Three Hypothoses

I put forward these three observations in the hopes that they might be swooped up by scientists, theologists, or Y.A. genre novel kid detectives for further study. (If used, please mention me in your dissertation, sermon, and/or Scholastic Books author review page.)

1. The sound my work computer makes when I get a pop-up error message ("ba-ding!") is the same sound featured in the Naughty by Nature 1991 hit "OPP."

2. Tracy Chapman's 1988 "Fast Car" is the same song as John Cougar Mellencamp's "Jack and Diane" from 1982, only with different lyrics and a different tempo.

3. Shane, the blond kid on the latest season of "The Next Food Network" star, has the same mouth as Jaimie Oliver.


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BRLP Week Four/Book Four

The Yiddish Policemen's Union (464 pp) was the best thing I've read from Chabon, a profluent mix of alternative history and noirish dime novel. I liked it even better than Kavalier and Clay (656 pp), actually. YPU continues some themes of identity and alienation from that earlier book, particularly relating to Jewishness and homosexuality. It's kind of right and fitting, I think, that certain authors continue to track through and explore particular themes and tropes, as this sort of fits the way that we continue to construct and problematize our own lives. (A discussion along these lines with my friend Bayard led to him suggesting that Chabon may not let go of these issues, "the way that some people never get over Vietnam, or opening for Nirvana.")

Having read Phillip Roth's The Plot Against America (416 pp) earlier this year, I'm ready to re-enroll as an undergraduate English major so that I can write a 3 and 1/3-page term paper with this title: "It Could Be Worse: Alternative History and the Jews." (Or I could skip it, and save myself the B-.)

After three novels, I felt BRLP Week Four was high time to investigate some recent non-fiction. I was hoping for The Age of American Unreason (384 pp) or Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine (720 pp), but neither were available. I had a false start with a book of J.M. Coetzee's book reviews, which I recognized would be hard slogging and dry, so I returned to the library on Saturday for Jim Rasenberger's America 1908.

So far, fairly interesting, both for the comparisons between now and then, and for all the weird exploration stuff (flight, polar expeditions, the New York to Paris automobile race) that just aren't part of the culture anymore, seemingly. For one thing, I wasn't aware of the speculation in the press about Theodore Roosevelt's sanity. And let's face it, hunting bears and having that moustache and using exclamations like "Bully!" and "Capital!" and starting a Bull Moose party? Crazy. He went blind in one eye after a boxing match with one of his White House subordinates, and was an early proponent of simplified spelling. I'm a fan of his daughter Alice, though, of whom T.R. said: "I can be President of the United States, or I can control Alice. I cannot possibly do both."

You'll also recognize Theodore as the only president to have a toy named after him, at least until someone develops a doll that garbles speech, mongers fear, and starts interminable wars for personal profit.