Neither Eva nor myself are what you'd call "bandwagon jumpers". We tend to walk one of two paths: either we like a group until it gets popular (Barenaked Ladies), or we shun the trend du jour for a few years, let it age a little, before embracing it.
Take television: "The Simpsons" was into its sixth season before I deigned to watch it. (Granted, part of the reason was my naive predjudice against cartoons...pshaw, I'm not a kid! Cartoons are for kids! Right? Right?) Of course, I quickly became a fan--not a fanatic, but a fan.
I've yet to see a single episode of any of the myriad of CSI spinoffs. Just no interest in them. And I once watched about twenty seconds of the first Survivor before I realized what it was and turned the channel lest I get reality-cooties.
Harry Potter is another example. The books were a phenomenon before Eva brought the first one home. Again, I reacted at first with disdain: "Kid's book! Kid's book!" After having my wife inform me repeatedly--like after every chapter--that this book was pretty good, I suddenly recalled that I had read and enjoyed some pretty damned good "kid's books" over the years: the Wrinkle in Time series. the Oz books, Gordon Korman, even some Judy Blume. Yikes. Resigned, I read Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone after she'd finished with it.
I'm now reasonably close to a fanatic on all things Potter.
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So that brings us to what's on the reading list right now. The only book I've got going is Dude, Where's My Country?" by Michael Moore. Eva decided to pick up Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, after it had been on the best seller list for, um, eleventy dozen weeks. I'll read the latter later (looters with litres of lighter fluid are littering letters everywhere....hmmm, where was I? Oh, yeah.) I just finished the former.
This book, from what I understand, forms the baseline for Moore's controversial, award-winning film, Fahrenheit 911. If you're willing to go into it with an open mind (and from the reviews on Amazon.com, it seems few are), you'll find it an interesting and thought-provoking read. I can't say I agree with all of his assertions, but even on those, Moore is persuasive enough to make me wonder if my thinking might be wrong.
The first chapter of "Dude, Where's My Country" is a tour de force. Thirty-one pages and ninety seven footnotes. This is the kind of chapter that does a complete home makeover on your brain. By the time you're finished it, you'll have been confronted with questions like
--was 9/11 the work of hijackers with a few flight lessons under their belts, or trained Saudi soldiers? (Moore asserts that to guide a plane into a five-storey Pentagon at 500 mph demands skills no rinky-dink flight school in Florida will or can teach.)
--why were bin Laden's relatives and Saudi royalty whisked out of the country, by air, in the days immediately following 9/11, while all other air traffic was still grounded?
--Why did Bush sit peacefully listening to children read stories for more than five minutes after being informed the United States was under attack?
That's just the start of a wild roller-coaster ride that examines the Republican string of lies, offers a dramatic solution to the instablity (Want to stop terrorism? Stop being terrorists!) and at every turn paints the sitting president as, if not the walking talking Antichrist, than at least his close cousin.
It's no secret that Canada resonates with Moore, although there's very little mention of us in his book. He bemoans the Patriot Act being used to detain John Clarke, who is the head of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP). There's no mention of John Clarke's sordid past--the man could reasonably be called a terrorist himself.
Moore does offer some tips to "liberals" in order to make their beliefs sounds more palatable to conservatives, and offers a quick primer on talking to "right-wingnuts", stressing to always remember Republicans are self centered and care only about themselves and their own money. That chapter forced me to consider my own Conservative leanings and conclude that no, I'm nowhere near that shallow. As I've written elsewhere in this blog, I don't mind paying taxes, even high taxes, so long as I see value for money.
I do hope that the White House gets a Brazilian this November...I'd like to see all traces of Bush removed. So I believed before reading "Dude, Where's My Country"...now I just have about thirty more reasons to believe.
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