Recently Read

The Cats of Roxville Station
by Jean Craighead George

It's almost impossible for me to resist anything that has to do with cats. So when I spotted this book at the local Friends of the Library book store, I decided to fork over a couple of bucks and see if I could enjoy a little feline entertainment, in literary form.

Turns out I probably should have stuck to LOL cats on the web.

The Cats of Roxville Station is ostensibly a children's book. It was published by a well-known publisher of children's books (Dutton). It has illustrations like a kid's book. It is short and tells a fictional story. All the earmarks of kid lit are there.

But here's the thing: the author is not really interested in telling a story so much as teaching a lesson about what life is like for feral cats.

Uh-oh. Whenever a kid's book is out to teach you lessons, you should probably run the other way.

It's been a truism throughout my many years of reading children's lit: books that are written to be educational--presumably as well as entertaining--are invariably only marginally educational, and hardly entertaining at all.

So it is with Roxville. The story follows the growth and travails of Rachet, a cat who is abandoned by her family and has to make her way among the hierarchy of feral cats who hang around a village train station and its surrounding neighborhood. In parallel, the text also follows a young boy (also an orphan--see what the author did there?) named Mike as he observes the cats of Roxville, roots for Rachet, and generally conspires in various ways to get his guardian to allow him to adopt his hoped-for cat.

Sounds interesting, right? Well, maybe. In reality, the story reads slow, has little that's particularly compelling to hold the interest, and ultimately just lacks a certain amount of literary punch.

The cats are characters in this story, but not as literary creatures. These are not anthropomorphic, talking animals. The cats are just cats, which means they only contribute to the story through actions, not thoughts, feelings, or any abstract expression thereof. That may be a big reason why this reader, at least, found it very hard to connect to these felines, despite being possessed of a passion for these favorite animals. Feline inscrutability may be fascinating in real life, in your living room--but it comes across as static and uninteresting on the written page.

It's possible that this negative vibe about The Cats of Roxville Station may be the product of expectations, but the author is not off the hook for not meeting the reader's anticipation. Things happen to Mike, and the cats--Rachet in particular, of course--but they rarely rise above the level of ordinary stuff. It is perhaps telling that I am writing this review several months after I finished reading the book. Nothing about the experience was all that compelling. I'm mostly producing this write-up just to get the book off my desk.

Overall, it's not a bad book--it's just not a particularly interesting book. And that's a hard idea to wrap one's mind around if you're as crazy about cats as I am. (And no, this feeling is not the product of my being an adult reading a child's book; even a kid's book, if well-written, should produce a certain amount of fascination and delight in an older reader.) I wouldn't necessarily recommend throwing The Cats of Roxville Station out with the litter, but I don't recommend rushing out to the library to pick up a copy of it, either.

Recently Read

The Book of Dust
Vol. 1: La Belle Sauvage
by Philip Pullman

It has been a long time since His Dark Materials first burst onto the literary landscape--so long that, at this remove, it may be difficult for Philip Pullman fans to actually remember everything that went on in the trilogy. Having that background knowledge helps, but is not necessary, if you decide to pick up La Belle Sauvage, the first volume in Pullman's tripartite return to the world of Lyra Belacqua, daemons, and Dust.

However, what may be (somewhat surprisingly) necessary for Pullman's readers to bring to the author's new epic is a fair amount of patience, and a memory of the goodwill he built with them through his earlier, quite spectacular effort.

The Book of Dust:
Volume 1--La Belle Sauvage

It is probably worth declaring, right now, that the above sentiment is not meant to dissuade anyone from reading La Belle Sauvage, or to suggest that Pullman's new work is a bad book. In many ways, La Belle Sauvage delivers much of the promise that fans would expect from a new episode of the HDM epic. But, when viewed with the inevitably jaundiced eye that one must bring to a new work that hopes to build upon a previous lofty achievement, it becomes all the more apparent that the mark has in fact been missed, even if the author's new effort came about as close as one could expect it to have.

Partially, the problem Pullman faces with this new volume is self-inflicted, because the early chapters of La Belle Sauvage are a pure pleasure to read, and thus the expectations get raised considerably. It takes but a few pages for fans to be reminded of just how good a prose stylist Pullman is; his talent for a clever turn of phrase remains firmly within his mastery, and one can't help but smile--if not outright laugh--at the author's cleverness as he relates the early pages of his tale. The description of the life of innkeeper's son--and soon to be epic hero--Malcolm Polstead is perfectly charming, witty, vivid in creating a sense of time and place, and full of promise of wonderful things to come. Intrigue arrives quickly, and in no time the reader is off on an adventure that appears certain to provide plenty of excitement, enchantment, and maybe a little danger, too.

The problem arises, oddly enough, once the action of the story finally starts to happen. Most of the early chapters of La Belle Sauvage are composed of scene-setting; much of what goes on is talky and lays the groundwork for the adventure that is about to come.

That description is not a disparagement. Quite the contrary: again, Pullman's penchant for clever turns of phrase, his talent at characterization, and his world-building vision all make the early chapters of the book into something fascinating--and those expectations build as the reader awaits the inevitable payoff of a fully realized saga.

Unfortunately, it doesn't quite work out that way. Once the crisis moment comes, and Malcolm, his partner-antagonist Alice (the dishwasher at his parents' inn), and the infant Lyra make their desperate escape from danger, La Belle Sauvage presents the paradox of a story where the action finally starts...but the narrative somehow slows down. As the three kids follow the Thames through the flooded Oxfordshire landscape and down towards London--pursued all the way by a very dangerous character--Pullman's story bogs down somewhat, despite the characters' literal movement and the high narrative stakes.

What's the problem? Mostly, it seems that the author, having plotted himself into an epic flood, feels compelled to give the disaster a fittingly epic amount of attention. Pullman indulges in a great deal of detailed description of the water-logged Oxfordshire landscape--a patch of earth that is obviously much loved by the author, but is most likely quite unfamiliar to most of his readers, and thus not nearly the object of fascination that Pullman obviously believes it to be.

There are other issues with Malcolm and Alice's odyssey. Pullman uses the trip down the river--really, across a temporary ocean that may as well be an ancient Greek hero's Mediterranean--as the setting for a series of stops along the way, most of which serve as the staging for some supernatural tableaux. Most of these scenes veer past the point of diversion and reach the unwanted shore that is distraction. The reader can only hope that Pullman is setting up something for the new trilogy's future volumes, for there's precious little payoff in these vaguely Homeric episodes.

Problems also spring not just from the narrative's set pieces, but also from the book's characters as well. Daemons, Pullman's unique contribution to fantasy literature--and a clever device for converting internal monologues into actual external dialogue--get strangely inconsistent treatment from the author. Malcolm's daemon Asta is always named and lives as a fully developed character in her own right; meanwhile, Alice's daemon Ben is often obscure, sometimes unnamed, and frequently seemingly forgotten. That, and other, similar, almost lazy treatment of other characters' daemons, can be found throughout the tale--an odd bit of literary clumsiness given Pullman's status as the sire of the device.

As for the human characters themselves, Malcolm and Alice start off as antagonists, then inevitably become allies and friends, and perhaps even more than that--which is odd and a little uncomfortable, given the difference in their stated ages. Malcolm starts the book as an eleven-year-old; Alice is described as "about sixteen." That's a major difference in developmental stages, and makes some of the story's later developments strange and improbable. Indeed, when the final confrontation comes with the book's chief villain, it includes a bit of ugliness that is of questionable necessity to the plot. The affront seems gratuitous, and while the guilty party receives justice, the entire scene stains the proceedings and makes the book's denouement arrive under a disturbing cloud.

Further character problems include the outright disappearance of at least two characters who, based upon the early chapters of the book, seem to be poised to play major roles in the later narrative. They don't. Again, one hopes that further developments are being set up for payoff in future volumes, but there are no guarantees.

So then, is La Belle Sauvage a bad book? No. But it feels very incomplete--more incomplete than even a volume 1 of any trilogy should feel. Unintentionally, perhaps, Pullman has put his readers into a story with stakes about as high as those faced by Malcolm, Alice, and the rest of Lyra's guardians: the high stakes of judging a literary work for its quality, and whether that attribute is great enough to make moving forward with the work's sequels worth one's while. I think there's enough in Volume 1 of The Book of Dust to make a fan anticipate Volume 2...but, as with the kids in La Belle Sauvage, it's a precarious thing, and the escape may be a narrow one. We'll see.

Recently Read

The Evolution of Beauty
by Richard O. Prum

Whenever we wish to answer any question about the natural world, and we're in doubt about it, we usually turn to Darwin. Except, that is, when it comes to the question of beauty and how it exists in the world, according to Yale professor Richard Prum. The rejection of Darwin's ideas about sexual selection--as opposed to his theory of natural selection--by the bulk of evolutionary scientists serves as the inspiration for Prum's The Evolution of Beauty, a book written as a methodical (and methodological) counterpoint to the field's slavish devotion to adaptation as the answer to everything.

Prum makes it clear that he does not wish to reject the notion of adaptive mate choice--the evolutionary mechanism that is scientists' preferred answer for why animals evolve in every given way--but simply wishes to reassert an arbitrary character to certain processes that lead to many of the extraordinary forms and behaviors displayed by animals and humans.

The Evolution of Beauty
by Richard O. Prum

Yes, humans, too. We're animals of a sort, and one of the great legacies of Darwin's investigation of evolution was to pull modern human beings out of their Ptolemaic universe, where we viewed ourselves as a special creation that lived in the center of the universe, near to but separated from the rest of the animal kingdom, and into a more scientific and realistic conception of ourselves as being the products of an expansive Tree of Life--animals along with all the rest of this planet's occupants, and sharing many similar characteristics, right down to our genes.

Thus, if you're the type who likes to spend weekends hanging out at the Creationist Museum, this book is probably not for you.

If, however, you have an open mind--especially a mind more open than most of today's current crop of evolutionary scientists, according to Prum--then you're likely to profit from reading The Evolution of Beauty, particularly if you have long pondered the signficance of the differences we see among creatures in the world around us--including the creatures we see at the mall, the grocery store, and the office.

Frankly, the idea that much of the organic world's existence is governed by a notion of aesthetic mate choice--that is, mates are chosen not simply for their Darwinian "fitness," but also for how aesthetically pleasing they are to other members of their species--seems like something fairly obvious. This observer has long understood (to his own personal detriment) how "the birds with the brightest plumage are the ones who get the mates." It seems like a strain to deny that being beautiful works heavily to a creature's advantage, be that creature a Great Argus pheasant, a breed of dog, or a USC cheerleader.

Yet, according to Prum, that has largely been the case within the field of evolutionary science, where the out-sized influence of Alfred Russell Wallace (the co-discoverer with Darwin of natural selection) has worked for over a hundred years to champion the primacy of all-powerful adaptation as the cause of all evolutionary change.

As Prum establishes in his book's early chapters, the turn away from Darwin's theory of aesthetic mate choice as a key component of sexual selection was largely driven by Wallace's personal animus, along with hearty doses of Victorian-era primness, particularly with regards to female sexual autonomy. The implications of "this aesthetic view of life"--as Prum puts it, echoing Darwin's famous closing to Origin of Species--were a little too risque if not revolutionary for the staid world in which the famous naturalist first proposed them, and biological sciences clung to adaptation as a shield against any nervous-making ideas interfering with their solidly orderly and reasonable view of how animals evolve.

But now, in the 21st century--where primness is an idea that has dissolved and the culture has moved well beyond the boundary of quaintness--along comes Prum, an ornithologist who has taken a lifetime of observing birds and their mating rituals and identified behaviors and physical characteristics that simply can't be explained by mere adaptation, or "honest advertising" of physical superiority, as the adaptationist creed would have you believe.

Thus, most of the first half of The Evolution of Beauty presents Prum's examples from the field, where his observations--literally, his bird-watching excursions--of Great Argus pheasants, various species of Manakins and Bowerbirds, and other exotic avians introduced him to behaviors and traits that defy classification as advertisements of an individual bird's fitness. Prum explains how, in most of the species studied, female mate choice served as the engine for creating adjustments to the males who were seeking mates, either through changes in appearance or in behavior, that are not only not adaptive in nature, but in some instances can be considered maladaptive, at least from an individual's point of view. (The mating displays of male Manakins--where multiple males show coordinated behaviors that assure certain birds lose out on breeding opportunities--are particularly effective evidence.) The chapter on duck sex presents a surprisingly dramatic scenario that makes a sound case for just how strong--and urgent--is the female drive to adapt in order to preserve their sexual freedom--a freedom of choice that insists upon being able to preserve a hen's desire to mate with the drake who is most appealing to her.

Later in the book, Prum tackles how aesthetic mate choice works in the human species, from our divergence with our ape cousins all the way through to the rise of homosexuality as an open human sexual phenomenon in these later days (at least as a question of sexual identity, if not the more ancient mechanics of the thing). Subjects tackled in these later chapters are as colorful as the human male's lack of a baculum (penis bone) and the utility of female orgasms (maybe there isn't any, besides the fact that it feels good) to the sobering reality that many of the by-products of human aesthetic mate choice (by women) serve the purpose of nullifying "traditions" of sexual coercion and violence. It's a rich tapestry for sure, and bound to be of interest to anyone with an interest in human sexual dynamics--which is to say, everyone.

Prum's treatment of his subject is scholarly, but that doesn't mean it's too opaque for the average reader to comprehend. The professor doesn't dumb things down; he keeps his reporting as straightforward and clear as possible to serve the purpose of reaching, and influencing, a broad audience. So, too, does his writing style; Prum injects a healthy amount of humor and even pop culture references into his text, which certainly helps to lubricate the nonscientist's understanding of the subjects being discussed. For a work as intelligent and dense as The Evolution of Beauty, the book is in fact a relatively easy and enjoyable read. The author's only real misstep comes in his closing chapter, where he presents as a thematic anchor a gross misinterpretation of an old Greek aphorism, which then serves to undermine his closing argument. Other than that one fault, Prum's presentation is lucid, well-argued, and hard to refute.

So, then, does The Evolution of Beauty triumph in beating back the adaptationists' claims to universality? Yes, I think so, at least as far as the notion of the ubiquitous and unchangeable power of adaptive mate choice is concerned. There's too much here that argues too strongly in favor of that "aesthetic view of life" for all the eggs to be placed in the adaptive basket. But some of Prum's conclusions--"intellectual offerings" may be a more accurate description--remain highly speculative and are (by the author's own admission) still wanting in evidence to be claimed as fact. Overall, the case for aesthetic mate choice is strong, but, as the Scots might say, "not proven."

Still, The Evolution of Beauty is a welcome addition to the scientific bookshelf. Science only progresses--indeed, only happens--when questions are asked, particularly questions that challenge entrenched dogmas. Prum had done more than enough with this volume to raise important questions and set the course for the next generation of evolutionary biologists to find the proof for these ideas.

For the Record, Scale Check

A new low milestone has been achieved, but it's a total cheat.

Why? Because I weighed myself in the aftermath of getting roaringly sick last Friday night.

How sick? I threw up. That's a headline, because I never throw up. Hadn't done so in quite literally decades. And this was no mere spitting up thing; it was total projectile vomiting, Exorcist-style, so violent that my sides ached for days thereafter. I ate nothing the following day, then only ate a little bit in the ensuing couple of days before I weighed myself Tuesday morning, when I recorded the figures shown above.

Plus I wound up suffering some pretty severe diarrhea--some of it at the same time as the vomiting (!)--that only went away (I think) within the last 24 hours (it's Friday evening next as I type this).

So it makes sense that I was quite literally empty of stomach and probably pretty dehydrated, too, when I stepped on the scale.

Bottom line: the weight loss exhibited above is not likely to last, and probably doesn't represent a real push below 250 such as I had hoped to achieve before the end of the year. My weight may have already bounced back up (especially as I haven't exercised in a week, for obvious reasons). But I like seeing a sub-250 number on the scale so much--first time I've seen anything like 245 in at least 15 years--that I just had to post the pic. (I did see a sub-250 reading in late August, but that too was a cheat, as I stepped on the scale after I showed post-exercise, so it was all water-weight loss).

Hopefully, there will be real progress again sometime in the near future.

Recently Read

Call of the Cats
by Andrew Bloomfield

There are two possible takeaways from reading Andrew Bloomfield's Call of the Cats: What I learned about Life and Love from a Feral Colony.

One is that Bloomfield is an uncommonly dedicated animal lover, one who devoted a huge part of his life to taking care of a group of backyard cats for little more than the intangible rewards of good deeds done (and maybe, perhaps, a decent writing contract).

The other potential takeaway is that Bloomfield confirms many observers' perceptions of cat people as weird, off-center, and perhaps more than a little crazy.

Andrew Bloomfield's Call of the Cats

The latter notion comes through to the reader less by way of the author's interaction with the cats in his neighborhood's large feral colony and more through what Bloomfield reveals about himself in the process of telling his story. In various diversions, Bloomfield discusses his time in Nepal, his on-again, off-again work as an astrologer, his spectacularly unsuccessful career as a day trader, his time as a dealer in rare Asian artworks...in short, Bloomfield relates the story of a peripatetic working life in which he apparently did everything except hold a normal job. The implication--no normal job because he's no normal person--seems clear, and certainly reinforces the notion that someone who would dedicate himself so vigorously to taking care of a group of cats--who often feel substantially less care for him--is probably a bit of a misfit, at least as far as the general rules of society go.

Nothing particularly revealing there. Those of us who love cats, in general, would have no problem with characterizing ourselves as misfits. In this world, dog owners are clearly deemed to be the normal people; they fit in, and one could even say they come across as quite satisfied with themselves. No such comfort exists for cat lovers, particularly those who really love cats. Bloomfield, apparently, qualifies on all counts there.

If you can get past the author's eccentricity, you do get an interesting and informative portrait of just how difficult it can be to handle--literally and figuratively--a colony of feral cats. The stories range from heartening--tales of this or that cat's recovery from a seemingly fatal illness--to heartbreaking--the devastation wreaked upon the colony, and particularly its kitten population, by the local predator population (coyotes, raccoons, opossums). It ain't easy living out there in the spaces in between, and it can be a harrowing experience if you're trying to help the cats who have settled into those spaces. That message shines through in Bloomfield's writing, at least as strongly as the characterization of the author himself does.

If there's any problem with Call of the Cats, it's mostly from a sense that the tale told in the book is comprised of many disjointed segments; a sense of flowing narrative rarely comes out of these pages. (Bloomfield's personal diversions do as much harm to that sense of flow as they do to his chance of being perceived as normal.) Also, the cast of feline characters grows too large at certain points for the casual, not-entirely-attentive reader to keep straight. The reader winds up feeling muddled in more than one stretch of the book's length.

But it's hard for a cat lover to make too negative an assessment of a book like this, and for an author who clearly exposes a deep and abiding love for the subjects of his literary inspiration. Those of us who deem ourselves to be true feline friends will find more than enough pleasure from Call of the Cats. And even the dog people among us, if they're feeling charitable towards their eccentric neighbors--and can get past feeling so satisfied with themselves--might get a bit of joy out of this very cat-centric book, too. It's certainly worth picking it up and giving it a try.

For The Record, Scale Check

This marks the barest minimum of progress, but nevertheless it is progress. I shaved another half pound off the weight, as of this past Tuesday, and got things down to 251.0 lbs. This is good, exciting, and impressive, though I fear it also sets me up for some failure in the near future. I know that, since this morning weigh-in on Tuesday, I've probably packed a few pounds back on, thanks to a couple of crises that played hell with my psyche, as well as my daily eating and exercise regimen. Plus it's dangerously hot outside right now, so not much I can do for exercise at the moment.

This might very well be the last of these posts for the remainder of the year, given the season that is approaching...but I've been surprised before. Hopefully, I have more of that in store in the not too distant; otherwise, I'll just have to be satisfied with achieving another low weight milestone for this year, and there is positive promise for the coming times.

For the Record, Scale Check

It's a new low weight. A full pound lower than the last achievement, 251.5 vs. 252.5.

An astute observer will notice that this photo was taken in a location that's different from the place where I usually do my weigh-ins. Indeed, I'm housecatsitting at the moment, and that's actually the floor of the main bathroom in my hosts' house. Being in a different living arrangement--which will continue for another month or so--has been helpful, to say the least. Easier to stay away from bad influences here.

What's also significant here is not simply the number, but when the number showed up. Here in late August is normally when I would have, in previous times, figured that the losing season was just about up, and that there was not likely to be much progress from here on out. But last year, I acheived a new low reading late in the year, sometime in November if I remember right. And I have other motivations pushing me at the moment (mysterious, I know; maybe I'll tell you all about it sometime), so I'm anticipating getting my weight down even lower before the holiday calorie-packing season really gets under way in earnest.

So good news, and there's still promises of better news on the horizon. Cool.

(By the way, I actually got a 249.5 reading a few days prior to this, but that was a cheat; I weighed myself after exercising and on a cavernously empty stomach, not the official "first thing in the morning" weigh-in, so that one doesn't count. But it was the first sub-250 reading I've seen since...frankly, I really don't know since when. Early in 2001? Probably. I can't wait to get the chance to post an official sub-250 pic on a future scale check; hopefully before the end of the year.)

Taylor's Laws

An occasional series in which I promulgate certain laws of nature, to help us better understand the universe around us.

---

Taylor's First Law of Social Motion

For every action there is an opposite, unequal, and stupid reaction.

Explication: A fairly straightforward principle derived from basic observation of the social media sphere. Any thought or idea presented on social media, however minor in importance and innocent in nature, will be met with a reaction that is disproportionate in its scope and negativity.

For The Record, Scale Check

And here we are, back from the lengthy vacation, and 5.5 pounds have dropped away in 26 days. This was almost an anticipated result, something I daresay I expected, based upon previous results and the expected duration of the trip. (I actually cut it short by a couple of days, but for the most part it went exactly as I expected.) 

The good side of this lies in the plain fact that this certainly represents a new low mark achieved in the now almost 10 year project to get myself back to relative healthiness and humanity. And it's a clear new low mark, not just a "barely counts" move where I just barely beat the old mark by a half a pound or so; this is a real, substantial move down the scale.

The down side comes from the fact that, now that I'm back in the cesspool of my everyday existence, I've probably already gained back much of the lost weight. That can be depressing, if I let it be; but for now I'm focusing on the fact that this experience serves as another proof of concept, that if I get myself out and living on my own terms, I can expect to see positive developments in my life, and certainly in terms of my health.

For The Record, Scale Check

This is barely a new low weight, but technically, it fits the description. The really encouraging thing about this weigh-in is that it came before I left for a month-long vacation. Since I tend to lose weight on vacations, I have high hopes that my next weigh-in, after returning to the home base, will mark a new low weight. All in all, things are very encouraging on the weight front.

PC Has Its Limits

Just happened to catch this sign on a trip to the local Safeway this past week:

A sign on a display at the local Safeway. No, there weren't any protesters out front of the store.

It's something of a cliche at this point, but: I can't imagine the amount of outrage that would be expressed over this sign if the ethnicity being...what?...lampooned? mocked? satirized?...by this mixed drink's name were any of the more "endangered" species among us. Carbombs are generally not considered sources of humor these days, though my personal sense of humor can manage it. For the most part, however, the bulk of the bodies around us would tend to see this as in poor taste--if it referenced someone other than a safely white, non-oppressed subgroup.

As it was, the display seemed to attract no particular attention on the day I was in the store. I made a quick move to snap the pic above--it's a little blurry because I didn't linger over it; I expected to get some guff from someone representing the store if I was spotted snapping that shot--just simply to share it with everyone, just to see if anyone finds it in any particular way offensive.

By the way, I highly recommend NOT being offended by this sort of thing; it just seems like people have an affinity these days for getting offended by just about whatever's out there, so I figured I'd stir the pot, if possible, by posting it here. Do with it as you see fit. Enjoy.

Recently Read

Listen, Liberal
Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?
by Thomas Frank

It took a decade and a half of political reporting, Barack Obama’s presidency, and a presidential run by Hillary Clinton to make Thomas Frank get serious.

This is not to suggest that Frank, famously the author of What’s The Matter With Kansas? and other works of political analysis, has never taken his subject seriously. But previous iterations of the author’s work have included healthy doses of incisive wit sprinkled within the cogent political analysis.

Not so much with Listen, Liberal. Frank’s writing remains top-notch, and his deconstruction of the dissolution of what used to be the Democratic Party is smart, convincing, and frankly—no pun intended—more than a bit depressing.

Perhaps Frank himself was getting that same vibe as he was crafting his prose. Even though his previous works covered a lot of the same ground, Frank’s earlier texts always included more than a few laugh out loud moments—either through the author’s exposition on the true absurdity of his subject, or simply via his own clever turn of phrase. But here, as Frank recites the laundry list of charges against today’s allegedly liberal political actors, nothing in the writing ever really comes across as funny.

Listen, Liberal
by Thomas Frank

That should be a minor defect when you’re reading a work of political analysis, but Frank has previously set his bar so high that anything less than a complete reading experience comes across as at least a minor failure.

That critique would be unfair as a total analysis of Frank’s tome, since in all other aspects Listen, Liberal succeeds at its task. Frank presents a powerful case—an indictment, really--that the modern so-called Democratic Party has succumbed to narcissism, rationalization, and just plain bullshit instead of sticking to its guns and truly doing the work of being the “party of the people.”

Frank argues that, through fetishizing “innovation” and that concept’s assorted empty promises, the Democrats of the last twenty or so years—particularly the ones carrying around the surname Clinton—performed a pantomime of the traditional party’s platform. Instead of fighting for working people—labor as a political subunit in particular, but in general everyone who falls below the top 20th percentile in earnings—modern Democrats sold out the poor and the middle class in order to cater to the desires of wealthy donors. In other words, they behaved just like their presumed adversaries in the Republican party, with the exception of preferring to kowtow to tech moguls versus the bigwigs of the extraction industries. Regardless of that minor difference, as Frank makes perfectly clear, the nation found itself deprived of two legitimately separate parties—a real monkey wrench for a political system supposedly built around a “two-party system”—which meant that that bottom 80% wound up deprived of pretty much everything that could have made their lives better. No wonder, given Frank’s analysis, that everyone with a keyboard must now type the improbable phrase “President Trump.”

If there is any real failing of Listen, Liberal, it is that Frank’s personal voice sometimes come through a little too stridently. The author clearly takes sides in this political exegesis; not to say that he’s on the wrong side, but Frank certainly veers away from the traditional standard of objectivity that used to be the gold standard of political journalism. If that blatantly biased viewpoint is a failing, it is certainly an understandable one, given the times and political milieu in which a reporter must work today. As with Hunter S. Thompson back in the early ‘70s—when the great Gonzo journalist famously declared that objectivity was a vice when reporting on that time’s largest political actors, that one needed to report subjectively in order to truly see what a monster Richard Nixon was—Frank finds himself faced with characters who also demand a subjective treatment in order to expose their true natures. It is a greater indictment of Bill and Hillary Clinton, and their various political satellites, that they have sunk to such Nixonian depths that make such a subjective viewpoint necessary, than it could ever be of a journalist as worthy as Tom Frank.

All things considered, Listen, Liberal overcomes its weaknesses to stand as a welcome addition to the author’s title list. Frank remains an essential guide to the political movements of our times, and this latest work earns its place within Frank’s impressive canon. What will raise Listen, Liberal up from a good to a great work of political journalism will be if its readers—hopefully including big names within the ostensible “people’s party”—take Frank’s lessons to heart and stop caring so much about obeying the right billionaires, and start caring much more about helping the millions who need good, fair, and equitable government.

For The Record, Scale Check

As indicated in this space not so long ago, the chances of further progress being made on pushing the weight down were pretty good going into this new year, given the success I saw last fall--and here's the proof. This marks the first time my weight has been below 260 since the year 2001; that's why I like to call the above "the space odyssey." Ha.

All in all, this was a very satisfying new low weight to achieve, given its milestone nature. Besides, a number below 260 has a certain ring to it. Yes, you're still wildly overweight if you weigh 258.5 pounds at 5' 10", but it's not as outrageous as, say 295. Or 340, for that matter. Two fifty-eight and a half is the weight of an NFL linebacker, not a morbidly obese loser. Of course, the linebacker is six-three and completely ripped, which I am not (nor ever will be). But I'm feeling better about myself, and--more importantly--I believe I've found a formula that can sustain this sort of weight loss going forward, so long as nothing truly untoward happens.

And in case anyone is looking at this picture and wondering, "What the hell is going on with his leg? And his feet?" The answers: yes, my feet look weird and ugly. Partially it's just that's how they are; partially, it springs from the fact that I get a lot of dead skin on my feet. I don't have a solution for this problem; I soak my feet and rub them down when I can, but that just doesn't happen often enough. I've tried using a foot scrub, but the results weren't so great. Not sure what to do to make the feet (especially the toes) look better. It's just something to deal with.

The damage on my right shin, on the other hand, is less problematic--in fact, it's part of what's helping me lose weight. I get almost all of my exercise from bike riding (looking into changing that, but for now it's the bike or nothing). A typical thing that happens is, when I get on the bike--you mount a bike from the left, like the way you mount a horse--I have to kick the right pedal around to position it to get into starting position for my right foot. And that often means I wind up stopping the spinning pedal with my right shin. My pedals happen to be large, heavy duty metal plates--I've snapped pedals before--so my shin, as a consequence, frequently takes quite a whack, often strong enough to break the skin. That's why I often have broken skin on my right shin. My left shin, in contrast, doesn't take the same abuse, and thus looks normal. Bottom line: the broken skin on my right leg means I've been exercising, enough to reach this new low weight of which I'm mighty proud. Thanks for asking.

The Real Reason Trump Won

Since we're rapidly approaching inauguration day, and we've spent the last two and a half months being buried under analysis about how and why Donald Trump pulled off his presidential victory, now might be a good time to mention the one thing that--as yet, in all the coverage I've read on the subject--has yet to be mentioned. That would be the real reason that Trump won. Namely, this:

Trump won because he was the one with the hot blonde chick standing next to him.

Reel Reviews

Straight Outta Compton -- Entertaining and accessible enough that this movie could probably make some rap fans--or at least N.W.A. fans--out of people who really aren’t all that into rap music. The only real complaint about this flick is that the story is too big for one movie; there’s no way the whole tale has been covered in full in this treatment. Nevertheless, this movie makes the case that these young guys deserve even more respect than they ultimately got, not just making cool music, but for being brave, sharp, and for seeing the big picture, too. Definitely worth a look, and a listen.