Cardio Pulmonary Recrimination

Sometime after the Twitchy Adventure, I realized it would be a very good idea to re-up my CPR skills. Yesterday I took the class, earning my re-certification twenty-plus years after the fact.

The classes are a bit different now. The dolls are different, for one thing: they don't have limbs anymore. Presumably this is because if you ever have to perform CPR on someone, it will most likely be a quadruple amputee. And why the doll is called "Anne" when it looks more like one of the male robots from I, Robot is beyond me. Also, the idea of "breath shields" had never occurred to anyone twenty years ago: you swabbed the doll's mouth with alcohol each time a new student took over, and that was that. Now you use these thin plastic doo-dads that bunch up awkwardly as you use them and encourage you even more to see the doll as an object rather than a person. (The instructor kept noting that the chief difference between class and real CPR would be the rescuer's adrenaline.)

But there was another new thing that I found particularly interesting: coverage of Good Samaritan laws. In yet another example of the woes of the litigious society (which I see not as the fault of the GOP's much-hated trial lawyers but as a result of a society that teaches people that it's your obligation to try to get something for nothing, anytime you can), apparently people have been sued for trying to render aid and not succeeding. This prompted the state legislatures of, I'm told, every single state to enact Good Samaritan laws to protect the legal rights of those who attempt to render aid. Because it does no good at all if someone decides not to help a dying person because he's afraid he might get sued.

The key term in Good Samaritan legislation seems to be that the rescuer should not attempt to render aid that "exceeds the scope" of his abilities. In other words, just because you saw a character on a TV show do a tracheotomy doesn't mean you should try to dig a hole in someone's throat and insert a pen tube. Now, when I was in the midst of the Twitchy Adventure the thought of litigation never once entered my mind because it almost never does: I am resolutely non-litigious, and would much rather see people try to work things out between themselves than holler out "I'm gonna sue!" over the least little thing.

Still, it's an interesting question. Given that I was more than twenty years past my CPR certification, if I had done what Twitchy was begging me to do, would I have been exceeding the scope of my training in attempting CPR? (God knows, at the time I was terrified of compressing the wrong part of her sternum.) Then there is the other issue: given that Twitchy's heart was clearly beating and blood was circulating just fine, if I had gone ahead and done CPR and something awful had happened, would her family have been able to claim wrongful death? Even though I was only doing what she had instructed me to do?

Who knows; it never came to that, and I'm even happier now that it didn't. But here's the danger: now the thought of litigation, which as I said never occurred to me before, might very well occur to me the next time. And then what decisions do I make in the heat of the moment, with all that adrenaline pumping?

Pink or Floyd?

Last week, I went to the final show of David Gilmour's U.S. tour, at the Gibson Amphitheatre. There, Gilmour played with Pink Floyd bandmate Richard Wright, with guest performances from David Crosby and Graham Nash. This meant that for the first few songs, I was barely conscious of the music being played, what with being starstruck and all. Two-thirds of Crosby Stills & Nash! (Not to mention parts of The Byrds and The Hollies.) The rythm guitarist Phil Manzanera, he was part of Roxy Music! And half of Pink Floyd! Woo hoo! (But which half? The Pink half or the Floyd half? Or maybe PiFlo, or NkYd.)

I have put myself on record before as a fan of the Floyd. I was surprised and delighted at the strength of the Australian tribute band that I saw last November, and now I was seeing (half of) the real thing. It was a very solid show, with some fabulous highlights (for me, the performance of "Comfortably Numb" sent me onto the street very happy indeed); but for some reason, it wasn't as transcendant as I'd hoped. Not sure why, either.

Maybe it was the venue. The Gibson Amphitheatre is, as a space, wonderful--good sightlines, fabulous acoustics. There are, however, two strikes against it: the location, and the seats. The location is pretty bad, right bang up against the Universal Theme Park. This means that you have to walk a narrow, windy path to reach the doors, and when you leave, every single person gets channeled into that narrow stream and it takes probably half an hour to get to your car. (Although, with an entrance for the 101 right there, once you get to your car you're out pretty fast.) But the seats are really problematic. I am not at all a fat person (6'3", 205 pounds), but sitting in those seats made me feel like one. They may be even narrower than on airplanes, and that's saying something. So whenever I was seated, I felt terribly constrained, my arms folded awkwardly in front of me because of the closeness of the people on either side; and every time we stood or sat again, there was the gripping of the seat-arms on my hips, trying to keep me from doing either. It's hard to really relax into a performance when you can't find a decent place to put your arms.

Or maybe it was the new album. Gilmour structured the show into halves, with the entirety of his new album, On an Island, comprising the first half, and then Floyd material in the second half. (Although partway through the tour he came up with the clever idea of starting the show with a three-song journey through Dark Side of the Moon, just to get people warmed up. Which might've worked better if I hadn't been sitting there wondering just what to call that particular half of Pink Floyd.) Now, there's nothing wrong with Gilmour's new album--there are some very good tracks, but I find it to be stronger in the first half than in the second, when it gets a little--noodly. The songs get very bucolic and gentle, and seem to meander a little. Which meant that I actually started to fade out a little as the first half of the show progressed, and that meant having to rev up again for the second half. In my uncomfortable chair.

And then, although I am a fan of the Floyd, I'm not a huge fan. I do not own copies of every album, I have not sought out the rarities and the B-sides, and although I ripped into iTunes the first disk of Umagumma I sure as hell didn't rip the second. And in the show, Gilmour paid considerable attention to some of the more obscure tracks, with stuff from albums like Atom Heart Mother.

In short, I'll admit it: I wanted the big hits, and didn't quite get them. I was very happy when "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" and "Wish You Were Here" were played, and the full presentation of the 23-minutes-plus "Echoes" was a real highlight. (The call-and-response section between Gilmour and Wright was incredibly tight, so much so that they often seemed to be improvising right on top of each other, while meshing perfectly.) The musicianship throughout was spectacular, Gilmour really is one of the great guitarists of all time, and it was fun to watch Graham Nash, for example, standing onstage and just having a great time watching Gilmour play. But I wanted more of the hits, I did; I wanted that feeling I got as "Comfortably Numb" played us out to go on all night, and didn't get it. In my uncomortable chair.

Isn't it a shame that a great experience can be so easily diminished? And not necessarily because of anything the musicians did or didn't do--because of the particular set of expectations I carried with me, and the years-ago design of a bunch of chairs, and so forth. But maybe there's still some hope--I see that AMC Theatres is showing a big-screen presentation of this very concert next month, so maybe I get a second chance to have the experience I'd hoped for the first time. A nice big immersive screen, good sound, better seats, plus expectations exactly in line with the show because I've already seen it. Here's hoping.

United 93

Paul Greengrass's film United 93 will premiere at Tribeca next Tuesday, then open nationwide three days later. I have several excellent reasons for wanting to see the movie: first, a friend of mine from college, David Basche, is playing Todd Beamer, which is potentially a career-making role for him. (He played my doppelganger in an adaptation of Hans Christian Anderson's The Shadow. So naturally, I taught him everything he knows. Yep. You bet.)

The second reason is that I really like director Paul Greengrass. Bourne Supremacy was terrific, and his docudrama Bloody Sunday, about The Troubles, was absolutely wonderful. He has a very potent, you-are-there style that makes for visceral, immersive movies, and I think he was a great choice for this movie.

But maybe too great. And maybe his style is exactly the problem. Think of that scene in Bourne Supremacy when Jason Bourne is in his car and gets broadsided, spins out, recovers and gets away. The quick cutting, from hand on stick to foot on pedal to tight on his face as his attention never wavers, really makes you feel like you're in that car with him, experiencing what he experiences. Greengrass is great at this stuff. But this is Flight 93 we're talking about.

There have been a bunch of articles lately, wondering whether the public is ready for this movie (including a good article that Yahoo pulled from The Hollywood Reporter), and it's a question I can't answer. Certainly I can't speak for anyone else, or guess what "the public" may or may not be ready for; but I have seen the trailer on Apple's QuickTime site, it's about three minutes long and it is a very emotional experience. Am I ready for a ninety-minute movie of this stuff? In public, with a theater full of strangers? That, for me, is exactly the question, and it may be the question a lot of people are quietly asking themselves. Do I want to go into a theater and sit there and be overcome by this experience? Or do I want to just wait till it comes out on DVD and experience it privately, at home? My guess is that most people will opt for the latter: that the movie won't do so well at the box office, but that the DVD release will go through the roof.

Then again, who knows? I vividly remember going to see Dead Man Walking in a theater, and at exactly the moment when the curtains in the death chamber are pulled open, some woman in the back of the theater let out one strangled sob, then choked it all back. It was a powerful reminder of the potency of a communal experience, of the fact that an audience is comprised of people who carry their own stories into the room with them, experiences that can sometimes react with the story onscreen in surprising and compelling ways. My own memory of the movie is now intertwined with that woman's reaction to it: did she have a relative who was on Death Row somewhere? Had someone she known been murdered? I'll never know, but it made the movie itself less abstract. The same thing can happen with United 93, and there's a real value to that kind of experience.

So maybe I'll suck it up and risk my manliness and go see the movie in a theater. Maybe; still haven't decided. The question is how many others will do the same? I guess we'll know in a week.

And, on an unrelated note: there is an excellent, thought-provoking article on the immigration debate in Salon, noting how it challenges progressive thinking but ultimately may provide a solution to the labor movement's slow decline. Definitely worth reading.

The Best of the Worst

From time to time, one must simply stop and marvel at a sentence such as this:

She smoothed the hair back from her elfin ears, making it tumble down her back, past her shoulders, broad but not too broad, broad enough to support the luxurious breasts that filled the front of her scarlet sun dress, glowing in the afternoon sun, the hot Georgia orb of fire, that came through the window, as she admired her trim shape and flat tummy, in the mirror.

This comes from a deliberately bad book called Atlanta Nights (on sale here), which was a team project designed to put the lie to a bad publisher. (The story, plus an excerpted chapter, can be found on Teresa Nielsen Hayden's site here.)

In short, it goes like this: an organization called the Science Fiction Writers of America hosts, as a part of its website, the valuable "Writer Beware" section, the purpose of which is to help novice writers avoid various scams and pitfalls. (It includes the most recent edition of the Twenty Worst Agents in America; and offers all the sound reasons why, for instance, you should never ever pay "reading fees" to agents.) The good folks at the SFWA had been keeping an eye on a so-called publisher called "PublishAmerica," and noted one day that PublishAmerica had seen fit to assail the credibility of science fiction and fantasy writers, saying that writers in these genres are hacks because they supposedly believe that "SciFi, because it is set in a distant future, does not require believable storylines, or that Fantasy, because it is set in conditions that have never existed, does not need believable every-day characters." The implication was that PublishAmerica stands for real literature and couldn't be bothered with such lame storytelling. Naturally, for members of an organization called the Science Fiction Writers of America, the game was afoot.

A group of SFWA members decidedly to collectively test the high standards of PublishAmerica. They split between them the chapters of a deliberately awful book, the above-mentioned Atlanta Nights, and spent a happy weekend writing just as badly as they possibly could. Naturally, this high-falutin' publisher was happy to accept the book for publication, and a certain kind of literary history was born. Go ahead and read the more detailed version of the story at Ms. Hayden's site, but above all, be sure to read the excerpted chapter. It will brighten anyone's day, I promise.

Oh, and for more bad writing, there is always the Bulwer-Lytton Society's legendary "It Was a Dark and Stormy Night" contest.

The Nukular Nightmare

What is to be done about Iran? I'll say it up front: I don't know. It's a big, tough, horrifying problem, and I don't have any answers. But there is one thing I know for sure: attacking them with nukes would be wrong, wrong, wrong and wrong.

Seymour Hersh, at the New Yorker, filed an article the other day laying out Bush administration plans for military strikes against Iran, in order to, as a former defense official told Hersh, "'humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government.'" But this former defense official then added, “'I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, "What are they smoking?"'" And then there was this paragraph:

One of the military’s initial option plans, as presented to the White House by the Pentagon this winter, calls for the use of a bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapon...against underground nuclear sites.... The elimination of Natanz would be a major setback for Iran’s nuclear ambitions, but the conventional weapons in the American arsenal could not insure the destruction of facilities under seventy-five feet of earth and rock, especially if they are reinforced with concrete.

Hersh is one of the great reporters, with impeccable sources, which is why he infuriates the Bush administration--he keeps saying in public things they want to keep very, very private. So when Sy Hersh writes that the Pentagon is considering tactical nuclear strikes on Iran, I have to take such an allegation seriously.

As I said up front, I don't know what the right solution is to the Iran problem. I have a hard time believing we're even capable of military action anywhere else in the world right now; and if we're fighting in Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran, wouldn't we all be forced to admit, finally, that our leaders have engaged in a new Crusade against the Muslim world?

There is a point to be made that, in the event air strikes are in fact called for (a point I am not yet willing to concede), the tactical difficulty of striking a target deeply buried under rock and concrete is daunting, and that a nuclear device might be the only weapon capable of penetrating deeply enough to be truly effective. But there is a bigger question that the Pentagon does not seem to be considering: the moral question.

After the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, the use of nuclear weapons became the new Rubicon, the barrier that, once crossed, changes everything. MAD was mad, but it also seems to be effective. A nuclear strike became the one place no one dared to go, understanding that even if a military victory resulted, the loss of moral authority would be total and irreversible. Put it this way: if the United States should ever use a nuclear device in any Islamic country, we can forget about winning over any hearts and minds in the region for the next century at least. So anyone who thinks that such a strike in Iran would "lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government" is suffering the worst kind of delusion and needs to be replaced in his job immediately.

MoveOn.org has started an online petition urging our legislators to make very clear their opposition to this nonsense. I don't sign everything that MoveOn sends me, but for this one there was no hesitation. Here's hoping it does some kind of good, somehow.

(Oh, and by the way: I'm fairly convinced that President Bush's mispronunciation of "nukular" is deliberate, a down-home touch from the mind of Karl Rove. Because they really do think that little of us.)

This Plus That

Some random stuff, in no particular order:

Rental madness

In last Friday's Variety, there was a "Weekend" article declaring "renting is the new luxury." A local mortgage banker was interviewed about the approximately $450 per month she spends renting purses from a company called Bag Borrow or Steal, in which she said "What I'm renting my Gucci purse for now, I could buy it for in about five months. But it's not like I can't afford to buy what I want. I just don't want to make a commitment right now."

To a purse? I am not one of those who like to make fun of "Hollywood types," in fact I go out of my way to assert the basic normalcy and decency of the vast majority of people who live here. But come on, you can't commit to an effin' purse? Geez, people, you sure do make this hard.

No entiendo cordura

A quick note on the latest in the immigration wars: as CNN reports, the Senate is all wet. Not that I was completely happy with their compromise bill, so maybe when (if) they get back to it, it'll be a better bill that finally passes--but come on, this is the Senate we're talking about. But still, it was the Congress that raised this whole foofaraw in the first place; if they now allow it to languish, it will become abundantly clear that conservatives only brought up the matter to score political points about how tough-minded they are, not because they actually wanted to, you know, accomplish something. In an election year.

(Actually, they did accomplish something, which as usual is exactly the opposite of what they had intended: they awoke the sleeping giant. No one will soon forget the peaceful mass demonstrations of the past few weeks, and I suspect that more than a few Congressmen will be hearing from their Latino constituents come election day.)

Hey Bob, what've you been up to?

Gosh, I sure am glad you asked. Trouble is, I can't really talk about anything right now. Beaudry is in good shape and will soon get better, Veils is moving along nicely, and the rest of it is still secret--including something new that is super-duper-secret.

But hey, the weather is terrific on this Spring day in L.A., I'm reading an interesting book someone handed me by Bruce Feiler about Abraham and his place in three of the world's major religions, and the recent film of Pride and Prejudice was really surprisingly good. Life, it ain't so bad.