I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: THE DUCKWORTH-LEWIS METHOD-The Duckworth Lewis Method (2009).

This is a CD released by the combined forces of Neil Hannon of The Divine Comedy and Thomas Walsh of Pugwash.  And if that weren’t enough of a sales pitch, the title of the band is a method of calculating cricket scores!  And even more…in concordance with that, this CD is largely about cricket.  Huzzah!  Buncha sellouts.

I don’t know a thing about cricket, but I know about great orchestral pop, and this disc has it in spades.  Some of the more obvious cricket songs are even understandable to non cricketers (the themes of “Jiggery Pokery” are familiar to anyone who has failed in a sport–and musically it sounds like a silent film soundtrack).

“The Age of Revolution” begins with an olde-fashioned soundtrack as well (jazz swing, including tap dancing) but quickly jumps into a dancey discoey verse (the two soundtracks blend surprisingly well in the chorus).  And the revolution?  Well, it has something to do with cricket.  Next, “Gentlemen and Players” is a wonderfully Divine Comedy-esque track complete with harpsichords.

“The Sweet Spot” is another discoey dancey track with some funky bass work (and innuendo whispered vocals).  And “Rain Stops Play” is a fun musical interlude.

“Mason on the Boundary” is the first track that seems distinctly Pugwash-y.  Hannon and Walsh have similar singing styles, and I find it hard to know who is who sometimes.  But this track is clearly Walsh’s and it’s very nice indeed.  Similarly, “Flatten the Hay” has that distinct Pugwash XTC/Beach Boys vibe and it’s quite good.

“The Nighwatchman” is also a very DC type song (it even sounds a bit like “The Frog Princess” but pulls away before being a repeat of that great single by introducing some very 70s sounding strings).  The rest of the disc follows in this same wonderfully orchestrated pop feel.  This a great record that, as far as obscure bands that get no statewide attention go, is top notch.

Oh, an it’s even more fun with headphones!

[READ: October 9, 2010] Skippy Dies

Wow, there’s a lot going on in this book.  It’s exhausting just trying to think of all the topics covered: boarding school life, failed romance (two big ones), life as a teacher, the appeal of pop singer Bethani, the Catholic priest sex scandal, drugs of all kinds, sneaking into a girls’ school, World War I, institutional cover ups, M-theory–which is pretty much the entire universe, and donuts.

But let’s start at the beginning.  Yes.  Skippy dies.  In the first couple of pages.  And what’s fascinating about this is that we don’t care.  I mean, in the scene where he dies, he’s not even the major character.  But then Skippy turns out to be more or less the glue of the book once the story proper begins.

Skippy resides at Seabrook school in Dublin (the best, most prestigious Christian academy in the country–sorry Gonzaga).   His roommate is Ruprecht (perhaps the strangest major character name I’ve read in a long time).  Ruprecht is a large boy who is incredibly smart (he will single-handedly raise the school’s average on the year’s final exams).  He is a computer geek who is obsessed with aliens and SETI.  And he hopes to be able to communicate with the other world by using techniques suggested in M-Theory.  The book does an admirable job explaining M-theory and string theory.  I’m not going to take up space here, but there’s a fine description at Wikipedia (or, if you don’t like Wikipedia, here’s an academic explanation that is written for the lay person).

Anyhow, Skippy and Ruprecht are two of a few dozen boys who reside full time at the school.  (Most of the other kids are day students).  And they have a cadre of half a dozen friends that they hang out with who make jokes at each other’s expense.  It’s a very realistically written entourage.  Mario is Italian and claims to have had sex with many many women (thanks to his lucky condom which he has had for three years).  Dennis is the ballbreaker.  He’s the abusive one (but by most standards, he’s not a bad guy).  And a few other hangers on.

This story of dorm life is a good one.  The boys are funny, their stories believable, even if they are all eccentric in their own way.  And then, one day, Skippy sees a girl playing frisbee at the girls’ school across the way (Ruprecht has a telescope which he uses for the stars, while eveyrone else uses it for the girls’ school).  And Skippy winds up becoming rather obsessed with the unknown “frisbee girl.”

This girls’ school plays a part in the story in another way too.  Carl and Barry are the Seabrook’s thugs.  When Barry hits upon the idea of selling ADD meds to the locals (as diet pills), it’s the girls’ school that he mostly preys on.  For yes, this story is also about drugs.

Skippy has been popping pills for some time (we know they make him feel better, but we don’t know where they came from until very late in the story).  But it’s Carl and Barry who are the major drug source in the school.  Until, that is, the real drug dealers get wind of them. (There’s a pretty frightening scene when they are caught).   But it turns out that the girl that Carl has a special sales relationship with is–unknown to anyone else–frisbee girl.

But lest we think this story is about a lost love opportunity, another major plot focuses on Howard the Coward.  Howard is a history teacher at Seabrook.  He is dating an American woman who writes reviews for a tech magazine and so is always getting free cool gadgets to play with.  Howard could be a minor character who impacts the kids lives, but rather, Murray has made Howard a fully realized person as well.  We see his (despairing) life now, and we also see Howard’s past, specifically how he received his nickname.

Without giving any of that away, I’ll reveal that Howard attended Seabrook as a kid.  And several of the people that he knew in school are also teaching there now.  For many, the past is a bitter pill.  So when a substitute teacher comes in to the school to teach geography and she happens to be super hot, Howard begins to look to the future–which can only lead to more trouble.

The students also become keenly interested in the hot substitute, and since she is a geography teacher, they also becomes keenly interested in the earth.

But it is Howard who really can’t stop thinking about her.  He even has a hard time talking to her.  When he does speak to her, it’s all about school.  He complains that he can’t reach his kids the way she can, she says he ought to read Robert Graves, the poet who brought WWI to life.   He takes this to heart (as a way to impress her) and slowly becomes obsessed not just with Graves,  but with WWI in general.  And Howard winds up spending an inordinate amount of time teaching WWI to the kids, even though the textbook only has one page about it.

There comes a huge discussion about WWI and its impact on Ireland. I don’t know if any of this is true, although why wouldn’t it be, but the author spends a lot of time (all of it interesting) about the few Irish soldiers who fought in WWI.  They were largely killed off, but those who returnnd were not only ignored, they were actually treated as traitors for serving with the English at the time of the Easter Rising.  And as such, WWI is a sort of ignored part of Ireland’s past.  (There’s some information online about this, and I’m sure some of our Irish friends can fill in any details..or maybe they can’t, it’s that much of a cover up!).

Meanwhile, Ruprecht is desperately trying to communicate with the otherworld.  His SETI work has him sending signals into outer space at regular intervals.  But M-theory has inspired him to try something more direct and obvious–and it involves Optimus Prime.

While all of this is going on, Seabrook is having an identity crisis.  It’s the 140th birthday of the school.  And as the number of priests dwindle in Ireland, the number of lay staff at the school is increasing, including, for the first time, a lay person as acting Principal while the Principal is in the hospital.  The lay person, Greg “The Automator”, is doing everything he can to remain in this post.  And one of his inspirations is to host a special 140th anniversary concert designed to secure his legacy.  The concert grows in Greg’s mind into an RTE broadcast with special DVD sales.

So why not have the best musicians in the shcool perform.  There’s some very funny stuff in here–the white gangstas are very amusing and Trevor Hickey’s attempt to audition with his gastrointestinal prowess is childishly hilarious.  But Murray also knows not to make this a giant farcical scene.  As for the real musicians, the school’s best hard rock band will play, and, The Automator hopes, at least one classical piece will feature.

Ruprecht plays french horn, and he manages to enlist three other kids into a quartet that will perform Pachelbels’ Canon.  And, since we know just how important this concert is to the school, we can tell that something exciting is going to happen there.  But there are so many ways it could go, that up until the last you really can’t guess what might happen (I loved that about the book).

The book is over 650 pages.  It is really jammed with information.  I haven’t mentioned the pivotal school mixer, or Skippy’s family or even Ruprecht’s past.  And yet, for all of these characters, it was quite a fast read.  The pacing is excellent.  Murray jumps back and forth to the different plot lines every few pages, so you never get bogged down in one particular area.  All of the plot lines are interesting and they are all vaguely interconnected, so it keep the whole story moving forward.

Skippy’s first real crush is very real, and you can feel the longing he has.  And, lest you think that it is all one sided, “frisbee girl” also gets fleshed out (her name is Lorelei).  Her family life is explored in detail, and her actions are given full explanation.  Howard’s crisis of character is also palpable, and very believable.  And all of the ancillary characters are three dimensional and real.  Even the drugs dealers have a side plot which is well fleshed out.   The whole Ruprecht/SETI thing goes off in a direction that I couldn’t believe (and takes up a lot more of the story than you’d think) and which I couldn’t wait to read more about.

The story is funny and clever, it covers all of these diverse topics with surprising detail, and yet they never overwhelm with technical data (explanations of string theory are often interrupted by jokes about farting or sex, which keeps the theory from getting too highfalutin).

After all of the intense scientific/metaphysics that the story builds up, the ending is surprisingly down to earth.  At first I was a little disappointed that the story ends so grounded on terra firma.  And yet, as with any comedown from a drug, or any attempts to communicate with outer space, the ending makes perfect sense.  All of the world’s injustices are just a part of history.

This is a sprawling book, and it is a lot of fun.  But it’s also quite dark and bad things do happen to good people.  And you may never look at a donut the same way again.  Mmm, donuts.

I look forward to more from Murray in the future.

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And here’s an interesting piece about the book