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Infinite (De)coding, or “His wit’s as thick as a Tewkesbury mustard.”

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  At a high school reunion in what I will call the Year of the iPhone 16, a classmate recommended I read David Foster Wallace’s  Infinite Jest  (1996), which I promptly dismissed as pretentious. I majored in literature and have read some whopper works of fiction, including James Joyce’s  Ulysses  and Leo Tolstoy’s  War and Peace , but  Infinite Jest  is just the type of book I tend to eschew for its popularity among men who showboat really long books in the same way they measure the length of their Johnsons (a metaphor the character Rod “the God” Tine, Sr. would appreciate). Perhaps Wallace was hip to that metaphor, as well, and meant to have much of the book go over the unsuspecting knob’s head, cony-catching some numbskulls with his southpaws, Hal et al (See footnote 268 and  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQThnv8c2uI ). I myself would not have understood the extent of his project, namely the conundrum of anonymity (disguised with Alcoholi...
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Gone like a shooting star

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Got up this morning, Sunday, Nov. 18 at 3:45 because I heard something about a meteor shower around 4 due to passing comet debris. I looked out the window to see if the sky was clear but couldn’t really tell with orange halogens shining up and down the street. So I put on my shoes and jacket. As soon as I walked out the door I saw my first shooting star. Not bad, I thought. It was a beautiful night. The early morning air was warm, a memory of the 70-degree temperatures of yesterday. To see as much of the heavens as possible, I laid on the lawn where usually there is a half foot of snow by now. Ducks quacked and geese honked on North Lake. Semi tires screamed on I-94. I started counting. Two. Three. Waited. Four. Waited. Five six. Soon I was up to 25, then 50, 75 and 100. Wow, I thought, 100 shooting stars way surpasses the most I’ve seen in one sitting, and was tempted to call it quits with that perfect number. Besides I was starting to shiver. But they continued to ...
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Jajji!

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Generation after generation is enamored of being in the movies. My mother’s father often recounted how as a U.S. Marine munitions expert at Camp Pendleton, California, he set up the beach-scene explosions for Sands of Iwo Jima (1949), seen at the end of this trailer in which he is off camera pushing buttons. My first chance came as an extra in ジャッジ! (pronounced “jajji,” meaning “judge”), in which I screwed up a shot by walking between the camera and the actors Satoshi Tsumabuki and Keiko Kitagawa. As I participated in the closing scenes with an eclectic mix of foreigners who had been bussed from Tokyo to the set at a desolate seaside resort on the Boso Peninsula, it all seemed an ill-conceived cheering-up centered around the promotion of a fish product following the Fukushima nuclear disaster, and 2011 earthquake strangely referred to as “3/11.” The main character (Tsumabuki) wins an ad competition under the paternal-like assurances of a U.S. contest judge played by Jam...
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