I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: CULTS-Cults (2011).

This album was on many year end lists in 2011.  But it’s really tough for me.  I really really want to like it.  The cover alone is very cool.  And in fact, I do like it quite a bit.  The songs are simple and catchy and after just one or two listens they are very easy to sing along to.  So what’s the problem?  The album sounds an awful lot like the girl group/Phil Spector sound of the 6os which I really do not like.  I have never enjoyed that era of music–and I think it is mostly something to do with those singer’s voices.

Cults singer Madeline Follin has a delivery that reminds me a lot of that sort of Ronettes vibe.  Even though the music is not like that–Cults is much more 90s indie sounding (although the drum beats are often the same) I’m conflicted about how much I enjoy the record.

When I can just lighten up and bop along it’s wonderful. Indeed, some of the album embraces other styles.  I hear the mood of  Twin Peaks on “You Know What I Mean”  And songs like “Never Hear Myself” sound more contemporary which takes that girl group edge off.  “Never Saw the Point” has a strange Japanese quality to it that makes it stand out from the rest of the tracks.

I found that after listening a few times I could get past the parts I don’t like and enjoy that punky fun.  Although I don’t imagine that I would get another Cults album after this.  But you never know.

[READ: January 20, 2013] Buddy

I rarely get a book that I don’t like.  So I rarely get a book that I don’t finish.  This book seriously had me considering not finishing it.  In fact, I even said I wasn’t going to finish it.  But I plugged on, got the minor amount of redemption I expected and am now done with it.

So what was so bad about this book?  Well, first, the title suggests that this will be a book about a rooster.  Perhaps I should have wondered how McGrory was going to write 300 pages (yes) about a rooster.  And then answer is, he isn’t.  He’s going to write 300 pages about McGrory.  I had no idea who he was when I checked out the book.  He is a columnist for the Boston Globe and, God help us, a novelist.  And I should have known that, since it was in the biography section that it would be all about him, but again, I was charmed by the cover and the title.

So the book opens with a brief bit about Buddy, a rooster who lives, sometimes, in their house.  And whom McGrory clearly does not like.  McGrory lives in the Boston suburbs, although with a house with nearly an acre of property I’m not sure exactly how suburban that is.  My family lives in NJ we have almost two acres and we aren’t really in the suburbs of any big cities.  We also have chickens–a lot of chickens and a few roosters.  And this is why I wanted to read the book–see how this guy adapts to a rooster in his life.

After that first chapter, the next 120 some pages have nothing to do with Buddy.  They are all about McGrory and his dog, Harry.  As any dog owner, McGrory thinks that his dog is the best, smartest, coolest etc dog in the world.  And that’s fine, although I didn’t need over 100 pages to be told that.  What I also learned in those 120 pages is that McGrory is a smug, entitled jackass.  He somehow believes that he is a regular guy although he is going to a vet on Newbury Street (I lived in Boston, that’s a swanky street…  I can’t even imagine what a vet charges there) and because of his reporting job, he has access to all kinds of fancy places to eat, people to meet, sports teams to see etc.  He also, and let’s make this very clear, things that the suburbs are a vast wasteland, that kids are overindulged and, well, every other cliche that rich, cranky, white men complain about (some of which I agree with mind you, but he seems so bitter about it all).

So Harry dies (which is very sad, but if I wanted to read about a dog, I would have read Marley & Me).  And all of that was a lead up to how he met his current wife (he ex-wife doesn’t fare so well in the book, although she’s not demonized either).  His current wife is his vet from Newbury Street.

Pam comes across as a saint, and frankly as a woman who does not deserve this guy–if she actually reads the book she’ll have to wonder what she was getting into.

The reason Pam’s little girls have a rooster is because one of the daughters incubated a chick for a science fair project.  And when it is first hatched it is adorable and cute and they call it Buddy.  They don’t know it’s a rooster (that’s impossible to tell), until much later.  Now, one way you know that the McGrory family is not average is not that they have a  rooster as a pet–many people have chickens for pets (although they prefer hens to roosters).  It is because they let the bird in the house.  A lot.  But it’s also because they sent out blood work to have the rooster’s sex determined.  This was an expensive and time-consuming project and frankly, you’ll be finding out soon enough.  (He also says that the girls have every American Girl doll, which if true is shocking  and if an exaggeration is not a good one).  And again  I’m cool with his family being rich, but not when he acts like the poor, put-upon average guy.  No.

So the long and  the short of it is that he and Pam move to the burbs (and build a palatial estate for Buddy–seriously–which he has the temerity to complain about he expense of).  And then… his worst fears are realized–they go to a restaurant and don’t get great service.  And we weep for him.  We do.

Oh, no that’ right the book is about the rooster. So he hates the rooster–abjectly hates it.  And the rooster hates him and attacks him whenever it gets the chance.  Now, we have had a few mean roosters (we call them baddy rooster) and they have attacked me and the kids and they are frightening but not anything you can’t deal with.  And a Google search will give you plenty of suggestions for dealing with one (that don’t involve killing it which is clearly not an option here).  But no, he gets chased around, hoping beyond hope that some horrible accident will befall his future stepdaughters beloved pet.  This rooster is so beloved that it comes into the house (and even sleeps in the house in the winter–and on that point I’m with him–no chickens in the house, they shit everywhere and frankly don’t have anything to scratch in.  And as for the cold, they are birds–sparrows live in the cold with no problem.  And if you’re really worried about the cold, insulate the palace that he lives in).  But anyhow,  this is a major pet for the girls and his wife.  But he wants it dead.  Just let that sink in.  This is not a guy inconvenienced, this is a jackass who is jealous of his girlfriend’s daughters’ pet.

And later when he moves to the burbs and has to, gasp, shovel his own driveway–he learns that it’s hard work!  Like maintaining a house–exhausting!  I suppose we’re meant to empathize with the backbreaking snow shoveling scene, but you know, he seems like such a martyr about it (never have so many words been written about shoveling a driveway)  that I just want to hit him with a snowball.

Maybe he’s supposed to be funny (I have o idea if this is written in the style of his column–if he’s a curmudgeonly guy in his work or what).  The only funny lines in  the book were when he said, “there I go sounding like a complete jackass again” (247) which should have been the subtitle of the book and a little later when he says, “I am not by nature a complainer” (257–that’s after 250 pages of complaining mind you).

As for McGrory’s writing, I was shocked to hear that he had written four novels because his prose is so turgid, so cliche strewn so melodramatic… and this is all about himself!  I can’t imagine what he does with fictional characters.

The end of the book is meant as a kind of redemption  in which he learns his lessons from the bird and blah blah blah.  But it’s too late by then–if it takes a rooster to teach you how to be not just a family man, but a decent, unselfish human being then there’s a lot more you need to work on that coping with the commute home.

I will admit that the scene where he read to his stepdaughter was very very touching and did make me tear up a bit, but then I’m a sucker for reading.  If he had made an article about that scene and I’d read that without the rest of t he book, I’d have a very different opinion of McGrory.  As it is, spoiled, entitled jackass is what I am left with.