CSI: Wasilla (update: January 12, 2009)
I don’t have a stomach for murder.
Guess that’s why to date, I haven’t seen one single episode of Law & Order, CSI, or it’s 854,211 offshoots (ie. CSI: Wasilla).
The public’s fascination with murder is not a recent fetish. The sensational news reports of Jack the Ripper in 19th century London’s Whitechapel to the Boston Strangler in the 60s, and all those lurid 70s private detective magazines are just descendants from times when public executions in town squares were viewed as entertainment.
The most shocking TV moment in 2008 for me was a scene when a couple in Discovery Channel’s Cash Cab was asked a question about serial killers. The girl chimed enthusiastically, “Ohmigod! I should totally know this one, I LOVE Serial Killers!” It’s not the only instance, as I have known many well-adjusted, family women who voraciously read bios on murderers and detailed accounts of murder scenes. The stuff makes me cringe.
I did read Thomas Harris’s Hannibal, even though the Loci Method (described as Jesuit Matteo Ricci’s Memory Palace after Cicero’s story of Simonides) was the biggest draw in the book for me. The Memory Palace is architecture as mnemonic device, where the layout of a building is used to aid one’s memory. Around 500 BC, the Greek Simonides of Ceos was having dinner with his pal Scopas when he decided to step out to have a cigarette. Scopas outsourced his banquet hall to Roman contractors because he didn’t want to provide a 401 K plan. So not only did the contractors hire illegal Scots who jumped Hadrian’s Wall to apply for Bank of America credit cards, they also took ages to complete the structure, vindictively slapping together a poorly built structure which collapsed and killed everyone when an overweight guest suddenly decided to perform interpretive macarena.
After his smoke, Simonides realized he forgot his breath mints when he heard the ambulance tearing around the corner, so he had to hurry and sort through the rubble and dead bodies. In order for him to recall the position of the last dinner guest he saw with a pack of Eclipse mints, he had to resort to his memory. That’s how the Method of Loci came about.
As you can see by the ease with which I recalled this story, my Memory Palace is basically a cardboard box.
I think to appreciate the horror of Hannibal Lecter, one has to spend some time in the kitchen with a real life culinary master. I will always remember how startled I was when I first saw my favorite tv chef, sweet Jacques Pepin demonstrating how to slice french bread. The sheer violence and precision of his (very hairy) arms bringing down the knife raised my eyebrows, which was then accompanied by a nervous scamper to hide behind my stuff animals. Also, if you’ve ever had to practice his famous 20 second deboning of a whole chicken for a ballottine, you’ll probably learn more about silencing a lamb than all the CSI you can stomach.
