Invisible Lizard's Unusual Oranges

McSweeney's 38

2011-08-23T18:44:00.000-05:00

Got the latest McSweeney's today. Sort of bland. Missing the usual introduction page that I joyously re-type here for easy reference. Couple of authors in there that I recognize, most I don't. I'll paste in the blurb from the website in lieu of anything more fun to read:

"Issue 38 is a real beauty, with stories pulled in from all over the world—a grand tour, in prose, of a dozen places you have perhaps neglected to visit, up to now! There is Ariel Dorfman in Paris, with one eye on Chile, Bisi Adjapon in Ghana, Chanan Tigay with the Israeli Arabs of the Desert Scouts Brigade, Nathaniel Rich exploring the Northeast Kingdom, Steven Millhauser somewhere far away, deep, deep in the woods, and new fiction from Dave Eggers—and more stories, besides, plus a comic and color photography and a cover that'll earn you admiring glances in whatever environment you're in." (It goes on a bit, but I think you get the idea...)

Not too sure how impressed I am that Dave Eggers (who I will admit I tend to admire very much) put "Chapter One" of his as-yet-untitled (and presumably unfinished) "forthcoming novel" in the pages of his own literary magazine. Maybe he's done that before and I never noticed. Now I'm going to have to go back through the back issues and look.

McSweeney's 37

2011-04-27T20:38:00.001-05:00

The latest McSweeney's arrived today. At first I thought they were going with some sort of postmodern Battlestar Galactica theme. (The book has 2 corners cut off, similar to every book shown in the 2004-2009 re-imagined series, something that several online [thus questionably accurate, and I note ironically that I'm merely adding to the noise, here] sources state was done purposefully to indicate the corners they needed to cut in order to bring in the show on budget.) But, no, on closer inspection, it appears to be the foundation for an optical illusion. Clever stuff. I should have known they'd never be that geek-lit.

The book itself has got some authors I've very much enjoyed in the past: Jonathan Franzen (who's latest, Freedom, sits high on my stack of books to read), Joyce Carol Oates, Joe Meno (if you haven't read his short novel, The Boy Detective Fails, you are definitely missing out on an odd treat). Can't wait to read those. It has 16 stories in all, including 5 (or 6, depending on how you count) stories from Kenya, one of which has a series of full-color illustrations on nearly each page, painted by the author. (Those Kenyans! Up to their usual gimmicks, I see.)

And now, because I do this, and have done so for a while, and once started I can't seem to stop, I will leave you with the lengthy narrative from the credits page which rebuts the modern standard and almost cliched theory that reading (and through a corollary: writing and publish) is dead.

© 2011 McSweeney's Quarterly Concern and the contributors, San Francisco, California. This has been a strange few years for the book industry. There have been many changes and realignments, and these changes have led countless commentators to predict that (a) reading is dead; (b) books are dead; (c) publishing is dead; (d) all printed matter is dead. Or that all of the above, if not already dead, will be dead very soon. ¶These are upsetting predictions, given they're based on assumptions and attitudes, and not data. Instead they point to the one reliable aspect of the literary world: that every decade, no matter the climate or the realities of the business, excitable people, many of them inside the industry themselves, will claim that reading is dead, that book are obsolete. It's a common but ill-informed line of thinking, and it leads to some bad decisions and bad outcomes. ¶Back in May of 2010, amidst some of the most dour prognostications about the state of the industry, we asked fifteen or so young researchers to look into the health of the book. Their findings provide proof that not only are books very much alive, but that reading is in exceptionally good shape—and that the book-publishing industry, while undergoing some significant changes, is, on the whole, in very good health. ¶Let's start with some bedrock data that disproves any statements that the industry is in freefall. According to Nielsen's BookScan—a sales-monitoring service widely regarded as representing 70 of 75 percent of trade sales—Americans bought 751,729,000 books in 2010. Excepting 2008 and 2009, when sales reached 757 million and 777 million, respectively, that's man millions more books sold than in any other year BookScan has recorded. (Five years earlier, in 2005, the total was just 650 million.) The decline from the all-time high of 2009 can't be overlooked, but it's worth remembering—in 2010, in the middle of a crippling recession, with unemployment in the double digits, people still bought more than 750 million books. (In all likelihood, quite a few more, considering BookScan's tendency to underestimate.) And that figure doesn't include e-book sales, which are no thought to make up as much as 9 percent of the overall book market—and which are growing by the year, representing at least a partial antidote to declining hard-copy sales. So: despite the prognostications, and the poor economic circumstances, total U.S. book sales in 2010 remained well above a billion books. ¶Other statistics—literacy, library circulation, overall book production—paint a similarly reassuring picture. Here are some examples, with each statistic using the latest available figures.
In 2008, there were more original book titles published in print that ever before: 289,729 different titles in the U.S. alone.
In 2007, there were more U.S. publishers than ever before: 74,240 (that's compared with 397 in 1925). This figure has been rising every year since the data began being collected.
In 2005, there were more published authors living in the U.S. than ever before: 185,275 (compared, for example, with eighty-two in 1850).
Adult literacy in the U.S. is also at an all-time high: 240,220,540 adults (98 percent of the adult population) were considered literate in 2010.
Library membership in the U.S. is at an all-time high: 208,904,000 Americans held library cards in 2009. (That's 68 percent of the population, the greatest number since the American Library Association began keeping track in 1990.)
Library circulation is at an all-time high: 2.28 billion library materials were circulated in 2008 (that's 7.7 circulations per capita) compared to 1.69 billion in 1999 (6.5 circulations per capita).
¶That's all good news. So much good news that we hope you'll feel armed with the numbers to combat the next lazy assumption that book, reading, novels, or literacy in general is dead. It isn't, by any available measure. ¶Still, though, there persists the idea that Reading Is Dead, and this assumption requires a corollary assumption, which is that there was some other, Golden Age of Reading and Writing Somewhere in the Past. For those who lament the death of reading, there is never a clear sense of just when this Golden Age was, but the idea is always there—that we are a fallen society, and that some earlier era was when books were read in greater volume and with greater depth and enthusiasm. ¶So let's consider this the Golden Age of Reading and Writing that every successive generation and age is measured against. When would such an era be? ¶Let's start with Dante. Sure 1321, when The Divine Comedy was published, was a time wherein the majority of citizens were walking around piazzas, reciting Ovid and Sophocles and talking about Dante's latest works? Not exactly. At that time, barely 10 percent of the Italian population could read. And given that Dante toiled at a time before the arrival of Gutenberg's press, books were incredibly scarce, and prohibitively expensive. The average Italian citizen—even if literate—had virtually no access to books. In the Italy of the fourteenth century, and indeed across Europe, reading for pleasure was an activity enjoyed by precious few. ¶So maybe it wasn't Dante's era that was the presumed Golden Age. How about Shakespeare's? People were coming to the Globe Theater to see his plays performed mere weeks after he'd written them! Surely this was the era that marked the pinnacle of literate society, from when our decline began. ¶But no. The statistics from his lifetime, 1564 to 1616, aren't much better than those from Italy during the time of Dante. In Shakespeare's era, the vast majority of the books and pamphlets that were printed, bought, and read were practical hexes and quasi-religious tracts. Shakespeare himself was not read widely, in part because by 1600, only 40 percent of the English population was literate (about 1,680,000 people). Books read and bought for pleasure were rare, and still expensive. As it had been for hundreds of years, the reading life was one for the very well-educated (and wealthy) few. For example, the first printing of John Milton's Paradise Lost, in 1667, was a mere 1,300 copies, and it took two years for them all to sell. So while those years were a time of some monumental writing, it was not our Golden Age of Reading. ¶Let's jump forward a century of so. Certainly the time of Jonathan Swift and William Blake was one of great and widespread literary awareness? Not exactly. In 1792, the most widely circulated newspaper in England, the Times, made it into the hands of a mere three thousand customers a day, about .04 percent of the population. By 1800, literacy in England had reached just 62 percent for a population of roughly 8 million (having risen only about 20 percent in the previous two hundred years). The most popular books were still religious texts, and most households were lucky to own a handful of books—and those were not likely literary in nature. ¶Back in the nascent United States, things were worse. At the time of the signing of the Constitution, in 1787, only about 60 percent of about 3 million American adults could read. And though Jefferson might have had a vast personal library, most citizens did not. Owning large numbers of books was still prohibitively expensive for most. ¶So let's set aside the lifetimes of Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Swift and Jefferson. Their eras, remember, were without systems of public education, and thus literacy was not equally accessible to all. Given the tiny percentages of people who could not only read, but had the time and money to read literature, their times cannot provide our Golden Age. ¶Would the nineteenth and twentieth centuries qualify? These were the years when literacy rates in America exploded. In 1870, about 80 percent of 38.5 million Americans were literate. BY 1940, almost 95 percent of 131 million citizens could read. ¶But today, as we noted, more than 240 million American adults (aged fourteen years and older), of about 245 million altogether, are literate. ¶In 1950, 5,285,000 Americans aged twenty-five and over had attained a bachelor's degree—about 6 percent of the twenty-five-and-older population. ¶In 2009, about 60 million Americans in that age group had one, making for a 29 percent share of the same population. So those more recent decades don't eclipse our own time, either. ¶To state the obvious, there are more people in this country and on the planet than ever before, and that means that there are more potential readers. More widespread and democratic access to education here and around the world means that there are more literate people—over 3 billion, by the last calculation. And with book production at an all-time high, it follows that more people are reading than at any time in human history. So that's good news.

Shameless

2011-04-23T11:47:00.001-05:00

Okay, I know this is shameless (which, by the way, is also an excellent Showtime series that just wrapped the first season... trust me when I say that William H. Macy leaves his Jerry Lundegaard pigeon-hole for good... but I digress, shamelessly) but I just got a new toy, and I've been dying to try it out on Blogger.

You may have to indulge me for the next few days/weeks/months...

The $1900 Screw

2011-03-12T17:24:00.002-05:00

Let me tell you the story of the $1900 screw. (Note to self: check phrasing on that before publishing.)

Screw-head, to be precise.* Sort of a funny story. Not funny in the "ha ha" sense. Mostly funny in the "shoulda taken that left turn at Albuquerque" sense.

A couple months ago, I renewed the registration on both of our cars. You know how that goes. Proof of insurance. Proof of inspection (in some states, including ours.) Send in your check. Once you've done that, you get a new sticker to put on the license plate with one more year incremented. I'm sure it's mostly the same in every state.**

We've got license plate holders that wrap around the plates themselves (and proudly display the name of the dealership where we bought the cars so many years ago, which begs a whole new question), and in order to properly apply these stickers, you've really got to take off those holders. They cover the edges of the sticker ever so slightly. But no problem; I do this every year.

This year, however, K's car was in a bad mood the day I went to apply her new sticker. One of the license plate screws wouldn't come off. I hosed it down with WD-40 and tried again: nothing. So, since the screw head had a hex shape to it, I got out my socket wrench and gave it a good hard tug.

And tore the head right off. Damn. There wasn't enough of the screw itself sticking out to grab hold of and try to twist out (even if it had been loose, which it definitely wasn't). And when I took apart the back panel of her car (she's got an SUV so it's screwed into the back door) it wasn't accessible from that side, either.

Temporarily defeated, I put the sticker on the plate and the plate (and holder) back on her car, held on by the one screw only. Every time we shut the back door, it rattled. Every time we hit a decent bump in the road, it rattled. I figured it was a matter of time before that one screw came loose and the whole thing just fell off.

So finally last month when we called the dealer and asked if they could fix it (figuring that someone, somewhere, much have special tools for removing stubborn, headless screws, if the "right tool for every job" motto is accurate).

"Sure," they said. "Fifty bucks."

Fifty? Bend me over, why don't you. But, as the man says, what're you gonna do? Needed to be done. So we dropped her car off in the morning, asked if they could do an oil change at the same time, and gave them all day to do those two things. They said it would be ready by the end of the day.

We got there at 5:45 that night (they close at 6:00) and noticed, sort of a peculiar thing, that they were just pulling her car into the garage as we got there. (Yeah, they had all day and didn't start until the last 15 minutes.) Could be taken as a bad sign, but we remained optimistic. We waited. To well-past closing time. Eventually, our sales/service guy came out and said it was finished, but they couldn't fix the screw. They didn't have the right tools to get it out and suggested we take it to a body shop. Great. Trip wasted. But all things being equal, it could have been worse...

Yeah. Things get worse.

When they pulled the car around, they confessed that they hit one of the yellow concrete pylons in the garage. Hit it with our car. Or, to be precise, as this doofus got out to show us the damage, he claimed that the yellow post "jumped out and hit him as he was pulling out." Sure. Way to put a positive spin on it. I guess it wasn't your fault at all.

To their credit, they said they would, of course, fix the damage for free down at a body shop they use. It wasn't much more than a yellow scrape down one of the back quarter panels. And we asked if they would get us a quote for some other minor repair work that we needed at the same time. (Both K and I have put some small dents and scratches into the front and back of her car over the years. I shan't elaborate.) And we insisted that they throw in the screw for free which was the entire reason we came there in the first place.

All told, our end of the bill was $1900 (yeah, "minor" repairs). They did end up charging us for the screw, which, yes, got fixed. It took almost two weeks, but they gave us a loaner car (similar to K's SUV) for the duration, so that was nice. And her car is back to pristine condition once again. Except for the seatbelt inside which B.B. has nearly chewed through.

So there you go. The story of the $1900 screw.

I'm going to keep this thing as a reminder. Of what, I'm not sure, but the next time I can't get a screw out, I'm not going to apply as much torque as humanely possible, that's for damn sure.

* Makes me think of this scene in Army of Darkness, which, if you've seen it, you'll understand why and if you haven't you'll wonder what in the world is going on in this 2 minute clip.

** Back in Missouri, those stickers were amazingly easy to peel off, so much so that theft was a problem, so we were instructed to apply the sticker then take a razor blade and cross through them so if anyone did try to peel them off, all they'd get was pieces. Not a bad strategy. Out here in North Carolina, these things are damn near impossible to peel off. I suspect they use Gorilla Glue as adhesive.

Organ Donors

2011-02-15T20:50:00.000-05:00

K and I were out to dinner and chatting about being organ donors (for some reason). She's against it. (Don't ask. She has her reasons.) I'm for it. I mean, why not? I'm dead. What possible use do I have for my organs?

She conceded her eyes. Literally. "I guess I'd donate my eyes," she said, finally.

"So wait," I said, thinking it through, "You're O-Negative, right? That's the universal donor, isn't it?"

"Yeah."

This will prove how much/little I know about organ donors. Is it all down to blood type? Or are there other methods of determining compatibility? I have no clue. Bear with me, here.

"So if you and I were in an accident, together, I mean a bad one, and you were killed instantly but I was left alive, barely alive, and let's say all I needed was a kidney, you wouldn't be able to give me one of yours because you're not a registered organ donor."

To give her credit, she considered that for about a second before she said, "You'd want to live without me?"

Touché.

Quote of the Day - Star Wars Edition

2011-02-14T07:46:00.000-05:00

"Don't be a Darth Maul."

- K to me. I don't know what prompted it, exactly. We were making the bed together before I went off to work, and I was teasing her a little, or something. Doesn't matter. Point is, how cool is it that she even knew who that was? I, of course, called her on it, and said, "Do you even know who Darth Maul is?" To which she replied, "Of course I do. He's the guy with the double light saber." Whoa. Even cooler. Right there.

What If, My Muse

2011-02-13T16:45:00.000-05:00

So here it is February already, well over a month into the year, 6/52-nds gone (unless my deficiency at fractions has misled me), and my resolution to write 11 short stories this year is faring poorly. Which is not to say that I haven't been writing at all, per se, or doing things related to writing. I certainly have been thinking about it an awful lot. I've tarted up my sister site where I've got a couple short stories posted, and I added a few more. Sure, all of them were written back in my creative writing hey days in the 90's, but I may have tweaked a word choice or two before I clicked "publish" and moved on.

I've also pulled out all of my old journals where I used to lazily jot down story ideas and have gone through them with (the literary equivalent of) a fine-toothed comb to see if anything there is worth writing. And sure, there are a few possibilities.

I started writing one such story in January, an idea I had years ago, essentially a horribly complicated Möbius Strip of interwoven characters and plots which sounds like it will be a good one but probably not the best story to start with. A page into it and I gave up. I felt like trying to lift 300 pounds of free weights after a decade away from the gym. Too much for these poor, tired, neglected muscles.

I've got another story I want to jump into, but it needs some work before I can start. I used to think of story ideas like uncut diamonds (a poor metaphor, but bear with me). I'd come up with something and need to turn it around in my head over and over, whittle away at it to see if there was a workable gem underneath, sometimes shifting characters about, adding plot elements, taking them away, turning the whole thing on its head and looking at it from a different angle, again and again. Sometimes, most times in fact, after all of that thinking, there wasn't anything left. I'd whittled it down to nothing. And then I'd move on to another idea. And believe me, back in the day, the ideas were aplenty.

Sadly, that's not the case anymore. I've realized something, as I've been thinking about writing these 11 short stories: I've lost the ability to actively "What If."

For those of you not familiar with the term, this is the ability to look at a situation—could be anything from a glimpse at a stranger in a shopping mall, a scene in a movie, maybe even a random memory just passing through your head—pause it in time and think: "what if something different happens now?" This is how stories are born. At least, that's how they get started in my head. I used to do this constantly, so often that I didn't bother writing most of them down because I took for granted that I would have an inexhaustible supply. Ideas were born from the most minute things all the time.

I think part of it had to do with the general distractedness of youth. Time spent in front of TV and movies where you're inundated with changing images every 3.5 seconds leads to a natural state of attention deficiency. That combined with a natural propensity for mental wandering led me to see most things around me as series of "What If's." I allowed (in fact, encouraged) my mind to wander freely. If I saw a couple arguing in a parking lot I would immediately construct a scenario explaining how they ended up there or where they would end up next. If I saw an old building, I would think of what it was like back when it was new and who might have lived there. Or even who was living there now, and why. I wrote an entire short story based on the fact that one day, in an elevator at school, I noticed that the colors behind the buttons had changed. (Someone had replaced the light orange bulbs with a slightly darker orange.) All sorts of scenarios ran through my head on any given day. Whenever I needed a new "rough diamond" to work with, I just grabbed the next one that came by. Invariably my mind would catch on a detail somewhere and simply venture down a different path that always started with "What If?"

And dammit if I'm just not doing that as much these days. I was aware of this decline in my creative process as I started on this "11-stories-in-1-year" resolution. My "What If's" lately (over the past decade) have been fewer and farther between. And believe me, I've been writing them down. I don't take them for granted any more. Now that I need them again for this little project, I find myself struggling. Can I recover the automatic mental divergences that I used to take for granted?

So, here I am with a year 6/52-nds gone and a big fat ZERO stories written so far. I chose the number 11 mostly because I knew that November would be a month off for me as I intend to do NaNoWriMo again and work on a novel which leaves 11 months left to write stories. If you assume one per month (which is, itself, quite aggressive considering that at my peak I was churning out maybe 6 a year) then I'm already behind. Inauspicious beginnings.

Then you have my inclination towards procrastination. Case in point: I had a couple hours set aside to write on this lovely Sunday afternoon, all of the weekend chores done, and K and I quietly working in our respective offices. I've got the above mentioned story that I want to work on fresh in my mind. The laptop is charged. Nothing to stop me.

And instead I write this long blathering missive whining about the loss of my creativity.

Figures.

I Digress Upwards

2011-01-22T04:44:00.000-05:00

I sent out an email yesterday with these words in it: "I've got a stack of work I need to catch up on."

Odd sentence there, especially coming from someone who (infrequently and foolishly) prides himself on using proper English. Are those really two prepositions at the end of that sentence?

The alternative just doesn't sounds right. "I've got a a stack of work on which and upwards with I need to catch." (Or something to that effect.)

Who talks like that? Modern Grammarians have petitioned to throw out that antiquated rule, and I, for one, am in favor of it. Sloppy writing can lead to the occasional trailing preposition, and let's avoid those for sure, but sometimes the alternative can sound even worse.

Reminds me of this quote, often attributed to Winston Churchill (I can't be bothered to look it up) and probably, at best, it's been bastardized over the years: "Ending a sentence in a preposition is something up with which I shall not put." Well put.

Further reminds me of an old English Grammar joke, popular in the obscure circles I traveled in during my college days. "A prospective student visiting Harvard stops a professor in the quad and asks, 'Can you tell me where the Registrar's office is at?' The professor says in his stuffiest voice, 'This is Harvard, young man, where we do not end our sentences in prepositions.' The young man thinks for a second then rephrases, 'Can you tell me where the Registrar's office is, asshole?'"

McSweeney's 36

2011-01-09T07:22:00.000-05:00

Those lovable diehards at McSweeney's have done it again. They've sent me yet another quarterly gem almost as challenging to fit on my bookshelf (though not quite as challenging as last year's Sunday newspaper format) as it is fun to explore and read. This is—by all outward appearances—a square cardboard box with a human head drawn on all six sides (including the severed bit of neck on the bottom) that opens up to reveal 11 different "pieces" inside, including:

An unfinished novella (?) by Michael Chabon
A play about a Muslim-American family (ironically [?] called The Domestic Crusaders)
A short screen-play for a new Mike Meyers/Dana Carvey movie, wrapped in a brown envelope with a cover letter inside introducing the piece to prospective movie producers
A series of postcards depicting one larger piece of artwork
The longest fortune cookie "slip" I've ever seen, rolled and rubber-banded into a tight cylinder
The first chapter of Adam Levin's (so far) great debut novel The Instructions which I've started reading but got pushed aside because I'm currently tackling another great/large novel (oh, I haven't mentioned in here that I'm currently reading DFW's Infinite Jest... well, there you go, maybe I'll expound on that another time)
Among other things also thrilling to discover in this box/head.

Never sure exactly how to proceed with any McSweeney's offering, this one sort of demands that you keep the box close-by and, like a magician's hat, simply put your hand in from time to time to see what you pull out. $26 at your local independent bookstore (or about $15 at Amazon—I note with amusement the usual "Tell the publisher I’d like to read this book on a Kindle" link below the image... as if) is a good deal for this level of ingenuity. Not trying to peddle someone else's wares on you. Just saying.

Finally, if you'd like to make your own box head, print out the below and fold along the lines (scissors and tape not included).

Now, as usual, here's the blurb from the credits page, always fun to read:

I'd love nothing more than a chance to crack your forehead open along a tidy seam and give the contents of your mind a nice gore-free sift. This McSweeney's issue was conceived as an approximation of what that experience might feel like for the sifter (without, admittedly, any regard at all for the feelings or the rights of our mustachioed fantasy siftee). What would your head look like inside? Mine, I think, would look like a disorganized yellow filing cabinet. There's some fun stuff in there; some serious stuff; some fragments. There's an unexplainable but functional partial order to things. (I like my indefensible mind fine, it works for me, and so forth.) These kinds of thoughts—p1us the old TV commercial for Reach toothbrushes starring the cartoon man with the "Hip-top head," plus the gruesome old monster-faced Madballs toys—are what sparked issue 36.

It seemed like a good idea to include at least one abandoned or unfinished text in the issue. Michael Chabon answered the call, and the result—the enclosed Fountain City mini-book—laughably outclasses our original big dream of plundering someones hard drive for a disused Word document.

Not knowing about the box, Jack Pendarvis sent us Fancy Times—a suite of adventure stories that are written like crass 1961 abridgments of pulpy, meandering WWI-era yarns. We selected one of our many favorites, and Michael Kupperman gamely fleshed it out with the right kind of art. The result is tucked away here in the way that the 114 things I've bought on eBay since 1999 are tucked away in perfect places.

Wajahat Ali's play and Sophia Cara Frydman's illustrated story are the kind of writing projects that could be enjoyed by countless readers—but how do you get them into people's hands? How do you publish a brilliant play, or a handwritten mini-story with seven drawings, so that a reader will think to seek it out, so that they might be attracted to it, so that they might read it? A human-head box (drawn by the amazing Matt Furie) is an ideal delivery system for work like this, we hope.

We at McSweeney's continue to love mail, and the institution of mail, and all the surprises it can bring. Tim Heidecker and Gregg Turkington's script for an imaginary Mike Myers/Dana Carvey movie hit our inbox less than a week before presstime, and it instantly felt essential. Ian Huebert's "installment postcards" revive a delightful idea originated by the postcard publisher Franz Huld in 1905: send an artwork through the mail, one teasing piece at a time, until the full image is finally revealed to the recipient.

We've left some space in the box so that you can introduce your own ideas into it, Inception-style. If you email us a picture of yourself holding your box in your home, we'll mail you something extra to put in the box. What can you fit into it?

If a man were to approach me at my desk right now and tell me he could get me into your head for fifteen minutes for $200 without you knowing about it, I'd run to the ATM. If the price were $500, I'd put it on my credit card. I would pay no more than $600. In that spirit, I hope you agree that twenty-six dollars was a steal of a price for McSweeney’s 36, which you can presumably keep now until you're dead.

—Brian McMullen, managing editor & art director, McSweeney's

© 2010 McSweeney's Quarterly Concern and the contributors, San Francisco, California.

Has this ever happened to you?

2011-01-08T18:19:00.009-05:00

Sometimes I find myself deep in thought, my mind wandering literally in a different time and in a different world, all sense of reality lost, and I find that I'm holding my body completely and totally still. For a split second I feel perfectly content. Nothing is wrong in the world. Everything... everything is good. But the second passes quickly, for I suddenly realize I've stopped breathing.

(May 22, 1995)

Spoonerisms

2011-01-07T18:12:00.000-05:00

I have a note here from an old journal that I was keeping back when I was in school. I used this journal to write down short story ideas. Why I wrote this down, I don't know. I remember the class I was in when I heard this. It was a course on linguistics. One I really liked. Maybe this was the only notebook I had with me at the time. Entirely possible.

(Dated 4-17-95, I add for my own amusement's reference...)

A spoonerism is when you mix up the 1st two consonants of 2 words—after a history professor, the Reverend Spooner, who once said, "You hissed my mistory lecture."

New Resolution

2011-01-04T19:17:00.014-05:00

I seriously thought about re-hashing all of the old New Year's resolutions this time around again: eat better, exercise more, write the Great American Novel, etc. Blah, blah, blah. That lasted about ten seconds, the last nine of which were spent laughing at myself for even thinking I'd follow through with any of them this year.

The "novel" bit hurt, though. Yes, I've repeatedly failed, but not for lack of trying. I've attempted NaNoWriMo each of the past several years. (I've got the sweatshirt to prove it.) I've got a half dozen beginnings, maybe a few more that actually made it to 50,000 words of (what might be considered) "middle," but no endings. Maybe what I need are results a little more tangible.

Lately I've revisited some of my old short stories. Seems like not so long ago that I was writing these, but as the cursed date column in Windows Explorer points out, the last one was actually written in 1999. Sure, I've tinkered with a few since then, but nothing new in the past decade. I've got almost 30 (mostly horrible) short stories from the 90's but a big fat zero from the Naughties. I think I need to make a change for the Teens.

So this year, with no serious resolution in hand, and thinking that I'd like to do something different in 2011, I've decided to write some short stories. Eleven of them, in fact, because fuck it, why not. I like prime numbers and there's a little poetry in that. Eleven in 2011. Twelve seemed too much a cliché almost. (One per month? Bah.) One or two seemed like hardly a challenge.

I'm going to dive in with the idea that this could be the short story equivalent of NaNo. They don't need to be polished or great. They don't need to be read (readable) by anyone else. They don't need to be gems. They don't need to be long. Just done. Beginning, middle and end. Eleven of them.

Now, of course, the irony. I have a story in mind. Been turning it over in my mind for a few weeks. Something that shouldn't take too long to write. And as I sit down now ostensibly to write, what do I do? Scribble out a blog entry about the writing that I haven't started. (Sigh.) Ominous beginnings. Let's not hold our collective breath just yet.

Our Very Bookish Christmas

2010-12-25T20:50:00.010-05:00

K and I love books. Anyone who knows us (and especially anyone who has stepped their de-shoed feet into our house) knows this. Thus, it came as no surprise that the bulk of our Christmas shopping for each other was either on Amazon or in books stores. This was the collected book loot that we got this Christmas. (Click the image to expand, if you're really curious about the titles.)

Is She Drugged?

2010-11-16T06:37:00.000-05:00

The other day K and I had taken B.B. to the dog park for an hour in the morning, our usual routine (or, rather, I should say K's usual routine that I tend to join on the weekends), where she (B.B.) runs around untethered, gets into minimal mischief, and generally has a grand time playing/wrestling with other like-minded dogs. Sometimes a bad one gets into the mix, and we owners all have to stay on guard, but usually the dogs are happy to frolic amongst themselves.

So anyway, the other day we drove her to bagel joint on the way home. They have a nice outdoors seating section, so we got our bagels and coffee and sat down with B.B. between us. Once she realized she wasn't getting any of our food, she settled down and took a nap. After an hour of playing at the park with her "friends," she is a remarkably well-behaved dog the rest of the day. In fact, we discovered that dog park when she was about 8 months old and was nearly ready to drive us insane with her energy. It saved us all.

So there we were, sitting and eating, chatting, B.B. between us, and random people would come up and say something about her (she is a beautiful dog), this little girl and her mother came over and asked if they could pet her, and B.B. sat up and let them (she loves little girls for some reason, not so much little boys), and then this older guy walked over and asked, "Is that a Husky or a Malamute?"

Most people immediately assume she's a Husky. That's the more popular representative of her canine family. Most people have never heard of an Alaskan Malamute, but anyone who's familiar with these breeds could tell them apart in an instant. Huskies are smaller and generally have icy blue eyes (probably why they are so popular). Malamutes are bigger with deep brown eyes (definitely why I'm so smitten with B.B.). The fact that this guy even knew to ask was impressive.

"She's a Malamute," we said.

"I've had one," he said, and went on to explain that he'd rescued a Malamute and raised it and really liked it. "She was a lot of work, though," he added.

And they can be. Like I said, without daily exercise they can be a handful.

Then he asked, "Is she drugged?"

B.B. was just lying on the ground resting, peaceful, calm. Not the usual state for a Malamute when she's around people. My family has had Malamutes all my life. They are not quiet dogs. My parents have B.B.'s sister, Abigail. We got them from the same breeder, from the same litter. I've never met their dog, but my brother tells me she can be a handful. When he and his wife met B.B. for the first time earlier this year, they told me she looked just like Abigail... if Abigail was on Valium.

"No," we said, "Just tired. We take her to the park to wear her out."

The guy smiled and said, "Good idea."

McSweeney's 35

2010-08-12T17:16:00.038-05:00

From the credit's page:

By God, it never gets old. We're twelve years in the the life of this journal, and there's always something, or someone, that jolts us wide awake again, lest we get at all complacent about the possibility of words on the page. This time it started, if we remember correctly, with a query to Hilton Als: "You ever gonna write fiction?" we asked. See, we've been devout fans of his critical writings and magazine profiles for as long as he's been writing them, and so we wondered—given his lyricism, given his passion, given his ability to paint a moment so beautifully (have you read his profile of Derek Walcott? Has anyone ever captured a person, in a particular moment, in a particular place, so deftly?)—we wondered if Hilton had ever attempted, or hoped to attempt, fiction. Would not his skills be applicable to this form? If Hilton was one of the best prose stylists alive and working in the U.S., shouldn't we get the benefit of him writing fiction? "What, what?" we wondered, breath bated. "Well, it's unconventional," he said, and we said, "Yes, of course, only that, that's all we want or would expect from you." And so began about a year of correspondence, and excited editing and encouragement, resulting in the bold and brilliant and outrageously original piece included in this issue, called "His Sister, Her Monologue." It's only the second piece of fiction he's published, the last being in 1979. So we are proud to have it in our pages, knowing as we do that we exist, and are kept alive, by publishing writers like Hilton at their most daring and unprecedented. And of course then there's Roddy Doyle, without whom the world would be far dimmer. Thank God for him, and for him being reckless enough to entrust us with his stories. Here he gives us another portrait of modern Ireland, an Ireland that would scarcely have seemed possible even twenty years ago. In this issue we also have another instant classic by Mr. Millhauser, whom we have never met, living as he does far away and in the woods (we presume) but whom we also thank for his blind faith in us. Thank you also to a newer writer named Patrick Crerand, who reminds us of the literary humor we used to publish in greater quantity, and thank you also to the nation of Norway. There is a good deal of interest in the literature of Scandinavia right now, the world being in the thrall of Stieg Larsson and Per Petterson (who is included here, on page 249), to name a few. Our foray into Norwegian writing began a few summers ago, when one of our editors spent a week in Oslo, and there he met dozens of writers, all of them serious and most of them experimental, and on the spot asked them if they would put together a section for McSweeney's devoted to all that was happening in contemporary Norwegian writing. The man for the job was John Erik Riley, an affable (wouldn't he have to be?) half-American, half-Norwegian novelist-editor living in Oslo. We're so happy to bring you this primer, in hopes that it will push open the door, just a bit more, to the reading of more new fiction and poetry in translation. Thank you as always for indulging us.

Gross Out Contest

2010-05-20T21:02:00.000-05:00

K and I have this little contest going on: who can see the grossest thing. Mind you, it's not something we enjoy, but it just seems to happen. I'm sure you've seen them, too. You look around the corner and there's a deep, wide plumber's crack staring you in the eyes. Once we saw a woman with orangutan-caliber leg hair in a shopping mall. Or dead animals alongside the road. You get the picture. Just gross.

Typically we play this game when we're together and have a lot of fun pointing out the gross thing to the other, unsuspecting, partner. "Fun" may not be the right word. Sadistic glee, perhaps. Regardless, misery does love company.

Well, today at the dog park, K (by herself, she was not able to share this with me and include me in her suffering) basically won the contest until the end of time. I will never see anything gross enough to compete.

Ever.

She made this sign to be posted at the park to warn the perpetrator that she knows what they've done, she's onto them. I hope this person learns his (or her) lesson and never allows this again. To wit:

I Would Walk 500 Miles

2010-05-08T18:31:00.004-05:00

Since we got B.B. (nigh on fourteen months ago) we've constantly struggled to give her the exercise she needs. Malamutes require a significant amount. Lots of dogs do, sure, but this breed in particular was built for the long haul. It's in their blood. They were bred to pull large packs across the Alaskan tundra, hundreds of miles sometimes, from sun up to sun d... well let's not use sun metaphors and Alaska in the same sentence. Suffice it to say, they pulled as long as their masters needed them to pull. They're strong and tough, and they need to work out a lot of energy. Even house-dogs like B.B. work hard when it's time to work and sleep hard when it's time to sleep. And if they don't get enough of one or the other (mostly the one), there's trouble.

As a puppy, B.B. would get worn out by a simple walk around the block. In fact, since we didn't know much about dogs or dog raising, we were worried that I was pushing her too hard. We asked our vet if that was a problem for her, describing in great detail us walking this small fur-ball up the street and back and how tired she looked afterward. He laughed and assured us it wouldn't be a problem and said to do whatever we could to wear her out. "Push her as hard as you want. You'll appreciate it," he said with a smile that we only understood later, "Trust me."

So I did. We walked almost every day. I wish I could show you how happy she was walking with me. (Oh wait, I can.) It was as if this was the thing she lived for. To be moving. To see new places and meet new people. To accomplish something. And very quickly, it became one of my favorite activities, too.

Our walks started from less than a mile to more than a mile to several miles to what you might call many miles. I was tracking them with my iPod.* I could see exactly how far we were going, and how fast. My average speed started from 3mph and increased to 4mph over the summer, which if you try it, is a pretty fast walk. We got up to about 6 miles a day, maybe 5 times a week. We'd go early in the morning, before work, because it was too hot for her later in the evenings. B.B. with her thick fur coat, can't take the heat. I'd set the alarm for 5:30am, get some food in her and some water, and we'd be on the trails by 6. Home by 7:30 or 8:00 which was just enough time for a quick shower before I ran off to work. On the weekends we'd explore new trails (our town has tons of greenways and trails) and parks. We found our favorites and got to a point where B.B. could lead the way and pull me along with her. (Pulling is her favorite part.) We'd both be tired upon returning home, and she'd sleep the rest of the day.

Unfortunately, we quickly got to a stage in her development where even 6 mile walks weren't wearing her out anymore. As I tried to stretch it to 7 or 8 miles, I would invariably return home exhausted and she'd be hopping around as if to say, What's next, pa? K and I had trouble with her tearing through the house in the evenings and just being a little hellion in general. Of course, it was all our fault for not giving her what she needed, but still, it was difficult to live with her like that. So K (who has a way of saving the day) started taking her to a local dog park every morning where B.B. could run around untethered for an hour or two. She met other dogs, some still puppies like herself, and loved playing and running and wrestling, whatever she wanted to do. That did the trick nicely. B.B. could simply wear herself out. Running around at the park has proven to be exactly what she needs. We can skip a day, but by that second evening, we have the hellion back. We can supplement with a doggy day care facility, but we have our doubts about those places.

Even with the new exercise regime, I still walked her several times a week, and she still loved it, but eventually the weather turned cooler and the days grew shorter. Pretty soon, daylight savings time ended, and suddenly 6am was pitch dark again. We moved our walks to the evenings, but after I got home from work, I was more often than not too tired already to go out. B.B. never complained, but those days that I'd lace up my shoes and reach for the leash, she'd jump towards me and race for the door. In fact, all I really need to do to get her bubbling with excitement is get my white gym socks out of the bottom dresser drawer. She's a smart girl. She knows the only thing I do with those white socks is take her for walks.

But with the sun going down by 5 in the winter, even those got fewer and fewer. K still took her to the park every day, so B.B. got her exercise, but we both missed our walking time together. It was a calm but sad winter in the Invisible Lizard household.

But spring brings new life, like it always does, and lately, we've been picking back up on our walks. Mostly on weekends, but occasionally we sneak one in during the week as well. I go with K to the dog park at least once on the weekend, sometimes twice, and have a great time with her and B.B. and all—well most—of the other dogs there. Lately I've been walking B.B. home (which is nicely 6 miles exactly), although it's getting a little too hot for her that late in the morning. I think I'm going to start walking her to the park instead. And we're going to explore some of the other trails in the evenings this summer when it's not too hot. We got her a backpack where I can keep some water for her. (She is a working dog after all, and she seemed to really enjoy the pack.) And we'll get back into our morning routine.

So what's my point? Well, there is none, other than to say B.B. has been an unexpected gift to me in all sorts of ways. To date, we've walked about 600 miles. The Nike website tracks it. Since I didn't use that thing at all (not really) until I got her, and I've only used it when I've been out walking with her, it's a fairly accurate record of how far we've gone. I look forward to the next 600 and beyond.

* A year (or more) before getting B.B., I'd bought this little Nike+ thingamajig which plugs into my iPod—and of course I had to buy special shoes to go along with it—in the theory that I'd start running. This thing is basically a pedometer that tracks your speed and distance through iTunes. Sounds great, but seriously: me, run? More likely I was just smitten with the technology and wanted a new toy. So anyway, it sat unused in my desk until I started walking B.B. around the block. And then I was very glad to have it. Check it out if you're an iPod fan and a walker or a runner. It's worked out great.

McSweeney's 34

2010-04-29T17:09:00.005-05:00

From the credits page:

We all took a little break after the Panorama, which you may remember, and went off to rest up and treat our papercuts and reintroduce ourselves to our loved ones, who had not seen us in some time. But after seven months as newspapermen and several weeks of blissful furlough, we came back hungry for a good old-fashioned short-story quarterly, the kind of issue we hadn't made since early last year, dense with well-nourished fiction—and that is what we set out to assemble. But then we were reminded of how good it is to include shorter pieces—including letters—among the longer stories we tend to run, so two pages beyond this one we've resurrected that practice, which we first took up way back in the first few issues of McSweeney's. And then, a couple hundred pages accounted for but still, somehow, hungry, we realized we were still a bit hooked on running long works of literary journalism, so here, in the other pocket of the plastic sleeve from which you retrieved this volume, we're proud to present Nick McDonell's stunning reporting from Iraq in a standalone paperback. Now, of course, the issue is just a hair under four hundred pages and we're feeling a bit wobbly on our feet, but we couldn't be happier with how it turned out, or with how we turned the damn thing around in two months. (Jan.4 - Mar. 4 being the working period for this issue—yes we sent it to press on the calendar date that corresponds to its issue number. This will never happen again.) We had other ideas, too, involving untested inks and diagonal bands, but we're going to save those for another time. It's your continued support and enthusiasm that allows us to do that, to continue to do this, and so we thank you.

© 2010 McSweeney's Quarterly Concern and the contributors, San Francisco, California

I will state for the record, and not that I'd ever complain about my beloved McSweeney's Quarterlies,* but it is rather difficult to get these two volumes in and out of the plastic sleeve holding them, which itself is probably going to fall apart in a few years. Alas.

* This is a lie. I've complained aloud about radically different sized publications, which make it difficult to line these up on a bookshelf, as well as oddly packaged collections (a cigar box full of pamphlets, a rubber-banded together set of mailbox items, two small volumes which simply must stack on top of each other, etc.). But I guess I wouldn't have it any other way. If nothing else, and they are many other things as well, these guys aren't boring.

If You Hurt My Dog...

2010-02-09T19:57:00.000-05:00

God help me if we ever have kids.

We took B.B. to her doggy day-care today, which we've been experimenting with lately as an outlet for some of her energy if it's raining and we can't get her to the park. They have two large rooms there with rubber(-ish) padded floors and plastic on the walls and a web cam in each room where the dogs can play so the owners can watch them while they are away. We took her there a couple times last week and watched her from home. She looked like she was having a great time just romping around with the other dogs. We thought we'd found a nice place for B.B. to have some fun. (That's what we literary types call "foreshadowing.")

It was supposed to rain all day today, so we took her in this morning for a half-day of play (that's all we ever do). We dropped her off at seven o'early in the it's-still-dark-outside. K came home, I went to work, and we watched her on the web cam. I had a browser open and would check in every couple of minutes during and in-between meetings just to see how she was doing. However, by about eight forty-five, we couldn't see her anymore.

So K called them, concerned. They told her that B.B. had gotten some poop on her (yuck, I won't elaborate) and they'd taken her to get cleaned up. But the whole rest of the morning, we still didn't see her. K went to pick her up at noon, and asked about it. They (and let me pause here to say that the people who work there all seem very nice, so I'm not sure exactly what happened) said that after B.B. got cleaned up she spent the next 3 hours hiding under a table with her ears back, cowering.

Now, I know my dog. She's never done that at all, and she's been yelled at a time or two here at home. In fits of frustration, I've even called her names even that make me really glad she doesn't understand English. And she'll drop her tail, run and hide for a second, but she'll always come out almost immediately and nuzzle up to us. At the dog park, even under the worst conditions when other much more aggressive dogs have been mean to her, she picks herself right back up and goes and licks their face to show them she's not a threat.

So what could have forced her under a table for several hours cowering? K said that the people (I want to call them kids because they all look like they're 15-20 years younger than I am, though it's probably more like 12-17 years younger) who brought B.B. out to her today were really nice, explained all of this, and seemed genuinely puzzled at her behavior. They offered some suggestions, things they'll do differently next time she's there, to try to prevent that - whatever it was - from happening again.

But I'm not sure if I ever want to take her there again. Someone - man or canine - did something to my B.B. Was it the blond-haired kid who was lackadaisical about cleaning up after the dogs? (Yeah, I was watching you on the web cam.) Was it the nice girl who took her from us this morning? Was it the other nice girl who brought her back to K at noon? Was it some unseen worker who may have been responsible for cleaning B.B. up?

I don't care who it was, but if you're reading this now, I've got a few words from you my friend. Lay a hand on my dog, and I'll lay a hand on you. You do what you did again, whatever it was, and you will feel my squirrelly wrath. And if that's not completely, one hundred percent clear, let me rephrase in words I'm sure you will understand: if you hurt my dog, I will fucking end you. Make no mistake.

B.B.'s Snow Day

2010-01-30T12:28:00.001-05:00

We woke to a few inches of snow on the ground this morning, first this season. We usually get something down here just far enough south to turn most wintry weather into cold rain, from a light dusting to a single good layer, but so far this year we've escaped it. Until today.

Frankly, I was excited, looking forward to it even. Since we got B.B., I wanted to see how she would like the snow. And perhaps this is stating the should-be-obvious, but she took to it like a fish in water, or, more precisely, like a sled-dog in snow.

Here's a clip.

McSweeney's 33 - The San Francisco Panorama

2009-12-08T17:08:00.001-05:00

From the "About this Issue" page:

This newspaper is and has been an experimental prototype published by a small group of writers and designers in San Francisco. This should not be taken as our definitive statement on what every page of a newspaper should look like. Rather, it's a grab-bag of some of the myriad things newsprint can do. And indeed there was much we did, and there was much we didn't do. This main news section, for instance, feels very short, even at 16 pages. The whole newspaper, at over 300 pages, feels incomplete. And now we're finished and we wish, somehow, we could continue... Actually, no. We prefer now to leave the newspaper business to the processionals. This process has provided great insight into the magnificent operations that daily newspapers are. how they do this every day we will never know. That they must continue has never been clearer. We raise our caffeinated beverages to them.

© 2009 McSweeney's Quarterly Concern and the contributors, San Francisco, California

Quote of the Day - NSFW Edition

2009-12-06T15:33:00.000-05:00

I have to tell this story, because it's just so freaking awesome. Yesterday, K, who can usually hold her own in the witty comeback department, suddenly raised it to a whole new level and burned me down to the minor leagues.

Let me set the stage.

I was playing with B.B. in the house. It was raining outside, so we couldn't take her out for her usual exercise, which she needs each day to stay relatively calm, and I was throwing this orange rubber ball around for her to chase, fetch, and bring back to me, something she does about 90% of the time. In order to get her worn out a little more, I started throwing it up the stairs, thinking that the "stair-master" effect would tire her out quicker. She would run up, get it, and bring it back down to me each time. Good girl.

Now, I have to explain, this isn't a little tennis ball we're talking about. No, this is a rather heavy, hefty, not-really-bouncable, hard rubber ball. B.B. has torn apart all of her other, less impressive, toy balls. So when I throw this thing around the house, I make sure to carefully avoid windows, vases, dishes, the cat, drywall, and load-bearing beams, suffice it to say.

So, anyway, up the stairs. B.B. was doing pretty well with this, until this one time I threw it, it bounced off something, and ricocheted back down as she was running up. She didn't notice at first and kept going. I caught it, and in an attempt to lob it back up before she got turned around - failed - I launched it right back up as she was swinging her face back around, and I clocked her right in the kisser. Being a Malamute (which is Eskimo for "dog with rock skull" I believe) she didn't really notice, but I felt bad anyway. I called out to her to come down and I rubbed her face and told her I was sorry. She happily dropped the ball in my hands and wanted me to throw it again.

But K heard me and asked what I'd done.

"I hit her in the face with the ball," I said.

"Oh nice," she said, but mostly laughing.

"Hey, it was an accident," I replied.

"What are you going to do next? Hit me in the face with the ball?" (You have to admit, she set herself up with that one.)

So I quickly replied, before she could retract that awesome setup: "Why? Have you taken balls to the face before?"

And just as quickly, she shot back: "Yeah, but not yours."

BURN. Damn. Ouch. That one still hurts. I was simultaneously shot down, silenced, left with no possible come-back, and just a little bit turned on at the same time. Yep. That's my K.

NaNo Wrap-Up - 51,962 Words!

2009-11-29T19:35:00.001-05:00

Yes, I finished. Unbelievable. I hit fifty thousands words tonight, a little while ago in fact, and because I was still working on a chapter, I took it right to the end (of the chapter). As of now, I have 51,962 words. But there is still so much left that I haven't finished writing about. I feel like I've just got my characters (plural: there are quite a few others now besides my MC) fully formed and in place for all of the real action to start. Why stop now?

I took B.B. for a long walk the other day. (Bear with me. This is going somewhere.) It was Friday, and I felt the need to work off all of the food I'd eaten on Thanksgiving Day. Plus, B.B. had been stuck inside all day long on Thursday and had pretty much slept the entire day. She can do that for one day, but the next day she needs some exercise or she gets a little crazy. So I took her out on a long walk, combining two long trails that we normally take separately, and ended up walking her for about 10 miles (which at my pace took us about two and a half hours). Yeah, crazy, I know. But I'd had enough turkey and stuffing and potatoes and pie (and whatnot) to last me a while, and I needed to burn some of that off. (The pedometer in my iPod told me, after we'd finished, that I'd burnt 2,000 calories on that walk. Nice.) Anyway, that gave me plenty of time to think and toss around different ideas for my story. And let me tell you, in two and a half hours, you can come up with quite a few ideas. I find that the fresh air and the exercise really gets my creative juices flowing. Probably has something to do with more oxygen getting to my brain than usual, but whatever. It works. I'm excited about some of the things I thought up, and I hope I can finish it. K suggested I spend the next 11 months working that out before I start on a new one in November 2010. Sounds like a plan.

But I think I might take a little break first. Whoever put NaNoWriMo in the middle of a month with a major American holiday in it was crazy to begin with. (Or, possibly, not American). Trying to write while getting ready for Christmas will be even more difficult. On top of that, I've got two books on my desk that I'm dying to read: Stephen King's latest, which will probably go first because he's usually a fast read for me, and Last Night in Twisted River, John Irving's new one.

So I'll do that, take just a little time off, but hopefully not so much that I completely lose the momentum I've build up over the past 29 days, and then get back to it. Wish me luck.

Many thanks to my friend M.C. Etcher for his daily blog updating his own NaNo progress, which has helped me along through the month. There was something comforting knowing that a buddy is going through the same ~~pain~~ exercise as I was.

NaNo – Back At It Again

2009-11-19T21:08:00.002-05:00

So I took a couple days off. I was ahead anyway. We had a bit to do around the house and stuff to do with the dog these past few days, plus work has been crazy busy, so haven't even had much time to sit back and think about what I want to do in the next chapter. I needed to create an entirely new setting for my MC (he gets hauled off to a mental institution, have I mentioned that?) and of course I'm creating all of this from scratch in my head. I don't know what a mental institution looks like outside what I've seen in movies and on TV. I put One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Next on the top of my Netflix queue, but I think I will wait to watch it until after November, so I don't taint my story with ideas that Ken Kesey cooked up forty-odd years ago. (Yes, of course I've already seen it, and read the book, which is great by the way, but writing about this made me want to revisit it again.)

I think if it wasn't for this deadline, looming, fifty thousand words due by the end of the month, I might have stopped here for a while, a decade perhaps, because it would have been just easier to do so than to stress over what my own version of an asylum would look like. But I sat down tonight (and after some encouragement from MC Etcher, thanks for that) and just started writing. I thought to myself, let's just describe this place. My MC wakes up in a strange place, what does he see? So I described the room, and as I did, I could see it in my mind. I added little details. There was a small desk under a window and someone had scratched some words into the top. I'll refer back to that at some point, probably will create an entire subplot to explain those words, or not, who knows. And the window cranks out vertically but only about two or three inches, so you know at some point my MC is going to need to drop something out the window barely two or three inches wide. Then he meets somebody, they have a conversation, he walks around, sees more of the place, meets more people, and the cycle has started again.

Point is, I forced myself to start writing when I really didn't want to – it's the perfectionist in me that doesn't want to start something unless I know I can do it well – and even though later, down the line, in the editing process, I might decide to throw out a good chunk of that exposition I drafted up detailing every nook and cranny of this guy's room, it helped me get this novel kick started again. Now I'm several thousand words ahead of where I was on Sunday, and I've got a score of new characters to interact with and a whole institution to explore. And boy will I.

NaNo - Chapter Two Finished

2009-11-15T18:39:00.002-05:00

Today I hit 29,751 words. My goal was to hit 30k by the end of the weekend, but I don't think I'm going to make it. I've finished Chapter Two, which was difficult, because I had to get my character over a couple of emotional and geographical humps so he can end up in the place where he spends the rest of the novel. I suppose I could throw in forty-nine more words to hit my self-imposed mark, but no, that's okay. I struggle with the subconscious inclination to pad this story as is, and I'm not going to start doing so deliberately now. Besides, I'm well ahead of schedule. By now, mid-point in the month, I should be at 25,000 words even, so I'm a couple of days in the black. Not that I'm going to rest on those laurels, but I need to spend a little time figuring out what happens next. He's going to meet a variety of new people, my MC, and I need to sort them out in my head before I start writing about them.

The NaNoWriMo web site allows you to plug in daily word counts as you go along. I'm pretty good about updating this after I'm done for the day, although not always, but this gives me a pretty good idea of how I'm doing and how I've been doing. I'm quite pleased with myself so far. Let's see if I can do this well the rest of the month, but I feel a little pressure to finish early. Whoever decided to put this in the same month as a tryptophan-laden feast was clearly not from the U.S., and I'm afraid if I don't hit my 50,000 words by November 25, I may not finish at all.

Couple of Things

2009-11-14T18:54:00.002-05:00

First off, I'm struggling at a point in my NaNoWriMNo novel where my protagonist has to transition from one setting to another. I wasn't sure how to pull that off. I've got him in limbo at the moment and haven't written much in the past two days. So I took B.B. for a walk tonight, put on some loud Prodigy (which is the soundtrack for this particular work), and mulled over different scenarios. Something about the fresh air, the exercise, the blood rushing to my brain in ways that it just doesn't while I'm sitting on my butt in front of the computer, I don't know, something about that just gets my creative juices whirling. I figured out not only how to get to the next phase (chapter three, in fact) but how to make this limbo stuff meaningful and memorable and useful later on, and I have some pretty good ideas how to kick off the next chapter. Thank God. I was beginning to worry that I'd be stuck here for the next 16 days.

Second, K and I picked up a copy of Dave Egger's edited Best American Nonrequired Reading (2009) today and found, inside, this ode to David Foster Wallace, a man I have expressed my sadness and adoration for already, written by (none other than) National Book Award winner Jonathan Franzen, who was apparently a close friend of DFW. It's a short paean, barely five pages, and if you're browsing through a bookstore someday soon, you might pick this book up, navigate back to page 167 and give it a read. But one thing I would like to share, as Franzen puts it better than I ever could, is a brief thought on how amazingly well DFW crafted a sentence, and if you link back to my pithy farewell, you'll know what I mean when I say his writing urged me to be a better writer.

He had the most commanding and exciting and inventive rhetorical virtuosity of any writer alive. Way out at word number 70 or 100 or 140 in a sentence deep into a three-page paragraph of macabre humor of fabulously reticulated self-consciousness, you could smell the ozone from the crackling precision of his sentence structure, his effortless and pitch-perfect shifting among ten different levels of high, low, middle, technical, hipster, nerdy, philosophical, vernacular, vaudevillian, hortatory, tough-guy, broken-hearted, lyrical diction.

So very true. Well put Jon.

Under the Dome (an early review, pre-read)

2009-11-12T19:41:00.001-05:00

I'm a Stephen King fan, I'll admit it freely. For a fun read, and for my money, there are few authors that can spin a perfectly mindless yarn while being entertaining, keeping me on the edge, and also write pretty well all at the same time. (My Scottish friends out there might be pleased to note that I've recently added Ian Rankin to that list.) I like to mix up my reading: something non-fiction, then something fiction; something heavy, then something light. Keeps the palate cleansed so to speak.

Also, I've been collecting Stephen King original hardcovers for, oh, about fifteen years now, ever since a buddy of mine in college showed me his collection of Stephen King original hardcovers, and I totally got caught up in my own envy. (I mean, to a book nerd like me, that was freakin' cool.) I'm not ridiculously hard-core about it. I don't go out and find the original hardcovers of books that I've missed (although I would love an original copy of It one of these days, just because I loved that book as kid). I have most everything he's written from the early 90's on. Before that, I had paperbacks that I don't own anymore. But these days, if it comes out, I generally buy it in hardback right away.

So when I got an email from Amazon a little while ago telling me that they were selling Steve's new one for $9 (down from a cover price of $35) I pre-ordered in a hurry. It came in the mail yesterday.

Now, two things I noticed before I even read it. Three things really. Well, four.

First of all, the cover is stunning. There is a blurb on the Amazon page for this book explaining all of the graphic art and CGI that went into it, but really, outstanding.

Second, the plot. Here it is from the publisher in a nutshell:

On an entirely normal, beautiful fall day in Chester's Mill, Maine, the town is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field. Planes crash into it and fall from the sky in flaming wreckage, a gardener's hand is severed as "the dome" comes down on it, people running errands in the neighboring town are divided from their families, and cars explode on impact. No one can fathom what this barrier is, where it came from, and when -- or if -- it will go away.

Dale Barbara, Iraq vet and now a short-order cook, finds himself teamed with a few intrepid citizens -- town newspaper owner Julia Shumway, a physician's assistant at the hospital, a select-woman, and three brave kids. Against them stands Big Jim Rennie, a politician who will stop at nothing -- even murder -- to hold the reins of power, and his son, who is keeping a horrible secret in a dark pantry. But their main adversary is the Dome itself. Because time isn't just short. It's running out.

Anything about that strike you as familiar? Say, maybe, the 2007 Simpsons Movie? (If you haven't seen it, trust me, it's similar. The town of Springfield gets encapsulated by a huge dome, although for completely comedic reasons, and of course Homer & Co. have to save the day once Marge pulls Homer's head out of his ass. Sort of like a long episode, but with a dome, over a city, that the occupants of which were under. Sound familiar?)

Now, I'm sure I'm not the only one to notice this similarity, the blogosphere must be abuzzin', but I got to wondering what could Steve possibly be thinking? In the back of the book, he's got one of his usual Author's Notes (addressed to me, or "Constant Reader" as he likes to call me) where he tells me that he actually started this story in 1976 and put it away because it was too challenging. "I had this idea first," he's clearly saying, preemptively staving off the naysayers among us. Then he clearly admits to starting it over again back in 2007. Really Steve? In 2007? I wonder what could have possibly prompted you to tackle this subject again.

Now, I've often speculated about how it must feel to an author to find one of his (or her) ideas used elsewhere, completely innocently, no plagiarism involved. Certainly it's possible for two people to come up with the same idea independently. I expounded upon it a little during my review of Quietus a few years ago. I, myself, had that problem earlier this year. Back in the summer of '08 (way back in the dark ages) I started work on a novel about a guy who could tell if people were lying to him and how he used that gift and how it used him, etcetera. Then, this fall, the Fox Broadcasting Company premiered a TV show about a guy who can tell if people are lying. (Bugger!) Oh well. I had pretty much run into a brick wall with it anyway, but now I'm really done. Maybe ten years from now I might revisit, but at the moment it would be way too soon, too obvious a connection to pop culture. Nobody would believe that I'd thought of it all on my own, even if I did put in an Author's Note explaining that I had the idea first, all the way back in 2008.

My point? Steve, you should have let some time pass before you tried to publish this one. I realize you're getting older and want to get a few more books written before your time runs out, but maybe this one should have stayed on the shelf a few more years until the memory of The Simpsons movie has faded. Trust me, you and Matt Groenig have a lot of the same readers. And at $527 million world-wide gross, more than just a few people saw that little flick.

Third: he's done this before, written a book with an obvious pop-culture inspiration. Duma Key, his last one (that I read, anyway) was about a guy who painted things that came true. Like in Heroes, that TV show that nobody's really watching any more. I stood up for you then, Steve. I'm not doing it again.

Fourth: the length. Have you seen this book? It's freaking huge. It's the biggest King book on my shelf. I have to go back to Insomnia before I find one that's even close. We're talking something along The Stand proportions. 1072 pages. I was initially quite excited. I like it when Steve goes all epic-proportions on us. Those are usually the most fun to read. I mean, seriously, have you read The Stand? Awesome book. So yeah, I was stoked.

Until I opened the book, that is.

Did you ever have to write a ten-page report for school and you increased the font to 13-point and widened the margins to 1.5" just to get your sparse text to spill onto that 10th page? (Our teachers weren't fooled, were they? But they couldn't say much because they hadn't specified layout metrics.) Yeah, this feels the same. The font is almost so big that I wondered if I got one of the "large print" books for people with poor eyesight. The margins are wide enough to draw very complex flip-book style animations in it and have room left for notes about the economy or anything else that comes to mind. The paper is obnoxiously thick, almost as if the publishers wanted the book to appear thicker than it really was. By comparison, David Foster Wallace's magnum opus, Infinite Jest, has nearly the same number of pages, is about a quarter-inch thinner, and just glancing at how small the print is and how many lines he gets on a page (43 lines per page compared to Steve's 35 lines) and a font size that probably gets about 25% more words per line, I'm guessing he's got about twice as many actual words in his 1076 pages.

This is not Steve's fault, of course. The publishers can't charge $35 per book for an inch-thick volume. So they padded it with extra paper (relatively cheap) and jacked up the price. I got my copy for nine bucks, so what am I complaining about? The sucker's heavy. That's all. I'm anxious to read that thing (after November of course) but I think I might get carpal tunnel just trying to hold it up.

I've rambled on long enough. Need to get back to my own writing. If/when I read it, I'll come back and tell you if I thought it was worth the $9. The last one was. The one before that wasn't.

NaNo Day 10 and a Bit of a Scare (not in that order)

2009-11-10T07:29:00.002-05:00

After Sunday's Bedroom Destroying Excitement (which was so much fun in the aftermath), B.B. was a little sluggish the rest of the day, but we chalked that up to the excitement of destroying thousands of dollars of custom window treatments. (It's not every day, after all, that you can increase your personal cost of ownership by a double-digit percentage in one fell swoop.) She came home from the dog park that morning a little sluggish, too (this was pre- the destructive rampage) and for the first in recorded history she didn't eat all of the food we gave her for lunch. She ate about three-quarters of it and then just laid down. That worried us a bit, but since she likes pumpkin (and thank God the Libby's people solved whatever distribution problem they were having earlier) which is good for the digestion, it somehow has the double effect of speeding up things that are slow or slowing down things that are happening too fast, or so we've read, we gave her a little bit on top of the one-quarter food she had left to encourage her to finish. Then we left her alone while we went out to lunch, and the rest is history.

But she didn't eat all of her food at dinner either and struggled over breakfast, too. Now, that could have been because K fed her three slices of Pepperidge Farm's White Bread in the evening because our vet had once told us a story of a dog who ate some sewing needles and the owner gave him white bread which coated the needles and allowed them to pass without tearing up the dogs intestines. But I think perhaps the bread, being something totally new to her, upset her stomach a little.

In the morning she clearly wasn't feeling herself, but she did eat breakfast and K took her to the park to run around, but something was clearly wrong. They came home for lunch and B.B. only had a few bites. So K called the vet and asked what she should do. He recommended we bring B.B. in for an x-ray, better to be safe than sorry. We had to leave her there because they needed the afternoon to sedate her (and I have to confess that I don't like leaving B.B. somewhere that I am not). They found little bits of metal from the flashing around the outsides of the blinds, but the vet said it probably wasn't anything to worry about. Still, though, we worry anyway. She came home, ate the rest of her lunch as dinner, and slept a lot (she was groggy because of the sedative). The vet encouraged us to take her on short walks to encourage her to, well, you know. He said the x-rays showed that she was likely blocked up by something, but he didn't know what. So we did. We walked her several times around the neighborhood, very slowly since she was stumbling around like a drunken sailor (no offense to any sailors reading this). Mostly she just slept as we watched her.

This morning she seems back to her usual self. We got up at five, had a bit of a walk around the yard, she ate her breakfast in usual lightening-fast style that she normally does, and then she chased the cat around, who seemed curious himself to know what was going on with her and just wanted to be in the same room with us. She's lying on the floor next to me right now, watching me type, and Gus is next to me watching her.

I don't like to think about anything bad happening to anybody in my family, K, Gus, B.B. I call them "my girls" even though Gus is technically not (he doesn't mind, though). Yesterday while B.B. was at the vet, I had this feeling of increasing panic rise up in me because she was somewhere that I couldn't just reach out and assure her that everything would be all right, even if it I didn't know that for sure. I knew she was scared by herself and didn't like being without us. Takes us back, full circle, to why she did what she did to the bedroom yesterday. In her little crate (which actually has enough room for her to move around in and almost stretch out, but we can't help our negative reaction to the fact that it is basically a cage) she probably can't do much more than just sit around idle. Given the space of an entire bedroom, her own rising levels of panic probably took over. I guess I can understand that, although I will say that in an entire afternoon without her yesterday I didn't destroy anything more than a grand latte from Starbucks.

Enough of that sentimental crap

Moving on...

NaNoWriMo Day 10. I'm just over the 20,000 words mark and feeling pretty good about it. I've gotten past Chapter One, which was my introduction to the Main Character, background about him, and leading up to an integral part of his storyline that sets everything in motion. Chapter Two always was going to be a transition into the main setting and the formal story-line which would start in Chapter Three, but I needed it to be more than just a couple of paragraphs saying, "...and then he moves to a new place and meets new people." Boring.

Something that fascinates me about creative writing is the creative part. Sometimes, as I'm writing, I just let my mind wander and stumble upon things I hadn't thought of before. For instance, I introduced a character who my main character needed to interact with during this Chapter Two transition, and in the course of writing I realized this new character was more interesting than I'd thought. The more I wrote about him (and he was never supposed to be in more than a couple pages) I found out that he could be useful. I think I'll bring him back later when the plot needs someone like him, which it will. The reader, at that point, will think, "Yeah, I remember that guy" because he got the chance to do some interesting things in Chapter Two that will impact the Main Character going forward.

So that's the interesting part, discovering little gems that you didn't know about. (Not precious gems like diamonds or rubies, because we're not writing at that caliber; more like feldspar or quartz.) You stumble upon them as you get your character from Point A to Point B. There are stops along the way and sometimes you run into interesting people there.

My guy (which is what I'll the MC) had to stop by a hospital in Chapter One and look for someone, just a brief visit but it was necessary to the plot. I had to write in someone at the front desk who he could talk to. So I did. I knew I was going to have to, but I didn't think much of it before I got to that particular scene. So I patterned this woman slightly after a character in a TV show that K and I watch, Nurse Jackie, if you've ever seen it, starring Edie Falco with a great little butch hairstyle who has a well intentioned, somewhat buffoon-ish, always sweet, nursing student assistant named Zooey working for her who became the inspiration for the nurse at the front desk. She didn't have to do much more than say a couple lines and be nice to my guy, but because of the image I have in my head, I feel like she could come back and play a much larger role if I needed her to. She probably won't. He's moving on. But that's what I'm talking about. Little gems. One of the things I like about writing.

Tomorrow I'll bore you with my thoughts on first-person vs. third-person narrative, but I warned you a couple days ago to ignore my rambling. If you're still reading at this point, you have no one to blame but yourself.

Minor Setback

2009-11-08T20:19:00.000-05:00

We left B.B. alone for the first time today outside of her crate. We'd gone out for lunch, only for about an hour and a half, and left her closed up in our bedroom. We thought that would give her some room to stretch. She'd just come back from a couple hours at the dog park and she was tired. We figured she'd just sleep while we were gone.

Wrong.

I'll leave this up as long as I can. YouTube didn't like my background music, but I thought it was perfect.

B.B. Did a Bad Bad Thing @ Yahoo! Video

NaNo - Chapter One Finished

2009-11-05T22:07:00.004-05:00

Well, I'm making some progress, that's for sure. Five days in, and I'm up to 14,103 words. I'm well ahead of where I wanted to be at this point. By now, I should be at 8,333 words, so I feel pretty good. Of course, as is my fear, that's when things usually fall out from under my feet. It's always the easiest for me to write the beginning of a novel because that's the part I've spent the most time thinking about. I might need to take a little break and think (just a bit) about what I want to happen in chapter two. Granted, I know what needs to happen, but how to get from where I am now to where I need to be...

Well, I'm sure it will all work out. We NaNoWriMo'ers got a nice email from Jasper Fforde today who basically said that what we're writing doesn't need to be good, doesn't need to be anything at all, except practice for the real thing. Even the Beatles, he said (I'm paraphrasing) started out small and practiced until they got good.

Well, I'm not sure if any of us should be favorably compared to the Beatles, or even referred to in the same email, but I see where he's going with that. How many people can say they've written a novel in their lifetimes? I certainly can't. I've written several starts, and one I nearly finished, but I've never completed one. I'd like to, one day, say I did, even if it never gets read by anybody. (Although secretly I'm hoping that if I ever do finish one, K will read it and lie to me when she tells me it was great.)

Oh the other thing I wanted to say was that K and I watched a movie called Antichrist tonight which has completely messed me up, so I think it would be a good thing if I took a little break from writing for a day, maybe two, lest a combination of stillborn deer, talking foxes and genital mutilation work their way into chapter two. Wow, avoid that movie unless you're really interested. It's not for the faint of heart.

NaNo – Day Two

2009-11-02T21:50:00.007-05:00

Day two of this writing extravaganza and I'm still going strong, although to be fair, the last time I did this, my stamina didn't peter out until well past the 30,000-word mark. So far, I'm up to 5,854 words, so just a little ahead of where I should be at the end of day two.

I'm having a little struggle, internally, with this project. My writing professor in college, Dr. Welt, always told me that a story is as long as it needs to be. I asked her how long a novel was, and that was the answer I got. She was adamant about that. If it's a short story, then that's what it is. If it's a novel, then that's what it is. If it falls somewhere in between, then so be it. Just write what you want to write and don't write any more than that.

Here, though, I can feel myself stretching things out because of last time, when I ran out of things to say before the end of 50,000 words. I'm in the same spot this time around, or at least I'm afraid I will be. I've got the beginning of this story pretty well fleshed out, the middle is fuzzy but I definitely know what I want to happen and who the principle characters are (although my character gets locked up in an asylum by then so I'm sure he's going to meet all sorts of interesting people that I haven't thought up yet), and the end is something of a blur, where I only know the most high-level details of what will happen. Granted, I'll know more about what happens in the middle once I finish the beginning, and I'll know more about what happens in the end once I finish the middle, but my fear is that I'll need more than 30 days to figure all that out. I'm just not smart enough to keep all of the details of an entire novel in my head at one time. General plot outlines, yes. Motivations of a dozen different characters, no.

But I guess this is just an exercise in discipline and endurance. This novel doesn't need to be great. If I stretch out scenes with particularly flowering writing, who cares. The most important thing is to finish the 50k on time. After that, if I want, I can go back and edit to my heart's content. Although, admittedly, I haven't touched the story I started 2 years ago. Maybe after this one is done I can go back to that one and see what needs excising. (Probably a lot.)

Anyway, pardon my rambling. Just wrapping up for the evening. K and I had B.B. in puppy class earlier tonight, teaching her the ever-elusive "heel" command and sitting and staying with the three big D's (distance, distraction and duration). If K hadn't taken B.B. for a long visit at the dog park earlier, I don't think we would have done nearly as well as we did. They are now downstairs watching TV together while I'm up here writing. But I think I'm done for the night.

Holidays and NaNo

2009-11-01T15:24:00.002-05:00

Happy Halloween!

Our most favorite of holidays. We dressed as suburbanites, again, although K wore black and orange in a festivy way so that added to the ensemb, and passed out candy. I made my holiday standard dinner, my semi-famous spaghetti, but because Halloween fell on a Saturday this year, I was able to cook it in the crock pot all day long. We dipped into it a little during lunch, but the real treat was dinner, when it had literally been simmering for about 8 hours in the pot. Something about that really makes the flavors meld together. We watched The Shining while we listened for the doorbell.

Last year we did not have enough candy to pass out to everyone. We always buy a lot, then wonder if we bought too much, so at first we pass out handfuls to each kid (who leaves our doorstep with a bright smile and huge eyes), and then we get worried as the night progresses that we may not have enough, given the rate of candy leaving the door (oh, and we eat some too, don't get me wrong) so we pass out less and less until the last of it is gone and we have to shut off all the lights and blow out the candle in the pumpkin on the front to ward off any further trick-or-treaters.

Last year, the final group of kids had a small boy hiding behind them, whom K couldn't see, so she divvied up the last of it to the kids that she could see thinking that we were lucky to have gotten rid of it all that year. However, when they turned to leave, this adorable little boy came walking up from behind them with his orange pumpkin candy bucket in his hands, held out to K with a "I'm too shy to say trick-or-treat, but you know what I want" look on this face. K, thinking she knew more about candy than a 2-year-old, put her closed hand, empty mind you, into his pumpkin, and then pulled it back out again, open this time, as if to mime dropping candy in. The kid looked in the pumpkin, and with savant-like mental agility, quickly realized that the candy count had not changed. With huge eyes staring right at her, almost accusatory, almost pleading, he lifted up the pumpkin to her again. All she could do is say, "I'm sorry, I don't have any more." He walked away with no smile that night. If he'd been older, we would have been the target of a trick, for sure. We hid in the dark house the rest of the evening and hoped no one else would ring the bell.

So this year I bought nearly $50 worth of candy. (All candy bars, by the way. I remember, as a kid, loving those the most. We could eat a couple pieces a day, legally, and the candy bars would go first. Then anything sugary, e.g., Sweet Tarts. Then maybe the suckers. Then, last, the Tootsie Rolls. Only the lamest of houses gave away suckers and Tootsie Rolls. That was my opinion, anyway. And I don't want to be lame in my old age.) I hit the Target on Thursday and filled up the basket. Probably too full. Definitely too full.

Today we still have half of it left. We had fewer kids at the door last night. I don't know why, maybe it was because Halloween fell on a Saturday and given the whole day to plan, people on our street found better things to do than walk around and peddle for candy, but we only got about 10 sets of kids total. Which is probably good, because there are exactly two nude scenes in The Shining (one during the scene showing Dick Hallorann's house in Florida where he's got these large prints of a naked black woman on his wall with the huge 70's afro, and the other scene, which you probably remember, where the full-frontal naked bird gets out of the tub in room 237 and starts making out with Jack) and the kids rang the bell smack-dab in the middle of both. So while K was passing out candy, I was sitting in the living room with B.B., holding onto her collar so she doesn't make a run for the door, and hoping all the while that the innocent gaggle of disguised tricksters can't see the paused image of naked boobies on the TV screen just inside the house.

But I digress...

There's a lot of candy let to be eaten. I may have to come up with a new exercise regime if I'm going to be participating in the fun. Which I will be. And our favorite holiday is over, once again, but that's okay, too. We will enjoy it every year.

NaNoWrimo 2009

So today, I've got something new going on. Every November, for the entire month, about 150,000 people around the world write a novel, and this year, once again, I'm going to be one of them. I've tried this before, twice, and have succeeded and failed once each. I'm doing it for fun, you understand. There is no prize, other than to say you did it. There is no other reason except for those of us who have always wanted to write, it's a good feeling to know that we're all writing at the same time.

NaNoWriMo = National Novel Writing Month. Evidenced by this web site here. You start writing after midnight on the 1st, and you have a full month to come up with 50,000 words. Why 50,000? Probably because it's a nice even number that is actually doable. You need to write 1,667 words a day. That's a little over 3 single-spaced pages.

I've got about 1,975 words written since this morning. We'll see how I'm doing 29 days from now.

One thing I do know is that nothing sparks the creative juices like writing here in this blog. So even though I've left it unattended for a while (for about as long as we've had a dog, if you look back, so you can see what's been occupying my time for seven months) I'll be stopping by here for a while to ramble on about whatever helps get me moving again over on the NaNo front.

Feel free to ignore me.

McSweeney's 32

2009-09-29T20:01:00.001-05:00

© 2009 McSweeney's Quarterly Concern and the contributors, San Francisco, California

Last year we asked a dozen or so writers to travel somewhere in the world—Budapest, Cape Town, Houston, any sleep or sleepless outpost they could find—and send back a story set in that spot fifteen years from now, in the year 2024. Only ten returned alive (and Doerr with a broken leg), but their stories are what you'll find here. The predictions, at least on the municipal level, are pretty grim—not enough good water, too much bad water, several distressing developments in personal electronics. But civilization persists nevertheless, and it offers some small consolation that each of these stories provides a picture of the little guy or gal persistently carving out a life. One reason we asked our writers to look ahead on fifteen years, in stead of fifty or five hundred, is because we wanted to hear about where we'd be—to see what the world could look like when things had shifted just a bit, as it seems like they're starting to, heading into the second decade of the third millennium, with the long presence of our forty-third president come to an end and a semitangible future at last seeming imminent. For better or for worse, this feels like a dynamic moment, in the world and in the work we do with ink and paper and in the changing physiques of our editorial board, who are all twelve years old, if you didn't know that. The best fiction set in years ahead can deepen that feeling of impending possibility; these stories, we think, are grounded in that spirit, and now is a good time to read them.

Editor: Dave Eggers

Thomas Pynchon's Latest - Inherent Vice

2009-08-16T16:19:00.029-05:00

Picked this up today from the Barnes & Noble. I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I didn't even know it was coming out. I suspect I'm the world's biggest Thomas Pynchon fan who's never read anything beyond 'Lot 49, although my shelves belie this fact with such an impressive collection (christ, I even have Slow Learner).

Although I suspect I'm not alone in this particular fan club. How many of us have tried and failed? How many simply keep Him on your shelves to evoke a certain sense of je ne sais quoi amongst the more literate of your visitors? (I have no literate visitors, myself, so I am excluded from the latter.) Alas, I have recounted my love affair with Pynchon before, been thrashed for it, and shall not do so again. Suffice it to say, I am looking forward to this book.

McSweeney's 31

2009-06-15T19:47:00.005-05:00

© 2009, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern and the contributors, San Francisco, California.

Every so often, we'll have a meeting here at the McSweeney's HQ, where we ask interns—our heroes and lifeblood—to tell us what they would put in the magazine if they had their druthers. Over the years, the results have been pretty great. Dominic Luxford, and intern a few years ago, wanted poetry in McSweeney's, so we asked him to come up with an innovative way to present it. The result was Poets Picking Poets, which became a section of Issue 22 and later a standalone paperback book. Not too long after that issue appeared, Darren Franich and Graham Weatherly pitched the idea of an issue celebrating neglected or deceased literary forms, and it immediately intrigued everyone. they went at the idea with a vengeance, and a year later—the research, commissioning, writing and editing of this issue took a very long time—here we are, with an astonishing array of forms and genres that you've likely never heard of, but which you might very well grow attached to. The pantoum, for example, has already become popular around the office and among our online readers (many of whom sent in their examples of the form). And we expect that the whore dialogue, hilarious and profane and very practical, might catch on again, especially with our readers, many of whom are experts in both cleaning and sexual technique. So we hope you'll enjoy this issue, and that those of you who have recently graduated or been laid off will consider McSweeney's for your internship needs. You will be valued, if not adequately paid.

Editor: Dave Eggers

Death by Ennui

2009-04-04T16:05:00.005-05:00

In her essay entitled "Edward Gorey: Mildly Unsettling," Karen Wilkin begins by writing, "If you say (the name) 'Edward Gorey' you are most likely to get one of two reactions: a blank "Who?" or an excited outpouring of enthusiasm." I fall squarely into the second category.

K introduced me to Edward Gorey during our early years back in Chicago, and his peculiar, erudite style certainly felt apropos of our unconventional courtship: equal parts art and cartoon, whimsy and pathos blended with a fine attention to detail. My inaugural foray was with his Gashlycrumb Tinies. (Check it out before that link goes away, as I'm certain it will.) I was fascinated by the detail in the little book, by the clever play on words, by the macabre nature of the whole thing, by how nonchalant Gorey dealt with the deaths of 26 consecutive children. Since then, we've engaged on a full-on love affair with the man and his work, buying everything we get our hands on, and sometimes twice over when we individually and simultaneously stumble on something that we don't already have.

When I saw this book available on Library Thing's Early Reviewers list, I quickly threw my hand up and requested a copy, and was subsequently thrilled beyond belief that of the 1318 members doing the same, I got one of the 15 copies available.

Elegant Enigmas is essentially a catalog from an exhibition that the Brandywine River Museum has organized, on display through May 15 of this year (2009). As such, I wish Pennsylvania was closer. I'd love to see it.

Wilkin's essay, the text of the catalog, is a good introduction to Gorey. There are certainly other, more well-rounded books out there that go into greater depth (a few notable offerings by Wilkin herself, e.g., The World of Edward Gorey), but she provided what was needed for a coffee table entry into the man's work. The work itself is the real treat, and Pomegranate Press spared no expense in faithfully depicting a well chosen set of prints. From classic examples ("N is for Neville who died of ennui") to one of my favorites, The West Wing, you get a good sense of the scope and breath of Gorey's work, what influenced him, and how his craft evolved. One of my favorite additions were his sketches showing drafts for a few pages with which I was already intimately familiar, showing me that he did not, as I previously assumed, simply sit down with pen to paper and see what evolved. (Not all the time, anyway.)

So, to bring this full circle, if you're scratching your head with a blank expression on your face wondering who in the world Edward Gorey is, well I'm not sure this is a book you'd be interested in. Check out one of the Amphigorey's for a good first impression. However, if you're like us and you collect everything you can get your hands on, this will be an excellent addition to your library.

Wild Things

2009-03-30T21:20:00.002-05:00

What excites me most about this trailer? Is it Dave Egger's name in the screenplay credits? Is it the awesome Arcade Fire track (Wake Up, brilliant) playing in the background? Is it the name Spike Jonze, period? Or is it just the fact that somebody made a well-intentioned movie of one of my childhood favorite books?

Too soon to tell. Could be all of that. Yeah.

The Interloper: Official Report, Pt. 1

2009-03-29T08:30:00.002-05:00

Day 1, 3:30pm - An Interloper has arrived. Mostly confined to back deck. Good. Maybe he (she?) will stay there for the brief time that she (he?) has on this planet. What a hairy creature. Odd smell, too. I will investigate further and report back.

Day 1, 4:15pm - Threat confirmed. Obvious hostile intentions coyly masked by playful giddiness. I will retreat to my panic room. Awaiting further instructions.

Day 2, 6:15am - I have gained a reasonable understanding of the Interloper's mission: to spray the house with a vile smelling, brown substance. It seems to be inconveniently stored in the hind regions. Surely somebody could have come up with a better design. The humans are spending a great deal of time both mitigating the risk and in clean-up duties. I am still hiding in panic room. Humans have allowed me access to the top shelf. I have no clue as to the Interloper's climbing abilities. I am on full alert.

Day 3, 8:00pm - Per instructions, I have ventured out on a reconnaissance mission. Interloper is confined to the kitchen area with the hardwood floors. Vile brown substance has not been emitted in 2 days, but (my dear lord) I believe she (confirmed) has "eliminated" herself a number of times on the floor and in the large cage the humans are keeping her in. (Damn the trailing preposition.) I issued the standard warning when I was detected and retreated.

Day 4, 4:30pm - The Interloper seems to have quietened down a bit. I approached cautiously today and sniffed. We touched noses. I am retracting my previous statement of the Interloper's mission, for I fear something far more nefarious at play: I now believe she intends to live here. The humans certainly seem to be supporting that assumption. Damn them.

Day 5, 2:00pm - The humans have taken the Interloper away, hopefully for good. I have inspected the house for remnants. All of her known accouterments are still present (e.g., variety of slobber-worn toys, the aforementioned cage, more hand towels than I previously believe existed), so I have to believe she's coming back.

Day 5, 3:00pm - Indeed. She is back and she has been to that damnable doctor's office with the needles and the faux-"treats" designed to lull lesser creatures into domestic compliance. (I am not so easily fooled.) They are clearly preparing her for the long haul in Casa de Lizard. I fear the worst. Must begin counter-measures.

Day 6, 9:00pm - Exhausting day. I must entice my humans with extra playfulness to make up for a complete lack of attention for the past 6 days. They are responding with love and attention, albeit at about 50% the level previous known levels. I will ramp up efforts tomorrow.

Day 7, 10:00pm - Interloper keeps the humans up all night with incessant whines and various other noises. She is confined to her plastic cage, but she is not at all opposed to eliminating within if left unchecked for too long (and getting all manner of foul matter embedded into and caked onto her fur). They rise and take her outside, tethered to a red band, at the first whimper. Apparently she's been using the entire back yard as her own personal litter box. Must be nice.

Day 8, 8:00am - I need rest. I have resumed sleeping with the humans as the bedroom is one place I know the Interloper has no access. But I must rouse with them every 90 minutes or so to check on the Interloper. None of us are getting any sleep. If this continues, I fear the worst. I will report back as often as I'm able. If you don't hear from me in several days, send reinforcements.

G

Note To Self

2009-03-21T12:21:00.004-05:00

If you're trying to crate-train your puppy, but the previous owner/breeder paper-trained her instead, don't put paper in the crate. Makes a confusing mess for everyone. She basically thinks you're locking her in the bathroom.

K and I haven't gotten much sleep in the past two nights. Thursday night, b.b. kept us up with explosive diarrhea. She (and her crate) got 4 baths in 24 hours. The crate maybe got 5.

She has decided she likes baths, more for the rub down at the end followed by the warm blast from the hairdryer (which whines at the same frequency that she howls at so she sings along in unison; if I ever get my video camera working, I'll get a recording of that) afterward. But - knock on wood - her stomach seems to be settling a bit.

She hates her crate and makes a variety of noises whenever we put her in. Malamutes are known for their vocal range, anything from an actual bark (which is sort of rare) to a howl to a chatter to a moan. Wikipedia says this about them:

The majority of Malamutes are fairly quiet dogs, seldom barking like most other dog breeds. When (they do) vocalize, more often than not they tend to "talk" by vocalizing a "woo woo" sound (the characteristic vocalizations of Chewbacca in the Star Wars films are based upon a Malamute named Indiana once owned by George Lucas). They may howl like wolves or coyotes, and for the same reasons. When they howl, the howl is difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish from the wolf.

Thursday night, which was presumably the second time ever she had been put in a small crate (the first time being her 10 hour trip out here), this went on for 45 minutes straight, a cacophony of yelps, howls, growls, etc. K, smarter than I was, realized that if she could hear us (e.g., TV on in the bedroom) she would keep calling for us. Once we shut that off, she simmered down. Last night's various canine concertos lasted anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes each time she went back in.

Gus, on the other hand, wants to be neither heard nor seen. He's not a happy little camper at the moment. This picture doesn't do him justice, because you can't tell that he's at the top of our closet (that's the ceiling above him), but this is pretty much where he hid for the first 24 hours. Lately he's been creeping around trying to get a peek. But if I reach for him with dog smell on my hands, he sulks off in the other direction. Not that I blame him.

B.B.

2009-03-20T06:16:00.005-05:00

So here's the story.

My parent's dog Nikki died not too long ago. She was a sweet dog, about 10 years old, who developed cancer in her shoulder. The vet told them it would only get worse and cause her more pain. She'd already been limping for a few months before they finally got it properly diagnosed (a different vet told them it was an infection in her paw... boy was he wrong) so they decided to just put her down and end her suffering. It broke my heart, but that was the best thing for her.

My parents are getting along in their years, both in the mid 60's, and neither one thought they'd get another dog in their lifetime, but (a) Nikki was their third Alaskan Malamute so they're clearly attached to the breed, (b) the previous one lived to be 14, and (c) they didn't expect to lose Nikki so soon. They thought they had a few more years with her.

So after the heart-wrenching way in which she left (limping one day with an infection that they hoped would clear up, to being gone the next because of cancer) they decided to get one more Malamute. They found a breeder in Kansas City who had a new litter and went down to pick one out. They found two they liked and had to decide between them. They brought home little Abby last week.

Meanwhile, K and I, sad at the loss of Nikki, finally decided to break down and get a dog of our own. I have always wanted a Malamute (as I said, my parents had three that I loved very much), but they're a lot of work, very head strong, and not something I felt K was up to, particularly with all of that fur that they shed constantly. So I suggested we go down to a pound and pick one out, just a mutt who looked like something we could handle and love. After all, G was a pound kitty, and there's something quite satisfying about rescuing an animal from a shelter.

K, on her own, got in touch with my Dad and said, "What about that other dog?" Between the two of them, they contacted the breeder and inquired about shipping. When she told me about it, she had already made up her mind. She didn't just want any dog. She wanted a Malamute. She wanted me to have one like I had growing up, and it make it all the nicer that we were getting Abby's litter-mate.

We picked her up from the airport yesterday. She was a little terrified from being in a crate for 10 hours and stuck on two different planes. She was a little hungry and thirsty and wasn't too sure who these two people were fawning all over her.

We spent the afternoon on the back deck getting to know her - close to the yard just in case. She spent the evening teaching us that puppies don't adhere to household rules. She's worked her way into our hearts already with those big eyes and big paws. She's going to be a big girl. Dad estimates she'll be a little small for a Malamute (based on the fact that her paws are smaller than Abby's) but still about 75 pounds.

I'm sure there will be more to this story, but for now here are some pictures to give you an idea of what we have in store for us.

Her full name, by the way, is Beatrix Kiddo. Bragging rights to the first person who recognizes the name. Without Googling.

Download of the Week - Dedicated to K

2009-03-09T16:54:00.001-05:00

This song is for K. It could have been written for her.

I Like Birds, by the Eels. (This video was made by a fan, btw. Not bad. Certainly the best option out there.)

If you're small and on a search, I've got a feeder for you to perch on...

12 Years =

2009-03-08T06:28:00.012-05:00

one      truth    worth    knowing  is
that     third    eye      which    sees
our      peace    of       mind     will
grant    power    over     my       faith
that     this     is       our      life

Increment Weather

2009-03-07T16:51:00.003-05:00

It was down in the 20's earlier this week, and on Monday we saw our third snow of the season (probably a record for recent years around these parts) - the past two winters have seen only a light dusting each - and now it's all melted away and 80° outside.

What is going on? It's no wonder my sinuses are trying to escape through my eyeballs.

Watchmen

2009-03-06T17:29:00.006-05:00

Wow.

I'm a fan of the graphic novel, so let me confess my bias right up front. But wow. What a great movie. No, scratch that. What a great adaptation of the book. Yes, Alan Moore, I said it. The <quote>unfilmable<un-quote> has been filmed, and Zack Snyder did a terrific job. The movie is about as faithful as it could be and still come in under 5 hours (way under 5 hours, it did). It is as beautiful a creation on celluloid today as Dave Gibbons' artwork was on paper back in the 80's. And the story is an earnest a representation of, I believe, Moore's every intention.*

Opinions on this movie will vary. I'm already reading a groundswell of criticism around staying too true to a story best left on the printed page. Sure. I get that. But Snyder had a heck of a challenge in creating something to appeal to the uninitiated yet also appease the rabid fanbase. I think he did an admirable job. It would have been, perhaps, a better movie if it were streamlined a little more, but it would have lost something precious along the way.

If you're a fan of the graphic novel, I recommend it. If you're curious and can handle some extreme violence, I recommend it. And if so, go see it in the theater. Visually, it's one of the most stunning movies I've seen since... I don't know when.

For the uninitiated, here's a brief summary of the plot, which will help you make sense of the convolutions going on but won't give anything away:

In 1985, an alternate America has won the Vietnam war, with Richard Nixon still in the White House, and now the world is on the brink of nuclear disaster. The cold war is being tracked by a doomsday clock who's minute-hand inches towards midnight at each new threat. Midnight will toll with the assumed imminent launch of tens of thousands of nuclear missiles aimed at destroying the world several thousand times over. The movie starts with the clock reading just a few minutes to midnight.

The Vietnam War was won thanks to Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup), a former physicist who was caught in an experiment which disintegrated him down to the molecular level but gave him with the ability to change matter at will (including his own, thankfully, as he put himself back together again into the rather impressive form of a large, blue, glowing naked man with relatively little modesty) including the ability to see his own future, who stepped into the rice paddies and blasted the Vietcong into smithereens in six days, giving us our victory.

The Russians see him as a threat, the coldness of a cold war depending on a stalemate between the two superpowers, something difficult to maintain when the other side has a demigod keeping watch, and they continue to stockpile their nukes higher and higher assuming that he could stop perhaps 99% of all of their simultaneously launched missiles, but even the 1% left would destroy the bulk of the U.S. well enough.

Aside from Dr. Manhattan, costumed vigilantes are outlawed. Apparently there has been a rash of them since World War II, starting with a group known as the Minutemen formed in the 30's to clean up the prohibition-era streets and help stop crime, regular men and women without any superpowers at all (except an innate ability to kick ass) but a common goal to right wrongs and help protect (if not serve). One of them was the Comedian, a larger-than-life character with no moral center; a questionable one, at best.

One by one the Minutemen are retired, something that was woven into scenes throughout the entire graphic novel, but which Snyder cleverly condensed into a brilliant series of flashbacks during the opening credits (with Bob Dylan's The Times They Are A-Changin' playing in the background), and now, in the relatively more modern era, a new group of costumed heroes called the Watchmen has formed. Modern times means modern criminals and perhaps a more modern approach to vigilante justice, and the Watchmen became a little too enthusiastic in their pursuits, prompting the oft-graffiti'd phrase displayed on walls in the background: "Who watches the Watchmen?" Thus the ban on costumed heroes.

(Naked blue supermen tilting the balance of the cold war in America's favor: notwithstanding.)

The Watchmen are/were:
Nite Owl (Patrick Wilson) who no longer flies his owl-ship through the night looking for evil-doers but has grown bored in his civilian life, and soft because of it
Ozymandias (Matthew Goode), the self-proclaimed "world's smartest man," now a billionaire trying to eliminate human dependency on fossil fuels
Silk Spectre (Malin Akerman), a.k.a. Dr. Manhattan's girlfriend, who find her life unfulfilled living with someone who views human existence no more or less altered by such trivial matters as life and/or death
Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), the last remaining vigilante who gives fuck-all about the outlawed nature of his mask, continues to fight crime in the shadows of the night
The movie starts with the Comedian, now in his 60's and ostensibly retired, being violently thrown through the plate glass window of his high-rise apartment followed by Rorshach's investigation into his murder, and unfolds as an interlocking series of plots that culminate in a philosophical battle for the survival of all mankind. Seriously. I won't give anything away more than that, but yeah, seriously.

One word of caution to those uninitiated (probably scant few reading these pages): don't go in expecting the Justice League or the X-Men. This isn't a story about superheroes, per se, but a story about extraordinary people (most of whom are innately ordinary at the molecular level) in extraordinary times. And for you chillun's out there too young to remember the 80's, those huge glasses that Patrick Wilson wears were once stylish. Deal with it.

* Moore, being the complete dick that he is (see my ramblings about him back at the bottom of my review of this movie) won't watch it, so we'll never know. But I truly believe Snyder wanted to honor the man's work to the very best of his ability.

Nikki

2009-02-25T06:37:00.002-05:00

My parents' dog, Nikki, died yesterday. I'm still very sad. K and I were there almost 10 years ago when Dad brought her home, just a little fuzz ball of energy with way too large paws. His third Alaskan Malamute, a tradition dating back my entire life. These are wonderful family dogs if you've got the energy and the will to keep them in line. Nikki kept Dad company as Mom went back to school several years ago and, while working at the same time, spent many nights in a row up in her office working on her dissertation. When I would come home for a visit, she was always there waiting for me at the door. Her purpose seemed to be to get as much of her long hair all over my clothes as possible, mixed in with a little slobber and drool, and to dig her too-long toenails into my arms, but there was a boundless amount of love there for anybody who wanted it. And she's gone. There is a hole in my heart today that will be hard to fill.

I'll dig out some pictures and post them later if you're curious.

Quote of the Day

2009-02-12T11:09:00.004-05:00

"Lately I feel my life is an exercise in subtraction."

- K, who, if you know her, understandably has elements in her life worth subtracting. She has assured me that I am not one of them, though she slyly warns me: "for now."

McSweeney's 30

2009-02-06T22:42:00.005-05:00

Drop what you're doing. The latest McSweeney's has arrived. As usual, I will proceed with caution, reading the shortest stories first. (Which allows me to maximize my per-author ingestion over the course of the next few days.)

The cover is reminiscent of their first few issues (reprinted because the original three were going for the GNP of Iceland on eBay*). The primary theme of the cover seems to be Democratic cheers for the election results. I'm down with that.

I just read the liner notes (if you read McSwny's you'll know what I mean). There's a really interesting note from Wells Tower who re-wrote one of this stories, originally published in issue 23, and published again here, who explains why in some detail. Interesting to the writer in me, I guess.

Beyond that, what do we have? Only a couple authors I've heard of. That's good. Glad to hear they're still accepting stories from the relatively unknown. And one from Michael Cera? The kid from Arrested Development? Credits in the back only list him as being born in Brampton, Ontario, and now living in L.A. Probably one in the same. I wonder if he can write? (The first two pages suggest: maybe.)

* Sort of an in-joke, though patently unfunny, since Iceland is in financial ruin at the moment, but McSweeney's, who used to print all of its quarterlies at Oddi Printing in Reykjavik, Iceland, and since stopped because it was just getting too expensive, threw them a bone and had this issue printed back at their Icelandic roots. At the top of the liner notes is this: Given the dire economic straits Iceland finds itself in, we decided to print this issue, a throwback in terms of design, at Oddi. We hope you'll consider Oddi for your printing needs, as they and all manufacturers in Iceland need your help to dig themselves out of the mess their bankers, crazier than bankers pretty much anywhere else, made.

Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream*

2009-02-03T11:56:00.001-05:00

I always tell K (who, by the way, has some of the craziest dreams you could ever imagine) that nobody really cares about someone else's dreams. They may seem personal and vivid and interesting to you, but as you try to describe them to someone else, they fall flat. Because that person doesn't have your experience with them to understand the relevance. Nobody does. That's why they're called "dreams."

So having said that, and admitting my own hypocrisy right up front, I did have this screwy dream the other night that I want to share.

Let me set the stage. I have recurring dreams about places I've lived in the past. I think, subconsciously, my psyche is trying to deal with the number of times I've moved in my life. I grew up in a small town in South Carolina. Spent the nine years between, and including, second grade through tenth grade there. (I'd already moved three times before that and have moved eleven times since. Just FYI.) As a kid, I rode my bicycle around everywhere. The town was small enough to quite easily bike from one side to the other. Naturally, in my recurring dreams about this place, I'm occasionally on a bike.

So get this: in this dream, I'm biking down the main road through our neighborhood (Evans Road, for those of you in the know) with this kid I knew when I was younger (someone I've haven't seen in decades but I stumbled upon recently through a Facebook search, which explains what he was doing in my dream) and I'm telling him, "Dude, this is incredible, I can't believe I'm back here after all these years biking down Evans Road, I mean seriously, you have no idea how many times I've dreamt about this same exact thing!"

What do we call that? Meta-dreaming?

* I've used this title before. Has it really been almost 3 years since I've had a dream worth blogging about? Not surprising. During my years (past) when I really struggled with insomnia or sleep apnea or whatever it was, months would go by before I'd wake up with any memory at all of having an actual dream.

Invisible Lizard's Unusual Stories

2009-02-02T08:05:00.000-05:00

I was talking to a fellow writer last week. In my line of work (IT), it's strange and unusual to meet someone who also writes. (Frankly, I struggle to meet people who even read.) But it happens. Anyway, she had posted one of her own short stories to her blog, and I read it. It was quite good. So we had a little chat about it and about writing in general. I confessed that even though I had a blog of my own, I didn't have any of my work out there... and then I could give no good reason for it.

Was it because I was afraid of someone stealing my work, she asked. No. Not at all. Honor among thieves and all that aside, I just would never assume my writing was good enough to steal. Was it because I was afraid of negative feedback? No, again, certainly not. (A year's worth of Dr. Welt's writing workshops cured me of that.) So what was it?

I gave it a bit of thought and I came to the conclusion that it was because I was afraid of it being ignored. Sitting in a folder on my c:\ drive, it was ignored only by me. But it (my writing) is my creation. I love all of my stories, good or bad. I revisit all of them from time to time. They are largely ignored, true, but they are safe and secure, nestled in their tiny beds, hibernating until such time that I can figure out what to do with them. Out there in the world wide whatever, they are free and can be ignored on a grand scale and...

...and...

There is no "and."

And: so what? They can be ignored until the cows come home (in a figurative and strictly technical sense, I suppose) and it doesn't hurt anything. Or they could be discovered by pretentious cretins who tear them apart. They can be laughed at. They can be scorned. It really doesn't matter. I'm not doing anything with them anyway. Why not.

So, I've created a sister-site to this one that we'll unimaginatively call Invisible Lizard's Unusual Stories. I've put one such story out there so far, something that a couple of you have seen already, but I'll add more. I have plenty. And maybe I'll try my hand at publication again. I have, somewhere, a folder full of rejection letters. Maybe I'll document my progress online.

Maybe.

For now, if you're curious, and have a few spare minutes, you'd make me happy beyond words if you clicked on over there and just had a look. Every once in a while. When you get a chance.

I would be forever in your debt.

Must Be Nice

2009-01-28T20:18:00.001-05:00

As I'm always eager to read news about the upcoming Coraline movie (which spawns from a really great book, by Neil Gaiman, that I do recommend), I stumbled upon this article here where Gaiman gets interviewed about his new movie, among other things. Just before he starts gushing over the genius that is Henry Selick, the director of The Nightmare Before Christmas (one of my all-time favs), and the guy who Gaiman literally gave the rights to make this movie, oh yeah, I'm excited about this movie, but I digress...

As I was saying, just before he starts gushing over the genius that is Henry Selick, Gaiman was talking about how he's always had control over his stories and how (and more importantly, when) they get made into movies:

You always have the power to say no. You don't get to hear about the times I say no because these projects don't get made. Eleven years ago I turned down an offer from Miramax for 3 million dollars for all my short stories. That was at time when 3 million dollars was an awful lot of money to me and it would have changed my life and it would have been cool but I thought "no, they would have complete control and the rights to every short story I have written to make movies or do anything". I thought about it for two or three weeks and I went the other way.

Oh, it must be nice to reminisce back to a time when $3 million used to be a lot of money. How many writers can say that? Perhaps a small handful.

Anyway, for your viewing pleasure, while the trailer is still available, check it out here:

Rest, Rabbit

2009-01-27T19:36:00.004-05:00

I have a strange history with John Updike, personal and interesting only to me, I'm sure, but I'll share it anyway.

I was studying Creative Writing in college. My writing professor was not a huge fan of Updike's. He was a regular contributor to The New Yorker and wrote in what we considered a minimalist style, where the tone, theme, imagery, metaphors, characters, and even the sentences themselves counted for much more than silly things like story and plot. Not to discount all of those things, but I figured, why can't you have all of that and an interesting story at the same time? I read quite a few of his short stories, and they were often beautiful and useful examples for a burgeoning writer, but just not the sort of thing I'd pick off the shelf on my own.

At the same time, I had a close friend who told me that Rabbit is Rich was his all-time favorite novel. I thought I'd give it a try, but since it's the third novel in the "Rabbit" series, I started with the first, Rabbit Run. I found it to be remarkably well-written, but wholly uninspiring. The ending frustrated me to the point that I didn't bother reading further into the series. (Reminds me of that Joseph Heller book I read recently.) Rabbit is Rich won the Pulitzer. Maybe it improved on the first. I don't know. I've always wondered.

Later I stumbled on to The Witches of Eastwick. I'd seen the movie and never knew Updike wrote the underlying novel. So I picked it up and gave it a try. Loved it. Had a blast reading that novel, but therein, things actually happened. It was quite a bit removed from the movie, but I was sort of expecting that. The upshot was: the guy could write an actual story when he wanted to, and his prose didn't suffer. Granted, there were no characters in there as fully real as Harry Angstrom, but that level of reality is a little hard to swallow sometimes.

I've read a couple others by Updike in the years since. He's not a writer I'll go buy any time they publish a new book. I'll wait until the urge hits me. I've been curious about The Widows of Eastwick, but the plot synopsis sounds like quite a departure from the original to me. Maybe I'll wait for paperback.

John Updike was a prolific writer. I do prefer his short stories, because all of that great writing and minimal plot goes down (for me) best in small doses. I am saddened that he's gone, but I am content with the thought that he is immoralized in the catalog he left behind for us to peruse and enjoy as the opportunity presents itself. He will be remembered as one of the great writers of the 20th century. Students for decades to come will be analyzing Rabbit, Run. Maybe they will understand it in ways that I could not.

Doubt

2009-01-25T11:08:00.004-05:00

A couple weeks ago, K and I went out to see the first movie of the year (the first we've seen together in a theater since Burn After Reading, and that was 4 months ago) and I let her choose. There are a couple coming up that I'm interested in seeing but this was on New Year's Day proper and I just wasn't feeling overly excited about any of the offerings. So she chose Doubt. Here's a quick overview:

Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Father Flynn, a priest at the St. Nicholas church and school in the Bronx. It's the early 60's. As the story opens, he is about to engage in a battle of wills with Sister Aloysius (Meryl Streep) who feels the school should remain strict and traditional in both their teachings and their discipline, while Father Flynn would like to update their practices to a more modern way of thinking. Amy Adams plays Sister James, a young, innocent nun at the school, caught between the two warring factions who inadvertently tips the scales when she begins to suspect Father Flynn of spending an inappropriate amount of time and attention on the school's only black student, Donald Miller. She shares her suspicions with Sister Aloysius who (to quote Miramax films' own summary) "sets off on a personal crusade to unearth the truth and to expunge Flynn from the school."

What a great movie. Superbly acted by Meryl Streep, who is always amazing, but had such a difficult role to pull off here (for reasons I can't properly explain without giving away the ending) and did such an incredible job. Close second is Hoffman who had (I feel) the ever-so-slightly easier of the two roles but still very challenging and still nailed it, dead center. The rest of the cast was in the same league, especially Viola Davis who plays the boy Donald's mother and has the difficult job of acting at Streep's level for a very intense scene where neither woman can get the other to understand their point of view.

The ending blew me away, partly because I was not expecting it, and partly because it hit me in the face with what I'd been thinking throughout the whole movie. And I've been thinking about it since. What a treat to sit through 90 minutes that leads to weeks of follow-up meditation. This is a movie not about absolutely certainties, but about doubts.

Final thought: this was based on John Patrick Shanley's play of the same name which won a Tony award a few years ago. The stage title was "Doubt: A Parable." I have to wonder why they lost the subtitle for the film version. Regardless, the guy wrote something powerful, and I'm glad he got to share it with the rest of us who wouldn't have had access to the stage production. Well done, John.

Working Out Slowly

2009-01-24T07:56:00.005-05:00

K bought me a set of these things a little while ago, the Perfect Pushup.

First of all, that's a bit of a misnomer. Perfect Pushups they may help you achieve, but in and of themselves, they are really Chest And Arm Killers. I can do probably an average number of "regular" pushups for a guy my size who doesn't get a lot of upper body exercise on a daily basis, but with these things I could barely do 5. Ouch.

They force you to use different muscle groups and because you're a few extra inches off the ground, you really get a back workout if you go all the way down to touch your nose to the floor (the way I was taught so many years ago in gym class).

Naturally, I was disappointed and frustrated with myself, so I put them away and tried to forget how pathetic I was. But this year, I have a new resolution. I want to be able to do 50. And since I'm in no hurry, here's how I'm going to work up to it.

I'll start with one at a time and every week add one to my reps. I started the first week in January with 1 pushup (in the so-called perfect style). For kicks, I augment that with 10 ab crunches. I did that several times a day for most of the days in that week.

Each successive week in January, I've increased the pushups by 1 (trying to keep the ab crunches to 10x the number of pushups). At the moment, I'm at 4 pushups and 40 crunches at a time. I do that in the morning and again at night. On weekends, I might slip in a mid-day set as well. At the moment it's all still pretty easy. Next week I hit 5, and I feel like it's not going to be a problem.

If I can keep this up, I easily reach my goal of 52 pushups by the end of the year. (Of course, I don't really expect to be able to keep up with the 10x rule for the crunches - 520 seems like a lot - but I'd be happy with 250.)

We'll see how it goes. If you hear from me again on this subject, it's going well.

Dowload of the Week

2009-01-23T19:16:00.005-05:00

I was driving to work a few years ago, and I heard this song on the radio. I was listening to a college radio station at the time that was playing some really interesting stuff.* I would get to work and write down the names of some of the songs I heard on the way in and look them up later. Quite a few got purchased off iTunes and started a great collection of (quote) alternative (unquote) music I might not otherwise have found. The morning in question I heard the song "Why'd You Want Me" by The Jesus and Mary Chain.**

The what? Yeah, I'd never heard of them. So I looked them up and this track in particular. The only place I could find it was on (of all things) the Encino Man soundtrack.

Yeah, you read that right. Encino Man. That crappy movie from the early 90's where Brendan Fraser plays a revived neanderthal in modern day California, Sean Astin plays the dweeb barely able to contain his homoerotic tendencies towards him, and "Totally" Pauly Shore plays the guy who unbelievably makes the movie even worse.***

While the soundtrack was available from Amazon, it wasn't from iTunes, and I wasn't about to plunk down $9.95 + shipping for this one track. It was catchy, but not something I had to have. Since then, however, I've kept looking for it to appear on iTunes (off-and-on), never finding it, and I eventually gave it up on it as the one that got away. Oh, well.

Fast forward to this past Sunday.

I sort of had the blues. Those Sunday Blues you get after a great weekend when you have to go back to work the next morning morning and you'd really rather not. You know what I mean.

I was vegging on the couch, flipping channels, not finding anything, so I switched over to the HBO On Demand channel. Guess what they had? Encino Man. So, yes remembering this one song I heard two years ago was on there somewhere, I thought I'd watch it again. (Also, see *** below, if you haven't already.) And there it was in the credits.

So I went back to iTunes and - finally! - they had it. On a collection of "B-Sides and Rarities." It's mellow. Groovy. Check out the lyrics below. Met my Sunday Blues head-on and suggested that I might pull my head out of my ass and get over it. Yeah.

Why'd you care?
Why'd you want me there?
Why'd you sin?
Why did you let me in?
I got no shoes
I've always got the blues
I gave myself to drink and drugs and filth
Why'd you care?
Why'd you want me there?
I see the gloom and doom in every room
You see the light in every darkened night
So why'd you care?
Why'd you want me there?
Why did you sin?
Why'd you let me in?
Why'd you want me babe?

* Still a great station that I love listening to. Check it out. They stream Ogg Vorbis, if you're down with that. Or mp3, if you're not.

** Interestingly enough, if you go to their playlist logs and search for this track, you won't find it. I went there just now curious to see if I could narrow down the actual date I heard this song, because I'm a little surprised I still remember it. It's not there. But that is not altogether surprising. I think they rely on human data entry to get that information onto their website, and it is not always accurate or reliable.

*** I'll confess to loving that movie when I was younger, back in college. It had the dweeb getting the cute girl in the end. Sort of a recurring fantasy of mine, don't know why. These days, not so much. I got the girl, and the film hasn't aged well.

Almost 6 Inches

2009-01-20T14:18:00.006-05:00

And the world did not end. It just got prettier.

Most people stayed home today. I think every school in the area closed, but that's for the best. People around here drive like idiots who have never seen snow before. K and I drove down to the Starbucks which is about 3 blocks away (I said the world didn't end) and as we were waiting to make a left turn, we nearly got sideswiped by a guy turning right into our lane from the same direction we were wanting to go (if that helps your visual image any). This doofus was trying to make a fast right turn and the back end of his car slid to within inches of ours. If I could have moved our car sideways (to the immediate right) I would have moved out of his way, but as it was, I wasn't sure if moving forwards or backwards would get us out of his path fast enough. Luckily we were unscathed and the Starbucks tasted great with that little added adrenaline.

The kids have been out playing in the snow, and yes, me too, just a little. There is an Asian family down the street making snowmen with little buckets, much the same way you'd make sand castles at the beach.

It must have started snowing last night. It was raining when we went to bed, but the temperature was dropping. When I got up at my usual un-godly-early hour, a good layer had already dropped. It's about done, now, but I think we got nearly 6 inches. (That picture below was taken just prior to our Starbucks run, nearly 3 hours ago.)

As always, we tossed Gus out into the snow to see how he liked it. (He didn't.)

Snow Threatens: Doom To All

2009-01-19T19:59:00.004-05:00

My fellow North Carolinians are... no, wait, that might be too broad a spectrum... my fellow Raleighites and Caryians are completely nuts when it comes to snow. The forecast is for a couple inches overnight into tomorrow and the office was practically abuzz today with wild speculation. I could hear conversations well down the hall: what to do if it snows, if your power goes out, if you have to leave your car stranded on the interstate.

This is not a joke. Several years ago, before we moved down here, a somewhat unexpected and freak snowstorm hit the city mid-afternoon and crippled the infrastructure for the drive home. People tell me it took 7 hours to go several miles. Accidents blocked the on and off ramps for the major interstates and ground down travel to a halt. Some people literally abandoned their cars and walked home.

A woman in the office was telling me a while ago that nowadays she packs up and leaves at even the slightest flurry. "I'm never doing that again," she said, referring to the many hours she sat in a dead stop for a drive that normally took about 20 minutes.

I should say so.

K and I went out shopping tonight. We usually go on Sunday, but yesterday we were too lazy, so we took our little list of the week's essentials with us and hit the little grocery store near our house only to find it packed. Every checkout lane was full. (Usually, even during what would normally be considered a rush, there are only 2 or 3 kids working the checkout lanes.) I asked if they had called in for reinforcements to which the barely lucid girl scanning our carrots said, "Dunno, I guess."

People were literally stocking up to prepare for the pending disaster. K and I were just shopping for the week. A few things we noticed:

The fruit and vegetable section was hardly touched. No sense buying perishables when the world is about to end, I suppose.
The pasta and Ragu section was thoroughly decimated.
As was the Gatorade section. (K eloquently pointed out that snow must really deprive you of those electrolytes.)
As was the Little Debbie section. (Really? Little Debbies?)
The store was selling gallon bottles of water by the gallon. (Redundant? Perhaps, but also redundant.)
Some people were hauling several canisters of propane out to their cars. (Really? Propane? You gonna fire up that grill and boil pasta using water from that gallon jug and pour ragu over it? Can we toast up some Oatmeal Cream Pies and have them on the side?)

Having said all that, I'm sure I've just jinxed myself into a new ice age, but it seemed pretty ridiculous to me. K and I have lived through actual blizzards in Chicago and truly devastating ice storms in the Midwest. 2-6 inches in Raleigh might cripple the city, but I think we'll survive.

Unless the internet goes out. Then we'll just die, but that's practically a given.

Who Doesn't Love Ricky Gervais?

2009-01-13T06:33:00.001-05:00

Yes, just a cheap post today, but as part of my NYRs I thought, what the hell, this made me laugh, so I'll share it and kill 2 birds with 1 stone. Why not.

WFH This Week*

2009-01-09T09:39:00.004-05:00

I've been "WFH" all week on my employee appraisals. (Yes, it's that time of year again.) I am down to 6 direct reports, but my three managers are responsible for the remaining 14 on my team, so I've been working on/thinking about 20 annual reviews this week. I tend to work from home when I do this to minimize the background noise. I'm nearly done, but it's taken a lot out of me.

First of all, my "work day" typically starts when I get up and ends when I go to bed. Sure, I take the customary breaks, but I leave my computer on and connected all day long. Email is always reaching me. IM, too. And naturally my desk phone is forwarded to my mobile, so I'm always in virtual earshot. While I enjoy W'ingFH, I also look forward to getting back in the office next week so I can put a reasonable start and end on my day.

Second, I take my employee evals very seriously. Is one person getting scored fairly compared to another? How do you account for different grade levels among employees? A lower grade employee working on x projects should get the same score as a higher grade employee working on 2x projects, but only if they both do equally as well depending on what your expectations are from that grade, and numerous other variables as well. Plus, management above me puts artificial restrictions on how many "good" scores you can give, so what does that do to my bell curve? Honestly, sometimes it feels like solving a Rubik's Cube blindfolded.

Anyway, almost done now, and looking forward to having this behind me. Each year, I struggle with it. At least this year I don't have a dictator boss making things more difficult on me. And I've pulled out all of the George Winston I have on iTunes and am playing them again. Some, I can see from the "last played" column, for the first time since January 2008.

WFH = Working From Home, an acronym we use around the office to soften the blow, so to speak. One of the advantages to working in IT is that most of what we do is electronic and can be done, theoretically, anywhere. It's one of the disadvantages, as well, as some of our work has gotten farmed out to India. But I digress...

New Year's Resolution #1

2009-01-08T10:33:00.001-05:00

Blog more. Get back to these pages. Don't leave three-and-a-half years of [whatever this is] neglected.

The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008)

2008-12-20T16:35:00.002-05:00

As part of a little team building exercise and to thank them for all of their hard work leading up to the holidays, I took the local staff who work for me out for lunch and a movie on Friday. There were 8 of us in all. I let them choose the venue, because my batting average lately for these types of things is hit-or-miss. We have too many vegetarians in the group now which throws off my food choices, and honestly there just didn't seem to be any good movies coming out. They picked an Italian place (very good) and this one.

The Day the Earth Stood Still. Playing on the IMAX screen, so I figured that even if the movie itself was as bad as the tomatometer suggested (20%), it would at least be interesting to see on the big screen.

And, yeah, it was just about that bad. Props to the genius who cast Keanu in a role which required no facial movement whatsoever. Inspired. Of course, he brought nothing else to the table besides his usual stoicism, but I don't think it required much else. The rest of the cast, which included the usually watchable Jennifer Connelly (who looked like she was losing a battle with anorexia here) and Kathy Bates did fair enough. Will Smith's kid was pretty good. I think he'll be one to watch in the future.* But the acting wasn't the problem with this movie.

Now, I haven't seen the original, so I'm not looking to make any comparisons to a movie that was relevant during the cold war, but this one seemed to be a major environmental suck-fest. I hope I'm not giving anything away, but yes, we know the planet is in trouble. We've all seen Al Gore's little soap box presentation, or at least had it related to us frame by frame, and whether we want to or not, most of us believe it. We don't really need another major motion picture to shove it down our throats. The whole "ark" concept went a little too far, I feel. Besides, are we really supposed to believe that the planet was saved by one-sixth of Monty Python, Bach, and a mother's love for her child? Jesus man, those things have been around for a while now, especially that last one.

The effects were okay. The movie was well made, over all. It just sucked. Too bad. IMAX couldn't even save it.

* Though I'm not sure if I really need a remake of The Karate Kid, and even if I did, you've almost got to cast a teenager in the lead role to make it even watchable. Who's gonna care about a couple of ten-year-olds duking it out in a karate championship. (sigh...) Another beloved movie of my youth which should have stayed there. At least they've got Jackie Chan taking over the Miyagi role. If nothing else, that's pretty cool.

McSweeney's 29

2008-12-14T08:21:00.001-05:00

This is more like it. That last one left me wanting more. I think I'll start out with the Yannick Murphy story. I bought one of his books a while ago and never read it. I think I owe it to him.

Eagle Eye

2008-10-24T22:48:00.003-05:00

Here's a movie I really wanted to like. First of all, check out that list of actors: Shia LaBeouf (who I've liked in the past, his Indiana Jones discretion notwithstanding), Michelle Monaghan (who impressed us in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang), Rosario Dawson (always cute, but rarely cuter than she was in Clerks 2), Michael Chiklis (less notable for his Thing role in FF but really stellar on his TV show) and of course Billy Bob Thornton who seems to take every acting job offered to him and yet still manages to remain interesting onscreen.

You've got Steven Spielberg producing - of course, because he's been hand holding Shia LaBeouf's career since Transformers - so you know it's got to adhere to a certain standard, at least. The director of Disturbia, another LaBeouf movie that wasn't too bad. And a couple of newbie writers.

And there, I guess, was the problem for, you see, this movie was absolutely, totally, and in all other ways inconceivable. Preposterous. Impossible. Beyond any stretch of the imagination, beyond any rational suspension of disbelief. Sure, it was well made and passably acted, but the story line itself was so far fetched that it constantly jarred me out of my reverie as if someone smacked me over the head repeatedly saying, "Are you seeing this?" Sure, I don't expect complete realism in movies, but this one at least purported to be realistic. Transforming robots lends a certain amount of incrediblity that you just accept, but this was supposedly about real stuff happening to real people. At least make it believable, guys.

Having said that, I did enjoy the rest of the movie, besides that one complaint. I think if someone had warned me going in that it was completely unbelievable and just let go of trying to make sense out of any of it, I might have enjoyed it even more. It will make a good renter, and on that score, I do recommend it.

Bad Movie Night: Max Payne

2008-10-20T22:20:00.001-05:00

Bad Movie Night = something me and a couple of my buddies from back in KC started a few years ago where we go see a movie that we know will be bad, something the wives wouldn't (or shouldn't) see, but for one reason or another we just wanted to see anyway. Thus, knowing it will be bad, and I mean really bad, we don't have too bad a time. Usually we can laugh at its badness and enjoy ourselves.

This is the fifth such event in roughly as many years. We started this with Jackass back in '02. Several of us knew about it, had read about it, seen the previews. We understood what kind of a movie it was, and we figured, what the hell, let's go see it anyway. How bad can it be? Sure enough, it was disgusting and terrible in so many ways and yet we laughed all the way through it. A movie for guys, if there ever was one.

A few years later we tried again with Doom. A few of us had played the game, so we decided go see it in the theater. Another boys' night out. Again, awful. The dialog was so bad we laughed all the way through it. We had fun in spite of the bad movie up on the screen.

In the years since, we followed that up with Underworld: Evolution (because we love Kate Beckinsale in black latex) and Jackass 2 (for tradition's sake). It's gotten difficult to do this since I moved away. However, my buddies back in KC, most of whom work at the same company, sometimes find their way down here to the corporate office and we look for an opportunity here and there. They're out this week for some training, so this time around, we decided to see Max Payne. In the spirit of Doom, a couple of us had played this game way back when, and even though we knew the movie would completely suck, we thought we might enjoy some piece of it anyway.

For my part, I can honestly say I didn't enjoy any of it. (Other than Olga Kurylenko, naturally, who is a treat to watch, even in a sadly abbreviated role.) The acting was terrible. Mark Whalberg, who has impressed me with his acting in the past, I've decided just sets his acting dial on random and sometimes gets lucky, mostly not. The art direction was (for lack of a better word) interesting. But the coolest parts of the game (the bullet time stuff) didn't even make it into the move, save one very short scene, merely an homage to the original. Neither did the noir-ish atmosphere, although I could tell that's what they were (poorly) aiming for.

All of these bad movie night movies are ones to skip unless you, yourself, think you have a reason why it might be slightly enjoyable. This one, however, is one I'd suggest you think twice about. Maybe thrice.

Visitors

2008-10-15T20:48:00.000-05:00

My favorite "adopted" Aunt Nan and Uncle Greg (long time friends of my parents who have become part of the family) were in town for a visit yesterday. We weren't really sure when they would get here, so I took a week off of work just to be sure. They were on a driving tour of the east coast, starting up in Maine and ending in Cary, NC. Naturally, their timetable needed to be flexible.

They arrived Monday evening, hung out with us all day Tuesday, and left us last night. K and I watched them go with sad hearts. What a lovely visit and what a nice treat it was for them to come all the way down here. We certainly had a good time. We took them around and showed them the few places we've discovered that are worth seeing. (Duke Gardens, if you haven't seen it, is a place to check out).

We investigated a barbecue joint in Durham that we've been wanting to try out called Hog Heaven Bar-B-Q. I think the waitress was flirting a little with Uncle Greg.

We grilled halibut for them on their first night here and on their second night, at their request, we took them to the little hole-in-the-wall Mexican place around the corner that we visit a couple times a week ("because it's cheap and it's close," we told them). They wanted to visit it because they said they have their own Mexican place back home that they like to visit for the same reasons (though, I suspect, not quite as often) and they wanted to see ours. We got to hear all sorts of interesting stories about Greg's work and Nan's veritable arsenal of friends and extended family.

I only hope we left them with the same warm feeling of love in their hearts that they left with us.

Download of the Week

2008-10-01T19:11:00.005-05:00

I don't care much for the video, and this isn't really my kind of music, but I dig this song nonetheless. I think it has something to do with those short, punctuated guitar riffs. It's catchy.

Rilo Kiley - Silver Lining

Rilo kiley - silver lining
by epb21

Me 119, Pancakes 0

2008-09-28T18:31:00.002-05:00

The trip to San Francisco was fun and very productive. T and I had a good time, and we got a lot out of the conference. We tried to maximize our time and go hear some really smart people talk about different products and tricks and techniques for doing the geeky things that we do. (Very boring stuff to anybody not in this field so I won't expound.)

There were about 40,000 people there this year all crowded into a couple of city blocks around the Moscone Convention Center in downtown SF. T and I registered late, at the very last minute to be exact (because it took my boss about 4 months to decide to let us go), so we had to stay a couple miles away. There were buses that run back and forth from the conference center to the hotel, which we took advantage of as often as we could, but we walked it more often than not. Interesting because the neighborhood between our hotel and the conference center, while not exactly the slums, wasn't quite the suburbs either. One morning as we got a particularly early start, with the sun just rising, we saw an interestingly dressed woman walking the other way from us (apparently at the end of her day) and T asked me, "Is that a hooker?"

I believe it was.

Our favorite Swedish Pancake place (called Sears Fine Foods, but not at all related to the other Sears) was mid-way between, so walking took on new purpose. We got into a routine of getting up early and leaving the hotel at 7am so we could get to Sears by 7:15, have our 18 little pancakes, be done by about 8, and then either catch a bus from one of the hotels near Sears or just walk the rest of the way to the conference, which usually started by 9. All the walking and all of those pancakes (we went to Sears every day, and I had 119 little pancakes by the end of the week... but remember these are about 2" in diameter and about 1/8" thick) probably canceled each other out. But it was worth it.

I got to go down to the MOMA and see, among other things, a Frieda Kahlo show, along with a really fascinating exhibit of Chinese art produced until the Mao regime (lots of stoic faces with hardened expressions which, by themselves, looked normal, but room after room of them gave you the sense that they were say: "we are not happy but we will pretend we are content"... very interesting, very cool, and very sad all at the same time). I missed K who is my usual museum guide, but as I walked through there alone I imagined she was there with me. And I brought her back some books of the exhibits I saw so we could share later.

And, naturally, as always, I schlepped over to the Cartoon Art Museum just down the street, dragging T with me, who seemed to enjoy it. I love that place. Again, somewhere that I like to go with K, but she was there in spirit.

Oh, and she told me to pick up one of these while I was out there, sort of an homage (and upgrade) to the one she got me one of the last times we were out there together. How cool is that?

Who loves me?

Semi-Annual Geek-Fest

2008-09-19T18:09:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow, I fly out for my semi-annual geek-fest in San Francisco. (I say semi-annual, but what I really mean is that the geek-fest is held every year, but I don't always attend. I missed last year, which was a bummer.) I'd be excited if I weren't so tired.

I've spent the past week working like crazy (work-work, not the housework that I'm trying to do now and clearly procrastinating) to try to get everything done before I leave, some days literally starting work at 6am, pausing for a quick shower at 8 so I can get into the office by 9, then coming home around 5 for dinner and back to work until 11. (That was my day yesterday.) Needless to say, while I'm at the conference, I don't have a lot of time for work-work, so I have to get all caught up before I go. It can be exhausting.

As for the actual traveling, which you know I hate, I fly out tomorrow at 11:40 which means I need to be at the airport by 10:40 which means we need to leave here by about 10:15. Which means I'd better get in gear and get the rest of my work done so I'm not stressing in the morning.

I'm flying out with one of my managers from the Kansas City office, T, just the two of us. A couple other guys had wanted to go, but I had to say no. We (my team) got presented in an unfortunately negative light two years ago when 5 of us went (which is another reason I didn't go last year: nobody went last year). I had approval from my upper management to send all 5. It's not like I was pulling something over on them. But for the whole next year, all I heard from that same group of upper-level managers was what a waste of money it was to send 5 people to the same conference. (The point can be argued both ways, so I didn't bother.)

So this year, since we got approval to go again, I figured we should pare it down. Besides, they wouldn't have approved any more than us two.

We'll meet in Dallas tomorrow to catch the second leg of our flights to SFO. A week's worth of fun and educational (presumably) lectures and hands-on sessions should get me my fill of geek-related training and information for quite some time. T's got me lined up for full days' worth, Sunday through Thursday, 8am - 6pm, chockablock. I think I'm going to need to come home Friday and just sleep for the weekend to recuperate.

Burn After Reading

2008-09-16T20:55:00.001-05:00

K and I hadn't been out to see a movie in the theater since The Dark Knight (I guess there just hasn't been much that appeals to us), but we rarely pass up a Coen Brothers movie. We were looking for something to see, so we took a chance. And with this cast, how could we go wrong?

Whew! We almost did. In fact, I had to let this movie settle in my mind a bit before I could (can) honestly say that I liked it. Here's a brief summary of just part of the plot:

Harry (Clooney) is having an affair with Linda (McDormand) who works at a gym with Chad (Pitt, in a hilariously a-typical air-headed blond role). Osborne (Malkovich), married to
Katie (Swinton) who, coincidentally, is also having an affair with Harry, gets fired from his post at the CIA. Embittered, he sets out to write his memoirs to expose what he thinks are devastating secrets about his time spent in the company. Katie, meanwhile, is preparing to file for divorce and on advice from her lawyer, copies all of his files from his hardrive onto a CDROM, including his memoirs by accident (she was looking for financial records). Through one of those only-in-the-movies happenstances, said CDROM gets left at Linda and Chad's gym for them to find. When they realize what they've got (or what they think they've got) they set out to blackmail Osborne. Hilarity ensues. Very subdued, confusing, convoluted hilarity.

This is a movie with some obviously brilliant comedic moments. For instance, there are a series of scenes where Harry, who is a treasury agent, is buying hardware and supplies, metal poles and other nefarious looking bits and pieces, and assembling them into something sinisted-looking in his basement. We only assume he's up to no good. When we get to the big reveal, I swear I almost fell out of my seat.

It's also a movie with the Coen Brothers' standard trademarked subtle moments. You have to watch it twice to catch on to the rest of their humor. In retrospect this was a very funny movie. In the middle of it, I have to admit it was a bit of a head scratcher.

Who do you root for in a movie like this (where this writer/director team, known for leaving many casualties behind in their wake, don't miss an opportunity to maim and kill just about whomever they please)? Here's a hint: look to McDormand, married to one of the brothers, to come out on top, somehow. And thank God for J.K. Simmons, who notably played Juno's father to some acclaim last year, to enter at the end, speak up for us viewers and scratch his head in time with the rest of us.

Too Good Not To Share

2008-09-16T06:12:00.000-05:00

I Knew Him Well, Horatio

2008-09-14T16:00:00.005-05:00

I'm reeling over the death of one of my literary idols, David Foster Wallace. Dead at 46, an apparent suicide. I run hot and cold, angry at him for leaving us too soon with too little (by my count, 2 novels [3, if you consider one is large enough to count twice], 2 short story collections, 2 non-fiction collections), sad that he's gone, happy that I got to know him prehumously through his writing.

Everything I've read from the man has inspired me to be a better writer. True, the big one, Infinite Jest, sits atop my interminable stack as one that I have not, yet, finished. I will one day, when I'm ready. Maybe I'll take a week or two vacation from work to do nothing by that. Perhaps that's what I need.

He could string a sentence together in such a way that I would get mad at myself for not thinking of it first. He mixed wit and pathos in such a way that it was hip and postmodern at the same time. He wrote the best essay on the porn industry that I... let me stop there. I never knew someone *could* write a good essay on the porn industry.

There will be no more from DFW. He hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is. Let the mourning commence.

McSweeney's 28

2008-08-24T08:12:00.002-05:00

Not a bad concept. Those brave souls at McSweeney's Publishing put together 8 minature books all dedicated to the art of the fable and packaged them cleverly in one large collection. What you see here is the back cover of 4 of the books. The other 4 are hidden beneath. Running through the front covers (unseen, underneath) is a large elastic band holding them together. This is all in the confines of a cardboard "tray" or "frame" to which the elastic band is attached. Neat little piece of design. Like I said: clever.

If only the stories within were as clever. It doesn't take long to read them, a few minutes each. Of some of them are a quick and entertaining read, mostly targeted to children (as fables tend to do), but for my money, I was expecting a little more out of my quarterly. I like to sift through the stories in each offering and find the best and the worst (understand, none of them are bad, just some better than the others), pick them apart, diagnose, analyze, enjoy. Here I was just treated to a novel concept in book art design.

Fair enough. I'll take it. I've got every issue back to the first up on my shelf, but I haven't been this disappointed in a McSweeney's offering since issue 17.

8 years, 22 days

2008-08-22T12:32:00.002-05:00

Zadie Smith On Writing

2008-08-17T14:09:00.011-05:00

That Crafty Feeling

A lecture given by the English Author, Zadie Smith, to the students of Columbia University's Writing Program in New York on Monday March 24, 2008

DISCUSSED: Fraudulence and Fraudulent Idiots, Kafka, Macro Planners and Micro Managers, Obsessive Perspective Disorder (OPD), Gravity's Rainbow, Derrida, Nabokov, Dostoyevsky, Crap, The Literary Echo Chamber, Apprenticeship, Magical Thinking, Victorian Boilers, Scaffolding, The Bhagavad-Gita, Donald Rumsfeld, Zeno, Roman Palazzos,Character, Odradek, Proofs, Smart Strangers, The Waste Land, Ezra Pound, Nausea

I've been meaning to write about this wonderful article for a few months now, but I knew I needed more time than the usual 15-30 minutes I normally allow for a blog entry. This was published in the fifty-fourth issue of The Believer, June 2008.* This article is for writers, aspiring or otherwise. If this describes you in anyway at all, stick with me.

Smith starts off by apologizing in advance for attempting to write about (or, in this case, talk about, since it was originally a lecture) something that cannot really be discussed amongst outsiders without feeling like a fraud, since talking about fiction - the why - is one thing, but talking about the art of fiction - the how - is another thing altogether.

"Permit me," she says, "the language of a fiction writer. The language a writer uses with another writer, when both are in the middle of novels and they meet downtown for coffee and speak to each other across the table from their separate dreams. I'm not sure how helpful it will be, but at least I won't feel I'm putting anything over anybody."

She then launches into her discussion, divided into ten parts. I'll briefly describe them here.

1. OPD in the First Twenty Pages - wherein she talks about two different kinds of writers, Macro Planners (who obsessively build the plot and characters in his/her novel before even writing a single word, often exchanging ideas, endings, verb tenses, etc., with the shuffle of some index cards) and Micro Managers (who simply start writing and let one sentence build upon another). Smith confesses that she is the latter and has developed an Obsessive Perspective Disorder (OPD) over the first twenty pages, because they determine the outcome of the rest of the novel. "In the case of On Beauty my OPD spun completely out of control: I reworked those first twenty pages for almost two years." When she finally got them worked out, she says, the rest of the novel took only five months.

2. Other People's Words, Part One - wherein she talks about the inspiration of other writers - other people's words - and how you leave them behind as you evolve, how you inevitably leave your previous self behind, how your own words, those you wrote in the past, become themselves other people's words. "After each book is done, I look forward to hating it (and I never have to wait long); I get a weird, inverse confidence from feeling destroyed, because being destroyed, having to start again, means I have space in front of me, somewhere to go."

3. Other People's Words, Part Two - wherein she discusses some writers who won't read anything else while they are writing for fear of being tainted by another's voice vs. writers like herself who devour other books (but not crap, she says, not in the first hundred pages anyway) to give balance to her diet. "If my sentences are baggy, too baroque, I cut back on fatty Foster Wallace, say, and pick up Kafka, as roughage." "The truth is," she goes on to say, "It's a very strong writer indeed who gets by without a model kept somewhere in mind."

4. Middle-Of-The-Novel Magical Thinking - wherein she discusses the middle of the novel, that point not necessarily mid-stream but where it stops being work and the words start flowing, where you lose sight of real life altogether, and the magic that seems to happen there: you find things happening around you that seem to fall in perfect symmetry with what you're writing. All writers have stories about middle-of-the-novel magic. She tells one of hers.

5. Dismantling the Scaffolding - wherein she discusses literary scaffolding, a device writers use to build their novels (she uses, as examples, modeling each chapter on the books of the Old Testament or the speeches of Donald Rumsfeld) and advises to use that scaffolding when you're writing but don't forget to tear it down later because you'll invariably find you didn't need it at all and the book may be better without it.

6. First Twenty Pages, Redux - wherein she advises that, late in the novel, you go back and revisit the first twenty pages and loosen it up a little, give your reader the benefit of the doubt. You don't need to explain absolutely everything up front, she says. "This reader who, for all you know, has read Thomas Berthard, Finnegans Wake, Gertrude Stein, Georges Perec - yet you're worried that if you don't mention Sarah Malone is a social worker with a dead father in the first three pages this reader might not be able to follow you exactly."

7. The Last Day - wherein she describes the exhilaration of the four-and-a-half hours following the completion of a novel, when you're finally done.

8. Step Away from the vehicle - wherein she gives her most important piece of advice, to step away from your novel when you're done, put it in a drawer ("a year or more is ideal - but even three months will do") and then take another look. The secret to editing, she says, is "you need to become its reader instead of its writer." This is true. Being an aspiring writer for these past eighteen years, myself, I have had ample opportunity to write something and then put it away for years on end, only to reopen it again and check it out from a whole new perspective. In my case, sadly, the realization that usually hits me is that my writing is crap. (Trust me on this one. The stories I could tell you, the stories I could show you...)

9. The Unbearable Cruelty of Proofs - wherein she describes proofs as "the wasteland where the dream of your novel dies and cold reality asserts itself." Proofs, those loose-leaf pages marked up by an editor's pen, might be a nightmare for the established writer who's next novel is already stimulating the salivary glands of publishing houses both here and abroad, but frankly getting to that point is still a pipe dream for me, so I can't really relate to this section of her lecture.

10. Years Later: Nausea, Surprise, and Feeling OK - wherein she talks about picking up your already-published novel years later, how sometimes it induces nausea, sometimes it surprises you, and sometimes it leaves you feeling "OK."

If this has prompted you to race out to your local bookstore or library and see if they have last month's copy of The Believer (the latest is the July/August Music CD issue), great.** If not, then let's move along. For me, I felt as if we were talking about some of my own writing, some of my failed attempts, and some of my own habits (bad or otherwise). It has been stimulating, reading this article now for the fifth time, and even as wear out the binding in the magazine, I know I'll be reading it again in the near and distant future.

* If you've never heard about this magazine, it's worth checking out. I have all fifty-five issues on the shelf across the room from where I'm sitting right now. I read it from cover to cover as soon as I get it (though, I will admit, since I know K is reading this, that I usually skim the more political articles).

** You can read most of the introduction here. But the rest you'll have to find yourself.

Two Quickies

2008-08-11T19:53:00.002-05:00

Pardon my meager sense of humor, but these gave me a couple of laughs:

A snail was mugged by two turtles. When the police asked him what happened, he replied: "I don't know. It all happened so fast."

(pause for the odd snicker)

A priest, a rabbi and a lesbian walk into a bar. The bartender says: "Wait a minute... is this a joke?"

Why Didn't Anybody Tell Me?

2008-08-04T18:41:00.004-05:00

I'm not sure too many people in the western world noticed, but Alexander Solzhenitsyn died yesterday. It was buried in the news (pardon the pun), and I accidentally stumbled upon it. A day late I might add. Who was he? Check out the link, below, for some more information, but if you'd really like to dig in, check out the Russian Literature section of your local library wherein you'll find the three more important authors that country has seen in the past 200 years: start with Fyodor Dostoyevsky, work your way up to Anton Chekov, and cap it off with a little Solzhenitsyn, in that chronological order.

I can't explain why, but I went through a Russian Lit. phase in college. It started with Dostoyevsky's Brothers Karamazov during a standard "Great Books" class, required of Literature majors. I stumbled into Chekov during some drama courses, Uncle Vanya and The Cherry Orchard among his best. And then, on my own, I sought out Solzhenitsyn's Cancer Ward. Not at all a light read, it took me months to get through it, and it only started to make sense afterward when a professor of mine explained that it was an allegory for the Russian communistic state.

These days I'm not reading nearly such heady stuff, but I feel the loss of one of the last of the three Russian greats as if I'd been reading them still. I may have to dig back through the stacks and rediscover. Although, I think I'll start with some short stories.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, December 11, 1918 – August 3, 2008

I Can Fly

2008-07-31T08:16:00.003-05:00

I watched Superhero Movie the other day. Really not a great movie, which should mean a lot coming from me because I really like spoof movies. Just not this one. Sure, there were moments that made me laugh out loud, but overall... well, I've seen better. (The genre itself doesn't require much critique. It is what it is.)

However, there was one scene in the movie that cracked me up beyond all others and literally had me on the floor. Luckily YouTube has it for me to share. Enjoy.

Watchmen Fans: Geek Out

2008-07-25T05:24:00.003-05:00

Someone over at Rotten Tomatoes with waaaaay too much time on his hands put together a scene-by-scene analysis of the Watchmen trailer. When I saw it, I rolled my eyes and chuckled, but then I read it and it got me salivating for the movie even more. If you're also a curious fan, check it out here. This guy noticed a few things that I certainly did not.

Download of the Week

2008-07-24T17:15:00.000-05:00

The Saturday Knights - Foreign Affair

Really a bizarre song. Rap? Yeah. But not terribly serious. I can't catch all the lyrics, but any song that raps about Amy Winehouse, Lily Allen, and M.I.A. - and is called Foreign Affair - has got my interest. Honestly, I heard this the first time and, while I liked the beat, had a strong WTF? thought running through my head. The second time I just liked the beat.

Couldn't find it on YouTube, but here's a link to an mp3. Grab it while it still works.

Quote of the Day, X-Files Edition

2008-07-22T17:51:00.001-05:00

"You're an invertebrate scum sucker whose moral dipstick's about two drops short of bone dry."

- From X-Files, Episode 4X09, "Tunguska"

How I Roll

2008-07-21T17:46:00.002-05:00

The Dark Knight

2008-07-20T16:08:00.006-05:00

I had to wait until Sunday to see The Dark Knight, after most of the country had already seen it - if you can judge by the $66 million Friday debut. I was afraid it would be crowded, so we hit the earliest matinee we could find, which at our preferred theater was noon. Sure enough, the theater was almost 2/3 full. That's just crazy for such an early show.

But what a movie. The acting was superb (and yes, whatever you've heard about Heath Ledger knocking The Joker out of the park is true... Jack Nicholson was great but Heath was just plain scary), the effects were outstanding (one scene in particular where they blow up a building shocked me with how real it looked and I wondered if they really did it), and the story was involved and compelling. What I liked about it was the fact that they (Chris Nolan, his brother, and David S. Goyer, who collaborated with them on the first one) really delved into the "good vs. evil within yourself" themes that's made Batman an interesting character all of these years. I mean, really, he's a vigilante, above the law. Is he a good guy or a bad guy who's just not as bad as everybody else? Where do we have room for that in our society?

I guess when you have larger than life baddies like The Joker and Ra's Al Ghul, you'll take a masked man with a utility belt if you can get one.

I think this is one of the best comic book movies I've seen, but it's apples and oranges compared to the others. It almost transcends comic-bookness because of the drama and pure psychological themes. Do I want to say it's better than some of my previous favorites? Does it belong up there above Hellboy, V for Vendetta, Sin City, Spiderman 2, X-Men 2, even this year's Ironman? Or do I put it on a different shelf altogether and classify it as something else?

I came out of the theater feeling exhausted. Sure, it could be the 152 minute running time, the 20 minutes of previews (Watchmen, yeah!) and the 20 minutes of pre-show ads before that (we got in early to get a good seat), but it could be that all of the emotional luggage I carried out with me as I pondered the effects of what I just saw.

On the drive home, I started thinking about it in comparison with 2005's Batman Begins (and I note that I've been at this blog long enough to start reviewing sequels to movies I'd reviewed earlier). How do they compare? This one was most certainly the better movie. Batman Begins was most certainly more fun. Think about Star Wars vs. The Godfather. Is there any question about which is the better movie? No. Is there any question about which is more fun? Again, no.

However, let me stretch a bit and compare this to The Empire Strikes Back. A lot happens. A lot is revealed. Things change irreversibly in the end. And I simply can't wait for the inevitable third in the trilogy. What the Nolan brothers and Goyer have come up with so far is leading - I feel - to something even more spectacular down the road. I'll look forward to 2011, but in the meantime, I'll get this one on Blu-ray so I can watch it again. And again.

Travelling Week

2008-07-19T16:05:00.002-05:00

The week went by pretty quickly, all things considered. Had a nice time. Am happy to be home. Not that there was too much worth the telling, but here's roughly how my week played out.

Sunday July 13, 2008

Left pretty early. Those 7:00am flights mean I have to get up at about 4. Ouch. But the nice thing is that I get in early, too, at about 8:30 (central time). As we have the past few times I've flown out to Kansas City, my brother and I met for breakfast at a little place which seems to sit about midway between his house and the baggage claim where I usually call him to let him know I've arrived. This place has amazing biscuits by the way – begging the question of why it is I moved to the south but I have to fly back to the Midwest to get amazing biscuits. On the menu for me that morning: small order of biscuits and gravy (one of said biscuits covered with enough gravy to harden the arteries of everybody at your current table plus the table next to you) and a bacon-egg-cheese biscuit sandwich. If you're into that sort of thing, the Corner Café at either location in the northern Kansas City area is pure heaven.

Then, par for course, he and I went back to Mom and Dad's house for a few hours of Warcraft which is much more fun when you're playing with someone sitting next to you and which is a game we still hang onto after a year and a half because otherwise we wouldn't hear much from each other (i.e., it brings us together on the battlefield where we kill monsters and such fun stuff as that). Break for lunch at a local barbecue joint – Arthur Bryant's, another delicious choice – at which point I was feeling the effects of the early morning. Mom made meatloaf for dinner. We watched a movie (or, rather, I snored through it) and called it an evening.

I like traveling in early on the day before I'm supposed to report to the office. It gives me time to catch up and get ready for the work week. It's fine if I have to fly in on Monday morning, but the past several times I've done this, I've really enjoyed hanging out with the family on Sunday.

Monday July 14, 2008

Just a day of meetings. Nothing spectacular about it. We went to a little sports bar that the local guys have discovered for lunch. They describe it as a "skanky version of Hooters." I won't elaborate, but the serving gals look as if they at least know someone who walks the streets and may have taken a few fashion tips from these them.

Good food, though.

A word or two on my staff in the Kansas City office: it's shrinking. I'm down to 3. Granted, they are 3 of my key most senior players, but still... I used to have 5 out there. One left on her own to spend more time with her kids. The other decided he couldn't work for me any more (long story) and moved on to another department. Alas.

Tuesday July 15, 2008

More meetings. Can you believe it? Yeah, well, that's why I came out here. Had to get in to the office at 6am (!!!) which meant leaving the house at 5 because Mom and Dad live all the way across town. So I left early that afternoon, at about 3:30 when I'd wrapped everything up, and took a nap when I got home. Later we all went out to see Wall-E at a 7:00 show. They loved it, and I loved it even more the second time around. (I enjoy taking M&D out to these feel-good type movies. The last time I was home we went to see Juno together.)

Wednesday July 16, 2008

We had a "team building" event planned for the evening, so after work we all drove to a place called Dave & Busters. Have you ever been there? Quite a concept. Sort of like an arcade targeted at adults, though at least at this one, kids were more than welcome. 3 bars, 1 restaurant, and enough games to keep you occupied for hours.

We started the evening with a beer and some pool, but among the four of us, we have skill levels that range from shark to simpleton, and I won't tell you where I fall on that scale. Dinner after that where the food seemed to aspire to "average" and managed to hit "merely tolerable" somewhat consistently. Then you get these debit cards where you put in money and swipe them at the various machines where you want to play. I put $20 on each card, and that lasted us several hours. The neat thing about it was we could play together. Most of the games allowed at least 2, if not all 4, of us to compete against or with each other. We killed aliens, zombies and Nicaraguan bad guys. We raced around speedway tracks, through mountains, and down the streets of Chinatown. We played skeeball – a decisively low-tech option – and air hockey (some of us are old school) and it seems that yours truly is somewhat of a savant at that Wheel of Fortune game where you have to hit a button to stop a circling light on a number – which determines how many "ticket" you get – or, more preferably, on the "Spin the Wheel" icon which, as promised, spun the wheel giving you a chance to get up to 450 tickets at one go. I got that once. I used up the remaining credits on my card to get about 800 tickets for one of my guys so he could bring home assorted plastic crap to his kids. Quite a blast.

Got home completely beat and crashed. Apparently I can't party like I used to.

Thursday July 17, 2008

More meetings, nothing special, but we took one of the guys out for lunch to celebrate his recent citizenship. Houston's down at the Plaza is still one of my favorite steak joints. Their filet is to die for. Salads melt in your mouth (if that's even possible) and I haven't had a bad side dish there. This week, the side was creamed corn, which I've never liked until now.

Friday July 18, 2008

Last day in the office. I took the guys out for lunch and we bade each other farewell after that. I'd originally planned to go home Friday, but got the Saturday morning flight instead. So Mom and I took a drive downtown to check out the new Kansas City library which was moved into a restored bank building (dating back to 1900). It's quite beautiful. The library lovers in the world will be well served by checking it out next time you're in the area. It's on 10th and Main.

Watched two movies with M&D that night: Lars and the Real Girl (previously reviewed on these pages) which they both loved, and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang which Dad loved and Mom skipped.

The Flights

Nothing dramatic this time. My flying horror stories seem to limit themselves to longer trips. Now that we have a direct flight from Raleigh-Durham to Kansas City, I seem to get off the hook. The most I can say about these is that on the way out, the flight attendant spent almost the entire two-and-a-half hours talking to the guy in front of me about some rare illness that they share (the name of which I missed, regrettably, and I felt it would be in poor taste to stop them later in their lengthy conversation to ask) and how much medication they would be taking the rest of their lives to keep it in check.

Nice.

Download of the Week

2008-07-12T16:44:00.003-05:00

I'm flying out to Kansas City in the morning. I spent the afternoon working out in the yard hacking down the weeds (which have taken over strategic locations) so K wouldn't get any menacing calls from the Home Owner's Gestapo while I'm gone. I'm pretty much wiped out right now, so I'll forgo my usual whining and griping about having to fly.

Instead let me leave you with my download for the week. I stumbled on this while listening to internet radio late one night preparing a power point presentation for work the next day. (One day, I hope you'll indulge me enough to let me detail just how much I hate power point. For now, I'll point out it's enough to refuse to capitalize it. Ever.)

School Of Language - Rockist

Hellboy II: The Golden Army

2008-07-11T16:11:00.002-05:00

First of all, I loved (capital L and, for good measure, capital V in that word) the first movie. I saw it in the theater twice and then waited - patiently - to buy it on DVD because I knew a special extended version was coming out and I didn't want to buy it twice. (It was worth it, by the way, for all of the extras and a few added scenes.) My expectations were high for this one. It was my second most anticipated movie of the summer behind Wall-E. To that end, I was mildly disappointed. Mildly. Very mild.

It suffered from that sequelitis plague wherein you don't need any more character development because you've done that, already, in the first movie. Sure, they tried to add some in with the escalating Liz/Hellboy relationship, but it was mild in comparison to the first movie. Liz seems like a stock character this time around as opposed to the somewhat more complex role she had before, battling her inner demons. Hellboy, himself, seemed almost farcical instead of brooding.

And that struck me as oddly dissonant: all the humor they interjected. Where the first one was dark and menacing, this one was light and almost comical. Not to say that's a bad thing. I laughed at all the right times and felt good about it, but I also never took any of the threats seriously. A little comic relief breaks the tension. Too much makes you wonder what's going on. The first one was a dark and horrific and touching all at this same time. This one was light and funny with some tense moments thrown in. Come on, really, if you've seen it, didn't the "Can't Smile Without You" scene make you laugh out loud while at the same time a strong WTF? thought crossed your mind? Kind of like eating something sweet and sour simultaneously.

So what am I complaining about? It's seems they switched genres for this movie. And it's not that this one didn't work. I just liked the other one better.

But enough of my bitching. Let me tell you why you should go see this movie if you were a fan of the original: it's even more beautiful and bizarre. Guillermo del Toro is a genius when it comes to his visuals. If you've seen Pan's Labyrinth then you got a taste of all of the fantastic creatures he introduces in this movie. The Troll Market looks as if Mos Eisley were reincarnated in Middle Earth.

And Ron Perlman as Hellboy does a fantastic job, as usual. This story in particular may not give him much character development to work with, but he does a great job exploring whatever depths he can with every minute he's on screen. And that can't be easy under all of those prostethics.

I liked this movie. I gave it 9 out of 10 stars on the IMDb. But I gave the original 10 out of 10. I was hoping for the same this time around.

Touchdown

2008-07-10T22:07:00.001-05:00

It's here. I love it. I'm such a geek.

Update: we rented a couple Blu-ray movies from Blockbuster to try it out. Watched the first one and we both said, meh, it looks okay but not as good as we thought. Then I found out I hadn't configured the device for 1080i video. It was displaying something hideous like 480p. Ah-hah! I'm not as geeky as I let on.

Oh, GTA is amazing. I'll stop with the blathering now.

Some of Money

2008-07-09T00:11:00.009-05:00

It's late and I'm tired. I've been stuck on a conference call with people in Singapore for the last two hours (and five minutes). I've been cleaning out my work inbox - which has grown unruly lately - and found this gem:

From: Useless Moron On Behalf Of Lab Security
Sent: Tuesday, July 08, 2008 4:46 PM
To: [All]
Subject: Some of Money

A some of money has been found in the Lab if you think this money belongs to you please contact the reception desk on 6044 to identafiy the some and arange to collect the money.

If we had the same level of intelligence working the reception desk, I'd be tempted to call and say, "Yeah, it's greenish and papery. When I can I come pick it up?"

Seriously. This is my company. I'm so embarrassed. I think you should have to pass a grammar and spelling test (or at the very least show the ability to use a spell-checker) before they assign you an email account.

Wordle

2008-07-07T07:04:00.002-05:00

Took 4 days off to celebrate the 4th and K's birthday. More on that later. For now, let me point you towards Wordle. Check it out. Have a little fun.

Download of the Week

2008-07-02T16:59:00.000-05:00

Wraith Pinned to the Mist (And Other Games), by of Montreal

Sadly pimped out to Outback for their commercials, this was a great song once. If you haven't heard the original version, check it out.

We'll play Tristan and Isolde but make sure I see white sails...

Paprika

2008-07-01T17:02:00.002-05:00

I waited all summer long last year for this movie to come to any of the theaters in our area. If it did, I missed it. I enjoy Japanese anime, though I'm only a novice at discovering it. I've seen the latter Hayao Miyazaki films, enjoyed them very much, and a few others that I could get my hands on. One was Perfect Blue by Satoshi Kon. Not a great film (marred by the cheesy, circa-late-80's soundtrack, I felt), but noteworthy. I have meant to seek out some other Satoshi-san movies, but as K only barely tolerates the few animated movies I bring home as it is - and furthermore has expressed nothing by distaste for anime - my viewing is limited. However, when I saw the previews for this one, I got excited and was determined to see it in the theater if I could. Alas, I was thwarted by the gods who control limited distribution films. So I rented it from Netflix and watched it by myself the other night.

First of all, let me just say that if anime isn't for you, don't bother starting with this one. It's a great movie but entirely too weird to be your introduction. This movie involves people who can enter and control dreams. If it sounds like a particular Dennis Quaid movie from about 25 years ago, trust me, the similarity stops there. It's a visual smorgasbord (criminally mixing cultures with that statement) that I can't even begin to describe. Take a look at the movie poster to get a clue. I think the dreams-run-amok motif was played out to let Satoshi-san run wild with his visual imagination. Yes, you do get a good storyline, but it's not always apparent. Like a lot of other anime films I've seen, you have to let it settle in your mind for a while after viewing to come up with what it was all about.

I think I'm drawn to these movies because of (a) my love for animation and (b) my need to find something that strays from the mainstream Hollywood formulas. If you've already discovered them yourself, this won't leave you disappointed.

This Is How I Sleeps, Beeotch

2008-06-30T17:25:00.001-05:00

Though why some moron felt the need to photograph me during my mid-afternoon, post-prandial snooze is beyond me.

<
Good, dim-wit. You found the zoom button. Can you roll over and play dead, too?

Shut up. It's more comfortable than it looks.

There, now you've had your fun at my expense. Go home. Run along. Shoo.

Wanted

2008-06-29T15:52:00.004-05:00

Wanted was K's movie choice this weekend. For some reason she's been looking forward to this since early Spring.* (Universal was going to release this in March, but somebody over there saw it and decided it was summer tent-pole material, thus we've waited several extra months.) So we had the pleasure of seeing two highly anticipated movies across the span of two days. And a lot of fun it was.

The plot was ridiculous. But, then again, you don't really go into a high-octane action flick expecting a great story. The best I can say is that the acting was, at least, pretty good. James McAvoy played the Luke Skywalker role well (born not knowing he was special until someone much prettier than Obi-Wan Kenobi shows up to unlock his hidden powers), going from wide-eyed innocent to guns-a-blazin' assassin in the span of 90 minutes. Angelina Jolie didn't need to do much more than look mysterious, which she does perfectly. Morgan Freeman is Morgan Freeman, a.k.a., the man. He's always good.

The action and the effects were awesome. That's why you see a movie like this. First of all, it's the first movie I've seen to one-up The Matrix in (a) bullet-time effects and (b) "storming the federal building"-style choreography. (Though, technically, is that a two-up?) Then you've got the sheer preposterousness of the curved trajectory business they made such a big deal out of in the trailers. Very cool. Add on top of that a train derailing over a many hundred foot gorge, cars flipping through the air with pinpoint precision, and people who can stop bullets by shooting other bullets at them and smashing them midair, and you've got a visual wonderment.

As long as you can suspend that disbelief - or at least check it at the door.

A couple of extra thoughts.

One: This felt like last summers' Shoot 'Em Up, only done better. We saw that movie at home not too long ago and found it to be fun but mindless. This was funner and mindlesser. Or, to be fair, probably just as mindless. Anyway, if you liked that one or that style at all, this is a great movie for you and well worth seeing in the theater.

Two: Angelina, eat a cheeseburger or something girl. You're practically skin wrapped around a skeleton. Granted, you're still hot, don't get me wrong, but you did used to be mind-numbingly gorgeous.

Three: James McAvoy. Can I call you Jim? Yeah, Jim, whatever deal you made with the devil to pair you up with Angelina Jolie right after Keira Knightley in Atonement and Anne Hathaway in Becoming Jane was probably worth it. However, if you get to lock lips with either Cate Blanchett or Liv Tyler in The Hobbit,** I'm going to officially hate you.

* I say "for some reason" because this really isn't her type of movie, but she does like Angelina Jolie. Probably more than I do, which is really something.

** Current rumor is that he's been talked to for the role of the young Bilbo Baggins, though I don't remember any Hobbit-on-Elf action in the book.

WALL·E

2008-06-28T21:11:00.004-05:00

Can I say that I've been looking forward to WALL·E since I first saw previews last year? Sure, I'm not ashamed to admit it. I love these Pixar films. I've been looking forward to their next one from the minute I left the theater after their last one. This is the movie I would have picked this summer had I only been able to see one, and it would have been a perfect choice. (I say that knowing that I'm almost as excited about the next Batman and Hellboy movies coming out next month.)

Let me sum up the plot. In the far-off future, WALL·E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class) is the only "life" remaining on Earth. His job is to clean up the mess that the humans left behind when they evacuated 700 hundred years ago. He's merrily tripping along, gathering garbage into cubes (and into stacks sky-scraper high), collecting little tidbits that amuse him and his one friend, a cockroach, when he meets a slick new search robot named EVE (Extra-terrestrial Vegetation Evaluator). EVE has landed on Earth looking for life and finds WALL·E instead. WALL·E is instantly smitten. However, when EVE realizes that WALL·E has discovered hope for the human race, she races back to the mother ship to report her findings. WALL·E chases after her and sets in motion his own unique adventure.

There are two (maybe three) reasons to see WALL·E and if none of these appeal to you, then what can I say? You're dead to me. (Just kidding.)

First, the animation. Amazing and lovely. I've said before that Pixar raises the bar visually with every movie it makes. This one makes the first Toy Story looking like stick drawings.

Second, WALL·E. Himself. The robot. He's more lifelike than you could imagine. And while I've never had a problem personifying robots (R2-D2, Johnny Five, V.I.N.CENT, Twiki) this is the first one I've wanted to take home with me. WALL·E's story is so touching that I found myself cheering for the little guy (albeit silently, K was sitting next to me, after all, and she doesn't go for sentimentalism).

What's the third reason? This is a great Sci-Fi movie. All things being equal, and shave off the sentimental robot stuff, this movie holds its own against any other set in the future, space traveling odyssey. I mean, you've got your dystopian waste-lands, bleak future for the human race, robots controlling everything from a single deranged mission control. What more could you want. You've even got HAL's red eye on one of the major "characters." (Seriously.)

Mixing all those elements together might sound like a hard concoction to swallow, but trust me, it works. If I can, I will see it again this summer. Then I'll watch it repeatedly on DVD.

Download of the Week

2008-06-27T18:41:00.002-05:00

If you know me, you know that I have a fondness for electronica. I stumbled across this the other day. In the Morning, by the Junior Boys. Catchy. Rhythmic. Can't dance to it, but that's okay because I can't dance. Just a little groove to have on in the background.

I found it available to download here, but you can listen along with the video if you prefer.

Ten Years

2008-06-26T19:02:00.007-05:00

Ten Years Ago Today...

K and I got married. It was not a grand affair. We eloped. Down at the county courthouse, after waiting our turn, a judge said his requisite lines, we said "I do," rings were exchanged, and that was it. Sign on the dotted line and you're married. The bailiff was our witness.

We have a picture that we took with a camera on a timer. It's our only wedding photo. She had on a lovely dress, and I actually looked a little like handsome myself. (It's been all downhill for me from that point, sadly.) She tucked a little plastic lizard into her dress, something borrowed. It was one she'd given to me earlier to show me she accepted me.

Our lives otherwise were in turmoil but despite all that, it was the second happiest day of my life.

Since then we've had a good time overall. Sure, ups and downs, but more of the first. I won't get too mushy on you or K will stop reading. Let's just say that I'm looking forward to the next ten years.

Get Smart

2008-06-25T16:17:00.007-05:00

On my birthday, we went to see Get Smart. Originally, we were not. The movie I really wanted to see comes out this coming weekend, and I figured we'd just wait and save our money. However, half-way through lunch at one of the local outdoor mall type places, K said to me, "Why don't we go see a movie?" I was curious about Get Smart. The trailers intrigued me, but my heart wasn't really in it. First of all, I had a sneaky suspicion that all of the good scenes were in the previews. Second, Steve Carell impressed me so little in Evan Almighty that I've never been able to watch all of it (despite HBO's persistence). Granted, I've loved him in other things, but that one was soooo bad I almost couldn't forgive his selloutedness. Third, although Anne Hathaway makes me wish I was 10 years younger (and an Italian real estate developer) she hasn't really been working my demographic (i.e., teenage girls or a gay cowboys).

But there we were, on my actual birthday, having an excellent lunch. I looked up the movie on my phone and found it was playing at that very same outdoor mall in about a half hour. So we figured, what the hell. There are worse ways to spend an afternoon. And I have to say, I was most pleasantly surprised. Let's take my three preconceived drawbacks one at a time.

"All the good scenes are in the previews." Not true at all. First of all, this is actually a pretty good action flick, combined with the comedy. The comedy was highlighted in the previews, so I wasn't really expecting the excitement, too. Then I was also surprised at how much funnier it was than I thought it would be. So, no, even though I think I saw about 86 different trailers for Get Smart leading up to this weekend, I hadn't seen all the good parts.

"Steve Carell sucked in Evan Almighty." Sure, but even the greats had their sophomoric misses. And I'm sure that the idea of following in Jim Carrey's footsteps sounded like a good idea to a lot of people. If I can forgive Will Farrell the drivel that was Bewitched, I can get past Evan Almighty.

"Anne Hathaway doesn't make my kind of movies." Yeah, well, I wish she did, and now she seems to have. And that's about 'nuff said there.

Funny and fun. That's about all. Not a clever movie by any stretch. Nothing earth-shattering going on. Terrance Stamp basically plays himself as the same bad guy he always does. The fat dude from Borat can speak English, it seems, and added a few moments of additional levity. The Rock (sorry, I mean, Dwayne Johnson) is quite funny. The chemistry between Anne and Steve works. And Steve is basically playing what he plays best: fumbling everyman with good intentions and a heart of gold.

It's possible I have benefited from never seeing the original Get Smart television series due to the fact that I wasn't alive back then. I'm sure it was great. I mean, really, with Mel Brooks as a writer on all 138 episodes, I'm sure it's something I would enjoy now if I could be bothered renting it. But no, I have never seen it. I wonder if people familiar with the source material ended up hating this one for being so different.

That aside, it's a great summer escape film. Worth seeing in the theater? Possibly. I think if you're a Steve Carell fan, you'll like this one.

The Happening

2008-06-24T19:35:00.004-05:00

We saw this a week ago (or so) mostly on a lark. How bad could it be? I mean, seriously, we saw Lady in the Water and My God that was bad. We saw The Village (in the theater no less) and tolerated it, though barely. You'd have go back to Signs before you'd find one I liked. Not as much as Unbreakable, and certainly not as much as The Sixth Sense. Sense a trend there? M. Night Shyamalan peaks early and quickly looses his street cred by churning out crap.

We almost didn't go because of Craig's review. It sounded just too bad to be tolerated. Plus at 19% on the Tomatometer, it hardly seemed worth eighteen bucks.

But then a funny thing happened. It grossed $30 million the first weekend, almost double of Lady's debut. Since then it's already grossed more than Lady did in that entire run. Granted, it doesn't (and won't) hold a candle to the $672 million world-wide unadjusted gross of Sixth Sense, but it does sort of indicate a reversal of that trend.

So last week, on the aforementioned lark, after a long day at work and a dinner out, and with our expectations firmly planted at ground level, we went to see it. And honestly it wasn't as bad as we had expected. Yes, if you've heard that the acting was terrible, it was. Not everybody was as awful as Mark Whalberg trying to play a nice guy with the taste of The Departed still in mouth, but the usually reliable Zooey Deschanel came across flat and lifeless. I blame the script, which pitted unwitting and unknowing protagonists against such terrors as... grass. And equally bad dialogue like: "stay ahead of the wind." Seriously.

But the mood was there. Creepy. If you got past the negatives of the movie, it was chilling. Sort of like the Birds. You don't know why but you're being attacked by something all around you and you can't do anything about it. Or War of the Worlds without the Tom Cruise thing going on. I can't say I was firmly planted on the edge of my seat, but there were a few moments of good old fashioned tension and suspense.

Probably not worth the eighteen bucks. If you're at all curious, I'd rent it.

George Carlin, 1937 - 2008

2008-06-23T09:23:00.003-05:00

Died on my birthday, too. What a downer. I loved this guy for two distinct and different types of his comedy. Sure, he did the political and poignant stuff, but I liked these the best.

Playing on words:

If lawyers are disbarred and clergymen defrocked, doesn't it follow that electricians can be delighted, musicians denoted?
Don't sweat the petty things and don't pet the sweaty things.
If crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight?

One-line non sequiturs:

When someone asks you, A penny for your thoughts, and you put your two cents in, what happens to the other penny?
I'm not concerned about all hell breaking loose, but that a PART of hell will break loose... it'll be much harder to detect.
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity.

Here's to you Rufus. You knew what you were talking about.

Happy Birthday to Me

2008-06-22T21:31:00.003-05:00

36 today. Don't feel much different. K and I went out for lunch and a movie (to be reviewed later). Then back home for a nap. What's the deal with that? When I was a kid, I always had a wish-list as long as Santa's arm every June. These days, I'm happy catching up on some sleep.

However, truth be told, the real gift that K is getting me this year is here. If only Sony would get off their asses and ship some more. It's been out of stock since a few minutes after this particular bundle went on sale.

On a completely separate note, here's my horoscope:

IF JUNE 22 IS YOUR BIRTHDAY: In a world that's overly focused on the negative, you're a rebel. You dare to seek novelty, levity and joy -- this year, you find it more places than not. It's like you've hit a gold mine of fun. The next 10 weeks represent a liberation of your creativity. Whatever was keeping you from the money you deserve is conquered in August.

A gold mine of fun? Who writes this crap? Although a liberation of my creativity would be nice.

Shameless

2008-06-20T16:33:00.005-05:00

I don't often simply post the usual junk email we all get from random people - I mean, I *do*, don't get me wrong, every now and again, but I don't want you to think I do - by which I mean that I slip them in whenever I feel I haven't been funny enough lately all the while hoping that nobody figures out that I'm just spamming you with email humor - funny being the quality that I hope brings people back here to read what I've written - God knows not the attention to sentence structure - and if that doesn't work then perhaps the occasional shot of girls in panties (see below) - I digress wildly - but the other day I was much in need of a good laugh when someone sent me one of those long emails full of the ironic "motivational" posters that I'm sure you've seen. I was almost rolling on the floor when I hit the "Blasphemy" one. I saved it and a few others to share. My apologizes.

Moron Compares The Strangers with Hamlet

2008-06-19T17:42:00.002-05:00

One reason I'm glad Roger Ebert is back is for his Answer Man column that he updates weekly on his web site. He takes questions from the audience (anybody who wants to write in, presumably; I've never tried), some clever, some not, and always gives great answers.

This week, some moron attempted to compare Hollywood's latest horror offering, The Strangers, with the inarguable greatest tragedy in the English language. As a piece of modern, studio-driven cinema, The Strangers shouldn't even be uttered in the same sentence as Shakespeare's masterpiece. At 41% on the Tomatometer, it shouldn't even be mentioned in the same paragraph.

However, moron is as moron does, and we have the wit of Roger Ebert to save us. Check it out:

Q. Allow me to liken "The Strangers" to "Hamlet," if you will. What made the sad ending of 1997's "Hamlet," to which you awarded four stars, so much more redeeming than that of "The Strangers"? Both movies featured complicated, multidimensional and human characters, who, through trials and tribulations, suffered and ultimately were killed. Both films were superbly acted, filmed and directed, and I find the endings to be very similar.

So what about the end of "The Strangers" made it be a 1½-star movie while Hamlet got four? Wasn't "The Strangers" also more about the feelings of the two main characters, and the wrenching sympathy to be felt for them?

(name withheld), Louisville, Ky.

A. I think it had a lot to do with everything that happened before the ends of the two films.