1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 38: That thing you do!

They should have known it was a bad idea to call their band the One-ders.

Their fans mispronounce this name (it’s supposed to sound like “the Wonders”).

The name evokes the phrase “One-Hit Wonder,” which describes what their band is in danger of becoming. They start out with one song, “That Thing You Do!” It gets so big, so suddenly, that they spend too much time playing it in dancehalls, at state fairs, and on TV, and they neglect to practice other songs.

Meanwhile, the rot is setting in:

The lead singer is too moody.

His girlfriend hangs around the band too much.

The guitarist is an idiot.

The bassist is obsessed with joining the Marines.

The drummer breaks his arm.

The drummer who replaces him – well, he can really play, he’s no idiot, he has genuine star quality, but he’s not truly one of the group. He filled in one night and somehow became the catalyst for the band’s success.

So much for the plot. The movie is basically an excuse to showcase “vintage” look and sound. The year is 1964; the setting is Erie, Pennsylvania – and then, other Midwestern cities (and fairgrounds) – and then, Hollywood.

There are lots of old cars and appliances to look at. Indeed, the replacement drummer is recruited away from a job in his dad’s appliance store. We stare at blenders, TVs, clock radios, etc.

Only the fairgrounds, with their mud and their gigantic bleachers and grandstands, look the same in 1964 as they do today.

The band is full of young men, so the lead singer’s girlfriend – Liv Tyler (who, in real life, is musical; whose father is Steven Tyler; whose adoptive father is Todd Rundgren) – commands a lot of attention, though in this story she contributes nothing to the music.

The replacement drummer’s girlfriend (Charlize Theron) provides deadpan hilarity in early scenes. She sits in her bedroom, rollers in her big hair, exasperation (or is it sheer boredom?) on her face, as the replacement drummer phones in his plans to tour with the band. She quietly leaves him for her dentist and is not heard from again.

We do hear from the original drummer (Giovanni Ribisi) – the one who has broken his arm. He takes the replacement drummer’s old job at the appliance store. Periodically, the movie cuts to scenes of the replacement drummer’s family, into which the original drummer has inserted himself, eating TV dinners with them and perhaps making overtures to the replacement drummer’s sister. All the while, a bulky cast remains on his arm.

It’s odd how casual this is, but then I wonder if this is the point of this breezy movie – if, indeed, the movie is trying to make a point. In this society, everything, everyone, is replaceable. A concert tour is abandoned for another as soon as money dictates it. Outfits are swapped out (the band is always being coaxed into appearing in a different suit color). Girlfriends and boyfriends are upgraded. And band members. There is some initial fuss about this, but soon everyone is going along with it. The people who are being traded “down” don’t complain much, either. The band’s ruthless manager – played by Tom Hanks, who also wrote and directed the movie – explains that this is just how things work.

Just as new TVs and clock radios quickly lose their shine and become obsolete, it’s very common to have to settle for being a one-hit wonder.

That thing you do.

That one thing.

Strangers and brothers

I’ve finished reading C.P. Snow’s eleven Strangers and Brothers novels. Here are the grades.

(I also note each book’s position in the three-volume omnibus of 1972.)

GRADE: A

Time of Hope (1st overall; vol. I)

The Masters (5th overall; vol. II)

The Affair (8th overall; vol. II)

GRADE: A-MINUS

The Light and the Dark (4th overall; vol. I)

The Sleep of Reason (10th overall; vol. III)

GRADE: B-PLUS

George Passant (2nd overall; vol. I)

The Conscience of the Rich (3rd overall; vol. I)

GRADE: B

Homecomings (7th overall; vol. II)

GRADE: B-MINUS

The New Men (6th overall; vol. II)

Corridors of Power (9th overall; vol. III)

GRADE: C

Last Things (11th overall; vol. III; dead last, in more ways than one)

The series has so many plot threads and recurring characters, it’s hard to assess each book on its own. You have to read most of the series to adequately judge this or that person.

But perhaps the three worst novels can be safely ignored.

I suppose it’s no accident that four of what I consider to be the best novels are largely concerned with university life. The Masters and The Affair are especially good.

Time of Hope, which is not about university life, is also very good, in a quieter way.

The narrator’s first wife and her father – who appear only in Time of Hope and in Homecomings – are two of the series’s most interesting characters. Hope is arguably Snow’s overarching theme. These two characters have great gifts, yet they are enveloped in despair.

Their effect on the narrator – who, alone among the series’s many strivers, pays heed to them – is to make him aware of a gloomy alternate existence.

The worst four novels are all about “real world” politics and its connections to the domestic sphere. There are lots of tedious pages about dinner parties, galas, etc. – which, I am aware, are essential for the depiction of social striving. The problem is that the narrator himself is too socially adept. He comments judiciously on others’ struggles, but there is too little tension for him in these scenes.

Strangers and Brothers is very long – indeed, it’s the longest unified work I’ve read.

Is there a pithier substitute?

The series has much to say about the role of natural science in human culture, and so the famous piece on “The Two Cultures” might be apposite.

But, in keeping with the idea of studying hope and despair by attending to biographical detail, a better substitute might be Snow’s Foreword to G.H. Hardy’s book (A Mathematician’s Apology).

A stroll through the alley

He is 18 months old now. Yesterday, for the first time, Karin took him walking away from our yard.

Until we visited Walmart earlier this week, he didn’t have shoes that fit him.

Since his ear infection isn’t bothering him anymore, and since Karin & I have been vaccinated against COVID-19, we’ll go back to church tomorrow. We’ve been absent since November, when we took Samuel to the children’s dedicatory service. Our last regular attendance – out of doors, in the parking lot – was in August or September of 2020.

R.I.P. The Super League

The Super League is no more.

Fans protested; pundits criticized; politicians threatened. The English clubs withdrew. Other clubs withdrew.

(So much for the spiffy website.)

Now the clamor is for owners’ and sporting directors’ heads to roll.

Meanwhile, Florentino Pérez of Real Madrid continues to advocate for the Super League.

(The whole video is worth watching. This issue is so clear-cut, the pundits can’t say a wrong word: even terrible Alejandro Moreno delivers some nice zingers.)

European soccer will change, though. An overhaul of the UEFA Champions League was approved even before The Super League declared its intentions.

This video explains the changes:

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I should say a few things about my family, or at least about the boy. For several days, he has suffered from an ear infection. Sometimes he has been feverish. Today his mood was better, but he broke out in a rash: he appears to be allergic to his medicine.

We took him to Walmart for the first time since the pandemic began, and he was pretty amazed by everything.

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Oh, and I gave my last guest lecture on Alasdair MacIntyre. The students clearly were struggling to read all of After Virtue. Perhaps I ought to have refrained from mentioning other readings, so that the students could focus on getting through the book that had been assigned to them. But instead, I recommended a few shorter pieces that, realistically, they might digest by the end of the semester: “Is Patriotism a Virtue?” and “Politics, Philosophy, and the Common Good.” I think those essays display what is best about MacIntyre’s moral and political philosophy, more or less independently of his history of moral and political philosophy (which, tantalizing though it is, I am inclined to reject).

The Super League

So, apparently, twelve ultra-rich European clubs have decided to form a breakaway competition called The Super League which is to rival the UEFA Champions League.

Motto: “The best clubs. The best players. Every week.”

The inaugural chairman will be Florentino Pérez, the president of Real Madrid – the world’s most powerful club thanks to the backing of General Francisco Franco.

Among the four inaugural vice-chairmen, three are U.S. sporting owners who happen to control Arsenal, Liverpool, and Manchester United. The company JPMorgan Chase (also U.S.) is reported to be the League’s foremost lender.

Nearly everybody who cares about soccer is outraged by this blatant “gated community”-style hijacking of the sport. Even horrid British P.M. Boris Johnson issued a powerful statement against The Super League.

What many of us hope from FIFA, UEFA, and the relevant domestic associations is that they ban these clubs and their players from all other competition.

Certainly, if this league goes forward, I’ll never watch any of its clubs again.

April’s poem

From Iona & Peter Opie, The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren:

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

Doctor! Doctor! How’s your wife?

Very bad, upon my life.

Can she eat a bit of pie?

Yes, she can, as well as I.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

A tiring day

The lawn seems thicker this year. Some of its plant species are new; I wonder if this is good or bad. I mowed again yesterday and, in one hour, used two full tanks of gas.

This afternoon I gave the first of the two lectures on Alasdair MacIntyre. “You spoon-fed the students,” said my Uncle Tim. “Which was exactly what I wanted you to do.” The broth I spoon-fed them was pretty diluted. My seven-page handout was neither very comprehensive nor very detailed; even so, the writing of it felt like hard labor, and at class-time I was exhausted. So were the students, several of whom fell asleep.

I’m always reassured when students do this. The most gratifying teaching evaluation I ever received said that one half of the semester was “boring but very important”; it told me that I was doing something right.

My cousin Vickie, who has been looking after Samuel during these guest lectures, was unavailable today because she has contracted a disease. Her place was kindly taken by my Aunt Sally. When I got home, I received a report of the many activities that Samuel was encouraged to do.

The loneliest practices

I suppose Mishawaka could have another deep-freeze, what with it’s being April, but I’ve begun cutting the grass again. A week after the first mowing, the lawn has regrown so quickly that it looks like a jungle. Mowing is much easier this year, now that (a) I know better what I’m doing, and (b) I’m in better physical condition.

As my mower chews up the cud, I can’t help but to ruminate over After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre. His theory of the virtues depends, in part, on the notion of a practice, which he defines as

any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity, with the result that human powers to achieve excellence, and human conceptions of the ends and goods involved, are systematically extended.

By way of illustration, MacIntyre says – notoriously – that “bricklaying is not a practice; architecture is.”

I wonder if J.M. Coetzee is having a little fun with this statement when, in Summertime, he writes of himself –

week after week, using a shovel and a wheelbarrow, he mixes sand, stone, cement and water; block after block he pours liquid concrete and levels it. His back hurts, his arms and wrists are so stiff that he can barely hold a pen. Above all the labour bores him. Yet he is not unhappy. … In fact, once he forgets about the time he is giving up, the work begins to take on its own pleasure. There is such a thing as a well-laid slab whose well-laidness is plain for all to see

– and when, a little later in the book, he attempts to situate his own slab-laying within a cultural history.

I take it that if laying brick isn’t a practice but architecture is, then mowing the lawn isn’t a practice but lawnscaping is. (Surely, what Hank Hill and his neighbors do is a practice.) So, perhaps I’m engaged in a practice when (a) mowing “begins to take on its own pleasure” – when I derive satisfaction from going in straight lines, not damaging the grass, etc. – and (b), what arguably is more important for MacIntyre, I ask friends for advice about how to cut the grass.

More likely, though, for MacIntyre, what I’m doing is not a practice. This is because, for the most part, it’s only incidentally cooperative. I very well could mow my lawn (lay brick, etc.) – mindful of “goods internal to that form of activity” – in drastic isolation. To a considerable extent, because of COVID and because of who I am and the society in which I live, I have no other option than to realize these goods in isolation.

This is what Coetzee does when he lays concrete; this is what Coetzee’s Michael K does when he gardens clandestinely – at night, on an abandoned farm in the countryside (where “there is time for everything”). This, mostly, is what I do when I mow the lawn or study philosophy or the Bible. This is what my life has come to – where it was headed all along.

I reacquaint myself with MacIntyre

Well, the vaccination did give me aches, chills, etc. for much of Saturday. But by Easter morning I felt all better – except in my arm. I continue to have “pain at the injection site.”

I should have remembered, before I got the shot, that this area of my shoulder is where Samuel likes to rest his head.

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My Uncle Tim has asked me to give two more guest lectures. The topic is Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue.

I can think of at least four other graduates of Bethel’s philosophy program who are better qualified to discuss this book. Still, I’m glad for the chance to reacquaint myself with it.

I now know more about the philosophers discussed therein, and so I grasp better what MacIntyre is saying.

(Famous last words.)

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Usually, I take my sweet time with any philosophical work longer than two or three chapters. I might spend a quarter of a year, or half of a year, or two or three years on something as long as After Virtue (which doesn’t even exceed 300 pages).

(Of course, I would also read other things during that time.)

This reading of the book will have taken just three weeks.

I’ll also have read several articles by or about MacIntyre – which is all to the good, except that I feel a little weary from having stuck so closely to one author, day after day after day. I keep on having to resist the temptation to read within fields that MacIntyre mentions but doesn’t discuss in detail. I’ve been gazing longingly at my books on social epistemology and free will; more generally, my appetite for studying the metaphysics of agency has been whetted again.

There is just too much to read.

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What my uncle’s students are making of After Virtue, I’m curious to find out. It can’t be easy going for them. Too many of the names, they won’t know from “Adam.”

Some polemical texts serve as good introductions to the ideas that those texts argue against. This is emphatically false of After Virtue.

If a student’s sole exposure to, e.g., John Rawls’s ideas is through this book, it will be very hard for him or her to give those ideas a fighting chance.

To be fair, if one’s sole exposure to Rawls’s ideas is through Rawls’s own books, it also may be hard to give those ideas a fighting chance, just because those books are so long, complex, and repetitive that it is hard to read them carefully.

I wouldn’t say the same about Rawls’s articles. Rawls’s ideas may be expressed canonically in A Theory of Justice and Political Liberalism, but often they are more alluring, more clearly motivated, in his briefer, less rigorous statements.

To some extent, this also is true of MacIntyre’s writing. This summary of After Virtue should help the students.

But I do hope that they carefully read After Virtue’s chapter 14, “The Nature of the Virtues.” The book’s constructive proposal is much more interesting than its criticisms of rival philosophies.

Better health

Yesterday, Karin & I were vaccinated against COVID-19. We took Samuel with us to the health center. Everyone in the waiting room praised his good behavior.

They also discussed how the U.S. government is conspiring to implant microchips into its citizens.

“That certainly would make things easier,” said one health worker. One of her tasks was to counsel people to hang on to their vaccination cards, so that they would not slide down the chasm of bureaucratic oblivion.

So far, the vaccine’s side effects have been gentle. I was very tired last night, but for all I know that wasn’t even due to the vaccine. The worst thing by far has been the “pain at the injection site,” which woke me several times after I went to bed.

Lying awake, I reflected that I am much happier – most of the time – now that I am able to breathe all night and don’t often wake up and brood.