In which I read (and read, and read, and read....) the Count of Monte Cristo.

Happy Halloween, everyone.

So I finished reading this book about a week ago, and I when I sat down to write my book report for the internets (because that is what I guess I do for fun these days) I found it really hard to do so.

It's hard, because this book is oh so very long.  Its a quick read, relatively speaking; I managed to down the 1400 page brick in about three months, which is a pretty good clip for me.  But it is also incredibly complex and convoluted, full of complicated character interactions and romantic plot twists (most of which involve Edmond Dantes, Master of Disguise, dressing up as a priest or an eccentric English billionaire to go places where even the well monied Monte Cristo dare not tread).

So a synopsis is beyond me, though if you have seen the movie you get the general idea.  Edmond Dantes, nautical prodigy and betrothed to the beautiful Mercedes, is falsely accused of being a Bonapartist by two of his associates and is condemned by the prosecutor of Marseilles in order to protect his own father (who actually is a Bonapartist for reals).  And so Dantes goes to the dreaded prison of the Chateau D'If, where he languishes for years and then meets the old Abbe in the next cell over.

Now in the book the Abbe does not teach Edmond swordsmanship, but he does tell him about the hidden treasure on the deserted isle of Monte Cristo in addition to giving him a world class education.  Edmond escapes the prison, finds the treasure, and then goes off to reward his friends and punish his enemies.

The book is actually very different from the movie.  For one, there are many, many more characters, all of them intertwined in betrothals and affairs and past interactions.  For another, Edmond never actually crosses swords with any of his enemies.  He rather uses elements from their own past (all have a stain of dishonor upon their record, of one sense or another) and engineers a situation which brings about their downfall, only revealing his true identity when they are, one by one, truly ruined.  There are four men involved in the Dantes conspiracy;  two die, one goes mad, the final one is financially ruined and briefly held captive by a band of Italian bandits (which appear to be at the service of Edmond), but is ultimately forgiven by an Edmond Dantes who is horrified at the collateral damage wrought by his revenge, which is extensive.

Edmond also doesn't get the girl in the book.  Mercedes has become an old woman in her unhappy marriage to Fernando, one of Edmond's principal enemies, and while Edmond still loves her he is a little ambivalent (and rather lacks understanding) about her perceived disloyalty towards him, his former betrothed.  She ends up in a convent.  In a twist which is kind of creepy these days, Dantes instead falls in love with his Greek slave Haydee, whom Dantes rescued from the Ottomans and has raised as sort of his own daughter....it's hard to place his feelings for her, but in the end they realize they love each other not as father and daughter or co-conspirators (she has an interest in seeing at least one of Dante's enemies fall), but rather as co-people.

It is at times a burdensomely romantic book, full of exotic stories and Italian smugglers, brave men and fainting women, faked deaths and drug usage, twists and turns and comings and goings.  There is a certain joy in reading it, and it is interesting to think about revenge in Dante's context (he truly believes he is the instrument of a vengeful God, though finally love for his fellow man softens his lust for restitution) and whether or not its justifiable, but ultimately I am not sure it signifies much.

Ted Cruz and Bad Renoirs

Two Things:

First, I must officially announce the end of the Ted Cruz Magical Mystery Tour.  Congratulations Senator Cruz: you have broken my will.  On the Alpe Duez that is the 2016 Presidential Campaign I have cracked and am heading back towards the team cars for a snack while I watch you doggedly grind on to try and catch Trump and Carson, who look surprisingly good in their tight fitting bike shorts.  It’s easy to see where Trump gets his confidence from.  He's got really nice calves.

It was a nice idea, I think, to try and capture the hum drum day to day movement of a man on campaign. But in practice it turned out to be a lot of work – trolling through Twitter feeds, logging miles, calculating distances, estimating the amount of chicken eaten at this event or that event;  it all turned out to be a little too much for me.  If I had been able to keep track daily that would have been one thing, but I got two kids at home and I’m holding down a job at the candy factory and Chelsea FC are in crisis and there just isn’t any time.

So we return the bus back to the Merry Pranksters, dispose of the rest of the marijuana at the Colorado state line, and with heavy hearts say farewell to the mystery tour.  We hardly knew thee.

But it also gives me more time and space to follow the campaign in general.  It is interesting, if not also down right fucking scary.  Yes, Trump and Carson are ahead in the polls (though dismayed by the appeal of Trump I understand it, though Carson….wow, I mean, I just don’t know what people see in him), but look at my boy Cruz down there.  Poll numbers stubbornly persistent around 7 – 10%, biding his time, staying out of the lime light, raising tons and tons of money and basically right now just trying not to lose, so that if and when Trump and Carson lose their appeal he is the next man up, the anti- establishmentarian who has in fact been a part of the establishment, who understands the levers of power and therefore is best positioned to destroy it.  Look out my friends.  Look out.
Second, a half-hearted boo to the Renoir Sucks At Painting (RSAP) movement.

Look…Renoir isn’t my favorite either.  There are other painters I enjoy more, but there are also plenty I enjoy less.  I think when Renoir is on he is excellent – it is hard for me to have any problems with his Luncheon of the Boating Party, I love his portrait of Monet, and I think these show that he can be quite good.  I think the problem with Renoir is, perhaps, that he can be sublime and shambolic in the same canvas.

Renoir Eats Lunch on a Boat

Take for example one of my favorite paintings, A Bar at the Folies- Bergere:

Fun Fact:  The Oranges signify that this woman might actually a be a prostitute.

I love this painting.  I love the fact that Renoir captures the movement around the busy Parisian bar, the people mingling over their drinks, the eyes of the barmaid with their sort of sad look, signifying the loneliness that one can feel in the midst of a bustling hedonistic paradise.  And look, there in the corner? That is a bottle of Bass Beer, with its signifying red triangle trademark.  Delightful!
But ah, the mirror in the background.  We see the barmaids back, with her disappointing squirrel tail haircut, and I suppose that we are the man in the top hat, talking to her.  But the problem is that by the laws of physics that perspective in the mirror should not be -

Wait, what?  This is a painting by Manet?

Manet?? Really??

Huh.

Okay, so maybe Renoir sucked at painting after all.   Still, I’m not going to traipse around the country with a sign that says “God Hates Renoirs” like a trooper in some kind of artsy-fartsy wing of the Westboro Baptist Church.  I have more important things to do with my time, one of which is definitely NOT following every movement of Ted Cruz as he continues to ask people for large amounts of money so that he can become leader of the Greatest Country on Earth and then refuse to govern it effectively with the obstinacy of a stubborn child denied desert because she didn’t eat all of her carrots, and yet still refuses to eat the carrots based on principle alone.

Plus, art is subjective.  Who can say what is good, and what is bad?  Lots of people thought Van Gogh was horrible painter when he was alive, it was only near the end of his life that the critics finally started to see what we think we see today.  And it’s not like everything Van Gogh did is a masterwork.  Van Gogh is my favorite painter, but there were some days were clearly there was too much brandy in his coffee and the results were slap dash and crappy, and in general his portraits often leave something to be desired.  Mr. Geller is right that we shouldn’t just assume that something is good because we’ve been told for years that it is so, but then what right does he have to tell people who love Renoir that his art is the worst art of all art?  He has no right.  He’s just a blowhard who has latched onto this one “cause”, garnered a following, and will probably try to spin it into a book or a movie or a You Tube channel or something.  I believe he is genuine, that he hates Renoir with all the gall and vitriol at his command, but 50 years ago he’d just be an eccentric man fuming in the corner of a coffee shop, chain-smoking cigarettes and writing letters to the editor, and we’d give him a wide berth rather than embrace him.

And so, I will do the same.

It Almost Made it Worth It.

It was, at least for me, an awful weekend.  Just terrible.  One of those weekends that all parents probably have every once in a while, where you feel like there are just too many people cooped up inside in a house that is just a little bit too small filled with just a little bit too many toys.

It sort of started earlier in the week with the story of Hurricane Joaquin and the Inferiority of US Forecast Modeling.  On Wednesday afternoon the storm track was going literally right over my house. Right over my house!  Pretty much everyone but the Europeans were predicting the storm would make landfall somewhere between the Carolinas and New Jersey.  Trish bought soup and water, New Jersey fretted about a repeat of Super Storm Sandy, and Jim Cantore pinched his nipples in delight as we all wondered just where the rapidly strengthening storm would go.

Then on Thursday the storm track was a little further to the East, a little off the coast but still dangerous.  But on Friday we were all breathing a sigh of relief as the new storm track took it out to sea.  Turns out the European model was right.  I read a news story in the New York Times suggesting the model is better because the Europeans possess more computers and have better storm initial input files - I think it simply may be because they use the metric system.  As for me, the National Hurricane Center has failed me for the last time....The Government used to be good at predicting the weather, it was the one thing they could do well.  Now, I am not so sure.

Either way, the storm was threatening enough to cancel a whole raft of planned activities.  My parents cancelled a major cousins re-union in Sandbridge, and the Newport News Fall Festival was scrapped.  We lost power at work and they were going to shut it down over the weekend to fix it so coming in on the weekend to work on some stuff was impossible.

That left me with the charming prospect of sitting around with the house with the kids all weekend.

And that sounded pretty good, at first.  Two weeks ago I was away from home whitewater rafting on the Upper Gauley.  Last weekend we were in Staunton to celebrate my wife's grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary.  50 years!  Another congratulations to them, by the way.

But the weekend went awry.  The kids were kind of...bonkers.  Elizabeth wanted to build forts from furniture and blankets all weekend.  She didn't listen particularly well.  Rosalyn was her normal active self, taking naps at odd times (or no naps at all!), trying to get into all sorts of things she isn't supposed to get into.  I cooked and cleaned and then cooked again and then cleaned again and then cooked again. And then cleaned again. Our dishwasher is broken, needs replacing, and I refuse to take the easy way and go further into debt to get it replaced.  We did go to Church today, but Church....eh, it doesn't do it for me.  I go.  But it just doesn't do it for me these days.  Chelsea lost.  Virginia Tech lost.  Alles ist kaput.

By Sunday night, my nerves were frayed.

But then Elizabeth, she builds a huge pile of  stuffed animals on the living room floor, burrows into them, and then pops out of the top, her arms stretched overhead and a huge smile on her face.

"Daddy," she said.  "Do you know what that is like?"

"No," I said.

"It's like I snuck into a birthday cake, and then just before the candles were blown out I popped out of the top!"

My mouth dropped open.  "Where did you think of that?" I asked.

"It came from my brain."

I'm sure.  I don't think it's my fault.  The only two things I have watched where strippers pop out of cakes in recent years is one episode of Cheers where Diane pops out of Sam's cake and then that scene in Under Siege where the girl pops out of a cake.  How they smuggled her onto the ship I will never know.

But Cheers is something we watch at night and Under Siege....I saw it once, ages ago, before Elizabeth was born, and that was enough.  So I am not sure where she got that idea from.  It's not something that one really thinks of on their own, I would think.  I am sure there is a fairly innocent explanation....either that, or she has been learning more than I bargained for at public school.  Those liberals artsy fartsies and their Common Core.

Anyways.  It almost made the weekend worth it.  It's a funny story, one of those cute things that kids say.

But now that the kids are finally all asleep I am looking forward to the vanilla pudding I made for myself that I secretly laced with rum.

Rum.  Rhymes with yum.

Rum.