Then we came to the end by Joshua Ferris

I guess this was a very really good book, because in the end I found that I really cared for the characters. I had an emotional reaction to their misfortunes at the end of the book.

I picked up this book when the New York Times put it in its top ten book of 2007 (fiction). I can’t remember exactly when about the article made me want to read it. I paid for price at Barnes and Nobles, which is something I rarely do.

The book is basically about life in an office. This time it is a Chicago ad agency, but it could be any office in the U.S. In the story, everyone is slowly being laid off, as it is set in the dot-com bust of a few years ago, but it rings true today. It was unnerving reading a story about people getting laid while lots of people in my own office have been dropping or “walking the Spanish” as they put in the book.

The book, which is Then we came to an end is a perfect book about the culture of an office. Really, I think every college or high school should be forced to read this book, so they can ask themselves if this (“the office”) really for me, or they can prepare themselves, because working in an office is like, especially when you are young, being in first grade again. You have to do so much more than kindergarten, which is basically college and especially grad school. You have recess, try to talk to your neighbor and look for a place to take a nap. This book captures everything about that perfectly. Ferris, the author, does it with much whit and insanity. He gets the archetypes right. The bitch, the boss, the scape goat, etc., and all their disorders are presented like the Canterbury tales or more aptly the Decameron.

I hope I didn’t forget to mention that it is so funny. There are definitely some laugh out loud moments. lol.

While I was reading this book, I used it as a guide of office pranks. I switch people’s chair to see if they would notice. I went to different floors to determine who had to the best coffee. It was the fifth floor on my building. These and other great ideas I lifted right the pages much to my co-workers’ bewilderment.

There is the TV series “The Office” both in UK and US versions. That’s really bizarre, and not too realistic because it is so extreme. It’s funny though. This book has too be drawn from real experience because some of the stuff written about has that “it must be true feeling,” because you can’t make that stuff up, and there are time where you think that this part of book is out of the author’s imagination. At other time you figure he was just a fly on the wall.

The Chicago part seems dead on. I hear the same voices and styles when people my Chicago office tell stories. It has the same feel.

This is Joshua Ferris’ first book, so you can’t anything else by him. He lives in Brooklyn now, maybe his next one will be more ghetto. Totally great book, read it.

U23D (2008)

U2 in IMAX, really? Do I really need to see Bono eight feet tall and coming right me? Not only that but in 3D too? OK, the answer is probably not, but as a hard-core U2 fan I made it to the IMAX as soon as I could.

Does it work? Well, sort of. It is just a few highlights from their Vertigo Tour in Argentina. It lasted for about an hour and 20 minutes. The 3D aspect of it becomes inconsequential after a while as you just get absorb into the show. And what it missing are the long dramatic shots of the band from a far away place, which is so much a part of their character.

So what does work? U2 works. The concert is awesome. Bono’s voice sounds really good. In some of their DVD releases his voice sounds a bit dodgy, but not this time. They make a smart decision of skipping a lot of their hits and going into what they call ‘The Dark side of the heart.’ This is the U2 that makes Axel Rose and Lars from Metallica U2 fans. This is the best part of any U2 show. In songs like Sunday Bloody Sunday, Bullet the Blue sky, and Love and Peace, it is easy to forget it is in 3D.

The problem of putting a live U2 show into a box is the box itself. U2 is essentially a stadium band. The have an ability to connect 55 thousand people and make them feel like some small community. This is done through a mixture of their music and body language. Despite how high tech the bands shows can be, they are always better when they are stripped down. Their body language is sometimes biblical, grand, and dramatic and somehow with that the guy in the noise bleeder seats feels like he is a part of the show.

Another character of a U2 is the Audience, which is really diverse. Even in the IMAX theatre, which was really packed, their were college kids through parents with children. The U2 crowd can sing 5 verses of any U2 song and Bono often asks them to do it.

There is really nothing here that isn’t their latest concert DVD. Still, it is the closest you will get to being at a U2 concert without being at one. At the end of the show, people in the audience seemed surprised on how good it was. So, yeah, is does renew your faith in the band. It was a good show.

All too human, my political education by George Stephanopoulos (1999)

It’s been many years since the last days of the Clinton Administration. Reading All too human by George Stephanopoulos is like get a heartfelt postcard from the past. A past, which is now a dim memory, that lingers like the residue of a dream. As a friend put it, the 90’s were the party, and now we are living the hangover.

Reading All too human, I felt the sensations of living 15 years ago. I thought, could it really be that long ago? Bill Clinton was the first President that I had really experienced from start to finish.

Stephanopoulos is not referring Clinton being all too human, but himself. It is good title because the book is a retelling of his years with Bill Clinton in a intimate narrative, which sounds almost like a therapy session. It more of how George Stephanopoulos dealt with the situations that came before him, which were the situations that ailed the Clinton Whitehouse. George takes you right through, how much he felt and knew at the time, how he dealt with it, felt about that, and finally what he thinks and feels about it later, which may sound like any memoir, but I can assure that I have been through many and it certainly isn’t. In a way George sounds like he is unloading a guilty conscious; justifying himself; giving corroborating evidences. At other times, it sounds like a love letter to Bill Clinton. What can be sure is that it is both heartfelt and rational writing of an experience that went from Jennifer Flowers to Monica Lewinski. In the end, he becomes his own person, less of a defender of Clinton based on awe, and rather he becomes more realistic in his loyalty to the President. It is a story of growth at it’s core.

I found that Stephanopoulos account of the role Hillary Clinton to be on the same page as the Carl Bernstein book on her, A Woman in Charge.

George Staphanopoulos graduate from Columbia University, where he was a visiting professor. He gave the commencement speech for the college during my time at Columbia. From that experience, I can say that he sound like a Columbia kid. He has that New York Ivy League persona that has lead so many from 116th street and Broadway to Washington. FDR went to the law school at Columbia, and there has never been a session of congress without a Columbia graduate.

I really did enjoy this book. I wish it were more updated as it was written in 1999; almost ten years ago. But I did like two things very much about it. It was terse and emotionally honest. I googled the book and found that some reviews blasted him for being self serving. I didn’t see it that way. I saw a narrative that was as honest as he could be with himself. The book neither, raised or lowered my opinion of Bill Clinton or Hillary Clinton. Instead, it reminded me why I feel the way I do about them in the first place.

I bought this book for a dollar on Amazon. It’s not a bad look at the Clinton years. As a young person during those years it was hard to not see George Stephanopoulos as someone you could relate too, generally because he looked too young to be there.

Michael Clayton(2007)

On a few movie screens you can still catch Michael Clayton; the George Clooney testosterone filled drama. Clooney drives the film with his usual steady and grounded characterization. It’s up for eight Academy Awards, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it wins most of them. Not because it is a very good movie, which it is, but it would be the most conservative choice. In many ways Michael Clayton is like an old film noir movie. It is character driven, dark, and offers little-to-no relief.

The story is not so completed, but that’s not really what the movie is about. Michael Clayton is a lawyer at a big New York firm who acts as a “fixer” to their high profile clients. He is never in litigation, but is involved in sorting out the messy world of their most important cases.

After a senior partner in the firm, basically, flips, and Clayton is sent in to deal with the situation. The partner who flips finds a piece evidence of a class action lawsuit that is very damaging to their client. Being that this guy is unstable and Clayton can’t control him or contain the damage, the client could sue the firm.

None this help Clayton who has a ton of personal problems of his own and all the while the client made their security unit involved. The corporate security unit is basically like corporate mob. They strong arm people and even take them out. This really happens. Under direction of their senior console played brilliantly by Tilde Swinton, they murder the partner of the firm who has flipped but is still a danger to the Corporation. When Clayton starts to poke around they try to kill him out too.

What cool about this movie is that examines the emotional elements of these decisions and the people involved. If you gave the dialogue a little zing and perfect piffys, it could easily resemble a David Mamet work.

This might a too serious for some people; like I don’t remember any smiling, ever! Not sure there are any jokes too; maybe one or two but only they are really biting.

It reminds me of an old Robert Redford or Gregory Peck film, because of its terseness. There is an economy of words, or soundtrack. Unfortunately, there is little new to story either. You have seen it before; not a lot in the past 20 years albeit. Nevertheless, I thought it was very good.

Central Park and a big frog

Central Park

Cloverfield (2008)

There was a lot of hype about this film, then a lot of anti-hype about it. The New York Times trashed it. It seemed a big budget Blair Witch Project. For the high and low expectations, the movie was good.

True the idea of an indestructible monster roaming the city is nothing new, but it was not really about the monster. You barely see it, and when you do it is like so unimpressive. The monster is lame. Luckily, the movie is not about watching some monster destroy buildings across Manhattan. It is also not some “Matrix” like action film.

OK, so thats what Cloverfield is not. What it is, is fear.

It feels like they must have interviewed 9/11 survivors and taken news footage to make the film. Being a 9/11 survivor myself, I can honestly say, that this movie has been the only thing I have ever seen that I can say “ Yeah, it was like that!” It got a lot right. The details of things being left right there they were a second before the chaos; the papers, random papers, everywhere, and the people running in panic looked and felt just like the real event. From when the disaster begins, it is 9/11 all over again. It was the sense of being in the middle of the storm, and not knowing what was going on, dealing with scared people, while controlling your own fear that was brilliant. Like 9/11, it starts in lower Manhattan and with people trying to escape north and through the Brooklyn Bridge.

After the 9/11 parallels it goes through the New York City blackout that occurred a couple of years later. People in the film were traveling through the New York City subway systems on foot. It combines both events.

The movie seems very realistic because in some ways it really is. You feel happy to see the monster because there is a sign that this is all fake. The viewer is not scared of the monster, the viewer is scared of being in a situation where they are trapped, and they don’t know what is going on.

The camera is moving so much, that you feel a little sick and disorientated. The characters are as simple, baseless, and as superficial as you can imagine. It is easy not to really care about them. However, I can understand why this is, in a way, because with such a dramatic plot-orientated movie, the audience doesn’t have the emotional capacity to handle much else.

Cloverfield is short, and once things get going they don’t stop till the end. It goes by pretty quickly. There will probably be a sequel.

Cloverfield probably does merit the hype of being realistic, because it is. It is made from the terror of the New York City disasters.

The movie is totally worth it.

The One Percent Doctrine by Ron Suskind

The full title is The one percent doctrine: Deep inside America’s pursuit of it’s enemies since 9/11.

The book reads like an information overload. It is like the best spy novel you have ever read, expect it isn’t fiction. You wish it were fiction.

Suskind picks up the story in the August before 9/11 when the CIA interrupted George W. Bush’s long vacation to warn him of the imminent threat to the country. Of course Bush had been warmed of the threat since before he took office. Over a year later, and with intelligence all of the world, especially the Middle East, saying that America was going to be attacked, George Bush told George Tenet and the CIA, OK, you have covered your ass, and went back to his vacation. Bush did nothing. (This meeting has been reported by many sources, and George Bush talked about it his interview with Bob Woodward)

After the attacks many things happened. George Bush saved CIA director George Tenet job, and thereby owning Tenet. A series of policies were put into place on how conduct the new war against terrorism. Dick Cheney put forth the One Percent Doctrine. This stated that there if there was even a one percent chance that something could threaten the United States, the government must act as if the country was certain to be attacked. This idea threw out analysis and evidence.

Cheney and Rumsfeld made sure that CIA had all the weapons it needed to fight this new war. This included torture and wire-tapping. The funny thing is that these measures have been used since the start of the CIA. The old rule used to be if it is isn’t public then it is legal. (A History of the CIA by Tim Weiner). The Bush administration went to great lengths to make it legal, even with great costs to the country’s collateral. I am not sure you can say that the difference is scale, because during the Cold War all mail that went out of the United States was searched. It begs the question that this insistence, to make it all legal was less about fighting terrorism than it was about gaining revenge for two men who were burnt by the Watergate era and wanted payback; to put the country where they thought is belonged.

The idea was that the United States would never be caught off guard again is the rational for these new measures. Of course, if the Administration would have just listened to its intelligence, maybe 9/11 could have been avoided. Al Gore, in The Assault on Reason suggests that if the government had just followed their leads, all the terrorists could have been caught using public records and know lists. Of course, the CIA, FBI and other government organization have a long disastrous history of not talking to each other. One the best things that the Bush administration has done, is not tolerate such behavior, which is the first time in history. The idea was that the FBI was fight terror at home and the CIA overseas, and that effectively worked.

The story really starts when Libya decided that it wanted to join the world community again. (Check out current news, i.e. Libyan meeting with the new French President). It had been alienated since the Reagan Administration for terrorist actions. Now a Libyan representative met with the CIA at the Hyde Park, London home of a Saudi Prince. He gave as an offering one name. The CIA took it and found that person in Pakistan. Working with Pakistani authorities that capture him and more importantly a computer, a diary and other important information.

Now like most things in the past few years, once American agencies have an opportunity to do their job right, they do, and they do it great. Unfortunately, the ideologues in the Administration, like Rumsfeld, get a hold of information and they filter it through fantastic and unrealistic view of how the world works and they screw everything up.

Now from here on, the story goes in two directions. One is the CIA success from that seed that of the original Libyan contact, and the other is the political story of the Administrations war on Terror. The CIA/FBI investigation went great. The seed lead to more and more information and arrests. Their money systems tapped. The U.S. was everywhere they raised their head. At the same time torture such as water boarder was being used those capture those who had to no knowledge anything, and those who were mentally unstable, although you have to wonder about the mental stability of all these people who are out to do so much harm. Nevertheless, things were said do to the torture that were untrue. However, because of the One Percent Doctrine everything had to be taken as a threat even though there no possible way these wild stories could be taken seriously. So what happened was that resources were spent chasing nothing. These stories of terrorist plots everywhere came mainly from one unstable man during torture. Evidence had to be thrown out due to directives from the highest level of government. American threat levels were constantly going up and down. This is why.

In fact, the combatants were trained and expect torture (so the argument that talking about American torture is giving intelligence to the enemy is complete nonsense), what they weren’t expecting of the FBI’s technique of doing favors. The FBI even went so far as to get someone’s wife for him from Pakistan and the wife told him that he better tell the U.S. what they wanted to know. Most who experience such treatment told the U.S. want they wanted to here. What the ideologues don’t understand is the history of the United States. They only knew the propaganda and the bravado. People from most countries expect to be tortured or spied on. It doesn’t help to be just as bad as the worst dictators. What worked for the U.S. in World War was that the Germans knew that the American were the most humane of all the Allies. They really didn’t want to be captured by the Russian, because they knew death would be better. German soldiers and citizens more easily surrender and cooperated with the American because they knew that the American would be just to them. (Source Stephen Ambrose ‘Citizen Soldier’).

Politics and reality become very confusing. As old and never followed through plots were uncovered were released to the press as if it they were current threats at prime periods during the 2004 Presidential elections, it would push the public towards President Bush. He ran on the premise that he had kept America Terror free. Even Bin Laden got in on the election. By making an appearance Bin Laden almost sealed the presidency for George W. Bush. It was clear that Bin Laden wanted Bush in the White House.

But it asks the question why hadn’t American been hit by a terrorist attack. To CIA the answer was that maybe they didn’t want to hit America again. Sure, America was now a harder target to hit, but the terrorist don’t do anything without a purpose. They have goals that they are trying to achieve. They only do things in their interest. Terrorists create chaos and achieve their ends by destabilizing a society. When they hit Spain, they got the Spanish out of Iraq. The scariest part, I thought is that, you realize while reading the book that they are an outsourced organization. Just like how everything is outsourced in business, so is policy of rogue or unfriendly states. Somehow these stateless organizations aren’t so stateless.

The One Percent Doctrine doesn’t really end anywhere. It just takes the reader along what is probably the first chapter on the War on Terror. It gives no answers. The author gives a statement on how it is an act of civil disobedience just to report on these events. Because the sources went against the current Administration’s political polices by telling what they knew, they put themselves in great danger.

In Rainbows – Radiohead (2007/2008)

January 1, 2008 In Rainbows by Radiohead was released on C/D. Radiohead who’s material has found it’s way to the internet since the days of Kid A, finally leaked their own album by selling it over the net for whatever you felt like paying for it. I think the minimum charge was 2 pense or 4 cents. I thought the MP3s were of poor quality, and I didn’t want to review the music until the CD was released.

The CD was totally worth it. I paid something near $7.50 at Target, which quite good for a CD, which usually run about $15. CD quality is so much better than MP3 or MP4 in general, but Radiohead is band that you want to hear everything. The CD sound of In Rainbows is so much warmer and fuller that it fills the room in like a warm morning sun.

In Rainbows is somehow the best and worst Radiohead album so far. Well, Hail to the Thief is really my least favorite Radiohead work. I only say that this could be the worst because this is the most commercial Radiohead I have yet to hear. It did seem like they were going in that direction. And why not? So so many bands have made fortunes by producing radio-friendly Radiohead music; like anyone remember Coldplay. Why should Radiohead loose out on their own sound?

The collection of new songs are great and beautiful. You could totally listen to them with your mother. However, Radiohead is one of those bands that you used to alienate other people in the room, those that might have enjoyed Justin Timberlake. In Rainbows is Radiohead for everyone. One the hand, it sucks, because you expect more from Radiohead. You want something you have never heard before. On the other hand is this is a new direction for Radiohead. It isn’t tired at all. It feels fresh. You wish they had done this in 2003.

Maybe Radiohead is out of their experimental stage, and now they are Masters of their art. There is a confidence that comes through here. Maybe they are ready to take their place amongst U2 and The Rolling Stones. Of course, that would be sad too, because U2 has not produced a great album in this decade besides a few great singles, and The Rolling Stones are just a skeleton of their former selves. You expect Radiohead, maybe even count on them, to push the envelope. If not them, then who?

Getting back to the early release of the MP3s, it was the greatest marketing experiment of the digital age. They got so much good press about it, that more people than ever know about Radiohead. They looked like hero’s for cutting out the middleman. They were written up in such places as the Financial Times and The Economist.

If I were to compare this endeavor The Beatles, I would compare it too With the Beatles, because it was an album of an extremely innovative band that made an impressive non-innovative album. It can also be compared to U2’s All that you can behind. U2 had gone too far off the edge (no pun) in the 90’s, and they needed to be brought back to center, which they did with a conservative album, which was better received than their breakthrough material from before. It worked. Unfortunately, U2 followed up that success with a banal next album. So, it will be interesting to see what Radiohead does next. They can’t here very long, or they will get stale.

As a listen, I can’t stop listening to In Rainbows. Every song is good. Every song is catchy. I do miss the new worlds that OK, Computer and Kid A took me to, but this is classic Rock album. It is almost like they remade Hail to the Theif and got it right.