Media Confession: What classic book have you *never* read?

I’m curious how many other people share my particular secret guilt: The knowledge, gnawing away inside you, that there is a classic book that you know you should have read by now but never have.

I’m convinced everyone must know of a book (or movie or TV show) that is widely disseminated in popular culture —but that if word ever got out that they, themselves, had never consumed it, they would never again be considered hip or urbane or literate. That they, in fact, will never get invited to hang with cool people again.

For me, that book was “The Phantom Tollbooth,” the children’s classic by Norton Juster.

When my well-read friends ever speak of it — even if they overhear it referenced in passing conversation — they always stop to comment, “Oh, I loved that book.” To which someone else will reply, “Yeah, that was great, wasn’t it?”

I don’t know how I missed it. I ever remember the librarian sitting us down and reading excerpts to us at Beechwoods Elementary. I remember sitting crossed-legged on an ochre carpet thinking that any book with a title like that was sure to be good. Then, for whatever reason, I never picked it up.

Thirty years later, driven mad by guilt (and the thousand-somethingth time I had been left out of a conversation about it), I finally picked up a copy and read it.

The monkey is off my back! But oh, my friends, my book-loving, media-savvy, witty and wise friends: I found it tedious.

Yes, I’ve just compounded my original sin (not reading a classic) with a newer, fouler sin (not loving a classic). I didn’t realize “Phantom Tollbooth” was a quite literal allegory about the search for knowledge, and the merits of learning over ignorance and complacency. Milo, the personality-free cipher of a protagonist, experiences a series of random, quip-laden encounters with school-bookish characters like the Spelling Bee and Mathemagician and the Threadbare Excuse.

“Well, you might say I’m a specialist,” said [Dr. Kakofonous A. Dischord]. “I specialize in noise — all kinds — from the loudest to the softest, and from the slightly annoying to the terribly unpleasant. For instance, have you ever heard a square-wheeled steam roller ride over a street of hard-boiled eggs?” …

“But who would want all those terrible noises?” asked Milo, holding his ears.

“Everybody does,” said the surprised doctor; “they’re very popular today. Why, I’m kept so busy I can hardly fill the orders for noise pills, racket lotion, clamor salve, and hubbub tonic. … Without them, people would be very unhappy, so I make sure that they get as much as they want. Why if you take some of my medicine every day, you’ll never have to hear a beautiful sound again.”

“I don’t want to be cured of beautiful sounds,” insisted Milo.

“Besides,” growled Tock … “there is no such illness as lack of noise.”

“Of course not,” replied the doctor, … “that’s what makes it so difficult to cure. I only treat illnesses that don’t exist: that way, if I can’t cure them, there’s no harm done.”

The absurdity and just-so-clever dialog invites a lot of comparison to “Alice in Wonderland,” another classic that, let’s be honest, is also kind of tedious. (Have you ever read it? Sure, it’s loaded with great imagery and memorable moments, but if you plow through the whole thing, you’ll wander through so much aimlessness you’ll need a Boy Scout and a compass to come out the other side.)

So either this proves I’m a craven half-wit, or that I just have a low tolerance for enigmatic characters and absurdist plot. But at least I know what everyone is talking about!

While I invite you to call me on my poor taste, I’m quite curious to hear your answer to a more pressing question:

What book have you never read that is making you feel guilty and less cultured as we speak? Come clean. It will be good for the soul.

Three-Word Review of ‘Ponyo’

Inscrutable, wet dream.

Captions don’t count: You don’t really watch a Miyazaki film for plot. Invariably, the Japanese director of “Spirited Away” and “My Neighbor Totoro” delivers films of visual richness and inventiveness with an uncanny understanding of how children view the world in wonderment. In this regard, “Ponyo” is no different. Its layered 2D animation luxuriates in the details of a bobbing, bubbly undersea world, making more marvel out of hand-painted cels than a host of Hollywood rendering computers ever could. It is, in every way, like watching a dream. The plot, however, makes not an ounce of sense. It involves a sea wizard’s well of wizardy hoodoo, vampiric healing magic, a localized tsunami, a moon on the move, and the inexplicable requirement to have two 5-year-olds commit to a long-term relationship in order to, uh, save the world. Somehow. (Because when your plot relies on magic, you can make any rules you want and no one can question you. A great “Simpsons” episode taught us to hand-wave away the plot illogic of fantasy stories by saying, “A wizard did it.” And in Ponyo, the entire plot is one big “A wizard did it.”) But you watch a film by Hayao Miyazaki for the power of its visuals, both big (a girl racing across the tops of magical, living waves to a stirring Wagnerian score) and small (the spreading movement water makes when you leave a wet footprint on pavement). If that’s what you go in expecting, you’ll be well rewarded.

Where the Good Books Are

If you’re the kind of person who reads this blog, you’re also probably the kind who’s fully aware of the upcoming Where the Wild Things Are movie due in October.

Just the very mention of a children’s picture book being turned into a movie brings to mind such painful memories as The Cat in the Hat travesty…

… or The Grinch That Stole Christmas tragedy …

… or the Go, Dog. Go! fiasco.

Beloved books all, and roundly pooped upon by Hollywood. So the notion of Maurice Sendak’s “Where the Wild Things Are” joining that list was unnerving. But, of course, if you’ve seen the two trailers, you saw something totally different. Something reverential. Something literary.

Instead of wacky novelty music, a moody indie soundtrack. Instead of exaggerated emotions, subtle shades of sadness and loneliness. Instead of a palette of exploding Technicolor, muted earth and sepia tones. Even the messaging written into the trailer is surprising:

“Inside all of us is … Everything you’ve ever seen … Everything you’ve ever done … Everyone you’ve ever loved.”

Hunh. Kinda makes ya think… think that this movie won’t stink, that is. Director Spike Jonze gave us both “Being John Malkovitch” (one of my favorite films of all time), as well as the “Jackass” franchise, so really there’s no telling which direction this thing will go. But I’m filled with hope.

Still, if the Hollywoodization of a beloved children’s picture book makes you nervous, the novelization of a Hollywoodized beloved children’s picture book should just be downright wrong. You should expect nothing more than a pure, artless cash-in at best — and a rude dumbing-down at the worst. But here’s where I got a surprise this week.

The New Yorker is running excerpts of the afore-dreaded novelization of the Where the Wild Things Are movie. As it turns out, this novel has been written by wunderkind Dave Eggers, the author of “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius” and the founder of the McSweeney’s literary journal. Eggers worked with Jonze on the screenplay (I had no idea), and no less than Maurice Sendak himself asked Eggers to write the accompanying novel, giving him full freedom to make it a thoughtful, all-ages prose adaptation.

And did he ever exercise that freedom.

It was a very strange time in Max’s life. The day before, his sister had tried, by proxy, to kill him. Her tobacco-chewing friends had chased him into his snow fort, and at the moment when he felt safest, in the cool white hollow, they had jumped on the roof, burying him. His sister had done nothing to help, and then had driven off with them, and to punish her, because she was no longer his sister, he’d doused her room with water. Buckets and buckets he’d emptied everywhere, in a furious, joyous process. It had been great, and felt so right, until his mother came home and found what he’d done. She was mad, Claire was mad, and so, tonight, the only person in the house who seemed to like him was his mom’s chinless boyfriend, Gary, and even thinking that sent a shudder through him.

After he runs away:

The air! The moon!

He felt pulled as if by an outgoing tide. The air and the moon together sang a furious and wonderful song: Come with us, wolf-boy! Let us drink the blood of the earth and gargle it with great aplomb! Max tore down the street, feeling free, knowing he was part of the wind. Come, Max! Come to the water and see! No one could tell that he was crying—he was running too fast.

Well, I’ll be damned. The movie opens Oct. 16, and the book hits shelves on Oct. 1. In a fur-wrapped cover. I’m pretty certain we all need to buy this. (Thanks to Retort reader Anneke for the tip; because, yes, I’m just not that guy who reads the New Yorker.)

Look, it’s Intellectual Property Man!: If only ideas really were bulletproof

Issues of idea ownership have been on my mind lately, and ta-da , here’s the ongoing Superman copyright battle still in the news to help me articulate my thoughts.

It starts with this: Owning an idea is not like owning a house or a gun or a spoon or anything else you can hold, steal, break, lick or leave a fingerprint upon. Likewise, the laws covering idea ownership are twisty and murky; they are as clear to observers as the view from inside a Turkish bath.

You can have an idea that wakes you in the dead of night, something unique and original and wonderful. That thing is yours, locked away in your head, for as long as you want to own it.

But it has no value there. If you want to get something for it, you’ve got to get it out of your head, and let others see it, and here your troubles begin.

If someone sees your idea, will they steal it? Can you sue to get it back?

If someone helps you improve the idea, should they be rewarded with part of the ownership?

If someone gets your idea out in the market where it can make you money, should they own some of it as well?

If someone makes variations of your idea down the road, do you own part of their creation?

You’d think the creators of Superman, one of the most recognizable icons of the 20^th Century, would have gotten rich, rich, rich for their efforts. And of course, they didn’t. Idea-havers never do, do they? (We’re leaving you out of this, J.K. Rowling.)

Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster dealt with their intellectual property issues in an era before “intellectual property issues” were a well-defined topic. So when they wanted to monetize their comic book superhero creation in 1938, they didn’t have a legion of fellow creators or lawyers waving red flags at the contract with Detective Comics that sold the rights to Superman for $130.

A hundred and thirty beans. That’s it, in exchange for some contract work producing the comic — that is, Siegel and Shuster gave away the potential for long-term gains in exchange for the security of some short-term work.

Over the years, courts have upheld this copyright contract in favor of DC, so that Siegel and Shuster got bupkus. (To be fair, DC acknowledged some moral obligation in 1975 by granting Schuster and Siegel an annual $20,000 pension apiece and health care benefits. Which is nice … but clearly, not quite what one would expect to earn for creating one of the reigning icons of all time, eh?)

But copyrights were never intended to last forever. And that’s where it starts to get thorny. Beginning in 1999, the estate of Joel Siegel (who died in 1996) began its battle to reclaim its share of the copyright, and Shuster’s estate followed a few years later. The result? A maddening patchwork of rulings that parse the Original Idea into absurd bits that seem to defy logic. As Variety reports in an Aug. 13 story:

[Siegel's estate] has “successfully recaptured” rights to … the first two weeks of the daily Superman newspaper comic-strips, as well as portions of early Action Comics and Superman comic-books.

This means the Siegels … now control depictions of Superman’s origins from the planet Krypton, his parents Jor-El and Lora, Superman as the infant Kal-El, the launching of the infant Superman into space by his parents as Krypton explodes and his landing on Earth in a fiery crash.

But not all is lost for DC!

DC owns other elements like Superman’s ability to fly, the term kryptonite, the Lex Luthor and Jimmy Olsen characters, Superman’s powers and expanded origins.

Really? An idea birthed in the 1930s by a couple of hardscrabble artists has now been diced like sushi and spread into every corner of the bento box. When you own “Superman’s ability to fly” how much do you get when Supes catches some air in someone else’s comic? (Or do you price your commodity so high that Superman has to take the bus?) If the Siegels own exploding Krypton and Superman’s “landing on Earth in a fiery crash,” can DC retcon his story so Kal-El is adopted from the Krypton Super Orphanage and delivered to Smallville by a Cosmic Stork?

My father would call this “a furschluggin mess.”

The lesson, then, is simple: Creators, own your work. Don’t let it go for cheap. In the words of another DC-spawned philosopher: “If you’re good at something, never do it for free.” (—The Joker, “The Dark Knight”) Unless, that is, you don’t mind having somebody else owning your hero’s right shoe and his ability to pronounce the letter P.

Sure, my fellow creatives, sometimes doing “work for hire” is the only oasis in a wide desert, but if that’s where you choose to drink, be aware — be very aware — that unless you negotiate a nice canteen and some ice, you’ll be just as thirsty tomorrow as you are today.

Does DC own this pose? Or does Barack owe Jerry Siegel a quarter?

‘The Wolfman’: Now THAT is a trailer

Holy smokes, I did NOT see this movie coming down the pike:

The Wolfman stars Benicio Del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, and Hugo “Elrond” Weaving — and I may just spend the rest of the night watching this beautiful trailer. It may be enough for Universal to make up for The Mummy.

Can’t wait for Feb. 12.

The world’s best media room: The Batcave vs. The Nautilus

Every man’s fantasy includes, at least on some level, the perfect manspace in which to view the movies he loves. (This fantasy may go on to include Swedish Bikini Teams or truckloads of tangy pork ribs or the re-sprouting of long-lost hair, but in all ways it must begin with a movie media room.)

I’ve kept a portfolio hidden from my wife of “some day projects” to achieve this perfect manspace. It began with nearby Abt Electronics in Glenview, Ill., which used to maintain a series of Truly Boss Media Room displays, featuring the kind of excess of equipment and overindulgence of design that is engineered to stimulate the pleasure center of every male until he’s a drooling mess with an open wallet. Abt is the first place I ever saw a gaudy, wonderful, tricked-out media room that put the theater in home theater: several rows of stadium seats, velvet curtains, armrests and cup holders … Oh, I saw what was possible and was made glad.

Abt doesn’t maintain as many cool media rooms as it used to, but that’s OK: I’ve refined my expectation of what such a thing should look like, having narrowed my preferences to two options decidedly not on the menu at Abt.

First, may I introduce The Batcave:

There’s some question whether this beauteous creation is simply a little showroom showmanship from vendor Elite Home Theater Seating, whether it actually exists in a home, or is merely a nice computer-generated dream. Little matter to me; now that I have seen it, I know that money can make it happen.

Just today, though, I’ve found the first viable contender for the Batcave, and it has me all atwitter because not only is it a real, concrete, in-service theater, it was homemade by a crafty maker-ninja in Switzerland, who has copious photos of the construction and final product at his own site.

Behold, the Nautilus!

It’s got the panache of Disney’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, with all the Victorian steampunk of Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill’s “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.” A fine place to take a brandy and another viewing of “Iron Man,” wouldn’t you say?

UPDATE: I found another Nautilus-themed home movie theater. How cool is this planet?

Things That Make Me Absurdly Happy VII

Been watching Lord of the Rings with Oldest Boy (9) and Younger Son (7) because they’ve been asking, and I’ve been putting it off, and finally we agreed they were ready for Sheer Awesomeness.

You know that scene in The Two Towers where Legolas rides a shield down a staircase while shooting orcs left and right with his Elvish Arrows of Unlikely Accuracy?

And then, as he dismounts, he stabs an orc in the chest with that selfsame shield?

The boys were on their feet, wooing and pumping their fists in the air. Younger Son, overcome by the moment, shouted, “Surf’s up!“

My boys are men now. Nerdy, wonderful men.

I’ve been caked!: One fan spells his Edgar & Ellen love with frosting

Friend of the Retort, Chris Rettstatt, found this gem on the Internet the other day:

And this!:

It’s the work of a Malaysian cake artist for a client whose child, reportedly, holds “Edgar & Ellen: High Wire” as his favorite book. (Previous link is a Flickr stream; here’s the corporate link for all my vast Malaysian readership.)

This cake is such a great monument to one of my favorites of the Edgar & Ellen series. The book has everything: a macabre circus, a shifty set of villains, a quest, a faked death, a poisonous bite from a carnivorous plant, and dancing peacocks. I’ve posted snippets of “High Wire” in the Excerpts section, and I’m proud of my work on the book.

It bears noting that, at the time, three different writers were sharing the load under the nom de plume Charles Ogden — not just the plotting and outlining (a very laborious and detailed process the way we did it), but the writing and editing, too. And though we split the duties evenly, I’ve always regarded this book as Billy Carton’s. As a fellow Ogden, Will identified some significant plot problems late in the game and offered the solution — he put the book on his back for a short time, restructuring the ending, throwing whole sections into different locations to help us untie a knot we had wound around ourselves.

In the end, Will knew instinctively that (mild spoiler here, if you care) the villain had to disappear, presumed dead, early in the third act and not be heard from until the bitter end. Because if the villain was going to hang around, we had to give him stuff to do and say and … poof. As soon as he was gone, our heroes could get on with resolving their journey, saving us time and torquing up tension to a new high.

It was a masterful feat, and it taught me a lot about the courage to “murder your darlings” as the old writer’s adage goes. That is, a writer may fall in love with a passage or a chapter or a whole sinewy thread of an idea holding together his plot, but when the story demands it, he must be able to kill off those beloved ideas in order to solve bigger problems. Sometimes the story just demands these favorite passages be axed, and a writer can’t let his ego (or his exasperation) keep him from going back to square one. Hint for writers: Just because something is funny, well-written, or masterfully clever, doesn’t mean your story needs it to fulfill your characters or deliver them to their destination.

However, some darlings get to live on. Here’s another of my favorite passages that survived the executioner’s axe on the way to the finale. It stars Ringmaster Benedict who, we have seen, has a whalebone peg leg that can be adorned with inventive costumes:

In the far corner Mayor Knightleigh sat uncomfortably in a carved chair with feet that were zebra hooves at the back and lion paws in front.

Benedict stood by the window that looked out upon a cranking collection of gears, cogs, and pulleys. The mechanisms whirled in a precise ballet and filled the room with a rhythmic hum. Here in the bowels of the funhouse, the man had a superior view of the machinery that ran it all.

Ellen noticed that Benedict’s right leg was no longer a unicycle; now it was covered in white feathers and ended in a scaly chicken foot with four fierce talons.

“Peculiar,” she murmured.

Benedict crossed to his desk and propped his chicken foot upon it.

“Oh! An itch. Just now. I can’t quite reach it,” he said. “I hate to impose, Mr. Mayor, but would you scratch it for me?”

The mayor curled his lip in disgust. “If … you insist.”

He reached out and tentatively placed a fingertip on the underside of the foot, then began to scratch. Suddenly, the chicken leg shot from Benedict’s body and smacked the mayor’s chest, knocking him back into the animal chair, which squawked like a kookaburra.

“Spring-loaded chicken leg,” chuckled Benedict. “My most recent invention.”

And now: Sports! (A trip to see Bears in their natural training habitat)

For all the cynicism I have in my soul for professional sports, I have to say the NFL reached out to me yesterday with the warm embrace of an Oprah show, and I hugged back. Yes, I hugged the NFL with all the joy in my blackened, shriveled heart.

On a bit of a lark, I took the boys to see the Chicago Bears at their summer training camp in Bourbonnais, Ill. A chance clip on the evening news showed people sitting around in lawn chairs on the sidelines of what appeared to be a Pop Warner pick-up game, but which was, in fact, highly paid professional sports superstars shuffling through drills on a college practice field.

“Why not?” asked my wife, and with at least one son who is Sports Crazy, we took the bait. Three men in a Honda, together we crossed the countryside to watch pro pigskin in action. And we found joy.

I didn’t expect it, really, since I’m more a college sports guy than a big-time sports guy. And why not? High-dollar pro players fill the newspapers with their misdeeds. Spoiled players throw tantrums and demand cookies or they will cry. And for the privilege of watching them play, a family of four has to drop hundreds of dollars to see it all live. (We’ve been to one Cubs game as a family; crummy tickets were $80 a pop. Bears tickets, like Bears games, are rarer and costlier still. Who can afford to take children to these things?)

As it turns out, the Bears Training Camp is a whole ‘nother experience. For the cost of gas (an hour and a half drive from my door), we got free parking, free admittance, free autographs, and all kinds of free freebies for a day’s submersion in football antics. We even got an hour in a heaven of giant inflatables and bounce-arounds — the last time we went to our local pumpkin harvest festival, the privilege of jumping around one of those air-filled amusements worked out to about two dollars a bounce. Try putting three kids in a duct-taped inflatable obstacle course and not dream of those six bucks flying back to your wallet to better serve you in the form of gas money or a steamy morning coffee.

But the Bears put on a class show, including crazy inflatables like a Japanese game show …

Older Boy takes it to the hole to win the tug-of-war challenge.

…and the obligatory Slide of Doom.

Older Boy, undaunted by heights.

My boys even had the chance to run the length of the big inflatable bear muzzle that REAL PLAYERS get to run through before REAL GAMES on REAL TV.

That’s some glee.

We got there two hours before the gates opened, so we found ourselves in a bit of a long line. But this being a crowd of football fans, it quickly became a mass tailgate as Bears enthusiasts broke out their grills, footballs and lawn games. (Note: Even though my Cincinnati kin insist it is called Cornhole, folks up ’round these parts will look at you crazy unless you just call it “bean bag toss.”) (Also note: Olivet Nazarene University, home to the Bears Training Camp Experience, keeps it alcohol-free, and you should, too. Or else the security detail will deal with you … the Wesleyan way.)

Travel tip No. 1: Our early arrival ensured the boys were two of the daily allotment of 150 kids granted access to a children-only autograph session after the practice. This session was a bit factory-like, with each set of 50 kids getting two autographs from just two players — and if you don’t like which two players your line got, then tough, junior. Older Boy got a Hancock from running back Mike Forte, which Younger Son (the true Sports Nut) is keenly jealous of. Still, it was a well-run operation, and got the kids close to some Wow Factor with some Really Big Dudes.

Travel tip No. 2: Seats for practice weren’t so bad — certainly you get a closer view at Training Camp than at an actual game. But here’s a warning: The practice area is three side-by-side football fields, and the team only practices on one, which changes day to day. We arrived so early, I didn’t have any clues as to what the best seat would be, so I chose shady seats in a set of bleachers at the 45-yard mark. We put down our things to save the spot and went to attack more inflatables. By the time we returned, it was clear we had chosen the wrong side; the real action was now quite far away. My hint for next time? Look for the cranes holding TV cameras — this was the vital giveaway for which field was going to get the most use.

We eventually moved to a blisteringly sunny spot on a grassy knoll. Not bad, but could have been closer for having arrived so early:

Younger Son did not complain about the view from behind the wide Urlacher fan.

Not the worst view of Jay Cutler (No. 6, the franchise-making QB upon whom the pillars of the Earth depend).

What could have been a hundred-dollar experience for three men-about-town turned out to require no more investment than a little gas money, some cooler-packed snacks and a little sunburn. So thanks, NFL. You could have charged for this amusement — and for all I know, someday some blackguard in your central office will think this is a fine idea — but for today, your well-run, family-friendly camp show made fast fans of two excited boys … and their father, who so desperately needs to keep them occupied for the rest of the summer before they kill each other.

Mission accomplished, NFL! My kids had so much fun they didn't throttle each other for one more day this summer!

Community: Will NBC’s new fall sitcom make TV fun again? Please?

NBC has posted the pilot episode of its new fall sitcom, “Community,” on Facebook, and it’s available for free watching through the end of the week. I urge you to do it. It’s smart, funny stuff set at a community college, and I laughed (or at least grinned contentedly) for the two-thirds I could watch before the video playback crapped out.

Not many sitcoms can coax a grin out of me these days — so black has become my heart — but “Community” has the right kind of snark, hiptitude and cynicism that’s going to make “30 Rock” step up its game, I should think. It skewers academia like a Richard Russo novel, while making fun of its own “Breakfast Club” collision of diverse worlds, all of it stitched together with snappy dialog from yuksters such as Joel McHale (“The Soup”), John Oliver (“The Daily Show”), and Chevy Chase (The Karate Dog). Yes, I said Chevy Chase, whose aging Toastmaster character just may find this comedian back in form. (Seriously: The Karate Dog, 2004. Look it up.)

“Community” has a few hurdles, namely that it’s kind of mean-spirited, and the main character, Jeff, seems to be an irredeemable cad. Cads can be a hoot, but he’ll need to be sympathetic before long if he’s going to be a cad in the spotlight. Still, “Community” is buoyed by the sound of me choking on my unexpected laughter through sips of  Coke Zero.

Not every TV show can give you an exchange like this. Jeff, the disbarred lawyer new to community college, is looking for test answers from Duncan, a professor who is a former client of Jeff’s:

DUNCAN: Are you trying to use reverse psychology on a psychologist?

JEFF: No, I’m using regular psychology on a spineless, British twit.

DUNCAN: I’m a professor! You can’t talk to me that way.

JEFF: A six-year-old girl could talk to you that way!

DUNCAN: Yes, because that would be adorable!

JEFF: No, because you’re a five-year-old girl, and there’s a pecking order!

Paired with “30 Rock” on Thursday nights this fall, “Community”‘s Sept. 17 debut may be NBC’s best chance to reclaim its Must-See-TV Thursday glories of yesteryear. And wouldn’t it be sweet if Fletch himself were part of the reason?