the happiest day in her parents’ lives.
   --Kevin Henkes, Chrysanthemum
   
   
8. At school they say I'm wired bad, or wired mad, or wired sad, or wired glad, depending on my mood and what teacher has ended up with me.
   --Jack Gantos, Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key
   
   
9. That fool of a fairy Lucinda did not intend to lay a curse on me.
   --Gail Carson Levine, Ella Enchanted
   
   
10. Before Julius was born, Lilly was the best big sister in the world.
    --Kevin Henkes, Julius, the Baby of the World
    
    
11. It was a dark and stormy night.
    --Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time
    
    
12. Tom woke up, but Tim did not.
    --John Irving, A Sound Like Someone Trying Not to Make a Sound
    
    
13. Not every thirteen-year-old girl is accused of murder, brought to trial, and found guilty.
    --Avi, The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle
    
    
14. I never had a brain until Freak came along and let me borrow his for a while, and that's the truth, the whole truth.
    --Rodman Philbrick, Freak the Mighty
    
    
15. If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book.
    --Lemony Snicket, The Bad Beginning
    
    
16. Officer Buckle knew more safety tips than anyone else in Napville.
    --Peggy Rathman, Officer Buckle and Gloria
    
    
17. The week before Mr. and Mrs. Anderson were to leave Tenderly, Ohio, for the somewhat more bustling metropolis of Paris, their baby-sitter, who had just returned from far-off climes herself; came down with a mild case of bubonic plague and called tearfully to say she didn't want to spread the buboes around.
    --Polly Horvath, The Trolls
    
    
18. If you give a mouse a cookie, he’s going to ask for a glass of milk.
    --Laura Joffe Numeroff, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie
    
    
19. The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind and another his mother called him “WILD THING!” and Max said, “I’LL EAT YOU UP!” so he was sent to bed without eating anything.
    --Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are
    
    
20. They murdered him.
    --Robert Cormier, The Chocolate War

Once again, we need a highly scientific scoring system:

    0-4:   You've never met a child.
    5-8:   You've read to a child.
  9-12:   You had the help of a child.
13-16:   You're a child at heart.
17-20:   You're a children's librarian.

Movie Links

I'd add a Links section to this site if I could find a tasteful and convenient way to do so. Since I haven't yet, here are my indispensable web sites for movie buffs; I recommend bookmarking these links:

All Movie Guide:   www.allmovie.com   Great movie database with terrific plot synopses and reviews. It's just hard to link to specific pages or I would.

Internet Movie Database:   www.imdb.com   Equally indispensable movie database. (They've added a Pro version for a monthly fee--not sure what that's all about.)

Yahoo Movies:   http://movies.yahoo.com/   The one place I go to look up show times for movies playing locally. I'm not sure why I rarely search their database for movie facts.

Fandango:   www.fandango.com   I've tried it. It works. And when I have a giggle of boys dying to see Lilo and Stitch or Finding Nemo on opening day, I take no chances.

Rotten Tomatoes:   www.rottentomatoes.com   My favorite source of movie reviews—after I've seen the movie. They conveniently summarize and link to the reviews from major newspapers, so before I consider a movie I can see what percentage of the reviews are favorable. Currently, First Daughter is garnering only 11% favorable reviews, while Shuan of the Dead, "the biggest zombie comedy in British history", scores a remarkable 92% approval on the fresh Tomatometer. The trailer for Shuan of the Dead was funny, but that rating is the kind of surprise that might persuade me to catch it in the theater.

Netflix:   www.netflix.com   For a small monthly fee, you queue up a list of DVD's to rent and they pay postage both ways. Say good-bye to late fees: you keep the movies as long as you like and can have several out at a time. When you finish one, drop it in the mailbox and in a few days the next one in your queue arrives.

Blockbuster:   www.blockbuster.com   I used to use them as a second source of DVD rental ideas for Netflix (to pay them back for all the late fees). Now it looks like they are going after Netflix directly with a mail-order DVD rental program of their own.

Coming Attractions:   http://www.comingsoon.net/trailers/   You'll want a high-speed internet connection and up-to-date media player software, but after that you'll be downloading trailers like this one before you know it.

Screenplays:   www.moviescriptsandscreenplays.com   Here's where I start now when I'm looking for the script to download.

Book List:   http://www.westmount.ci.yrdsb.edu.on.ca/moviesa-z.html   The information is buried in other movie databases, but I found myself wanting a single easy-to-browse list of books that had been made into movies. This is an amateur site, with obvious gaps and numerous typos, but it has about 600 titles listed and it's the best of its kind I've located so far.

(Note:   I was able to construct a suitable "Power Search" at IMDb: by restricting the Country of Origin to USA, Language to English, Year range from 1960-2005, Keyword to "based-on-novel," and excluding TV movies, TV series, and "Direct to video" releases, I was able to generate a manageable and interesting list of about 2000 titles. Regrettably, I couldn't find a way to save the search and post the link here.)

Movies Based on Books

The surprising observation that several books I read recently had been made into movies sent me searching for a comprehensive web site listing novels and stories that have made it to the screen. I'm still searching, but so far one amateur site with about six hundred titles is as close as I've been able to come.

Browsing their database, and my records, inspired me to put together a few lists:

10 Movies to Add to My Rental List:

This is a list of books I've read (or started) that were made into movies in the past 10 years. I probably had a good reason for missing most of these, but curiosity keeps them on my rental list.

The 13th Warrior (1999)  (from Eaters of the Dead)
Bastard Out of Carolina (1996)
Children of Dune (2003)   (from the TV miniseries)
The Door in the Floor (2004)
The Human Stain (2003)

A Map of the World (1999)
The Mighty (1998)   (from Freak the Mighty)
The Postman (1997)
Timeline (2003)   (I'm a third of the way through the book.)
The Virgin Suicides (1999)

My expectations are low, especially after the recent disappointment of Wonder Boys, A Thousand Acres, and The Shipping News. (Going back much farther than ten years, I hope one day to see The Collector, Last Summer, and Nickel Mountain, among other old favorites.)

10 Books to Add to My Library List:

A Beautiful Mind, Sylvia Nasar
Blood Work, Michael Connelly
The Bone Collector, Jeffery Deaver
Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier
The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje

Mystic River, Dennis Lehane
A River Runs Through It, Norman MacLean
Rocket Boys, Homer Hickam   (released as October Sky)
Searching for Bobby Fischer, Fred Waitzkin
The Talented Mr. Ripley, Patricia Highsmith

20 Books-to-Movies You May Have Missed:
And maybe you should have, but as I went back into the vaults, I rediscovered this crop of stories that I've both read and watched (usually in that order).

A Boy and His Dog, Harlan Ellison
After Dark, My Sweet, Jim Thompson   (overshadowed by The Grifters, that same year, this was the better adaptation)
Devil in a Blue Dress, Walter Mosley
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, Tom Robbins
First Blood, David Morrell   (the birth of Rambo)

The French Lieutenant’s Woman, John Fowles
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, Fannie Flagg
Heaven's Prisoners, James Lee Burke
The Man Who Fell to Earth, Walter Tevis
The Milagro Beanfield War, John Nichols

The Mosquito Coast, Paul Theroux
The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco
The Natural, Bernard Malamud
Red Dragon, Thomas Harris   (the debut of Dr. Hannibal Lecter; so good they made it into a movie twice...first as Manhunter)
The Road to Wellville, T. C. Boyle

Smilla's Sense of Snow, Peter Høeg
The Strawberry Statement, James S. Kunen
The Tin Drum, Günter Grass
Tough Guys Don't Dance, Norman Mailer
The Witches of Eastwick, John Updike

Note:   They're reading the same books in L.A. that I am, obviously. That television preview I kept ignoring all week—the scary-looking one starring Kirstie Alley—turned out to be based on the Sue Miller novel, "While I Was Gone," that I read and forgot about from two summers ago. Maybe it was a blessing that I missed it.

First Line Quiz—Kid Stuff

Naturally, what you want to know is: If Irving's first line was so terrific—if it's possible that "there was no better beginning to any story than the first sentence of The Mouse Crawling Between the Walls,"—then what other children's stories have memorable first lines?

Time then for another First Line Quiz. I threw in several lobs, so you should be able to get five correct without breaking a sweat.

1. I am Sam.
   
   
2. Kidnapping children is not a good idea.
   
   
3. I went to sleep with gum in my mouth and now there’s gum in my hair and when I got out of bed this morning I tripped on the skateboard and by mistake I dropped my sweater in the sink while the water was running and I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.
   
   
4. There is no lake at Camp Green Lake.
   
   
5. I am commanded to write an account of my days: I am bit by fleas and plagued by family.
   
   
6. Now, the Star-Belly Sneetches had bellies with stars.
   
   
7. The day she was born was the happiest day in her parents’ lives.
   
   
8. At school they say I'm wired bad, or wired mad, or wired sad, or wired glad, depending on my mood and what teacher has ended up with me.
   
   
9. That fool of a fairy Lucinda did not intend to lay a curse on me.
   
   
10. Before Julius was born, Lilly was the best big sister in the world.
    
    
11. It was a dark and stormy night.
    
    
12. Tom woke up, but Tim did not.
    
    
13. Not every thirteen-year-old girl is accused of murder, brought to trial, and found guilty.
    
    
14. I never had a brain until Freak came along and let me borrow his for a while, and that's the truth, the whole truth.
    
    
15. If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book.
    
    
16. Officer Buckle knew more safety tips than anyone else in Napville.
    
    
17. The week before Mr. and Mrs. Anderson were to leave Tenderly, Ohio, for the somewhat more bustling metropolis of Paris, their baby-sitter, who had just returned from far-off climes herself; came down with a mild case of bubonic plague and called tearfully to say she didn't want to spread the buboes around.
    
    
18. If you give a mouse a cookie, he’s going to ask for a glass of milk.
    
    
19. The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind and another his mother called him “WILD THING!” and Max said, “I’LL EAT YOU UP!” so he was sent to bed without eating anything.
    
    
20. They murdered him.

The books range from picture books to young adult (YA) novels. If you need a hint, ask the nearest four to fourteen-year-old.

Multiple Submissions

The 18th time's a charm, right?

Having given the first ten publishers ten weeks, and having received five rejections so far, I just submitted The Search for Plupreme to eight more publishers. This time it's wending its way locally to Berkeley and San Francisco, and farther afield to New York, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania.

I'm curious whether an unknown, unagented writer will have better luck at the smaller publishing houses. Time will tell.

It takes "The Village"

Like many, I eagerly await each new M. Night Shyamalan film since The Sixth Sense, which I thought was outstanding. His work has been decent since then—Unbreakable was my favorite—but he'll never catch us so unguarded again and so each subsequent movie struggles to measure up.

I recently saw The Village, and there were moments when it was terrific. I don't think I have ever heard a woman in the audience moan with such audible anguish as I did during one scene of The Village. But by the time the movie had run its course and unraveled the mystery one couldn't help feeling disappointed, especially by revelations that in hind-sight rendered earlier scenes illogical.

The Sixth Sense, on the other hand, I can watch time and again. I recently discovered it on television and even with the commercial interruptions and edited-for-TV censorship, I was still struck by the outstanding craftsmanship, brilliant screenplay (every single line perfect!), and spot-on performance (I almost typed "dead-on") by young Haley Joel Osment.

Seeing it again after all these years reminded me of the first time...and of an email I wrote at the time capturing my reaction. So here is something from the vaults. It captures a hint of my sensibilities when the boys were two and dad was brain-fried and exhausted, albeit employed:

*****

Sent:   October, 1999
Subject:   I see dead people

...I first saw The Sixth Sense with a friend, Steve, while on vacation at Lake Tahoe this summer. Steve was vacationing with his wife, Caroline—a college classmate of Kathy's—the same weeks we were in Tahoe. We took several long hikes together during that week and we discussed the movie at least half a dozen times before the obvious struck me.

We were at the top of a scenic outlook with a gorgeous view of the Nevada valley and the Lake Tahoe basin when I experienced a series of flashbacks that usually only happen in the movies.   Flash: discussing the movie while Kathy and Caroline pretended not to hear.   Flash: feeling lightheaded while struggling to keep up with Steve on our hikes.   Flash: our babysitters complaining how cold it was in our rental home in the middle of August.   Flash: Caroline visiting Kathy each morning and the two of them chatting while completely ignoring me.   Flash: calling to check my voicemail, but not having any messages even though I didn't leave a "while I'm on vacation message."   Flash: Kathy pulling away from my cold feet at night which I could never seem to get warm.   Flash: Kathy recently telling me about a friend whose husband died of a bike accident over a year ago.   Flash: half my work team relocating their cubicles to another floor while mine alone remained in a sixteen cubicle section.   Flash: Kathy making plans while at Tahoe to start consulting with Palm when she got back, but nobody from Palm ever talking to me about it.   Flash: driving Steve to the movie and drifting across the double yellow line when I was trying to change a radio channel.   Flash: lifting Kevin from his crib while he reached for Kathy and whispered what I swore sounded like, "I see dead people."   Flash: returning again and again to the same cubicle, the same bedroom, the same commute, the same meetings, but never noticing even the slightest reaction to my ideas or suggestions or complaints.

And you thought you were surprised by the ending of the movie. How would you like to have seen it and later discovered a much more personal message, but still not have any idea what unfinished business you need to take care of...

--John

...it's okay, you don't need to adjust the thermostat; I have meetings to go sit in on now.

Spontaneous Publicity

Oh my God! The new phone book's here! The new phone book's here! ...

Page 73, Johnson, Navin, R.!

I'm somebody now! Millions of people look at this book every day! This is the kind of spontaneous publicity--your name in print--that makes people. I'm in print! Things are going to start happening to me now.

      --Steve Martin, "The Jerk"

Several days ago, while searching to discover the truth behind Philip Roth's claim to have discovered a piece of paper with nineteen sentences that he subsequently turned into the opening lines of his first nineteen books, I repeatedly hit dead ends until I Googled:

"philip roth" "nineteen sentences"

and found this erudite link:

6° of Aberration
... nineteen sentences that taken together make no sense at all." An unattributed exercise by one or more authors (who knows ... The Human Stain, by Philip Roth. ...
sixdegreesofaberration.blogspot.com/ - 101k

Google had found my little oasis in cyberspace...okay, admittedly with a gentle nudge from yours truly—one can submit one's URL to their web crawler, Googlebot, and out of curiosity I had. But it was surprising nonetheless to see my recent posting turn up as a result of my own search term.

It also seems that Google, the owner of Blogger, the tool I use to author this blog, has not yet fully integrated their search and blogging technologies. It appears that Googlebot crawled and indexed only the top-level page of my URL http://sixdegreesofaberration.blogspot.com/ even though they claim that providing the top-level page is sufficient for their bots to crawl the entire site.

The template I use creates individual pages for every post, making it possible for me to provide convenient links back to earlier threads of discussion. To be properly indexed and searchable, Googlebot needs to crawl every page.

How else are things going to start happening to me now?

Based on the Novel

The topic of taking books I've enjoyed and making them into movies had me curious: how many of the 20 books from my First Line Quiz (a random collection of sorts, right?) ever made it to the screen? I was certain of at least ten; I was surprised to discover fourteen, a high percentage, I think.

In order of release then, here are the novels from that list that were made into movies:

Moby Dick:   (1930)   Starring John Barrymore; followed by John Huston's version with Gregory Peck as Ahab (1956); an animated version (1977); and a four hour TV miniseries featuring Patrick Stewart (1998).

The Stranger:   (1967)   Released in Italy as Lo Straniero (1967) and starring Marcello Mastroianni; later released in France as L'Etranger.

Catch-22:   (1970)   The book was a best-seller, but the movie flopped: it got trumped that same year by Robert Altman's M*A*S*H, but what an unbelievable ensemble cast appeared in Catch-22: Alan Arkin, Martin Balsam, Richard Benjamin, Art Garfunkel, Jack Gilford, Buck Henry, Bob Newhart, Anthony Perkins, Paula Prentiss, Martin Sheen, Jon Voigt, Orson Welles, Bob Balaban, Charles Grodin, and Alan Alda as an extra.

End of the Road:   (1970)   Originally rated X; starred Stacey Keach as Jacob Horner and James Earl Jones as the doctor. I rented it years ago and it was nothing like I envisioned the novel, but similar to other gritty, realistic, Vietnam-era movies like Easy Rider, Midnight Cowboy, Little Big Man, and Straw Dogs.

A Clockwork Orange:   (1971)   A cult classic; also X-rated when it was released—although the violence is unremarkable, literally cartoonish, by today's standards; directed by the remarkable Stanley Kubrick; starring Malcolm McDowell.

Slaughter-House Five:   (1972)   "Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time." The movie may have permanently imprinted that line for thousands of viewers, but as delightful as it is, that is not the first line of the novel.

Portnoy's Complaint:   (1972)   This one surprised me, although maybe I saw it in a campus theater decades ago. It starred Richard Benjamin and Karen Black. Benjamin, incidentally, also starred in another Philip Roth effort, Goodbye Columbus (1969), with Ali McGraw one year before she gained stardom for Love Story.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest:   (1975)   Directed by Milos Forman and starring Jack Nicholson. A terrific movie, although I recall being moderately disappointed as I left the theater after the first viewing, having made the mistake of finishing the novel the week before—never a good idea.

The Hobbit:   (1978)   Animated. I wonder whether the boys would enjoy it.

Grendel:   (1981)   Surprise, surprise! "Grendel, Grendel, Grendel," was an animation out of Australia featuring the voice of Peter Ustinov. The plot synopsis at www.allmovie.com cracks me up:

In the late 1970s, Grendel by John Gardner was a highbrow best-seller that everyone with pretensions to intellectual sophistication was reading. In it, the author retold the epic Anglo-Saxon hero myth of Beowulf from the point of view of the monster the hero killed, rather than from the hero's vantage point. In so doing, he scored numerous points about the violence and intolerance of human beings and raised more profound philosophical issues. This animated feature was adapted from Gardner's book and never quite found its audience; too simplified for the literati, it was definitely not a children's feature and was not aimed at mainstream audiences.

Gorky Park:   (1983)   Starring William Hurt, Lee Marvin, and Brian Dennehy; I still can't understand why nothing else from Martin Cruz Smith has made it to the screen except for Nightwing (1979).

The Princess Bride:   (1987)   Well, William Goldman is a renowned screenwriter and novelist, after all. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Great Waldo Pepper, the original version of The Stepford Wives, Marathon Man, All the President's Men, and The Right Stuff, among others, all preceded The Princess Bride, which many (Goldman included) think is terrific, but which I still consider disappointing.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas:   (1998)   Directed by Terry Gilliam; starring Johnny Depp and Benicio del Torro; see also Where the Buffalo Roam (1981) with Bill Murray and Peter Boyle playing Hunter S. Thompson and his attorney.

A Scanner Darkly:   (2005)   In production, as previously discussed.


As near as I can tell, none of the others from that list of twenty have yet been made into an American movie:

M/F:   If it hasn't reached the screen by now, I seriously doubt it ever will.

One Hundred Years of Solitude:   Hasn't made it to American screens, but there was one movie, Eréndira (1983), that was made from a Gabriel Garcia Marquez story. For magic realism fans, try The House of the Spirits (1993) from the Isabel Allende novel.

The Tiger Bride:   Most of Angela Carter's outstanding writing, many of them dark and symbolic derivatives of classic fables, are short stories, not novels; I know of one movie, The Company of Wolves (1984), that was loosely based on her examination of the Little Red Riding Hood tale.

The 158-Pound Marriage:   Not surprising that this one never made it, but The World According to Garp (1982), The Hotel New Hampshire (1984), Simon Birch (from A Prayer for Owen Meany) (1998), The Cider House Rules (1999), and Door in the Floor (2004) (from A Widow for One Year) all came from other John Irving novels.

Rendezvous With Rama:   Surprisingly, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and the sequel, 2010 (1984) are the only Arthur C. Clarke novels to my knowledge to make it to the screen. I don't know how that is possible: ever since I first read Rendezvous With Rama in college I began imagining how I would make it into a movie.

Neuromancer:   The rights have been optioned, and at least one old screenplay is circulating in Hollywood, but so far only Gibson's stories Johnny Mnemonic (1995), and something called New Rose Hotel (1998), have made it to film.

Five More Sentences, Plus One

[Warning: contains profanity.]

Postscript to Friday: For those of you who wonder—and there are always some of us—I collected the first lines of Philip Roth’s five subsequent novels. Perhaps one day, Roth will also claim a mysterious origin to these sentences:

Either forswear fucking others or the affair is over. [20]   The Swede. [21]   Ira Ringold's older brother, Murray, was my first high school English teacher, and it was through him that I hooked up with Ira. [22]   It was in the summer of 1998 that my neighbor Coleman Silk—who, before retiring two years earlier, had been a classics professor at nearby Athena College for some twenty-odd years as well as serving for sixteen more as the dean of faculty—confided to me that, at the age of seventy-one, he was having an affair with a thirty-four-year-old cleaning woman who worked down at the college. [23]   I knew her eight years ago. [24]

      20. Sabbath’s Theater
      21. American Pastoral
      22. I Married a Communist
      23. The Human Stain
      24. The Dying Animal

It's pretty hard to keep up with a writer as prolific as Philip Roth. His twenty-fifth book, a novel that imagines what the world may have been like had an anti-Semitic Charles Lindbergh defeated FDR in the 1940 presidential election, was released in the past few days (and at the time of this posting ranked #2 on Amazon's sales list). It begins:

  Fear presides over these memories, a perpetual fear. [25]

      25. The Plot Against America

I find myself repeatedly mulling over Roth's so-called "myth of origin" [Professor Shostak] regarding the first sentences of his first nineteen books...as well as my ready gullibility at the suggestion.

It is an intriguing scenario to imagine. What if Philip Roth's creative output had been driven by such a serendipitous act? And how different would the world of literature be if Roth had found a piece of paper containing the first nineteen sentences of what is now John Updike’s body of work or Saul Bellow's? Or what if instead of Roth, Thomas Pynchon or Chaim Potok had found that sheet of paper and had a compulsion similar to the one described by Philip Roth?

Hmmm. That gives me two really great ideas.

Nineteen Sentences, Explained

Recall from Wednesday the unusual paragraph containing nineteen sentences that turned out to be the first line from each of Philip Roth's first nineteen books.

The story behind the page containing those sentences is told by Philip Roth in the Afterword to the 25th anniversary publication of Portnoy’s Complaint (1994). According to Roth, he was eating at a favorite diner nearly fifty years ago when he discovered a single typewritten sheet of paper, revealing "in the form of a long single-spaced unindented paragraph... [those] nineteen sentences that taken together make no sense at all."

Regarding the fate of that sheet of paper during the next year, Roth says, "Though I could never bring myself to discard it, I did nothing not to lose it." The page would turn up time and again until:

I saw that these sentences, as written, had nothing to do with one another. I saw that if ever a unifying principle were to be discernable in the paragraph it would have to be imposed from without rather than unearthed from within.

What I eventually understood was that these were the first lines of the books that it had fallen to me to write.

...Please don't ask me to defend the notion that I carried away from that piece of paper at the age of twenty-three...I am even willing to concede that my conclusion was completely mistaken and my whole career has been grounded in a baseless premise. An idiotic premise. An insane premise.

...Well, whether it was or wasn't my job to do, the job is now completed. For better or for worse, wisely or stupidly, I did it. The books that, according to my lights, had necessarily to follow from each of those sentences are finished and done with. There is now a little red checkmark beside every single sentence on that piece of paper whose existence I have never before disclosed to anyone and which I have kept securely hidden all these years in a safe deposit box in my bank.

...Free at last. Or that's what I would probably be tempted to think if I were either starting out all over again or dead.

      --Philip Roth, March 1994

Unbelievable. Imagine my amazement at happening upon that essay precisely when I did, after weeks of writing on and off about first lines and selecting one of Philip Roth's own for inclusion in my First Line Quiz.

Naturally I wanted to know more and, if need be, to expose the entire Afterword as some literary practical joke on the part of Philip Roth. But it had been ten years since its original publication in both The New York Times Book Review and as the essay, "Juice or Gravy?" I found as an Afterword to the twenty-fifth anniversary edition of Portnoy's Complaint. The trail had grown cold.

There are Roth scholars and well-educated literature junkies who could surely shed some light on the whole affair, I believed. But after following dozens of useless links, I was unable to locate a single essayist, blogger, student or reviewer who could debunk Roth's anecdote.

Until today.

I was finally able to locate one essayist who wrote of Roth's "alleged discovery, in a cafeteria in the late 1950's, of an anonymous, abandoned sheet of paper covered with a paragraph of nineteen unrelated sentences." The essayist considered Roth's "myth of origin" as a "directive to the reader concerning the folly of trying to find coherence in Roth's career."

From there, it took only a bit more sleuthing to identify the essayist as Debra Shostak, Professor of English at the College of Wooster, and author of "Philip Roth: Countertexts, Counterlives," (published, coincidentally, the same month I posted my First Line Quiz). Those credentials are good enough for me, thank you very much.

Free at last.