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Review of “Butcher’s Crossing”

Butcher's CrossingButcher’s Crossing by John Williams

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is an exciting and well-written novel, setting the viscous brutality and gentle kindness of men against the backdrop of a vivid, nostalgic depiction of the American West. The aspects of human nature which Williams chooses to contrast are counterbalanced by the opposing forces in the wild lands of the frontier he describes. The ambitions and follies of men play out against a nature which is at once movingly beautiful and harshly indifferent – a country of inner truth and stark emptiness, reflected in the eyes of the men who seek to explore and dominate it.

Williams sketches the characters and dialog in direct, sparse terms; the blend recalls both gritty westerns as well as some of my favorite passages of Hemingway. Unlike works from the latter author, however, I was not drawn into the internal life of these characters in any meaningful way, and this is my one complaint. On the whole, the story and writing are potent enough to carry the novel strongly through to the end regardless.

My thanks to NPR’s Three Books series for suggesting this novel in their episode Three Books to Take to a Fistfight. It certainly lived up to the recommendation.



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Posted in books and literature.

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Recent Hack of AVT Website

A message from Antelope Valley Thespians, posted here while the AVT website is down temporarily:

Recently, our main blog at www.avthespians.org was hacked by a web attack. The main web page was infected by a script which may have instructed browsers to download malicious code from a third-party website. Thanks to Google’s malware detection software, the site was flagged and most users should have received a warning page in lieu of our site while it was infected. Thank you to all of you who helped us by sending us information on what you were experiencing.

If you visited www.avthespians.org within the last few weeks, we strongly recommend that you run a full-system virus and malware scan.

We took the following actions upon noticing that we had been hacked:

1.       Site was taken down and domain-parked.

2.       All server passwords changed.

3.       Entire site and SQL database restored from backup.

4.       All web files searched using Google’s Webmaster Tools and StopBadware.org for malicious scripts, iframes, and redirects.

5.       Removed 1 malicious script found in the main webpage.

6.       Checked access logs and change history for all files.

7.       Reactivated the cleaned website and are now waiting for Google to finish reviewing the site and remove the warning flag. This may take up to a few days.

The server that was infected contains only our blog, forum, and associated files. The following information is NOT hosted by or stored on avthespians.org in any form:

  • Financial transaction information, including ticketing and online donations (service provided through PayPal and WellsFargo)
  • Records and personal information about members, auditioners, Patrons, or Subscribers (electronic document storage provided through Google)
  • AVT Email (messaging service provided through Google)

There is no indication that any of these types of information have been compromised.

We will announce when our website is returned to operation. Thank you for your patience while we deal with one of the many curses of the modern world!

AVT.

Posted in updates.


Public Transit to USC

If you’re a regular on my twitter feed, you know I’m often prone to random adventures. Today, I tried my latest: attempting my weekly commute from Quartz Hill (north end of LA County, where the San Gabriels meet the Mojave Desert) to USC (on the south end of the city of Los Angeles), by public transit.

I parked at the Lancaster Metrolink Station and took the Antelope Valley Line south to Los Angeles Union Station at 0655. After a brief coffee stop I switched to the LA Metro Red Line subway to Pershing Square Station. The station exit dumped me right at the northwest corner of Hill and 4th St, where I caught Metro Local 81 (bus) southbound on Figueroa St., arriving at Figueroa and Jefferson at 0920 for a total outbound trip time of 2 hours, 25 minutes.

This is about 45 min longer than driving through morning traffic. That’s an additional 45 minutes taken out of my day each way right? Lame. On the surface, this seems like an insurmountable deficit for the public transit argument.

However, the advantage of public transit is seldom that it offers a faster solution… other factors need to be taken into consideration.

2011-03-02 07-25-02 899

Snapshot out the window while crossing the San Gabriels on Metrolink 208 from Lancaster to Union Station.

 

First of all, let’s consider the fact that I didn’t have to drive. This freed me up to actually use part of my commute time studying, something which is impossible (or, at the very least, highly dangerous) to do while driving in LA traffic. In practice, this was difficult to do on the subway and bus portion of the trip, as well as during the transfers of course, so chalk that up that time as nada. However, on the Metrolink train from Lancaster to Los Angeles, I got a good 1.5 hours of pretty quiet studying in.

Engineering analysis of this first point; non-engineers, you may skip this paragraph and not lose a beat. I estimate an outbound commute time of 2.5 hours at 0.7 productivity efficiency, 11 hours on campus at 0.85 efficiency, and a return trip of 2.5 hours at 0.7 productivity efficiency (including composing this blog post, and sleeping, which I cannot safely do in the car despite my early morning for work tomorrow). For the car I assume 1.75 hours outbound commute at 0.1 efficiency (I’ll allow catching up on KCRW’s Which Way LA? and To the Point as productive), 12.25 hours on campus (can stay longer when driving because I don’t have to catch a particular train back) at 0.85 efficiency, and 1.25 hours return trip at 0.1 efficiency (calling people I need to catch up with). Net utilized hours were 10.71 (0.7025 overall productivity) for driving and 12.53 (0.7881 overall productivity) for mass transit.

On a first cut estimate, I got more productive hours out of my day for less overhead of my time by taking mass transit.

Secondly, let’s consider cost. No skipping the math this time… Total fare down and back on mass transit was $28.50. For driving, I estimate 3.5 gallons of fuel used (just over a quarter tank in my ’06 Nissan Sentra, 33mpg avg) at the current Lancaster gas price of $3.80/gal (yeah I know, shut up mid-westerners). With an additional $5 for parking, that comes to $16.90. BUT, what about the miles put on the car? The cost of maintenance on your vehicle, averaged out over time, comes out to…. well, there’s all sorts of estimates with different assumptions, most between $0.35 and $0.60 per mile.. in reality, it depends on your car, your driving style, and how well you care for it. Let’s go with 0.25/mile, pretty conservative. That makes the total-cost-of-driving estimate come out to $55.80! Transit wins again in the long run.

Oh yeah, and you’re freaking saving the environment. That’s probably a separate article.

The major drawback to using mass transit today was the bus. It was a bit crowded. With close proximity to… interesting people. However, I am going to wait for more data points, as, today, approximately one-third of the bus appeared to be loud, elderly Japanese women with bright suitcases. Even for Los Angeles, that has to count as an outlier, right? Maybe not. We’ll see.

Important, subjective, additional point: I could snag a couple shots of fiery Irish whiskey at Casey’s on the way up, which is definitely not advisable when driving.

At the end of the day, the real question is: would I do it again? The answer is yes. I think I’ll buy a TAP card next time I pass through Union Station.

Posted in travel.


Review of “The Sun Also Rises”

The Sun Also RisesThe Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I do not presume that my thoughts would add anything meaningful to the volumes of commentary written about this book. I will simply say that I love Hemingway’s sparse, understated style. It’s like reading a play. Let the dialog speak for itself. Describe only when you have something useful or poignant to convey.

And here are my favorite quotes from the book.

It’s awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing.

“‘Listen, Robert, going to another country doesn’t make any difference. I’ve tried all that. You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another. There’s nothing to that.’”

“‘This wine is too good for toast-drinking, my dear. You don’t want to mix emotions up with a wine like that. You lose the taste.’”

“‘Simple exchange of values. You give them money. They give you a stuffed dog.’”

That was morality; things that made you disgusted afterward. No, that must be immorality. That was a large statement.

“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.
“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”

“You know I feel rather damn good, Jake.”
“You should.”
“You know it makes one feel rather good deciding not to be a bitch.”
“Yes.”
“It’s sort of what we have instead of God.”

I drank a bottle for wine for company. It was a Château Margaux. It was pleasant to be drinking slowly and to be tasting the wine and to be drinking alone. A bottle of wine was good company.

“It’s funny,” I said. “It’s very funny. And it’s a lot of fun, too, to be in love.”
“Do you think so?” her eyes looked flat again.
“I don’t mean fun that way. In a way it’s an enjoyable feeling.”
“No,” she said. “I think it’s hell on earth.”

“Utilize a little, brother,” he handed me the bottle. “Let us not doubt, brother. Let us not pry in to the holy mysteries of the hen-coop with simian fingers. Let us accept on faith and simply say – I want you to join with me in saying – What shall we say brother?” he pointed the drumstick at me and went on. “Let me tell you. We will say, and I for one am proud to say – and I want you to say with me, on your knees, brother. Let no man be ashamed to kneel here in the great out-of-doors. Remember the woods were God’s first temples. Let us kneel and say: ‘Don’t eat that, Lady – that’s Mencken.’”

That seemed to handle it. That was it. Send a girl off with one man. Introduce her to another to go off with him. Now go and bring her back. And sign the wire with love. That was it all right. I went in to lunch.

You paid some way for everything that was any good. I paid my way into enough things that I liked, so that I had a good time. Either you paid by learning about them, or by experience, or by taking chances, or by money. Enjoying living was learning to get your money’s worth and knowing when you had it.

Never once did he look up. He made it stronger that way, and did it for himself, too, as well as for her. Because he did not look up to ask if it pleased he did it all for himself inside, and it strengthened him, and yet he did it for her, too.

Everything is on such a clear financial basis in France. It is the simplest country to live in. No one makes things complicated by becoming your friend for any obscure reason. If you want people to like you you have only to spend a little money.

“Oh Jake,” Brett said, “We could have had such a damned good time together.”
Ahead was a mounted policeman in khaki directing traffic. He raised his baton. The car slowed suddenly, pressing Brett against me.
Yes,” I said. “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”

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Posted in books and literature.


Philadelphia: a confrontation with uncertainty

The sunlit serenity of the cloud tops melded into a murky grey during the descent into Philadelphia, and upon landing I could tell that the present light rain was not to last. The cold and rain cut almost as incisively as my doubts as I left the terminal, the romance of an impromptu adventure replaced by the cold reality of uncertainty – and cold. Despite loving the American West, I’d always liked the idea of Eastern cities: rich history, walkable streets, and perhaps critically: never having visited one, they remained just a romantic idea. Now was the time to see if reality would cooperate with my imagination.

The novelty of a new environment was tempered by the discomfort of uncertainty as I boarded the train to the city center. “Did I get on the right train? What if there is some procedure for train-riding I don’t know? Did I do the train-passenger secret handshake?” The most ridiculous of concerns passed through my mind as I let the world slide by the windows, eased only slightly by another passenger asking me if I knew where a certain stop was – at the least I didn’t look too far out of place. A little more at ease after paying the conductor for my ticket – at least I wouldn’t be thrown off of the train now – I settled back to consider my purpose here.

Too pragmatic to simply let myself have a much-needed adventure, I gave myself a pass with the justification that by attending a conference in my area of academic interest I would make connections useful in my graduate studies. On a deeper level though, I had simply reached a point where I needed a new and difference experience. The stress of finishing my undergraduate studies had taken its toll on my morale, and a subconscious need for variety and escape had pushed me to an uncharacteristic spontaneity.

“Center City Philadelphia,” the voice of the conductor woke me from my reverie. Stepping off of the train and into the night the voices nagged at me again, darkness and sleet joining in now, questioning my wisdom in coming here. Banishing them with thoughts of how pleasant it was to be able to hop on a train with remembering my stop as the only concern. I stepped down to the platform and began looking for an indication of where the subway was, I wandered through the station attempting to orient myself when suddenly the doubt, concern, looking for the subway, all of it evaporated. As I stepped through an archway the ceiling vanished into an immense abyss above. The magnificence of thirtieth street station had me in awe, I had never seen such architecture before. I half expected to see clouds gathering in the upper reaches of the room. I was struck not just by the size – I had been in plenty of large hangars – but the careful adornments of the building, the ornate and polished floor, and elaborate molding. It seemed unreal that this could be a public building – perhaps my imagination was not off so far in envisioning the “east”.

Reluctantly pulling my eyes away from the grand building, I returned to the suddenly very mundane task of finding the subway. Leaving the grand terminal for the subway station, my thoughts were once again focused on navigation by the sleet, now pouring down in immense quantities. Fortunately I quickly found my way, and after only minor confusion in navigating the ticketing rituals was seated. The now-familiar uncertainty once again confronted me, was I sure of the right stop, could I hear the annunciator well enough? In the process of checking my directions for the umpteenth time a rather obvious realization came over me: my change of location was merely a catalyst. The objective of my travel was lose myself, my troubles, and my routine – and in doing so find something fascinating, real, and important.

I had touched that realization only minutes before, basking in the experience of 30th street station, but foolishly banished it with pragmatic concerns. Now renewed and embraced, the realization was completely liberating. Suddenly I didn’t care what my stop was – I would make it to the hostel eventually – I only cared that I made the most of what I saw and experienced. Without the stress I easily found the stop and my way to the hostel (yet another new experience to add to the list for this trip). Emboldened by my recent realization, I soon set off again, though with no destination. I set off not on some path I had pre-ordained for myself, but in search of what the now snow-hushed city could teach me if I but listened.

Posted in introspection, travel.