Jack’s Old & Busted Blog

I had put off reading Rush drummer Neil Peart’s Ghost Rider for two reasons: First, at the time the book came out, I had just experienced the loss of both of my parents, so the prospect of reading about someone else’s ordeal was wasn’t very appealing (Peart lost his 19-year-old daughter in a car wreck; within a year, his wife was diagnosed with cancer and died). Second, I have never been able to warm up to Rush musically. I respect their talents (Peart is widely regarded as the best living percussionist), but to me they’ve always been sort of contrived and overproduced in a Led Zeppelin-plus-talent-minus-all-possible-sex-appeal kind of way. Canadian.

But a renewed interest in motorcycling and a shiny new library card put me in the mood for a travelogue, so I checked it out.

It’s a good travelogue; Peart travels 55,000 miles on a motorcycle roaming around trying to figure out what to do with his life now. And I feel really badly for the guy. However, the emotional connection with his family just wasn’t there for me. The beginning of the book is pretty compressed. Things happen quickly, which is probably the way it felt for Peart, but we never really get to know these people. In fact, the only person we really get to know is Peart’s riding buddy, Brutus, who is jailed early in the book for drugs. Through a series of letters included in the longish second half of this 400-page tome, we know a lot about this Brutus guy. We also get to know that Peart has some real animosity for the human race, not all of which was precipitated by his tragedy:

Lately I notice that the more I travel, and the more people I observe at work and play, the lower my overall assessment of humanity falls . . . I certainly encounter people that I instinctively like, casually, and there are certainly those I know and value as “kindred spirits.” But they are few. Most people, I seem to have decided, just spoil it for the rest of us . . .

At the end of the book, Peart finds “true love” again, but you don’t know much about her either, except for a cursory description. In fact, you know more about his motorcycle than her at this point. Teary encounters notwithstanding, Peart “responds” to his machine better than he responds to people. Unlike Peart, it breaks; it gets fixed; it moves on.

Not a lot of character development here. I think a more appropriate title for this book would have been “Ego Trip.”

(slate): “What if Christ spoke at a Republican Party fund-raiser?”

Must read.

(counterpunch.org): It’s strange that Alan Greenspan hasn’t been blamed for the housing bubble. After all, he set the “easy money” policies that put the whole thing in motion and he’s the one who should be held responsible when it goes up in smoke.

(SBL FAQ): “From the California Vehicle Code:

#27801 Required Position of Equipment

No person shall drive any two-wheeled motorcycle equipped with a seat so positioned that the driver, when sitting astride the seat, cannot reach the ground with his feet. Effective May 3, 1972.”

(Harpers.org): “America is simultaneously the most professedly Christian of the developed nations and the least Christian in its behavior. That paradox - more important, perhaps, than the much touted ability of French women to stay thin on a diet of chocolate and cheese - illuminates the hollow at the core of our boastful, careening culture.”

Tonya gave me a bonsai a couple years ago, which is doing great. This would make a fine modification, I think.

(crashbonsai.com): CrashBonsai is the creation of John Rooney, an artist who is torn between the desire to create and destroy. Recently, he has been making bonsai plants, and combining them with model cars and trucks which he has creatively smashed and melted, to create “CrashBonsai,” little living car crash sculptures.

. . . on human sexuality and genetics (via robotwisdom):

(The Boston Globe): The debate has always been that it was either all in the child’s upbringing or all in the genes. But what if it’s something else?