Day: November 18, 2007

Fifteen years after the author signed it, I finally finished The Rascal King: The Life and Times of James Michael Curley (1874-1958); An Epic of Urban Politics and Irish America. Read a little on Google Books if the topic interests you.

The author, Jack Beatty, was a senior editor at The Atlantic Monthly during my time there. This was his first book. Every employee got a copy, and Jack was kind enough to sign it, even though I was then a part-timer, working on special advertising sections. For that note of kindness, I’ve kept this book on my “to read” pile for much longer than any dim interest in Boston’s political history would have done.

Still, the biography is a good one, about topics I knew very little about: Boston’s political history, the rise of the Irish politician, and Curley himself. Five times Mayor of Boston, once Governor of Massachusetts, and even a US Congressman, Curley abused the system. But his personal charisma, energy and exploitation of politics which can only be called tribal were enough to make him larger than life. I haven’t read or seen The Last Hurrah, which in its re-telling of Curley’s tale made his flaws and triumphs legendary. Curley did cross paths with every notable politician from Roosevelt to Kennedy, though being indicted twice never really helped his aspirations to rise beyond Massachusetts. 😉

I’m always impressed when a well-done magazine excerpt sharpens my anticipation of a book, rather than removing the need to read the full-length work.

I first read about Michael Oher in Sports Illustrated (Sep 25, 2006). Michael Lewis’s full book The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game goes deeper and broader, to great effect.

The game is American football. The blind side is the quarterback’s vulnerable side, the left side for the right-handed quarterback. Lewis traces how Lawrence Taylor and Bill Walsh, from different angles, raised the value of the offensive lineman most responsible for protecting the blind side, the left tackle.

Michael Oher is, quite literally, a very large example of the trend. As a high school kid, he was huge and agile, and those two attributes in combination changed his life for the better. The story of that change is remarkable.

While I enjoyed Moneyball and other Lewis accounts, The Blind Side made me care a lot more. Without preaching — but with a clear point of view — Lewis demonstrates how capricious American life can be. Lewis only learned about Michael Oher because he happened to go to elementary school with Michael’s adoptive father, and rightly points out how many Michael Ohers are lost to the disadvantages placed in front of them.

Lewis contributed a related piece to the New York Times last week, Serfs of the Turf, advocating that colleges pay their football players. His research into and continuing interest in the story of Michael Oher informs this viewpoint (not a new one).

Looking for a bit of light fun on a Friday evening, our thoughts turned to The 40-Year-Old Virgin. Great call. After enjoying Steve Carell in Dan in Real Life recently, and laughing endlessly at Knocked Up this summer, it was a blessing to not have seen this Apatow film yet. Just moved Superbad to the top of the Netflix queue… DVD is available in December.

So much of this humor is crude, in a “I can’t believe they just said that” way, but so spot on all the same. And, it’s real in a “I wish I could come up with a line that funny, even if I wouldn’t say it out loud” way.

Maybe it won’t stand out over time, but it’s a cultural fit right now. And there are some time-tested themes, so Metacritic’s 73 feels a few points low.

No Country for Old Men is bleached with violence. But the menace remains, so the gore doesn’t deaden you to the story. I haven’t read Cormac McCarthy’s book, but the Coen brothers certainly know how to make a movie which doesn’t feel like anything you’ve seen before.

The Texas countryside is beautiful, but blasted by sun and wind. The characters continue on set paths, with no deviation or options. Still, your interest in the pursuit remains, even if you know how it will all end. The only disappointment was the final five or ten minutes, where Tommy Lee Jones demonstrates how he’s lost his way, retiring from the sheriff job which has been his whole life. The film drifts off, too. It’s very deliberate, but I glanced at my watch during this sequence. Overall, though, there’s no looking away from a powerful, interesting movie.

Jones is, by the way, perfect for the role. At times, you wonder if he’s acting, or just doing a riff on local history, since he was born in Texas, and lives there now.

Metacritic delivers an expected high score: 91.