From Fugitives to Freakenomics

It is about time I wrote a “media review,” considering I just saw a phenomenal movie and have also recently finished reading a number of books. I will begin with the movie.

Because I am a Reader and not a Television Watcher, I have seen significantly fewer movies than most of my media-savvy peers. For example, I only just saw the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie a few months ago, during my stay in England. (My American friend/housemate Carl showed it in his room in honor of the new Turtles movie that had just come out. He and several other people were about to go see it in theaters, but he wanted to see the first and second “originals,” first.) Apparently, Turtles was a “classic” for everyone my age while we grew up—the original Turtles movie came out in 1990—and, subsequently, one I missed. Needless to say, I have “missed” a good number of movies throughout my life, and various people have taken a personal interest in seeing that these gaps in my media-awareness are sufficiently filled. One such person is my friend Ben.

One evening two summers ago, the two of us were discussing movies after having finished watching Cruel Intentions—apparently another “adolescent classic” that I had missed during junior high school. Actually, we were playing one of our more frequent games: “what-movies-has-Allison-not-seen.” Obviously, I was losing. Finally, we pulled out a movie guide my dad had bought several years ago and started flipping through, with Ben pointing out “great movies” that I “had to see.” Determinedly, he wrote down a list of 5 to “get me started:” L.A. Confidential (which I have yet to see); Terms of Endearment; What’s Eating Gilbert Grape; Platoon; and the one I finally saw last night, The Fugitive.

I’m ordinarily not a big action-movie fan. I tend to like movies that are more “brainteasers,” dramas, or comedies. (Some examples of what I’d consider a “brainteaser” movie are Unusual Suspects, Momento, and The Butterfly Effect.) However, The Fugitive might have just qualified as my favorite action movie.

Essentially, the plotline is not very complicated and very action-oriented: Harrison Ford—playing Dr. Richard Kimble—is unjustly convicted of murdering his wife. On the way to prison, the armored truck containing Dr. Kimble and other convicts crashes, and Kimble is set free. He goes on the run, with Tommy Lee Jones (who gives an outstanding performance as the chief investigator Marshal Gerard) intent upon hunting him down.

What I really like about this movie is the fact that it is not only an action movie, but also somewhat of a “brainteaser” or “mystery movie” as well. It is a “smart” action movie. A substantial part of the plot involves Richard Kimble trying to figure out who murdered his wife and why. However, Kimble not only solves this mystery, he also leads the authorities to the evidence he discovers and culprits he catches without being caught, himself. The setup and execution of this complicated plot involves a good bit of genius on the parts of the screenwriters. Thus, since I named the primary actors in this film (Ford and Jones), I must also name these worthy screenwriters: Roy Huggins, David Twohy, Jeb Stuart, and David Twohy.

I am always on the look-out for intelligent writers, and recently I have been reading a plethora of work from one such writer, Chuck Palahniuk. If you have read any single book by Palahniuk, it was probably Fight Club, and if you haven’t read the book, you have probably seen or at least heard of the movie. I never read that particular book, but about a year ago, a friend from Rochester mentioned to me that Palahniuk was one of his favorite writers and that I should try reading his novel Invisible Monsters. That summer, I did check out Monsters from the local library. I thoroughly enjoyed the novel, but I did not pursue reading any more of his work until recently, when I came across another person—a friend of my sister’s, in fact—who named Palahniuk as one of her favorite writers. She suggested a few titles to me, and I ordered them from the library.

Palahniuk has a very unique style. His writing tends to mix horror with satire, yielding books that are as intriguing as they are bizarre. He almost always writes in the first person, with arresting, often disturbed protagonists telling the story. In Lullaby, my first Palahniuk novel of the summer, the narrator is a newspaper reporter covering sudden infant death syndrome. During his investigations, he discovers that it is caused by a culling song—a magical incantation that has been written into children’s poetry books—and can be used to kill virtually anyone to whom the song is read. However, a real estate agent who sells haunted houses (without telling the buyers that they are haunted, of course, so that she can quickly resell them) also knows about this culling song and uses it to her advantage. Thus, a battle ensues, both internally and externally: how should the song be used? Should it be used? Who should have the right and responsibility to use it?

Lullaby examines the ideas that knowledge is power and with power comes responsibility. It pits social responsibility against humans’ addictive desire for power and control over one another—in this case, the power over life and death. Meanwhile, amongst all of these philosophical question, Palahniuk mixes in a variety of wacky characters (aside from the narrator and the real estate agent, who are bizarre enough) including a necrophiliac, a witchcraft-practicing secretary, and a hippie animal rights activist.

My next Palahniuk book of the summer was entitled Choke. Again, this novel grapples with the idea of power, particularly power over life and death. The narrator/protagonist of the story is a medical school dropout who fakes choking to death in multiple restaurants every night in order to enlist monetary support from his rescuers—who do this to uphold their moral self-images, he claims—so that he can keep his mother alive in a nursing home. However, he refuses to invest in a feeding tube to help her health improve, because he resents her for wielding power over his childhood. (This resentment is developed by a series of flashbacks in which he is a foster child and his mother randomly appears and kidnaps him from his foster parents.) Meanwhile, the narrator attempts—but fails—to achieve sexual gratification by coupling with members of sex addiction support groups. Thus, throughout the novel, the reader is never quite sure whether the narrator is a sex addict himself, or whether he is just futilely searching for a sense of fulfillment in the absolutely wrong places.

As a reader, I was also never quite sure what the “main” purpose of the novel was. That is, I was never quite sure what “overall storyline” I should be following. While the title of the novel implies that its premise centers on the narrator’s nightly choking escapades, surprisingly little time is dedicated to this aspect of the story. Most of the narration deals with the narrator’s mother (both in the hospital and within flashbacks), the narrator’s friend and roommate (a prior sex addict who obsessively collects rocks in lieu of indulging his sexual addictions), and the narrator’s various sexual encounters. Also—and this may sound impossible, but it is how I felt reading the book—the narrator seems impassive and frantic at the same time, as if he is paranoid while also being emotionally numb. How Palahniuk achieved this combination is a mystery to me, and although I didn’t care for this novel as much as Monsters and Lullaby, I was still impressed by it.

My final Palahniuk novel of this summer was called Survivor. This story is told by the alleged “sole survivor” of a religious cult. It sets up the story with the narrator explaining that he is on an airplane destined to crash and is telling his life story to the plane’s “black box” (the indestructible part of the plane that records all activity up until the point of impact). The rest of the story culminates to this moment in the narrator’s life. Again, as with most of his novels, Survivor grapples with concepts of power over others and power over life/death. The narrator sets up a false suicide hotline so that people contemplating suicide or even just having a bad day call him. Then, he encourages them to kill themselves. Meanwhile, he is expected to kill himself, because the colony of the cult to which he belonged all killed themselves, and so every member of this colony existing in the “outside world” are expected to kill themselves, too. Eventually, he is believed to be the last survivor of this cult, a position which elevates him to celebrity status until his surviving brother and Fertility, the sister of a boy whom the narrator encouraged to commit suicide early in the novel, arrive to “save him from himself.” What I found most interesting in this novel is the way it explores the many ways in which humans can slowly kill themselves without acknowledging or even necessarily intending self-destruction. Is there really a difference between blowing your brains out, asking your brother to bash your face in with a rock, or taking steroids while starving your body, undergoing ultraviolet tanning, and shooting your face full of Botox to fulfill an “ideal image”?

The latest book I finished (yesterday, in fact) is called Freakenomics by Levitt and Derber. Let me begin by saying that I have never taken an economics class, nor have I ever been remotely intrigued by the field. However, this book was recommended to me by a variety of people relatively recently, so I figured I should check it out. It is the least economic-y economics book I have ever read. Honestly, I think (without being able to directly reference the book) that the entire thing was written without citing one single numerical statistic. Basically, the book shows that by using concrete data (i.e. numbers generated by real-world circumstances), you can find an answer to even the most bizarre questions. Take the title of a few chapters as examples: “Why do Drug Dealers still live with their Mothers?” “What do School Teachers and Sumo Wrestlers have in common?” “What Makes a Perfect Parent?” My personal favorite had the least interesting-sounding name: “Where have all the criminals gone?” (The answer is, they were never born. Crime went down not because of an improving economy or improved police forces, but because abortion was legalized in the famous case Roe vs. Wade. Fifteen years later, all of the babies who would have been born into circumstances that would have led them to lives of criminality were…nonexistent. Or, as pro-life activists would claim, dead.)

I’ve never been much of a nonfiction buff, but if there is a nonfiction book worth investing time in, this one is it. It almost makes me want to study economics. Almost.

Why I need a cell phone

I have never disputed the argument that “in this day and age,” I really do need a cellular phone. Case in point:

Two nights ago, my nearest and dearest friend (and also next-door-neighbor) Emily arrived home from her family trip to Boston. She came to my house around 11p.m., and we sat in my kitchen talking until almost 2a.m. During that time, we made plans to drive to the North Side the following night so I could meet some of her friends from school (she goes to Washington and Jefferson College). The catch was that she had to waitress at the country club where she works that night before we could go, so she didn’t know exactly what time we would leave. She estimated that she would be let off anytime between 9 and 11p.m.

That day, I was scheduled to work until 3p.m. Then, I had a doctor’s appointment, and on the way home, I picked up Ben from his house. He had called me that day, and we were planning to go running together. The last few times we have gone running (this happens only sporadically, you see), he has had other plans almost immediately after we finished our two miles. Therefore, I did not anticipate spending the rest of the day with him. However, he had a new rap artist he wanted me to hear and a comedy DVD he wanted me to see, so we took our sweaty selves back to his house and set up in the den with food, beverage, and entertainment for the next several hours.

When the DVD had finished playing, it was around 7:30p.m. Knowing Emily, I estimated that even if she was let off of work at 9p.m., she would need at least forty-five minutes to an hour to come home, change, eat dinner, and putz around as she always insists on doing before we ever go anywhere. Therefore, I figured that if I left by 9:30p.m., I would have ample time to get home, take a shower, and be ready to go by the time she called me to leave.

Around 9:20p.m., Ben’s phone rang. It had been ringing on and off all evening from the other room, and he finally just got up and retrieved it so that it would be within reach when he needed to answer it (since he didn’t bother when it was in the other room). He fished it out of his pocket and answered. “Oh, hi!” As I detected the surprise in his voice, my heart sank. It was Emily. “Where are you? I’ve been home since eight o’clock looking for you!” Funny that she thought to call Ben, considering the previous night I had ranted about how all of my recent efforts to get together with him had come to sour ends.

As I got ready to leave, Ben pointed out the painfully obvious reality of the situation: “See, if you had a cell phone, she could have just called you when she got off work. Then this wouldn’t have been a problem.” Yeah, thanks for the advice.

Then, yesterday while I was at work, I e-mailed with a man who is supposed to be selling me a flash drive off of craigslist (a website that is virtually one big network of classified ads). I arranged to meet him at a location in Oakland near where I work the following afternoon (today). My plan was to call him before I left my house, take a bus to Oakland, and wait for him at the landmark until noon—the time when we arranged to meet.

Because of cell phones, this endeavor was a failure from the outset. When I called his cell phone from my house at 11a.m., no one picked up. I left a message but realized while I was leaving it that he had no way to get in contact with me. “I’d leave you my number,” I found myself saying, “but I actually can’t because I don’t have a cell phone. Hope to see you at twelve!”

As I sat on the steps of our meeting point, I realized that I had no idea who I was looking for, nor did he have any idea what I looked like. Thinking that maybe now he would answer his phone, I went across the street to the University of Pittsburgh Student Union and tried using a pay phone to call him. Much to my frustration, however, the pay phone would not take my money and, therefore, would not let me make the call. I waited until quarter after twelve before giving up and walking to work.

Upon arrival at my office, I tried phoning him again, but to no avail. Then, when I checked my e-mail, I came upon a message from him. Apparently, he had written to me yesterday telling me that his child had dropped his cell phone in the pool and to try calling his house. Apparently it was too late for that, however, because when I called his house, the woman who answered (presumably his wife?) said he was not home. She didn’t know if he had driven to Oakland or not.

As I recount this second story, I am beginning to realize that it wouldn’t have made a difference if I had a cell phone or not. He didn’t have his, so there was no way he could have called me when he arrived at our meeting place to determine my identity or specific location. Furthermore, I did what any logical person would have done in my cell phone-less position and tried to use a pay phone. Yet, the call could obviously not go through because his cell phone was out of order.

All of this being said, I am still proud to be a “cell phone hold-out.” I don’t know anyone—aside from my mother—my age or otherwise who does not have a cell phone. I have seen how dependent people have become on these little commodities (no one can make plans anymore without including the disclaimer, “I’ll call you”) and how annoying they can be (Ben must have gotten at least eight phone calls while we were hanging out, seven callers who would never have called had there been any risk of his parents answering instead of him). I do find various circumstances in which having a cell phone would be very handy—the incident with Emily the other night being one of them—but these sporadic occurrences never seem worth paying $40-a-month-plus-tax. Nor do I need one more thing to carry around. My wallet, keys, checkbook, calendar, sunglasses, Tylenol, notebook, and pen are more than enough.

Why America is fat

I have probably already discussed this. In fact, I know I wrote that initially upon arriving home, I simply couldn’t understand why we had so much food in our house. Here’s the reason: in America, we want everything here and now. This means that when we want food, it had better be in the kitchen, because we are not getting in our cars to drive to the grocery store just for some decent food. And this means we buy processed food. A lot of it.

If I compare the amount of processed food in my own family’s cupboards, refrigerator, and freezer to the amount of unprocessed food, the ratio is staggering. We have two humidity drawers full of fruits and vegetables, maybe a few bananas on the counter, a box of white rice (which I will count as unprocessed for the sake of this argument) in the front of the pantry, and a bag of brown rice in the back. If past counts (which technically it doesn’t), we have a few boxes and bags of that, too. Meanwhile, our refrigerator is full of yogurt cups, preservative-laden lunchmeats, fake shaker-style parmesan cheese, pickles, Juicy Juice, diet cola, and more condiments than you can shake a stick at. Our cupboards—not to mention the rest of the pantry—are stuffed with multiple varieties of crackers, pretzels, cereal, microwavable popcorn, peanuts (with or without salt), preservative-laden pre-sliced sandwich bread, boxed cookies, unopened condiments (I guess we like every food to have its topping) and every canned product imaginable: canned tomatoes, canned corn, canned beans, canned soup, canned soup stock, canned pineapple (sliced, diced, or crushed), canned tuna, canned gravy, and even an age-old can of spam (although I guess it should be considered a “tin”).

Any my family eats healthily (comparatively, of course). We grow our own string beans out back, and my mother even has a little herb garden with parsley and lemongrass. We are not people who stop for Burger King just because we don’t want to cook every other night. The closest we come to buying frozen TV dinners is Boca burgers, and that’s just because I don’t like red meat. We don’t have an inordinate amount of sweets in the house, nor do we even have a single bag of potato chips. But our amount of processed food is overwhelming. And considering the amount of time it takes to tear open a bag or grind the lid off of a can and dump the contents into a pot (or better yet, a microwavable bowl), the time we take to prepare that food it likely incomparable to what it would take to prepare a meal from “scratch.”

Despite making all of these observations, I am completely guilty of practicing American-style consumption. When I get home from work at 8:30pm on weekends, I don’t want to start cooking a “healthy” meal. I’m much more inclined to pull out a box of crackers and some lunchmeat than to wash, peel, and chop up fresh vegetables for a salad or defrost a chicken breast and start the grill. It’s not as if Ritz crackers and turkey slices are equally as satisfying, either. They’re just there, and the temptation factor is too great.

Buying my own groceries in England, I found that it was actually cheaper to buy unprocessed foods. Not fruits and vegetables, granted—those were always more expensive than the canned kind—but a bag of uncooked basmati rice would last me several weeks, whereas a box of crackers costing the same amount might last me two nights, at most. I could buy a bag of dried chick peas for the same price as two bars of chocolate. Preparing and eating them—sure, that took more time. But it was healthier and cheaper, and since I had the time, why not?

It’s not that Americans don’t have the time. If anything, they should have more time, considering all of their “time-saving” devices. It’s that we’re an impatient people. We want our gratification now, and if we can’t have it now, someone needs to make up a way to get it to us quicker, darn it. That’s what everyone in this country works for. That’s called Progress. And in the realm of the food industry, Progress is making us fat.

Vehicles

I had a revelation while standing at the bus stop (for half an hour after the bus was scheduled to arrive, I might add) yesterday afternoon. I was standing at the curb, watching all of cars and vans and trucks drive by. Whenever the traffic light stopped them, I could peer into the front of each car. With almost every single car, the only occupant was the driver, with an occasional single rider in the passenger seat. Meanwhile, every car I saw could have seated a minimum of four people.

Then it hit me: why can’t everyone ride-share? I don’t mean neighbors or coworkers; I mean picking up hitchhikers, total strangers who need to go in the same direction you are already driving. I guarantee that at least 90% of those cars could have taken me at least halfway closer to home than I was while standing at that corner in Oakland. Even a few blocks would have been helpful, because when my ride planned to turn in another direction, I could have simply gotten out of the car. Furthermore, all of those cars were going in the same direction. Imagine if all of the drivers had all been inside one vehicle?

I suppose that is the idea of buses: to allow people going in the same direction to share the same vehicle. However, as Americans, we are loath to give up our cars and the freedom they provide. Yet, if we all shared rides, imagine how many fewer cars we would need. Imagine the gas—and therefore money—we could save. Imagine the pollution that would be prevented. At the very least, imagine a world with no more rush hour!

I guess living in Europe has made me a huge advocate of mass transit. It is simply more efficient in terms of moving many people with fewer vehicles on the road. It is comparatively cheaper, and it makes people less lazy—your destination is almost never five feet away from your bus stop; it usually requires walking at least a block or so. No one riding a bus or train ever experiences “road rage,” nor are passengers generally impatient unless their bus/train is late. On a bus, you are not constantly waiting for a light to change or trying to switch lanes to pass a slower vehicle. In fact, although a bus may reach your destination in a greater amount of time than it would take to drive to the same location, you actually save time by being able to multitask on a bus. (Although, some people do try that while driving their cars. Hence, why many states have outlawed talking on cell phones while driving. Reading, however…not advisable, even if it is legal. And what about “interactive” reading? That’s called texting, probably a more dangerous activity than actually talking on a cell phone.)

Also, through the influence of many of my friends, I am becoming—if not a full-fledged activist—at least more environmentally aware. While I am not to the point at which I would completely change my lifestyle for the sake of environmental conservation (I need my air-conditioning!), I don’t mind doing what I can, especially when it causes no inconvenience to me. Case in point: ride the bus and carpool whenever possible.

Besides, like I am sure you know, I am the queen of multitasking. How would I ever get all of my reading done if I were driving a car for 50% of my day?

New Plans, New Goals

Done with this:

Trying for . . . this?

Could I really manage 25 miles? Better start with one.