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March 23, 2007New BloodIf vampires really existed, they'd replace the entire human race in 30 months, according to a paper written by physicists at the University of Central Florida and analyzed at the Collision Detection blog here. (Here's the PDF of the study; hat tip to Rachel Sklar.) Here's the argument:
Anyone who has seen John Carpenter’s Vampires or the movie Blade or any of the host of other vampire films is already quite familiar with how the legend goes. The vampires need to feed on human blood. After one has stuck his fangs into your neck and sucked you dry, you turn into a vampire yourself and carry on the blood-sucking legacy. The fact of the matter is, if vampires truly feed with even a tiny fraction of the frequency that they are depicted to in the movies and folklore, then the human race would have been wiped out quite quickly after the first vampire appeared.
But I wouldn't expect a physics professor to have these insights into the undead world. For that, you need a guy who writes about weight lifting. Posted by LouSchuler at 09:01 AM | Comments (0)
March 07, 2007Tom Cruise Is Trying to Bring Down the RepublicHas anyone else noticed that Tom Cruise is linked to just about every major political scandal of the past three years? This morning I was reading a recap of the Scooter Libby trial, written by one of the jurors, when I saw this reference:
Cruise's upcoming visit to the Office of the VP to discuss Scientologists in Germany was one of the 27 items in the June 14, 2003 briefing [Craig] Schmall gave to Libby. The more important item was a note on that day's table of contents. "The Amb told this was a VP office question?" "Joe Wilson" "Valerie Wilson." The note was written by Schmall, who said his practice was to make note of topics introduced by Libby for possible follow up at the CIA. That testimony would indicate Libby was aware of Valerie Wilson nearly a month before he claims to have first heard her name from Tim Russert.
So that's scandal #1. Scandal #2 is the fiasco over the eight U.S. attorneys who were fired for what appears, in some cases, to be their reluctance to use their offices for purely partisan purposes. Most prominent among the fired attorneys is David Iglesias, a former Navy lawyer who was one of the models for Tom Cruise's character in A Few Good Men. Scandal #3 involves another character Cruise played, the hot-shot fighter pilot in Top Gun. I've read and heard over the years that the character, Maverick, was based on real-life fighter pilot Duke Cunningham, who's better known today as the most corrupt congressman in U.S. history. Alas, that story isn't true. Cunningham was indeed a cocky asshole, but the specific cocky asshole in Top Gun wasn't based on him. Hard as it is to believe, a Hollywood screenwriter came up with the idea of making the lead character in a major movie a cocky asshole without having to base him on any real-life cocky asshole. But it does make me wonder what role Cruise might've played in other scandals, or might play in future ones. Maybe the bartender in Cocktail was based on a real-life mixologist who got all the Watergate conspirators drunk the night of the break-in, causing them to botch it and bring down a president. Maybe the kid in Risky Business was based on Brett Wilkes, a defense contractor who provided Duke Cunningham (remember, he's the guy who wasn't the inspiration for Maverick) with hookers. And, what the hell, maybe Charlie Babbitt, the unscrupulous businessman Cruise played in Rain Man, was based on Scooter Libby himself. Makes as much sense as anything. Posted by LouSchuler at 10:29 AM | Comments (3)
February 06, 2007Bang for the BuckI just finished reading The Wheelman, a crime novel written by Duane Swierczynski, a former colleague at Men's Health. If you like reading crime novels, this one is worth a look. It's faster, funnier, and more twisted than anything I can recall. I'm by no means up to speed on the genre, but I'm certain I've never read anything quite like this. The only book that comes close is The Death and Life of Bobby Z, which Duane lists here as one of his favorites. It's like literary speed metal, if that makes any sense. For the record, this makes two former colleagues from my early days at MH who're now acclaimed novelists. Jennifer Haigh's second novel, Baker Towers, made the New York Times bestseller list, and her first, Mrs. Kimble, won a major award. And hey, I knew 'em back when they were just ridiculously talented magazine schlubs -- exactly like me, except for the ridiculously talented part. Posted by LouSchuler at 08:03 AM | Comments (0)
January 29, 2007Monday Link DumpKevin Drum asks if Roger Federer is the greatest tennis player in the universe. I have a humbler suggestion: Tiger Woods is the best athlete in America right now. It seems odd to talk about tennis and golf during Super Bowl Week, but really, does anyone dominate any sport the way these two dominate theirs?
A 20-year study found that orthodontic treatment had little positive impact on future psychological health.
Speaking of acting awards: Forest Whitaker is considered the frontrunner for the Best Actor Oscar. As it happens, over the weekend, I saw much of Platoon on cable. He only had a minor role, but you always notice him when he's on screen. By contrast, he shared several scenes in Platoon with Johnny Depp. But if you didn't know it was Depp, you'd never pay any attention to that character. He's just a guy in the background. Whitaker had a different kind of presence, even then. Even when he's in the background, you notice him. I can't quantify this is any way -- writing about movies is pretty far from my paying gig -- but I think I can remember more minor roles by Whitaker than by just about any other actor. The bit he did in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, as the force-of-nature football player, was just a cartoon, like a purely physical version of Sean Penn's Jeff Spicoli (interesting that neither actor ever played similar characters again), but in The Color of Money and The Crying Game, I remembered his scenes more clearly than I did just about anything else in the movie. And who says there aren't any good roles for overweight black men with weird eyes?
I can't argue with his point that eating real food is better than eating anything "enriched" or "fortified." I made the case for "clean eating" in New Rules of Lifting, although I suspect I'm more enthusiastic about protein supplements than Pollan is. Right on cue, I found a news report this morning that bolsters Pollan's argument that we spend far too much time looking at the bits and pieces of nutrition, instead of the big picture:
Children who eat too little fat can end up overweight, a new study has found. Researchers in Sweden discovered that eating the right sort of fat kept the weight of children down.
Posted by LouSchuler at 07:22 AM | Comments (2)
January 23, 2007"I'd Like to Thank the Academy ..."Actually, I would like to kick the Academy in the buttocks, and keep kicking until they make a rule that every Oscar-nominated film is automatically released on DVD. Every movie geek should have a chance to see everything nominated before the telecast. As it stands, I've seen just a handful of the movies on the list of nominees announced today:
I have to think that's just bad marketing on the part of the movie business. Most categories have five nominees. That means people like me would try to see all five nominated pictures in each of the main categories before February 25. If we can't see them in theaters and they aren't available on DVD, we're SOL. But after February 25, we'll only be interested in the winners. So we'll only see a fraction of the movies we would've been willing to rent before the envelopes are opened. I understand that the Academy is an organization of movie people, and movie people want you and me to see their product in theaters. Realistically, though, that isn't going to happen, which is why they make more money from DVDs than they do from ticket sales. So why do they leave so much money on the table by holding back the DVD release of most of their best movies until after the winners are announced? Isn't that just a bad business decision?
Posted by LouSchuler at 12:06 PM | Comments (0)
December 28, 2006Book of the YearTraditionally, when all the critics and bloggers are putting together their end-of-year best-whatever lists, I try to weigh in. I don't believe for second that anyone cares what I think the best books or movies might be. I just like to get into the conversation. This year is a bit different, in that most of the movies on the top-10 lists aren't yet on DVD, and I haven't read most of the books getting accolades. I wanted to read quite a few of them, but ended up devoting my reading time to older books, or books that didn't make the critics' lists. I'll confess one reason why I avoided new ones: I realized I was reading too much about politics, and the disconnect between the facts I was learning and the way politics is covered was starting to drive me around the bend. I think this is the first time in our history we have a presidency that formulates policy based on what it wishes to be true, rather than on objective reality, and obsessing on something I couldn't change wasn't good for my mental health. So I took a sabbatical from reading about public policy, which means I avoided The Looming Tower, Imperial Life in the Emerald City, Fiasco, Hubris, State of Denial, and many others. I did read The One Percent Doctrine, which is a stunning expose of the administration's fecklessness in fighting and politicizing its various wars. And, because no one was talking about the book's revelations -- particularly the passages that showed the president knew al Qaeda had decided not to launch another attack against the U.S., and that Osama bin Laden clearly wanted Bush to be re-elected in 2004 -- I realized that knowing more of this type of information would just make me more depressed and paranoid. And nobody needs that. Instead, I read Brothers of Iron, the dual autobiography of Joe and Ben Weider. If you have any interest at all in the history of bodybuilding -- which, in my view, is a lot more entertaining than the sport itself -- this is a book you should read. Then there's Joe Weider's rags-to-riches personal story, which is more moving than I'd ever imagined. Finally, there's Ben Weider's accounts of his half-century of work to make bodybuilding a legitimate sport recognized by the International Olympic Committee. On the face of it, this is as quixotic a mission as any of us could imagine. The purpose of human muscle tissue is to facilitate strength and power and speed and endurance, but the purpose of bodybuilding is to celebrate the display of that muscle tissue with no regard to its functional abilities. That's wacky, and yet Ben Weider has devoted his entire adult life to it. So you'd think the passages in the book in which Ben describes his travels and meetings and impassioned advocacy for bodybuilding would read like the rantings of a lunatic -- kind of like my blog, in other words. But instead you get real insight into the art of diplomacy. And I don't mean that in any sarcastic or ironic way. Ben describes tense meetings with communists and bureaucrats in the service of brutal dictators, and shows that there's always a way to present your case without making it personal or confrontational. Brothers of Iron is not by any stretch a political book, but Ben Weider is a hell of a politician. The brothers' narration is arranged in alternating chapters, so you get a couple chapters of Joe talking about his life and his entry into the iron game, followed by a chapter of Ben talking about his quest, followed by more of Joe, and so on. The brothers' coauthor, Mike Steere, makes this work, and that's no small compliment. I was genuinely impressed by how well the stories flow. If Joe Weider had allowed this kind of editorial hand in his magazines, we'd regard him in an entirely different way today. So let's talk about Joe's magazines. When I started working full-time at Weider, in 1992, a few of the editors had a running joke: "Energy, Sexy, Hard." That was an actual cover line on an issue of Muscle & Fitness, which ran in '91 or '92. The line makes no sense at all -- one noun, two adjectives, no connection. Whenever one of us was stymied by an assignment or flabbergasted by a decision that had been made above our pay grade, someone would say, "Energy, sexy, hard." It was our acknowledgment that we were working in a nuthouse, and that the best strategy, most of the time, was to go with the flow. In the heart of the Weider empire, making sense wasn't required for advancement. That's why Joe's flagship magazine was called Muscle Builder/Power for many years, before he changed it to Muscle: A New Body Image for You in 1979, and finally to Muscle & Fitness. I'm hardly an expert on the history of magazine publishing, but if there's ever been a magazine with a worse title than Muscle Builder/Power, I'd like to know about it. (Muscle: A New Body Image for You would be a contender, if it weren't just a transitional title.) Joe Weider is his own creation, and as he says in Brothers of Iron, he became his own product, his own brand. There's an interesting passage where he tells the young and very ambitious Arnold Schwarzenegger not to waste his money buying a business to run. Arnold should be in the Arnold business, promoting himself as a unique and fungible commodity. If the passage is true, and Arnold really was considering investing his bodybuilding earnings in something that would've distracted him from his true path, then you have to think Joe gave him the best advice he'd ever received. But it's impossible to say what in this book is true and what is Joe promoting himself. Most of the stories in the book ring true, but whenever Joe shifts from anecdote to analysis, you start getting that uncomfortable feeling that you're stuck in a room with someone truly delusional and can't find a way out. Joe is convinced he's an absolute genius in the publishing industry, and the most important person in the history of the modern fitness movement. Ben seems convinced of this as well, so you never know when something you're reading is fact or fantasy. I don't doubt that Joe was a very strong guy, physically, but it gets a little creepy to read in chapter after chapter how strong and muscular and handsome he was. I told some stories about Joe in this article in T-nation, and while they probably come off as mean-spirited, they really only scratch the surface. I don't believe the man has the capacity for humility or any sort of perspective about himself. If there's a camera in the room, it should be taking his picture. If there's a story to be written about fitness or bodybuilding, it should be about him. I don't say that to deny the man his place in history; he deserves to be celebrated as a guy who believed in himself and believed in the importance of exercise as a ticket to lifelong health and vitality. It's fine that he promotes himself as an example of practicing what he preached. But, as I said, it sometimes gets a little creepy. The lack of perspective about himself may have been the trait that allowed him to start off as an impoverished, uneducated kid in Montreal and end up as a mentor and close friend of the governor of California. But it makes me wonder what he could've achieved if he hadn't been so hell-bent on self-promotion. Would someone have been brave enough to him that "Energy, Sexy, Hard" was a really stupid cover line? Or that he should stop boasting about himself long enough for someone else to sing his praises? Joe's absolute refusal to be objectively assessed or second-guessed shows up in some unintentionally funny passages in Brothers of Iron. In various chapters, he compares himself to Einstein (for codifying bodybuilding methodology), to Alexander the Great (for standing up to Bob Hoffman, a more established rival), to Hernando Cortez (for standing up to his mother, who thought he was nuts for trying to be a magazine publisher), and to Lorenzo di Medici, for bringing "prosperity, stability, and safety from tyrants who wanted to oppress bodybuilders." I shit you not. He also prides himself on being self-educated, but then compares himself and Arnold to "Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn on their raft, looking up at the stars and drifting into the future." You'd think someone would've pointed out that it was the escaped slave Jim on the raft, not Tom Sawyer. In another passage he mentions Hercules fighting the Hydra, "a horrible monster that ... had a hundred heads." Any sixth-grader with a yen for Greek mythology could have told him the Hydra had nine heads, one of which was immortal. But when you see yourself as the embodiment of all the world's greatest thinkers and conquerors and champions of the downtrodden, you don't listen to sixth graders who might save you from making utterly foolish assertions. That, I fear, is going to be Joe's legacy -- he'll be remembered as a guy whose single-minded belief in himself was both his greatest virtue and worst shortcoming. In a way, he reminds me of the current president, a genius at politics but a disastrous leader who will go to his grave believing that he deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill. On the bright side, at least the president has so far resisted comparing himself to Einstein or Huck Finn. If he did ... well, let's just say I'd start drinking early and often. Posted by LouSchuler at 09:29 AM | Comments (0)
December 27, 2006The DecidersBack in high school, there was this girl named ... well, I can't remember her name, so I'll call her Stephanie, since I'm pretty sure that wasn't it. But more than 30 years after graduation, I can still picture the girl's face: oval, with full lips and enormous brown eyes, framed by long, straight, blonde hair. Since I went to a small high school in rural Missouri, there weren't really deep social divisions in the student body. Everybody hung out with everybody else. But when it came to dating, there was one unwritten, unspoken rule: The cutest girls in our school, such as Stephanie, were out of our league. We were in the shadows of two bigger public schools, and the prettiest girls in our little Catholic school accepted the social hierarchies of those schools, rather than the level playing field of our own. To us, it didn't really matter who someone's parents were, or what kind of car they drove; our classmates were judged on the things that mattered most to teenagers in the 1970s -- good looks, success in sports, and access to drugs and alcohol. But outside our walls, there was an entirely different game being played. The scions of the biggest local businesses were at the top of the social pyramid (they had the nicest cars, if nothing else), and the top athletes at those schools were close behind. You could be the best-looking guy at our school and the most popular and the best athlete and the guy with the brightest future, and you'd still be in a lower social stratum than the guys with the shiniest pickup trucks or who scored the most touchdowns for one of the public-school teams. Stephanie dated one of the touchdown-scorers at the bigger of the two public schools. I can't remember his name, either, but I remember he looked kind of like a Viking. Let's call him Brad, since that's as good a name as any for a handsome, broad-shouldered jock dating someone like Stephanie. After high school, I lucked out and landed probably the best summer job you could possibly have. I was a lifeguard at a local recreation camp owned by the Teamsters Union. The main attraction was the swimming pool, which employed a couple dozen lifeguards. It also had a nine-hole golf course, tennis and basketball courts, a summer camp for children, a restaurant and snack bars, campgrounds, picnic areas, and a few other amenities I can't recall and that wouldn't add much to the story if I could. It was a very labor-intensive place, and most of the employees were college kids on summer break. For us, it was a three-month-long party, and as a lifeguard, I found myself nearer the center of the action than I'd ever been before. The pool where I worked was the most trafficked area of the camp, and that made the lifeguards the most visible employees. For the first time in my life, being visible worked in my favor. I was still pretty skinny back then, but I was the right kind of skinny for a guy who worked in a Speedo. My romantic possibilities increased accordingly. What little social hierarchy there was at the camp was imposed by outsiders, guys from suburban St. Louis who'd been on swim teams at their high schools and who belonged to college fraternities. I'd grown up in the St. Louis suburbs -- very close to where these guys lived, in fact -- but my family had moved to the sticks when I was 14. Thus, I'd missed the transformation of my friends and neighbors into social climbers, and was startled to hear the suburban guys using designations like "loser" and "low-life" to describe people they didn't like. I had my prejudices, of course, but I don't think it had ever occurred to me to classify people in those ways. The part I found most fascinating is that the suburban guys had somehow appointed themselves as judges of all they surveyed. Stephanie, the pretty girl from my high school, worked at the Teamsters camp, but Brad didn't. They were still a couple, though, and she brought him to the one of the parties. That inspired the suburban guys to pronounce Brad not just a loser, but a "total loser." Imagine the cognitive dissonance: Throughout high school, I'd slowly internalized the idea that guys like Brad -- good-looking, popular athletes at the local public high schools -- are near the top of a social hierarchy in which guys like me didn't even have a caste. We were non-entities outside our own small high school. And here were guys who, by virtue of the fact they grew up 20 miles to the north and belonged to college fraternities, decided that Brad was nothing, a "total loser" in a competition in which none of us knew the rules. I guess I could've bought into their world view, but to tell you the truth, I thought the suburban guys were ridiculous. They weren't smarter or better-looking than anyone else there, and while they could swim better than any of the other lifeguards, they weren't particularly athletic. Only one of the three had a good physique. (He was also the only one who wasn't a total dick.) I dated better-looking girls than they did, and I suspect I had a lot more fun as well. If you don't consider yourself too good to socialize with anybody, you're free to hang with everybody. I had a small group I mixed with to play sports, another group for dating, another group for going to see movies like Star Wars, and everyone else for drinking and having a few laughs. I'm thinking about all this today because of a movie my wife and I watched last night. If you haven't seen Little Miss Sunshine yet, I highly recommend it. The main character, played by Greg Kinnear, is a motivational speaker held back by the fact he's unable to motivate anybody. His schtick is a nine-step program to transform people into "winners," and in the movie's opening scenes he's obsessed with classifying people as winners or losers. The other characters, correctly, see Kinnear's character as a tool, and his nine-step program as a complete crock of shit. The screenplay telegraphs early on that the motivational speaker, who considers himself a winner despite his failure to even make a living at his chosen profession, will get his comeuppance. When he does, it isn't remotely surprising. (He's convinced he's going to get a lucrative book deal, but if you've spent five minutes in the publishing industry, you know there's no reason anyone would hire an unemployed speaker to write a book about winners and losers.) I don't want to say it's a great movie, or even one of the best of the year. (I haven't seen enough movies this year to know. Most of the memorable ones I've seen were documentaries, but none of the critics are putting them on their end-of-year best-movie lists.) But it is a damned good look at the limitations of a world view that allows only two classifications of people. The point of the movie -- and I'm not really giving anything away by saying this -- is that you can't will yourself to be a winner if you aren't suited for the competition you've chosen. We all learn that lesson, in various ways and at various points in our lives. The best illustration is this bit I heard many years ago, and have used a few times since: A boy's first dose of reality is when he realizes he's not going to be the star quarterback. A girl's is when she realizes she'll never be a princess. Girls figure this out around the time they hit puberty. Guys figure it out in their mid-30s. If a guy's competitive, he finds games in which he has a better chance. Or he takes satisfaction in staying in the game, even if he knows his potential is limited. But, at the end of the day, winning and losing aren't black and white designations. Most of the good things in life happen in between the extremes. I have no idea what happened to Stephanie, Brad, or the suburban guys. I probably go months at a time without ever thinking back on high school or lifeguarding or the social strata of rural Missouri. I hope Stephanie and Brad are happy with each other, if that worked out, or with other people, if it didn't. And I kind of hope the suburban guys got some kind of comeuppance. I don't mean I wish bad things on anybody, but I do think those guys were in desperate need of karmic intervention -- It's a Wonderful Life in reverse, with Clarence the angel showing them what nimrods they've been. If nothing else, I hope their poor judgment came back to bite them on the ass once or twice. Here's what I mean about their judgment: The pool was managed by a guy who was a teacher and coach at one of the smallest local high schools. He was a real prick, one of the foulest people I've ever had to work with or for. What I remember most about him was his deep voice, like that of Ted Cassidy, the actor who played Lurch on The Addams Family and was the guy who got kicked in the nuts by Paul Newman in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. I don't know if he was a good teacher or not, but I'm pretty sure the teams he coached never won anything. Even if they had, he'd still have been an unpleasant, abusive, alcoholic bully, the kind of guy who had to find a new wife every few years and got into fistfights with their ex-husbands. The assistant manager was a neighbor of ours, a big, good-natured guy who was a teacher and football coach at one of the bigger local high schools. His teams would go on to win state championships, and his one and only marriage worked out for him. If you could magically travel back in time to that pool in the summer of, say, 1978, and you were forced to classify the people working there as "winners" or "losers" in the game of life, you'd never in a million years pick the assistant manager as a loser. He was a nice guy, a talented coach, and a decent human being. Conversely, you'd never pick the pool manager as someone to admire. You had to fear him, given his position and disposition, but you'd find him contemptible in most other ways. And yet, the suburban guys spoke of the assistant manager with utter derision. They even added an extra syllable to his last name, turning a garden-variety German name into two words that you wouldn't use to describe someone worthy of respect. (Sorry to be so vague, but I'm deliberately avoiding the possibility that any of these characters would Google their own names and come across this post. I don't need the aggravation.) They didn't stop with his name; they made fun of the way he walked, the cadence of his voice, his intelligence (which was probably above average for a high school football coach), and anything else they could think of. At the same time, they treated the pool manager as an admirable character, and used him as the paragon against which the assistant manager should be unfavorably measured. By any objective standards, they should've admired the man who was not just a better coach, but also a better human being. And yet, the guys who'd introduced "total loser" and "lower form of life" to my vocabulary chose one of the least admirable people I've ever known as the guy they looked up to. Today, more than a quarter-century later, I can't think of a stronger indictment of the type of people who feel empowered to pass judgment on others. If the guy you admire is a drunk and a bully, and the ones who hold in contempt are decent and successful, what does that say about you? Posted by LouSchuler at 07:13 AM | Comments (7)
December 06, 2006Wednesday WeirdnessA bunch of stuff that defies categorization:
A South Carolina boy, 12, was arrested Sunday morning after his mother called police to report that he had unwrapped a Christmas present without her permission. According to a Rock Hill Police Department report [a copy of which you'll find if you click the link above], the child opened a Nintendo Game Boy, though he had been directed not to by family members. When the boy's mother learned that the $85 gift had been opened, she called cops, who charged the juvenile with petty larceny. In an interview with The Herald newspaper, the boy's mother, a 27-year-old single parent, described her son as a disruptive child, noting that she hoped his arrest would serve as a corrective to disorderly behavior at school and home. I guess she's the last parent in America who hasn't heard of Ritalin ... for herself, if not for her son. Another contender for worst parent of the year:
For nearly 20 years -- ever since Pete Costello was 8 -- his mother has collected disability benefits on his behalf. In meetings with Social Security officials and psychologists, he appeared mentally retarded and unable to communicate. His mother insisted he couldn't read or write, shower, take care of himself or drive a car.
(Thanks to Rannoch Donald for the heads-up.)
A man who pleaded guilty to molesting two girls told a judge he did it because of his wife's excessive bingo playing. "My wife was never home," Floyd Kinney Jr. said during his plea hearing Friday.
Worldwide spam volumes have doubled from last year, according to Ironport, a spam filtering firm, and unsolicited junk mail now accounts for more than 9 of every 10 e-mail messages sent over the Internet.
The internet is arguably the apex of human technological development, the most complex and paradigm-changing invention so far in the history of homo sapiens. And what do we mostly use it for? Porn, Justin Timberlake downloads, and penny stock scams. Makes you proud, doesn't it?
Two percent of adults have more than half of the world's wealth, including property and financial assets, according to a study by the U.N. development research institute published on Tuesday.
(Thanks again to Andy Scharlott for this one.)
Flatulence brought 99 passengers on an American Airlines flight to an unscheduled visit to Nashville early Monday morning.
Fitness USA, a gym chain, is investigating an alleged civil rights violation involving a local Muslim woman who says her afternoon prayer was interrupted by a fellow patron, and that her complaint to management about the situation was rejected.
Speaking of Gruntgate: My friend Nick Bromberg quoted me in this story for the Columbia Missourian. Posted by LouSchuler at 07:28 AM | Comments (0)
November 21, 2006Cosmo Goes PsychoHave you ever seen the movie A Face in the Crowd? In it, a hillbilly singer, "Lonesome" Rhodes, played by Andy Griffith, becomes an overnight sensation, and becomes so famous and powerful that he starts to become a political figure. The people closest to him are increasingly disturbed by this, since they know he's a really, really nasty guy behind the good-ol'-boy facade. (This isn't Sheriff Taylor of Mayberry.) One of them finally brings him down by leaving a microphone on when the singer is joking around with his pals during a live broadcast, letting the entire nation know what a creep the singer is. Which brings me to Michael Richards and his crazy tirade against a couple of hecklers at a comedy club. Richards isn't anywhere near the cultural icon that the fictional Rhodes was in A Face in the Crowd, or even in the same class as Mel Gibson when he went off on his anti-semitic rant against an LAPD officer. But he was caught on video, which makes this the most remarkable celebrity self-immolation I can recall. Here's his explanation:
Michael Richards said Monday he spewed racial epithets during a stand-up comedy routine because he lost his cool while being heckled and not because he's a bigot.
Comedian George Lopez told Los Angeles television station KTLA that he thought Richards' lack of stand-up experience may have been a factor.
Veteran comedians have a couple of lines that quickly put hecklers and "helpers" in their place. One of the guys I performed with used a line (which I'm sure wasn't original) that went something like this:
Hey, do I go to hotel rooms and sit on the edge of the bed and talk while you're working?
This year I want to have a white Christmas. I'm not talking about snow. I want to have a honky Christmas. "Honey, throw another Mercedes on the fire."
Offstage, though, there was no racial talk. Maybe I've whitewashed my memories, but I can't recall any tension at all. Most of the time we all went our separate ways after the shows, but sometimes we hung out together, and I just can't remember there being any kind of unease. And this was in St. Louis, a very segregated city, at a time when the busing controversy made racial divisions a front-page issue. That's why it's hard for me to believe that a guy like Richards, working for decades in L.A. as an actor, would have genuinely deep-seated animosity toward African-Americans. It'd be damned hard to work in the entertainment business if you did. And more than that, working with fellow entertainers (or, in my case, aspiring entertainers) tends to take the edge off whatever racial attitudes you might've had before going into show business. If there's any difference between a white guy trying to tell jokes to drunken strangers and a black guy trying to do the same, I sure never saw it. Which makes Richards' tirade inexplicable, and makes me think George Lopez has the best take: If you're in front of an audience because you're famous for doing something else, and you have no experience dealing with a disruptive situation that arises in comedy clubs no matter who you are, and you haven't prepared for disruptive situations, then you might just say the first thing that pops into your head. Even if it's a thought you'd never have in any other situation in your life. I'm not justifying what Richards said. I'm just trying to understand it. Posted by LouSchuler at 07:50 AM | Comments (0)
November 13, 2006Funny FacesGood news -- science has figured out what facial features are ideal for comedians:
They said soft and feminine features, typified by Ricky Gervais, were more likely to make people laugh. ...
"All these years I assumed my global success as a comedian was down to my acute observations, expert directorial rendering and consummate skills as a performer. Turns out it's because I've got a fat girly face."
Comedian Hal Cruttenden said the research was probably on to something. ... "Comics say things that are taboo-breaking, that are on the edge, and quite often the best comedy comes from really uncomfortable stuff.
They're separated by more than 20 years, they come from opposing political parties, and one evicted the other from the White House. But Bill Clinton and George Bush act like a team, a pair of touring comedians with a well-honed act.
Posted by LouSchuler at 07:57 AM | Comments (0)
October 30, 2006Fast or Slow?I confess I've never seen an entire episode of a reality show. I've surfed past them a few times, and occasionally lingered for a minute to try to fathom what was going on. Each time, I was reminded of Quiz Show, the movie directed by Robert Redford about the game-show scandals of the 1950s. In an interview, Redford said he remembered watching the shows, and realizing in some part of his brain that they were rigged. Just the way the contestants answered questions made it clear they weren't really confused about the answers, which they'd been given in advance by the producers. It screamed "fake!", but it took years before the scandal occurred. In its way, it was like the steroid scandal in major-league baseball. Watching Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa in 1998, it was clear to me that both guys had juiced. The tipoff was when McGwire talked about how he was "in awe" of his own prowess. He was telling the world he was in awe of what steroids had allowed him to do with a bat in his hands, but couldn't come out and say it. I'm not saying the contests on these shows are rigged; I have no idea if they are or aren't, and I have no reason to suspect they are. I'd have to care to work up a case for or against, and I can't bring myself to do it. The signature fakeness that sets off the "change the channel" alarms in my brain lies in the preposterousness of the situations -- throwing people together who'd never cross paths in real life isn't my idea of "reality." It's like watching a guy who knows the answer pretend he doesn't, or watching a juicer pretend he hasn't juiced. Fake is fake. But that's just me. Anyway, as someone who's in the body-transforming biz, I know I should be interested in The Biggest Loser, if for no other reason than to assess the techniques they use to help people lose weight. But I can't work up the enthusiasm even for that. Fortunately, somebody has, which is why a story in today's L.A. Times asks a serious question about a silly show: Is it a good idea to lose weight as fast as the contestants on The Biggest Loser? The experts quoted seem to agree that it doesn't really matter if you lose weight quickly or more gradually, although fast reduction has a psychological advantage:
"Studies have shown that long-term, it doesn't matter if you lose it fast or slow," says the University of Colorado's Wyatt. "One or two years down the road, the people who lost weight slowly were equal," in keeping weight off to the people who lost it fast.
Assume there are two 300-pound men, each with a body composition of 180 pounds of lean mass and 120 pounds of fat, and each loses 100 pounds total. If one loses 10 percent of the weight in lean mass and the other loses 20 percent (the norm is 20 percent to 30 percent), both will reduce the number of calories they burn at rest.
The article does discuss exercise as a key to maintaining lost weight, but, maddeningly, focuses on endurance work -- "60 to 90 minutes of daily moderate-intensity exercise" -- when anaerobic exercise like strength training and intervals could accomplish the same goal in a fraction of the time. Posted by LouSchuler at 08:55 AM | Comments (1)
October 11, 2006This Is the Life We've ChosenI don't often get into the public-figure part of my life on this blog. There's not much to it, beyond my books and occasional appearances at fitness events. But, because I have a lot of material out there (I'm up to 269,000 hits on Google), I'm occasionally confronted with the unpleasant truth that I really piss some people off. I'm not talking about people who disagree with me or raise legitimate questions about my work; those debates are invigorating and necessary. They keep me honest. It's the crazy shit that throws me off. I don't get a lot of it -- I'm not prominent enough for that -- but when I do, it's unnerving, especially if it involves a review of one of my books. Take a recent Amazon reader review of Book of Muscle, for example. The reviewer gives it one star, headlines his review "Are You Kidding?", and then says this:
When referencing select muscle groups like shoulders, this book lists EVERY exercise that effects the muscle group and not the exercises that have a direct impact. For example, for shoulder exercises it lists Bench Press. The primary muscle group for Bench Press is the CHEST with the Shoulders being indirectly affected. The Bench Press should not even be in this category. This happens over and over whne discussing various muscle groups and it can lead a beginning weight lifter to have a strong misunderstaing of strength training.
Put another way, what Ian King and I were deliberately and pointedly trying to avoid was classifying exercises according to "body parts." Lots of workout books have chapters filled with "chest" exercises. Ian and I were trying to change the conversation. My critic clearly didn't want the conversation changed, and that would be a fair point, if he'd raised it. Instead, he ripped into the book for doing exactly what it set out to do. I got a similar slam from a reader of New Rules of Lifting, who headlined his two-star review "Not so hot." His complaint:
Page 13. of the book, "when I conceived this book I had a brilliant premise: I would take every excersive in the gym and look at it in terms of possible role in human movemement." Then later goes on on to list the moves they think are important, even debating what should be included. There is no scientific method to this, only apparently two individuals conceiving an idea for a book. I'm sure there strength books are good, but this a "me too" book on core performance.
I'm going to make a horrible confession about my own ignorance.
There's nothing you can do about these reviews, other than hope that the positive reviews from people who actually read and understood the book will marginalize the bad ones. And, indeed, it's worked out that way so far. But there's another type of comment that some people in the fitness biz get, a comment that's highly personal and extraordinarily deranged, that crosses the line from infuriating to funny. Eric Cressey, one of the really bright young guys in the fitness world, got one of those recently, and decided to deconstruct it in his newsletter. I couldn't do justice to it by pulling out any particular passage. So if you want a good laugh, click through and read the entire thing.
She saw the most recent cover of this magazine, and went off:
This girl looks like she starved herself for weeks before her photo shoot, and has never touched a weight (unless it was pink, and weighed less than five pounds) in her life. To make matters worse, one of the titles on the front of the mag says, “Get hips and thighs like these!” and points to this model.
Cass's righteous fury reminds me of the skinny-fashion-model tangent I went off on a few weeks ago. I don't want to speak for her, but I think our points dovetail into this thought: If the fashion industry wants to sell its products with paperweight models, that's their business. But when those models with that degree of emaciation cross over into our business, we have to push back. Muscles are healthy and look good on women as well as men. To promote a starved, unmuscled physique on the cover of a fitness magazine is an abomination. Posted by LouSchuler at 07:51 AM | Comments (0)
October 06, 2006Weird ScienceBefore I get into the bit about the scientist who cured hiccups with a finger in the rectum, I want to pause to point out my favorite news from the frontiers of scientific observation:
Julia R. Fox, assistant professor of telecommunications at Indiana University isn't joking when she says [The Daily Show with Jon Stewart], which last week featured Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf as a guest, is just as substantive as network coverage.
One of this year's recipients is Howard Stapleton, inventor of teenager repellent:
His device, called the Mosquito, emits a high-frequency, siren-like noise that is painful to the ears of teens and those in their early 20s, but inaudible to adults.
Dr. Francis Fesmire said he wasn't sure whether he was honored or embarrassed when he learned he'd won an Ig Nobel for his paper called -- ahem -- "Termination of Intractable Hiccups with Digital Rectal Massage."
Posted by LouSchuler at 06:48 AM | Comments (0)
September 21, 2006A Different Take on the War on DrugsBecause I'm just not in a serious mood today ...
Keith Richards says he has finally given up drugs -- because they don’t give him satisfaction any more. The Rolling Stones guitarist complained dealers and chemists have reduced the power of his favourite narcotics. Posted by LouSchuler at 10:28 AM | Comments (0)
September 04, 2006This Just In: Hunting Dangerous Animals Is ... DangerousOf all the news stories one expects to see upon awakening on a Monday morning, this one has to be near the bottom of the list:
Steve Irwin, the passionate conservationist who shot to international fame as the Crocodile Hunter, was killed today in a freak accident while diving off the north Queensland coast.
As Mr. Irwin himself would've said, "Crikey!" Posted by LouSchuler at 07:18 AM | Comments (0)
August 17, 2006DrudgeryI haven't visited the Drudge Report in ... well, I can't remember the last time. But look at all the cool stuff I found there this morning:
Posted by LouSchuler at 10:20 AM | Comments (0)
July 25, 2006Land Shark!In a post about steroids the other day, I cooked up this bit of medium-grade blogsnark:
You know what I'm wary of? Shark bites. Granted, it's not likely to happen here in Pennsylvania, but you just never know.
Authorities say a nine-year-old Pennsylvania girl was apparently bitten by a shark today as she played in the surf on a barrier island in Florida. Her injuries are not considered life-threatening.
Posted by LouSchuler at 11:46 AM | Comments (0)
June 29, 2006Diet HumorI thought this was funny:
Confused by all the conflicting news from nutrition research studies? Here is the final word:
Posted by LouSchuler at 06:42 AM | Comments (0)
June 15, 2006The Upside of DowneyThe married guys reading this will probably relate: My wife's yoga night is my only chance to watch a DVD that's 100 percent estrogen-free. I don't watch one every week -- it's kinda selfish, with three kids I'm supposed to be supervising -- but when I do, I like to make it count. Last night's choice was Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and it's a winner. (The last yoga-night movie I rented, The New World, was so slow and unplotted that I stopped it halfway through.) This review by Christopher Orr on The New Republic's website describes its essence better than I ever could:
As with [Raymond] Chandler's tales, the plot of the film is almost willfully convoluted. But it's also largely beside the point, an excuse for quite a few good scenes, most of them equal parts homage and subversion. The familiar ingredients of the hard-boiled school (and the noir cinema it spawned) are all here: the half-glittering, half-seedy L.A. setting; the protagonist's expository voiceover; the jaded but ultimately decent private eye; the dead body that mysteriously turns up exactly where it's not wanted. But Black gives each element a satiric twist: the tough shamus is gay; the corpse is discovered in a bathroom and accidentally peed on; the first-person narrator is not so much unreliable as simply incompetent.
Since Robert Downey Jr. is the narrator, I suspect that's a deal-breaker for a lot of guys who'd otherwise get a kick out of the movie. But this may be the only lead performance of his entire career in which you won't wish you could have been on set just to slap some sense into the overacting bastard. The other interesting thing, for me, is that it was written and directed by Shane Black:
For Shane Black, meanwhile, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang offers a second chance to make a first impression. In the 1990s, he became synonymous with Hollywood excess for his action screenplays -- The Last Boy Scout, The Last Action Hero, The Long Kiss Goodnight -- and the million-dollar fees he received for them.
My favorite line in the movie was just a toss-off, when Downey parts with Kilmer by saying, "Don't quit your gay job." Stupid? Sure. But that's the kind of movie it is -- lines like that catch you by surprise, and if you don't laugh at that one, there's a funnier one catching you by surprise a minute later. Posted by LouSchuler at 09:07 AM | Comments (3)
June 12, 2006Bustin' OutI have some more serious stories to blog this morning, but I couldn't resist starting with this one:
Alice Alyse is quite plainly a bombshell, a knockout: She's slim, leggy and gorgeous, with long, dark hair and a great set of cheekbones.
"It's a virtue to have bigger breasts on Broadway, in my expert opinion," Klayman [Alyse's attorney] observes one balmy evening, over dinner with Alyse at a seaside restaurant called Bongos. It certainly seems to be a virtue to have them in Miami: The city is awash in well-endowed women wearing tight-fitting tank tops and cleavage-baring camisoles.
Posted by LouSchuler at 08:29 AM | Comments (0)
June 05, 2006We've Carbon-Dated Cubism to 25,000 B.C.Scientists believe they've discovered the oldest known cave drawing:
A drawing discovered ... on the wall of a cave in the west of France appears to be the oldest known portrait of a human face. ...
Michel Boutant, chairman of the local Charente department council, said: "The face reminded me of a Modigliani portrait."
We still don't know whose face is portrayed on the wall, or whether the image was once attached to a drawing of a nude body that was scrubbed off the cave wall during the Inquisition. Still, it's a pretty good bet that the artist died poor and young, with a variety of paleo diseases and a dependence on whatever drugs were fashionable among the cave-dwellers of his day. Sad? Yes, but at least the work lives on. Posted by LouSchuler at 10:39 AM | Comments (0)
May 25, 2006If You Can't Kill the Messenger, Steal the MessageThis is the weirdest story about the media, politics, and election fraud that I can recall reading:
The election took place in Ellensburg. On the campus of Central Washington University. For student-body president.
Observer production manager Michael Bennett, 23, also a print-journalism major, said he and some friends picked up about 7,000 copies of the newspaper from the printers the night of May 17. They began delivering them by van to about 25 locations on campus when they noticed a man watching them from near the science building.
The papers were in the garage at Gilmore's apartment and could be seen from the alley. Bennett and a couple of reporters raced over and began taking photographs from the alley before someone closed the garage door. They also called campus police, who arrived soon after.
All of which makes me wonder if he wouldn't have been better off embracing the story of his manslaughter charge. Maybe positioning himself as the "edgy" candidate would've sparked enough interest in the race to get more people to come out. Case in point: When I was in college, a comedian ran for student-body president on a promise that he would flood the football stadium for "mock naval battles" and change the name of the school to the University of Rhode Island, on the theory that it would look better on a Midwestern kid's resume to give the appearance of having attended college on the East Coast. But the last laugh was on the comedian: He won, and had to be student-body president for a year. The comparison isn't perfect. For one thing, the paper thief wanted to be president, and the comedian didn't. But still, there is some precedent for the idea that kids will sometimes place entertainment value above all else. And if Gilmore wants to get into real politics, I have to think he'll fit right in. Posted by LouSchuler at 11:54 AM | Comments (0)
May 23, 2006How the Other .01 Percent LivesIf you're not in the publishing biz, you probably didn't know that the annual Book Expo America (BEA) was held last weekend in Washington, D.C. More than 500 authors, 2,000 exhibitors, and tens of thousands of publishing professionals showed up with a singular purpose: to not talk about me or my books. Oh, I'm sure they had other items on their agenda, like selling their own books and getting drunk at cocktail receptions. But, from my perspective, the most important order of business was not talking about me. This is why I'm never invited to these things; it's a lot harder to not talk about me when I'm actually standing there. Some actual news came out of BEA this year: Oprah and her trainer, Bob Greene, signed a $12 million deal for a weight-loss book. You may wonder, as I did, how any book can contain $12 million worth of information about weight loss, considering that we all know how to do it. That doesn't mean it's easy or simple or foolproof. But we all know the drill:
If Oprah and Greene can come up with $12 million worth of advice on how to deal with all that, I'll be happy to go on her show and congratulate her for the accomplishment ... and maybe talk just a bit about my own books. Posted by LouSchuler at 07:59 AM | Comments (0)
May 22, 2006Odd SquadI had the weirdest, funniest dream last night: I was working for the FBI, which is funny enough. I was investigating political corruption during my first week on the job, which is even funnier. And the funniest part is how my supervisor and I were doing it: We were going through the mail of congressmen and senators, which was all sitting out in one of those old-fashioned systems of wooden slots, like they used to have in offices -- as if all of a congressman's mail would fit into one little opening that was maybe four inches wide. I guess you had to be there. And, no offense, but considering all this was happening inside my sleeping brain, I'm glad you weren't. Anyway, when I woke up, I realized the dream had it wrong: We should've been going through their freezers. I tell you all that as a way of explaining why I gravitated toward the weird stuff this morning. I do that anyway, but today I have an extreme preference for oddness over substance. For example: Did you hear about the killer pedicure?
Kimberly Kay Jackson loved getting pedicures each month, especially with bright pink nail polish, although as a paraplegic she couldn't feel the massages and bubbling water on her feet.
Next up: Did you know Botox -- injectable botulism -- might someday be used as a treatment for depression?
A small-scale pilot trial, published in the May 15 journal Dermatologic Surgery, found that Botox injected into frown lines around the mouth or in forehead furrows of 10 women eliminated depression symptoms in nine of them and reduced symptoms in the 10th. ...
Continuing: Did you know that about 2 percent of teenagers still wet their beds? Or that a vegan diet lowers a woman's odds of having twins? Or that our society is set up as a system of economic Darwinism that encourages cheating, with the most successful putting themselves in positions to gain the most from breaking the rules? Oh, wait. That's not odd. That's just depressing. Well, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to get a Botox injection, and then maybe check out the job board at the FBI to see if they need any help going through bad guys' freezers. Posted by LouSchuler at 08:34 AM | Comments (0)
May 19, 2006Will Had GraceFriday afternoon, bored and Googling around, I came across this collection of Will Rogers quotes. The man was the Jon Stewart of his time. Hell, he could be the Jon Stewart of our time. I mean, which of these jokes wouldn't be just as funny today as they were in his time?
A fool and his money are soon elected.
"My ancestors didn't come over on the Mayflower, but they met the boat." Posted by LouSchuler at 04:21 PM | Comments (1)
May 05, 2006"You Can't Even Get Honest Fiction Anymore"A friend of mine read my blog entry about the plagiarism scandal du jour and told me about a part of the story I hadn't paid much attention to: The young author, Kaavya Viswanathan, has published her book via a book "packager" called Alloy Entertainment. The New York Observer explains how it worked:
Ms. Viswanathan first signed with agent Suzanne Gluck [of the William Morris Agency], who then passed the author to a junior agent in her office. The junior agent worked with Ms. Viswanathan and eventually hit a wall in terms of developing a commercial proposal. The junior agent then suggested that the writer speak with Josh Bank at Alloy. The Opal Mehta idea emerged from Ms. Viswanathan’s conversations with Mr. Bank; once an outline was ready, it was decided that another William Morris agent, Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, would try to sell it to publishers, which she did, to Little, Brown.
Speaking as someone who's been represented by agents off and on since 1984, that in itself is very, very strange. An agent then works with you to develop ideas for books you can sell -- remember, the agent gets 15 percent of whatever you come up with, so she's only interested in making as much money as possible as quickly as possible. Then the agent sets up a meeting with you and this packager guy from Alloy, and the two of you come up with a commercial idea for a novel. You then write up an outline for a novel, and it probably goes back and forth a few times between you, the agent, and the packager, and then a major publisher offers you $500,000 for the outlined book and its sequel. Remember, at this point, you're a teenager who has never written a book-length manuscript. And now someone is betting a half-million dollars on your ability to do this not once, but twice, and not only do it, but do it so well that everyone involved makes a profit off your work. My friend, it turns out, wrote several books for that same packaging company back when it was called 17th Street Productions. He didn't always write these books under his own name; in fact, several of his titles were published under the name of a very famous author who writes book series for young-adult readers. And that's why he thinks Viswanathan had some "help" from editors at the packaging company, and perhaps even other freelancers. "The odds that she even wrote it are way long," my friend says. "It was probably put together fast -- I usually had 30 days to produce a 40,000-50,000 word manuscript. So why not take chunks of other books? There was so much money on the table here." To tell you the truth, this isn't totally different from the way we used to do some books when I worked at Rodale. The first one I worked on was called The Men's Health Hard Body Plan. I was just a consultant, but when I jumped in, I was shocked to realize that the editors and writers who were pulling the book together had no affinity for the subject of strength training. Sure, they were going to hire a noted exercise physiologist to design the workouts, and took my advice to hire my friend Tom Incledon to design a diet plan. And all the writers and editors involved were talented and hard-working and sincere about doing a good job. But still, it was just strange to see how the process worked. My books at Rodale got progressively less sausage-like as I went along. Testosterone Advantage Plan had a tone in its early chapters that I wasn't happy with but wasn't empowered to change. Home Workout Bible employed a long roster of writers and contributors, but because I was in charge from start to finish, felt more like a "real" book to me. And Book of Muscle was very much a product of Ian King and me, editorially, although the idea of doing it as a coffee-table book wasn't ours. But some books were packaged, including a relatively recent series called Men's Health Best, on which I helped out as a consultant. So I don't see anything wrong with the idea ... as long as the publisher actually owns the material that's being packaged. Stealing from other authors, though, is clearly and thoroughly out of bounds, and I have to think every writer in the world is glad to see them get busted for it. As my friend said, "This whole thing’s bizarre. Man, you can’t even get honest fiction anymore!" Posted by LouSchuler at 10:21 AM | Comments (2)
Full MagazineI had a blast writing this review of health and fitness magazines at T-nation, but the photo gags inserted by the editor, TC Luoma, are funnier than anything I wrote. Posted by LouSchuler at 07:35 AM | Comments (3)
May 04, 2006Heavy LiftingFollowing up on my post the other day about plagiarism, it's worth noting that the publisher of young novelist Kaavya Viswanathan is pulling her book for good:
The announcement was made on the same day that new allegations of plagiarism were reported about Kaavya Viswanathan's novel, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life, including one report that she had copied from famed author Salman Rushdie.
[S]peaking on India's CNN-IBN news channel, Rushdie, who was also born in India, said similarities between the books could not have been accidental.
But here's the question that I haven't heard asked: Why does anyone think that a 19-year-old can write publishable fiction? I know it's happened a handful of times -- the first author who comes to mind is Bret Easton Ellis, who published Less than Zero when he was 21. That means he wrote it when he was 19 or 20. It's one of those books that transcends criticism, since it's a train-wreck story about essentially amoral characters, and as such it's hard to stop reading it once you start. Maybe now it'd be easy to put down, but when it first came out, in 1985, it seemed to be a new type of book about a new type of world that most of us didn't know existed. But, really, Ellis was sui generis; yes, he had a grasp of the mid-'80s zeitgeist, and knew how to get readers' attention (not to mention the media's), but he wasn't exactly destined for literary greatness. I remember thinking at the time how bizarre it was that someone that age could write an entire book, much less something publishable, much less something that would become a pop-cultural touchstone. I could barely finish term papers as a teenager, and the most charitable word you could use to describe the fiction I wrote back then was "amateurish." (The uncharitable words start with "horrible" and descend quickly from there.) That's why I make my living writing about health and fitness, which worked out fine for me. What troubles me is the idea that competent, professional writing is something young people should plausibly be able to do. I don't want to get into a rant about age discrimination in Hollywood, but it's well-accepted that younger writers are universally preferred over older ones. But in most of those cases, it's writers in their 20s and early 30s, often graduates from film schools, Ivy League colleges, or the top writing programs who are getting the gigs over writers in their 40s or 50s. We aren't talking about teenagers; these are men and women who are ambitious and talented and willing to put up with just about any amount of crap to get ahead. (And, based on what I've heard from writers lucky enough to get those jobs, the crap gets deeper than anyone expects going in.) Teenagers, though, are a differe | ||||||||||||||||||||||
