Gratuitous interactive book post + abuse of adverbs

I feel sure that I've mentioned before that I love to read, right? :D That I have a houseful of books and acquire more on a weekly basis, that I never feel the need to join those book-a-week communities because the idea of not reading/rereading fifty books a year is completely foreign to me, even if I rarely feel comfortable talking about them for fear of trying others' patience.

There are books I like and ones I am indifferent to and a few I simply loathe, but I'm rarely intimidated, once I open the covers, into not finishing. David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest nearly defeated me, though. It's a gigantic book, and it's dense and heavily endnoted, which is fine, except that I read and read without getting pulled in. (In fact, the only thing that kept me reading past, say, page 150, was the knowledge that it's A Certain Friend's favorite book and having started it I felt embarrassed not finishing it, on her account.) I read, I say, and read and read, flipping back and forth between the end notes, getting increasingly annoyed with David Foster Wallace for being so apparently willing to sacrifice everything worthwhile in his novel to his obsessive love for his own voice.

I remember the exact moment when that feeling changed for me, too, when it became clear to me that what I was reading was not so much a young man's thousand-page sploogefest (or do I mean spoogefest?) as what I am thinking is The Great American Novel made manifest. I can't tell you what that scene is without issuing some serious spoilers, but after my epiphany I settled in eagerly; and I am becoming increasingly aware as I read that this is possibly the finest instance of one of my own bulletproof kinks that I will ever see.

(Do you remember bulletproof kinks? Te, I think, is the one who first talked about them in conjunction with fandom. She was referring to porn when she put the term forward, but I think it can be applied in a more general sense, too, to any concept or scenario which will move you unbearably every time you read it (no matter how mediocre its execution).)

My bulletproof kink centers around what I've come to think of as a new and peculiarly American form of tragedy, built around a group of people, all bright and funny and/or quirky, whose primary impetus seems to be engaging, and who fail, utterly or maybe just barely, to engage, almost every time they try. The overshots and undershots and near-misses, everyone terribly, frighteningly isolated and nearly irreparably damaged because of it, which makes the rare connections, when they do come, all the more poignant and dear, and throws the misses into sharp relief.

Okay, I've got off-point here. My points are these:

(1) I am reading Infinite Jest. I am enjoying it very much. If you feel the urge to read, hang in there. It is worth any effort you put into it.

(2) Do you have literary bulletproof kinks? What are they?

Gratuitous interactive television post + lack of proper tasteful reverence

One of my favorite televisional pleasures -- I was going to say guilty pleasures, except that as I wrote the word, I realized I don't feel guilty in the least -- is "My Name Is Earl," you know, that little thing that started as a bizarrely appealing Jason Lee vehicle focused on a small-time hood who's changed his ways through an imperfect introduction to the idea of karma and who is now charging through a (literal) list of the wrongs he's committed, trying to make everything right; but which has now turned into kind of an astonishingly clever ensemble comedy. The basic concept of the show is actually the least of its pleasures, in my opinion, but the fact is that it works well on two levels; it is a silly comedy featuring a group of interconnected and hilariously trashy characters who get into crazy situations each week as Earl tries to bulldoze his way into grace, and it is also a smashing postmodernist effort, wherein most of modern American life is called into play and into question, and wherein the fourth wall is done away with so often and so subtly that really it's more of a curtain than a wall, quietly drawn back in these little throwaway moments, and the curtain's dropped back into place so quickly that if you're not paying attention, you're in danger of missing it.

Thursday night's episode was probably one of my favorites so far, which is saying something. Not only were the meta parts spot-on (TWOP, anyone? Thanks, Amelia, for reminding me about that tiny but apropos joke), but the bottom-line premise of the episode was also riveting for someone with my own affinity for morbid humor and John Waters. In it, John Waters plays a funeral home director whose sales gimmick is to stage the deceased in lifelike tableaux instead of in coffins, according to their interests in life. (Examples shown: guy in recliner with beer hat and bowl-o-popcorn in front of football game; guy in front of laptop computer, connected to the internet.)

(An aside: is there anyone more suited to play the funeral director's role than John Waters? I mean, honestly, this is why MNIE is so often entirely, surefootedly perfect.)

I have been thinking ever since that before I am cremated, I want to be memorialized in this way; specifically, I want to be curled up in my chintz rocking-chair, book in hand (I'm thinking Harry Potter or Jane Austen, now, but I reserve the right change my mind about that), pets on floor and in lap (make sure they don't eat me, okay?), an enormous tea and a laptop (so I can listen for email) sitting on a table beside me.

Forget all those top-five lists of music-I'd-want-played-at-my-funeral, man. Here's what I really want to know. What scenario would you want John Waters to fit you into, at your own lacking-in-proper-tasteful-reverence funeral service?