My last sportswriting post [Finally apparent truisms]

Posted on January 25, 2012 by JJH

Yesterday I wrote about Grantland.

Today (Grantland-style; I’m aware of the irony) I’m writing about me.

I used to want to be a sportswriter. As my career has diverted, I still lurk in social playgrounds with sportswriters. At one time I was promising, sure. I’d confidently put paper Daily Iowans sold, or column hit-rates up against the Press Citizen or CR Gazette on my run dates. Had we counted hits, that is. Or not given the paper away for free. We were young.

But today, actually, I finally realized what sportswriting has become. Maybe, today, I’ve finally outgrown the sports-talk itch.

Apparently, sportswriting means the writer falls in love with the subjects he or she covers. Want proof?

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How to build a cheeky sports blog with everyone else’s ideas [Grantland Review]

Posted on January 24, 2012 by JJH

Why? Because. Image: Flickr/EmmaBond

First, there’s nothing wrong with Grantland. Let’s just get that out of the way. It’s fine.

As a landing spot for talented essayists yearning to boost their profile, it’s understandable.

As a home for willful expansion of silly twitter asides, Grantland is occasionally laudable.

Of course, Grantland also is a double-hit content marketing farm for ESPN based on editor Bill Simmons’ massive Q rating. It’s not a destination, but a worthwhile grazing stop.

But is Grantland also a lunchroom bully? Or, worse yet, a petty thief?

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The Adventures of Tintin [Movie Review]

Posted on January 16, 2012 by JJH

“Settle down, John,” I seethed, muttering to myself. “You haven’t lost your edge. Not even close.”

/sips $9-dollar “medium” vat of diet soda

“No, there’s nothing wrong with going to the movies. Not even a Spielberg movie. Not even to see a faux-animated Indiana Jones replica for tweens.”

/really, truly chuckles at Cartoon Network teen gamer-show preview

“So what if you’ve never heard of Tintin? So what if a frenetic, whimsical MacGuffin chase, recalls Indiana Jones, replete with propeller scare and Moroccan market chase. Did you know this thing won a Golden Globe?”

/crams fistful of Reese’s pieces into mouth

“I guess it is artfully – professionally – done. It’s a decent homage to the beloved Belgian children’s book. The limited cast doles out exposition, comic relief, sneers, exultation and dramatic tension in expert dollops. It harkens back to animated classics, like The Secret of Nimh, An American Tail, Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown, and other mystical adventures I may or may not have seen 576 times as a kid. And if it owes a wink and nod to Raiders of the Lost Ark instead of National Treasure, isn’t that a good thing?”

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The Art of Racing In the Rain [Belated Book Review]

Posted on January 11, 2012 by JJH

Who would have thought the most dependable first-person narrator actually isn’t a person at all?

After two successive, miserable first-person experiences, Garth Stein’s bestseller The Art of Racing in the Rain somewhat restored my faith. Turns out it is actually possible to deliver a swift-moving, gripping, insightful story told from one point of view.

Especially if that point of view is a dog’s.

 

 

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House of Lies [TV Review]

Posted on January 9, 2012 by JJH

Schwarz, Cheadle, Hansen and Bell crackle with nervous energy.

Are you like me?

Have you been a marketer? Business developer? Junior executive?

Maybe you’ve shopped for vendors: software companies, management experts, processors, each promising to save you something. Maybe you’ve been privy to boardroom meetings. .

Maybe – god forbid – you’ve even sat through upper management retreats, all responsibility and thought turned over to smiling management consultants, eager to tell you you’re great – but something unknown can make you oh-so-much-better. They can’t tell you what this is, of course. After you’re gone, presumably you and your team will be brilliant enough to figure it out.

Or to ask for more help. (But from where?)

House of Lies, an innovative and promising satire from Showtime promises to lift the curtain on lucrative “management consultancy.” The premiere featured just enough Better Off Ted – the pitch-perfect lampoon of fruitless corporate America – coupled with a healthy dose of smarming Franklin & Bash. In other words, tonally and substantively, it’s already a success, Like a consultant’s seminar, for the rest of the season, it’s up to you to catch on.

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War Horse [Movie Review]

Posted on January 8, 2012 by JJH

The critic’s lament: What to do with a movie you’re not supposed to like, but works anyway?

Everything about War Horse suggests predictable sneers. The Spielberg pedigree. The treacly John Williams score. The stilted dialogue and occasional paper-thin characters. The two-and-a-half hour running time. The sweeping, epic shots of battle or hillside or plough field. In a world of cynics who yearn for drama and depth, there’s absolutely no way War Horse should work. No way.

But it does. It works magnificently. War Horse is a harrowing saga about the futility of war, the loss of innocence, and the mystical connection between man and beast.

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The Curse of the First-Person Narrative [Talking Shop]

Posted on December 31, 2011 by JJH

The protagonist seems like the easiest part of a book. How else does the author’s story come together?

I suspect that’s how most writers start. They have glimmers of story in head, and an inner monologue to tie it all together. So that’s what they spill. That’s how I started.

My first novel, These Monks (out this year!) is the coming-of-age story of three adult, adolescent friends – Nate, Plasko, Branden – stuck in their hometown and marooned in wasted potential: Some of the story – like with most authors – is reminiscent of events, characters or thoughts in my own past. Nate, in particular, features manners and actions borne out of my own stint as a failed grad student. That’s how he was written, at first. Nate was the storyteller.

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Vertical: The Sequel to Sideways [Book Review]

Posted on December 31, 2011 by JJH

You probably haven’t read Sideways. But you probably have seen the movie.

You chose wisely. The movie Sideways is amusing and genuine, a triumph of character study, male friendship, and shifting expectations. It succeeds where the novel fails. And it stays faithful to the source material’s main success – the two lead characters.

Sideways the novel is a good start, a victory of idea if not execution. But this is a tenet to Rex Pickett’s character conundrum in Vertical, which purports to reinvent or deconstruct or sneer at the film’s success, instead paying tribute to the novel.

Fast forward five years or ten or whatever, and Miles and Jack are in very different places. Jack is a loser, and Miles is the successful writer of Shameless, a celebrity author, solely responsible for powering the U.S. wine industry with a book that everyone loves turned into a movie that instantly became a classic. It’s not hard to see the parallels. After all, no one read Sideways but Alexander Payne, who layered film genius atop Pickett’s promising story.

(Memo to self: If Alexander Payne ever buys These Monks and changes a few scenes, just count the bills and consider it improved.)

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I Just Want My Pants Back [Book Review]

Posted on December 31, 2011 by JJH

I’ve got white-guy problems. I’ve had them all my life. As a writer and reader, I’m drawn to tales of frustrated white guys careening through their 20s with no direction, hope or meaning. It happens to the best of us.

I wrote a novel about white-guy problems, too. When you read These Monks, you’ll be amused at the travails of 26-year-old Plasko, Nate and Branden, each searching for his direction. Hopefully, unlike I Just Want My Pants Back, you won’t want to murder the lead character. At least not throughout the novel.

I picked up Pants excited to read a moody, introspective story about a young male coming of age. Perhaps I was sizing up competition. But I definitely hoped for inspiration – a story recalling High Fidelity or How To Talk to a Widower. Sure, the young professional or young malcontent searching for meaning is a familiar tale. But that doesn’t mean the story can’t be inspiring or the character resonant.

Yet it’s neither.

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Chris Cornell, Salina, Kansas, Dec. 10 [Wistful Review]

Posted on December 19, 2011 by JJH

You’re just not prepared for the voice.

Gone are the days when grunge music powered MTV and FM radio. Once, Cornell’s Soundgarden stood alongside giants Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Alice In Chains as the acts who dethroned Michael Jackson and Guns N’ Roses, and ushered in a much more serious era of rock and roll. Not that they planned it that way; it’s just how it happened.

Today, of course, Cobain, Staley, Nirvana and Alice In Chains are gone. Pearl Jam remains, almost improbably, a jam band for the world’s greatest fans. Dave Grohl rose from Nirvana to helm the chameleon Foo Fighters, and Jerry Cantrell reformed AIC as a de facto tribute to Layne.

Cornell, however, bounced around. Never as celebrated as either Cobain nor Vedder, he possesses a voice more powerful than both and as haunting as Staley’s. When Badmotorfinger released, you were certain Soundgarden might just fucking be Led Zeppelin; the frontman looked like Jesus and wailed. He just wailed.

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The Visible Man [Book Review]

Posted on December 18, 2011 by JJH

Chuck Klosterman has his share of detractors.

All successful writers do (which is why no one hates me, and also why I can’t read Joe Posnanski continuously whine about Tim Raines.)

After years in the public eye, countless feature stories, columns, blog posts and essays, they’ve exhausted all of their newfangled tricks, and detractors grow weary. It’s not that the reader knows exactly what’s coming. It’s that they know exactly how you’re going to get there.

The challenge for successful writers is, of course, to evolve. Klosterman knows this. A pioneer for nostalgia obsession, Klosterman burst on the scene with Fargo Rock City in the late 1990s, a self-important tome that amuses more than inflames.

Written amid a career in features, Fargo Rock City was just a precursor to the fantastic Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs, a collection of essays with tongue-in-cheek, nostalgia obsession couched inside critical review, and an obvious forerunner for VH1′s entire programming for decades to follow. His work has peaked and plateaued and plummeted since then, just like it would for anyone. Klosterman is a known quantity, inspiring hearty applause from fans like me; and snide huffs from detractors.

Fiction is, of course, Klosterman’s evolution. His second novel, The Visible Man is less ambitious than his debut Downtown Owl. In my opinion, it’s much smaller, much more contained – and much more satisfying. For Klosterman, it’s much more successful.

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The Postmortal [Book Review]

Posted on November 19, 2011 by JJH

Drew Magary is the rare writer who exudes talent yet fails to prompt scorn. At least in me.

Magary once interviewed he “writes like he talks,” an admirable quality that proves true in his Deadspin and KSK essays. He’s biting and funny, with a knack for sprinkling sarcasm, shouting and whimsy in just the right manner. It’s harder to convey tone than you think. Magary habitually pulls it off. His persona suggests he’s relentlessly self-deprecating, a secretly caring person, and takes nothing too seriously. These qualities are refreshing.

So it’s no surprise that Drew’s popularity yielded an ambitious debut novel, The Postmortal. His talent for whimsy and satire is on full display, with subtle social comment masquerading as sci-fi. The Postmortal is an invigorating debut, quick to pick up, and even quicker to devour. Two up and two down, after the jump:

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The Art of Fielding [ Book Review ]

Posted on November 14, 2011 by JJH

I wanted to dislike The Art of Fielding.

I really did. The swirl of hype around The Art of Fielding primed the novel for backlash: Author Chad Harbach’s $600,000+ advance. The e-book about the making of the book. Baseball poets eager to genuflect. Pretentiousness tugged at Fielding’s edges. I prepared to give up early, probably frustrated with passive voice, terms of art, or whiny, self-absorbed characters.

Sadly, not even a cameo.

But that didn’t happen. In spite of my contrarian disposition, I really enjoyed the novel. Instead of overwritten terms of baseball art, Harbach litters his debut with perfectly resonant passages, at once poignant and genuine. Like this, for example:

“…Schwartz knew that people loved to suffer, as long as the suffering made sense. Everybody suffered. The key was to choose the form of your suffering. Most people couldn’t do this alone; they needed a coach. A good coach made you suffer in a way that suited you. A bad coach made everyone suffer in the same way, and so was more like a torturer.”

Every time I thought the narrative teetered on the edge of “sportswriter swoon,” Harbach peeled back another layer. A gripping read and artful saga, I consider The Art of Fielding the best book of 2011. Or failing that, at least my personal favorite.

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WELCOME BACK TO ME [ Site news ]

Posted on November 14, 2011 by JJH

First, I’m back. Your favorite cantankerous marketing pro and erstwhile writer. But things gotta change.

So I’m going to be tweaking some design, thematic, and content elements around here.

Regardless, I’m back. Sort of. Such as it ever was. This time, we’re going to focus on reviews and recaps of everything.

That’s a horrible elevator pitch.

But work with me, it will come together. In addition, you can (and should) also find me:

I’m most active via social. I’m also funnier via social.

Mister Faded Glory, however, will continue to serve as repository for my longer thoughts and also cat photos.

Plus, I’ve got a book coming out. These Monks. Next year. Stay tuned.

You’re welcome.

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This Week In Quotes, Breaking Bad 413, “Face Off.” [Recap]

Posted on October 9, 2011 by JJH

Photo courtesy AMC.

Admit it. You went into the season finale knowing the title “Face Off,” haunted by Nicolas Cage as Castor Troy deliciously seething, “I want his face. Off.” (Or was it John Travolta?)

You couldn’t get that vampy quote from that awful movie out of your head.

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