Modelland. Here begins the chronicle of my second run at Modelland.
I just want to start off with something here. A problem I’ve found in talking about bad books or movies or games or whatever. Sometimes I find that, when you’re getting into something that’s bizarre, it tends to sound awesome.
I’ll give you an example. I was talking about the movie The Escape Plan just this morning, and described it like this: “Well, Stallone and Schwazenegger have to excape (that’s what I think the movie should have been, the excape plan) from the same prison that I’m pretty sure was in Face/Off, and they blow up the Jesus guy with a missile and 50-cent is their tech guy.”
If someone described that movie to me, I would want to see it. That sounds like the perfect movie, really.
But what happens when you describe something terrible by kind of explaining how terrible it is, well, there’s fun to be had. And there was fun in the movie. And when you describe it, you have to think , “Why didn’t I enjoy that more…oh yeah, because it was like 2 minutes of fun in 2 hours of movie.” That’s the problem. Not the absence of fun, but the ratio of fun to not fun. 50-cent being the tech guy occupies 10% of my review, but he was in like 2% of the movie. The Jesus guy is the Jesus guy to me, but it’s not like anyone in the movie acknowledges how funny it is to blow up Jesus with a missile.
Which kind of brings us to the other problem. When I talk about Stallone being a prison escape artist, I know that’s stupid. I’m not so sure that The Escape Plan knows it. If a movie kind of knows it’s stupid, things tend to work out a little better. For example, Stallone/Kurt Russel vehicle Tango Cash. I’m pretty convinced that at least some of the people involved with that had a pretty good idea that it was pretty stupid. With Escape Plan, I’m not convinced. Maybe a couple people had an idea, but I don’t think most of the cast and crew realized they were making a hilarious movie, and therefore it doesn’t feel like a hilarious movie. It’s mostly kind of boring.
Modelland is 569 pages long. It’s jammed with crazy. Packed to the gills? Balls to the wall? Is that the same? It’s filled to the balls with crazy.
I have a suspicion that, in some ways, it’s going to sound fun to read this. When I describe just how tortured the whole thing is, I think it’s going to sound pretty fun.
Let me reassure you. Although it’s fun to discuss, it’s not fun to read. Based on my previous experience, it’s painful. Even at a few pages per day, it’s a slog.
Let me reassure you, at this time I am NOT recommending that others read this book, and it’s my goal to have this review series be a hell of a lot more fun than the book itself. By the time I’m through, you’ll know everything you need to know about Modelland, and then some.
Without further ado, let’s start with the introduction.
The intro is a few pages of italicized type that makes no sense. One of my least favorite ways to start a narrative, just throw me in with a bunch of crazy words that mean nothing. Throw me into the body of someone I’ve never met, who is mid-conversation with someone else I’ve never met, and don’t worry about bringing me up to speed. No time. We only have 569 pages here. Let’s get clipping along!
Rather than parse the text, which I don’t think is comprehensible until you’ve read the book, I want to include my favorite portion from the introduction.
The Land you thirst for has loomed at the top of the mountain in Metopia for as long as you can remember. But for most of the year, it’s covered in fog, its color changing with each passing day as if it’s a gargantuan mood ring. You begin your mornings staring at the fog, longing for the fateful evening when it will turn a golden yellow and then, finally, like a push-up brassiere, lift.
Okay. Let’s just…okay.
It’ll never work for me to stay this picky through the entire book. But this little paragraph is so horrific.
I mean, I have to say, 250 pages into reading this, ANY editor would probably say, “Fuck this shit. Just let her say whatever. Who cares? I only work here because they pretend not to notice I smoke at my desk.”
I picture ALL editors as J. Jonah Jameson, by the way.
What I mean is, if this happened 250 pages in, I would think it was dumb, but I’d let it go. Because by then I know what to expect. But in paragraph two there are some pretty good reasons this cannot stand.
This little line at the end, the one about how fog lifts like a brassiere?
Here’s a good tip if you’re using a simile. Reword the sentence with a different verb to test whether what you’re saying makes sense.
Example
The fog lifts.
The bra lifts.
Now, replace the verb with a synonym.
The fog disappears.
The bra disappears.
Oh, shit. Right?
I might have a fundamental misunderstanding of the way a bra works. I might. It is not my understanding that, like fog, a bra dissipates in the presence sunshine, wind, or, as I understand it here, ill-defined magic. With the exception of that Scott Baio movie where he had some sort of magic power and mostly used it to make bras disappear. You know, that one. The one that really seemed like a Charles in Charge prequel movie, but they were like, “Hmm…being in charge isn’t enough. Let’s give him a superpower or something, or like a sassy parrot.”
When the word “lift” is used with fog, it means “dissipate”. Right? The fog dissipated.
When the word “lift” is used with a bra, it means “elevate.”
If this sounds right to you, then Tyra’s little comparison here means that she thinks either
A) Fog goes away by ascending into the sky, where it remains always.
or
B) Bras have a tendency to disappear.
Now, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Tyra’s right. Maybe there’s a fog/bra connection I’m not aware of, and this is San Francisco’s big secret. Not only is it foggy, but the fog somehow replaces your standard bra. Which is why so many San Francisco hippie ladies burned their bras back in the day. They didn’t need that shit. They had the gentle caress of simple humidity to hold things steady.
But I kind of doubt it. I kind of think what happened here is Tyra picked what she thought was a good comparison because both phrases have the word “lift”, and no one told her No.
I think that’s one of my big questions with this book. Who was involved that could have told Tyra No? And did they? And if they didn’t, why? Where are the true villains in this story, the editors?
Because, like I said, after 250 pages of this craziness, I’ll be sick of it too. But to have that kind of weird fuck-up on PAGE ONE!? Page one. The first page. The part that every person who opens this book is likely to read.
To have a simile that just doesn’t work is a strange and prophetic start for what we’re headed for here.