Book Review: The Appeal: John Grisham

Sooooo... despite everything that I say about being a pretentious reader it appears I have read three John Grisham books in the last year so... what kind of fool am I and how ashamed am I? Fairly. But surprisingly I am not extremely embarrassed. Likely a metaphor for my life where I really enjoy claptrap and connived, stretched, but easy to read plots. I like things easy and simple.

But this book. This book was really, really intriguing for a number of reasons. I will not wax on and on about how average Grisham is and how it is lowest common denominator literature... it is all true. But who really cares. It is awesome and this particular book is a much needed read.

Recently they failed in another attempt in beautiful Missouri to sack our Missouri Courts Plan where we have a committee put together a panel and the governor needs to pick one from the panel. This last year there was evidently, allegedly some deal making which resulted in a panel where the governor had no choice and it pissed him, and big business and evidently conservative Christians (of which oddly I still consider myself) off. You see most other states elect all their judges leading to campaigns and fund raising and money. And these judges have to stand for election every few years for another campaign and more money. Our plan of appointed judges is not perfect but once they are in, they are in and cannot be bought or sold. They might have bias but at least not bought and paid for bias... anyway....
So in this book we have the typical villains, big corporation raping the environment and killing a lot of people. A small town couple practicing law in Mississippi takes them on and wins but alas... there is the appeal. The judgment is for the tens of millions and there are hundreds of cases which will be filed if the verdict stands. And... the appeal takes a while to percolate through the system giving the big corporation and their fixers plenty of time to find a conservative judge they can get elected in order to shift the deeply divided appeals court in their direction. We meet all the people. The brave lawyers, the nobly suffering injured people and the vicious hustlers and fixers.

All the characters are drawn sharply and there is not much effort that needs to be exerted to figure out good guys and bad guys. As the case winds it’s way through the system we see the fixers work their magic finding a good looking young defense lawyer from a good church with absolutely no distinguishing marks or record for anyone to crucify him over. He runs, and flies around the State on a wave of money against a much beleaguered female appellate court judge and as the appeal nears hitting the court...

A lot of things happen. Surprisingly none of them good. I have always said that grisham does not know how to end a legal book. As this one has a lot of disasters and you wonder about how long it is going to take to wind it up with the requisite happy ending. The calamities make you squirm and twist and get anxious about how the good guys can win and he hits a nice (very troubling) plot device at the end which frankly just seems over the top but... he ends this one well, and not happily... but with a lesson which is a great one.

grisham is heavy handed with his political views but, since they seem to align with mine. .. thats fine. I highly recommend this one folks. It will make you think and you can breeze through it in a few days at worst.

9 Slingers on the 10 scale.

CD REVIEW: THE WOOD BROTHERS: LOADED

So occasionally you stumble on a good CD. Well made, nice tunes, very tightly played. You listen to it a bunch of times and claim it as your own... and then your standing in the Starbucks waiting for your vente (whatever the hell that means) black iced tea (unsweet) and suddenly you hear one of the songs from the CD. Does it ruin it? Does it validate your taste? Or is it a non-event and you are only considering how it e you because you are so dramatically self involved. Yes that is probably it.

This was recently my experience with The Wood Brothers new Cd “Loaded”. It was released in March and I listened and then listened again and... damn i thought these were fine songs. The Wood Brothers have been around for a long time and through at least three CD’s. They are Oliver Wood on guitar and vocals and Chris Wood on bass. Chris is one of the founders of the (I never got it) Medeski, Martin and Wood. Medeski produced this one and it is just a fine, listen-able tuneful CD.

One of the things I love about it is that it does not seem front loaded. Some of the best tunes are buried in the middle and the back. it is definitely a CD you could put on while chatting with some friends and having a drink and sooner or later someone says “who is this?” And as a music snob that is about all you can ask for. Oliver has a kind of young Levon Helms or Levon helms pre throat cancer type voice that just sounds real and mournful right from the start on the opening cut “Lovin Arms”. The happily named postcards from hell carries it on but aside from an interesting little noodling guitar line there is not too much there. Pray enough is a little more bluesy with even a New Orleans lilt with some sweet organ by Medeski. “Loaded” is a mournful drinking song which you have written and sung a hundred times. “Walk Away” is a throw away followed by “Don’t Look Back they make up the low part of the Cd both lyrically and energy wise. “Twisted” starts to ramp it back up and they really hit stride on Fall Too Fast” where he sings:

“Don’t let me fall to fast.
I want to fall slowly.
I want my fall to last”.

Amen brother Oliver.

After that lyrical delight they go into the boringly named but beautiful “Angel” which is just...just a great song. Written by that nobody Jimi Hendrix it just is lilting and nuanced and...great. they then cover Dylan’s “Buckets of Rain” in a pleasant romp that does not borrow too heavily from the man which is really the nice thing about both covers. they made them their own. They close it out with “Make Me Down A Pallet On Your Floor” and a song called “Still Close” and they are both listenable and would be a nice inclusion on anybodies CD.

These guys can just flat out play and there is something about brothers who have been playing together for so long and have so much history where the groove just...grooves. Buy it and smile and do not worry too much about the Starbucks thing.

www.thewoodbrothers.com

8 Slingers on the 10 scale

Built To SPill
The Pageant
March 15, 2008





Okay... so March Madness seems to be REALLY distracting for the St. Louis Diner Review. And that does not seem like it is ANY good at all. but maybe it is. Or maybe no ne gives a shit. Who knows. Until I figure out a way to put a pagenator (legal term) on here i will never know whether it is me or both me and my mom who check the page out. Who knows.

So I saw an excellenet concert over spring break or something when Jon was home. We caught the Meat Puppets who opened for Built To Spill. Now Built To Spill has been here about 23 times over the last two years but it just seems to never get old. They are still traveling on their two year old album “You In Reverse” which also gets better and better every time I listen to it.
But lets talk about the Meat Puppets first. The puppets are a nice nineties band out of Phoenix where brothers Curt and Chris Kirkwood picked up on a Neil Young grunge theme and well. They rocked. They had a minor hit in an excellent song called “Backwater” but other then that were relegated to the hated “crtiically acclaimed” category and that was it...then it got worse when Chris Kirkwood tanked his life and got kicked out of the band... and then the brothers got together again and... oh yawn. I have never really liked the Puppets but all the music people who i respect their opintion have always loved them so... I try.
We were on the floor and it was a nice crowd but an old guys leg start to die. The Puppets did tear it up. These are age appropriate guys who can rock but in the end it comes down to... so what. the songs are generally not good enough. That is my opinion, but it always good to see the dreaded critically acclaimed.

Built To Spill is Doug Martsch along with a drummer, a bass player and two other guitars. Jim Roth and Brett Nelson are awesome in their own right but Martsch tears it up and tore through a lot of songs in a two hour set that kept daddy up too late. The set list included many of their songs from you in reverse and delved back to some excellent older stuff including “Joy Ride”, and several cuts from my favorite album “There Is Nothing Wrong With Love” including “In The Morning”, “Big Dipper” and “Twin Falls”. Twin Falls was the best as he dedicated it to his mom who was sitting stage left with his wife and a whole passle of friends.

The thing about the band is that they are the true inheritors... along with Dinosaur Jr. of the Neil Young legacy. Great simple distorted guitar with some nice lyrics that repeat over and over again as you rock into oblivion. That is all a boy can ask for. It was a good crowd and he played a long hard set and I really do not care how many times he comes to town, I will always go see him. It is that good of a show.

8 Slingers on the ten scale.

Concert Review: Built To Spill & The Meat Puppets

Built To SPill
The Pageant
March 15, 2008







Okay... so March Madness seems to be REALLY distracting for the St. Louis Diner Review. And that does not seem like it is ANY good at all. but maybe it is. Or maybe no ne gives a shit. Who knows. Until I figure out a way to put a pagenator (legal term) on here i will never know whether it is me or both me and my mom who check the page out. Who knows.

So I saw an excellenet concert over spring break or something when Jon was home. We caught the Meat Puppets who opened for Built To Spill. Now Built To Spill has been here about 23 times over the last two years but it just seems to never get old. They are still traveling on their two year old album “You In Reverse” which also gets better and better every time I listen to it.
But lets talk about the Meat Puppets first. The puppets are a nice nineties band out of Phoenix where brothers Curt and Chris Kirkwood picked up on a Neil Young grunge theme and well. They rocked. They had a minor hit in an excellent song called “Backwater” but other then that were relegated to the hated “crtiically acclaimed” category and that was it...then it got worse when Chris Kirkwood tanked his life and got kicked out of the band... and then the brothers got together again and... oh yawn. I have never really liked the Puppets but all the music people who i respect their opintion have always loved them so... I try.
We were on the floor and it was a nice crowd but an old guys leg start to die. The Puppets did tear it up. These are age appropriate guys who can rock but in the end it comes down to... so what. the songs are generally not good enough. That is my opinion, but it always good to see the dreaded critically acclaimed.

Built To Spill is Doug Martsch along with a drummer, a bass player and two other guitars. Jim Roth and Brett Nelson are awesome in their own right but Martsch tears it up and tore through a lot of songs in a two hour set that kept daddy up too late. The set list included many of their songs from you in reverse and delved back to some excellent older stuff including “Joy Ride”, and several cuts from my favorite album “There Is Nothing Wrong With Love” including “In The Morning”, “Big Dipper” and “Twin Falls”. Twin Falls was the best as he dedicated it to his mom who was sitting stage left with his wife and a whole passle of friends.

The thing about the band is that they are the true inheritors... along with Dinosaur Jr. of the Neil Young legacy. Great simple distorted guitar with some nice lyrics that repeat over and over again as you rock into oblivion. That is all a boy can ask for. It was a good crowd and he played a long hard set and I really do not care how many times he comes to town, I will always go see him. It is that good of a show.
8 Slingers on the ten scale.

The AbstinenceTteacher

The Abstinence Teacher
Tom Perrotta
St. martin’s Press
358 Pages





I got turned on to this book through Nick Hornby’s column “what I am reading” in The Believer. I am happy I did. Perrottas 4 previous books have all been well received and at least one, “Election” was made into a rather average Reese Witherspoon Matthew Broderick vehicle. Perrottas book “Little Children” from 2004 appeared on a little people’s best books list and is worth going back to if you have not caught it. He has flown under my radar screen but this book will make me go back and revisit those. It is all Spring and it is now timne to leave the Russian writers and St. Louis suicide weather behind.

“The Abstinence Teacher” is a plainly written book about sex education, the culture wars, suburbia, kids soccer and evangelical Christianity. When typing this I was shocked about how the five things in that prior sentence seem to go together. I could rattle off a few more including Starbucks, yoga and S.U.V.’s. All of them having something to be said for themselves but when looked at all together in one sentence... it makes me queasy.

The book has two main characters. the first is a middle aged, divorced, liberal, agenda-ized mother of two girls who is a health teach in a public high school. the second is a male recovering scar from 70’s culture, former bass player, dead head, alcoholic, druggy who turns his life around through his involvement in the local evangelical church and the personal ministry of their preacher Pastor Scott. Both characters are smartly drawn and first come into contact when after a particularly hectic soccer game he leads the kids in a prayer after the game which leads to her shrieking at him and leading a parents insurrection again against this in the soccer league.

She has some issues with Christianity (especially the evangelical kind) after her health class (and when did we start linking sex education with “health”) gets her in trouble when she opines in regard to one girls obvious distaste for the topic of oral sex by saying four words; “some people like it”. This brings a fire storm from the girls mother and her church who crusade to get abstinence education installed in the schools curriculum and we follow her somewhat less then stellar attempt at keeping her job and swallowing her pride to teach it.

As a parent and someone who tries to be a Christian the subject of abstinence as sex education interests me. I know abstinence is the only Chrisitian answer to premarital sex but... I also remember being a teen ager and it just seems so absurd that you would teach it in public school to the exclusion of everything else. I mean if that is so important to me shouldn’t I be bucking up for a good Christian school to send my kid to rather then expect that from public education? But... I am a commie. What do I know?

The characters are well drawn and she has the mandatory gay boyfriends and we get to deal tangentally with their relationship issues. the two main characters are undeniably drawn to one another just as they are repulsed by their intolerance on both sides regarding the others beliefs. In the end the book succeeds because it points out through these broken characters that people are really fragile and yet are capable of and indeed entitled to some sublime and beautiful moments as they stumble brokenly through life searching for meaning and connection in jobs, religion, family, sex and whatever else they can find. Even as the book winds towards it’s hopelessly logical conclusion, it never quite gets there but implies a lot of greatness, pain and life that lies ahead.
So far I am calling it the best read of the year. 8 Slingers on the 10 scale.

KUBE WRAP PARTY

Wel, as you can see from the paper this morning some of you missed quite a party! The KUBE KNATION showed up in force to watch the finals at the depot with well over 100 kontestants, and their pets showing up for a bash which included lobster, cracked crab and tenderloin. Top shelf booze was served by elegant model waitresses as a good time was had by all... until a few bad apples had to ruin a nice party. Madness ensued and sadly, after paying everyone's bail... the prize money was fully expended.

Better luck to everyone next year and thanks for playing.

STUPID PEOPLE DOING STUPID THINGS

On a very consistent basis.

DO NOT FORGET!

Tonight we meet at the depot for a cocktail and to watch a little basketball. This reporter will be arriving and leaving early FIFO for you accountants and am looking forward to drinking that extra money that has been saved up for the last few years. Kukla has been investing that money in Bordeaux futures and I have HIGH confidence that we will see the results this evening.

For thoise of you who really love KUBE it is a costume event. Mogerman will coming as Mark Spitz with 7 gold medals and a speedo. You do NOT want to miss that.

See you tonight.

mab

ROCK CHALK!

GREAT GAME!











Sooooo... it is Sunday and... well it has been a great tournament. As we wait on the finals on the Monday night and anticipate what kostumes we are going to wear to the Kukla Depot for kocktail hour we need to make a few KUBE Komments.

1. How about those Tarheels?
2. How about the 113 of us who picked North carolina or UCLA as Champion?
3. So much for form holding in the Final Four.
4. Kudos to the 45 kontestants who chose Kansas or Memphis for champion.

We are down to memphis and Kansas and I think all right thinking people everywhere... even Missouri fans, are going to rally behind our Big 12 JAWHAWKS from neighboring Kansas. After all, here in St. Louis almost everyone knows someone who was not smart enough to get into Mizzou or Drake and who had to go to school in Lawrence Kansas. The fact that several of these college “graduates” actually went to Hascal Indian Junior College in Lawrence but told everyone that they went to KU is of no import. The main purpose today is to celebrate Jayhawk pride.

Now we have a few nightmare scenarios. Kim Zender wins if Memphis wins which begs the question... who in the hell is Kim Zender? Perhaps Kukla or one of our other Koodinators knows but i think we will be implementing a rule next year where you cannot win unless I know you personally... and you have given me some kind of gift. Karen “I forgot to leave Rock Island like everyone else” Warlop comes in second and Molly (I am so much smarter then Mogerman AND Zerman and deserve a huge raise for carrying the firm on my back) Alesi comes in third.

Unfortunately for these folks we all know the mighty Kansas Jayhawks (similar to the formerly might North carolina Tarheels) will romp in the finals on Monday and in that case Liz Ott (do not know her well enough to make fun of her), Bill Dickens (don’t know him either) and OH MY GOD my semi retarded but extremely high functioning brother Rob “Becker the Wrecker” comes in third. Unbelievable. The man could not find his behind with both hands and a pack of dogs but here he is taking possibly taking 3rd in the most prestigious competition in KUBE history.

What is more interesting and i think is probably a huge cry for help is Logan Finnerty
Kukla will inform us as to what the prize money is Logan Finnerty who did not only not beat his mother but to be fair.... he did not beat anyone. But for Kukla’s sister and some one named Alsop who must have had a severe head wound he did not even have much company. We must think that Logan either:

A. Intentionally tanked his brackets (unlikely since he picked Duke); or
B. Is attempting to get just a little bit of attention from his parents; or
C. Is finally showing the results of all those margaritas mom drank when she was carrying him.

In any case I am thinking we of the KUBE nation have some obligation to konduct some type of intervention.

Another observation about all your pets. THEY ARE PATHETIC! Ugly dogs, frightening cats and although some of them looked good to win, they all folded up when the going got tough. We all thought Lucy Shapiro or one of those Curtis mutts was going to run away with this but when the Shapiro’s stopped feeding Lucy and the Curtises began to threaten Riley with taking a long ride he would never come home from... they quit.

Tyler thought THIS was a bad day. I will not miss seeing and reading about him EVERY DAY in the Post.



So we will await a Monday update from the Kommissioner who will tell us:

1. Prize money breakdown. (With over 200 kontestants at 10 bucks a head Don tells me that we will have almost $234 dollars to distribute in prize money).
2. Timing for KUBE Finals Happy Hour at Depot.
3. What time to show up with your pet.
4. What sort of theme for your kostume
5. Whether YOU in particular are invited
6. Who the musical guess will be
7. Whether he will be flying his children at college in or not.
Personally I cannot wait.