THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
03/24/06 -- Vol. 24, No. 39, Whole Number 1327
El Presidente: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
The Power Behind El Pres: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
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Topics:
What's Expected of Us (story pointer by Mark R. Leeper)
One Book Worldcon (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Belated Comments on the Academy Awards (comments
by Mark R. Leeper)
Hugo Nominees
SPIDER-MAN II (letter of comment by Gerald W. Ryan)
YANG BAN XI: THE EIGHT MODEL WORKS (film review
by Mark R. Leeper)
This Week's Reading (ITERATIONS, CONFEDERATE STATES
OF AMERICA, and BLEAK HOUSE)
(book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: What's Expected of Us (story pointer by Mark R. Leeper)
Evelyn points out to me a rather good very story by Ted Chiang
that shows up at a science site. It sort of takes an idea from
Isaac Asimov and looks at its implications. It really is not so
much a story as a situation. It is the kind of thing I try to do
in my editorials. But for those who like my sort of musings, but
done in story form, there is "What's Expected of Us" at:
http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050704/pf/436150a_pf.html
[-mrl]
[And for those who really like Ted Chiang's writing, here's a
chance to read one of all all-too-infrequent works. -ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: One Book Worldcon (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Well, four books really. L.A.con IV will be having four
discussion groups for classic science fiction works: Robert
A. Heinlein's SPACE CADET, Aldous Huxley's BRAVE NEW WORLD,
C. L. Moore's "No Woman Born", and Jules Verne's TWENTY THOUSAND
LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA. People who attending may want to get
started reading these now. (I just read BRAVE NEW WORLD last
year, so I can concentrate on the other three.)
"No Woman Born" is available in several anthologies, including
Groff Conklin's TREASURY OF SCIENCE FICTION, Damon Knight's
TOMORROW X 4, Isaac Asimov's THE GREAT SF STORIES 6 (1944), and
THE BEST OF C. L. MOORE.
(For those who have not heard of the "One Book" program--which is
really for cities and states, not for conventions--there is more
information at http://www.loc.gov/loc/cfbook/one-book.html.)
[-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Belated Comments on the Academy Awards (comments by Mark
R. Leeper)
This week's editorial was going to be about politics. But I have
been hitting that subject fairly heavily of late so I will give
people a one-week reprieve. I didn't talk much about my reaction
to the Academy Awards and it occurs to me that I have some things
that I want to say about that. Let's see if I have a whole
editorial's worth.
On the morning of the day of the Academy Awards I was asked what
I thought would win the Best Picture award. For me it seemed
that the likely winner was what had won most of the dramatic
awards to that point, BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN. Now people who saw my
"Top Ten" of the Year list will know that BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN did
not even make the list. This is not to say I did not think it
was a good film. But there were at least ten films that I
thought were better. Actually I listed two runners-up so there
were at least twelve. Knowing that I am nominating myself for a
Troglodyte Award, I would say that I was happy to see CRASH win.
That was on my "Top Ten" list but below THE CONSTANT GARDENER.
CRASH did something that is extremely unusual for films about
racism--it said something new. It said that while it may be true
that underneath a surface of civility many people may be racist,
the racism may also be just a layer and people may be basically
decent and good even if it is covered over with a layer of
racism. I believe that of the racists out there, some have those
attitudes because they have picked them up from peer groups.
They may have even convinced themselves they believe it. CRASH
is about people who come to realize that their own negative
attitudes are not what they truly believe. Every film on the
subject I have seen, and there have been a lot, have made it seem
that anybody who is bad is bad right down to the core. CRASH
manages to be a film about human hatred that is also in its own
way a feel-good film. I mentioned a few weeks ago that some
films drift upward in my estimation after I give them a week or
so of thought, and some drift down. CRASH started high and still
is drifting up. If I were to make my "Top Ten" List today it
would probably be higher on the list.
BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN is a good film about a relationship, but I
have seen the film before. The type of film is almost a cliche,
but for the fact that the two lovers in this film are the same
gender. It is saying you can have the same sort of sad, bitter
love story when the lovers are both males that you can if they
were of different genders. I think the same sort of movie has
been done with two women also. It is just that this is the first
time that it was done with two males. And it was done sensitively
enough that you did feel for them. I did find it odd that after
BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN won three Academy Awards including Best
Director that Annie Proulx, author of the story on which the film
was based, wrote an enraged diatribe for the British newspaper the
Guardian. She tore into the Academy and the awards ceremony for
daring to give another film Best Picture. It reminds me of
Barbara Streisand's rage at not being nominated for Best Director
even though the film was nominated for Best Picture. Martin
Scorsese was clearly disappointed that THE AVIATOR did not win
Best Picture and just quietly responded that he "got the
message." That is how to let people know you are disappointed if
you must.
The Proulx piece can be read at
http://books.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1727309,00.html
Then there is the Best Song category. There was little doubt in
my mind what would win there. It was the song "It's Hard Out
There for a Pimp." Even with lyrics that had to be changed for
the song to be performed on national television, I still was
expecting it to win. Particularly for anybody who has
seen HUSTLE & FLOW, that film is engraved in their brain. The
term "memorable" does not cover it. It is hard to forget. This
is not that it is a good piece of music. It probably was the
worst of the three. But the other two had melodies that were more
complex and hence harder to remember. "Hard Out Here for a Pimp"
has a chorus that is a seven-note, nine-note theme that is
repeated over and over and over. It combines that with rap that
barely has a melody at all. It just repeats over and over. So
the listener knows exactly what is coming in the melody. When it
does come is just sounds right because it is exactly what the
listener was expecting. Repetitiousness done at all right is a
shortcut to popularity. That is the principle that the "Top 40"
music radio stations go by. When you hear the same forty songs
over and over and over they start to sound right to you.
In any case, I think that what wins Academy Awards tells you more
about the Academy's taste is, not what is good or bad. When I
write a review or make a "Top Ten" list I am telling people about
myself and how I react to film. I am writing about what is my
taste. The Academy Awards are not about film either; they are
about what is the Academy's taste in film. Of course, the taste
of the filmmaking industry itself is an important force. It is
valuable to know what the collective taste of the film industry
is. It is a force worth knowing about, particularly for
reviewers. The awards are a comprehensive measure of what the
taste of the film industry is at a point in time. It tells you
something about a group of people, not about a set of films. My
"Top Ten" list is a measure of my taste. It is all about me. The
Hugos are all about the aggregate tastes of the kind of people who
go to Worldcons and what they like this year. That is what awards
really are.
These are not necessarily the films that they themselves have
made. It is what films are to their taste. There is a
distinction between pleasing to oneself and profitable. Show me
a McDonalds manager who really prefers hamburgers to prime rib.
What they make may not be what they think is good. Actually it
is not clear what their taste represents. It could be any of
- what they make,
- what they like,
- what they want the world to think they like, and
- what makes the most money.
These may be all different things. The word taste is vague
enough that it could apply to any of them and may be different
for each voter. But my statement still holds, I think. The
Oscars say little about film and more about the Academy's taste
at a point in time. Certainly this year, I don't think any of
the films nominated for Best Picture was a studio film so I think
there would have been little studio partisanship. Contrary to
Ms. Proulx, I think that, more than most years, the awards
honestly represented the members' taste. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Hugo Nominees
2006 Hugo & Campbell Awards Nominations
The Hugo Nominations have been announced. One nomination here
was, I think, Evelyn's personal project to get to get on the
ballot. Apparently some people agreed with her message.
Best Novel (430 ballots cast)
-- LEARNING THE WORLD, Ken MacLeod (Orbit; Tor)
-- A FEAST FOR CROWS, George R.R. Martin (Voyager;
Bantam Spectra)
-- OLD MAN'S WAR, John Scalzi (Tor)
-- ACCELERANDO, Charles Stross (Ace; Orbit)
-- SPIN, Robert Charles Wilson (Tor)
Best Novella (243 ballots cast)
-- BURN, James Patrick Kelly (Tachyon)
-- "Magic for Beginners", Kelly Link (Magic for Beginners,
Small Beer Press; F&SF Sep 2005)
-- "The Little Goddess", Ian McDonald (Asimov's Jun 2005)
-- "Identity Theft", Robert J. Sawyer (Down These Dark Spaceways,
SFBC)
-- "Inside Job", Connie Willis (Asimov's Jan 2005)
Best Novelette (207 ballots cast)
-- "The Calorie Man", Paolo Bacigalupi (F&SF Oct/Nov 2005)
-- "Two Hearts", Peter S. Beagle (F&SF Oct/Nov 2005)
-- "TelePresence", Michael A. Burstein (Analog Jul/Aug 2005)
-- "I, Robot", Cory Doctorow (The Infinite Matrix Feb 15, 2005)
-- "The King of Where-I-Go", Howard Waldrop (SCI FICTION
Dec 7, 2005)
Best Short Story (278 ballots cast)
-- "Seventy-Five Years", Michael A. Burstein (Analog
Jan/Feb 2005)
-- "The Clockwork Atom Bomb", Dominic Green (Interzone
May/Jun 2005)
-- "Singing My Sister Down", Margo Lanagan (Black Juice,
Allen & Unwin; Eos)
-- "Tk'tk'tk", David D. Levine (Asimov's Mar 2005)
-- "Down Memory Lane", Mike Resnick (Asimov's Apr/May 2005)
Best Related Book (197 ballots cast)
-- TRANSFORMATIONS: THE STORY OF THE SCIENCE FICTION MAGAZINES
FROM 1950 TO 1970, Mike Ashley (Liverpool)
-- THE SEX COLUMN AND OTHER MISPRINTS, David Langford(Cosmos)
-- SCIENCE FICTION QUOTATIONS edited, Gary Westfahl(Yale)
-- STORYTELLER: WRITING LESSONS AND MORE FROM 27 YEARS OF THE
CLARION WRITERS' WORKSHOP, Kate Wilhelm (Small Beer Press)
-- SOUNDINGS: REVIEWS 1992_1996, Gary K. Wolfe (Beccon)
Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form (364 ballots cast)
-- BATMAN BEGINS
-- THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE
-- HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE
-- SERENITY
-- WALLACE & GROMIT IN THE CURSE OF THE WERE_RABBIT
Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form (261 ballots cast)
-- Battlestar Galactica "Pegasus"
-- Doctor Who "Dalek"
-- Doctor Who "The Empty Child" & "The Doctor Dances"
-- Doctor Who "Father's Day"
-- "Jack-Jack Attack"
-- "Lucas Back in Anger"
-- Prix Victor Hugo Awards Ceremony (Opening Speech and Framing
Sequences)
(There are seven nominees due to a tie for fifth place)
Best Professional Editor (293 ballots cast)
-- Ellen Datlow (SCI FICTION and anthologies)
-- David G. Hartwell (Tor Books; Year's Best SF)
-- Stanley Schmidt (Analog)
-- Gordon Van Gelder (F&SF)
-- Sheila Williams (Asimov's)
Best Professional Artist (230 ballots cast)
-- Jim Burns
-- Bob Eggleton
-- Donato Giancola
-- Stephan Martiniere
-- John Picacio
-- Michael Whelan
(There are six nominees due to a tie for fifth place)
Best Semiprozine (219 ballots cast)
-- Ansible edited, Dave Langford
-- Emerald City edited, Cheryl Morgan
-- Interzone edited, Andy Cox
-- Locus edited, Charles N. Brown, Kirsten Gong_Wong, &
Liza Groen Trombi
-- The New York Review of Science Fiction edited, Kathryn Cramer,
David G. Hartwell & Kevin J. Maroney
Best Fanzine (176 ballots cast)
-- Banana Wings edited, Claire Brialey & Mark Plummer
-- Challenger edited, Guy H. Lillian III
-- Chunga edited, Andy Hooper, Randy Byers & carl juarez
-- File 770 edited, Mike Glyer
-- Plokta edited, Alison Scott, Steve Davies & Mike Scott
Best Fan Writer (202 ballots cast)
-- Claire Brialey
-- John Hertz
-- Dave Langford
-- Cheryl Morgan
-- Steven H Silver
Best Fan Artist (154 ballots cast)
-- Brad Foster
-- Teddy Harvia
-- Sue Mason
-- Steve Stiles
-- Frank Wu
John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer of 2004 or 2005
[Not a Hugo. Sponsored, Dell Magazines] (186 ballots cast)
-- K.J. Bishop (2nd year of eligibility)
-- Sarah Monette (2nd year of eligibility)
-- Chris Roberson (2nd year of eligibility)
-- Brandon Sanderson (1st year of eligibility)
-- John Scalzi (1st year of eligibility)
-- Steph Swainston (2nd year of eligibility)
(There are six nominees due to a tie for fifth place)
The Best Interactive Video Game category, added to the nominating
ballot this year by the L.A.con IV Committee, has been dropped
because of a lack of interest (as per Section 3.6 of the WSFS
Constitution).
That's it. [-mrl]
[Note: All the short fiction not appearing in Analog, Asimov's,
F&SF, or Interzone is currently available on-line; I suspect the
rest will be relatively soon. All the novels have had United
States publication. For the first time since the 1970s, there is
a non-broadcast performance in the dramatic categories--in fact,
two of them: the Hugo ceremony and "Lucas Back in Anger". [-ecl]]
===================================================================
TOPIC: SPIDER-MAN II (letter of comment by Gerald W. Ryan)
Regarding Mark's comments on SPIDER-MAN II in the 03/17/06 issue
of the MT VOID, Jerry Ryan writes, "I don't think there's
terribly many elevated train tracks near skyscrapers in NYC
anymore, though I think in the past before the old Third Avenue
El was torn down, there may have been trains near tall buildings.
It certainly looks that way in old photographs. I think that I
remember that the Seattle monorail used to run next to some
skyscrapers. As for ending with simple bumpers . . . . When I
was first out of school, my new wife and I lived in Ozone Park,
NY, which is in Queens on a small spur of the A-train El known as
the Lefferts Boulevard line. The line was just a few stops long
(it extended east from where the A train turns off to Far
Rockaway). Anyway, the terminus at Lefferts Boulevard ended just
like that: a station at the end, a couple of bumpers, and a
precipitous drop to the street. Of course, with dead-man
switches and the various safety stops on the NYC Subway system,
it seems unlikely that there'd ever be a danger of one of the
trains actually *making* that precipitous drop :-)" [-gwr]
===================================================================
TOPIC: YANG BAN XI: THE EIGHT MODEL WORKS (film review by Mark
R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: What might have been a very enlightening documentary
about Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution has some very strange
artistic choices that blunt the impact. We are never quite
certain of the goals of the film and what director/writer Yan
Ting Yuen is trying to say, particularly with what appear to be
two embedded music videos. Rating: +1 (-4 to +4) or 6/10
To start, what were the Yang ban Xi? In 1965, China's Chairman
Mao Zedong decided that the revolution he himself had initiated
in China was going in the wrong direction. He and the so-called
Gang of Four took a firm hand in redirecting the country. The
youth was bred into fanaticism for the leader and the state, each
carring Mao's "Little Red Book" of quotations. Intellectuals
were sent to the countryside to learn to be farmers. The country
fell into a chaotic mess. Great artworks that reminded people of
the past were considered to be counter-revolutionary and were
destroyed at great loss to the culture. People formerly
venerated were seen as competition by the government and were
forced to write self-accusations and were given punishments by
people chosen for their loyalty to the state rather than any
loyalty to justice. The turmoil continued for more than a
decade. When it was over, Madam Mao was accused of being the
force behind the Cultural Revolution. Most historians agree that
while she was not very good for China, it is really Mao who
deserved most of the blame. He, however, was venerated by the
Communist Party and hence was inappropriate to be the scapegoat.
During this time the only art that the people were allowed to see
were government-sanctioned unsubtle propaganda pieces. There
were more than a dozen ballets and operas, but they are
remembered as a whole as the Eight Model Works. This was the
only form of drama that the people were allowed to see. The
titles are like "Red Women's Detachment" and "The Taking of Tiger
Mountain by Strategy". The stories are bluntly propagandistic.
In one a woman held in slavery escapes and joins the Chinese
Army. The noble and upstanding soldiers help her get revenge on
her former masters and everything works out well for everybody
good. They owe it all to the great Chairman Mao and the
Communist Party.
The history, not surprisingly, is fascinating. But Yan Ting
Yuen, the Hong Kong writer and director of this film makes some
peculiar artistic choices. In the middle of the documentary we
see a modern street scene and suddenly we are watching a rock
music video with very modern dancing to rock that may or may not
be inspired by the musical themes of the Yang Ban Xi. The viewer
has to ask himself repeatedly "What am I seeing and why am I
seeing it?" The director is experimenting with the documentary
medium, but not in ways that seem fruitful. Madam Mao seems to
be commenting on the Cultural Revolution and on the Yang Ban Xi
plays which she says are not forgotten. That is, of course, a
historical impossibility, but that is not admitted until the end
credits. The quotations are fictional.
There is a lot of rock music, presumably to show the degree of
change in China in the three decades since the end of the
Cultural Revolution. While what we see of the plays is mostly
hokey text, somehow the music is far more beautiful (at least to
my ear) than the discordant contemporary rock music in the film.
Of course, it may well be that I am in the minority preferring
Chinese Concert Music to most modern rock. (As an aside, if one
wants to hear how beautiful the combining the music of Chinese
Opera with Western symphonic styles can be, find a copy of "Liang
Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai: The Butterfly Lovers" by He Zhanhao and
Chen Gang. It really is one of world's greatest orchestral
pieces, and the music is strongly reminiscent of the
revolutionary music used in the Yan Ban Xi.)
We do get to see some excerpts from the model operas. In the
political climate in which they were written, there was no such
thing as going too far overboard in extolling the virtues of
Communism saving the people of the world. The film, when it is
on track, shows pieces of the performances and introduces an
assortment of people who became famous in the productions of the
Yang Ban Xi. We meet a ballet dancer, an opera singer, an actor,
a scriptwriter, and so forth. They talk about their lives during
this period and what happened to them after the Cultural
Revolution ended.
The film is at its best when showing how a totalitarian
government destroyed the lives of its intellectuals. There is
the irony to how a government that says that it is devoted to the
people can have such disregard for the individual. This was a
story that needed to be told and which has been nearly forgotten
by the world in the three decades since it ended. It should have
been told without the distraction of modern rock music. I rate
this film a disappointing +1 on the -4 to +4 scale or 6/10. For
more information on the Yang Ban Xi art form, see
http://www.answers.com/yang%20ban%20xi. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Last week, I said that Kim Stanley Robinson's FIFTY DEGREES BELOW
was the sequel to FORTY DAYS OF RAIN. That should have been FORTY
SIGNS OF RAIN.
ITERATIONS by Robert J. Sawyer (ISBN 0-88995-303-1) is a
collection of some of Sawyer's short fiction. In fact, it is the
only collection so far of his short fiction. Considering that he
has been nominated for nine Hugos, you would think an American
publisher would have been interested in doing a collection, so it
could be that Sawyer felt that as Canada's most visible science
fiction author, he should have this collection published in
Canada. It includes his one Hugo-nominated short piece that was
published before the collection came out, but also a few pieces
less likely to have been seen by readers, such as one originally
published in "The Globe and Mail" newspaper, and several from
small press publications. Sawyer also wrote an introduction for
each piece, although in most cases it is just the explanation of
where it first appeared. I suspect that at some point a more
comprehensive collection may be done of Sawyer's work, but until
then, fans of his writing will want to seek this out. (It is
available from amazon and other sellers in the United States.)
CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA: WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN by Roger L.
Ransom (ISBN 0-393-05967-7) is a counterfactual. It is not an
alternate history per se, because first of all, it is not a
novel--there are no characters, and no plot outside of recounting
the history as it might have been. And second, Ransom never gets
into the world of the divergence. Alternate history novels are
always written *in* that world, unless the main character is from
our timeline (or some third timeline). Even Robert Sobel's
classic FOR WANT OF A NAIL, while not a novel, is written *in*
its timeline, down to alternate bibliographical and publication
information. But Ransom keeps pulling back, saying things like,
"In our world what happened was X. But what if Y?" It is of
interest to history buffs, but does not have the texture to
appeal to most people looking for an alternate history novel.
BLEAK HOUSE by Charles Dickens (ISBN 0-553-21223-0) seems to be
the current "classic du jour" with both an eight-hour
"Masterpiece Theatre" presentation and a five-hour BBC radio
adaptation in the last few months. I figured I should read the
book first, before watching or listening to either of those, but
after 200 pages (out of 800 pages total), I decided that Dickens
was definitely paid by the word, and this was way too padded out
for me. Oh, there were some fine passages, such as "Sir
Leicester is generally in a complacent state, and rarely bored.
When he has nothing else to do, he can always contemplate his own
greatness. It is a considerable advantage to a man to have so
inexhaustible a subject. After reading his letters, he leans
back in his corner of the carriage and generally reviews his
importance to society." [Chapter 12]
Nothing so displays the poles of wonderful reading versus
repetition (to me anyway) as Dickens's first two paragraphs. The
first, about London in November, is as evocative of a scene as
any; the second, about the fog, is merely repetitious:
"London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor
sitting in Lincoln's Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As
much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired
from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet
a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an
elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from
chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in
it as big as full-grown snowflakes--gone into mourning, one might
imagine, for the death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in
mire. Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers.
Foot passengers, jostling one another's umbrellas in a general
infection of ill temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-
corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have
been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if this day ever
broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud,
sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and
accumulating at compound interest."
"Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green
aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls deified
among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a
great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the
Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-
brigs; fog lying out on the yards and hovering in the rigging of
great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small
boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich
pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the
stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down
in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of
his shivering little 'prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the
bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with
fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon and hanging
in the misty clouds."
In fairness, I should say that Vladimir Nabokov thinks this
repetition is a positive thing, saying in his LECTURES ON
LITERATURE, "Dickens enjoys a kind of incantation, a verbal
formula verbally recited with growing emphasis; an oratorical,
forensic device." I disagree with this (as well as with
Nabokov's use of the semi-colon). ("Forensic" seemed to be wrong
also, but it is defined in my somewhat older dictionary as
"suitable for debate; rhetorical".) Then again, maybe Dickens is
a *man*'s author, since Nabokov starts his lecture (given at
Cornell when that university was all-male, one presumes) by
saying, "In our dealings with Jane Austen we had to make a
certain effort in order to join the ladies in the drawing room.
In the case of Dickens we remain at table with our tawny port."
In spite of Nabokov's words, I have liked other Dickens, but
perhaps the fact that this not only drags on and on, but that the
plot is about a lawsuit that drags on and on, make it seem far
more tedious than, say, A TALE OF TWO CITIES. [-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Life is something to do when you can't
get to sleep.
-- Fran Lebowitz