A Fall from Grace (into a steaming vat of mortification)

by Emily Walls, as told by Angie Amos

Chance. Happenstance. Accident. Poppycock.

The story I'm about to tell you has informed, to my core, the way I perceive the world. The events I describe can only be attributed to Providence. No one else can claim credit for the bizarre circumstances of the incident, and no one else can account for the exact sequence in which the calamity developed. I laugh in the face of the so-called "force majeure," and I laugh in the face of Angela Amos, without whom this story would not exist. Also, I laugh at the word "poppycock."

On the morning of the unfortunate incident, my sister-in-law Angie was living the high life on the beaches of Destin, Florida. She and three of her friends were stopping for a quick visit to the Florida coast before embarking on a week-long cruise of the Caribbean. Twenty-something, gorgeous, and energetic, these ladies were rulers of the Destin shores. That is, they sat on the beach for an hour or two until a gushing storm drove them inland. Their day ruined by the rain, they sequestered themselves in the comfort of a familiar shelter, the great American outlet mall. It is important to note here that the ladies did not first go home to change out of their beach clothes. Remember that.

Once inside the mall, Angie and Elisabeth broke off from the rest of the group to make a quick stop in BCBG. Elisabeth wanted to browse the racks, and Providence, planning a delightful treat for the rest of us, chose Angie to keep Elisabeth company. This is where it all went down, and I mean literally it all went down. Elisabeth was searching through a rack of dresses, and Angie was standing on the other side of the rack—not browsing, just gabbing. As Elisabeth circled the rack to Angie's side, Angie moved out the way and flattened her back against a nearby wall. At least, she thought it was a wall.

In truth, Angie had chosen to lean against the questionable foundation of a floor-to-ceiling banner. Recognizing that her "wall" was not as solid as she had hoped, Angie responded by taking another step backward—onto the step of a window display. Now, Angie made her choice to step backward under the delusion that there was a wall somewhere close behind her, so when her foot failed to find a solid, immovable wall, but found a raised display floor instead, her brain failed to comprehend the foot's newly acquired information concerning the layout of the room. She did not adjust, so she fell. And she didn't just fall.

Up went her feet and down went the first victims of Angela's tumble—the rack of dresses. Angie was still wearing her flip-flops, wet from the rain, so when she lost her balance, her slippery feet flew in opposite directions. Her left foot caught the dress rack and knocked the entire frame down. Every dress and every metal hanger crashed to the floor in a cacophony of scrapings and whooshes, the soundtrack to her embarrassment, if you will. Meanwhile, Angie, still trying to catch her balance, shifted her weight to her right foot, which was just then sliding across the floor of the window display. Her errant appendage snagged the nearest mannequin (which, lifelike as it may have appeared, offered no help) and knocked it into a unit of carefully placed shoes. Pumps and sandals rained down on innocent shoppers as Angie continued her descent of the damned.

Have you been picturing, Reader, that Angie's arms were tightly clenched against her sides in this unfortunate fall? That while her legs thrashed wildly her arms were awaiting placidly the end of the event? It could not be so, Reader. Even at this stage, Angie was desperate to prevent a complete, butt-on-the-floor fall. Since her legs had escaped her control, she looked to her arms for guidance, which unfortunately, were looking to her legs. Whatever cataclysmic route Angie's legs took, her arms sought to outdo their rival limbs. Angie flailed and grasped for the nearest solid surface, which in this case was the floor-to-ceiling banner that had started all the trouble in the first place. Since her legs no longer supported her, Angie grabbed that banner with desperate fingers of steel.

For a millisecond of a moment, it seemed to have worked. Her legs were useless, but she was hanging by her arms, suspended halfway through the fall. She looked to Elisabeth, and Angie's eyes were, in Elisabeth's words, like saucers. That's when the banner broke free of its ceiling ties. Angie fell to the floor in a final, desperate plunge, the betrayal of the banner reflected in her stunned eyes. She landed on the heap of shoes, dresses, hangers and mannequin limbs on the floor of the window display—the same window that looked out to the main walkway in the mall. The banner, not quite finished with its elaborate bid for humiliation, plopped on her head with a thud and rolled down the length of her prostrate body. It had once declared rock-bottom prices; now, it advertised the depth of Angela's humiliation.

Up to this point, I have left out one crucial detail of this story. I told you earlier to remember that the girls had not gone home to change before heading to the mall. What I omitted in my narrative is this: Since they were wearing wet bathing suits and had not packed changes of clothes, the girls, fearing chaffing and discomfort, had decided to take off their bikinis for the trip to the mall. After all, they were wearing dresses and would rather go free than go sodden.

So when Angie hit the floor of the display in the window of BCBG off the main walkway of the mall, and when the racks and shoes and mannequins clattered to the floor with deafening clangs, and when a floor-to-ceiling banner—a banner that was designed specifically to draw attention—fluttered and folded to the ground, and when Angie's dress flew up over her head as she landed, she was not wearing underwear.

And people say there is no God.

Claptrap.

Wake Up Call

By Josh Corman

Follow me on Twitter @JoshACorman

My wife has lost almost 15 pounds in the last the last three weeks. She is not, however, on a diet. Instead of Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig or Nutrisystem, each which presents its own solutions for the manifold problems of those looking to do everything from shed a few holiday pounds to totally remake their bodies, Sara’s just eating a modest intake of calories and eating foods that are simply better for her. Things like whole-wheat pasta, Crystal Light instead of soft drinks, and lean ground turkey instead of ground beef. She calls it a “lifestyle change.”

As she bloody well should. See, I could avoid a diet. Sara could do her thing, and I could do mine. But a lifestyle change? I haven’t been able to duck that one. Now, that isn’t to say that I control my portions as well as Sara has, nor is it to say that I don’t occasionally do my own thing for dinner while Sara makes a healthier choice. Fault me, insult me, call me unsupportive if you like, but bacon and I have been together much longer than my wife and I, and that relationship is proving difficult to end. But I’m trying. I’ve eaten turkey burgers and whole wheat lemon chicken pasta and lightly seasoned baked fish for dinner, where before, it would have been cheese-smothered beef tacos, spaghetti with heaps of Italian sausage, and fried chicken.

In between my lamentations, though, I noticed how excited Sara was at the results of her choice to soldier on through the sometimes-less-than-appetizing moments. Sara is making real progress toward her goal, she looks great, and after just a few weeks, I don’t think I could convince her into even one night of Chinese food. She’s seen the Promised Land, and it ain’t filled with General Tso’s chicken.

Anyway, her resolute embrace of these challenging gustatory alterations inspired me. Sara’s choices have not been easy to make, but they have been immensely rewarding. Taking the long view (incredibly difficult when cheeseburgers and pizza are involved) has produced authentic happiness and self-confidence to the extent that it has become contagious.

I started thinking about my own goals and how irresponsibly I’d been “pursuing” them. After all, if a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing right. Anything worth having is worth working hard for, etc., etc. David Foster Wallace liked to point out that clichés and truisms like these get their reputations by being, well, true.

One afternoon, I told Sara all this and explained my own plans for a lifestyle change. “Starting tomorrow,” I said, “I’m getting up at six a.m., brewing myself some coffee, and writing until 7:20” (about the time I normally get up for work). Since she’s a much better spouse than I am, she evinced nothing but bubbly support for my decision (in retrospect, perhaps this is because my lifestyle change doesn’t mean that she has to get up at six in the bleeding morning, but I digress). I bought myself some Seattle’s Best to brew at home, lugged out the coffee maker, set the auto-brew timer for six, and forced myself into bed at around ten o’ clock.

Needless to say, I hated myself something fierce eight hours later. This is not a new feeling. I’ve been writing seriously for years (I’ll give you a moment to suspend your disbelief), but I have never been able to sustain any sort of work schedule, which, if you’ve ever read a book on writing (I have—about half a dozen, in fact), is pretty much the first thing that anyone who’s ever had success will tell you to do. The guilt that comes from not writing is the inverse of the guilt that stems from scarfing a handful of Oreos right before bed: you feel terrible because you’re not doing something. So on days when inspiration struck, I might pound out a couple thousand words in a flurry, but inevitably came the crash, which might last for a week or three, in which I wouldn’t jot a single letter. The guilt would swell and recede until another burst of the muse’s pixie dust would float down from heaven.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

Keep in mind that during this time I produced a few short stories, numerous long-winded blog posts (I’m sorry. Or, you’re welcome. I can’t decide.), more than 200 pages of a collaborative memoir, and 25,000 words of a still-in-progress novel. Imagine what I would have accomplished had I actually worked with any degree of consistency. I would, but the guilt would kill me. Now, back to hating myself.

So there I lay. The pitch black of my bedroom as my left arm groped numbly for the snooze button. Don’t close your eyes. Just five more minutes. No! That’s the kind of thinking that got you into this mess. I can start tomorrow. It’ll never happen. It’s not like I’m going to get anything real done in an hour, anyway. Get. Your. ASS. Out. Of. BED!

I swung my feet over the bed’s edge, and when they found the floor, I knew the hardest part was over. I switched the alarm off, threw on a rumpled hoodie, and marched out to my computer.

Today marks the twelfth consecutive day (weekends included) that I have fought through that same routine. The thirty seconds after my eyes open are still the hardest. By the time I’ve poured the coffee and opened whatever file I’m working on, I’m itching to go. An hour isn’t a lot of time, and some days are more productive than others, but even if I only write a few hundred words or spend most of the time staring in perplexed thought at the screen, I’ve put in my time. Anything else I write that day is icing on the cake, and every night, I go to bed feeling like I’ve taken another step toward being a writer. Maybe soon I’ll even lose the painful, self-conscious embarrassment that comes with explaining to people that a writer is exactly what I want to be, because, increasingly, it’s what I am.

Were my name Phil (in 1967), this is what my mornings would look like.

Whatever the long-term results of this endeavor (and believe me, I’ve let my imagination run wild on that front; writing is like playing the lottery: a lot of the fun is tied up in dreaming), I no longer feel guilty about my work habits. And that feeling alone is probably worth it.

If a faith without works is dead, then my faith in myself had been on life support. What I said and thought and what I actually did were two very different things. But no longer. Thanks to my wife, I’ve seen the Promised Land, and it’s filled with early mornings, the smell of coffee, and the soft sound of typing.

By Josh Corman

Follow me on Twitter @JoshACorman

The Sorting of Harry Potter: Ranking the Books in an Assortment of Ways, and Answers to the Nerdiest Potter Questions

Welcome to the Sorting of the Harry Potter series.

In this fluff completely academic piece, our editors will sort the Harry Potter BOOKS (not the films) in a variety of categories, from what we think are the best to the least best (not worst...there is no worst in Potter) in each given category. But before that, we'll get the potions flowing by answering some totally nerdy questions.

We got some good variation, but we did get some overlap as well. We aimed to give honest answers rather than change our answers to allow for diversity.

This piece is purely for fun and purely for Potter fans. If you haven't read the series, we invite you to start with Book 1 right now. We'll see you back here on Friday.

For those of you who remain, how do your own answers stack up? Feel free to speak up in the comments with your own answers to these questions and your own rankings.

Have fun.

A Reminder Cheat Sheet:

Book 1: Sorcerer's Stone
Book 2: Chamber of Secrets
Book 3: Prisoner of Azkaban
Book 4: Goblet of Fire
Book 5: Order of the Phoenix
Book 6: Half Blood Prince
Book 7: Deathly Hallows

Favorite scene in the series:

Jonny: A favorite scene, like a wand, is not easy to pick. No, the favorite scene, like the favorite book, picks the reader. Many things must be taken into account, and truly I (like anyone else) have multiple favorites, one to fit each mood. Overall, the scene that keeps coming back coming back to me is right after the cave in book 6, when Dumbledore is weakened by the potion and they are swimming out, Dumbledore clinging to Harry for support. The full, brilliant reversal of their relationship is revealed when Dumbledore says, "I am not worried Harry, I'm with you."

Emily: The graveyard scene in book 4. This was the point in the series where it really took a dark turn. It's the scene that makes you realize that the story is much larger than you had previously thought.

Corman:  Embarrassment of riches, really, but mine’s the “something like triumph” scene near the end of Goblet of Fire. Harry and Dumbledore have this (seemingly) innocuous conversation, but Dumbledore’s tone belies the immensity of the gamble he’s taking, a gamble we only glimpse at this point, but that becomes fully revealed before all is said and done.

Who is worse? Umbridge or Voldemort?

Jonny: Umbridge. People literally hissed in the theater when she first showed her face in Order of the Phoenix. I know this post isn't about the films, but this experience only illustrated how hated the Umbridge of the books is. It was opening night, so none of these people had yet seen the film. It was the lingering repulsion of the book Umbridge that stuck like stinksap and drew their hisses. Umbridge is no less oppressive than Voldemort, but her saccharine, sickly sweet exterior is what makes her more disgusting than a bogey flavored jelly bean. At least Voldemort doesn't pretend to be something he isn't.

Emily: Voldemort. While Umbridge may hide behind a wall of lies, remember that Voldemort did the same thing until he was powerful enough to come out in the open with his evil. He is no better, only more ruthless.

Corman:  I’m taking Umbridge, and I’m using Paradise Lost as my rationale. Voldemort reaches a point (like Satan in Milton’s opus) where pride and hate have driven him beyond the capacity for empathy and love, and his humanity is essentially nonexistent (further exemplified by the horcruxes, yada, yada). By the end, “choice” is a relative term for Voldemort. Umbridge is the knowing hand of a fascist regime, but she still has a soul, and she’s making destructive choices that she has to know are evil. Lucifer becomes evil and doesn’t have the capacity for anything else. Same with moldy Voldy. Umbridge has options, and she picks the sickliest pink one every time.

If you had to choose a Hogwarts "major":  

Jonny: Transfiguration. Infinitely complex and limitless possibilities.

Emily: Potions. Four words: Brew glory. Stopper death.

Corman:  Who isn’t taking Defense Against the Dark Arts? Potions is cool, but ultimately too like math. DADA is about feel and passion, and it’s the implicitly moral choice. I can’t even come up with a close second.

If you got had to date one of the characters, it would be: 

Jonny: Fleur Delacour. I've always enjoyed a challenge.

Emily: George Weasley.

Corman:  Hermione and I are too alike (stubborn, over-thinking, know-it-alls who can’t stand being wrong), and Cho’s carrying Cedric’s torch to the grave, so I’m going Katie Bell. We don’t know much about her, except that she likes sports and she’s a Gryffindor (which carries a lot of weight, after all), but there’s enough there to warrant my interest (for all of you touting Fleur, she’s got too much power to trust).


If you had to marry one of the characters, it would be: 

Jonny: Hermione Granger. I was a little in love with Hermione by the time I finished books 1-6 for the first time. By the time book 7 came out I had realized that I already knew my own real life Hermione, so I married her.

Emily: James Potter. He's like George in the fun ways, but he's grown into a responsible man.

Corman: Ginny. Capable wizard, tough, not high-maintenance, good family background, just romantic enough, and, just like Katie Bell, she likes sports. Plus, I’ve got a thing for fair skin, freckles, and red hair.


Scene (back story, or stuff that goes on behind the scenes during the saga's timeline) you most want to read about in full:  

Jonny: The duel between Dumbledore and Grindelwald. There is a hot steaming cauldron worth of potential for awesome action and for Rowling to work her creative magic with some (as of yet) unmentioned spell work from these two juggernauts. Plus, most importantly, there is an entire department's worth of mysteries here, and I want answers.

Emily: I want to hear about Regulus Back: his turn from the dark side, his own experience in the cave, and how he met his death. 

Corman:  In Deathly Hallows, the brief glimpse we get of Snape’s backstory as a spy is FASCINATING (not to mention the fantastically written scene at Spinner’s End at the beginning of Half-Blood Prince. I would read a Snape-perspective novel in a heartbeat. 

One food item, unique to the Harry Potter universe, you want to try the most:  

Jonny: Butterbeer. My mouth waters just reading about the stuff, and I've never even tasted it.

Emily: Butterbeer

Corman:  Butterbeer. As much as anything, I’m curious. All the man-made recipes I’ve seen online involve butterscotch, which I loathe, but I don’t actually think that’s how it’s supposed to taste. Maybe like Bourbon Barrel Ale, but without the alcohol taste? I have to know!

What one item you would buy from Weasley's Wizard Wheezes: 

Jonny: A Patented Daydream Charm. "One simple incantation and you will enter a top quality, highly realistic, thirty-minute daydream, easy to fit into the average school lesson and virtually undetectable." Oh, the possibilities.

Emily: Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder. You're at a party with a bunch of people you don't know, and you get cornered by some dullard who wants to talk about, oh I don't know, Harry Potter for two hours or so. What do you do? Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder is what you do. You're out of there before he can say "Merlin's Pants," and you can filch a couple of Blu-Rays, some nice photo frames, and maybe a house pet or two on your way out.

Corman: This is probably way too practical, but as a teacher, I’d love to have some extendable ears. Just to know what these couples whisper to each other between wet kisses in the hallway, just so I could laugh more.


Quidditch position you would play:  

Jonny: Chaser all the way. I played striker in soccer and point guard in basketball, so I've got the real life experience to back me up. In athletics I was quick, slippery, and a point scorer.

Emily:  Seeker. I'm small, and it's all about precision and speed.

Corman:  Assuming my gangly ass could get airborne astride a broom, I’m saying beater. My size (6’4” 225 lbs.) precludes positions that demand speed (seeker, chaser), and I’m not agile enough to be a keeper, but my baseball and golf years have built up a pretty solid ability to produce the torque required to launch bludgers. 

Your Patronus would be:  

Jonny: Great White Shark

Emily:  Mongoose

Corman: Penguin

Your animagus form would be:

Jonny: A falcon. It's all in the nose.

Emily: A golden retriever

Corman:  A Crane. Long legs, disproportionately-sized feet, broad wingspan. Fits the bill, plus it would allow me to fly, which is something I’ll take anytime I can get.


---Harry Potter by the numbers. Let the Sorting begin!---


Favorite Book: (This category may defy all explanation. Remember, the reader doesn't choose the book, the book chooses the reader. A favorite JUST IS)

Jonny: 1st Place: Book 4, Runner-up: Book 6, The Rest: 7, 5, 3, 1, 2

Emily: 1st Place: Book 6, Runner-up: Book 7, The Rest: 3, 5, 4, 1, 2

Corman: 1st Place: Book 4, Runner-up: Book 6, The Rest: 7, 5, 3, 1, 2
 
Funniest:

Jonny: 1st Place: Book 1, Runner-up: Book 6, The Rest: 4, 3, 5, 2, 7

Emily: 1st Place: Book 1, Runner-up: Book 6, The Rest: 2, 3, 4, 7, 5

Corman: 1st Place: Book 1, Runner-up: Book 3, The Rest: 2, 4, 5, 6, 7

Most Poetic:

Jonny: 1st Place: Book 6, Runner-up: Book 4, The Rest: 7, 5, 3, 1, 2

Emily: 1st Place: Book 6, Runner-up: Book 7, The Rest: 5, 3, 4, 2, 1

Corman: 1st Place: Book 7, Runner-up: Book 4, The Rest: 6, 5, 3, 1 and 2 (tie)
  
Best Adventure:

Jonny: 1st Place: Book 4, Runner-up: Book 7, The Rest: 5, 6, 1, 3, 2

Emily: 1st Place: Book 7, Runner-up: Book 4, The Rest: 6, 3, 5, 1, 2

Corman: 1st Place: Book 4, Runner-up: Book 7, The Rest: 3, 1, 6, 2, 5   

Best Action:

Jonny: 1st Place: Book 7, Runner-up: Book 4, The Rest: 5, 6, 2, 3, 1

Emily: 1st Place: Book 4, Runner-up: Book 7, The Rest: 5, 3, 2, 6, 1

Corman: 1st Place: Book 7, Runner-up: Book 4, The Rest: 5, 6, 3, 2, 1

Most Epic:

Jonny: 1st Place: Book 7, Runner-up: Book 4, The Rest: 6, 5, 3, 2, 1

Emily: 1st Place: Book 7, Runner-up: Book 6, The Rest: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1

Corman: 1st Place: Book 7, Runner-up: Book 4, The Rest: 5, 6, 3, 2, 1

Best Writing:

Jonny: 1st Place: Book 7, Runner-up: Book 6, The Rest: 4, 3, 1, 5, 2

Emily: 1st Place: Book 6, Runner-up: Book 3, The Rest: 7, 4, 5, 2, 1

Corman: 1st Place: Book 6, Runner-up: Book 4, The Rest: 5, 7, 3, 2, 1


Let's hear your own versions of these lists and your answers to the questions!

Stuck Inside of London with the Baltimore Blues Again, Part II

In which the author tries (and possibly fails) not to write something best used as a sleep aid or a dry-as-dust academic treatise, and reaches an organic and frightening conclusion.

(If you haven't read it, here is part 1)

1.

There’s an episode in The Wire’s last season called “The Dickensian Aspect,” which follows part of a much larger story arc involving The Baltimore Sun and its quest for juicy stories. I always “got” the title, in the sense that I knew that “Dickensian” was shorthand for wretched urban plight. But it wasn’t until I read Oliver Twist that I saw an added layer of meaning in the phrasing of the episode’s title.

To The Sun’s editor, “Dickensian” probably means “gritty” or some other euphemistic definition that glosses over the horrors from which he’s profiting by chronicling. But really, I think it gets at the heart of what both Nancy and Felicia Pearson feel about themselves. They’ve become, as my old friend Red puts it, “institutionalized.”

And just think about the ones who don’t get the casting director knocking on their door.

How easy it is for us to look at the people who populate these bleak corners of the United States, who occupy what epidemiologists call a “cyst” because it’s contained within a host environment, but is not made up of the same material, and say that if they only made better choices, they could rise beyond their circumstances. But even if that happens, and the circumstances themselves still exist, what have we won? We love putting the onus on the individual and playing up the role that hard work and personal responsibility play in our lives. But what Dickens knew, and what Simon knows, they showed us through their art: When we use class as a convenient way to ignore a voiceless population, we create a separate world, governed by a different set of rules, where words like “choice” and “fate” and “work” and “responsibility” and “education” don’t mean the same things or work the same ways.

2.

One of the most fascinating aspects of both Simon’s and Dickens’ work is how they view the outside forces that might conceivably come to the aid of those in need, but ultimately don’t. Both The Wire and Oliver Twist are filled with individuals who are burdened by good intentions (for the sake of spoilers, I won’t mention specifics), but, despite their efforts, have little success in changing the lives of the desperate characters around them.

My interest is piqued most specifically by the way that both men view the Church’s role (or the inevitable lack thereof) in aiding these individuals. In Oliver Twist, the Church and its people are largely absent. Oliver is confined to the workhouse as an orphan, and nothing good that happens to him is initiated in any direct way by the Church. In fact, the book’s first third is filled with ironic scenes in which Oliver’s Christian decency is constantly in suspicion (he is constantly described as having a rotten soul on account of his parentage). The characters who do provide Oliver some comfort are often described in terms of their virtues, but they’re virtues that anybody could have, irrespective of their motivations. If Dickens sees a poor orphan’s best shot out of London’s horrific underbelly taking place in a Churchless bubble, it can’t speak well of his view of the Christian community’s role in aiding the poor.

The same is even more true of David Simon. The one clear religious figure in The Wire is unquestionably good-hearted, but the Church itself just kind of sits in the background, a warm, toothless grandmother who isn’t ignorant of the cancerous drug game, but is admittedly powerless to do much about it.

Simon covered Baltimore for a long, long time. He has said repeatedly that his greatest aim as The Wire’s creator was to examine the major issues at hand in American cities, particularly the sort of former industrial hubs that have been increasingly hard-hit by rampant gang violence, crushing economic blows, and governments that seem more and more worried about plastering over the cracks than making hard decisions to address the most crippling problems of their communities (Detroit and Pittsburgh would likely fit the mold). If that was his aim, and he succeeded (which by the ways that prominent sociologists embraced the show’s depictions of the inner-city, it’s reasonable to say he did), then what does that say about the Church’s crushing lack of success in serving the “Other America?”

3.

The book of the Bible I’ve read more than in any other is James’ letter to the twelve tribes. The most powerful verse in this short book is, for my money, James 1:22 - “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.”

The edict here is pretty clear. James 1:27 delivers another - “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”

I can’t read this verse since watching The Wire without thinking about Bubbles, Randy, Dukie, Michael, Bug, Namond, Brody, D’Angelo, and all the other nameless characters who are, at one point or another, outside the game, practically begging for someone to step in and show them grace.

Please understand that, for my part, sanctimony has no place in this rambling mess of thought. I have never done anything that could be construed as what I apparently am ashamed of the Church for not doing enough of, if that makes any sense (unlikely, I admit). Charles Dickens and David Simon collided (unbidden) in my mind while I read Oliver Twist and made me think about this stuff. I’m doing a lot of the thing you’re not supposed to do when you write about serious issues (heaps of complaining and hand-wringing; no solutions), and with each word I type I get a little more down on myself. I want the Church to step in and act for me, so that I don’t have to think about Simon’s and Dickens’ implicit criticisms as criticisms of me (which of course they are, because I am the Church).

So then I end up, strangely, in a very similar situation to Snoop and Nancy. They’re scared to leave the situations that have defined their entire lives. Miserable though they may be, they know their misery and are comforted by it, in a weird way. In the end, the most challenging part of their struggle to escape their circumstance is perhaps that they are terrified about the unknowns that await them on the other side of their escape.

I’m scared too. What would it be like if I did what Simon and Dickens see so little of, and became an arm of the Church’s reach into these ravaged communities? Uncomfortable and even dangerous, perhaps. Christ didn’t mind those (or in spite of minding them, acted anyway), but I find myself wishing He’d give me a pass if it came to that.

I’m doubtful.

Stuck Inside of London with the Baltimore Blues Again: Part I

By Josh Corman

Felicia "Snoop" Pearson

Follow me on Twitter @JoshACorman

1.

If you have known me for more than, say, half an hour, it’s likely that you’ve heard me vigorously extol the virtues of HBO’s The Wire. Watching the show was a strange experience for me for a number of reasons, chief among them that The Wire very well may mark the moment that television became the medium for telling long form stories. This is coming from a guy who defends the viability of the novel with rabid-wolf ferocity to anyone who’ll listen (and a fair few people who don’t particularly want to). Don’t get me wrong. I have no interest whatsoever in abandoning novels and consuming narratives solely through premium cable. But only the most sweeping, piercing novels can do what The Wire did in terms of establishing such an empathetic vision and developing complex arcs that so vigorously mine the human experience of so many seemingly disparate individuals. Think East of Eden or The Brothers Karamazov, but in contemporary Baltimore.

David Simon and Ed Burns, its co-creators, both had lived in the Charm City, The Wire’s almost-its-own-character setting, for more than thirty years, as a journalist and homicide detective, respectively. Their depictions of the violence, drug abuse, police brutality, and complex moral and ethical structures in East and West Baltimore scared the hell out me when I watched the show. Which, come to think of it, may have been the point. Perhaps The Wire functions most like one of those plays that churches occasionally put on, where they depict the misery of sinners as they depart life without accepting Christ and, painfully aware of their error, plunge into hell’s eternal fire. The biggest difference is that in the plays, people can make a choice to be saved. In Baltimore? I’m not so sure.

This may have been David Simon’s thinking when one of the show’s actors, a real-life product of the Baltimore drug game named Felicia “Snoop” Pearson, was arrested last year on charges of conspiracy to distribute heroin. This, after vanquishing her stash and quitting the game (as it is always called by those affected) a few years prior when she was discovered and cast as a mid-level enforcer in the Stanfield crew. Within hours of the arrest, Simon issued a statement:

Both our Constitution and our common law guarantee that we will be judged by our peers. But in truth, there are now two Americas, politically and economically distinct. I, for one, do not qualify as a peer to Felicia Pearson. The opportunities and experiences of her life do not correspond in any way with my own, and her America is different from my own. I am therefore ill-equipped to be her judge in this matter.

If you’ve seen The Wire, you know that this quote perfectly meshes with Simon’s Baltimore as it appears onscreen. In fact, Pearson’s arrest brought back several of the same gut-punch feelings that the show delivered often. I desperately wanted Snoop to have been wrongly arrested, for her to have finally separated herself from the game and the life that has claimed tens of thousands of mostly young, mostly black Baltimoreans. Because, see, Pearson falls into the one percent of the one percent who had (and still has, possibly) a way out of the predatory, cyclical destructiveness of poverty and drugs. Her fall would shake a (probably asinine) assumption I’ve always made about places like urban Baltimore: that if the people there could just be given a viable path out, if the allure of quick cash and status from the drug trade could be replaced with something, anything else, that those areas could be reclaimed. (Note: I am painfully aware that in using terms like cyclical, poverty, urban, viable, and reclaimed in such close proximity to each other, I’m playing into the worst part of the worst stereotype of the educated, non-urban white guy playing arm-chair quarterback to inner-city America's biggest problems. If it seems like I’m making prescriptions, I’m sorry. I aim only to portray my own woefully limited point of view.)

So, a funny thing happened. I heard about Snoop’s story and sought out Simon’s comments, pondered them, figured he knew better than I did, and went on my merry way (it speaks, I think, to my pathetic detachment from the plight of urban America—and hundreds of other places in need—that I could encounter this story and go “on my merry way,” but go I did). Then some months later, Rolling Stone ran a story about Snoop and her attempts to fully and finally extricate herself from Baltimore and all that that entails. I learned that she had been born to a crack addicted mother. I learned that she had previously spent time in prison for murder—starting when she was fifteen. Recruited by an East Baltimore drug crew, she had been on the street when a member of a rival crew (another young girl) rushed at her wielding a baseball bat. Snoop opened fire on the girl and killed her. After her time in prison, she vowed to go straight and even got a real job. She was promptly fired when her employer discovered her record, so she got another job. Once more, her crime surfaced, and she was fired. It took little time for the game to swallow Pearson once again. And until The Wire came along, nothing in her life was likely to offer any further opportunities for escape, barring some sort of myth-making, Horatio Alger-like effort of individual will (which may or may not actually even be possible), that would undoubtedly have been spun into a Lifetime movie.


2.

Oliver Twist—Charles Dickens’ second novel, published in 1837—is an unusual work of fiction. Typically, main characters are supposed to do something, rather than simply have things happen to them. Characters should dictate the action, the common wisdom goes, not serve as punching bags, tossed around by fate. Dickens, evidently, didn’t get the memo.

The book’s most famous scene (one so famous, in fact, that I would almost guarantee that you’ve absorbed it through cultural osmosis), where Oliver eats his gruel at the workhouse where he was born, and, demonstrating verve that nobody finds in the least charming, asks for a second serving, occurs on page eleven, leaving 335 more pages before we fully know the fate of the titular character. In those pages, Oliver is passed from the cruel workhouse to serve as an apprentice at the hands of a cruel coffin-maker (Dickens’ humor was bleak from the beginning, apparently), and from there into the arms of a cruel band of organized pickpockets led by a couple of especially vicious rogues who put him to work as a housebreaker. Every time it looks like little Oliver has a chance to escape these villains' clutches, he is ruthlessly jerked back into their grasp. It gets to a point where every time the kid walks outdoors, you brace for some terrible new fate to befall him (which, in Chuck's defense, isn’t quite as morally defeating and exhausting as it sounds).

Then, kind of suddenly, things get static on Oliver’s end, and a couple of other characters take center stage: Rose Maylie, a compassionate young woman who vows to aid Oliver, and Nancy, girlfriend and criminal associate of Bill Sikes (the most vicious of the two aforementioned rogues). These two women play important roles in Oliver’s development, but for long stretches, Oliver doesn’t even factor into the narrative (aside from generally being the motivating element for others’ actions—he’s kind of a Maguffin in that way), and Dickens instead focuses on the plot to finally bring the novel’s villains to justice through a Rube Goldberg-like set of machinations (his passion for coincidence knows no bounds).

Two meetings between Rose and Nancy occur in the latter half of the novel, and it is these two scenes in which Dickens makes his most lasting critical statements about London’s underclass and the crippling effects of deep poverty and learned hopelessness (which is largely, it seems to me, what the book is really "about" in the English class sense). In this passage, Nancy speaks first.

Snoop wouldn't have asked so nicely.

“I am the infamous creature you have heard of, that lives among the thieves, and that never from the first moment I can recollect my eyes and senses opening on London streets have know any better life, or kinder words than they have given to me, so help me God! Do not mind shrinking openly from me, lady. I am younger than you would think, to look at me, but I am well used to it. The poorest women fall back, as I make my way along the crowded pavement.”

“What dreadful things are these!” said Rose, involuntarily falling from her strange companion.

“Thank Heaven upon your knees, dear lady,” cried the girl, “that you had friends to care for and keep you in your childhood, and that you were never in the midst of cold and hunger, and riot and drunkenness, and - and - something worse than all, as I have been from my cradle; I may use the word, for the alley and the gutter were mine, as they will be my deathbed.”

This exchange happens the first time Rose and Nancy meet, and in the midst of a larger conversation in which major plot points are advanced, so I’ll spare you most of the context. What you can take from this is how Nancy views herself. She isn’t fishing for compliments when she claims that people recoil from her in the streets, and she isn’t asking for a handout when she describes the miserable circumstances of her life. She’s simply offering Rose—who she sees as occupying an unreachable social plateau—an explanation of who she is, so that Rose will take the time to listen to what she has to say. A few pages later, they continue, Rose offering Nancy a chance at escape from her corrupt life.

“... do not turn a deaf ear to the entreaties of one of your own sex; the first - the first, I do believe, who ever appealed to you in the voice of pity and compassion. Do hear my words, and let me save you yet, for better things.”

“Lady,” cried Nancy, sinking on her knees, “dear, sweet, angel lady, you are the first that ever blessed me with such words as these, and if I had heard them years ago, they might have turned me from a life of sin and sorrow; but it is too late, it is too late!”

“It’s never too late,” said Rose, “for penitence and atonement.”

“It is,” cried the girl, writhing in agony of her mind...”

That agony, I think, is a very real thing, born out of the solipsistic view that often engulfs those born into extreme poverty and the sort of sinful mire that Dickens saw in the squalid hovels of 1830s London.

Or, say, that David Simon saw in millennial Baltimore. In both cases, it’s reasonable to suppose that one of the greatest contributing factors to the seemingly endless cycles of crime and despondency is that the people in those places don’t really and truly believe that another existence is even possible, let alone likely for them. In these passages, Nancy doesn’t come off as someone who is truly beyond hope, but since she sees herself that way, it doesn’t matter. Perception becomes reality, and the game claims another victim.

Part II (in which I attempt to avoid the frankly intimidating trap of sounding like I'm writing an abstract for a doctoral program application) arrives on Monday. 

By Josh Corman

Follow me on Twitter @JoshACorman

Wine from the Pop Machine: A Lesson in the Classics from a Whole Bunch of Prostitutes

It's a classic story: Boy meets girl. Boy pays girl to sleep with him. Girl dies in grotesque bout of tuberculosis. Ah, l'amour.

Previously on Wine from the Pop Machine, we learned the name and composer of Bugs Bunny's raucous piano solo in the critically acclaimed think-piece, Rhapsody Rabbit. Today we're going to jump from cartoon to film with the help of our new best friends, the afflicted and conflicted women of the night. Let's journey together back to 1990. Hair is big, bangs are bigger, bangles are plastic, Paula Abdul is not yet a punchline. Cinema is bright this year. We have Goodfellas, Edward Scissorhands, Home Alone, and the pick of the bunch, Pretty Woman. Dear Pretty Woman. Delightful Pretty Woman. You brought the wonder of downtown Hollywood to the big screen. I remember when I moved here to L.A. and sat in my first, magical traffic jam at Hollywood and Highland and smelled the smog and sweat and watched all the map vendors and flyer-givers and crack sellers working together in harmony and thought, "Ah, Pretty Woman, how full of shit you weren't."

Fellow time-traveler, you'll recall several memorable moments from the film, I am sure. There's the "Big mistake. Big. Huge," scene, the playful snap of the necklace box scene, and the "So good I almost peed my pants," gaff at the opera. You might also remember Edward's speech as the curtain goes up.

People's reactions to opera the first time they see it is very dramatic; they either love it or they hate it. If they love it, they will always love it. If they don't, they may learn to appreciate it, but it will never become part of their soul.

Our protagonist watches with undivided attention as the opera unfolds, and at its close she stands to applaud with tears in her eyes. Clearly, she is one of those opera newcomers who absorbs the medium into her soul (I assume in some kind of horcrux ritual). I always wondered what the story is that so engrosses her and inspires him, and ten years after I saw the movie for the first time, I got my answer.

The opera they attend, if you have been curious to know, is called La Traviata, and it was written by Giuseppe Verdi. The story goes a little something like this: Poor boy falls in love with a—shall we say—mistress of the courts. Mistress abandons life of immorality and opulence for poor boy's true love. Outsiders convince no-longer-mistress it would be wicked to stay with poor boy because of factors A, B, and C. Woman goes back to being mistress and tells poor boy she doesn't really love him (but she so does). The lovers overcome the obstacles and reinstate their love just in time for mistress to die of tuberculosis.

I certainly hope the synopsis sounds familiar. Moulin Rouge is one of its most recent incarnations, but the story was born even before Verdi grabbed it. It was first a novel by Dumas called La Dame Aux Camelias. The novel was quickly adapted as a play, then an opera, a ballet, a movie, and about twenty more movies. You know how little orphan Annie goes to the movies with Daddy Warbucks? Yeah, she's going to see Greta Garbo in Camille, the 1936 movie version of the story. I guess Daddy Warbucks wants Annie to get a complete and early education about all of her career options, since she definitely ain't getting her dirty orphan hands on his fortune.

Over time, the Dumas story transcended its literary origin and became rooted in our cultural consciousness. You can see its influence on any romance that sees one person putting the needs of the other individual over the desires of the relationship, even if it means giving up the relationship. Aragorn parts with Arwen because he knows she belongs in the Grey Havens. Edward tries to resist Bella because she doesn't belong in the vampire world (but maybe as a snack? Just an idea, Ms. Meyer). Those guys with unbuttoned shirts sing, "It's the hardest thing I'll ever have to do, to look you in the eyes and tell you I don't love you. It's the hardest thing I'll ever have to lie, to show no emotion when you start to cry." Nick Lachey, the glory of your selflessness dims only in comparison with your shining pectorals.

Verdi chose well when he snatched La Dame Aux Camelias' story for his opera. He chose a romantic conflict that every generation could adapt and appreciate. If you haven't seen La Traviata, I hope you get to do so soon. The arias are soaring, the story—as I've mentioned—is timeless, and you get the rare pleasure of rooting for the whore. Well, rare if you've never seen Camille or Moulin Rouge or Pretty Woman or Memoirs of a Geisha or Firefly or Taxi Driver or Trading Places or L.A. Confidential...

In Defense of Peter Jackson and Faramir: The Art of Adaptation

By Jonny Walls

Recent conversations with friends have gotten me thinking about the art of story adaptation, particularly for film.

A couple things I've come to learn over the years: One, I used to think the best way to adapt was to stick as closely as possible to the source material. This is often not true. Two, fans of the works in question are the worst film critics.

I understand that this is a self defeating argument since I claim that fans of original works are the worst critics and then turn around and criticize a film begotten by my most beloved work of literature, but hear me out.

Uber-fans are like crazy parents at a little league game. "If that coach doesn't see my child exactly the way I (completely erroneously) see him (based on a pure but nevertheless blinding love) and start him at pitcher every game, then he's an idiot!"

Maybe your kid just isn't a pitcher. Maybe he's a shortstop. Maybe he's a catcher. Maybe, just maybe...he sucks at baseball.

But if we can put aside our fanboy-ism we can all learn to appreciate some good films for what they are, or, as the case may warrant, recognize the films that just got it wrong.

Here is my thesis in a nutshell: The art of adaptation requires a walk on a very tight rope indeed. The adapter must not be afraid to break from his source material. It's for its own good! Literature is a different medium, and certain things that work in that arena simply will not fly in film. (More on that in a minute.) Conversely, and most importantly, the spirit of the original work must be maintained. This can be accomplished even while changing and compressing a story, and it can be failed miserably even when following an original work closely.

Make no mistake, I'm not here to cast a wide net of defense over all adaptations with the erroneous claim that to adapt is to gain unquestioned dominion over a work. Not so. The original work must be respected and treated with care, or it can become a pale imitation of the original work (Prince Caspian) or cease to be an adaptation at all and be rendered a devious imposter at a hotel luncheon with someone else's nametag while said tag's rightful owner is bound and gagged in his hotel room on the sixth floor (Fever Pitch and Resident Evil.)

While the subject of films that went awry is a fun and (sometimes) worthy topic, I will instead focus on one that got it right.

Lord of the Rings is a great example to consider because it isn't perfect, but despite its flaws, it still falls into the pinnacle category, in my opinion. I could go on for an age about the myriad specific ways these films succeeded or fell short, but taken as a whole I say they were a success. I will focus on one of the big ones in the hope of a reasonably brief discussion.

Faramir is representative of the greater issue at play here and is thus a perfect example. Oh, how the fanboys wailed and howled (myself included) about film-version Faramir's prick-ish decision to drag Frodo away to Osgiliath and derail him from his quest. As much as I always loved the films, I derived much pleasure from bashing the discrepancies between page and screen that Jackson and crew were "too thick to understand," wondering, "does he think he knows better than Tolkien? If only they had let me write the script."

Yeah, right.

Put bluntly: Jackson, Walsh and Boyens knew what they were doing in 2002, and I didn't. Had Faramir emulated his ink and paper counterpart and turned Frodo loose immediately upon learning of his treacherous and noble quest to destroy the ring, we wouldn't have a movie.

And that would be a slight problem, because you need a movie to have a movie.

If Faramir hadn't presented some sort of conflict for Frodo and Sam, they would have literally spent the entire second film walking. And walking. And walking. Remember how they spend the first half of that film just...walking...as it is? Remember how tedious it is? It's already the weakest of the three films, and much of that is because it sticks to the formula of the book as much as it does.

This is a necessary evil because, as I said, much of the original work must be retained to serve the greater work, even if it may be at the expense of portions of the film. Those dull moments in Two Towers serve the greater work as they lend Middle Earth a sense of grand scale and drive home the oppressive nature of Sam and Frodo's quest. They serve as juxtaposition for the the beautiful Shire and Rivendell that our heroes toil to save. But Jackson and crew stretched that band as far is it would go. Any more and it would have snapped.

A bridge piece is extremely difficult to adapt because movies need clear cut beginnings, middles and ends, with tangible conflicts. Where novels can get away with things like meandering through the waste for hundreds of pages by using little techniques like omnipresence (the ability to see inside any character's mind at any time, allowing us to explore the character's emotional growth, anguish, joy, etc. from the inside) films must be external. Conflicts must be apparent in the things happening on the outside. On screen. Thus, The Two Towers needed prick-version Faramir.

"But wait!" cry the fanboys, "Shelob's lair could, nay, should have been the main conflict for Two Towers. That's how it was in the books, and that would totally work for all that external stuff. What's more visual and cinematic than a giant-ass spider?"

You're right and you're wrong. That could have worked for Two Towers.

Shelob's Lair and Shelob herself were quite cinematic and gave us one of the best scenes in all three films. The problem is if you move Shelob out of the third film and into the second (where she was in the books), you're left with no active conflict for Frodo and Sam in the third film. Yes, there is plenty of conflict happening around them, and there is a great menacing threat floating over the whole world, but if there isn't direct conflict in Frodo and Sam's path, on screen, the entire third film would have consisted of them wandering around in Mordor, making their painstaking way to Mount Doom (which is how it is in the book). It would have been unspeakably dull right up until the very end. Remember, we wouldn't be seeing all of the character development and conflict through personal anguish going on in their minds and revealed through Tolkien's well crafted dialogue. In film, we must see it happen, must see them overcome their trials, or it doesn't translate. It wouldn't have hooked us otherwise.

The third option would have been for Jackson and crew to invent a host of new conflicts to spice up act two (like they did with the Aragorn storyline), and it would have pissed people off even more than the Warg battle did. Ironically, changing Faramir's character helped them keep things as close to the original work as possible.

One more word and then we'll wrap it up. And this is important. The Faramir change does not alter that all important spirit of the books. Much of the spirit of Faramir in the books is borne of his success where Boromir, his brother, failed. The physically "weaker" brother is stronger where it counts. The film still delivers this theme in full, but it's deftly altered to fit the film format. If Faramir had been strong and pure from the get go, without the benefit of Tolkien's omnipresence directly telling us all that neat, deep character stuff for which the author has unlimited access and liberty to divulge, we would have been left with an "important character" who shows up on screen, does absolutely nothing, and then disappears.  And we would be left to assume that he's important because...why? Because they told us so? They told us he's related to Boromir, so we need to take their word for it and believe he's important?

Wrong. It does not work on screen.

As it is (in the film), we get to see Faramir reach that character arc, that point of strength that eluded his brother before him. We get to watch it take place and witness the transformation, and in the end, we get the same theme of strength over weakness, the defeat of temptation. The spirit remains the same, and it tidies up the act two issues for both the second and third films in the process.

The LOTR movies aren't perfect as films or as adaptations, but they get the spirit right. Despite a few missteps, like pretty much every extra in The Return of the King, which were cut from the theatrical for good reason (hindsight is 20/20, after all), Jackson and crew did a great job bringing Middle Earth to the screen. Similar arguments could be made in defense of the excision of Tom Bombadil and The Scourging of the Shire, but we've all got places to be, so I'll spare you.

Have you been too tough on some adaptations of your favorite works? Have you blindly stood by some that were faithful to a fault? What are some adaptations you think worked? Which ones fell flat for you? Maybe it's time to go back and give some of these a second look. And for goodness sake, give Faramir a break.

By Jonny Walls