Yeah, yeah. This is barely a book. It's less book like than The Diary of Laura Palmer was back in the heady days of thirtySomething and China Beach, bYeah, yeah. This is barely a book. It's less book like than The Diary of Laura Palmer was back in the heady days of thirtySomething and China Beach, but I do love me a nice piece of pop cultural tangentia, and this pseudo-podcast, book tour interview, side show to The Boys is well worth a listen if you're into the minutiae of great TV shows. ...more
I have no idea what the fuck this was that I listened to. I love Matt Berry (the man who is Steven Toast), and I love Steven Toast, and I got a smatteI have no idea what the fuck this was that I listened to. I love Matt Berry (the man who is Steven Toast), and I love Steven Toast, and I got a smattering of the laughs I expected, but this "autobiography" of Steven Toast was too meta for its own good. I liked it, I giggled, but I couldn't love it. I'm just waiting for Toast of Tinseltown to come into my sphere of influence, so that I can fully enjoy me some Clem Fandango once again. ...more
I am a man. I am a father with three children. We had no trouble conceiving, and though we lost two babies to miscarriage, we've been fairly lucky wheI am a man. I am a father with three children. We had no trouble conceiving, and though we lost two babies to miscarriage, we've been fairly lucky when it comes to fertility and childbirth. Thus, my biases probably make my feelings about Avalanche: A Love Story unhelpful or tone deaf or irrelevant to many folks who don't share my experiences.
I'm going to share my biases anyway ('cause that's often what goodreads is for).
I don't believe there is a right to pregnancy or childbirth, nor do I support medical intervention to make pregnancy possible. My position does not come from religious conviction -- of which I have absolutely none -- but from my convictions about socio-economics and the nature of intervening when natural selection has made a choice we don't like.
I'm also not a fan of one-person shows. They are mostly self-indulgent, overrated crap from spoiled artists who reveal their inner selves in ways that vilify everyone who disagreed with them in their lives and rarely contain much in the way of self-reflection or personal responsibility. Privileged elites pretending to be victims or finding their identity in victimhood is not my idea of a stimulating evening of theatre.
To some extent, Avalanche: A Love Story falls into the confines of both these biases. It is, after all, about a privileged woman -- a white (Australian?), affluent screenwriter -- and her attempts to get pregnant in her late-thirties and early-forties. Even before she gets to the latter stages of fertility, pregnancy has been a long shot for her, and her own body proves to be as problematic as the man -- her ex-, then her husband, then her ex- again -- she hopes to share the experience with. Indeed, everyone around her is to blame for her situation to some extent or other, and even her mother, who tries to talk the narrator out of becoming pregnant because she thinks the narrator will be a terrible mother, is known only through her opposition to the narrator's journey. So the selfishness, the embrace of being the victim, the unmitigated privilege, and the single, whiny, self-indulgent voice made my time spent with Avalanche: A Love Story a challenge.
Yet somehow, with all these things working against my appreciation of the one-woman show, I found myself impressed by Avalanche: A Love Story. If I set aside all my problems with Avalanche: A Love Story, I am left with a narrative that did affect me emotionally. For all the narrator's faults, for all my feelings of opposition to her, Avalanche: A Love Story was able to take me to a place where it didn't matter what my biases were or are ... the narrator's truth was her truth and that is what mattered. No. I can't know what it was to be the narrator, to be a woman facing the pressures of motherhood slipping away from her in a society that still expects motherhood for all women, to understand the struggle to conceive -- possibly alone -- but Avalanche: A Love Story gave me a chance to empathize with someone who has experienced these things, and even if it wasn't terribly entertaining Avalanche: A Love Story was enriching.
I've been familiar with John Houbolt and his quest to see Lunar Orbit Rendezvous (LOR) become the USA's method of getting to the moon for quite some tI've been familiar with John Houbolt and his quest to see Lunar Orbit Rendezvous (LOR) become the USA's method of getting to the moon for quite some time. It's touched on in Andrew Chaikin's A Man on the Moon, and character actor Reed Birney played Houboult in the HBO mini-series Chaikin's book inspired, but I've never seen this story as more than a footnote to the greater tale of going to the moon.
And maybe that is all it really is ... a footnote.
But it is a fascinating footnote, and as told here by Todd Zwillich, Houbolt and LOR take on the tone of a passionate, nearly heroic quest. It's all a bit overblown, but the telling is exceptionally well done, including interviews with people who were there, soundbites from people who are long gone, Houbolt included, and some wonderful little diversions -- footnotes to this footnote -- that try to shine a little light on some of the dark corners that NASA, and those who love the agency, seem more than happy to ignore or are even willing to justify (such as the preeminence of Herr von Braun).
The Man Who Knew the Way to the Moon is a fun listen, an informative listen, but I can't help wondering if Houbolt's story really merits the attention it occasionally receives (especially considering that an engineer named Tom Dolan had his own version of LOR called MALLAR). Now a true expose of Werner von Braun ... that's the story I really want to know more about....more
I can't help feeling like a bit of cheat when I add most of the "audible originals" to my list of books on goodreads. They run the gamut from podcastsI can't help feeling like a bit of cheat when I add most of the "audible originals" to my list of books on goodreads. They run the gamut from podcasts to stand-up, and even when they would make a compelling read if written as a book -- as is the case with Jon Ronson's The Last Days of August -- I feel like I am pushing up against some strange force field of my own design.
Had to get that off my chest.
So ... The Last Days of August kept me up most of last night. I didn't expect it to grab me as hard as it did, and I probably haven't been that absorbed by a podcast (because the seven chapters of The Last Days of August are really seven episodes of a podcast that has been given life beyond podcasting) since Serial. But it did grab me, and I think it was masterfully crafted.
Ronson and Lina Misitzis chased down the death of Mercedes Grabowski (a.k.a August Ames) like a true crime investigation, but in the end the story became a humane and rather kind examination of wounded, damaged and unhealthy people struggling through the world together until one of those people couldn't struggle anymore.
Why did August Ames kill herself? That's the overarching question, and there are lot of things that happened to her over the course of her life that built up and overwhelmed her until suicide was her only way to relieve her pain. But I don't think, in the end, that the myriad reasons she was in pain matter nearly as much as the fact that she lived a life and people loved her.
I couldn't stop listening until The Last Days of August was over. And now the day beyond my windows looks bleak....more
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