http://blogcritics.org/ A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously. en Copyright 2005-2007 by the authors Tue, 24 May 2005 11:19:26 EDT http://backend.userland.com/rss Blogcritics.org custom software http://blogcritics.org/ Phillip WinnSunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. 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Administration0@blogcritics.org Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/05/24/111926.php Laura Rae AmosThe real name of the Perfume Factory was International Scents and Essences of New Jersey, but everyone in Port Beach called it the Perfume Factory, and there wasn't a place in the town from which you couldn't see the factory's towers and smokestacks[...] Even on a Friday night, the factory spilled out the sickly sweet odors that made Port Beach smell like the bottom of an old woman's handbag. The "sickly sweetness" of The Perfume Factory's home town, Port Beach is deceiving. It is in fact a dilapidated resort town on the coast of New Jersey where the unemployment is as high as the number of taverns and misguided teenagers. The story is set in the 1960s. Sam is nearly eighteen, a high-school dropout and the oldest of three. His parents are both drunks. His father is unemployed, an abusive and bitter ex-military man. Sam's mother is weak but loudmouthed, and her tenderness for Sam instigates his father's temper. Sam is tormented, wise for his seventeen years. He reads Kant and Hume and Schopenhauer and might have been a philosopher himself if born into a different time or life. Alex Austin's gritty coming-of-age novel opens with an abrasive encounter with Sam's family, after which he goes "down to the Front." Friday night always began at Jack's Café[...] Like the two bars that made up the trio of businesses on the east side of Front Street, Jack's was set right on the beach, whose yellow sands piled up against the foundation and curled around the bottom of the front door like a yellow tentacle. Sam runs into his wild friend Leo and they go out for a joyride. Sam meets Julie, a beautiful sophisticate from Jersey City. Her family is staying in Keysburg, a richer sister-city to Port Beach, for the summer. His first words to her are lies. He makes up an alternate, better life, at first to amuse himself, but maybe also to impress her. He tells her he is going to school at Princeton. "I gave myself a dead father, an inventor who had perished while testing a one-man submarine off the coast of Nova Scotia[...] I spun a world that I never came close to living in. I started getting so good at it, I started believing it. It was exhilarating, and it wasn't until later that I wondered if I could only interest this girl in me by fabricating myself, even if she didn't believe a word of it." But she does take an interest in him, even if for whatever twisted realities he has told her. And with Julie, Sam experiences his first real tastes of love and pain; because of Julie, he finds himself in all kinds of the usual trouble.Alex Austin is an award-winning playwright, which is apparent in his convincing teenage dialogue. His young characters are fascinating. Their naïve invincibility, their teenage wants and fears bring them to life. Most of these characters are independently unique and memorable, though a few of them are not so fully fleshed. Sadly, Sam's brother and sister are merely sketches, and his father, while developed throughout the story, in the beginning comes across as an unnecessary tyrant. All of Austin's Port Beach is magically created; his images are sharp and clear. Austin grew up in Newark, New Jersey, and his local expertise is evident in his prose. This story is illustrated through Sam's voice which is observant and honest, edging on poetic. "With the darkness came the fireflies, which Julie wanted to catch and put in a jar. We ran around the yard, cupping them and depositing them in the jar until we had thirty or forty. But though they continued to glow in the jar, the magic had gone out of their light and what started as a quest for something extraordinary turned solemn. Julie opened the jar and shook them out. As they spread across the night, I watched her face, lost for a moment in their flight and regained magic." But while Sam is observant of the magic in his world, he is equally observant of the dark and ugly realities. Sam's narrative swings between the extremities of tenderness and violence, beauty and filth. The Perfume Factory is a debut novel for Alex Austin, a touching story, and Sam is a wholly loveable rogue. Sam struggles with his lack of possibilities, of being born into poverty, a soul-depleting, lackluster town, and family dysfunction. He is conflicted with wanting to become better than what he was born into while being sentenced to the life he has. He is a good boy turned sour by the circumstances of his world, which he deals with in this coming-of-age summer. Laura Rae Amos lauraraeamos.blogspot.com. Books30069@blogcritics.org Tue, 24 May 2005 11:19:26 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/08/21/030114.php Laura Rae AmosShifting Through Neutral is the story of a young girl's sad family drama. Rae Dobson is a child of the seventies in Detroit. I fell in love with her, and her world - and I just had to leave my own world to go live with her for a couple of days. I finished the novel in a single weekend, hardly putting it down until the end. I became so involved in her beautifully told desires and pain.Rae Dobson is a gem. She is a troubled, but strong young woman. She longs for the love of her self-involved, cold mother who is "weak for men"; she idolizes her trendy and fun big sister Kimmie; and she vows that the only man she'll ever need is her Daddy.The story is told at several times in Rae's life. This is confusing sometimes, especially at the beginning, but as you become familiar with the amazing characters, you will also learn to read the time shifts. We begin with a 4 year-old Rae, then jump to 9. A bulk of the story takes place during the summer of Rae's 9th year, when her big sister Kimmie comes back to Detroit for a visit. Kimmie had stepped in as a mother-figure for Rae because their own mother was so inept. Then when Rae's father enter's the picture, when Rae is 4, Kimmie is shipped down to Louisiana to live with her own father. It's a bit complicated, of course, adding to the turmoil of Rae's personality.The whole "driving as a metaphor for life" thing has been done before, but this is cute. Each section is labeled and begun with a quote from the Michigan Secretary of State What Every Driver Must Know manual. And all the more fitting because Detroit is the Motor City.The language is beautifully poetic, and very descriptive. The large dark house, the highways, the industrial air. Her language calls into life this very real world, and I relate with these things, maybe because I grew up a half hour outside of Detroit, but maybe because she paints them so vividly. The UAW. Cedar Point. 1-75. I know these places, and these people.Sometimes it felt like she dropped names a little bit too much, as if to say, "Hey, I'm from Detroit, and I'll prove it." It didn't bother me too much, but was just something I noticed, and maybe if you're not from the area, you wouldn't notice at all.She flashes forward, which is something I don't like in a story. That may just be a personal preference though. Foreshadowing is a different story, and is fine. I like to get a hint of something by foreshadowing, but I don't really want to "know", as in, see the scene in concrete. We always like to hold out a little bit of hope.We learn very early in the story that Rae's father dies when she is 17. From then on, he is a doomed character. Of course, we know he is a sick man, but we always like to hold out a little bit of hope, especially when we've grown to like a character so much.This particular scene, when we learn that Rae's father has died, is a very strange one. We see Rae bathing her nude father on a hospital bed after he has passed away, which is a very odd and unfitting choice for these characters. That action leaves a perverted suspense over their father-daughter relationship that does not need to be there. I can't understand the reasoning for this choice, but it takes something from an almost flawless story. Rae and her father have such a beautiful and pure love, and there is no need to add a false shock value for the sake of getting readers, if that is why she's done that. The story and characters will carry the novel on their own.The characters are so rich. Each of them tainted and beautiful in their own ways. So developed. So real. The whole story is its characters, and Rae's relationship with them. And it is woven perfectely. Ms. Davis is skilled here, in building a soul and making her shine. You wont find better characterization than this.The ending though. The last five or so pages, that's where I fell off the train. Perhaps another one of Davis' odd stylistic choices. I'm not saying don't read it because of the ending. Do read it, actually, because I'd like to have some other opinions on this. I thought, "weird". And that's all I'm going to say, to save it for you all. It all pulled together, and made sense, but not really what I needed from her to end this story... just weird.But in all, a beautiful story about wanting love, finding love, and losing love in so many ways. Laura Rae Amos peaceandjellybeans.com Books18897@blogcritics.org Sat, 21 Aug 2004 03:01:14 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/08/09/021621.php Laura Rae AmosI spent my summer reading a lot of the great American classics. You know, the ones you were supposed to read in high school, but really only read the Cliffs Notes to. It isn't the same, really. But we were young, and so involved, and everything in the whole world was more important than literature.So, we have the Catcher in the Rye. Please note that this novel is not about baseball or bread, as one might assume (or as I dimly assumed for many years). It is a story about a young boy, a wandering soul - about expectations, and finding your place in the big nasty world.Holden Caulfield is a doll, and if he were real, I would pinch his sweet little cheeks. He is an unambitious 16 year-old who has just been kicked out of the prestigious Pencey Prep School in Pennsylvania for flunking four out of his five classes. He is immature yet introspective, and generally, the world annoys, depresses, and bores him.The story is told by Holden, in his hilarious sarcasm, over the span of a few days in late December. There is no reference within the story to dates, but it was published in 1951, and showcases a lot of the styles and lingo of the time.The plot is simple: Holden has "gotten the ax" from school, and "his father is going to kill him." This is the fourth school Holden has flunked out of. But this story is about so much more than plot. The value is found in relating to his character, and maybe remembering the first time you realized how "phony" the world was.The Catcher in the Rye is beautifully written; it is, after all, a classic. The narrative flows smoothly from one scene to the next, as if you were writing the story in your own head as it went. Holden Caulfield is timeless. He is each of our little brothers, he is pieces of ourselves, but caught in his own inimitable fate.But what we really want to know is why this wonderful novel has been linked to murderers? And does this mean that if I carry the novel around with me in the pocket of a trench coat, I am likely to kill someone? Probably not, huh? Laura Rae Amos peaceandjellybeans.com Books18418@blogcritics.org Mon, 9 Aug 2004 02:16:21 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/07/29/164507.php Laura Rae AmosAh, you see, things do come out of Ohio sometimes. Pretend You're Alive is an energetic mix of garage rock and electric alternative. The Strokes, my husband says they remind him of. A wanna-be Radiohead meets the Goo Goo Dolls, I say. It brings me back to 1995, grunge rock, flannels, and greasy hair. Yes, that was a good year. I like to reminisce.Lovedrug is a four-man group from Canton, Ohio, and Pretend You're Alive is their debut album, released on July 27th. 13 tracks, all of which are pretty okay. The band is fronted by Michael Shepard, who writes the music and lyrics along with the bassist Adam Ladd. Shepard has a distinctive voice which is hard to describe, maybe a bit nasaly?Lyrically, the songs are interesting. Avant garde. Experimental. Like one of those poems that sounds really intense, but when you think about it, you realize that it doesn't really make any sense. And then you wonder if the writer is being deep, or cryptic, or maybe he was just really high when he wrote it. But still, you have fun trying to decipher the words.I listened to it all the way through, a few times actually, and I would listen to it again. But here's the thing, Pretend You're Alive is suffering from what I think of as Background Music Syndrome - it sounds okay, and you'd listen to it while doing the dishes, or writing an essay for philosophy class, but when it's all over, it's over. It might not leave the impression that would call you out of your bed at night to listen to it again. I was told that they would be something like Coldplay. This comparison was probably made because of the one or two tracks that have a bit of piano. No, not Coldplay. Coldplay is musical Heaven. As is Radiohead. Lovedrug is making an attempt.The sound is very similar to a lot of what is already out there. And that's okay, of course, because not everything that comes out can be cutting-edge. It's not that I want to call them unoriginal, but perhaps they just haven't grown into their own style yet. It's something I've noticed before, even with really great bands, Incubus is one that comes to mind. You buy a great album, and find out that the band has had one or two prior to the breakthrough album. Well, there's a reason for that sometimes. It's good music, but just not quite spectacular yet. I think that's where Lovedrug is right now. Pretend You're Alive is one of those "first albums". They bought their shoes a little too big, and now they just need to grow into them. And I will give them a listen again in a few years, just to see how much they've grown. We'll see.Overall, energetic and catchy music. Interesting lyrics. Worth a few listens.www.lovedrugmusic.com Laura Rae Amos www.peaceandjellybeans.com Music18027@blogcritics.org Thu, 29 Jul 2004 16:45:07 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/07/25/012604.php Laura Rae AmosI just finished my very first experience with Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle. Wow, what a mind trip!It was a series of outrageous characters and scenes, all revolving around two central concepts: Bokonon, a newly formed religion, and Ice-9, a chemical element that freezes water on contact. The combination of the two proving to be quite a "situation" (hoping not to give too much away).First of all, the book just kind of floats along, or so I thought it did. Like it had no plot, but not in a bad way. Like a drunken bar story. The chapters are short, not really chapters at all, but scenes, and flow one into the next from beginning to end.It was different. And refreshingly deep. It was published in 1963, in a time when it was still fashionable to think. I don't think our current culture, the new millenium bunch, likes to get too deep too often. And that's a shame. Reality TV, Britney Spears, Entertainment Tonight... nope, that just doesn't do it for me.So then, this is what they call satire. I like it. How crazy that I've lived almost 24 years on this planet and not encountered any. Animal Farm, we were supposed to read in seventh or eighth grade, but I think I skipped that one, or read the Cliffs Notes to it, or something.But really, this is some good stuff, about stupid people, and the stupid things we do, and the stupid things we make, and how we're all stupidly itching to kill ourselves out of greed, and fame, and the naivety to follow blindly.I remember once, telling a manager I used to work for that I wanted to be a writer. He said, "Write satire."Yes, I think we should. Laura Rae Amos www.peaceandjellybeans.com Books17806@blogcritics.org Sun, 25 Jul 2004 01:26:04 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/06/20/194524.php Laura Rae AmosWell maybe not this summer, but such ideas might not be fantasy much longer."SpaceShipOne, designed by Burt Rutan of Scaled Composites, will be carried by a turbojet called White Knight to an altitude of about 50,000 feet (15,240 meters)... The craft's designer aims to open up a new space frontier with Monday's launch... If all goes according to plan, it will ignite its rocket engines that propel the craft to Mach 3, three times the speed of sound, and into space. The spacecraft will spend three minutes beyond Earth's atmosphere, becoming the first private craft to carry a human into space and touch down on the same runway it left about an hour and a half earlier." - from the CNN report: Commercial space travel next leap for mankind? by Michael Coren Rutan and his team are one of twenty teams, from seven different countries, competing for the $10 million Ansari X Prize for the first civilian flight in space. The prize was meant to encourage interest in private space travel.We are on the edge of a breakthrough here. If Rutan succeeds with his flight tomorrow (I assume tomorrow, though the CNN report said "Monday"), or if one of these other teams succeeds soon after, that will bring the idea of space travel that much closer to all of us (well, any of us with money of course, because I can't imagine it will be cheap). There were a few pieces of information that I didn't find from the article, such as: are these people even allowed to go into space? Do they need special permits, and if so, what kind of agency supplies those? What about an intergalactic pilot's license? Are there rules for this kind of stuff?"It's like Star Trek!" my husband said this morning. I'm not a Trekkie myself, but I share his excitement. The thing is, space travel has always been one of those things that "they" did. The government, military, or other secret alliances. But most certainly not me, and not you either. It's hard to grasp the idea that I might one day be outside the Earth's atmosphere, or that I would have the option anyway. There are talks of space tourism, resorts and hotels in orbit! In the future, we will take the kids to the moon instead of Disney World.Although exciting, this feels like one of those huge things, advances in technology, that may be too big. Scary big. Like cloning, or artificial intelligence. One of those things that maybe we are not supposed to do. Playing God even.Maybe humans aren't meant to leave the planet. Although, I'm sure they said that humans weren't supposed to fly when the first airplane left the ground.Still, I'm all for innovation. Rock on with your big bad brains - let's build some rockets. The deciding factor for the continued success of commercial space travel will be whether or not there is a market for it. How many people would be willing to take a trip into space if they could?It sounds like a thrill, better than a rollercoaster I'm sure, but I think I'll probably sit out the first few rounds, just to see how it goes. Both feet firmly planted on Earth's soil. Laura Rae Amos peaceandjellybeans.com Sci/Tech16682@blogcritics.org Sun, 20 Jun 2004 19:45:24 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/06/13/102913.php Laura Rae Amos"Love, like rain, can nourish from above, drenching couples with a soaking joy. But sometimes, under the angry heat of life, love dries on the surface and must nourish from below, tending to its roots, keeping itself alive." -The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch AlbomAhhh... wasn't that nice? :)Five People was one that I just picked off the bestseller rack, having never read a review of it before, neither having read any of Albom's other works before (The well reviewed Tuesdays With Morrie was published in 1997). Good title, I guess. Kudos to the marketing team on that one.I liked this novel for such refreshing moments as I noted above. Stop and sigh, kind of moments.Reviewers attacked this novel (little novel - 196 pages) for it's sentimentality - calling it melodramatic and clichéed. Other's say that it's not a read for the "sophisticated" types.I say, even though they're right, it was a cute story. And I don't regret the $15 I spent on it.I do agree with the comments of melodrama and the sentimentality. Beyond that though, what bothered me most was that I didn't feel Eddie, the main character, had much of a personality. He never grew past the point of the generic two-dimensional "bitter old man."Even if this novel doesn't win you over with the writing (chances are that it wont), I cannot deny that Albom is a storyteller. I read this little gem in a few hours, four I think, from start to finish. Because despite the clichés and the flat characters, I was into the story. It's a page turner. A heart-felt story, made me cry twice.And as I mentioned above, it just has these cute little "awww" moments that make it worth while. Let me add another..."All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair."Now wasn't that profound?I disagree that this book is only for the "simple readers." I am a literary type, a "sophisticated" type - I can read all the big words without a dictionary, and I know an extended metaphor when I see one. But I liked this novel anyway.It's a thoughtful, feel-good, happy story.~Laura Rae Amos peaceandjellybeans.com Books16490@blogcritics.org Sun, 13 Jun 2004 10:29:13 EDT