This; And also that

In seventh grade I read Cat’s Cradle, my first Vonnegut book. I remember standing in front of the class and giving a book report. I played a newsreporter delivering the play-by-play from the book’s closing scene (“a tragedy today, here in the beautiful island of San Lorenzo…”). There was an ad in the back of all those Vonnegut paperbacks that said, essentially, bet you can’t eat just one, and they were right.
No books, aside from Steve Martin’s Cruel Shoes, had a bigger impact on my brain in middle school and high school. I’d sometimes hear folks disparage Vonnegut’s novels as lightweight, comparing them unfavorably to, say, Catch-22. That always seemed off-point to me. These weren’t book you were supposed to roll around in for a month. They were a different kind of beast. Thin, portable devices that delivered high voltage electric telegrams direct to the nervous system. And if you read them in a certain frame of mind (and most especially at a certain age), they really did change the way you saw the world.
If you’re planning on reading a Vonnegut book today, may I recommend Sirens of Titan? Or perhaps God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater? Or mebbe Slapstick? Or what about Bluebeard? Oh, who are we kidding? The book to read today is Mother Night.
Mother Night, a book so gigantically good that when I finished it back in freshman year of college, I hopped up, flung it down the hallway, and scrambled out to the street to recover with some New York City air. And see, if it had been Catch-22, I might have really hurt somebody.

Kurt Vonnegut 1922-2007

Dyngus Day is finally here! And you know what that means — beware kids sporting pussywillows and water guns. Especially if you live in Buffalo or South Bend.
In an almost entirely unrelated development, So-Called Bill was angered by advertising over the weekend, which reminded me of this marketing copy I found on the box for Rob Reiner’s Rumor Has It, starring Kevin Costner, Shirley Maclaine, and Jennifer Anniston:

At last there’s a movie for everyone who’s ever looked at the eccentrics and oddballs in his or her family and wondered who are these people?

Like until now, we were left to ask, “Doesn’t anyone else have a crazy uncle who thinks the Theodore Roosevelt part of Mount Rushmore is making googly eyes at his wife? Am I the only person in this whole country with a quirky family? And if I’m not alone, why doesn’t anyone make a movie that finds comedy in those sorts of situations?”
And then — at last! — along comes this groundbreaking film. And now you’re not alone anymore. At last! At last! Grrrr.
Speaking of bad things, here’s what may be the worst pick-up line ever: “Either this place smells like really good Indian food, or you smell like really good Indian food.”