An Experiment Gone Horribly Wrong

So I have not been getting the results out of my diet that past experience tells me I should be getting. Either I'm doing something terribly wrong, or else my system just doesn't react in my late 40's the way it did ten years ago (probably a bit of both). So in the process of tweaking to find a more effective approach, I decided to try giving up soda for a week.

Disaster. After two days, my weight had gone up two pounds. Why? Because without the occasional sweet kick of diet soda, I ended up turning to actual sweets, which (I'm guessing) spiked my insulin and led me to retain water. Not a big problem in the overall scheme of things, but it's obviously a step in the wrong direction. So today, I switched back to soda, and I haven't been tempted by cookies or frozen pops.

I also tried working out again today after taking an extra couple of days off due to soreness from the run. And that was a disaster, too. I don't know if I tried working out too early in the day since I'm now accustomed to working out in the afternoon, or just too soon after breakfast. but my energy crashed big-time, and I had to quit. A couple of hours later, I tried again, changing up the order, and got through most everything, but seriously. I used to be able to figure out my body's signals better than this.

I mean, it's not as if I'm getting no results. It's just that the results so far are merely tangible. Which means that I can't really see any results in the mirror nor on the scale (over a month of weigh-ins, and today I weighed in one pound less than the day I started keeping track). But I can feel the results when, say, I shower. My body is firmer and stronger, but nowhere near where I should be after over a month of diet and exercise.

In other news, I finished Hero Go Home last night and set it to drop Friday, and now I'm casting about for a final plan for herogohome.com to continue. I intend to pick up Super Movie Mondays again, as well as another possible feature that might be fun. Ideas are developing for my new book, but I'm still not sure it's the one I want to write right now. And I'm pretty sure that it's about the least commercial idea I will ever have, while what I need right now is a moneymaker.

But you can't fake the funk on that stuff. Trying to chase a commercial trend right now would probably not only not make me any money, but also result in a worse book.

I do have four other ideas: two Diggers (prequel and sequel), a Secret Project I've toyed with for over a year that I could not publish under my own name, and an expanded version of my fragment from last year's Christmas contest (in which Santa Claus is a soldier-of-fortune having international adventures in the months between Christmases).

I don't really have a plot for that last one, but of all my character and setting ideas, that one looks as if it would stand the best chance of selling as a YA novel. Other than that, I've got nothing. So it looks like 20's supernatural detective for now, and hope like hell that somehow comes into vogue by the time I'm ready to submit to somebody.

Green Lantern

My ass hurts. I did my normal workout a couple of days ago, doing kettlebell swings, which really work your legs and butt. Then yesterday, I got the bright idea to try running for the first time in ages. My legs did not thank me. Now every step I take, my thighs and butt ache.

Went to see Green Lantern today, and BTW there are spoilers in here, but seriously: it's Green Lantern. How can you really "spoil" it?

I'd heard awful things about the movie, but it wasn't as horrible as I expected. Ryan Reynolds makes a fun hero and there were some decent things happening in the script.

Unfortunately, the good things they did were overshadowed by two problems, one major and the other one... well, pretty major, but only to those who recognize the references.

The first problem: the two big opposing forces are identified by color--Green signifying Will, and Yellow signifying Fear. The Green Lanterns and the Guardians are the good guys, while the bad guy is a former guardian gone rogue (yellow). It's the Jedi and the Sith, only less subtle. It's like a Rainbow Brite version of Star Wars, and you know you're on shaky ground when people say you're oversimplifying Star Wars.

The second major problem: the good guys keep talking about how their power derives from Will. Now, in the Silver Age Green Lantern comics, the term was "willpower." And I'm not such a dorky fanboy that I quibble over them changing the wording, except that "Will" has unfortunate connotations.

But hey, it's not as if this were the only Hollywood film to pay tribute to Leni Riefenstahl.

Hands down, the worst scene in the movie is the one where Hal Jordan goes to the Guardians to ask for help in fighting the evil, and somehow manages to talk them into allowing him to fight alone instead. Truly makes no damn sense.

But the effects are good and Tim Robbins dies horribly, so it's not all bad.

The Transformation Illusion

So I really desperately need a new job, or some pathway to writing success, neither of which are in the offing right now. Because my life feels really positive right now, but only because I'm completely ignoring a couple of very large financial hammers poised to drop on my head.

What I'm saying is, I'm functioning better than I have in almost three years, but only by basically ignoring or denying reality. How bad has it gotten? A few times in the past couple of weeks, I've actually wondered about the feasibility of moving back in with my wife (yes, the one who's divorcing me).

I understand part of why it's happening. Several big things have changed in the past few weeks. I've been moved to a different job area at work, which has resulted in me having a more consistent and predictable schedule, which has done wonders for my attitude. And my wife's grandmother has moved out of the house, which would make living there more endurable.

But the biggest part has been that I've started a diet and exercise regimen. And here's where the danger zone is for me, because I've gone through this a few times before.

As I transform my body, I begin to enter this trance where I feel as if everything in my life could potentially change radically for the better, if only I would have the confidence to try. I don't know if it's low blood sugar or just too many crappy movies, but it seems to happen every time.

Like today. I spent the afternoon shopping around the mall looking at the things I want to buy when my finances magically change for the better after I've finished working through the immediate issues in my life and completed my physical transformation.

But here's the thing: the shape I want to be in, I've been in before. The weight I want to achieve, I've achieved before. And my life did not suddenly get better. Women did not suddenly find me more attractive, my self-confidence didn't skyrocket and job offers didn't come pouring in.

This is not to say that my life can't get better, only that there's nothing magic about weighing 150 lbs. that will make things radically better than weighing 165 lbs. And while it was nice to spend the afternoon in a trance, fantasizing about a better life, I actually need to get to work to make it happen, and even then, it probably won't, not in a hugely dramatic way, anyway.

And speaking of fantasy, I have a problem. I have accumulated a shit-ton of plastic 2-liter soda bottles. I have been loath to throw them out with the regular garbage, because they are mostly air, which seem like a waste of trash bag volume to me. At one time, I was cutting the bottles in half and stacking the halves inside one another to save space, but that's a lot of work, and I have too many bottles now to contemplate such a move.

So what's a good way to dispose of a bunch of 2-liter bottles? Yes, I know the problem took a long time to reach its current proportions, but I'd still like a solution that's a) relatively easy and b) relatively quick. Perhaps I'm asking too much, but then, I've spent the afternoon in a trance.

Wrapping Up and Looking Forward

No, this post is not about my impending divorce, although the title certainly fits that as well.

Hero Go Home will be officially wrapping up next week. The final chapter publishes on July 1, and with any luck, I'll have the entire thing available as an ebook by August 1, exactly one year after I published the first chapter on-line.

The experience has been really interesting. Since I had already written two previous drafts of the story, I was able to keep up with deadlines at many points by simply defaulting to large chunks of stuff that had already been written. On the other hand, entire chapters were written completely from scratch, and the storyline overall is very different from the previous drafts, even though some incidents play out almost exactly the same.

What has really been interesting for the last few weeks, though, is how the process of writing the climax has progressed. Normally, when writing the climax, I really barrel along. I can sometimes barely ooze out the middle act, but when I get to the big action setpiece at the end, I get in the zone and can knock out 5,000 words in a day, easy.

This time, though, strangely, exactly the opposite has happened. Forced by the deadlines of weekly serialization, I cranked out the middle chapters at a good clip. And now that I'm at the end, that same weekly chapter pace has me lingering over every paragraph, rereading and polishing over and over.

And then comes the agonizing choice of what to do next. Part of me wants to do the Johnny-Dollar-Meets-Cthulhuzilla book, while part of me wants to try writing for one of those houses that publishes exploitative crap under house names. Then again, part of me wants to write something that my daughter will enjoy reading. Guess which option I totally don't have an idea for? There's also another Digger novel partially plotted, but I'm a little Digger'd out right now.

Musical Romance Without Vampires

Just finished watching the Korean drama I Am Legend yesterday, which not only has nothing to do with vampires, but turns out to be sort of the exception which proves the rule with Korean drama. I think I had mentioned before that the shows function mainly on strong writing that overshadows all the other elements.

I Am Legend was written well enough, but what really carried the show was the performance by lead actress Kim Jung Eun. She plays Jeon Seol Hee, a former wild child in high school who is currently trapped in a loveless marriage with a high-powered attorney from a rich family. They got married after she accidentally got pregnant, and after a miscarriage, her husband and mother-in-law never forgave her. They treat her with utter contempt, and she suspects her husband is having an affair with another attorney at work. Seol Hee spends most of her time feeling isolated and miserable.

There is only one bright spot in her life. She still rehearses with her high-school garage band, rocking out wherever they can manage to find a practice space. They don't perform in public--her husband's family would never allow it, for one thing--but she likes to imagine them playing for adoring crowds.

But when her sister is diagnosed with leukemia and her husband and mother-in-law forbid her from donating marrow to save her sister's life, it's the last straw. Seol Hee moves out and asks for a divorce. It seems at first as if this will be a drama mainly about Seol Hee finding a new life with her band and new love with another musician, but it doesn't quite work that way.

The divorce plot ends up eating about half the series before it's completely resolved, but instead of clearing the decks for the band's story to really take center stage (to mix some metaphors), it merely makes way for a completely unrelated legal case to start up, as Seol Hee takes a job with the lawyer who helped her with her divorce. The second half of the series splits time between the band and the legal case. Seol Hee is like a Korean Erin Brockovich, if she had also been Belinda Carlisle of the Go-Go's in her spare time.

So the writing ends up being pretty much all over the place, and though there are some really good moments, the story overall kind of disappoints. Two things really make the series memorable: the music (the women playing the band members are all musicians and have continued to play as the fictional band even after the series ended, sort of like The Monkees) and the performance by Kim Jung Eun.

What really sells her performance is her eyes. In scenes where she is confronted with a crisis, she gets the crazy eyes.


It's hard to describe or capture in a single frame, but it happens over and over again: she faces some kind of adversity and is ready to give up, go along just to get along, until someone decides to push her just a little too far. Then her eyes flash with this almost desperate energy, and the next thing you know, she's fighting back, hard, whether it's in the divorce against her husband, or in a bar fight against a couple of drunken thugs messing with one of her friends. She even gets much the same look when their first public gigs with the band don't go the way they'd hoped.

And then about two thirds of the way through, the band has one of their first major gigs at a music festival, where they debut their signature song, "Comeback Madonna." The lyrics in the bridge are about pushing forward in life and love, knowing that you are worth the effort. And the first time she sings it, she's singing to the man who helped her write the song, her new love interest who is serving as the band's unofficial mentor. Her eyes are full of affection, and it's a nice moment.


But then they hit the instrumental break, and she sees her evil mother-in-law standing in the audience. One of the big issues during the divorce was the husband's family trying to keep her from performing in public, to keep from being an embarrassment to her husband, who had political ambitions. So needless to say, Mom-in-Law has never shown up to a gig before, and isn't there to be loving and supportive.

As Seol Hee notices the evil old woman glaring at her from the audience, she falters and her hands fall away from the keyboard (although the piano on the soundtrack keeps playing--a sad technical glitch distracting from such a dramatic moment). But then she gets that flash in her eyes again, and when she resumes the bridge, she's singing to her former mother-in-law with defiant joy (which once again was hard to capture in a single frame, but I did my best).


It's a brilliant moment, and I almost wish the series had ended there, because it never quite got that good again afterward.

Another scene that I wish I had screencapped when I first saw it because I can't find again without practically watching the series over featured an incredibly subtle performance by Kim Seung Soo as her ex-husband. There's a scene where the attorney he's having the affair with proposes that they take their relationship public after the divorce (an impossible prospect, since she is divorced with a child, unsuitable for a man with ambitions for a political career).

Kim Seung Soo plays his role in the mold of other stone-faced Asian men, playing most of his scenes very cool and neutral. So as the other woman makes her proposal, his expression remains almost unchanged; I could screencap the first and last frames of the shot, and you would be hard-pressed to spot the difference. Yet you can see in a miniscule twitch around his eyes and mouth how the wall slams down emotionally between the two in the matter of a second. It's a really well-played scene.

Twin Peaks

So one of the things I promised myself as part of my rejuvenation was to let myself eat out once in a while (and by eat out, I mean go to a sit-down place, not fast food). Today, I decided to take myself up on it.

I went to a place called Twin Peaks, which someone at work had described as basically "Hooters with good food." Now actually, I have not been dissatisfied with the food at Hooters, but still decided to give Twin Peaks a try. I drove out to the hell-corner of 71st and Memorial, found the place and went in.

The place looked just as expected. It's decorated with rustic fashions to suggest a mountain lodge, while the female staff dress like Naughty Lumberjacks (or should I say Jills?). First disappointment: there seems to be no lunch menu, so I had to order off the full menu. But yeah, that's just my cheapness talking.

So I ordered the Steak Sliders, described on the menu as "mini ribeye steak sandwiches." The waitress, a gorgeous girl whose nametag read "Bambi," said it was her favorite dish on the menu. When the food arrived, I received my second disappointment.

The sliders were not steak. Or let's say, you could technically describe them as steak only in terms of what cut of the cow they came from. But steak to me says the beef should be grilled or broiled. What I got tasted like it had been simmering in a crock pot for a few hours. It was soft and mushy and bland. It certainly did not have the savory flavor I had hoped for. Part of the mushiness may have come from the sauteed onions slathered on top. I appreciate the zing of a good sauteed onion, but these were also mushy and overcooked, and there were so many that they overwhelmed the beef, which was also overwhelmed by the thick, thick bread slices.

I ended up taking the sandwiches apart and eating all the constituent bits separately in an attempt to wring some flavor out of the individual elements. That made them edible, at least. I probably should have just had a cup of coffee.

Bambi was very friendly and had a great rack, but I didn't like the food, nor did I love the ambience. There may be a lot of guys who just love the mountain lodge/sports bar aesthetic, but I tolerate it for the women. So I probably won't be back.

A few years ago, before I made the Biggest Mistake of my Life, I had an idea for a geek-themed place. I was seeing it as more of a bar than a restaurant, but a restaurant would probably work better. The idea was to decorate kind of like a sci-fi Hard Rock cafe, with lots of different SF and Fantasy memorabilia. The waitresses would dress in cosplay outfits, and instead of a bar or a live music stage, there would be a discussion pit where geeks could debate DS9 vs. Babylon 5 to their heart's content. It would be like a con suite, only year round and with hot women. I didn't have a good name for it, so my working title was "The Fan Club."

I doubt if such a place could actually succeed, especially in Tulsa, but it was fun to fantasize about for a while.

A Revelation of Sorts

Even though I've made some professional sales, I sometimes feel like a bit of an imposter at this whole writing thing. My writing often seems plain and graceless compared to other writers I admire. I'm not very prolific, and I rarely have the confidence to submit what I written. Even when I am confident enough to submit, it only takes three or four rejections to make me give up on that story and move on.

The lack of reaction to Hero Go Home and slow sales on both Death Wave and Digger Breaks Through! have just reinforced that notion that I'm just not good enough.

And yet...

Two of the stories in Digger Breaks Through! are stories written for Codex contests. The first one placed second in Codexian Idol four years ago, and the second one placed third three years ago. There was another writer in the contest both years, a guy named Eric James Stone. I placed ahead of him the first year, and right behind him the second. This year, he won the Nebula award for Best Novelette.

I'm not saying I write as well as he does, or that I will ever be so good as to win a major award. But maybe I'm not as mediocre as I all too often run myself down as. Maybe it's time to start trying to play with the big kids again instead of telling myself I'm out of my league.

Too Many Things to Say

I haven't been posting much, not because I had nothing to say, but because I have had so much to say that I was almost afraid to take the time to write such long posts. For instance, the last Korean drama I watched, My Girl, got me literally angry--so angry that I was screaming at my computer monitor. But I didn't write a post, partly because it was triggered by the main character acting like my wife as our marriage was dissolving.

The drama before that, You're Beautiful, also had me thinking of a lot of things to post. Actually, every drama I watch reminds me of stuff from Korean culture that I think might make an interesting post, except I end up deciding that the people who would be interested already know what I'm going to talk about, and the people who don't know won't be interested.

Right now, between the low-carb diet I'm trying to follow (not well so far--no real results to speak of) and the food porn drama I'm in the middle of (Pasta), I'm getting kind of cooking-obsessed. I've ended up restocking my pantry and refrigerator almost completely, and today, I finally ended up breaking out the old wok and the stove-top grill to try to do a proper bulgogi. Still need to work on the marinade, though.

Tonight's supper was stir-fried steak and vegetables (I'm writing this out so I can remember what I did--it wasn't perfect, but it was pretty good). In the wok, I stir-fried sliced green onion, chopped red pepper, minced garlic and grated ginger. I rubbed the juice from the ginger on the meat before slicing it into strips. I added soy sauce and a dash of Liquid Smoke before adding the meat, and after letting all that cook down, I threw in some spinach leaves to help pick up the sauce and balance out the spiciness right before removing it from the heat. Like I said, it was pretty good, but I really think some five-spice or hoisin would have added a lot of flavor.

It's not the kind of thing I plan to do a lot; that's more prep than I usually enjoy. But I've been cooking at home a lot more and saving some money on eating out, and for the moment, I'm really enjoying it.

I'm also plotting my next book, which is turning out strange. It's my Johnny Dollar vs. Cthulhuzilla book, only I'm overlaying a Korean-romance-style formula. And it's a little bleak, given the impending divorce. My wife introduced me to someone as her "ex-husband" the other day. And it's not like it's a surprise (and it may not even be the first time, now that I think of it). But not only is the divorce not final, the paperwork to start the process is not even turned in yet. So it feels weird to be called the ex. It's like reading the will before pulling the plug.

I"m in a weird place, anyway. On the one hand, the prospect of making things official seems like it has prompted me to start putting my life back together, which is good. And all the romances I've been watching certainly have me thinking about dating again. But there's still a part of me that doesn't want the divorce, that wants instead to rediscover with my wife the things that made us fall in love in the first place. And it's so frustrating to watch stories in which even estranged lovers end up winning through their disillusionment to finally reconcile in the end, knowing that it can't happen for me. My life is not a movie and I'm no leading man.

Perils of Parenting

You want to believe somewhere in your heart of hearts that your child is a miniature you, only better. Like she got all your good qualities and all your interesting quirks, but none of the major hang-ups that have caused you so many problems throughout your life. And when she's very young, you can shape her interests to a degree. What you like, she likes, and what you don't, she often doesn't.

But then one day, you discover that she has somehow become an actual person while you were looking the other way. And on the one hand, it's inevitable and good, but on the other, it's sad.

What brought this on, you ask? Last week, I was watching my daughter for a day (one measure of how far I've cleaned up the mess from the Worst Mistake of My Life is that I was finally willing, after over two years, to let my daughter come into my house again--the house is far from clean, but I'm not too ashamed to let her in the door anymore), I decided to share with her one of the great treasures from my own childhood. I showed her the original Star Wars.

Okay, it wasn't the original, or the VHS version I have that's really close to the original. It was the Special Edition (ptooey!) which I have on DVD and which is mostly the original.

She got bored less than halfway through and stopped paying attention. After Ben Kenobi died, she looked up and wondered why Luke was sad; she had been doodling throughout the entire lightsaber duel. When they were tensely running down the Death Star trench, she briefly looked up and asked, "What are they doing?" having completely missed the significance of, well, every scene in the movie talking about how the Death Star was the ultimate enemy they had to destroy.

And it's not as if I expected her to have the same reaction I did. When I saw it, I was in a theater coming out of a period when any movie with a happy ending was considered a kid's movie. Movies were depressing and often incoherent. And special effects, even the good ones, were crude at best and usually just laughably awful. And the movies those effects featured in were usually stilted and boring until the brief shining moments when cool stuff happened.

Star Wars was different, fast-paced and funny with effects totally unlike anything I'd ever seen before. Without Star Wars, I would not have gone to the University of Southern California. The movie changed my entire life. It is not an understatement to say that it was, for me, a religious experience.

I didn't expect it to have the same effect on my daughter. To her, effects like that and even better are an everyday experience. And the movies she has seen have all been influenced by Star Wars to such an extent that it's no longer the unique experience it was for me. So no, I didn't expect her to speak in tongues after watching it. But I did expect it to at least hold her interest.

*sound of heart breaking*

But all is not lost. She came over again on Thursday, and I showed her Raiders of the Lost Ark. And that one, she not only watched all the way through, but really seemed to like (I'm super-duper hoping that she wasn't saying "awesome" just to keep from hurting my feelings). So yeah, there's hope.

Old School Shave

So anyone who has known me for a while knows I've got this nostalgia thing going. I love old movies, good or bad, I love old radio shows, I like to wear my vintage hat now and then. I took it to such an extreme degree while I was writing Death Wave (which takes place during the Great Depression) that I even switched from regular shaving cream in a can to old-style mug shaving soap with a brush (and never went back) with old-school Bay Rum for aftershave and old-style Brylcreem on my hair on those occasions when I would wear my vintage fedora.

The thing I didn't change was my razor. I've been using a Gilette Mach 3 since I was sent a free sample handle in the mail years ago and liked the shave I got with it. But when I had to cut back on my expenses, I could no longer afford the replacement blades, which are getting a lot more expensive. I tried switching to a cheaper generic drugstore alternative, but it just magnified the frustration I'd been feeling with the Mach 3.

What frustration? When I let my beard grow for a few days, I get a crap shave with it, because the whiskers clog up the spaces between the blades. And all too often, I miss spots that I don't notice until later in the day, and when I get in a hurry, I cut myself with it. I also tend to overuse the blades, stretching them out way past the time I should, because the replacements are so expensive, meaning worse shaves and more cuts.

So between the frustration and the expense, I've been mulling for a while switching to an old-school safety razor like my dad used when I was a kid. You sometimes see specialty boutiques carrying new ones, but they're always really expensive. But last week, I finally decided to look some up on eBay and see how much an old, used one would cost.

After doing some shopping around and losing my first bid, I won my second for amazingly little. Even with shipping, it was only around 5 dollars, and a pack of 5 blades at Med-X is $1.50. By comparison, a four pack of Mach 3 blades is somewhere in the neighborhood of eight bucks, so

I'm already saving money. (Are there any journalists cringing at the style inconsistencies in this paragraph?)

I got the razor in the mail today and just tried it out. Don't know how I'll feel in the long run, but after the first shave, I like it. I hadn't shaved in several days, but there was no problems with clogging; the entire shave went smoothly (so to speak). And it feels as if there's more feedback with the single blade. You can really feel the blade interacting with the whiskers, which I like. I understand that cuts are probably more likely with this razor, especially given my inexperience with it, but at the same time, I have to be more mindful of the way I'm shaving, take my time and be more deliberate, which should help me avoid cuts and missed spots. All in all, I like the result.

I've got a couple of big announcements to make, but I'll wait, since something is still cooking, so to speak. I'll space them out over the next couple of days.

You Know It's Serious When This Happens

I cleaned my room last night. Which may not seem like a big deal, but it was the first time in two years, maybe? The cycle went like this: I got depressed and didn't clean. Plus, between the heat of summer and trying to save money on utilities due to unemployment, I tried to move as little as possible and not run things like the vacuum cleaner (although I did stay on the internet--oh yes, I did). When the weather cooled off enough to think about doing a little cleaning, maybe, the mess was so big that trying to think of where to start made my brain shut down in panic, which got me feeling more useless and depressed. And before I could get past that, it was too cold to clean.

Rinse, repeat.

It's different this time. It really is. Not only did I clean one room, but I also worked out, something else I hadn't done for over two years. And really, for the first time since just after I moved into the house, I'm starting to think about changes I want to make to the property. If I won the lottery, I would tear the whole thing down to the ground and rebuild it. But there are some things I can do to make it suit my personality more, and I'm thinking of ways to do them. It's starting to feel as if the future will not be a long downhill grind until death. Life might actually be good again, someday. It's weird to feel that, and embarrassing to realize that I fallen so far that it has become weird.

All this has come at a cost to my productivity. It's like I just woke up and all the stuff I was doing with Hero Go Home and Digger Breaks Through was a dream I'm trying to piece together in the light of day. I don't know if I'll make that June 1st deadline.

Multiple Personality Day

Strange day today. Happy, restful, but also sad and frustrating. Productive in some ways, maddeningly not in others.

I mentioned the other day that I'm slowly putting my life back together. What does that really mean? There's a list--not written down because it's too long, but in my head--there's a list of stuff I need to take care of. Long list. And over the last couple of years, since I made the Biggest Mistake of My Life, that list has done nothing but grow as poverty and severe depression put me into near stasis. Mail piled up unread, trash didn't get taken out, the yard grew wild as debts accumulated and bills fell behind. I might occasionally take tiny stabs at the list, but they were brief.

I've been gradually pecking away at small things on the list for a couple of weeks now. Cleaning things up here and there, catching up on utility bills, working in the yard. And I'm starting to cook more, improving my diet to lose weight, and even thinking about working out again. I'm still a L-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-N-G way from catching back up to where I was two years ago, but I'm taking small, positive steps, and more than I have in ages. So that's had me feeling good today. The smell of red wine and garlic from the steak I fixed for supper (a small, cheap cut, but still a steak) makes me smile every time I walk past the kitchen.

On the other hand, my wife and I went to the bank and signed quit claim deeds for each other's houses and cleared out our joint safe deposit box. And I guess we're close enough to the end that it doesn't really hurt the way it did, and I guess that's a good thing too. The only time I came close to crying was when I was looking over some extra prints of our wedding pictures that were in the box.

There was a time when we were so in love and eager to discover life together. Now it all seems sad and empty.

Other than that, it was strange, the stuff we saved in it. Some old rings of hers and mine. My high school class ring (which I got through my dad and not through the school's official company, so they misspelled the name of the school). Another ring my dad gave me right about the time I proposed so I could get used to wearing a ring. My birth certificate and my mother's. My wife's international drivers license, which she got just in case she ended up being able to come visit me in Korea. Negatives of our pictures. A bunch of paperwork related to our first daughter. The mortgage agreement for the home we bought as I was going to Korea for my last tour. A forgotten savings bond that had been a wedding present from a college friend of mine. Every item had a story.

Then came the frustration. I set myself a deadline of June 1 to finish putting together Digger Breaks Through, the short story anthology, but the rewrite on one of the stories is totally blocking me. It's another "Digger tells a story in the bar" story, and on a line-by-line basis, it feels pretty good. There are good moments in it. But overall, it just seems dead and flaccid on the page, and I'm not sure how to rescue it. I may just have to leave it out altogether.

Thor

Saw Thor on Saturday, and I was a little disappointed. The 3D wasn't great. There was plenty of depth to the picture, but there were some scenes, like Thor's coronation in Asgard, that the 3D effect caused to feel miniature. I'm pretty sure I would have felt a greater sense of scale in plain 2D.

But that wasn't the major source of my disappointment. The big thing was, by the time it ended, I was wondering where the story was. Loki's motivation never really worked for me, and the stuff with Jane Foster was just sort of rote and by-the-numbers. When he suddenly declared his love for her, I was like, "Where did that come from?" And where was Balder? If they could include the Warriors Three, they should have had Balder in there as well.

So yeah, the effects were great, and Heimdall was bad-ass for a token black inserted randomly into a Viking story, and Thor's powers were depicted pretty much as in the comics, with the lightning and the hammer-twirling and the flying. But by the end of it, I felt as if I'd watched a bunch of scenes in search of a story. I wondered where the movie went.

The Fever Has Passed

I seem to have burned out on the Korean dramas. After finishing the last one, My Lovely Sam Soon (the English title - the Korean title translates to My Name Is Kim Sam Soon, which actually fits the story better, but is also super-boring), I tried to watch another, but lost interest less than halfway through the first episode. After a while, they don't have the addictive newness that the first couple did.

But after burning through seven in the last few weeks, I think I've learned a few lessons about how Korean dramas work and why they are so popular.

1. They rely very heavily on plot formula. Every drama I've watched has followed the basic formula I outlined a couple of posts ago, with the seeming exception of Oh! My Lady! about an actor who falls in love with a woman who blackmails him to get a job with a theatrical production company (she learns he has an illegitimate daughter and helps him take care of her and keep her secret in exchange for him agreeing to star in a stage musical). Except that it, too, follows the formula. The difference is that the formula applies to his relationship with his daughter, not the romance with the older woman.

Lesson: Formulas work.

2. They rely on stock characters and situations. Out of the seven, four centered around show business as the main or secondary plot, with a possible fifth in Coffee House, with a novelist as the main character and another main character who becomes a writer on a radio show. Three featured a main romance between an older woman and younger man (though maybe Gumiho doesn't count, since she was a 500-year-old mystic creature). Five revolve around forbidden romance between rich man and poor woman. Three feature characters who find expression in food (two by learning to make great coffee, and a third who is a Le Cordon Bleu-trained patissiere).

Lesson: Stereotypes are shorthand that make people feel comfortable with the environment quickly.

3. Every character starts out as a stereotype, but almost every one--even minor characters--grows beyond it. Sometimes they cheat--Seung Yeon's family in Coffee House becomes much less cartoonish by the end, but we don't really see how or why--but even the worst characters are given moments of real human emotion.

Lesson: Stereotypes can't satisfy in the long run.

4. Character is everything. As stated before, the plots are formulaic and the situations are familiar. The budgets don't allow for spectacle. So character writing and performances have to carry everything, and this is where the Koreans shine.

I may still watch some now and then, but it's not going to consume all my time the way it has recently, which is good. I'm starting to put the pieces of my life back together, and I'm approaching this summer with a pretty positive attitude. The divorce process may kill that, but it will take a few months for it to finalize (got to get those numbers together this week--urgh), so my summer at least should be good.

Some Random Commercials

Watching as much K-drama on Hulu as I have been means I've also been seeing a lot of the same commercials over and over again. Some thoughts:

I have gotten to know the Geico commercials well enough that I can predict which of the three current endings--"Do dogs chase cats?" "What, do you live under a rock?" or "Is the pen mightier than the sword?"--it will show based on the Rod-Serling-wanna-be's walk to the camera.

A phrase I'm really getting sick of: referring to eating as "putting fuel in your body."

It is very rare that I refuse to buy a product because I don't like their commercials, but Northern has managed it with that idiotic commercial featuring women droning on about how it's "time to get real about what happens in the bathroom." It's not. It annoys me more than that animated bear with the cling-ons, which is a lot.

On the other hand, I'm actually thinking about trying the Quaker Oatmeal Squares in spite of the horribly annoying "homemade video review" commercials. They do look kind of tasty.

Don't have much use for cats, but I love the Fancy Feast commercial where the guy proposes by getting his really gorgeous girlfriend a kitten. On the other hand, I'm baffled by that Friskies commercial where the cat enters a phantasmagoric dreamworld when it starts eating. I mean, I get the concept. I just don't get who thought it was a good idea. Remember, Fancy Feast = lifelong love. Friskies = Cat LSD.

I really should be writing rather than watching all this stuff. But it's actually helping me break through a wall I had run into on a novel project I'd been toying with(the drama, not the commercials), so maybe it's not a complete waste of time.

More Korean Drama and a Formula

So I've watched three more, and thankfully, they're not all the gut-wrenchers that Kumiho and Secret Garden were.

Coffee House was fun, about an asshole author who torments his gorgeous female publisher and his gawky younger assistant. The main female lead was lovely, but often wore ugly clothes. Ham EunJung as the assistant alternates between sweet and stupid. Her character is sometimes a bit too slow-witted, but I found myself really liking her by the end, to the extent that I wished the author had ended up with her instead of the more conventionally pretty one. And she does a nice bit of acting in her final scene with the author in the last episode. She starts to cry, stops, wipes her tears and gives a little smile to say, "See, it was nothing. I'm fine now." And starts to cry again, harder.

She also does some fine physical comedy; I think she just used the simple physical trick on swinging the same arm and leg when she runs, but it does an effective job of making her look totally clumsy. I was amazed to find out she's a member of a girl group whose videos show her as glamorous and sexual, two things she never is on the series.

Prosecutor Princess was okay, starting out as a sort of Korean Legally Blonde before descending into melodrama. And once again, I found myself liking the secondary female lead more than the main (I actually liked the secondary male more than the mains, too, though that doesn't mean I would rather have watched a show centered on them, if that makes sense). From a legal standpoint, it was pretty ridiculous, though I don't know how much of that is cultural difference in the Korean legal system and how much is simply bad writing.

And last night, I finished Coffee Prince, a Korean version of Just One of the Guys. There were some nice turns in the writing which were sold well in the performances. The pacing of the show slows to a crawl in the mopey middle, to the point where I started to get frustrated with it, but it picks up again in the last third. The performances are pretty good, too, though I think more than performances is the chemistry the cast members have with each other. The final episodes are full of playful, telling moments where you get the idea these people not only love each other, but are really comfortable with each other and having fun.

I had never really thought too deeply about the ways in which the Romantic Comedy both fits and deviates from the basic three-act story formula I learned back in screenplay class, but the Korean romances provide a fascinating study. Because unlike a feature film, with 16-20 hours to fill, every step in the progression gets its own in-depth treatment.

I plan to think more deeply about this, because one idea I'm noodling for my daughter's birthday present next year is writing her a book about writing, with all the story construction stuff that I wish they had taught me in high school instead of that simplistic "rising action/falling action" nonsense. I had the idea a few days ago, too late to write it up for her birthday yesterday. It was a good birthday nevertheless. I went by to drop off her present and ended up staying to grill hot dogs in the backyard. It was nice.

But back to the formula: It seems to go something like:

Two protagonists, call them A and B, each have a goal (feature films often focus on one as the main protagonist, while Korean dramas with more time to fill give both characters equal weight) and each face outside pressure forcing them into choices they don't want

They encounter each other while pursuing their goals, find each other interesting, though often also infuriating

End of Act One: The Pretext, or the Ill-Considered Choice - something happens that gives the two characters a reason to spend more time together as they continue to pursue their separate goals. This something is very often a lie.

They continue to pursue initial goals, but also get to know each other better. A is attracted to B, but resists.

Midpoint: The Flip - Character A realizes that he/she loves the other, and suddenly pursuit of the goal is less important than pursuit of the other character.

Tension rises as A waits for B to reciprocate feelings; this is often complicated by the Pretext, which helped keep them together early, but has now become a burden that threatens to ruin their relationship. B still resists feelings for A, until...

Character B professes love for A, just before...

End of Act Two: Truth or Betrayal - Either the truth comes out or there is a betrayal by a romantic rival. Often, both happen at once, as the rival reveals the truth.

Heartache, break-up, reconciliation.

Both characters have professed their love for each other privately, and in the climax must also do so publicly, while overcoming the outside pressures that disapprove of their love (romantic rivals, social class, age, race, religion, political affiliation, whatever). The story also circles back to the initial goals, as the characters either give up their goals for the sake of love, or find that their love gives them the wherewithal to succeed at their goals where they formerly failed.

One other interesting twist on the standard formula in a romance is that, though there is an outside force they must overcome, it is not the main antagonist for much of the story. Instead the two characters are each other's antagonists, pushing against each other. And in Korean dramas, especially, the characters are also their own antagonists, competing with each other to see who can sacrifice more for the other. This is the cause of much of the heartbreak, as they hide the truth from each other in the name of protecting the other person.

You'd Think I Would Run Out of Tears

So after almost three years of separation, my wife finally wants to make things official and file divorce paperwork. And while I know intellectually that things can never go back to what they were, and that we can never be the kind of people we were for each other, it was still a blow. I sometimes buy lottery tickets, and when I idly think about what I would do with the money, one of the things I want to do is take my daughter to Disney World. But I can't imagine just the two of us going, and there isn't anyone I would rather take with us than my wife, and I know it would end up being more uncomfortable than fun, because the entire time, I would be hoping for some kind of affection that is just not there anymore. So I guess it's a good thing I haven't won any jackpots.

But in addition to the loss, there's the shame of having to do a full financial disclosure and let her see exactly what a hole I've dug myself into. And of course, in order to do the disclosure, I have to actually look at the figures myself, something I've avoided to keep from depressing myself even further.

And in the midst of this, my favorite shows have been on hiatus, so I decided the other day to try out a Korean drama on Hulu. I have been idly considering the idea for a while now, given that a writer's group friend of mine has been watching them enthusiastically, and I have spent a couple of years in Korea and know a little bit of the language.

So I tried watching this action show titled A Man Called God, but it was so awful that I couldn't even finish the first episode. But I got bored a couple of days later and decided to give another show a try. I picked My Girlfriend Is a Kumiho (Nine-Tailed Fox), which looked like it would be funny. And the first episode was okay, kind of a live-action version of a standard magical girl anime, like Video Girl Ai or something. It had some good scenes, and the girl was cute, so I watched the second episode the next day.

And got totally sucked in. Because although the scripting and acting and production values aren't always up to American standards, the plotting is brilliant, and relentless in the way they tighten the screws on the characters, making their situation more tragic and desperate. In the entire second half of the series, it seems as if all of the main characters are either crying or on the verge of tears. It's exhausting, but also addictive.

And maybe it is just my own fragile emotional state, but I ended up being a total sucker for the tear-jerking. Not just because of recent events, but because I've wanted to cry pretty much every day for the past, I don't know, three or four years? I'll be walking through the store, looking for the right spot to shelve an item, and my throat will close and my eyes will start to well up, and I have to stop to take a breath and reorient. Sometimes just for a single random moment, but it's Every. Single. Day. Usually several times.

The Hulu page for a particular show will recommend similar shows, so after I finished Kumiho, I tried another show called Secret Garden. And though at first I didn't like it as much, I did end up watching all twenty hours in three or four days, missing out on a lot of sleep and writing.

And it was surprising how similar the two shows were, not just in the ways they use the plot and characters to tighten the emotional screws and put me in tears episode after episode, but also in surprisingly specific ways. Both shows, for instance, use the story of the Little Mermaid to develop the theme of the doomed romance. Both shows feature main characters who work on action films, so major plot elements revolve around casting and filming and stunts gone wrong. And both use comedy relief involving elevators (I like both scenes a lot) in the first episode to set up major plotlines later.

Secret Garden is subtler and better scripted, I think, but though it's cruder, Kumiho is more tightly plotted and more relentless about tightening the screws and investing the audience in the outcome. In fact, one of my biggest problems with the series was that it tightened the screws a little too far to allow for a satisfying resolution (an idea I might explore in more detail in a later post).

Overall, though, I really liked both series a lot, though I liked Kumiho a little more, if only because it stars the awesome Shin Min-A, who is super-cute. I mean, weapons-grade cute. If the point of a romance is to get you to fall in love (at least temporarily) with the main character, she totally did that for me.

But imagine, if you will, the kind of emotional and intellectual roller-coaster ride it was watching these shows. On the one hand, I'm totally sucked into the plot and the characters, laughing and crying right along with them. And all the while, I'm also relating the tribulations of the main characters and their seemingly doomed romance to my own failed marriage and impending divorce, so I'm crying even harder. And while I'm doing that, I'm also kind of embarrassed that I'm a 48-year-old man falling so hard for such a nakedly melodramatic soap opera of a show. And on top of that, I'm also analyzing the writing and story structure, even through the tears, thinking, "I totally need to remember how to do this so I can use it myself."

My heart and my mind are both broken, it seems.

Daunting Success

So I've lately been back on Codex after a long absence, and I notice several of the writers there are also putting out ebooks. And in one thread, they're posting their cover images.

Which gets me thinking about the Digger short story collection I want to publish soon. So yesterday, I start toying with a cover concept, and sometime late last night, I end up with something that looks actually sort of awesome. Which presents me with a problem.

What's the problem with an awesome cover?

Well, I'm currently struggling with revising some unpublished Digger stories to include in hte collection for extra value. I thought the stories were sort of pleasantly funny, but now I'm thinking, "Man, I really need to step up my game so people won't be disappointed that this story is in a collection with that cover."

Because I've been a victim of the cover bait'n'switch before, and it sucks.

So the editing and polishing may take longer than I thought.

Adventures in Retail

Politically, I lean toward the libertarian and the conservative, in the belief that it's better to let people figure out things on their own than impose some sort of top-down Soviet-style rule commanded by "experts." I also generally hold to the hope that people will act like adults if you treat them like adults.

Working at a large retail store is utterly destroying that belief. Because people are pigs.

Virtually all I do, all day long, is pick up after them. I remember in one Diner podcast about New Year's Resolutions (either this year or last), Lileks mentioned that one resolution was to put stuff back on the proper shelf in Target rather than just dropping it at random anywhere in the store. He meant it as a joke, but I actually started to get mad.

Because that's all I do. I find frozen food that someone didn't want hidden among the bottles on the shampoo shelf, now warm and ruined. I find full carts of stuff picked up at random by teenagers with nothing better to do, abandoned in the corner of the store, and now I've got to put all that stuff back. At the end of the day, you cannot walk through the shoe aisles, because the floor is so littered with shoes. One shopper yesterday set up shop in the patio furniture section, setting up chairs for himself and someone else, plus an end table, and then proceeded to tear open a box containing a wire mesh firepit and partially assemble it on the floor of the store. I found the half-assembled firepit, surrounded by cardboard and plastic strewn heedlessly about, abandoned without a word.

People are pigs.

But it is fun to laugh at them sometimes. A dude in the store yesterday was looking at a grabber, one of those aluminum things to extend your reach (not this one, but similar). And his kid, maybe three or four, is sitting in the shopping cart, and Dad is grabbing his arm with the thing, and the kid's going, "Do it again. Do it again."

And then, in that loud shouting voice that kids use as a default because they think it's the only way they can get attention (and it may be true), the kid yells, "Dad, grab my pee-pee with it. Dad, grab my pee-pee!"

Rude Software is Still Rude

I should be used to this by now, given that I wrote a rant about it three and a half years ago, but every now and then it still jumps up in my face and bugs me. I walk into a fast food place and start to order.

"Hello, I'd like a number..."

"Will this be for here or to go?"

It's bad enough that they're interrupting me. That's rude, but people are rude to me all day long. What really gets my goat is that they don't intend to be rude to me. It seems to be the way their POS software is designed; they seem to be required to ask that question first before they can take the rest of my order. Thanks to this stupid-ass program, it is their job to be rude to me.

And as I said, I've been complaining about this for years. I should be used to it by now, except that not only is it rude, it's a bad design. This is just a guess, but I'd say nine times out of ten, the main thought on people's minds when they step up to order is what food they're asking for. That's my priority, that's what I'm thinking about, that's the reason I walked into your place of business in the first place. So why is it so hard to just let me order and then decide on the delivery details?

Imagine trying to order something from Amazon, and every time, before it lets you choose which book you want to buy, it makes you choose how you want it delivered first. It's ridiculous.

I'm looking at you KFC, Chick Fil-A, Arby's. Maybe also Long John Silver's and A&W; it's been so long since I've eaten there that I forget if they do it too. I like your food (some more than others), and with the exception of KFC, I enjoy visiting your restaurants. But seriously, even when I don't get interrupted because the person opened the conversation with the question before I could speak, I notice that the question comes first and that it's not the way I want to order.

If this bothers you too, pass it on.