I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: CRASH TEST DUMMIES-Jingle all the way… (2002).

Even though the Crash Test Dummies are often seen as a joke band or a one hit wonder (which I guess they are), I’ve liked them for a while (their earlier stuff a lot more than their later stuff, admittedly).  But it seemed like they’d have a fun take on Christmas music.

And it starts out in a comical sort of way with Brad Robert’s deeper-than-ever voice reciting about his life in Los Angeles, where it is warm and sunny at Christmas time.  I like that he rhymes 24th with up north.  The spoken section is quite loud in the mix (it sounds like he is right in your ear).  Unfortunately, that is the case when he starts singing too–he is uncomfortably loud in the mix and it sounds like he is holding back because of it–he doesn’t sound great and his voice sounds more comical than interesting.  Which is a shame because the music (with cheesey keyboards) is great.

Roberts sings lead on about half of the songs.  Ellen Reid sings lead on the other half except for a couple where they split lead duties.

The rest of Robert’s songs include: “Jingle Bells” (which is certainly comical–it sounds like a chain gang song with the “Hey!s” sounding almost like a prison chant).  It’s weird and cool though (even if his voice is once again too loud in the mix).  “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” has his voice mixed much better–he seems to be really singing.  And this version–a loungey/jazzy rendition is much great fun.  “God King Wenceslas” sounds proper (with Reid’s close backing vocals).  It has a pretty penny whistle keeping the song going.

Ellen Reid has a great voice and I love hearing her sing.  But in the first two songs she sings lead on in this disc she sounds like she is singing too slowly.  “O Little Town of Bethlehem” especially sounds like the music is going to pass her up at any minute.  I also don’t like the country vibe of the song.  “In the Bleak Midwinter” is also (intentionally) slow, which I don’t like.  Perhaps I just don’t like this song (although I do think the melody is lovely).  “The Little Drummer Boy” is beautiful and Robert’s bass backing vocals are perfect.  “Silent Night” is done in a countryish style, but I like this version.  Although normally this song can make me cry, this version absolutely does not–too honky tonkish.

The final song, “The Huron Carol” is quite formal and proper–just Reid and a piano opening the song.  It sounds very holy, very pretty.  When Robert’s bass backing vocals come in, it adds more depth to the song.  And it’s a lovely way to end.

[READ: October 30, 2014] Freedom

I read this a couple months ago and then got so caught up in reading other things that I never got around to posting about it.  And that’s a bummer because I really liked the book a lot and I fear that I won’t remember everything I wanted to say about it.

I had read a couple of excerpts from the book in the New Yorker (quite some time ago).  They were helpful in grounding the story for me, but they didn’t prepare me for the breadth of the story.  It follows one family, the Berglunds, through several decades, focusing on each of them in great detail as they navigate through the Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush and a smidge of the Obama years.

The Berglunds are a liberal family.  They were among the first white families to move onto their urban street in St. Paul, Minnesota (after white flight to the burbs).  Patty is a charming (some say smug) homemaker and Walter is a lawyer (public defendant, naturally).  They have two kids, Jessica and Joey.  Patty dotes on Joey to an embarrassing degree (Joey is embarrassed by it, Jessica is infuriated by it and even Patty is kind of embarrassed when she really thinks about it).  At the same time she is rather neglectful of Jessica.  Naturally, Jessica becomes quite the success (loves reading, committed to the environment), while Joey rebels and finds all kinds of ways to disappoint them and make money.  (This isn’t a bad thing, but the family has plenty of money and Joey doesn’t need to (especially not the way he goes about it).  Not to mention Walter and Patty are not into the money for money’s sake thing.

The book opens that there was some “news” about Walter. He and Patty had moved to Washington DC two years earlier.  He clearly did something bad (we won’t find out until much later).  But that serves as an introduction to the Berglunds.  And then we go back to see them, years earlier, settling into St Paul.

We learn so much about these characters (Franzen is nothing if not excellent at creating well-rounded characters–characters who you care about and get mad at when they act badly, even if it is completely believable).  Patty grew up in New York and received a full scholarship to play basketball in Minnesota.  It was considered odd that she clearly loved her own family so very much and yet she showed no evidence of her roots–never speaking of anyone in her family.

The Berglunds irritated their neighbors because they seemed so oblivious to troubles in the world. The Monaghans across the street were especially vexed by them.  Seth (the father) seemed to have a crush on Patty and Carol (his wife) was jealous and thought Patty was too smug and “perfect.” But their daughter Connie loved Joey.  She stared at him and waited for him everywhere.  She was clearly obsessed with him for years, although he never did anything about it. Eventually, the Monaghan’s split up and Carol started dating a right-wing guy named Blake.  Blake renovated their house in a hideous way, much to the Berglund’s dismay (the tension across the street is hilariously uncomfortable).  And even worse, Joey, annoyed by his parents, decides to actually take up on Connie’s persistent waiting and they start dating (and having sex).  And, eventually, when his parents have had enough of him, Joey moves into Connie’s house.

The second section of the book is an autobiography (requested by her therapist) from Patty.  It’s here that we learn all about Patty’s background.  Her parents ares till alive.  They doted over her other siblings and encouraged them in every way possible.  But they never once went to one of her basketball games–even though she was exceptional.  The straw that broke the camel’s back was when Patty was raped and her family did nothing about it (the boy was a big wig in town and it was at a party, so she must have wanted it, right?). Her coach tried to help her out but the resistance was too great and Patty never forgave her parents.

There is a big subplot about how the siblings divide their inheritance and how each one of them needs it for reasons that the others think are stupid or horrible.  Patty’s siblings prove to be wonderful in both comic relief and in real emotional sadness.

We also meet Patty’s oldest best friend, a girl named Eliza who became obsessed with Patty in college.  Patty normally hung out with basketball friends, but Eliza was a solitary person.  Eliza obsesses over Patty and slowly devolves into craziness.  It is painful to watch, and Patty’s obliviousness to what happens to Eliza is also painful to watch.  But it is through Eliza that she meets Richard Katz.  Richard is a budding rock star–broody and cool, but a major slut, he will sleep with anyone.  Patty is smitten, but he plays it very cool with her.  His roommate is Walter (who we know becomes Patty’s husband).  He falls heavily for Patty and that has something to do with why Richard backs off.  Richard and Walter could not be more different–Walter is polite and sensitive, Richard is an obnoxious ass but, somehow they are friends and seem to complement each other.  At first Patty is turned off by Walter and thinks he might be gay.

When Richard leaves school for New York, Patty, who is supposed to move in with Walter, tags along with Richard in the hopes that something will happen.  But it doesn’t and she is devastated and relieved at the same time.  Walter never finds out and she is happy about that.  Indeed, her autobiographical section is very sympathetic towards Walter, even as their marriage and love begins to disintegrate.  She was even a little sorry for him about his love for her when they were in college.

The story jumps to 2004.  Over the years, Richard had become a very successful musician who was once a punk (with The Traumatics) and then released an introspective album of songs (presumably about Patty) that introduced to a whole new group of (rabid) fans.  But he grew tired of the whole scene.  And as we see him in 2004, he has given up music and became a roofer (he was always handy).  We learn a lot about Richard’s life and his regrets.  We also see him get interviewed by a local boy who recognizes him and thinks that an interview with Richard will get him into the pants of a girl he has a crush on (Richard has interesting thoughts about that).

Meanwhile, Walter has taken a job with the Cerulean Mountain Trust.  They are a fracking company doing mountain top removal in West Virginia.  He hates that they are fracking but their long-term plan is to remove the mountain and replace it with a bird sanctuary.  Walter has become obsessed with birds (echoes of Franzens’ own obsession) and he is willing to look at the long view of this environmental disaster to when his birds will be protected.  It turns out that the main guy (who is super rich) who is funding the project loves the same bird as Walter–he does indeed want to protect the bird but also knows he will make a ton of money from fracking.  This is one of the moments when you struggle with Walter’s behaviors.

Walter’s partner is a pretty young Indian woman named Lalitha.  She seriously has crush on Walter (despite him being much older, she genuinely respects his committment to the future).  And even though he and Patty are at this time more or less separated, he feels that he cannot doing anything with Lalitha.  In part for Patty’s sake and in part because he is too much of a gentleman to take advantage of his employee.  There is an intense moment when Walter brings this beautiful Indian woman to a small restaurant in West Virginia and racism rears its head.  But Lalitha is genuinely committed to the project as well (she works almost like Walter’s reasonably person when he gets pig headed and stupid).  She’s also a huge supporter of zero population growth and plans to get her tubes tied.

In an nice twist (well, not for Walter), Walter finds out about Patty’s lust for Richard (which he always suspected) and he and Richard are basically no longer friends (interestingly Patty and Richard are also no longer friends).  But then Lalitha learns that they can use Richard’s fame for their campaign.  Richard feels bad and kind of wants to help, but doesn’t really want to get involved, so he is torn.  They are brought into a tension-filled scenario of pledges and broken promises.

And just as that story line is coming to a head, we jump over to Joey’s story.  Joey has been tied to Connie for a long time, trying his best to dump her but never being able to.  Joey starts making headway in some Republican circles even scoring some big jobs with this college roommates’ wealthy father.  In a lengthy and intense subplot, he also tries to seduce his roommates sister who is the hottest woman he has ever seen.  he hopes that if things work out with her, then he can genuinely dump Connie.  But Joey makes a lot of bad decisions and eventually bottoms out (at one point he has his hands in a toilet looking for a precious item that has left his body).  Joey acts like an asshole but is a good person at heart and you cant help but root for him (most of the time).

As the story gets about a third of the way in, Walter gets more and more intense about his beliefs.  He starts getting angrier about just about everything.  They are trying to get their West Virginia job finished and unfortunately the story gets preachy.  I agreed with everything Walter said, but even I was getting tired of the doom and gloom and preaching. Luckily it doesn’t last for too long–and Walter doesn’t really come off as the “right” person either.

We also get to see Jessica’s life and her awkward situation of being stuck between her parents while they fight.  She has become angry and suspicious of just about everyone over the years, but she believes more than ever in environmental causes.  Despite her suspicion of Lalitha, she winds up helping Walter as best she can.

Especially after Walter has his public meltdown (which is awesome and is how the book started).  This meltdown gets all the green kids in America on his side and brings renewed interest into Walter’s life and beliefs.

The musical side of the book is interesting too. We learn about Richard’s writing process and we seem him evolve from a college guitarist (dragging Walter to shows even though he hated them) to a punker with The Traumatics and then as a solo guy.  We learn about his massive libido and his regrets about the same.  And once Richard has gotten older, we see him freak out about being too old to be cool.  Perhaps most unusual to me was that there is an entire section where Richard and Walter go to see “the suddenly hot band Bright Eyes, fronted by a gifted youngster named Conor Oberst.”  There’s a lot of information about Oberst, too.  It’s so weird to see real person in this book (or any book).  And how on earth did he pick this one singer of the multitudes out there?

There are plenty of threads that I have left dangling here and Franzen does a great job of tying them together.  There are some supremely sad moments in this story.  Not the least of which is seeing these people who we have grown to know in such great detail, make such horrible mistakes and behave so childishly.  How two people who supposedly love each other can fall so far apart and how friends can hurt each other so badly.  It also looks at the challenges of growing old while the world changes from what you know is right into a place that you don’t even recognize anymore.  And how people can simply die on you, right when you need them the most.  And so much more.

I was totally hooked on this book.  I wound up staying up way too late reading an extra thirty or forty pages.  I finished this 600 page book so quickly it was quite a surprise.  There is something about the way that Franzen writes which I find utterly compelling.  He also really explores people’s lives and makes you feel like a part of the family.  I genuinely cared about these people and had to keep reading to see if they got out of the holes they dug for themselves.

And even though I’ve written so much, I have barely scratched the surface of all of the depth that he throws into these plots and characters.  It’s a story about family and America and music and the environment and marriage and so much more.

I have now read Franzen’s two latest novels but have never read his first two.  I have read (from Franzen himself) that he thinks his first two books aren’t as good as these last two.  This of course makes me reluctant to jump into those early ones (especially since they are also long).  But I do plan to read at least one of them in 2015.