Jonathan Henderson

The Wiz (1978). 134 minutes, Universal Pictures. Directed by Sidney Lumet.

The Wiz came out in the fall of 1978. I was a junior in high school at the time, and most of my spare time was spent practicing and competing on the school's debate team. That year I also got my driver's license, and so it was the first year I was able to drive myself to various places. And, more importantly, to drive to places with my friends. There was no movie theater in the small town of Hodgenville where I went to high school; we had to drive 10 miles away to Elizabethtown to get to the nearest theater. And I hope I don't have to remind you that this was before the era of home video...

My debate team partner Mark Shelton didn't have access to a car (nor did he even get his driver's license until after graduation!), so if he wanted to see a movie, he had to persuade me or another of our friends to go see it. Such was the case with The Wiz. I had no interest in seeing it; I was not a fan of Michael Jackson, and I had never heard of Diana Ross, Nipsey Russell, or anyone else who was in the cast. I did know who Richard Pryor was, but I knew him only as a raunchy comedian, and didn't see what good he would be in some cheesy musical.

But Mark had seen a stage production of The Wiz two years previously on a trip to New York, and he was desperate to see the movie. I was easy to convince, since even then everyone knew I loved movies and would go to see almost anything. And in truth, I did (and do) like musicals – I just wasn't familiar with The Wiz.

So, one Friday evening in November of 1978, I drove over to Elizabethtown with a couple of friends, and we saw The Wiz. I was not very impressed with the movie as a whole. It seemed too long, but in an odd way: The good parts were too short, and the bad parts were too long. The tone of the film was somehow all wrong, although it was not easy to say exactly how. My friends and I were especially dismissive of Diana Ross as Dorothy. As I recall, we made fun of her portrayal in the car on the way home, and for at least a few days the following week.

There was one thing in the movie that I was very impressed with, however. And so were all of my friends. That was Michael Jackson, 19 years old at the time, as The Scarecrow. He was the only really outstanding thing in the movie. I was astonished at how good of an actor he was. I knew Michael Jackson only as the singer from The Jackson 5, as a guest on The Sonny and Cher Show, and as a cartoon character on Saturday mornings. I had no idea he had that in him.

We all agreed. Mark, who was very disappointed in the movie version, did say that Michael Jackson's Scarecrow was the only thing in the entire movie that was better than the stage version. I remember thinking, well, Michael Jackson is obviously going to become a famous actor.

The following year, Jackson's first solo album Off The Wall came out, but I was not much of a music fan at the time, and wasn't interested. In fact, I never even heard the album until I was in college. I was, instead, waiting for an announcement of what his next movie role would be.

But there never was another movie. The Wiz ended up being Michael Jackson's one and only film.

As the years went by, and I saw Michael Jackson in various music videos, I'd see occasional glimpses of that fine acting talent. But it was always apparent that I'd seen him at his best back in 1978. Of course, the 1970's were the last decade that you could hear or see Michael Jackson and just enjoy him solely as a performer. After that, his strange personal life became what everyone thought of when they heard the name.

When Michael Jackson died last week, and all the cries of "Wacko Jacko" turned into "Michael Jackson the Legendary Musician", I was reminded again of The Wiz. And so, Saturday night, I downloaded the HD version of The Wiz over iTunes and watched it on the Apple TV. I wanted to see that Michael Jackson again, and see if my impressions from 1978 would match my impressions in 2009.

The Wiz is a retelling of Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Although it's a musical, it does not share anything with the famous 1939 movie version of the same book. The Wiz is an African-American (we said "black" back in the 70's when this was made, though) twist on the same story. Instead of a farm girl in Kansas, Dorothy is a black girl in New York's Harlem neighborhood. Instead of a twister, a blizzard takes her away to Oz. And the magical land of Oz is like a magic version of New York, rather than some fairy tale forest.

Seeing it again as an adult, with four years of film school and a lifetime of experience under my belt, it's much clearer to me how and where The Wiz succeeds – and even more clear how it fails. The production values are good. It's wonderful to see the World Trade Center intact, as the center of the Emerald City. The sets are marvelous, the costumes are elegant and spectacular. At least every other song is good and tuneful. In the spots where the movie is good, it's very good.

Ah... but the rest. It's even worse than I remembered. I now see what the wrongness of tone was that I could only feel back in 1978. There is no magic here. The sets, while beautiful, are grim. This Oz is no fairy-tale land that you would want to stay in – it's a creep hell hole that you would see only in your nightmares. Almost every shot makes the wrong choice, like long wide shots when someone is singing. The film seems edited wrong. Some scenes go on way too long, others seem cut short. The film actually has several jump cuts, and they don't look intentional. As a movie, it has no flow at all. Literally every single creative decision made during filming and editing appears to be the wrong one.

Diana Ross is terrible, absolutely terrible, as Dorothy. It's not just that, at 34 years old, she is way, way too old to be playing Dorothy. The movie tries to gloss over that by explaining that she's a 24 year old kindergarden teacher (sadly, Ross looks older than her age here, not younger). To me, the whole point of the story is that Dorothy is a child. An adult just wouldn't accept Oz in the same way. Her Dorothy has no spunk, no fire. Honestly, the kid in the local elementary school did a better job with Dorothy than Diana Ross did. She is just wrong, so wrong, and that wrongness pulls the whole movie down with it. You know the story. And if you don't accept Dorothy, you just can't accept the story.

Michael Jackson, however, is even better than I remembered. The 10 minutes of the film where he first appears, singing "You Can't Win" and then "Ease on Down the Road", are fantastic. Watching him again, I am convinced that Jackson made a big mistake when he elected not to do any more film roles. He is magic here. He is the Scarecrow. His movements, his expressions, everything, are absolutely perfect. And of course, he sings the song wonderfully. But more than just his great singing, it's his facial expression, his hand movements, that sell the songs. It is an absolutely wonderful acting job, hands down one of the best.

One other observation I have after seeing this movie again. In this film, Michael Jackson's speaking voice sounds... normal. I mean, sure, it's that same high voice we all know. But the way he speaks, that sounds normal. Not that odd, somewhat feminine lilt that you always heard him speak in throughout his public life. But you know who does talk like that in the movie? Diana Ross.

It's well known that Michael Jackson was enamored of Diana Ross. After seeing The Wiz again, I'm convinced that Jackson's odd way of talking was either his conscious or subconscious imitation of his idol Diana Ross. I think he must've been studying her during the entire time they were doing the movie, and then he started talking like that. That's my observation, anyway. Take it as you will.

I don't pretend to have any idea what the hell happened to Michael Jackson. What happened to that earnest, hard-working 19-year-old actor in The Wiz? Where did he go? What drove him to make the decisions that he did? I certainly don't know. I doubt if even Jackson himself knew.

But I do know this: If you want to see Michael Jackson before he became "Wacko Jacko"... if you want to see how he could have become one of the great actors of our generation... if you want to see the best performance of Scarecrow ever (and yeah, I do mean better than you-know-who in the 1939 version), then see Michael Jackson in The Wiz.

Fast-forward through the rest of the movie, however.

American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang (2006). 240 pages, Square Fish Press.

I love stories where there are one or more plots that seem to be completely unrelated. Then they come together, one by one, in a way that I never saw coming. Sometimes it'll be two stories that run at the same time. Sometimes you follow different characters doing completely different things. I always enjoy seeing how the author twines plot lines together.

But every once in a long while, I come across a book where I don't even realize I'm reading an integrated story. And then an amazing feeling creeps over me, as it becomes clear that the stories – which I thought were completely unrelated – are in fact all part of one single story.

The graphic novel, as an art form, is quite new. The vast majority of graphic novels are actually collected reprints of comic books (Watchmen, V for Vendetta, Sandman, etc). A great trend over the past decade, however, has been the emergence of the true graphic novel – a work created from the beginning as a single book, one single story, told by the author in words and pictures in such a way that it could never be done with words alone.

Gene Yang's American Born Chinese is a wonderful book. It has won all manner of awards, and it deserves every one of them. This is a book that reveals so much to the reader, so cleverly drawn and written, so perfectly plotted, that it literally took my breath away as I neared the end. And it is the perfect, the absolutely perfect, example of how seemingly completely and utterly different stories merge together in a way that is totally unexpected and seamlessly plotted.

As I began to read American Born Chinese, I just assumed it was a collection of short pieces, just grouped together under the theme of being written by the same author, a man who is an "American-born Chinese". It wasn't until about page 200 that it became clear that I was reading a true novel, and that the three alternating, seemingly completely unrelated stories were all part of a whole.

The three individual plot lines take the form of alternating chapters. The book begins in the "ancient past", and relates the myth of the Monkey King – a monkey who is determined to shed his animal nature and become elevated to a God. The Monkey King is an actual Chinese folk hero; I cannot say how much of the Monkey King story here is "the real story" and how much is Yang's invention, but it reads like a real folk story.

The second story is that of Jin Wang, a lonely Asian-American kid from San Francisco whose parents move to the midwest. Suddenly Jin is one of only two Asian kids in the entire school, and his natural shyness becomes all encompassing. He'd do anything to fit in with his white classmates, especially to win the heart of the girl he has a crush on.

And the third story – written with an accompanying laugh track and applause – is the sitcom plight of Danny, an All-American white teenager who is mortified every summer when his Chinese cousin Chin-Kee comes to visit. Chin-Kee is a painfully obvious ethnic stereotype, complete with buck teeth, a pigtail, and yellow skin. Even his name is an ethnic slur – which I didn't figure out until after I finished the book, by the way. Spell it slowly to yourself, stopping after the fifth letter...

Each chapter of the book alternates, one after the other, between these three stories. Chapter 1 begins the tale of the Monkey King. Chapter 2 begins the story of Jin Wang. Chapter 3 begins the story of Danny and Chin-Kee. Chapter 4 picks up with the Monkey King again... and so on throughout the book. Each story line is very good, although I found myself particularly drawn to the saga of Jin Wang. His painful attempts to make friends in his new school reminded me a lot of my own life during middle school – minus the racial problems, of course.

As the book nears the end, each of the three stories seems to be reaching their own, separate conclusions. But then – no, sorry, I can't and won't spoil it. It was just too well done.

What I liked so much about this book is that it's a small, human story. Here is a fantastic, wonderful, modern graphic novel that doesn't have any super heros. No aliens. No vampires. Just good, honest storytelling, combined with a bit of Chinese folk wisdom. The "big reveal" at the end of the book is not really "big" at all. It's just about one person, one character. No one dies, no one saves the world, no one makes news, none of that. It's just the story of a few people, and how they live their lives, and a great lesson.

Obviously, I'm not Asian. Gene Yang could have made up the entire folklore part of this book from whole cloth, and I would never know. All of the Chinese symbols that are integrated into the typography and layout of the book could be gibberish. I doubt it, however. Those elements just feel... right.

In Chapter 2, when we first meet Jin Wang, he's a small boy in San Francisco. His mother likes to visit an ancient herbalist in Chinatown for her allergies, and Jin sits out in the waiting room while she takes her treatment. Jin is playing with a Transformers toy, and he tells the herbalist behind the counter that when he grows up, he wants to become a Transformer.

He stares at his toy, embarrassed, and tells the old lady "But Mama says that's silly. Little boys don't grow up to be transformers".

The old herbalist looks at him with a baleful eye. "Oh, I wouldn't be so sure about that," she says. "I'm going to let you in on a secret, little friend." The next panel is an extreme close up of the old woman's face, as she tells Jin: "It's easy to become anything you wish... so long as you're willing to forfeit your soul".

And that is the heart of what the book is all about. Better to be who you really are, than to forfeit your soul in an attempt to become something else.

Go get a copy of American Born Chinese. Buy it at your bookstore. Order it from Amazon. Or check out a copy from your local library. Even if you "don't like comic books", or have never read a graphic novel, or if you think this book looks like a collection of cartoons, please – take a chance on this book. You won't be sorry. It's charming, enlightening, and breathtaking.

My hat is off to Gene Luan Yang, and I hope he writes-and-draws many more books to come.

This morning, Frank and I decided to have breakfast at a local favorite, Weston Diner. Weston Diner is one of those great places where people line up to have their names put on a list for breakfast, where the waitresses remember your face and what you want, where the food is plentiful and the menu contains exactly what it should. There are gum-ball machines near the door. There are little tiles at each booth with pithy sayings like "A house should be clean enough to be healthy and dirty enough to be happy". The coffee is good and continually refilled. The owner's name is Sam.

I had corned beef hash and eggs, Frank had the "2-2-2": Two eggs, two pancakes, two pieces of bacon. We sat in a booth in the corner and quietly ate our breakfast, occasionally looking at something on our iPhones or engaging in brief chit-chat.

The threesome in the booth behind us, however, were not so reserved. We'd paid them scant attention when we sat down: Two guys and a girl, all in their late teens. I would guess just out of high school, first year of college, thereabouts. One guy was sitting on one side of the booth, the other guy and the girl were sitting on the other side. Nice looking kids having breakfast together.

Being young and much more carefree than us two old fogies , they were talking loudly and laughing. And so, even though we were not eavesdropping, we could not help but hear the vast majority of their conversation. LIstening to them talk while we ate our breakfast, we got a slice of young life, circa 2009.

"Eye-RACK!" the guy sitting next to the girl said loudly. "When you say it like that, it sounds so much worse than it really is, you now. Eye-RACK! You gotta say the last part of it really loud". The other two chuckled. I couldn't hear what the girl was saying, but the other guy was in my line of sight, so I saw his reaction to his friend's comment. "Is that how they say it over there?" the other guy asked.

"I don't know", said the loud guy. "My Staff Sergeant was telling me Friday that's how we should start saying it. Loud and with emphasis. Eye-RACK!" He laughed again.

Growing up in the Army, I knew my share of Staff Sergeants. I had this guy's sergeant pictured in my head as he talked: A grizzled guy in his thirties, close-cropped hair, five o'clock shadow, maybe smoking a cigarette –

"She's been there twice, so she wants us all to be prepared, you know", he added.

My imagined Staff Sergeant vanished in a puff. I wasn't sure how to picture a female Staff Sergeant who was advising this young man. Frank raised his eyebrows at that, and despite ourselves, we listened a little closer.

"Dude, right after Memorial Day, too", the other guy said. "That's wicked."

"Thirteen weeks of training, I know, and now I'm shipping out the day after Memorial Day!" said the fellow with the Staff Sergeant. He told his friends about how he negotiated a later curfew from his mother the previous night. "I mean, normally, she'd say I have to be home by midnight. But I was like, Mom! I-m going to eye-RACK day after tomorrow! So, she said OK, I could stay out as late as I wanted".

About then I got a refill of coffee, Frank and I talked about something else, and I stopped paying attention to the youngster's conversation. Maybe ten minutes later, we heard them talking again.

"I hope my motorcycle's in good shape when I come back", the military kid was saying. "And I'm gonna get a new car too! You know... when I get back from..." and all three of them said loudly "Eye-RACK!!"

The kid was talking so fast and so loud, I felt sure that he was overcompensating. Was he trying to make sure his friends didn't worry? Was he trying to cover up his own fear? Was I just projecting way too much onto a complete stranger?

As we were leaving, I was rehearsing a line. I was going to say to the kid, "Hey, stay safe over there", or "Thanks for your service", or "Come back in one piece", something like that. But when I stood up and saw his face, I decided to just keep my mouth shut. They were three teenagers, and one of them was about to go away to war. It was not my place to insert any tone of worry or concern into their happy breakfast.

Paying the bill, I had a clear view of the T-shirt the kid was wearing. In the center was the Marine Corp emblem. Above the emblem it read, "To err is human. To forgive is divine". And under the emblem, it said "Neither is Marine Corp policy".

For some reason, that just really hit me hard. The shirt seemed so much more grown-up than its owner. I turned 47 last week, a big fat happy man in a nice house, cars in the garage, my own business. And here I am, looking at an 18-year-old kid smiling and grinning as he's about to be shipped off to Iraq.

So, instead of intruding on his last breakfast with his friends, I sent him a silent wish for an uneventful tour of duty and a safe return.

Our flag flies over our driveway this Memorial Day, in honor of the men and women who gave their lives for our freedom. Who go out and do what they are asked to do, whether they think it's right or wrong.

To my friends and family in the military, whether you're Over Here or Over There, my best wishes. I hope with all my heart that all of you – including the loud teenager in the booth next to me whose mother extended his curfew the night before he was to be shipped out – are safe and sound next Memorial Day, and for all future Memorial Days.

Stay safe out there, guys and girls. Thanks for everything that you do, and for everything that you've already done.

Let Memorial Day be a day of celebration, and not a day of mourning.

Kindle: Amazon's 6" Wireless Reading Device, $359.00

I'm living on a greatly tightened budget. I've cancelled satellite service, land phone service, pool cleaning, book and magazine subscriptions, and I'm buying all our food at Costco and Wal-Mart. So why, why did I just spend $359 a month ago for a new Amazon Kindle 2 – to replace the perfectly good, still working Kindle that I bought only a little under a year ago?

Because I love to read, I love books, and the Kindle 2 (now referred to as just the 6" Kindle by Amazon) is the best book reader I've every encountered. That's why.

LIke many others, I had some complaints about the original Kindle. Amazon listened to me and countless others, and they fixed (almost) everything that was wrong with the original Kindle. And, let me be clear, the original Kindle was a very good device (and still is, for that matter). The Kindle 2 literally fixes every single complaint I had with the original – with the exception of the screen size, which is the same as the first Kindle and is still too small.

Thin Is In - And Oh So Shapely!
The first thing I noticed when I removed the Kindle from its (very nice and very Apple-inspired) packaging was the thickness of this device. As in the lack of it. You may have seen some ads for the Kindle 2 that show it on edge next to pencil – and the pencil is noticeably thicker. Those pictures aren't lying. The device is thinner than an iPhone 3G, thinner than any remote control I've got, thinner than any other electronic gadget of any kind that I currently own. It's about the thickness of 30 sheets of paper.

And the thickness (er, thinness) of the device is constant. It doesn't curve out anywhere or bulge up at any spot. The edges taper in somewhat, much like the edge of a MacBook Air do. All four corners are rounded identically, following the same gentle taper toward the edge. The overall effect feels very good in your hands. It just feels... right. The specs say it weighs 10 ounces. I haven't verified that independently, but it feels about like holding a sheaf of paper.

The back of the Kindle 2 is smooth aluminum. There are tiny grills in the lower back for speakers, used for the audio book and music playback features (which I completely do not care about and never use). Even the holes in the speaker grills are carefully milled and feel good under your fingertips. And the smooth brushed metal doesn't get slick as you hold it for a long about of time, as plastic usually does (think how a phone feels after you've been holding it for a long conversation).

Interface Reface
The Kindle 2 sports a revamped version of the Kindle interface to go along with the new physical design. The main outward aspect of this is getting rid of the "sparkle bar" and wheel that was the navigation system for the original Kindle. It's been replaced with an easy-to-use four-way joystick type toggle. You just use the little joystick to point to the item you want, then push it in to select. Amazon refers to this as a "five-way control" because it's up, down, right, left, and select. Anyone who has used a remote control for a Tivo, satellite, or cable box in the last 10 years will instantly know how to use the control. It also makes it possible to scroll right and left of text in order to bring up menu options.

Magazines and newspapers, two things that I absolutely love on the Kindle, are much, much easier to navigate with the Kindle 2. In fact, it's so obvious now that I can't believe Amazon didn't do it like this to begin with. You get a straightforward table of contents, with sections from the magazine in question. Next to each section is the number of articles in each section. You can select the section's name to go straight to the first article, or click on the number to see a detailed sub-table of contents for that section, with longer descriptions of each article.

Reading Newsweek and the New York Times on the Kindle is now much better than reading the print editions. Now I really wish every magazine was available on the Kindle! I'm still pushing hard for The Economist and Rolling Stone. Come on, publishers!

Nice little tweaks and additions are scattered throughout. For example, the little status bar at the bottom of every page now shows you what percentage of the way through a book you are. This helps a great deal to duplicate the feeling of "I'm half way through this book" that you get from a physical book.

Size Does Matter
Amazon fixed all but two thing I didn't like about the original Kindle. I felt, and still feel, that the Kindle needs some sort of built-in reading light, or at least a custom-made "snap on" light that is low profile and fits neatly onto the device. And, I opined that what the Kindle really needed was a larger screen - I felt that it needed about a 9" to 10" diagonal screen, one that would let you read a book page at approximately the same size as the print edition. And magazine articles would also "feel" about the right length.

But when the Kindle 2 came out, I though, oh well. I'll continue to just use a clip-on reading light, clamping it in ugly fashion to the top of the Kindle. And, it looks like they just couldn't manage to get a larger screen, so I'll just buy this one and --

Crap. The Kindle DX is Announced.
Well, damn. Only six weeks after I got my Kindle 2, Amazon announces the Kindle that I really want: The Kindle DX. Yup. A larger sceen, almost 10" diagonally. The screen it should've been from the start. With auto rotation. And native reading of PDF files. Literally everything except a light.

I've watched all the videos for the Kindle DX I can find. I've seen the pictures. I'm salivating for its arrival. I pre-ordered one the day they were announced, even though they won't be shipping this reading wonder until "summer" (which could mean anywhere from late June to late September, really).

I've read the criticisms lobbed Amazon's way over the price point - the Kindle DX will be a whopping $489, and the Kindle 2 will remain at its current $359. For me, a Constant Reader, this price is worth it. I find it interesting to read the snarky comments on Engadget and Gizmodo trashing the device, with person after person saying they'll never buy one until it has a color screen or blah blah blah. (An aside: Of what use would a color ebook reader be? Every book I've read consists of exactly two colors: white paper and black ink. And no, I'm not counting graphic novels / comic books. Those will always need to be in glossy print).

The Kindle Market
I get the Kindle. I really do. And I think anyone who reads a lot - people who list their hobby as "reading", people who regularly buy lots of books - they will want a Kindle. As for anyone else? I can't see why they'd ever want a device that is a dedicated book reader at all.

I'm reminded of a friend of mine, who was listening in on a conversation me and some other guys were having about an iPod. He volunteered that he didn't have an iPod, and couldn't understand why he'd want one. We all looked at him funny, and I said "Well, what do you listen to music on now"? He said, "I don't even listen to music. I don't like music, and I don't own any CDs or records or anything". And my answer was: "Then there is absolutely no reason at all for you to own an iPod".

So, if your'e one of the many tech geeks out there who looks at the Kindle and says "Why? I already have an iPhone, I can read web pages on that", or "Blech! It's not in color. I can't read graphic novels on it", or "It has to display video and play music and accept a mouse and..." then I have to say: You're not in the target market. You don't need a Kindle, nor should you want one. And please go away and stop bothering me, OK?

But for those of us who Read. Read every night. Read all the time. Read magazines that consist of nothing but printed words, magazines where the only picture is the one on the cover or the occasional graph on the inside. Read the New York Times Book Review. Read works in translation. Read the classics, new and old. Read read read read... We need a Kindle. You need a Kindle. You want a Kindle.

You want to be able to buy a new book at 2 in the morning, have it instantly delivered to you in about a minute, and start reading immediately. You want to be able to highlight sections and save them for reference later. You to be able to get on a plane and bring a hundred books with you, on a device that weighs less than a pound.

So, if the above description fits you, and you don't already have a Kindle, then go to Amazon now and order one. If you can afford it and if you can wait until "summer", then I'd suggest waiting for the Kindle DX. But on the other hand... well, this economy ain't gonna stimulate itself, y'know.