Katie Hoeber is a student at San Francisco State University working on her Masters in Public Health Nursing.

As a project for her Community Nursing class, Katie is spending a week living off four dollars a day — the equivalent value of an average day’s worth of food stamps.

Unlike the hipsters living on food stamps featured in last year’s Salon.com article “Hipsters on Food Stamps” — who used their food stamps to buy organic rabbit, raw honey, fresh squeezed juices and gourmet ice cream at their local Whole Foods — Katie has limited her fare to include only things she can buy within walking distance of her West Oakland home — which basically means the
local dollar store.

She explains on her blog: “Many people (on food stamps) do not drive a fancy little Prius as I do and don’t have the resources to clip coupons and drive all over town for sales. So for 1 week, I am living off of $4.00 a day for all food and drink and only purchasing my
groceries in West Oakland, at stores that are walking distance for a person with disabilities.”

Like many folks on food stamps, Katie does has a physical disability, one that forces her to walk with a cane.  Unlike the vast majority of people on food stamps, however, Katie’s foray into $4-a-day eating is by choice, not necessity.

Follow Katie’s blog, which she calls “a way for me to record the experience and share the realities of hunger in America with others,” as she lives a week on $4 a day.

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As a bit of a time-travel aficionado, I’m always engaged by stories that utilize the trope to explore ideas of causality loops, paradox, pre-destination, and free will.  The best mind-bending time-travel movie in recent memory is called Primer, an independent film shot on a $7,000 budget, that presents a hyper-realistic and chaotic vision of time-travel so dense and confusing it has spawned flow-charts like this one, as audiences attempt to unravel the head-scratchingly dense plot.

Hot Tub Time Machine doesn’t spend much time questioning the inevitable paradoxes of time-travel all that deeply.  The movie takes the “inhabiting the body of your younger self” track of time-travel, as opposed to the “existing alongside your younger self as an older double” route that is more commonly seen in such thinking-man’s time-travel classics like Back to the Future and Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.  What HTTM essentially does is give its characters a chance at a do-over, sending their 2010 mind-selves back into their 1986 body-selves and asking them “if you knew then what you know now, what choices would you make differently?” Certainly a question we’ve all asked ourselves at one time or another. But has anyone really stopped to think about the terrible consequences of such a do-over? Sure, the film engages in the standard blather about the notorious “butterfly effect” and warnings that changing the past could end up “making Hitler president” or even cause one of the lead characters to never have been born. But of course, all the light treading on history doesn’t last too long, as there wouldn’t be much of a movie without the characters taking advantage of their do-overs to try and change things for the better.

(Spoiler alert from here on out, although there is honestly nothing about the plot of HTTM that is in any way surprising or revelatory, and if you are actually worried about having the plot of a movie called Hot Tub Time Machine spoiled for you — well, you must be a blast at parties…)

In any case, the friends set about trying to better their timelines. Songs are plagiarized, bets are lost, forks are stabbed into eyes. Some things go better, some things go worse, and some things end up exactly the same way, with little rhyme or reason as to why. Rob Corddry’s character “Lou” is revealed to be the father of Clarke Duke’s character “Jacob” in a possibly juicy paradox, as it is never made clear whether Lou slept with Jacob’s mother the first time around, or if it was only this second go-round in which the fathered the boy.  Eventually, they all return (albeit not all of them by the same route) to the present, where everything has changed (surprise!) for the better.

Or has it? Upon even the most cursory investigation of the movie’s ending, things start to fall apart. This shouldn’t be too surprising, given that looking for internal consistency and scientific factuality in a movie called Hot Tub Time Machine is like trying to learn about physics from a Wile E. Coyote cartoon. But regardless, the investigation raises some fascinating time-travel questions.  So let’s get on with it, yes?

One of the biggest problems with the ending — outlined expertly by Christopher Campbell in his review of the film (which was also addressed in the hilarious open letter “To the Writers and Director of Hot Tub Time Machine, from a Physics Professor” – is that the three characters who return from the past to the “new and improved” future have no knowledge or memory of the 24 years between 1986 and 2010 that elapsed differently this time around.

While Lou stays behind in 1986, his son Jacob, John Cusack’s “Adam” and Craig Robinson’s “Nick” jump back into the hot tub and literally wake up to a brand new world.  It’s a world where Adam is married to a girl he met (to him) just once, Nick has a successful musical career that he never got to experience, and Jacob now has a wealthy, loving set of parents who probably gave him a much different childhood than the one he remembers.

As sad and problematic as this is for these original characters, I can’t help but wonder about the versions of themselves they were replacing. Let’s do a little thinking on this, shall we? We’ll just consider Nick for the sake of simplicity, but the concept applies to all three of the guys who didn’t stay behind. So “Old Nick” gets into the Hot Tub and is returned to the future, presumably leaving “Young Nick” behind to become a successful musician and producer, rip off the Black Eyed Peas, and stay friends with Adam and Lou.

Now the question must be raised as to whether “Young Nick” remembers anything that happened while “Old Nick” was occupying his body. There are two possibilities here. One is that he does remember everything that “Old Nick” did – from performing on stage to calling his 9-year-old wife-to-be — all of it.

This is problematic for a number of reasons that we’ll get into, but first let’s look at the second option – “Young Nick” wakes up in the Hot Tub, still in 1986, and doesn’t remember what happened with “Old Nick” occupying his body. He doesn’t remember killing it at the concert, and thus is still the shy and insecure guy who choked away his big chance the first time around. He certainly doesn’t remember “writing” a Black Eyed Peas song, and while his band might remember the chord changes, who is to say “Young Nick” was changed at all by an experience he can’t even remember?

But, because “Old Nick” returns to a world where “Young Nick” did go on to become rich and famous, we have to assume that “Young Nick” was somehow aware of what had happened while “Old Nick” occupied his body, at least enough to be changed by those events.

This creates a tragic conundrum, because the majority of what “Old Nick” was trying to do while in “Young Nick’s” body was get back to the present. This makes it incredibly likely that, for the rest of his life, “Young Nick” knows (if not literally, then at least subconsciously) that someday in 2010, he’s going to get into a hot tub, and somehow magically be replaced by a lesser version of himself, one who never accomplished anything close to what “Young Nick” was able to achieve.

Add to that the fact that Lou, who stayed behind in his young body (so there never was a “Young Lou” to worry about) probably had a hard time keeping quiet about the fact that his two best friends, “Young Adam” and “Young Nick” (and even his son, “Second Jacob”) were all living with expiration dates — due to be replaced by inferior versions of themselves at a predetermined time.

Talk about a mind-fuck.  That’s the kind of time travel movie I’d like to see — the story of “Young Nick” and “Young Adam,” growing up afraid of hot tubs, dreading that day in 2010 when through fate or destiny or who knows what, their existence would be snuffed out forever. Who knows if they even needed to be in the hot tub?  Maybe they just disappeared, poof?  Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide — your “Old Self” is coming to replace you, and there’s nothing you can do about it! Not exactly the formula for a raunchy buddy comedy, but maybe I can get an option for “Hot Tub Time Machine II:  Revenge of the Young”?

***

Rumpus original art by Lucas Adams.

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Jack Hopkins is a real-estate agent, and things aren’t looking too bright for him. You might think that’s just a sign of the times, but Jack is a Gulf War veteran living in mid-1990s Los Angeles. It’s not that business at Fleet and Fleet Real Estate is all that bad—it’s just that Jack hates the business. Uninspired, restless, and fickle, Jack halfheartedly agrees to meet yet another client, who proceeds to turn his world upside down: the beautiful, coy, and manipulative Darlene Hunt, a femme fatale cut from the Brigid O’Shaughnessy mold, who offers him ten million dollars to kill her husband.

Such is the setup for Millard Kaufman’s second novel, the posthumously published Misadventure, a rollicking comic-noir page-turner that is equal parts Elmore Leonard and Dashiell Hammett, with bits of Glengarry Glen Ross and Lolita thrown in for good measure.

Darlene’s husband is Tod Hunt, a severe man who carries a torch for his fourteen-year-old ex-housekeeper and who boasts a penchant for throwing coffee pots when enraged. He would seem to be the perfect villain and an easy target for Jack, but, as is the case with any good noir novel, nothing in Misadventure is ever so cut and dried.

Complicating matters is the fact that Hunt doubles as a real-estate mogul and Goliath to Fleet and Fleet’s David. Looking to merge with Fleet and Fleet for opaque reasons, Hunt draws Jack into his confidence and makes him a counteroffer—to kill Darlene. Thus begins a spiraling and labyrinthine tale of murder, mayhem, statutory rape, and real estate that will have the reader laughing, cringing, and guessing until the very end.

Millard Kaufman

Kaufman’s debut novel, Bowl of Cherries, was published in 2007 when the author was ninety years old. A World War II veteran nominated for two Oscars for screenwriting (Take the High Ground! in 1953 and Bad Day at Black Rock in 1955) and the co-creator of Mr. Magoo, Kaufman passed away in 2009. From page one, Misadventure sparkles with the late writer’s wit and wisdom. His prose is precise, efficient, and often surprising. Elegant words like “miasma,” “bromides,” “paucity” and “diaphanous” mingle easily with visceral classics like “batshit,” “wanko,” and “dumb fucking horse’s ass.” Jack feels as if he’d “caught a wet flounder across the mouth” when he learns that his live-in girlfriend has moved out; his boss, Jerry Senior, has a “marshy head.” That the plot eventually leads Jack in search of a strange, unknown island off the coast of Baja partially explains all the watery imagery.

Jack Hopkins serves as a compelling noir narrator—possessed of a perfect mix of self doubt and self determination, a knack for well-timed violence, and of course, an unthinking ease with the opposite sex, all of whom throw themselves upon him at one point or another. Kaufman’s other characters leap off the page with vivid insistence, defined as much by their foibles as their physiques. Jerry Senior keeps a gold toothpick on him at all times, and is described as “a man full of exquisite self-tortures, all of them inflicted by that toothpick.” Jack’s girlfriend, Gayle, has a penchant for pulling his leg-hairs out with her toes and digging plaster from the wall for a mid-day snack.

That the three female characters fulfill the stereotypes of the femme fatale, the nymphet, and the nag makes Misadventure feel dated at first; as the novel progresses, though, Kaufman deepens and rounds these females into three-dimensions. But all three still function primarily as sex objects—the most problematic of these being the 14-year-old Carmen Ochoa, Tod Hunt’s would-be mistress. That precocious Carmen is perhaps the wisest of the novel’s characters feels unrealistic, an authorial justification for her sexuality. But by the end, when all has been laid bare, Carmen emerges as perhaps the most fascinating—if still problematic—character in the book.

To his credit, Kaufman never stoops to judgment of his characters, preferring to present them in all their sticky, amoral glory. “People are endlessly interesting, but on the other hand,” one character acknowledges, seeming to articulate Kaufman’s own thesis on humanity, “they can be mean, miserable pains in the ass.” Such is the world of Misadventure—a fascinating array of damaged thugs, lowlifes, schemers, millionaires, nymphets, and manipulators, all of whom straddle the line between sympathy and incredulity: complex and imperfect people struggling to ride the waves of a complex and imperfect world.

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The annual award is given “to draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discourage it.”  Past winners include Tom Wolfe and Norman Mailer, and in 2008 John Updike was given a lifetime achievement award after having reached the award’s shortlist four times since the award’s inception 17 years ago.

This year’s winner?  Jonathan Littell, for a passage from his controversial, bestselling tome The Kindly Ones. The passage describes a Nazi officer’s orgasm while sodomizing a woman locked in a guillotine as “a jolt that emptied my head like a spoon scraping the inside of a soft-boiled egg.”  Yum.

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The hat he wears in his video interview on bigthink.com is a jaunty chapeau; a beanie perched atop Ames’ bearded head.  It’s almost jaunty enough to distract from the fascinating responses to questions about Ames career arcs as a boxer, performer, writer, screenwriter and more.

An especially interesting tidbit centers on Ames’ answer to the questions “Is there a particular joy to writing about sex?” and “Do you have any personal stories about Craigslist?” which dovetail together nicely and resonate with Ames’ explorations of sex and loneliness.

The only question I wish they’d have asked: “Where did you find such a jaunty hat?”

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But seriously, it’s an interesting read, covering how Fitzgerald made the equivalent of $500,000 a year, paid only about 5.5% in taxes, kept strict ledgers and budgets, but still managed to go broke. Quirk cites the problem of “leakage,” wherein money is spent that doesn’t fall into budgetary categories.

In a hilarious bit of anachronistic irony, Fitzgerald published two articles about money and savings in the Saturday Evening Post in 1924.  The first was satirically titled “How to Live on $36,000 a Year,” which again, is the modern day equivalent of $500,000.  In that article, Fitzgerald estimated that, due to leakage, a “mysterious third of our income had vanished into thin air.”

The second article came out six months later and was titled “How to Live on Practically Nothing A Year.”  The irony of the articles is that, while not “practically nothing,” $36,000 a year is much lower than the current U.S. median yearly income.  But—if you cut out the J.K. Rowlings and Stephanie Meyers (and let’s be honest, the F. Scott Fitzgeralds) of the world—the number sounds just about right for a working writer’s income.  Depressing indeed.

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This is good to hear, as Lethem looks for a rebound of sorts after his last novel.  Considered by Lethem to be his most “funny and “sexy” work, the L.A. rom-com indie rock inspired You Don’t Love Me Yet, was released in 2007 to mixed reviews.

Chronic City marks a return to Lethem’s location of choice, New York City, and to the expansive, epic style of his previous NYC-staged masterworks Motherless Brooklyn and Fortress of Solitude.

GQ calls the book “a stellar, multi-layered novel,” while The Daily Beast hails it as “a sprawling book about pop culture and outer space…realistic and fantastic, serious and funny, warm and clear eyed.”

In a unique promotional campaign for the book, “Lethem vs. Chronic City” will feature the author reading the entirety of the novel over eight nights in seven different locations throughout Manhattan and Brooklyn.  The marathon reading kicks off this Friday the 16^th at the New Yorker Festival, and culminates December 6^th.

Click here for more information on Chronic City, or visit Jonathan Lethem’s Facebook page to keep up with news and events info.

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First off, I had no idea that Diablo Cody, of Juno fame, had written Jennifer’s Body. From the previews, the film appears to be little more than a sex-and-blood vehicle for America’s current wet dream infatuation, star Megan Fox.  But reading Orange’s article—which cites feminist readings of horror films and the perplexing revelation that “recent box office receipts show that women have an even bigger appetite for these [horror] films than men” to engage in a fascinating investigation of the role of women in horror—the new movie seems much more interesting than its base preview would imply.

Viewed as a sort of “Trojan horse” for feminist ideas and beliefs by Cody, Jennifer’s Body is further described by Orange as presenting a multi-layered “portrait of female identity in flux.”  Heavy, intellectual stuff.  And you pigs were only going to go see it to catch an eyeful of Fox eating some guy’s intestines and then making out with Amanda Seyfried.  Sheesh. Men.

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So yes, we can agree, covers matter.  Why else would publishers spend money to hire professional designers to create draft after draft of potential cover art?  To wit: Print recently posted a fascinating little article called “Kill Your Darlings” by Peter Terzian that asks eight designers to show their favorite runners up to a book’s cover art.

Each designer explains the history of the different designs and why the changes were made.  The progressions from initial draft to final product are intriguing – some are fluid, and some are abrupt, and whether or not the finished products are any better than the early drafts is up to you to decide.

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I’ve been hearing some of the buzz about Eastbound and Down—about a washed-up Major League Baseball star returning home to live with his brother—but it wasn’t until I read Sweeney’s article that I realized that the show is from the same group (McBride, along with Ben Best and Jody Hill) that brought us 2006’s achingly funny indie/kung-fu flick The Foot Fist Way.

Sweeney’s thorough and insightful review was just the catalyst I needed to move from the “yeah, I should check that show out sometime” mentality into a more urgent type of “holy crap, I need to check that show out, like, NOW” state of mind.  Well, it’s a good thing I’ve got no other plans tonight…

Read Sweeney’s article here.

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