Who is great in art is not necessarily great in life, so the cliche reports. Dostoyevsky is our poster boy. Disagreeable, broke, irascible, drunk, angry and relentlessly unpleasant and aggressively righteous, why wouldn't he be my hero? Just finished The Brothers Karamazov and the occasional digressive plot jumps aside, it is the masterpiece they'd have you believe, those unctuous holders of cultural elite cards in the lower lower Manhattan of a Californian's nightmares. I don't know what else I can do in the Dosty sweepstakes- the only taunter is Volume Five of Joseph Frank's biography, a hundred pages down from a year ago and 700 to go. How a man that looks like Frank could have managed 800 final pages is a mystery for monkeys and Shakespeare- the man is a barely breathing skull. But what a skull! What an achievement! I haven't counted but my god- it might be 3000 pages by now, and without gossip or trivia, but with a keen and sustained analytical eye. It's a modern miracle, far greater than Lazarus or the '75 Warriors. The sheer swish of the man's critical faculties could blow Bradley's biases out his ears like a tornado purging a Cherokee tent town. Author and critic are serious motherfuckers- us critters picking at new variations of fried calimari in the Oakland night are nitpickers and placeholders and peanut gallery nobodies. These are the real brothers, the ones you don't want at your Graduate table but who deliver for you in the early morn and in the hours when the white noise blanketing consciousness threatens your harmony. Dostoyevsky will threaten that promise of future quiet but with intellectual, not aural, discordancy. Enter the dialectic, and resist the mad proselytizer if you dare.

Orange for Holland, Hup Hup, Oranje! Ian Buruma's Murder in Amsterdam is a workmanlike overview of the two murders that threaten Holland's smug self-righteousness. I didn't learn a whole lot, but I've been following this shit. If you haven't and you're curious about yet another angle on the Euros and Islam question, you could do worse. Two gruesome political assassinations in a few years has opened the door to previously repressed questions about the place of immigrants in Dutch society, and it has forced the country to confront difficult questions about its own definitions of tolerance and what multiculturalism really means and how far they're willing to go to both encourage and fund such a Holland. What happens when a country's self-definition runs into ugly realities that force it to lower its national nose and stare into the orange mirror? Will it overreact and throw the brown men out? Will it cling to old illusions and press forward with open borders and open coffers for all? Or will it find some medium that more realistically addresses cultural, financial and political necessities?

The Sharks won a game on Sunday against their arch nemesis, the Dallas Stars. They are now 6-12 in their last 18 games and are clinging to the final playoff spot in the Western Conference. Do not argue with me- this is the worst collective Bay Area sporting era since I've been around, and that's 1969, fuckface.

I watched Memento for the third time last night and it still holds up. Heartworn Highways, a 1975 documentary without commentary about country upcomers like Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt and David Allan Coe, was also worth 90 minutes, but it didn't hold that blowing candle to last year's TVZ doc, Be Here to Love Me. If you haven't seen it, do yourself a favor and leave the woman at the spa. I'd say four Moylan's Hopsickles ought to ease you through, and you'll be buying all his stuff after you peel your bawling face off the vinyl couch. Highest rec, gents, for Be Here To Love Me. Send me the bill if you don't dig it. I'll pay you in Damnation, Belgian style, patio time, preferably before noon.