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As anyone who saw it will tell you, the focus on this year’s pageant was to make a CHANGE.   It’s like our Presidential Election — everyone wants CHANGE.  The Miss America pageant isn’t about finding the next Miss America — but about finding the next “IT girl” — whatever the hell that means.

Everyone also wants ratings — which I suspect is the real story behind the hunt for an…. “IT girl”   –   Whatever that is.

To that end, The Learning Channel, ran some sort of 12 week reality TV series having somewhat very little to do with the actual pageant itself, but which seemed, at first glance, to be sort of reality-TV - ish.

Evidently, people even phoned in to make their votes.   Miss. Utah, I believe, won the popular vote.   She served in Afghanistan or some place and she’s hot, I presume, and maybe she has some skills.   I hear when they told her she was a “loser” (their word, not mine) that she hit the floor and did 10 push ups.

I have to go by what I read on this subject because, having tried watching it TWICE now, both times, the 52 women have been reduced to the 15 by the time I realize what’s going on.  The second time I half-watched it, I already knew Miss Michigan would win.

The fact that I did not puke watching the show knowing this is a testament to my strong stomach and intense ability and willingness to disbelieve and think maybe it’ll be different this time.

Miss Michigan introduced herself as the one candidate who can’t ride a bike — even as an adult (if 19 is considered an adult).  Her singing was pretty much awful — her hair reminded me of the Blue Lagoon — her body was no better than any of the others.   The only thing I saw that set her apart from anyone was the fact that she was first in virtually every competition they announced.

BUT, as much as they SAY, they want to bring the Miss America Pageant into the 21st Century, the fact of the matter is, they picked the MOST stereotypical pageant girl in the whole pageant.   The fresh faces — the fresh talent.   The fresh looks:   juggle California, Washington, Wisconsin, or Indiana.   As for All American, aside from playing the violin, I’ve got to go with Wisconsin. 

In any case, it was a complete disappointment from the whole attempt to reality-TV-ize it, to the complete reversal on what type of person they were looking for as a winner.   Not to mention the so called “DJ” who was there to give it this “fresh” feel that they wanted (I was a DJ — this guy was a corpse in a suit wired into some sort of standard music generation program.)

Bottom line — NOBODY CARES, AND THIS MODERNIZATION HAS JUST FED INTO THE ENTIRE REASONING WHY.

Sorry.

The Road is a work of “Post-Apocalyptic Fiction”. This is a genre that, and this might suprise you, is not quite comedy, not quite satire, but instead, something along the lines of a brutal and searing look at the world as it might be just after some form of nuclear holocaust or errant meteor has pretty much killed just about everything on the burnt up, ashen-skied skeleton of what used to be our planet.

Which is not to say that it doesn’t have it’s darker moments, Cormac does deal with some issues that some might find disturbing, for lack of a better word, such as cannibalism, slavery, rape, and, in one of the most uplifting moments, a baby smoldering on a skewer.

However, on the whole, I found The Road to be a light hearted and touching portrayal of one man’s love for his son illustrated through a mischievous romp through a dark, barren wasteland to try to find a beach, despite the ever present threat of starvation, rape, suicide, sickness, or death by cannibalism.

No, seriously, I have to say I had higher hopes for this book. I mean — post apocalyptic? How does it get more intense than that? We’re talking, and I’m not exaggerating in any way, END OF THE WORLD TYPE STUFF here!!!!! The Day After, Mad Max, Armageddon, Independence Day, most of Jerry McGuirre — The imminent end of all life as we know it is cool. . . but the lone survivors of the planet AFTER the end as they try to put things back together — That’s gotta be ten times as cool.

Or so I thought.

Actually the book starts out at a pretty timid pace. And by timid, I mean, mind numbingly uninteresting. And by starts out, I mean the whole book. There is no prologue of any kind. We have no idea what happened to the planet but there are, evidently, no resources. Survivors of whatever caused the ash to cover the ground and unpotablize all the rivers and lakes, are forced to scavage around hoping to find stashes of resources from before the Event (since Cormac won’t tell us what to call it, I’ll call it that). Our window into this world is from the perspective of one guy and his son who are doing just that. Wandering around trying to find abandoned houses, shops, pharmacies, bars, restaurants, whatever that may have food, water, fire, gasoline, blankets, shoes or pretty much anything else that may come in handy after the end of the world.

Predictably, you have good guys and bad guys and the assumption made by the author is that the bad guys have teamed up and seem to be roaming the countryside looking for good guys to force into slavery, first. Rape second. And then provide dinner later. And by provide dinner, I don’t mean pick up the tab. I mean, they literally are the dinner for these bad guys.

So we have the guy and his son. Roaming tribes of bad guys. Random stashes of food and supplies. One really really long walk for the guy and his son, interrupted briefly and always in the nick of time, by discovering mostly houses that the other people wandering around haven’t found yet and then punctuated by tense moments in which they are hiding from the next roaming bunch of cannibals that they happen to hear coming their way.

Lather, rinse, repeat that in any number of combinations and if you do it enough, you’ll eventually, with luck, come to the end of the book when Cormac tidies things up neatly in an overly convenient and thoroughly disappointing ending that leaves you wondering how you’ll get the 4 hours of your life that you spent reading The Road back.

So, you may be asking yourself, why do I recommend this book. Cormac has a very unique writing style. The characters are mostly annoying, the plot, such as it is, sucks, but the writing is very elegant and, perhaps if you go into it looking to savor each chapter for it’s style and language — and looking not for action and adventure, but more subtle spiritual things or life lessons or fundamental moral questions of what’s right or wrong given the circumstances, you might find the book . . . maybe not good. . . but . . . . interesting.

I won’t spoil the ending for you, but I will say this:

[EDITED --  The original post actually did spoil the ending, which at first I thought might be funny, but in hindsight... I don't wanna be THAT guy...  ]

So, you ask.   What the hell did Rand Damn Nix DO in 2007?  It certainly wasn’t blogging, now was it?

No, it was not.

2007 definitely had some challenges, but I’d have to say, looking back on it, it’s got to have been the best Rand Year in recent history.

NOTABLES:

AA Miles:  77,000

Countries:   7

Passports:  2

Lines of Code:   Give me a break…

Broken Bones:   1 or 5, but all in the hand.

Number of Hotels kicked out of:  1

Number of Hotels that should have kicked me out:   2

Number of lunches that consisted of rice, beans and mystery meat:  7,234

Number of weeks spent out of the country:   Far more than in.

So that’s pretty much what’s kept me busy and not blogging.   I really do intend to do better this year, but last year, seriously, I wound up on the back foot trying to make good on a million dollar promise I made counting on some support I didn’t get.   The fact that I did make good on the promise despite being behind from the start and without the support I was counting on made me realize how important it is to not go around making promises.   ;-)  

What I can tell you is that, and this is important, from the deserted backwaters of the Amazon, to trendy restaurants in England and all the way to the smoke filled Cafe’s in Paris…   and you may not believe me. . . . but I’ve got plenty of photos to prove it. . .

. . .  the buttcrack is back.   Seriously, if you’re not showing some crack, you just lost your relevance in the new world.  Once the only identifying characteristic of the average plumber –  today, however, in the 21’st century, we still don’t have our flying cars, granted… but we’ve got buttcrack.   Miles of it.

So, for 2007, we can sum it up with that:  The Crack is Back, Jack.