Happy 8th Birthday

It's not like I have a ton of responsibilities.  I should be able to produce more than 21 posts a year, particularly when 3 of them are written by others.

Yes, you read that right, there were exactly as many posts written between April 1, 2015 - April 1, 2016 as there were from April 1, 2014 - April 1, 2015.  Flying Houses is not even a bi-monthly newsletter.

It's pathetic is what it is!  You know I've spent a lot of time over the past 8 years building this database, but does anybody really care about it?  We've had a few "celebrity visitors" in our time, but overall, this blog is not going viral anytime soon.

We now currently sit at 93,445 page views.  So we should hit 100,000 this year.  I should say that my page views are roughly current with the miles on my '05 Civic, but that car is 3 years older than this blog.  I hope to use that car for another 10 years (at least) and I hope to keep this blog another 30 years (or until I write my special comment on "facing the void").  Is it fatalistic to expect to die at 62?  I think if I got married I could go into my 80's, but if life continues its present course, I will remain single and yes, die prematurely.

Our growth slowed slightly, but again I haven't made many efforts to make many new friends or publicize the blog.   The current balance on my Google AdSense earnings is now $30.95, which means I "made" $1.74 on ad revenue over the past year (I have never been paid, as has been previously explained). (Note: I am testing out a new ad layout in an attempt to get paid more quickly.  If you find it particularly obnoxious--I am concerned it draws attention away from the links on the upper right, as well as the archived posts--please let me know in a comment.)

Perhaps our MD&A over here at FH harps on the same points every April Fool's Day, the primary point being "WTF."
WTF, why can't I get paid to write?
WTF, why doesn't anyone offer me a book deal?
WTF, can't you see I'm trying very hard here, on top of being a full-time attorney?
WTF, don't you think if I devoted myself full-time to writing that I could turn out a better product?
WTF, don't you think the product is pretty damn good as it stands?
WTF, who else is putting out content as relentlessly independent as FH?  
WTF, do you like me or should I just STFU?

These April Fool's Day MD&As do not consist of falsehoods, but operate as sarcastic truths.
You can't get paid to write because you are, in fact, a bad writer (at least one person has assured me).
You can't get a book deal because your blog is not a cultural phenomenon, and does not suggest that you will develop a bankable audience.
You may be trying hard, but it's getting to the point where you need to prioritize.  Everybody can't just be Scott Turow if they want to be.
You will never know because the only time when you would be able to devote yourself full-time to writing is when you might be otherwise unemployed, and at such times you are hounded by doubts that you are spending your time as productively as possible (i.e. writing instead of job searching).
Your product is pretty damn good, I agree, but sometimes you also get lazy and write tons of shit that would never be considered publishable by a reputable source of book reviews like the NYT or Bookslut.
Everyone else whose head isn't on straight and still thinks they've been misunderstood and discounted for the past 32 years.
Me personally, I like you, but sometimes I really don't, and I think you should STFU on your insecurities and focus on the more palatable truths on which you'll have greater agreement from the masses.

Nobody ever got a book deal by whining and saying, I really am good--look at all I've done!  So without further ado, here are the top 5 posts of the past year.

Wait, before I get there, here are the top 5 most popular posts of the past year (the number is total page views--yes my numbers really are that sad):
(1) NIED #26: 185 (because I'll always be most famous for my comments on legal education)
(2) Happy 7th Birthday: 150 (because people love reading lists and MD&As)
(3) The Pale King: 95 (because DFW is gone but not forgotten)
(4) WITAWITAR: 84 (because Murakami is so in right now)
(5) Why We Write About Ourselves: 82 (tie with Please Kill Me) (because it got retweeted by the author)

#5: S/M: Experience #4
This is the final chapter in my second novel which has managed to avoid serialization on a blog to this point.  It may not survive 2016 in its hidden form because it is quickly becoming obsolete.  Whatever I wrote about in 2007-2008 has already changed.  Regardless, it was posted on 9/11/15 because this chapter depicts that very as-yet-unknown date in the future.  I had predicted that 9/11 would be made a national holiday.  While that was wrong, it remains a "holiday week" at the Daley Center, and all attorneys must pass through security in remembrance of how dangerous we all might be.

#4: Raymond Carver: A Writer's Life
This is just an extremely long review of a very long book that is also very good (one of the "Best Books of Flying Houses").  Carver is one of the greatest writers of the 20th century and I hope to review each of his collections before the end comes.

#3: Modern Romance
This is just a controversial choice that I'm surprised did not get more views.  I thought it was more titillating than any of the other reviews (except perhaps NIED #26).

#2: Chicago Cubs 2015 Report Card
A yearly Chicago Cubs report card has become as great a tradition on FH as has this MD&A.  Truly, this was the most sublime yet, though my younger brother suggested that there were many things he disagreed with (Jason Hammel and Tommy LaStella in particular).  I was worried about tweeting it @ Jon Lester when I suggested that he must have a complex over the fact that he was getting paid 40 times more than Kyle Hendricks and yet barely pitched any better than him (Michael also suggested that I oversold Hendricks, but I do not think that is the case as he has retained the #5 spot in the rotation, at this juncture, at least).

#1: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Really I think any of the above are better than this, but I felt this was one of the few instances where I offered a "critique."  It's possible I'm susceptible to the accusation that I'm not a real "critic" because I don't say enough books are bad.  Certainly, this is not a bad book, but I didn't consider it the greatest of the 21st century.

Finally, thank you all for reading.  I never really address you often enough, but if you are paying attention, know that I appreciate it.  All too often I feel as if I am speaking into a void, though even if I am, I am glad to lay down a body of work which at least includes an ur-text on The Beautiful and Damned (821 views on April 1, 2012; 5,597 views on April 1, 2016).   

Modern Romance - Aziz Ansari (with Eric Klinenberg) (2015)

Do I really need to write a review of this book?
Haven't you already seen the reviews, like five months ago?
This is actually one of the few books that most lay people (i.e. non-readers) of a certain age know.
They know it because they know Aziz Ansari, and it's about dating, and he's right: it's both a wonderful and horrible time to be single.
This book is candy to Penguin Press.

Do I need to parrot the ideas of this book or can I just write this as a special comment on Tinder?

I always try to "personalize" these reviews so they're more valuable than the "objective" stuff you'll find in any number of major newspaper markets across the country.  But this is a real opportunity for extreme personalization, and I don't want to go there.  I will start off with a pertinent quote, so you know what to expect:

"One thing that I definitely want you to know up front is that this book is primarily about heterosexual relationships.  Early in the process Eric and I realized that if we tried to write about how all the different aspects of romance we address applied to LGBT relationships, we simply wouldn't be able to do the topic justice without writing an entirely separate book.  We do cover some issues relating to love and romance among gays and lesbians, but not at all exhaustively." (8-9)

Because of this, while I initially flirted with the idea of putting this on the "best books" list, it fails.  I'm not that strident of an activist so I really don't care to start a fuss over the idea that LGBT relationships are different from straight ones, but I will comment briefly that a law school classmate of mine wrote a law review article about domestic violence in LGBT relationships and found that there wasn't much of a difference (I mean, obviously, in straight ones it's usually the dude doing the hitting, I'm guessing).  I do think gay dudes are way less picky when it comes to sex partners, in general.  That's about all I can say, though.  I'm not too angry, because I do think there should be a book about dating for bi people.  I just think it's a little troubling, economically, particularly when that big SCOTUS decision came down just as this book was released (June 16, 2015).  Straight people wouldn't be interested in reading about non-straight people, I guess.

What would a book about dating for bi people be like?  It would be the most fucked up thing in the world.  Do you disclose, or do you pretend?  Do you delete all your old Facebook references to anything that might give a potential date the idea that you had never strayed from the straight and narrow?  I really don't think there is any problem whatsoever for a bi dude to tell a same-sex partner that he likes girls--I think they're more excited by the idea of a straight dude than a gay one (at least for a casual thing)--but does that work on the opposite level for girls?  I mean, of course, girls don't want to go out with bi dudes, but are lesbians open to going out with bi girls?  Frankly, if Mr. Ansari would like to entrust such a project to a fellow '05 NYU Alum, I will rip up my law license and skip down the street.

I've been a little bit harsh in starting off this review, so let's move onto the positives: this is probably the funniest book I have reviewed on Flying Houses.  I laughed out loud while reading it more than a few times, and on the CTA that was sometimes embarrassing.  I think this was the line, yesterday:

"I'd run the Hardee's and probably be pretty good at it.  Maybe I'd catch wind of a guy who was running a huge 'biscuit extortion' scam to smuggle biscuits across the border to Georgia [from South Carolina].  The scam would work like this: The guy and his partner would steal biscuits from our store and then sell the stolen biscuits at a lower cost on the biscuit black market.  After getting suspicious of his frequent trips to Georgia, I would hide in the bed of a Ford F-150, under a bunch of biscuits, and when they reached their destination, I'd dramatically pop up and go, 'GIMME BACK MY BISCUITS!'
The family would be proud." (237)

It's not even that funny, really, but the image cracked me up.

Upon further review, it was actually this passage that made me laugh to embarrassment:

"My Dearest Charles,
I hope this letter finds you in the halest and heartiest of conditions.  I'm sure it will, as your constitution, as I recall, was always most impressive for its resilience and fortitude.
What do you make of this so-called 'Revolution'?  I fear that, win or lose, we shall be feeling its reverberations for decades to come.
In other news, in addition to your sister, I am fucking Tina, this woman I met at the bar last week.  I also caught syphilis from a prostitute I met in Boston.
Fondly, your brother-in-law,
Henry" (225)

Is Mr. Ansari a good writer?  I think so.  It's unclear to me how much of this book is written by him and how much is written by Klinenberg, but it feels like it's mostly Ansari, even when there's not a joke being thrown in every few sentences.

The constant jokes aren't a distraction.  Instead, they change the book into something different entirely.  Now I know that comedians get book deals, and sometimes their books are funny, but this is more impressive because it's about something else, something that most younger people might want to know.

The problem is that we all already know.  There is some interesting research that the book brings out, but all of the perceptions, all of the subjective stuff, we know.  We know about not texting back immediately for fear of seeming too desperate.  We know about selecting profile pictures.  There is a lot of stuff "we" know, but we don't really know that other people feel it too, and I guess that's why this book is nice.  Ansari is never mean-spirited with the jokes here, and that's impressive in this arena.  It also has the potential to get extremely raunchy, but the dirty stuff is kept relatively safe.

The central thesis, if you will, is that "good enough" partners are not good enough for people anymore.  We now require a soul mate.  Along the way in that search, we might discard some really amazing people, and Ansari advocates on behalf of "quality" rather than "quantity."  It's better to get to know a person really well and find out everything that's great about them, rather than to meet a lot of people and only get to know them superficially before deciding there's someone better for you.

This is kind of the romantic issue of our time, and Ansari is clever to seize upon the moment and call it out for what it is.  Thousands of people have written about these issues over the past half-decade, but Ansari is the first to turn it into a book with mass appeal.  And he is the right person to do it because the humor complements the material in a strange way.  In a sense, it almost detracts from the material, but this turns it into a strength.

Perhaps this sounds strange.  Really what I mean is, you can't take a book with this subject matter all that seriously.  You're not supposed to.  Ansari isn't saying WE ARE ALL LIKE THIS; he's just sharing stories that he heard in focus groups and surveys and sociological studies.  He also writes about his own romantic travails to powerful effect, though I contend that he leaves an important element of dating/mating out: money.

Maybe I'm cynical, okay, but we can't all go out every weekend night and spend 5 hours in a bar or club and spend $200 on drinks.  And when we think about who would be a good partner, tell me nobody cares about their job.  Of course, many more women pursue a professional career than in the past, and marriage has become a kind of status symbol--more of a "power couple" thing than the traditional "sole breadwinner" thing.  I would have liked to hear more about stay-at-home dads.

Ansari effectively describes the shift in marriage habits, from our grandparents' and parents' generations to ours.  Perhaps this is why I often said I wished I was 10 years older, back in '01 and '02.  But maybe it's more like 20 or 30 years older.  The difference is, the older generations did not have the experience that we do of "emerging adulthood," the period between, say, 23-30, when we pretty much live on our own and seek a mate that is most complementary to our vision of a worthwhile existence.  Ansari thinks this period is a great thing, more or less, but personally I'm not sure.  Now, I have no problem with their being tons of single people getting older and not having kids--so long as we're not lonely.  But I do have a problem when I am 32 and I look around and see that most people my age are married, or engaged, or have kids, or have a good job with a retirement plan, and I have nothing.  I guess it would hurt a lot more 20 years ago to be in the same situation at my age, but my belief is, it wouldn't be this way 20 years ago.  But I should shut up before I say something dumb and insensitive.

There are some really intriguing parts, particularly about Japan and the way their government is responding to the low-birth-rate crisis by subsidizing singles' parties.  And of course there are some priceless stories:

"Back in June of 2012 when I was 43, my boyfriend broke up w/ me via a text message after being together for 8 years!  I practically raised his daughter, and had been totally committed to him [and] everything that came w/ him.  I was really offended and hurt as I felt that I at least deserved to be broken up with in person or at least on the phone! 
Apparently the wound didn't run too deep, though, because look what happened next:
After 10 months of no contact, his uncle passed away [and] I called him [and] left a message w/ my condolences.  We finally talked after that [and] eventually got back together.  I still love him completely [and] have forgive him for how things went down.  And you best believe I gave him hell for that text! :-)
No offense, but at this point let's take a moment to be thankful we are neither of the people in that relationship." (194)

I could go on, and on and on about this book and excerpt every single great joke, but I'm gonna wrap things up here.  I just can't resist putting in my favorite part, which is where Ansari advocates for monster truck rallies as ideal venues for first dates:

"One of the social scientists I consulted for this book is the Stanford sociologist Robb Willer.  Willer said that he had several friends who had taken dates to a monster truck rally.  If you aren't familiar with monster truck rallies, basically these giant-ass trucks, with names like Skull Crusher and The ReJEWvinator,* ride up huge dirt hills and do crazy jumps.  Sometimes they fly over a bunch of smaller cars or even school buses.  Even more nuts, sometimes those trucks assemble into a giant robot truck that literally eats cars.  Not joking.  It's called Truckzilla and it's worth looking into.  Frankly, it sounds cool as shit, and I'm looking at tickets for the next one I can attend. (140)
"*Okay, I made up ReJEWvinator, but it would be cool if there were a Jewish monster truck scene." (141)

The book also ends on a really sweet story about a couple meeting and how they left notes to each other on the doors of their apartment complex.

This isn't necessarily "required reading," but I wouldn't be surprised to hear about this book being passed around between groups of friends in "emerging adulthood."  That is the way the most culturally relevant books attain their cache.  This is increasingly rare, and I applaud Ansari for rejuvenating the medium.