Oh God. First, they put the Big Loser Weenie on the cover of Esquire a few months back (on the "Genius Issue," no less), and now his Loser Sidekick has his huge "I Robot" mug plastered across this month's Wired. There's a big bunch of articles on the new high-teching of the Green Movement. The lead-off is an article titled "The Next Green Revolution" which lists "four key principles" behind the re-energized environmental movement.
Three of them--"Renewable energy is plentiful energy," "Efficiency creates value," and "Quality is wealth"-- I can get on board with. They make sense, and you can get a broad range of people behind them, at least in theory. But I fear the fourth--"Cities beat suburbs"-- is more liberal fantasy than than achievable goal. It's a lefty article of faith that downtowns are signs of progress and prosperity and suburbs are basically the first circle of hell made manifest on Earth.
But the idea that all those people who've been turning downtowns into desiccated wastelands in their pell-mell flight to the suburbs will somehow magically turn around and go back is just silly. Urban sprawl didn't happen because millions of people woke up one day and said "I'm bored with the city. Let's go fuck up some pristine wilderness." It happened because there are very real negatives to the quality of city life, and you can't wave those away with a simple, "It's more environmentally sound to live in a cramped high-rise apartment than in a house."
But that's really not why I'm disappointed. The thing is, I got the Special Edition DVD of Peter Jackson's "King Kong" last week, and I'm really bummed. First off, there's no "Making of..." documentary, just a bunch of Post-Production Diaries that were previously posted on-line at kongisking.net, which are old news if you followed the website, which I did. It doesn't even include all the Production Diaries, because they were sold in a separate set.
It does contain two other documentaries, but there are none of the other great bits found on, say, Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" DVD's. No art galleries. No deleted/expanded scenes. No interactive content.
And worst of all by far, so bad that I didn't even realize that it was missing until I went looking for it last night: NO DIRECTOR COMMENTARY. No commentaries at all. The "Lord of the Rings" extended edition DVD's had four commentaries per picture. The reissue of the original "King Kong" had one. Some movies, like "Spider-Man," have a director's audible commentary and a pop-up text-based commentary. The new "Kong" has nothing (and this is not the basic no-frills disk, but the 2-Disc Special Edition we're talking about).
It may be that the movie is just so damn long that they couldn't fit a commentary on the disk without spilitting it across 2 disks, or compressing the video into unwatchable hash, but cripes! I want some commentary, damn it!
Thursday, April 27, 2006
Sunday, April 23, 2006
Okay, I Guess Technically, It's Obligatory SceneS
It appears, as things break out, that there is more than one obligatory scene, but the good news is that, after some false starts and editing in the first draft (which I know I'm not supposed to do, oh, the horror, the horror), the worst bitch of them is done and I'm moving forward again. Not writing with the blazing speed and urgency of the big action set-piece I did a couple of weeks ago, but forward progress is forward progress.
The dilemma I'm facing right now, and I'm sure it'll work itself out soon enough, is that things have taken a dark turn in the aftermath of Act II. Everybody's kind of grieving and in shock, even most of the bad guys, and I'm not sure when I can lighten things up again. I mean, they're never going to get as light as they were in the beginning, at least not until the very end, but I don't want to keep everything grim until then.
Number one, it's not the book the reader is promised in the beginning (although, ha-ha, just to piss some friends off, I threw in a semi-grim prologue that I might not keep). And number two, I hate grim. Digger was conceived just as comics were entering the grim'n'gritty phase, and despite the best of intentions, he just could not stay grim'n'gritty. Finally, I just gave up and let him be who he is, and people seem to be responding to that. I just want to make sure I get the balance right.
The ironic thing is, one of my self-perceived weaknesses as a writer is that I rarely, when writing, really dish out the damage to my protagonists. Other writers really delight in turning the screws on their protagonists, but I don't enjoy torture so much, even imaginary torture (except for that one interrogation scene in Blue Falcon which was actually a hoot to write). I generally like my protagonists and don't like them to suffer. Plus, when they're suffering, they're no fun to write.
So here I am, writing a book that is ostensibly a comedy, and now is the time I choose, finally, to reach deep into my gut and really hurt my protagonists.
Oh, and speaking of irony, here's one: yesterday, I finally decided, "What the hell, I have an extra dollar. Let's buy a lottery ticket." Now, I was actually thinking of getting one of those scratch-off cards, but I said "lottery ticket," so what I got was a Powerball ticket.
So at one point last night, before I lost, I was digging around the floorboards of my car and under the driver's seat, looking for change to buy a Coke from the vending machine (and before Coke's trademark lawyers get all over me, it was technically a Diet Coke, but still a Coca-Cola brand soft drink, and by the way, gee, I guess I didn't have an extra dollar after all) while in my head, I was spending the $28 million I could potentially win.
Weird thing about the lottery; even though you know you don't have a chance in hell of winning, while you hold that ticket, you feel rich, even while you scrabble for change. The feeling even persisted for a while after I had checked the numbers and knew I had lost. No wonder people get addicted.
The dilemma I'm facing right now, and I'm sure it'll work itself out soon enough, is that things have taken a dark turn in the aftermath of Act II. Everybody's kind of grieving and in shock, even most of the bad guys, and I'm not sure when I can lighten things up again. I mean, they're never going to get as light as they were in the beginning, at least not until the very end, but I don't want to keep everything grim until then.
Number one, it's not the book the reader is promised in the beginning (although, ha-ha, just to piss some friends off, I threw in a semi-grim prologue that I might not keep). And number two, I hate grim. Digger was conceived just as comics were entering the grim'n'gritty phase, and despite the best of intentions, he just could not stay grim'n'gritty. Finally, I just gave up and let him be who he is, and people seem to be responding to that. I just want to make sure I get the balance right.
The ironic thing is, one of my self-perceived weaknesses as a writer is that I rarely, when writing, really dish out the damage to my protagonists. Other writers really delight in turning the screws on their protagonists, but I don't enjoy torture so much, even imaginary torture (except for that one interrogation scene in Blue Falcon which was actually a hoot to write). I generally like my protagonists and don't like them to suffer. Plus, when they're suffering, they're no fun to write.
So here I am, writing a book that is ostensibly a comedy, and now is the time I choose, finally, to reach deep into my gut and really hurt my protagonists.
Oh, and speaking of irony, here's one: yesterday, I finally decided, "What the hell, I have an extra dollar. Let's buy a lottery ticket." Now, I was actually thinking of getting one of those scratch-off cards, but I said "lottery ticket," so what I got was a Powerball ticket.
So at one point last night, before I lost, I was digging around the floorboards of my car and under the driver's seat, looking for change to buy a Coke from the vending machine (and before Coke's trademark lawyers get all over me, it was technically a Diet Coke, but still a Coca-Cola brand soft drink, and by the way, gee, I guess I didn't have an extra dollar after all) while in my head, I was spending the $28 million I could potentially win.
Weird thing about the lottery; even though you know you don't have a chance in hell of winning, while you hold that ticket, you feel rich, even while you scrabble for change. The feeling even persisted for a while after I had checked the numbers and knew I had lost. No wonder people get addicted.
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
The Obligatory Scene
Okay, first off, this rules. Go look. I'll wait.
Back? Good. After my Act II exhilaration, I'm now stuck in early Act III, writing The Obligatory Scene. I've read this term in reviews and things all my life, kind of understanding what it meant, but I'm not sure I've ever really understood it from a writer's perspective before (although I must've during Blue Falcon - it's just all such a blur now).
The Obligatory Scene for me now is one that I don't want to write, but that I feel I have to write. Not because it's good or entertaining, not because people will enjoy reading it, but because I'm afraid people will feel ripped off if I don't write it. Characters who were separated during the climax meet up and basically fill each other in on stuff the reader knows but the characters don't. Writing it feels repetitive and boring, but if I don't include it, people will be all, "Wait a minute, how did he know that?"
So even though I'm trying to write 25,000 words in six weeks, I'm lucky right now if I can grind out a page at a sitting. Rrgh.
Back? Good. After my Act II exhilaration, I'm now stuck in early Act III, writing The Obligatory Scene. I've read this term in reviews and things all my life, kind of understanding what it meant, but I'm not sure I've ever really understood it from a writer's perspective before (although I must've during Blue Falcon - it's just all such a blur now).
The Obligatory Scene for me now is one that I don't want to write, but that I feel I have to write. Not because it's good or entertaining, not because people will enjoy reading it, but because I'm afraid people will feel ripped off if I don't write it. Characters who were separated during the climax meet up and basically fill each other in on stuff the reader knows but the characters don't. Writing it feels repetitive and boring, but if I don't include it, people will be all, "Wait a minute, how did he know that?"
So even though I'm trying to write 25,000 words in six weeks, I'm lucky right now if I can grind out a page at a sitting. Rrgh.
Friday, April 14, 2006
Mosquitoes (Figurative) Revisited
So I know you've all been on the edges of your seats, wondering about this. My snippet was posted today on the Baen's Universe Preview site. The final count: number 24 out of 27. The waiting is over; the suspense has lifted. I'm so relieved.
If you'd like to take a look, it's here. And feel free to read some of the other snippets as well. I don't mind.
If you'd like to take a look, it's here. And feel free to read some of the other snippets as well. I don't mind.
Thursday, April 13, 2006
At Least I'm Not the Only One
Okay, so Jay Lake's blog pointed me to Tobias Buckell's blog which pointed me to this by John Connolly. Connolly said this...
...there is a wall that I hit during the writing of every book. The point at which it occurs varies from book to book, although it’s usually around the halfway stage or just beyond it. I start to doubt the plot, the characters, the ideas underpinning it, my own writing, in fact every element involved in the process...But there is always that fear that this book, this story, is the one that should not have been started. The idea isn’t strong enough. The plot is going nowhere. I’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere along the way and now have to try to find the right path again.
To which Tobias Buckell added...
I think most of the unfinished short stories I have are that way because I took too long to write them and hit the point where I realized how bad they were and just… stopped...With a novel I think it takes about 4-5 months to talk myself out of it. With Crystal Rain there was a 2 month pause in the middle of writing it where I lost all confidence in the book and had to bring myself to terms with just finishing the damn thing.
And Jay Lake said... well, he's got pieces of this idea scattered all over, but the gist is, he writes really fast, so he finishes stuff before he ever hits the wall. It's not a problem for him. He's the guy the rest of us hate. He's the woman who complains that no matter how much she eats, she never gains any weight. He's the rat bastard I went running with one day in the Army, who stood around smoking for twenty minutes right before we went running, then took off like a shot and left me in the dust.
And what really pisses me off is that for most of my life, when it came to writing, at least, I got to be that guy. I was almost always the smartest guy in the room, and definitely the best writer, even if I rarely finished anything. And now that I'm trying to swim in the larger pond, I'm surrounded by people as good as or better than me, and it's intimidating. (edit: I may be making this sound worse than it is, just for effect - fact is, even in my local writer's group, which is full of published writers, award-winners and just plain smart folks, I split my time between being intimidated and being inspired, so it's not like I just sit around hating people who are better than me - I just have some deep-deated emotional glitches that I'm working on).
But it's comforting to know that other people go through the same things I'm experiencing. Well, except for that bastard Lake...
I'm so jealous.
And, of course, the thing is, writing fast works for me, too (I've mentioned this before but I can't find the link right now, and I've got to wrap this up fast). "Frame by Frame" was very carefully developed and crafted over a series of weeks, and it's been making the rounds for over two years now. I've submitted quite a few stories for publication, and so far, the only two to find acceptance were one-day jobs, plotted in a couple of hours and written in three or four, with minimal revision after. Now, the character had been developing on paper and in my head for over twenty years, but the stories themselves were produced really quickly.
But real life doesn't really allow me to use this as a regular working method, so unless and until I'm making my living completely from writing, I can't just set aside four or five hours in a day to bash out a full draft whenever I feel like it. I have to catch it when I can. I hate to think that, even though I'm still writing, I might be doing the writing damage by doing so.
...there is a wall that I hit during the writing of every book. The point at which it occurs varies from book to book, although it’s usually around the halfway stage or just beyond it. I start to doubt the plot, the characters, the ideas underpinning it, my own writing, in fact every element involved in the process...But there is always that fear that this book, this story, is the one that should not have been started. The idea isn’t strong enough. The plot is going nowhere. I’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere along the way and now have to try to find the right path again.
To which Tobias Buckell added...
I think most of the unfinished short stories I have are that way because I took too long to write them and hit the point where I realized how bad they were and just… stopped...With a novel I think it takes about 4-5 months to talk myself out of it. With Crystal Rain there was a 2 month pause in the middle of writing it where I lost all confidence in the book and had to bring myself to terms with just finishing the damn thing.
And Jay Lake said... well, he's got pieces of this idea scattered all over, but the gist is, he writes really fast, so he finishes stuff before he ever hits the wall. It's not a problem for him. He's the guy the rest of us hate. He's the woman who complains that no matter how much she eats, she never gains any weight. He's the rat bastard I went running with one day in the Army, who stood around smoking for twenty minutes right before we went running, then took off like a shot and left me in the dust.
And what really pisses me off is that for most of my life, when it came to writing, at least, I got to be that guy. I was almost always the smartest guy in the room, and definitely the best writer, even if I rarely finished anything. And now that I'm trying to swim in the larger pond, I'm surrounded by people as good as or better than me, and it's intimidating. (edit: I may be making this sound worse than it is, just for effect - fact is, even in my local writer's group, which is full of published writers, award-winners and just plain smart folks, I split my time between being intimidated and being inspired, so it's not like I just sit around hating people who are better than me - I just have some deep-deated emotional glitches that I'm working on).
But it's comforting to know that other people go through the same things I'm experiencing. Well, except for that bastard Lake...
I'm so jealous.
And, of course, the thing is, writing fast works for me, too (I've mentioned this before but I can't find the link right now, and I've got to wrap this up fast). "Frame by Frame" was very carefully developed and crafted over a series of weeks, and it's been making the rounds for over two years now. I've submitted quite a few stories for publication, and so far, the only two to find acceptance were one-day jobs, plotted in a couple of hours and written in three or four, with minimal revision after. Now, the character had been developing on paper and in my head for over twenty years, but the stories themselves were produced really quickly.
But real life doesn't really allow me to use this as a regular working method, so unless and until I'm making my living completely from writing, I can't just set aside four or five hours in a day to bash out a full draft whenever I feel like it. I have to catch it when I can. I hate to think that, even though I'm still writing, I might be doing the writing damage by doing so.
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
People Suck
Got over the elation I felt yesterday by actually reading the longhand I'd written the day before. It kinda sucks. I can massage it into something readable, but the giddy momentum I felt yesterday has abated.
Then as I was driving home last night after thirteen hours at work (someone else called in sick - surprise, surprise), I ran over a car battery. Somebody, teenage boys probably, left a car battery sitting in the middle of a darkened street, and I hit it going about thirty miles an hour. I drive a Miata, which rides really low to the ground, so I hit it hard, and then it got caught and dragged underneath my car. I had to run my wheels up onto a curb going backwards to dislodge the thing.
Asswipes.
Then as I was driving home last night after thirteen hours at work (someone else called in sick - surprise, surprise), I ran over a car battery. Somebody, teenage boys probably, left a car battery sitting in the middle of a darkened street, and I hit it going about thirty miles an hour. I drive a Miata, which rides really low to the ground, so I hit it hard, and then it got caught and dragged underneath my car. I had to run my wheels up onto a curb going backwards to dislodge the thing.
Asswipes.
Monday, April 10, 2006
Motivation Is a Wonderful Thing
Act II is finished, and I've written several short scenes to start Act III. Don't have an official word count, because some of it is still in longhand, but I'd guess a little over 54,000.
I feel such a rush of relief and confidence now. Act II is where so many attempted books have died (okay, maybe not many, exactly, but of the six I've seriously attempted, three have died in Act II, one got lost in Act II but had a quickie ending tacked on so I wouldn't feel like I'd failed completely, one was Blue Falcon, and one is this). Getting past that huge daunting fight scene and wrapping up that part of the story makes me feel as if successful completion of the book is now guaranteed.
Which is not to say that there are no challenges left. The finale of the book of course needs to be bigger and more spectacular than the Act II climax, but I plan for it to be simpler. A big piece of the Act II climax was the heroes finally identifying who their enemies really were, so there was a sequence of misdirection, action, revelation, action, more revelation, more action, etc.
None of that is a factor in the finale. The sides are clearly laid out. The agendas are clear. It's just a matter of getting the heroes through the obstacles to final victory (or defeat, but this being a superhero story, what are the odds of the latter?).
So yeah, I'm getting excited again. I'm trying not to get too excited, because there are still a lot of words to write between here and "The End," but I'm a lot more confident of getting there than I was two weeks ago, and worlds more confident than I was, say, two months ago.
I wonder if I should get one of those word-counter things?
I feel such a rush of relief and confidence now. Act II is where so many attempted books have died (okay, maybe not many, exactly, but of the six I've seriously attempted, three have died in Act II, one got lost in Act II but had a quickie ending tacked on so I wouldn't feel like I'd failed completely, one was Blue Falcon, and one is this). Getting past that huge daunting fight scene and wrapping up that part of the story makes me feel as if successful completion of the book is now guaranteed.
Which is not to say that there are no challenges left. The finale of the book of course needs to be bigger and more spectacular than the Act II climax, but I plan for it to be simpler. A big piece of the Act II climax was the heroes finally identifying who their enemies really were, so there was a sequence of misdirection, action, revelation, action, more revelation, more action, etc.
None of that is a factor in the finale. The sides are clearly laid out. The agendas are clear. It's just a matter of getting the heroes through the obstacles to final victory (or defeat, but this being a superhero story, what are the odds of the latter?).
So yeah, I'm getting excited again. I'm trying not to get too excited, because there are still a lot of words to write between here and "The End," but I'm a lot more confident of getting there than I was two weeks ago, and worlds more confident than I was, say, two months ago.
I wonder if I should get one of those word-counter things?
Sunday, April 09, 2006
Refried
Just got home from pulling another all-nighter at work (last one for a while, I hope). Yesterday was a double-milestone on the book. I finished the Act II climax (a first pass at it, anyway) and I broke 50,000 words. I'm now over 51,000, in fact. which is funny, because three weeks ago, I was thinking I'd be lucky to stretcth the climax out to 45,000.
Now, part of that is me going back and adding some stuff in earlier in the book, but most of it comes from turning the Act II climax from a simple, brief fight scene into a complex event worthy to be called a major plot point. I haven't read it all through, so I don't know how well it works, but I've got all the pieces down now, and I'm ready (after one more little stinger scene, or maybe two) to push on to Act III.
I don't have a very complicated structure for Act III, but I figure at least 10,000 words of it will be dedicated to the final big fight, so how complicated does it need to be? Ten thousand words to establish what happened to everybody in the aftermath of Act II, ten thousand words to get them all back together, then ten thousand words to fight it all out, brief epilogue, and the book's over.
Easy.
Hah.
7 1/2 weeks to write 29,000 words. Let's see if I'm really up to the challenge.
Now, part of that is me going back and adding some stuff in earlier in the book, but most of it comes from turning the Act II climax from a simple, brief fight scene into a complex event worthy to be called a major plot point. I haven't read it all through, so I don't know how well it works, but I've got all the pieces down now, and I'm ready (after one more little stinger scene, or maybe two) to push on to Act III.
I don't have a very complicated structure for Act III, but I figure at least 10,000 words of it will be dedicated to the final big fight, so how complicated does it need to be? Ten thousand words to establish what happened to everybody in the aftermath of Act II, ten thousand words to get them all back together, then ten thousand words to fight it all out, brief epilogue, and the book's over.
Easy.
Hah.
7 1/2 weeks to write 29,000 words. Let's see if I'm really up to the challenge.
Thursday, April 06, 2006
More Cowbell
Finally got my acknowledgment of receipt of my Writers of the Future entry. This one is not a contest winner. It's too lightweight, breezy. It reads almost like an episode of some silly TV series rather than a serious literary story.
On the other hand...
It explores its subject a lot more fully than my last entry ("Shell") did. "Shell" was a cool little story, but it was almost a haiku; an incomplete little fragment designed to produce a feeling of vague melancholy without going into detail. It worked really well for what it was, but what it was was not what the judges were looking for. And what they're looking for, from what I've read of the anthologies, is worlds created with quite a bit of telling detail. My vague little urban fantasy was too modern-day, too "right here and right now."
Also, M.T. Reiten says that the story that won it for him was a story he'd just sent in as filler, because he was entering the contest every quarter and he had to send something. So maybe I'm wrong. In three months, I'll either be proven right, or I'll be really happy.
Still scraping along on the Act II climax. It's difficult, because I have a lot of characters who all have to stay busy while I get four or five key characters into specific positions for what I know is the climax of the scene. And it's going to be a biggie.
So writing the scene has been sort of like pulling teeth. I write a few pages of action, get to a pause, read it over. Realize I'm losing people here and there, so I add a couple of lines in strategic places to keep everyone in the mix.
Today was spent writing dialogue for a big mid-fight pause as the antagonist's true identity is revealed, plus going back to earlier parts of the fight for "more cowbell." Basically, I realized that the fight was a little bland ("she hit him, he hit another guy") and decided to add some production value (and yes, in this case, cowbell=explosions).
Can't remember if this is the way I worked on Blue Falcon. I had some pretty intense action scenes in it, but it seems like I wrote my way through them pretty quickly. Then again, with the exception of the big finale, all of the scenes were written from the viewpoint of a single protagonist with a very limited view of things, so I didn't have to juggle large numbers of characters taking simultaneous actions within seconds of each other.
I'll have to wait until I'm done to see the results before I decide whether it's a good working method or not. But the pattern seems to be:
-block action roughly to establish a timeline and emotional dynamics
-rearrange elements for smoother flow
-add detail for enhanced production value
Hope to finish this fight by Monday morning, plus the dialogue sting that carries us into the third act. Then, with any luck, I'll have enough momentum to finish the first draft by the end of May. That's my goal, and I'm stating it out loud for the first time. 80,ooo words (by the MS Word counter) by the end of May. Then reading, revision, and in an editor's hand by the end of the year.
Anyone reading this, help me out. I'll probably need a whip cracked in my direction a time or two to actually do this. But if you help me, and I finish the first draft by May 31st, I'll buy you all a beer*.
*if you live in or happen to be in the Tulsa area on the designated "Tony buys everybody a beer" night. Substitutions allowed, as long as it's not, like, super-expensive brandy or something. I'm absolutely serious about this. First week of June, drinks are on me.
On the other hand...
It explores its subject a lot more fully than my last entry ("Shell") did. "Shell" was a cool little story, but it was almost a haiku; an incomplete little fragment designed to produce a feeling of vague melancholy without going into detail. It worked really well for what it was, but what it was was not what the judges were looking for. And what they're looking for, from what I've read of the anthologies, is worlds created with quite a bit of telling detail. My vague little urban fantasy was too modern-day, too "right here and right now."
Also, M.T. Reiten says that the story that won it for him was a story he'd just sent in as filler, because he was entering the contest every quarter and he had to send something. So maybe I'm wrong. In three months, I'll either be proven right, or I'll be really happy.
Still scraping along on the Act II climax. It's difficult, because I have a lot of characters who all have to stay busy while I get four or five key characters into specific positions for what I know is the climax of the scene. And it's going to be a biggie.
So writing the scene has been sort of like pulling teeth. I write a few pages of action, get to a pause, read it over. Realize I'm losing people here and there, so I add a couple of lines in strategic places to keep everyone in the mix.
Today was spent writing dialogue for a big mid-fight pause as the antagonist's true identity is revealed, plus going back to earlier parts of the fight for "more cowbell." Basically, I realized that the fight was a little bland ("she hit him, he hit another guy") and decided to add some production value (and yes, in this case, cowbell=explosions).
Can't remember if this is the way I worked on Blue Falcon. I had some pretty intense action scenes in it, but it seems like I wrote my way through them pretty quickly. Then again, with the exception of the big finale, all of the scenes were written from the viewpoint of a single protagonist with a very limited view of things, so I didn't have to juggle large numbers of characters taking simultaneous actions within seconds of each other.
I'll have to wait until I'm done to see the results before I decide whether it's a good working method or not. But the pattern seems to be:
-block action roughly to establish a timeline and emotional dynamics
-rearrange elements for smoother flow
-add detail for enhanced production value
Hope to finish this fight by Monday morning, plus the dialogue sting that carries us into the third act. Then, with any luck, I'll have enough momentum to finish the first draft by the end of May. That's my goal, and I'm stating it out loud for the first time. 80,ooo words (by the MS Word counter) by the end of May. Then reading, revision, and in an editor's hand by the end of the year.
Anyone reading this, help me out. I'll probably need a whip cracked in my direction a time or two to actually do this. But if you help me, and I finish the first draft by May 31st, I'll buy you all a beer*.
*if you live in or happen to be in the Tulsa area on the designated "Tony buys everybody a beer" night. Substitutions allowed, as long as it's not, like, super-expensive brandy or something. I'm absolutely serious about this. First week of June, drinks are on me.
Wednesday, April 05, 2006
The Lost World
One thing I haven't seen mentioned about Lost is its international flavor. It's maybe the only television drama I've ever seen that makes people of different nationalities and cultures an integral part of the storyline.
I mean, think about this for a bit. Besides the American, English and Australian passengers, there are two Koreans, an Iraqi, and a Nigerian. At least two, perhaps three, of the Americans have lived abroad (Walt in Amsterdam and Australia, Shannon in Paris, and maybe Jack in Thailand), and another two (Hurley and Ana-Lucia) are of Hispanic descent. They're all stranded on an island in the South Pacific along with a French woman and a secret project founded by two American researchers with Dutch names and funded by a Danish arms magnate. The secret project takes its name from a Hindu (Indian) term; its logo is Taoist (Chinese) in origin. There is a computer that counts down to zero, and if the proper code isn't entered in time, Egyptian hieroglyphics appear. A map to the island on a blast door is covered with inscriptions in Latin, along with at least one name in Greek. And somewhere on the island, someone is raising genetically modified polar bears.
What other show pulls so freely from so many cultures, and explicitly acknowledges that we no longer live in a segregated world? Not sure what it all means, but it's worth noting.
I mean, think about this for a bit. Besides the American, English and Australian passengers, there are two Koreans, an Iraqi, and a Nigerian. At least two, perhaps three, of the Americans have lived abroad (Walt in Amsterdam and Australia, Shannon in Paris, and maybe Jack in Thailand), and another two (Hurley and Ana-Lucia) are of Hispanic descent. They're all stranded on an island in the South Pacific along with a French woman and a secret project founded by two American researchers with Dutch names and funded by a Danish arms magnate. The secret project takes its name from a Hindu (Indian) term; its logo is Taoist (Chinese) in origin. There is a computer that counts down to zero, and if the proper code isn't entered in time, Egyptian hieroglyphics appear. A map to the island on a blast door is covered with inscriptions in Latin, along with at least one name in Greek. And somewhere on the island, someone is raising genetically modified polar bears.
What other show pulls so freely from so many cultures, and explicitly acknowledges that we no longer live in a segregated world? Not sure what it all means, but it's worth noting.
Fried
I got home this morning at six a.m. after working for my tenth consecutive day. I know, ten days doesn't really seem like all that much, but between the high stress (we had a software change that threw everything behind for several days), the odd hours (I was subbing for people who were either sick or on vacation, so I worked all three shifts at one point or another - the last two shifts were overnights), and the lack of sleep, I am now seriously fried.
And I've got two employees that I've got to replace, like, immediately, so things could well get worse before they get better.
And I've got two employees that I've got to replace, like, immediately, so things could well get worse before they get better.
Tuesday, April 04, 2006
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Neon Genesis Evangelion is one of the most popular anime shows of all time, I think. It only ran 26 episodes (and even some of its fans sort of wish it had only run 24, but I'll get to that later), but it had a huge impact, and a legion of fans who are still around today. Which is understandable, to an extent, because technically, the show is gorgeous, and the storytelling style is compelling.
But on another level, it's weird, because it plays out almost as a very bitter joke on its audience.
Evangelion starts out with all the standard trappings of a typical genre giant-robot show. Monstrous alien beasts threatening the future Earth. The only defense against them: giant robots piloted by teenagers. Our hero, the teenage son of the head researcher and inventor of the robots, has a special connection with one of the robots, so that only he can pilot it. Problem is, he's young and inexperienced, in over his head. Working with him are two other pilots, with their own unique robots, and a crack support team of technicians, scientists and soldiers.
The robot and monster designs are awesome, the animation and character design are first-class. The show lurches from awesome action to clumsy comedy, with characters that seem to be strict genre stereotypes: the restrained commander, the loudmouthed rival. But even at the beginning, something feels creepy and out of place. The robots look sort of mechanical, sort of alive. There is all this religious imagery and symbolism, and a sense of foreboding about the whole enterprise. Even the music is odd, with a frightening martial symphonic score instead of the usual rock/pop you'd expect in a show of this type.
And as the show progresses, it begins to twist and corrupt every expectation. The hero is a whiny brat who only pilots the Eva in a vain attempt to gain his father's love. The other members of the secret task force all turn out to have dark secrets in their pasts. The secret project itself turns out to have a dark past and a perhaps sinister purpose.
In the beginning, we expect to see this odd assortment of characters pull together to combat a terrible menace, with the hero maturing and developing his inner strength as the show progresses, with good finally triumphing over evil. Instead, over the course of 24 episodes, we see the characters slowly unravel, retreating from each other and succumbing to depression as their struggle begins to seem more and more futile (and we learn that perhaps we've been rooting for the bad guys all along).
It's depressing, yet you can't stop watching . It's compelling, hypnotic, because you can't believe they're doing this, making these characters that seemed so cool in the beginning turn out so miserable and ugly and bitter. You keep watching because maybe the filmmakers are just following the rules a bit too well, turning the screws on the characters a bit too tightly before letting them redeem themselves in the end. And yet, you can sense, well before the 24th episode, that perhaps there will be no redemption for these characters. They are doomed. But you keep watching because you just can't believe they'll let things go that far.
Then come the final two episodes, in which the plot basically stops, and we spend an hour listening to various characters psychobabble about philosophy. Imagine if they cut out all the cool stuff from the Matrix trilogy, and only left in the philosophical speeches about perception and reality and such. That's the final episode of Evangelion in a nutshell.
There was such a negative outcry from the show's fans at the ending that the producers did a truly unprecedented thing: they produced a feature film, The End of Evangelion, that basically starts at the end of episode 24 and retells the ending in a more conventional manner. But if you think that means that there is any hope of redemption, or a happy ending, you would be mistaken. When I got to the end of the movie, I felt soiled, literally used and dirty inside.
Yet I watched the movie at least three more times over that weekend, and watched one sequence in the middle maybe twenty times. It's so well-made, beautifully animated and edited, yet to such depressing purpose. Whenever I think about Evangelion now, I think the emotions I feel must bear a small resemblance to how abused kids feel about their parents: so much love and hatred inextricably linked together (not surprisingly, neglectful and abusive parents play a huge role in Evangelion).
It's strange how one show can be so mindlessly fun, so thought-provoking, so exciting and yet so viscerally unpleasant. It was far from a perfect show, and yet, it's absolutely unforgettable.
But on another level, it's weird, because it plays out almost as a very bitter joke on its audience.
Evangelion starts out with all the standard trappings of a typical genre giant-robot show. Monstrous alien beasts threatening the future Earth. The only defense against them: giant robots piloted by teenagers. Our hero, the teenage son of the head researcher and inventor of the robots, has a special connection with one of the robots, so that only he can pilot it. Problem is, he's young and inexperienced, in over his head. Working with him are two other pilots, with their own unique robots, and a crack support team of technicians, scientists and soldiers.
The robot and monster designs are awesome, the animation and character design are first-class. The show lurches from awesome action to clumsy comedy, with characters that seem to be strict genre stereotypes: the restrained commander, the loudmouthed rival. But even at the beginning, something feels creepy and out of place. The robots look sort of mechanical, sort of alive. There is all this religious imagery and symbolism, and a sense of foreboding about the whole enterprise. Even the music is odd, with a frightening martial symphonic score instead of the usual rock/pop you'd expect in a show of this type.
And as the show progresses, it begins to twist and corrupt every expectation. The hero is a whiny brat who only pilots the Eva in a vain attempt to gain his father's love. The other members of the secret task force all turn out to have dark secrets in their pasts. The secret project itself turns out to have a dark past and a perhaps sinister purpose.
In the beginning, we expect to see this odd assortment of characters pull together to combat a terrible menace, with the hero maturing and developing his inner strength as the show progresses, with good finally triumphing over evil. Instead, over the course of 24 episodes, we see the characters slowly unravel, retreating from each other and succumbing to depression as their struggle begins to seem more and more futile (and we learn that perhaps we've been rooting for the bad guys all along).
It's depressing, yet you can't stop watching . It's compelling, hypnotic, because you can't believe they're doing this, making these characters that seemed so cool in the beginning turn out so miserable and ugly and bitter. You keep watching because maybe the filmmakers are just following the rules a bit too well, turning the screws on the characters a bit too tightly before letting them redeem themselves in the end. And yet, you can sense, well before the 24th episode, that perhaps there will be no redemption for these characters. They are doomed. But you keep watching because you just can't believe they'll let things go that far.
Then come the final two episodes, in which the plot basically stops, and we spend an hour listening to various characters psychobabble about philosophy. Imagine if they cut out all the cool stuff from the Matrix trilogy, and only left in the philosophical speeches about perception and reality and such. That's the final episode of Evangelion in a nutshell.
There was such a negative outcry from the show's fans at the ending that the producers did a truly unprecedented thing: they produced a feature film, The End of Evangelion, that basically starts at the end of episode 24 and retells the ending in a more conventional manner. But if you think that means that there is any hope of redemption, or a happy ending, you would be mistaken. When I got to the end of the movie, I felt soiled, literally used and dirty inside.
Yet I watched the movie at least three more times over that weekend, and watched one sequence in the middle maybe twenty times. It's so well-made, beautifully animated and edited, yet to such depressing purpose. Whenever I think about Evangelion now, I think the emotions I feel must bear a small resemblance to how abused kids feel about their parents: so much love and hatred inextricably linked together (not surprisingly, neglectful and abusive parents play a huge role in Evangelion).
It's strange how one show can be so mindlessly fun, so thought-provoking, so exciting and yet so viscerally unpleasant. It was far from a perfect show, and yet, it's absolutely unforgettable.
Monday, April 03, 2006
Lord, Save Me From the Mosquitoes
Okay, this is like, totally petty, but I'm pretty tired from working eight days straight, so I'm going to vent a little, just cause I can. That's what blogs are for, after all.
So they've had this preview up at Jim Baen's Universe for a month now. They put up snippets of the stories, a new one every other day or so. Out of the twenty-seven stories listed in the full table of contents, they have seventeen snippets up so far, plus one audio snippet.
My story isn't among them.
Now, one could argue that this is a good thing. After all, of the stories that are left unsnippeted so far, several of them are the big names: Alan Dean Foster, Gregory Benford, Gene Wolfe. So maybe I can look at the fact that mine has been held back so far as a mark of quality or something. And let's face it, somebody has to be last. It's simple math.
But there's something about the waiting, the tension, that's... It's like being in a contest, where they're announcing the winners, and they start with, like, fifth place, and you're waiting, hoping to hear your name, but also hoping not to hear your name, yet. And with every name they call that's not yours, your anxiety level goes up, because while the potential reward is increasing, the odds of you being one of the winners are going down.
And that's kind of how I feel here. I'm thinking, yeah, I should be flattered that they've held mine back, I'm going to come out with the A-listers. But there's another part of me that's saying, "Geez, all the other Introducing authors have their snippets up. And several of the bigs, like David Drake and John Ringo, also have snippets up. They've even snippeted a story that doesn't exist yet. Why don't they want people to see my story?"
Now watch, somebody at Baen's will read this and say, "Put the crybaby's story up next." Which is not really the point of this post. Really, sometimes it just feels good to complain about something.
Neon Genesis Evangelion tomorrow...
So they've had this preview up at Jim Baen's Universe for a month now. They put up snippets of the stories, a new one every other day or so. Out of the twenty-seven stories listed in the full table of contents, they have seventeen snippets up so far, plus one audio snippet.
My story isn't among them.
Now, one could argue that this is a good thing. After all, of the stories that are left unsnippeted so far, several of them are the big names: Alan Dean Foster, Gregory Benford, Gene Wolfe. So maybe I can look at the fact that mine has been held back so far as a mark of quality or something. And let's face it, somebody has to be last. It's simple math.
But there's something about the waiting, the tension, that's... It's like being in a contest, where they're announcing the winners, and they start with, like, fifth place, and you're waiting, hoping to hear your name, but also hoping not to hear your name, yet. And with every name they call that's not yours, your anxiety level goes up, because while the potential reward is increasing, the odds of you being one of the winners are going down.
And that's kind of how I feel here. I'm thinking, yeah, I should be flattered that they've held mine back, I'm going to come out with the A-listers. But there's another part of me that's saying, "Geez, all the other Introducing authors have their snippets up. And several of the bigs, like David Drake and John Ringo, also have snippets up. They've even snippeted a story that doesn't exist yet. Why don't they want people to see my story?"
Now watch, somebody at Baen's will read this and say, "Put the crybaby's story up next." Which is not really the point of this post. Really, sometimes it just feels good to complain about something.
Neon Genesis Evangelion tomorrow...
More Anime Musing
Okay, so I've written at length about Fullmetal Alchemist before, but I have another tidbit to share. Since I know that my wishes concerning the DVD collection will probably not come to pass, I've been thinking of compiling all the episodes on my media center PC. I've got four episodes collected so far, and Cartoon Network has recently started over from Episode One, so I was really excited to get the entire series collected.
So Saturday night, I set the computer to record Episode Two, and what happened? Saturday was April Fool's Day, so for some asinine reason, Cartoon Network added fart noises to the soundtrack. The entire freaking episode, after almost every single line of dialogue:
*"So you're the alchemist they call Fullmetal." *thp*
"That's right." *phrp*
"You don't look like much to me." *braaaaap*
*not actual dialogue
They were scheduled to air the episode a second time later that night, but then, of course, Daylight Savings Time happened, so they ran Chuck Norris's Karate Kommandos or something instead. So I deleted the recording, because watching the episode with non-stop fart noises was just too offensive. Although, if it had happened with, say, Neon Genesis Evangelion, that might have hilarious.
Speaking of which, I was sure I had talked about Neon Genesis Evangelion before, but I can't find an entry, so I guess I haven't. Before Fullmetal Alchemist came along, Neon Genesis Evangelion was just about my favorite anime. Which is weird, because I find the anime very uneven and depressing. But I'll talk more in-depth about that tomorrow.
I'm maybe halfway through the big Act II climax. Word count is 45,000, so I'll actually come out closer to 50,000 when it's all completed. So I'm feeling a little better about that, plus I realize that publishers count words differently than MS Word does, which means my word count may be at a publishable level by the time it's all finished up.
I had exactly the opposite problem with Blue Falcon. The manuscript for that was pretty big, something like 550 pages. I read an article about estimating word count for publishers, and tried it with Blue Falcon, for which I'd been using the MS Word counter. The count came out way higher, which was disturbing, because the manuscript was already in the high range of what was publishable by a first-time author (something like 125,000 words). So I kept using the MS Word calculation, hoping no one would call my bluff.
Of course, it didn't matter, because not only did I end up not selling it, but I also cut out something like 50 pages on the final editing pass before turning it in to iUniverse. I hated to lose some of the details I'd written in, but I think the book benefited greatly by it. It had always been kind of flabby and ponderous, and it ended up pretty tight.
So Saturday night, I set the computer to record Episode Two, and what happened? Saturday was April Fool's Day, so for some asinine reason, Cartoon Network added fart noises to the soundtrack. The entire freaking episode, after almost every single line of dialogue:
*"So you're the alchemist they call Fullmetal." *thp*
"That's right." *phrp*
"You don't look like much to me." *braaaaap*
*not actual dialogue
They were scheduled to air the episode a second time later that night, but then, of course, Daylight Savings Time happened, so they ran Chuck Norris's Karate Kommandos or something instead. So I deleted the recording, because watching the episode with non-stop fart noises was just too offensive. Although, if it had happened with, say, Neon Genesis Evangelion, that might have hilarious.
Speaking of which, I was sure I had talked about Neon Genesis Evangelion before, but I can't find an entry, so I guess I haven't. Before Fullmetal Alchemist came along, Neon Genesis Evangelion was just about my favorite anime. Which is weird, because I find the anime very uneven and depressing. But I'll talk more in-depth about that tomorrow.
I'm maybe halfway through the big Act II climax. Word count is 45,000, so I'll actually come out closer to 50,000 when it's all completed. So I'm feeling a little better about that, plus I realize that publishers count words differently than MS Word does, which means my word count may be at a publishable level by the time it's all finished up.
I had exactly the opposite problem with Blue Falcon. The manuscript for that was pretty big, something like 550 pages. I read an article about estimating word count for publishers, and tried it with Blue Falcon, for which I'd been using the MS Word counter. The count came out way higher, which was disturbing, because the manuscript was already in the high range of what was publishable by a first-time author (something like 125,000 words). So I kept using the MS Word calculation, hoping no one would call my bluff.
Of course, it didn't matter, because not only did I end up not selling it, but I also cut out something like 50 pages on the final editing pass before turning it in to iUniverse. I hated to lose some of the details I'd written in, but I think the book benefited greatly by it. It had always been kind of flabby and ponderous, and it ended up pretty tight.
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
Okay, I Didn't Mean It Literally
So yesterday, I write my blog post with the plan in mind to go to my office and write for at least an hour, maybe two, before heading in to work at 2:00 (I'm filling in for someone on vacation). I said I would write "at least a paragraph" not so much as a goal, but as a way to lower the pressure on myself.
So I finish the blog post, mouse around a little, then get ready to take my shower...
And the phone rings.
It's one of my employees who's not on vacation, His daughter is sick, and he needs to leave. I have no one else to cover. I bring my daughter home from kindergarten, then go in early, and work from 11:20 a.m. to 10 p.m. Then once I'm home, I quickly check my e-mail before going to bed, because I've got to work at 6 a.m. this morning due to another of my employees being out of town.
So in an effort to not make myself a liar (yet again), I wrote two paragraphs in longhand while I was waiting in line at the school. It wasn't frantic action, but it was from the scene in question, so I say it counts.
On the good side, I was able yesterday to look beyond the end of Act II and begin planning the sequence of events in Act III more clearly. That's been one of my major worries with this book, and what has killed other promising projects of mine.
I seem to plot almost subconsciously. As I'm working out my present scene, my mind is often looking ahead to see what I can do with what I've currently written. When I outline, I'll come up with a general direction I want things to go in, but I'll often fudge the details of how they get there.
This is not an excellent working method. If I am unclear on where something is going, or why something is happening, I end up slowing down, even stopping for weeks and months at a time, while my subconscious tries to make all the pieces fit. This has killed my last two book projects. On Angel Baby, I wrote what I thought was a pretty good first act, but then stopped dead, after something like three aimless pages of Act II. On Flip, I wrote almost two-thirds, then decided I'd made a wrong turn and backed up to the halfway point (after about a year off). I managed to get myself almost up to the place I'd quit again, and it was better, but I still couldn't feel where I was going.
And it really sucks, because there's a lot of good stuff in both books, but if I can't make myself find a believeable way to get from here to there, my subconscious is unable to just "get something down on paper" and fix it in therewrite. I just stop, and no amount of wishing will fix it.
Got to go to work. Another paragraph today, maybe, then real writing tomorrow.
So I finish the blog post, mouse around a little, then get ready to take my shower...
And the phone rings.
It's one of my employees who's not on vacation, His daughter is sick, and he needs to leave. I have no one else to cover. I bring my daughter home from kindergarten, then go in early, and work from 11:20 a.m. to 10 p.m. Then once I'm home, I quickly check my e-mail before going to bed, because I've got to work at 6 a.m. this morning due to another of my employees being out of town.
So in an effort to not make myself a liar (yet again), I wrote two paragraphs in longhand while I was waiting in line at the school. It wasn't frantic action, but it was from the scene in question, so I say it counts.
On the good side, I was able yesterday to look beyond the end of Act II and begin planning the sequence of events in Act III more clearly. That's been one of my major worries with this book, and what has killed other promising projects of mine.
I seem to plot almost subconsciously. As I'm working out my present scene, my mind is often looking ahead to see what I can do with what I've currently written. When I outline, I'll come up with a general direction I want things to go in, but I'll often fudge the details of how they get there.
This is not an excellent working method. If I am unclear on where something is going, or why something is happening, I end up slowing down, even stopping for weeks and months at a time, while my subconscious tries to make all the pieces fit. This has killed my last two book projects. On Angel Baby, I wrote what I thought was a pretty good first act, but then stopped dead, after something like three aimless pages of Act II. On Flip, I wrote almost two-thirds, then decided I'd made a wrong turn and backed up to the halfway point (after about a year off). I managed to get myself almost up to the place I'd quit again, and it was better, but I still couldn't feel where I was going.
And it really sucks, because there's a lot of good stuff in both books, but if I can't make myself find a believeable way to get from here to there, my subconscious is unable to just "get something down on paper" and fix it in therewrite. I just stop, and no amount of wishing will fix it.
Got to go to work. Another paragraph today, maybe, then real writing tomorrow.
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
All Hell Breaks Loose (For At Least a Paragraph)
So I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I had read a book written by a friend of mine (actually a manuscript written by an acquaintance, but I like to put positive spin on things). So I e-mailed and told him how much I liked it, and he advised me to keep the number of combatants down in my combats scenes, because in his climactic battle, he had 16 major characters (heroes and villains) as well as hundreds of agents, and it was hard to control.
Well, I needed to hear this advice, because the major conflict I'd been putting off since November was a biggie: 6 heroes vs. 6 opponents, and something like 5 civilians in the mix. So off I went, reenergized, writing my build-up scenes, cranking up the tension, getting everything set to explode...
And now I have 6 heroes vs. 18 (that's right, EIGHTEEN) opponents, plus seven named civilians and several hundred bystanders. Yeah, I have a sort-of-plan to get through this, but it's still going to be hard.
See, this is why self-help books never really help me, because I swear, somewhere in the loop between the words and my brain and my eventual actions, things get horribly mixed-up. My daughter does the same thing ("Did you hear what I said?" "Yes, you said don't cut the dog's hair" "Did you do what I said?" "Yes" "Then who cut the dog's hair?" "I did"), and until this moment, I never understood where she got it from. It's like that "Home Movies" episode where Brendon made a video to teach his little sister not to put marbles in her nose; everyone who saw the video ended up doing exactly that.
Anyway, today I'm starting the fight (I actually wrote the first punch yesterday, but it's not really a fight until somebody punches back). It's still overwhelming, but I'm determined to write at least a paragraph of frantic super-violence today, work on it some more when I'm off Thursday, and hopefully finish it up over the weekend.
Well, I needed to hear this advice, because the major conflict I'd been putting off since November was a biggie: 6 heroes vs. 6 opponents, and something like 5 civilians in the mix. So off I went, reenergized, writing my build-up scenes, cranking up the tension, getting everything set to explode...
And now I have 6 heroes vs. 18 (that's right, EIGHTEEN) opponents, plus seven named civilians and several hundred bystanders. Yeah, I have a sort-of-plan to get through this, but it's still going to be hard.
See, this is why self-help books never really help me, because I swear, somewhere in the loop between the words and my brain and my eventual actions, things get horribly mixed-up. My daughter does the same thing ("Did you hear what I said?" "Yes, you said don't cut the dog's hair" "Did you do what I said?" "Yes" "Then who cut the dog's hair?" "I did"), and until this moment, I never understood where she got it from. It's like that "Home Movies" episode where Brendon made a video to teach his little sister not to put marbles in her nose; everyone who saw the video ended up doing exactly that.
Anyway, today I'm starting the fight (I actually wrote the first punch yesterday, but it's not really a fight until somebody punches back). It's still overwhelming, but I'm determined to write at least a paragraph of frantic super-violence today, work on it some more when I'm off Thursday, and hopefully finish it up over the weekend.
Monday, March 27, 2006
Face-Off
So over a month ago, I mentioned that I was writing the build-up to the big Act II climax. And I have been: I've written several scenes of rising tension before the villains finally reveal themselves, as well as fitting in some earlier scenes to fill in some backstory and heighten the stakes a bit. And it seemed to be going well; just last Sunday, I said that I thought I'd be into the big climactic action scene by the next day.
Well, it's pretty obvious by the way I worded the last paragraph that it didn't happen. So where am I?
I'm right in the trickiest, and potentially most interesting, part: The Face-Off.
I remember that I used to have a special about Disney animation on tape that I watched over and over. One of Disney's Nine Old Men (it was Frank Thomas, I think) mentioned that Woolie Reitherman was the studio's expert on action scenes. Then they showed Reitherman talking about the tension before the fight, when the two sides are facing off, that last moment of stillness in which it seems like a fight may be avoided, before all hell breaks loose.
You've seen it in movies: the two gunfighters facing each other down a deserted street, two kung-fu masters adopting contrasting stances, two samurai, hands on hilts, locking eyes for that interminable moment before the swords are drawn and blood follows. Sometimes before the battle, they talk, just to make sure that every option besides violence is considered.
That's where I am: two sides, facing each other across an empty expanse, one side committed to the fight, the other side not yet suspecting that there will be one. This is a crucial, crucial scene, because it sets up the entire third act, and I've got to get the dialogue just right to set all the dominoes falling.
And more than anything right now, I want to rush past this moment, which needs to be caressed and savored, and get right into the blowing things up part.
Well, it's pretty obvious by the way I worded the last paragraph that it didn't happen. So where am I?
I'm right in the trickiest, and potentially most interesting, part: The Face-Off.
I remember that I used to have a special about Disney animation on tape that I watched over and over. One of Disney's Nine Old Men (it was Frank Thomas, I think) mentioned that Woolie Reitherman was the studio's expert on action scenes. Then they showed Reitherman talking about the tension before the fight, when the two sides are facing off, that last moment of stillness in which it seems like a fight may be avoided, before all hell breaks loose.
You've seen it in movies: the two gunfighters facing each other down a deserted street, two kung-fu masters adopting contrasting stances, two samurai, hands on hilts, locking eyes for that interminable moment before the swords are drawn and blood follows. Sometimes before the battle, they talk, just to make sure that every option besides violence is considered.
That's where I am: two sides, facing each other across an empty expanse, one side committed to the fight, the other side not yet suspecting that there will be one. This is a crucial, crucial scene, because it sets up the entire third act, and I've got to get the dialogue just right to set all the dominoes falling.
And more than anything right now, I want to rush past this moment, which needs to be caressed and savored, and get right into the blowing things up part.
Saturday, March 25, 2006
An Interesting Review
I'm kind of interested in seeing "V for Vendetta," and kind of not. I remember really liking the comic (but let's face it, I liked everything Alan Moore wrote, even "Big Numbers," which went nowhere fast). But then again, that dark, cool, angsty, anarchy vibe feels so... 25 years ago, you know? I've moved on.
But the review of "V for Vendetta" in "Entertainment Weekly" has an interesting bit in it that I thought I'd comment on. Owen Gleiberman writes about a friend who expressed surprise that a film like "V" could be released by a major studio:
I was awestruck at his naïveté in a world where fight-the-power anarchy is now marketed as a fashionable identity statement — by the corporations that helped raise a generation on bands like Rage Against the Machine, by the armchair-leftist bloggers who flog the same righteousness day after day. V for Vendetta has a playful-demon vitality, but it's designed to let political adolescents of every age congratulate themselves. It's rage against the machine by the machine.
Exactly.
But the review of "V for Vendetta" in "Entertainment Weekly" has an interesting bit in it that I thought I'd comment on. Owen Gleiberman writes about a friend who expressed surprise that a film like "V" could be released by a major studio:
I was awestruck at his naïveté in a world where fight-the-power anarchy is now marketed as a fashionable identity statement — by the corporations that helped raise a generation on bands like Rage Against the Machine, by the armchair-leftist bloggers who flog the same righteousness day after day. V for Vendetta has a playful-demon vitality, but it's designed to let political adolescents of every age congratulate themselves. It's rage against the machine by the machine.
Exactly.
Friday, March 24, 2006
Random Cool
Another nothing entry today, just a couple of cool links to point you to.
First, this looks pretty neat (warning: it's a pretty long video, over a half-hour, but you can get the gist pretty quickly, but if you're still on dial-up, it will probably be a pain). If you're interested in it, this month's Wired also has a two-page spread about the game and an interview with the designer. It looks like this game will be getting a lot of pre-release hype. Will it live up to the hype? eh...
And then there's this. I especially like the photos at the bottom which show a different angle, so you can see how the illusion is done. I remember reading an article long ago (in National Geographic, maybe) about Renaissance masters who would embed images like this in their paintings. For example, Holbein's "The Ambassadors." There's a light-and-dark smear at the bottom. You can sort of tell what it is, although why would he paint it all stretched out like that? View it at the proper angle, and you get this. For a fuller discussion of hte phenomenon, go here.
What I want to know is, why do this at all. Why embed a skull in the painting that can only be seen clearly when looking at an angle that obscures the rest?
I think it's a secret message, one that was missed or ignored by Holy Blood, Holy Grail and The Da Vinci Code. Even "Dogma" got this one wrong. The skull means that the last scion has died, and the conspiracy is over. Everybody go home. It's so obvious.
Okay, so the entry grew a little while I was writing it. Sue me.
First, this looks pretty neat (warning: it's a pretty long video, over a half-hour, but you can get the gist pretty quickly, but if you're still on dial-up, it will probably be a pain). If you're interested in it, this month's Wired also has a two-page spread about the game and an interview with the designer. It looks like this game will be getting a lot of pre-release hype. Will it live up to the hype? eh...
And then there's this. I especially like the photos at the bottom which show a different angle, so you can see how the illusion is done. I remember reading an article long ago (in National Geographic, maybe) about Renaissance masters who would embed images like this in their paintings. For example, Holbein's "The Ambassadors." There's a light-and-dark smear at the bottom. You can sort of tell what it is, although why would he paint it all stretched out like that? View it at the proper angle, and you get this. For a fuller discussion of hte phenomenon, go here.
What I want to know is, why do this at all. Why embed a skull in the painting that can only be seen clearly when looking at an angle that obscures the rest?
I think it's a secret message, one that was missed or ignored by Holy Blood, Holy Grail and The Da Vinci Code. Even "Dogma" got this one wrong. The skull means that the last scion has died, and the conspiracy is over. Everybody go home. It's so obvious.
Okay, so the entry grew a little while I was writing it. Sue me.
Thursday, March 23, 2006
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Spring Is Here
The first official day of spring was yesterday, or maybe the day before. Tonight, we're under a snow warning.
Warm winter, cold spring. Crazy days...
Warm winter, cold spring. Crazy days...
Sunday, March 19, 2006
Excitement & Frustration
I'm incredibly excited and frustrated today.
Excited why?
Because I had a great run of writing on Hero Go Home this afternoon. I wrote several scenes, something like 3-4ooo words maybe, which is huge for me. I have great momentum that I plan to continue into tomorrow, where I hope to bite a great big chunk out of the Act II climax.
So frustrated why?
Word count. I'm still only at like 38,000 words, and I don't envision this climax running much more than 5,000. So I finish Act II at something under 45,000 words, and then I write another 20,000 or so for Act III and then I'm basically done. I may have a few fill-in scenes to write for the earlier parts of the book, but there's also stuff I plan to cut out, which means that the entire book will run somewhere under 65,000 words. Good for a NaNoWriMo book, bad if I want to sell it (which I do).
To sell it, I figure I need at least 85,000 words. I have no idea how I will fill that much extra space without bloating the story insanely. I have a nice, tight storyline right now, and I don't want to kill it with padding.
So I'm basically happy about where I am, but not so happy with where I'm going. Par for the course.
In other stuff, naamah_darling continues to blow me away. I won't give you the link, because I'm not sure how many people she wants reading the whole thing (I'm sure you can find it if you look), but I must quote:
This is a room, recently vacated, where refined men have sat planning a terrible thing. The room is upholstered in leather. A thick carpet covers the floor. Long curtains frame a window that looks out on a moonless night's blackness where the only sign of life is one glowing star low on the horizon. Smoke lingers in the air in feathered layers, along with a trace of perfume risen from someone's naked body. A fire smolders sullenly in the hearth, no more than glowing coals. Empty glasses still fumigate the air with the dregs of a good brandy. The scent of incense is old and a little stale, as though the books crammed onto shelf after shelf are slowly exhaling the odor of vanished incense. The room is warm and almost unbearably close, and thick with the smell of bodies gathered in close cabal. This is not the scent of one man, but of several. They were here, not a minute ago. The chair, this gorgeous leather chair, is still warm. It's really quite comfortable. Sit down and wait. They won't be gone for long.
You know what this is? It's a review. Of what? Perfume. The woman writes better than I do even when she's reviewing perfume. You can imagine how good her stories are.
Excited why?
Because I had a great run of writing on Hero Go Home this afternoon. I wrote several scenes, something like 3-4ooo words maybe, which is huge for me. I have great momentum that I plan to continue into tomorrow, where I hope to bite a great big chunk out of the Act II climax.
So frustrated why?
Word count. I'm still only at like 38,000 words, and I don't envision this climax running much more than 5,000. So I finish Act II at something under 45,000 words, and then I write another 20,000 or so for Act III and then I'm basically done. I may have a few fill-in scenes to write for the earlier parts of the book, but there's also stuff I plan to cut out, which means that the entire book will run somewhere under 65,000 words. Good for a NaNoWriMo book, bad if I want to sell it (which I do).
To sell it, I figure I need at least 85,000 words. I have no idea how I will fill that much extra space without bloating the story insanely. I have a nice, tight storyline right now, and I don't want to kill it with padding.
So I'm basically happy about where I am, but not so happy with where I'm going. Par for the course.
In other stuff, naamah_darling continues to blow me away. I won't give you the link, because I'm not sure how many people she wants reading the whole thing (I'm sure you can find it if you look), but I must quote:
This is a room, recently vacated, where refined men have sat planning a terrible thing. The room is upholstered in leather. A thick carpet covers the floor. Long curtains frame a window that looks out on a moonless night's blackness where the only sign of life is one glowing star low on the horizon. Smoke lingers in the air in feathered layers, along with a trace of perfume risen from someone's naked body. A fire smolders sullenly in the hearth, no more than glowing coals. Empty glasses still fumigate the air with the dregs of a good brandy. The scent of incense is old and a little stale, as though the books crammed onto shelf after shelf are slowly exhaling the odor of vanished incense. The room is warm and almost unbearably close, and thick with the smell of bodies gathered in close cabal. This is not the scent of one man, but of several. They were here, not a minute ago. The chair, this gorgeous leather chair, is still warm. It's really quite comfortable. Sit down and wait. They won't be gone for long.
You know what this is? It's a review. Of what? Perfume. The woman writes better than I do even when she's reviewing perfume. You can imagine how good her stories are.
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Friend Pimping
So I haven't done this before, but I figure I ought to start. One of the members of my writing group has a new story up on The Edge of Propinquity, and it's a really good read. So follow the link and read "The End of Memory" by Amanda A. Gannon.
I just finished reading another superhero book, and it has left me pretty energized to get back to work on Hero Go Home. On the one hand, I think his is a lot better than mine in a lot of ways. On the other hand, mine is trying to accomplish different things, and I think I'll have enough coolness in there to satisfy most readers. The coolest thing is, his book is giving me ideas I can use in mine without making me feel like I'm stealing, because unless you knew which parts of mine were inspired by his, you wouldn't know. It's going to be that different.
Here's the big secret about writing that good writers know, and wanna-be writers don't: Ideas are cheap. Execution is everything. Give two really good writers the same idea, and they're likely to write two completely different stories. The idea has to filter through each person's unique mind and voice and experiences and interests. Each writer will have a different goal and a different approach to character and dialogue. Some writers plan carefully and rewrite extensively; others just sit and let it flow.
Which is not to brag that I'm a really good writer, but I am pretty good one, good enough to have learned this lesson, anyway. So I can steal shamelessly from Sargon, and no one will ever know but me and him, and maybe just me.
Then again, I can come up with stuff completely independently and look as if I'm stealing. Example: his book has a superhero who is embarrassed by his real name and goes by his superhero name, which is often shortened to Van. My book has a superhero who is embarrassed by her real name and goes by her superhero name, which is usually shortened to Val. Looks like a total rip-off, but it's not.
Anyway, the point is, I'm excited again. And go read Amanda's story. Not thrilled with the 'zine's name, but the story is really good.
I just finished reading another superhero book, and it has left me pretty energized to get back to work on Hero Go Home. On the one hand, I think his is a lot better than mine in a lot of ways. On the other hand, mine is trying to accomplish different things, and I think I'll have enough coolness in there to satisfy most readers. The coolest thing is, his book is giving me ideas I can use in mine without making me feel like I'm stealing, because unless you knew which parts of mine were inspired by his, you wouldn't know. It's going to be that different.
Here's the big secret about writing that good writers know, and wanna-be writers don't: Ideas are cheap. Execution is everything. Give two really good writers the same idea, and they're likely to write two completely different stories. The idea has to filter through each person's unique mind and voice and experiences and interests. Each writer will have a different goal and a different approach to character and dialogue. Some writers plan carefully and rewrite extensively; others just sit and let it flow.
Which is not to brag that I'm a really good writer, but I am pretty good one, good enough to have learned this lesson, anyway. So I can steal shamelessly from Sargon, and no one will ever know but me and him, and maybe just me.
Then again, I can come up with stuff completely independently and look as if I'm stealing. Example: his book has a superhero who is embarrassed by his real name and goes by his superhero name, which is often shortened to Van. My book has a superhero who is embarrassed by her real name and goes by her superhero name, which is usually shortened to Val. Looks like a total rip-off, but it's not.
Anyway, the point is, I'm excited again. And go read Amanda's story. Not thrilled with the 'zine's name, but the story is really good.
Sunday, March 12, 2006
Writing the Funny
So I'm at this book signing for a few friends, which turns into almost an unofficial second OSFW meeting for the month (we'd had the official meeting the night before). And somebody brings up the fact that the writing in the group seems to be taking a funnier turn lately (I believe the term used was "arms race").
And I felt kind of put on the spot, because I'm the most prominent among the "funny" writers, I think.
Which is to say, I'm not the only funny writer: Sargon the Terrible, K.D. Wentworth, and M.T. Reiten have all presented side-splittingly funny stories over the past couple of years, and that's not even counting the flood of humor that has poured out of the annual Christmas fragment contests.
But I'm the only one who seems to be almost exclusively funny, which is odd, because for most of my life, I've been a pretty serious writer. I wrote action or suspense with only occasional touches of humor (at least intentionally). I tried to be funny in person (often tried too hard, as a matter of fact), but even when I thought to myself that I ought to try channeling that humor into writing, it seemed that all my good ideas were serious ones.
It wasn't until I began writing Blue Falcon that I seemed to break through the seriousness barrier, and even Blue Falcon ended up being mostly dead serious with light-hearted moments. The first four pieces I presented at OSFW meetings were:
Prologue to Blue Falcon - funny opening to funny/serious book
Opening to Cybersorcery - scene from sci-fi action screenplay - the overall story is serious, but this scene happened to have humorous moments and a funny punchline - Christmas fragment
"Skins" - serious science fiction short story
"Frame By Frame" - horror short story (novella?)
So about fifty-fifty serious to comedy ratio. Since then, the things I've read have been:
"The Night They Raided Pulinsky's" - supposed to be funny-ish, but mainly, just bad
"Out of His League" - superhero comedy
First three chapters of Flip - comedy suspense novel that's stalled at about the 2/3 mark
"Deep Shit" - military sci-fi comedy
"Astromonkeys!" - more superhero comedy
"White Rose" - kung fu action - Christmas fragment
"Haunted" - Horror comedy - summer fragment/flash contest
"Double-Secret Weapon" - even more superhero comedy
"Shell" - science-fiction, starts out funny, ends up serious
"Fischer's Wild Goose" - light-hearted suspense - an extended car chase
"Timestorm" - sci-fi comedy - Christmas fragment
Another funny story that I cannot name here
First two chapters of Hero Go Home - superhero comedy novel
So out of the last thirteen things I've presented, all but maybe three were comedic in nature, and two of those two had funny moments.
Now, this isn't all I've written, although it is most of it. But the other, more serious stories, like "Pushing," and "Wolf in the Fold," and "Lurking Beneath Red Blossoms," I haven't read publicly. Some members of the club have seen them on our critique list, but I haven't presented them to the group at large.
I know why I do it this way. I am very insecure about my writing at the best of times, but especially when I'm trying to be serious. If I'm going to be laughed at, it might as well be on purpose. And let's face it, I love the attention and the positive feedback.
And I think it's making me a better writer. I've needed to write the humor to get excited about writing again. That list above represents the greatest creative output I've had since my years at the Oklahoman in the mid-Eighties. In the last three-four years, I've written substantial amounts of three novels (one of which I may actually finish), and something like fifteen or sixteen short stories, plus other fragments that may yet get fleshed out. I'm not super-prolific, but compared to my past, I'm really churning stuff out.
But now I'm seeing that, yeah, I've been turning the writer's group into sort of an entertainment venue, and that might sour the mood for more serious, contemplative work. If I decide to do something about that, I've got basically two choices: stop reading so much, or write more serious stuff. But it's hard to force a serious story if a funny story wants to come out.
So I should probably stop reading for a while. I need to buckle down and finish Hero Go Home anyway, so the shorts will probably get put on hold for a bit. We'll see.
And I felt kind of put on the spot, because I'm the most prominent among the "funny" writers, I think.
Which is to say, I'm not the only funny writer: Sargon the Terrible, K.D. Wentworth, and M.T. Reiten have all presented side-splittingly funny stories over the past couple of years, and that's not even counting the flood of humor that has poured out of the annual Christmas fragment contests.
But I'm the only one who seems to be almost exclusively funny, which is odd, because for most of my life, I've been a pretty serious writer. I wrote action or suspense with only occasional touches of humor (at least intentionally). I tried to be funny in person (often tried too hard, as a matter of fact), but even when I thought to myself that I ought to try channeling that humor into writing, it seemed that all my good ideas were serious ones.
It wasn't until I began writing Blue Falcon that I seemed to break through the seriousness barrier, and even Blue Falcon ended up being mostly dead serious with light-hearted moments. The first four pieces I presented at OSFW meetings were:
Prologue to Blue Falcon - funny opening to funny/serious book
Opening to Cybersorcery - scene from sci-fi action screenplay - the overall story is serious, but this scene happened to have humorous moments and a funny punchline - Christmas fragment
"Skins" - serious science fiction short story
"Frame By Frame" - horror short story (novella?)
So about fifty-fifty serious to comedy ratio. Since then, the things I've read have been:
"The Night They Raided Pulinsky's" - supposed to be funny-ish, but mainly, just bad
"Out of His League" - superhero comedy
First three chapters of Flip - comedy suspense novel that's stalled at about the 2/3 mark
"Deep Shit" - military sci-fi comedy
"Astromonkeys!" - more superhero comedy
"White Rose" - kung fu action - Christmas fragment
"Haunted" - Horror comedy - summer fragment/flash contest
"Double-Secret Weapon" - even more superhero comedy
"Shell" - science-fiction, starts out funny, ends up serious
"Fischer's Wild Goose" - light-hearted suspense - an extended car chase
"Timestorm" - sci-fi comedy - Christmas fragment
Another funny story that I cannot name here
First two chapters of Hero Go Home - superhero comedy novel
So out of the last thirteen things I've presented, all but maybe three were comedic in nature, and two of those two had funny moments.
Now, this isn't all I've written, although it is most of it. But the other, more serious stories, like "Pushing," and "Wolf in the Fold," and "Lurking Beneath Red Blossoms," I haven't read publicly. Some members of the club have seen them on our critique list, but I haven't presented them to the group at large.
I know why I do it this way. I am very insecure about my writing at the best of times, but especially when I'm trying to be serious. If I'm going to be laughed at, it might as well be on purpose. And let's face it, I love the attention and the positive feedback.
And I think it's making me a better writer. I've needed to write the humor to get excited about writing again. That list above represents the greatest creative output I've had since my years at the Oklahoman in the mid-Eighties. In the last three-four years, I've written substantial amounts of three novels (one of which I may actually finish), and something like fifteen or sixteen short stories, plus other fragments that may yet get fleshed out. I'm not super-prolific, but compared to my past, I'm really churning stuff out.
But now I'm seeing that, yeah, I've been turning the writer's group into sort of an entertainment venue, and that might sour the mood for more serious, contemplative work. If I decide to do something about that, I've got basically two choices: stop reading so much, or write more serious stuff. But it's hard to force a serious story if a funny story wants to come out.
So I should probably stop reading for a while. I need to buckle down and finish Hero Go Home anyway, so the shorts will probably get put on hold for a bit. We'll see.
Sunday, March 05, 2006
Full Metal Alchemist
So I've been wanting to write about this for a while, but it's been hard. So here goes.
Toonami kicks ass.
There, I said it. Saturday night on Cartoon Network has become appointment viewing for me in almost the same way that Thursday nights on NBC was twenty years ago. I like Naruto, I like One Piece, I love Justice League Unlimited. I even like Zatch Bell. And then, an hour after the Toonami block has ended, comes my current favorite Japanese show, Fullmetal Alchemist.
Here's the deal with anime in general: a lot of it is crap. And even the stuff that's good is, like, formulaic good usually. It's very striking visually, often doing dynamic things with layout and moving cameras (part of the striking look of the Matrix films is the attempt to recreate an anime look in live-action, with the time-shifting and the camera swirling around the characters, going from wide-shot to extreme close-up and back out to wide shot in one take).
But the thing you figure out if you watch a lot of this stuff, as I have, is that a lot of those things that originally drew you, that amazing audacious visual invention, is actually pretty ordinary. The bold artistic splashes - the crescendo of sound followed by a silent pause at the climactic moment, the split screens, the calm, quiet characters who can explode into sudden, stylized violence - these things are commonplace, even cliched. And if you can get past the "ooh-aah" factor and really look at the story, you realize that most Japanese writers are as bad as Americans. For all the hype about Japanese story sophistication, for the most part, it's not better, just mediocre in a different way.
And then there's Fullmetal Alchemist. Like most shows, the early episodes are a mixed bag, combining clumsy humor with rip-roaring magical action. But once the deeper storyline gets going, this becomes one of the best animated shows I've ever seen. There's no easy way to summarize the show, but it revolves around two brothers who study alchemy in a fantasy world. Their alchemy is different from that of our world, but it revolves around a single law, the Law of Equivalent Exchange, which is the magical equivalent of the Laws of Conservation of Mass and Energy. The brothers want to reverse a ghastly mistake they made when they were younger, a mistake that has left both of them scarred in unique ways. Along the way, they are drawn into conspiracies and political intrigues that will change the course of their nation and perhaps the world.
The show has the usual Japanese eyecandy - gorgeous production values, appealing character design. And like a lot of other shows, it has a huge story arc with an epic feel, punctuated by kick-ass action sequences. But unlike most shows, it plays on several levels at once, combining profound philosophical and ethical questions with complex character development and intricate political maneuvers. There are few shows that can excite me, touch me, viscerally creep me out, and get me thinking about the big questions, all in one episode. This one does, with very few missteps.
I only wish they would put out an affordable all-in-one boxed set. There are 51 half-hour episodes, which equates to 25 1/2 hours. That's one season of Lost. If they put out a boxed set of Fullmetal for the same price, I'd buy it in a heartbeat.
Toonami kicks ass.
There, I said it. Saturday night on Cartoon Network has become appointment viewing for me in almost the same way that Thursday nights on NBC was twenty years ago. I like Naruto, I like One Piece, I love Justice League Unlimited. I even like Zatch Bell. And then, an hour after the Toonami block has ended, comes my current favorite Japanese show, Fullmetal Alchemist.
Here's the deal with anime in general: a lot of it is crap. And even the stuff that's good is, like, formulaic good usually. It's very striking visually, often doing dynamic things with layout and moving cameras (part of the striking look of the Matrix films is the attempt to recreate an anime look in live-action, with the time-shifting and the camera swirling around the characters, going from wide-shot to extreme close-up and back out to wide shot in one take).
But the thing you figure out if you watch a lot of this stuff, as I have, is that a lot of those things that originally drew you, that amazing audacious visual invention, is actually pretty ordinary. The bold artistic splashes - the crescendo of sound followed by a silent pause at the climactic moment, the split screens, the calm, quiet characters who can explode into sudden, stylized violence - these things are commonplace, even cliched. And if you can get past the "ooh-aah" factor and really look at the story, you realize that most Japanese writers are as bad as Americans. For all the hype about Japanese story sophistication, for the most part, it's not better, just mediocre in a different way.
And then there's Fullmetal Alchemist. Like most shows, the early episodes are a mixed bag, combining clumsy humor with rip-roaring magical action. But once the deeper storyline gets going, this becomes one of the best animated shows I've ever seen. There's no easy way to summarize the show, but it revolves around two brothers who study alchemy in a fantasy world. Their alchemy is different from that of our world, but it revolves around a single law, the Law of Equivalent Exchange, which is the magical equivalent of the Laws of Conservation of Mass and Energy. The brothers want to reverse a ghastly mistake they made when they were younger, a mistake that has left both of them scarred in unique ways. Along the way, they are drawn into conspiracies and political intrigues that will change the course of their nation and perhaps the world.
The show has the usual Japanese eyecandy - gorgeous production values, appealing character design. And like a lot of other shows, it has a huge story arc with an epic feel, punctuated by kick-ass action sequences. But unlike most shows, it plays on several levels at once, combining profound philosophical and ethical questions with complex character development and intricate political maneuvers. There are few shows that can excite me, touch me, viscerally creep me out, and get me thinking about the big questions, all in one episode. This one does, with very few missteps.
I only wish they would put out an affordable all-in-one boxed set. There are 51 half-hour episodes, which equates to 25 1/2 hours. That's one season of Lost. If they put out a boxed set of Fullmetal for the same price, I'd buy it in a heartbeat.
More Grumbles About Advertising
I know that life's too short to get all worked up about little stuff and yada-yada-yada, but since I've started a trend complaining about the copy on fast food wrappers here and here, I might as well do one more.
We were at Burger King last night, where they're still using old tray liners from the launch of Chicken Fries. And the gist of the thing is to make a game out of eating your fried chicken bits by, you know, nibbling them like a carrot or eating them with your pinky extended like some society matron.
And they've got one idea under the heading "Professional." And this is what it says:
Self explanatory. Don't use your
hands. We know it's hard for
finger food stuff. Get creative.
Tip 'em back like a drink. Or
maybe use chopsticks.
See what bugs me? If you can't, read it again and see if there's anything a little, well, idiotic about that statement, besides the fact that Burger King doesn't have chopsticks.
Okay, here's the thing. They open the description with "Self explanatory," and then go on for five freaking sentences explaining this thing that doesn't need to be explained. And the kicker? The reason they had to explain "self explanatory" is that "Don't use your hands" is not the first thing that jumps to mind when you read the word "Professional." So it's most certainly not "self explanatory."
Duh.
Okay, I feel better. But only slightly, because now we move from fast food to TV, where I must sadly inform you that UPN has decided to dub their hit reality series "America's Next Top Model" a dramality series.
What is dramality, you ask (assuming you're able to pronounce it - it does not trip easily off the tongue)? I ask, as well.
I know that one complaint about "reality" series like "Survivor" is that they are not real, in a very basic sense. They take a carefully selected group of people, place them into an engineered situation and painstakingly edit the resulting footage to create a compelling storyline. So in that sense, you could say dramality is a show that engineers drama out of unscripted material.
But then, there are also the dark rumors that "Survivor" cheats. They restage challenges with stunt doubles in order to get more dramatic camera angles, they cut backroom deals with favored contestants, they even arrange a call-in contest so that one of their most popular players (though far from the best) gets his own million. I've even heard a story that at least one player's ouster was set up by the crew off-camera. I'll give details if anyone comments wanting to know.
In short, could dramality be a tacit confession that, if nothing interesting is happening on the show, then the producers will engineer something? Could, say, Shandi's illicit Italian hot tub romp on "America's Next Top Model" (and all the ensuing long-distance drama with her boyfriend back home) have been set up by the producers just to wring some interesting TV out of her agony? Is that what dramality really means?
It's possible.
We were at Burger King last night, where they're still using old tray liners from the launch of Chicken Fries. And the gist of the thing is to make a game out of eating your fried chicken bits by, you know, nibbling them like a carrot or eating them with your pinky extended like some society matron.
And they've got one idea under the heading "Professional." And this is what it says:
Self explanatory. Don't use your
hands. We know it's hard for
finger food stuff. Get creative.
Tip 'em back like a drink. Or
maybe use chopsticks.
See what bugs me? If you can't, read it again and see if there's anything a little, well, idiotic about that statement, besides the fact that Burger King doesn't have chopsticks.
Okay, here's the thing. They open the description with "Self explanatory," and then go on for five freaking sentences explaining this thing that doesn't need to be explained. And the kicker? The reason they had to explain "self explanatory" is that "Don't use your hands" is not the first thing that jumps to mind when you read the word "Professional." So it's most certainly not "self explanatory."
Duh.
Okay, I feel better. But only slightly, because now we move from fast food to TV, where I must sadly inform you that UPN has decided to dub their hit reality series "America's Next Top Model" a dramality series.
What is dramality, you ask (assuming you're able to pronounce it - it does not trip easily off the tongue)? I ask, as well.
I know that one complaint about "reality" series like "Survivor" is that they are not real, in a very basic sense. They take a carefully selected group of people, place them into an engineered situation and painstakingly edit the resulting footage to create a compelling storyline. So in that sense, you could say dramality is a show that engineers drama out of unscripted material.
But then, there are also the dark rumors that "Survivor" cheats. They restage challenges with stunt doubles in order to get more dramatic camera angles, they cut backroom deals with favored contestants, they even arrange a call-in contest so that one of their most popular players (though far from the best) gets his own million. I've even heard a story that at least one player's ouster was set up by the crew off-camera. I'll give details if anyone comments wanting to know.
In short, could dramality be a tacit confession that, if nothing interesting is happening on the show, then the producers will engineer something? Could, say, Shandi's illicit Italian hot tub romp on "America's Next Top Model" (and all the ensuing long-distance drama with her boyfriend back home) have been set up by the producers just to wring some interesting TV out of her agony? Is that what dramality really means?
It's possible.
Friday, March 03, 2006
Plate o' Shrimp
So I'm freaking out yesterday about all the authors I'm sharing web space with in the new e-zine, and this morning when I check my email, I've gotten a comment from one of the writers I mentioned, specifically Elizabeth Bear. I felt a little odd that one of them had actually witnessed my little geek fit, but it's cool.
Then I visit my friend Matt's LJ blog; he has a bunch of writer friends, so I tend to read their blogs through his friend list. And I'm reading Jay Lake's entries from last night, and he's talking about guess who left and right?
That's right.
According to Jay Lake, she's, like, one of the smartest, coolest women on the planet right now. But in one of those strange serendipitous timings that I'm constantly encountering, he chose last night to wax rhapsodic over Ms. Bear, so that I would read it today, right after she contacted me from out of the blue (and of course, why did she contact me? Because she got a Google Alert that someone had used her name - which means that she's probably also reading this right now!!!).
Brrr... It gives me one of those shivers you get when you're watching TV late at night, and they're demonstrating backward masking or EVP, where you hear the ghost voices on the tape, and your skin draws up in goosebumps as one side of your brain screams, That is so weird! and the other side screams, That is so cool!
Okay, I'm done.
Then I visit my friend Matt's LJ blog; he has a bunch of writer friends, so I tend to read their blogs through his friend list. And I'm reading Jay Lake's entries from last night, and he's talking about guess who left and right?
That's right.
According to Jay Lake, she's, like, one of the smartest, coolest women on the planet right now. But in one of those strange serendipitous timings that I'm constantly encountering, he chose last night to wax rhapsodic over Ms. Bear, so that I would read it today, right after she contacted me from out of the blue (and of course, why did she contact me? Because she got a Google Alert that someone had used her name - which means that she's probably also reading this right now!!!).
Brrr... It gives me one of those shivers you get when you're watching TV late at night, and they're demonstrating backward masking or EVP, where you hear the ghost voices on the tape, and your skin draws up in goosebumps as one side of your brain screams, That is so weird! and the other side screams, That is so cool!
Okay, I'm done.
Thursday, March 02, 2006
Wow
So I finally get my first look at the e-ARC (advance reader's copy) of Jim Baen's Universe, and there's my story, "Astromonkeys!," in the Table of Contents.
Now get this: I share this Table of Contents with Alan Dean Foster, Gregory Benford, David Drake, Elizabeth Bear, John Barnes, Gene Wolfe, Bob Shaw (whose name you may not know, but who wrote one of my favorite short stories of all time), Mark Twain (yes, that one), David Brin, John Ringo, and Eric Flint. I mean, holy crap. Holy. Freaking. Crap!
Now granted, I haven't really read all of these authors, but I've read several of them and heard of all of them, and I am just amazed that I'm published alongside them. It freaks me out that I might, just might, possibly, run into Gene Wolfe some day and have him say, "Oh you're the guy that wrote that monkey story. I loved that story."
Yeah, I know, probably never happen, but what if? I'm freaking myself out.
Man, I need to start writing again. I've been on a break for too long.
Now get this: I share this Table of Contents with Alan Dean Foster, Gregory Benford, David Drake, Elizabeth Bear, John Barnes, Gene Wolfe, Bob Shaw (whose name you may not know, but who wrote one of my favorite short stories of all time), Mark Twain (yes, that one), David Brin, John Ringo, and Eric Flint. I mean, holy crap. Holy. Freaking. Crap!
Now granted, I haven't really read all of these authors, but I've read several of them and heard of all of them, and I am just amazed that I'm published alongside them. It freaks me out that I might, just might, possibly, run into Gene Wolfe some day and have him say, "Oh you're the guy that wrote that monkey story. I loved that story."
Yeah, I know, probably never happen, but what if? I'm freaking myself out.
Man, I need to start writing again. I've been on a break for too long.
Saturday, February 18, 2006
Anticipation or Avoidance?
So I've been trying since November to write the end of Act 2 of Hero Go Home, and I realized I wanted to do more scene-setting for the big climax to the act. So now I've got a bunch of scenes lightly sketched in which build toward the climactic confrontation.
On the one hand, I think it's necessary for the story to have a certain amount of build-up. It's like foreplay; a certain amount of teasing works well. I think one of the better passages of Blue Falcon is the long build-up to war at the end of Act 1, climaxing in Colonel So's rousing speech and the soldiers shouting "Victory" in unison. The book as a whole embarrasses me a little more with every passing month, but I still think parts of it are really good.
On the other hand, it strikes me that I'm spending so much time on the build-up because I'm a little hesitant, if not downright afraid, to write the actual climax. It's a complicated scene with a bunch of characters and a load of action, and my mind just seems to shut down every time I contemplate starting it. Maybe a part of me thinks that if I spend enough pages setting all the dominoes up, that they'll fall that much faster when I finally tip one, but I worry that the other part is just using the dominoes as an excuse, the way my daughter suddenly finds vitally important things to do right at bedtime.
Then again, as I began writing the first of the build-up scenes, I found the characters really breathing in a way that they never did when I was rushing through, trying to keep up NaNoWriMo pace. So it's not as if I'm not getting anything valuable out of it.
In other news, I experienced a couple of cool personal milestones. I got invited to a NeoPro online writers group, which made me feel really good. Of course, now that I've joined, I feel a little like an imposter, a kid being asked to sit at the grown-ups' table. I'm not sure I take the whole writing game as seriously as most of these guys. But I'll stick it out for a while, at least; I must admit, the discussion there is on a whole other level than most of what I was reading on Baen's Bar.
The other thing is, I got invited to my first Con as a guest. Granted, it's Conestoga, put together mainly by folks in my writing group. Last year, I was about the only member who wasn't an invited guest. But it's another signpost to me that I'm making legitimate progress and not just spinning my wheels the way I did for for the fifteen or so years before I joined OSFW.
I've always thought my stuff was good, but lots of people delude themselves. I've seen lots of people who thought they were awesomely talented while they produced pure crap, if they actually produced anything at all. And I've always had this secret fear that I could be one of them (I still do, actually - I've never been good with the characters and the themes and the substance that makes the witty lines and funny turns of phrase worth reading - Sargon, feel free to slap me anytime). So it's awfully gratifying when someone else comes out and says I'm doing good work.
Now I've just got to do some more actual writing to pay off on that.
On the one hand, I think it's necessary for the story to have a certain amount of build-up. It's like foreplay; a certain amount of teasing works well. I think one of the better passages of Blue Falcon is the long build-up to war at the end of Act 1, climaxing in Colonel So's rousing speech and the soldiers shouting "Victory" in unison. The book as a whole embarrasses me a little more with every passing month, but I still think parts of it are really good.
On the other hand, it strikes me that I'm spending so much time on the build-up because I'm a little hesitant, if not downright afraid, to write the actual climax. It's a complicated scene with a bunch of characters and a load of action, and my mind just seems to shut down every time I contemplate starting it. Maybe a part of me thinks that if I spend enough pages setting all the dominoes up, that they'll fall that much faster when I finally tip one, but I worry that the other part is just using the dominoes as an excuse, the way my daughter suddenly finds vitally important things to do right at bedtime.
Then again, as I began writing the first of the build-up scenes, I found the characters really breathing in a way that they never did when I was rushing through, trying to keep up NaNoWriMo pace. So it's not as if I'm not getting anything valuable out of it.
In other news, I experienced a couple of cool personal milestones. I got invited to a NeoPro online writers group, which made me feel really good. Of course, now that I've joined, I feel a little like an imposter, a kid being asked to sit at the grown-ups' table. I'm not sure I take the whole writing game as seriously as most of these guys. But I'll stick it out for a while, at least; I must admit, the discussion there is on a whole other level than most of what I was reading on Baen's Bar.
The other thing is, I got invited to my first Con as a guest. Granted, it's Conestoga, put together mainly by folks in my writing group. Last year, I was about the only member who wasn't an invited guest. But it's another signpost to me that I'm making legitimate progress and not just spinning my wheels the way I did for for the fifteen or so years before I joined OSFW.
I've always thought my stuff was good, but lots of people delude themselves. I've seen lots of people who thought they were awesomely talented while they produced pure crap, if they actually produced anything at all. And I've always had this secret fear that I could be one of them (I still do, actually - I've never been good with the characters and the themes and the substance that makes the witty lines and funny turns of phrase worth reading - Sargon, feel free to slap me anytime). So it's awfully gratifying when someone else comes out and says I'm doing good work.
Now I've just got to do some more actual writing to pay off on that.
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
Christian Jihad
You, know, I don't want to harp on this, but I'm a little surprised* at how entrenched the attitude I mentioned in my last post is. What brings it up again is a story I read in the online slush for Baen's Universe. Without going into too much detail, the story features a character who is a cross between Jerry Falwell and Rev. Don Wildmon, who is protesting a particularly violent TV show. When he is supplied with military weapons, his followers not only attack the remote island on which the TV show is taped, but also begin randomly attacking abortion clinics and homosexual-rights groups.
This is at least the second story I've read in past months in which Christian rightists (and more specifically, American Christian rightists) take up arms against a world of sinners in order to impose their own moral views by force. And what's more depressing than the assumptions implicit in the stories (and though both authors denied that the stories represented their personal views, the denials seemed disingenuous - I can write a story about elves without believing in magic, but can I seriously argue that my story about lazy, stupid blacks who prefer slavery to freedom doesn't represent my personal views in any way?) is the lack of protest from anyone else on the boards. There were plenty of criticisms of this point or that point, but none about the stereotyping of Christian conservatives as being one step away from worldwide jihad.
Am I just crazy? Look, I think it's silly and ignorant to believe in the six-day Creation, the worldwide Flood or the Virgin Birth. But I think people who believe that we're just a Supreme Court appointment away from outlawing abortions, legalizing homosexual murder and reinstituting slavery are just as silly and ignorant (and they're out there, apparently in large numbers and supported by famous names). It's a hateful caricature, and I'm getting tired of it.
*to which a friend of mine would reply, "I'm only surprised that you're surprised"
This is at least the second story I've read in past months in which Christian rightists (and more specifically, American Christian rightists) take up arms against a world of sinners in order to impose their own moral views by force. And what's more depressing than the assumptions implicit in the stories (and though both authors denied that the stories represented their personal views, the denials seemed disingenuous - I can write a story about elves without believing in magic, but can I seriously argue that my story about lazy, stupid blacks who prefer slavery to freedom doesn't represent my personal views in any way?) is the lack of protest from anyone else on the boards. There were plenty of criticisms of this point or that point, but none about the stereotyping of Christian conservatives as being one step away from worldwide jihad.
Am I just crazy? Look, I think it's silly and ignorant to believe in the six-day Creation, the worldwide Flood or the Virgin Birth. But I think people who believe that we're just a Supreme Court appointment away from outlawing abortions, legalizing homosexual murder and reinstituting slavery are just as silly and ignorant (and they're out there, apparently in large numbers and supported by famous names). It's a hateful caricature, and I'm getting tired of it.
*to which a friend of mine would reply, "I'm only surprised that you're surprised"
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
To the Alarmists About the Christian Right
You know, I left the whole Christianity thing behind long ago. And I'm not one of those milquetoast agnostics who says, you know, even though I don't go to church, I kind of believe in Christianity in a general sense. I don't. I'm an atheist. I don't want the Ten Commandments hanging on the wall of the courthouse, I'm not a fan of the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, and I don't want to see the blue laws enforced.
Having said that, for the American liberals who piss and moan that the Christian Right is the greatest threat to freedom in the modern world, you cannot seriously argue that the Christian Right would do anything like this. So count your blessings.
Could this thing keep escalating? Could the civilized world survive something as barbaric and shocking as 9/11, only to go to the mattresses over cartoons?
Having said that, for the American liberals who piss and moan that the Christian Right is the greatest threat to freedom in the modern world, you cannot seriously argue that the Christian Right would do anything like this. So count your blessings.
Could this thing keep escalating? Could the civilized world survive something as barbaric and shocking as 9/11, only to go to the mattresses over cartoons?
Monday, February 06, 2006
Another Dose of Irony
Am I the only person who watched the Stones' Super Bowl halftime show, in which 62-year-old Mick Jagger sang (among other songs) "Satisfaction," and thought of his famous quote, "I'd rather be dead than singing 'Satisfaction' when I'm 45"?
Friday, February 03, 2006
Truth in Advertising
So this dude who works with me came in with an Arby's cup, and on the cup, it talks about how they only use 100% chicken, not chicken containing significant percentages of water and phosphates.
No, that would be their roast beef. (scroll down to read ingredients list for "Roast Beef")
No, that would be their roast beef. (scroll down to read ingredients list for "Roast Beef")
Monday, January 30, 2006
Digger Goes Electronic
So I decided to make a new character in City of Heroes, and I thought, "Why not see if I can make Digger?" As it turns out, not so much.
The look, I think I got pretty close on. I don't have a scan of one of my later Digger drawings, after the character had evolved a bit, but here's an early one that has most of the major elements: two-tone blue shirt, tan pants, boots (with wacky fringe that I later decided to replace with Captain America-style buccaneer flaps), blasters on the arms. Ignore the other characters in the drawing. They're character concepts for a super-group I was trying to put together, but they were generally silly and went nowhere (except for that yellow-and-red arm on the left - keep an eye out for him, because you may run into him sometime later if Hero Go Home ever gets published).
And now, the City of Heroes version (pardon the dark colors):
As you can see, I kept the two-tone shirt, although I reversed the colors (not sure which way I like best). They didn't have the straight break across the torso that I liked so much (another design element lifted from Captain America - Kirby was a genius), so I made do. For the blasters, I used the same gloves I used with my first 'toon, Metatronic, with more metallic colors. The boots look pretty good, although I'm not thrilled with the color - something about their browns doesn't translate well to the character.
Of course, I couldn't even come close on the powerset. Two of Digger's most basic powers - digging tunnels and clinging to walls - do not exist in the City of Heroes repertoire. And the powers don't mix-and-match, so you've got to select groups of powers that come close to what you want. I built him once as a Scrapper, with super-fast reflexes. But the closest I could come to a main attack power was claws, which just... no. So now I've rebuilt him as a Tanker, nearly invulnerable, with energy punches, which fit the Driller Beam Generator concept more closely, although he doesn't get any knockback :( Oh well...
As far as the real Digger's adventures, I finally wrote a scene that I'd been afraid to write since late November, so I'm that will get the book back on track. I want to finish the first draft by the end of February; that's my goal.
The look, I think I got pretty close on. I don't have a scan of one of my later Digger drawings, after the character had evolved a bit, but here's an early one that has most of the major elements: two-tone blue shirt, tan pants, boots (with wacky fringe that I later decided to replace with Captain America-style buccaneer flaps), blasters on the arms. Ignore the other characters in the drawing. They're character concepts for a super-group I was trying to put together, but they were generally silly and went nowhere (except for that yellow-and-red arm on the left - keep an eye out for him, because you may run into him sometime later if Hero Go Home ever gets published).And now, the City of Heroes version (pardon the dark colors):
As you can see, I kept the two-tone shirt, although I reversed the colors (not sure which way I like best). They didn't have the straight break across the torso that I liked so much (another design element lifted from Captain America - Kirby was a genius), so I made do. For the blasters, I used the same gloves I used with my first 'toon, Metatronic, with more metallic colors. The boots look pretty good, although I'm not thrilled with the color - something about their browns doesn't translate well to the character.Of course, I couldn't even come close on the powerset. Two of Digger's most basic powers - digging tunnels and clinging to walls - do not exist in the City of Heroes repertoire. And the powers don't mix-and-match, so you've got to select groups of powers that come close to what you want. I built him once as a Scrapper, with super-fast reflexes. But the closest I could come to a main attack power was claws, which just... no. So now I've rebuilt him as a Tanker, nearly invulnerable, with energy punches, which fit the Driller Beam Generator concept more closely, although he doesn't get any knockback :( Oh well...
As far as the real Digger's adventures, I finally wrote a scene that I'd been afraid to write since late November, so I'm that will get the book back on track. I want to finish the first draft by the end of February; that's my goal.
Saturday, January 28, 2006
"I'm the bad guy?"
Mom-in-Law rented Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron last night for The Girl, who luuuvs cartoons as much as her old man. I had seen the trailers in the theater, but had never been especially tempted to see the movie. It looked like a typical Hollywood multi-culti/environmentalist preachflick, ala Pocahontas or Brother Bear or Ferngully: The Last Rainforest. Nature good, people bad; white people really bad, Native Americans not so much. But it's what was on last night, so I watched it.
Made it through about twenty minutes. The animals didn't talk, but the horses would whinny while making faces that looked as if they were talking. It was weird. And then, of course, it got into the main story.
Spirit meets people. People are bad. They enslave horses. The cowboys try to catch Spirit, but he leads them on a merry chase, and just when he thinks he's beaten them, they rope him and drag him away. Then they take him to the most evil place on Earth: an American cavalry fort. The soldiers try to break him, but they can't. Nor can they break the spirit of the good-hearted Lakota they've captured. The Lakota saves Spirit from being shot by the American commander, and together the two make a daring escape.
So to recap: Horses good. People bad. White people worse. White American military people worst of all. Nogoodniks, the lot of 'em.
Yeah, okay. Got better things to do with my time. Thanks for playing.
Made it through about twenty minutes. The animals didn't talk, but the horses would whinny while making faces that looked as if they were talking. It was weird. And then, of course, it got into the main story.
Spirit meets people. People are bad. They enslave horses. The cowboys try to catch Spirit, but he leads them on a merry chase, and just when he thinks he's beaten them, they rope him and drag him away. Then they take him to the most evil place on Earth: an American cavalry fort. The soldiers try to break him, but they can't. Nor can they break the spirit of the good-hearted Lakota they've captured. The Lakota saves Spirit from being shot by the American commander, and together the two make a daring escape.
So to recap: Horses good. People bad. White people worse. White American military people worst of all. Nogoodniks, the lot of 'em.
Yeah, okay. Got better things to do with my time. Thanks for playing.
Thursday, January 26, 2006
I Need a New Plan
I just found out that I have an extra five days' worth of vacation this year. Apparently, you get a third week in your fifth year. Odd to think that I'm approaching my mid-forties and this is the first company I've worked five consecutive years for (other than the Army, which doesn't really count).
Onthe one hand, this is cool news, but on the other hand, I wasn't able to spend ten days last year. What makes me think I'll be able to spend fifteen this year?
My first thought was that I might try to hit more conventions this year. It sounds like a good way to spend a few long weekends, schmoozing with other writers and editors. But conventions can be expensive, especially if I'm not an invited guest, so I don't know how much of that I can afford to do.
Then again, I could just take the entire thing in one big lump during the summer, but then I'd just end up going to movies or shopping and spending tons of money, and things would just fall apart at work while I was gone.
I could take a summer's worth of three day weekends. It would be like having a holiday every week. But the problem with that plan is that The Wife would find ways to fill my free time until it didn't really feel like a vacation at all. And how awful would it be when the vacation time ran out and I had to work full weeks again?
Onthe one hand, this is cool news, but on the other hand, I wasn't able to spend ten days last year. What makes me think I'll be able to spend fifteen this year?
My first thought was that I might try to hit more conventions this year. It sounds like a good way to spend a few long weekends, schmoozing with other writers and editors. But conventions can be expensive, especially if I'm not an invited guest, so I don't know how much of that I can afford to do.
Then again, I could just take the entire thing in one big lump during the summer, but then I'd just end up going to movies or shopping and spending tons of money, and things would just fall apart at work while I was gone.
I could take a summer's worth of three day weekends. It would be like having a holiday every week. But the problem with that plan is that The Wife would find ways to fill my free time until it didn't really feel like a vacation at all. And how awful would it be when the vacation time ran out and I had to work full weeks again?
Monday, January 23, 2006
Strange Dream
I had a dream last night that I was so eager for the next month's OSFW meeting that I showed up at the locale for the next meeting on the next night (in other words, I pulled up to the house and realized I was 30 days early - the previous meeting had been the night before, not the month before). I sat there in the driveway, thinking how stupid I was, then I backed out, forgetting that this person's house (which was not any of the actual houses I've been to) sat on a tall hill with a steep drop-off on the other side of a narrow lane.
Next thing I knew, my car was rolling backwards out of control down a steep slope that was almost a cliff, until it finally smashed onto the street. I think I woke up about the moment that I actually hit, or maybe just before.
Next thing I knew, my car was rolling backwards out of control down a steep slope that was almost a cliff, until it finally smashed onto the street. I think I woke up about the moment that I actually hit, or maybe just before.
Sunday, January 22, 2006
Modern World, Shifting Memory
I had a strange experience today. I was thinking about somebody I met at a convention years ago, with whom I briefly stayed in touch. I'm talking late 80's here, back when I still lived in OKC and wrote for the Daily Oklahoman. And as I thought about her, I had this memory of her e-mailing me. Now keep in mind, this was years before I knew what e-mail even was. I got my start on-line in the early 90's, and even then, there was no e-mail, only BBS's. I used to hang out on a FIDONET BBS in Tulsa called Shadowland, I think, as well as a couple of others. But I was in touch with this person at least three years before that. I don't remember if we snail-mailed or talked on the phone, but I know for a fact that there was no e-mail, even though I vaguely remember it. Funny how memory works.
Glad I'm not being asked to testify before a committee about this, because they'd definitely charge me with something.
Glad I'm not being asked to testify before a committee about this, because they'd definitely charge me with something.
Cool Conestoga News and Guilt
I found out last night that Conestoga here in Tulsa is going to be an official Baen's Universe event. I had hoped, considering David Drake is the GOH, but now Baen's has confirmed it, which is cool. It will be fun to meet some of the people I only know through the Baen's Bar Webboard and e-mail.
I'm feeling a bit guilty about my flip comment concerning M.T. Reiten's stack of rejections. Fact is, he's doing what I wish I were brave and disciplined enough to do: write a lot and submit continuously. I write sporadically, and only recently have begun to submit with any regularity, and even then, I went several months last year without any stories in circulation at all (except for some contest entries trapped in limbo). It's all too easy for me to start a project, hit a snag and let it wither on the vine (see Flip), or to give up on a story after a few, or even a single, rejection. I think I'm getting better, but the only reason I don't have as big a stack of rejections as Matt is that I haven't had the drive to write, the discipline to research markets, or the bravery to submit, that he has. So there.
I'm feeling a bit guilty about my flip comment concerning M.T. Reiten's stack of rejections. Fact is, he's doing what I wish I were brave and disciplined enough to do: write a lot and submit continuously. I write sporadically, and only recently have begun to submit with any regularity, and even then, I went several months last year without any stories in circulation at all (except for some contest entries trapped in limbo). It's all too easy for me to start a project, hit a snag and let it wither on the vine (see Flip), or to give up on a story after a few, or even a single, rejection. I think I'm getting better, but the only reason I don't have as big a stack of rejections as Matt is that I haven't had the drive to write, the discipline to research markets, or the bravery to submit, that he has. So there.
Saturday, January 21, 2006
Quick Turnaround
"Shell" got a super-quick rejection from F&SF. 11 days round-trip by snail mail. It was a John Joseph Adams and not a Gordon Van Gelder (a grading scale introduced to me by M.T. Reiten, who has collected quite a few of his own rejections from them), which means it didn't make the cut to get passed up to the big guy. However, the wording is slightly more encouraging than the first rejection I got from them, so I'm slowly making progress. Maybe in another couple of stories, I can, like Matt, start getting GVG rejections rather than JJA's (which is a small, sad ambition, I know, and yet I've learned to grasp any tiny indication of progress and cherish it as I try to work my way into this business).
In other news, I heard a story on the news the other night about a local highway crash that sounded pretty Darwin-worthy, except that nobody had actually died yet. A woman was in critical condition after being ejected from a vehicle that overturned. The vehicle in question was being driven by the woman's boyfriend and overturned after it tried to pass the vehicle in front of it... on the shoulder... in a CONSTRUCTION ZONE. I've been trying to find a link to the story to see if in fact the overturned vehicle was a pick-up truck, but so far, I have not succeeded.
In other news, I heard a story on the news the other night about a local highway crash that sounded pretty Darwin-worthy, except that nobody had actually died yet. A woman was in critical condition after being ejected from a vehicle that overturned. The vehicle in question was being driven by the woman's boyfriend and overturned after it tried to pass the vehicle in front of it... on the shoulder... in a CONSTRUCTION ZONE. I've been trying to find a link to the story to see if in fact the overturned vehicle was a pick-up truck, but so far, I have not succeeded.
Of Course
So I mentioned a while back in this post that I expected I might never sell "Frame by Frame," because I just couldn't find a suitable market. I got to thinking, what I really needed was a horror/suspense anthology with a movie theme. Lo and behold. So I've now got a submission in to them. What delicious irony if I were to sell it now, just after whining that I might never be able to. Wouldn't that just put me in my place?
C'mon fate, put me in my place, already.
C'mon fate, put me in my place, already.
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Is My Face Red
Well, not super red. Turns out the Product Key for the media center PC was on a sticker on the case all the time. But in my defense, it was toward the back of the case, hidden in the recesses of the entertainment center, and the 25-digit code was in like 5 point type, incredibly tiny. And then, once I finished entering the 25 characters, I had to call a toll-free number and read like 45 numbers into an automated system, and then enter another 45-ish numbers back into the computer. Oof. But it finally works again, so I can watch digital cable. Still can't record, but that's coming.
Sunday, January 15, 2006
What Did I Expect?
Got a rejection from The Town Drunk today for "In Deep." The editor said they found it "well-written and entertaining," but in the end it was just an extended fart joke, which, okay, guilty. She also included a long paragraph of technical nit-picking about the chemical make-up of farts. Here's the thing: I actually did research on the chemical make-up of farts when I wrote the story, so I could, if so inclined, write a defense of my story on the technical merits. However, I think it's remarkable enough that I actually got an editor to write a treatise on farts that I'll let it pass.
Do you think when she decided to become an editor that ever in her wildest dreams she thought she would write a paragraph like the one she wrote to me? My work here is done.
In other news, I actually started writing again, another useless bit of short story filler called
Do you think when she decided to become an editor that ever in her wildest dreams she thought she would write a paragraph like the one she wrote to me? My work here is done.
In other news, I actually started writing again, another useless bit of short story filler called
Saturday, January 14, 2006
My Latest Tale of Woe
And no, it's not the fact that I got elected VP of Oklahoma Science Fiction Writers last night (although it was about the last refuge I had where I didn't have to be in charge of anything - oh well).
Two weeks ago, I wrote this post about how I planned to install a media center PC. Some background: my boss handed me this out of the blue last month. He said that our department head was giving them to people as learning tools or something. Cool, thought I, a free computer. I had actually been wanting a Tivo or some other type of PVR, so this was like a wish come true. However, it did mean that I needed to go out and buy a wireless router so both computers could share the same high-speed connection.
So I get the router. It's seventy bucks, but I'll get 30 back in rebates, so I figure it's still a super bargain for what this baby will do once it's up and running. I set aside the entire weekend to fight with the thing, because I know my past patterns. Saturday comes, and I begin installation. Router installs fairly painlessly. Then I start pulling redundant components out of my home theater setup. Bye-bye VCR. Bye-bye, DVD player. Bye-bye, CD player. Bye-bye, dual cassette dubbing deck that I never use.
I hook up the computer, a Q-Media Entertainment PC running Windows XP Media Center. The box had apparently been opened and the computer tested by someone, because there was a sticky note on the box that said, "Works." I turn it on, and lo and behold, the note is right, That crazy gizmo really works! I watch some TV for a while, rewind it during commercials to watch my favorite scenes again, then jump forward after the break is done. I need to track down a missing cable before I can try recording shows, but so far, it seems really cool. I shut down for the night. It says it's going to install a few updates first.
Later that evening, I can't sleep, so I decide to watch a bit more telelvision. I turn on the TV and the computer, and get this message. "Welcome, User: Clear Channel. Password:"
What the hell? It never asked me for a password before, and I sure as hell didn't set one. So I try just hitting Enter, but that doesn't work. I try a bunch of obvious passwords, but none of them work. I try restoring, but it just puts me right back to the same password screen.
So I wait until Monday and ask my boss. He doesn't know, but he suggests one of the techs in the department. I ask the tech, who refers me to another tech, who also doesn't know. Finally, I decide to use the DVD backup I burned, back when the thing still worked the way it was supposed to.
I do a disk format and restore from DVD. Does it prompt me for a password? No. Success! No, wait. Instead, it's now asking me for a 25-character Product Key on my Microsoft Certificate of Authenticity. Doh! The computer didn't come with a Certificate of Authenticity! It didn't come with any Microsoft documentation at all, just a booklet that basically says I never have to mess with Windows at all, just the Media Center interface which runs almost completely form the remote control. edit: I'm looking back through the booklet and it says there should be a software disk included which wasn't in the computer by the time I received it; that may have been the Windows disk.
So I email the manufacturer to ask if they have the Product Key so I can restore my computer. That was a week ago, and they have not yet answered. If they end up not being able to help me, I have several choices, none of them good. Get a product key from someone else and run the risk of Microsoft coming after me for using pirated software; spend another $150 to get a new authorized copy of XP Media Center (awfully expensive for a "free" gift); switch to Linux (I've actually tried this one already, only to find out that I can't install because it doesn't register input from my wireless keyboard; I asked for help with this issue on their forums and got a snooty answer from some dude who said it was a well-known problem, and if I'd just done a moment's research before I bought the computer I wanted to use the software with, I could have avoided the drama. Ass); give the damn thing back and go back to the set-up I had before.
Aaaaaarrrrrggghhhh!
Two weeks ago, I wrote this post about how I planned to install a media center PC. Some background: my boss handed me this out of the blue last month. He said that our department head was giving them to people as learning tools or something. Cool, thought I, a free computer. I had actually been wanting a Tivo or some other type of PVR, so this was like a wish come true. However, it did mean that I needed to go out and buy a wireless router so both computers could share the same high-speed connection.
So I get the router. It's seventy bucks, but I'll get 30 back in rebates, so I figure it's still a super bargain for what this baby will do once it's up and running. I set aside the entire weekend to fight with the thing, because I know my past patterns. Saturday comes, and I begin installation. Router installs fairly painlessly. Then I start pulling redundant components out of my home theater setup. Bye-bye VCR. Bye-bye, DVD player. Bye-bye, CD player. Bye-bye, dual cassette dubbing deck that I never use.
I hook up the computer, a Q-Media Entertainment PC running Windows XP Media Center. The box had apparently been opened and the computer tested by someone, because there was a sticky note on the box that said, "Works." I turn it on, and lo and behold, the note is right, That crazy gizmo really works! I watch some TV for a while, rewind it during commercials to watch my favorite scenes again, then jump forward after the break is done. I need to track down a missing cable before I can try recording shows, but so far, it seems really cool. I shut down for the night. It says it's going to install a few updates first.
Later that evening, I can't sleep, so I decide to watch a bit more telelvision. I turn on the TV and the computer, and get this message. "Welcome, User: Clear Channel. Password:"
What the hell? It never asked me for a password before, and I sure as hell didn't set one. So I try just hitting Enter, but that doesn't work. I try a bunch of obvious passwords, but none of them work. I try restoring, but it just puts me right back to the same password screen.
So I wait until Monday and ask my boss. He doesn't know, but he suggests one of the techs in the department. I ask the tech, who refers me to another tech, who also doesn't know. Finally, I decide to use the DVD backup I burned, back when the thing still worked the way it was supposed to.
I do a disk format and restore from DVD. Does it prompt me for a password? No. Success! No, wait. Instead, it's now asking me for a 25-character Product Key on my Microsoft Certificate of Authenticity. Doh! The computer didn't come with a Certificate of Authenticity! It didn't come with any Microsoft documentation at all, just a booklet that basically says I never have to mess with Windows at all, just the Media Center interface which runs almost completely form the remote control. edit: I'm looking back through the booklet and it says there should be a software disk included which wasn't in the computer by the time I received it; that may have been the Windows disk.
So I email the manufacturer to ask if they have the Product Key so I can restore my computer. That was a week ago, and they have not yet answered. If they end up not being able to help me, I have several choices, none of them good. Get a product key from someone else and run the risk of Microsoft coming after me for using pirated software; spend another $150 to get a new authorized copy of XP Media Center (awfully expensive for a "free" gift); switch to Linux (I've actually tried this one already, only to find out that I can't install because it doesn't register input from my wireless keyboard; I asked for help with this issue on their forums and got a snooty answer from some dude who said it was a well-known problem, and if I'd just done a moment's research before I bought the computer I wanted to use the software with, I could have avoided the drama. Ass); give the damn thing back and go back to the set-up I had before.
Aaaaaarrrrrggghhhh!
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
The New Year: Hope and Disappointment
Got up this morning and everything was blanketed with snow. I drove to work with big flakes swirling around my car. Come noon when I went back outside, not only had the snow stopped, but it had almost all melted away. Now I look out the window, and everything's sunny and dry, the sky blue with only a few hints of cloud. It's hard to believe I drove to work in the snow this morning.
The last thing I remembered dreaming before I woke was driving past a gas station and noting with a start that gas had gone up to $7.01 per gallon. Funny how your nightmares change as you get older.
I've had a printed story sitting on my desk for about a month, waiting to be sent out. It got stuck here waiting out the holiday madness, and was recently joined by a friend. Today, I finally got both sent out. I'm starting to emerge from the end of year doldrums to get stuff done. I haven't really started writing yet, but I've I've started thinking about writing, at least. I've got four stories out right now, and I'm looking for places to submit more.
The one big disappointment? "Frame by Frame." I wrote this story a couple of years ago, using the background I'd developed for a novel that never came together. When I read it to my local writers group, I was horribly nervous, and grew more so as I read, because everyone seemed bored out of their skulls. However, when I finished, almost everyone said they loved it, and they still comment on it today; someone asked me at the Christmas party just last month if I'd managed to sell it yet.
The answer was "no," and I suspect it will be "no" for the rest of my life, unless I manage to achieve some kind of Stephen King-like success where someone will publish just about any piece of crap I ever scribbled down, just because it has my name on it. The problem is that it's not really a story, per se. It's a mood piece, an 8,500 word mood piece, and who really wants to read that? I sometimes think the reason it went over so well was not so much the story as the performance; I was scared when I read it, scared they wouldn't like it, scared they'd tell me the emperor had no clothes even though I thought I could see some. I think that fear translated well to the narrative, which is a sort of horror story.
I don't know. Maybe I'm just coming up with excuses. Maybe I could edit it down to a more salable length and try again. But as it stands right now, I don't know of anyplace else to submit it, and it depresses me, because in some ways, it's one of the best things I've ever written, even though it breaks about a thousand rules in the process. I just don't know what to do with it.
The last thing I remembered dreaming before I woke was driving past a gas station and noting with a start that gas had gone up to $7.01 per gallon. Funny how your nightmares change as you get older.
I've had a printed story sitting on my desk for about a month, waiting to be sent out. It got stuck here waiting out the holiday madness, and was recently joined by a friend. Today, I finally got both sent out. I'm starting to emerge from the end of year doldrums to get stuff done. I haven't really started writing yet, but I've I've started thinking about writing, at least. I've got four stories out right now, and I'm looking for places to submit more.
The one big disappointment? "Frame by Frame." I wrote this story a couple of years ago, using the background I'd developed for a novel that never came together. When I read it to my local writers group, I was horribly nervous, and grew more so as I read, because everyone seemed bored out of their skulls. However, when I finished, almost everyone said they loved it, and they still comment on it today; someone asked me at the Christmas party just last month if I'd managed to sell it yet.
The answer was "no," and I suspect it will be "no" for the rest of my life, unless I manage to achieve some kind of Stephen King-like success where someone will publish just about any piece of crap I ever scribbled down, just because it has my name on it. The problem is that it's not really a story, per se. It's a mood piece, an 8,500 word mood piece, and who really wants to read that? I sometimes think the reason it went over so well was not so much the story as the performance; I was scared when I read it, scared they wouldn't like it, scared they'd tell me the emperor had no clothes even though I thought I could see some. I think that fear translated well to the narrative, which is a sort of horror story.
I don't know. Maybe I'm just coming up with excuses. Maybe I could edit it down to a more salable length and try again. But as it stands right now, I don't know of anyplace else to submit it, and it depresses me, because in some ways, it's one of the best things I've ever written, even though it breaks about a thousand rules in the process. I just don't know what to do with it.
Friday, January 06, 2006
Bob Denver, Finally
To start, I digress into politics (which I usually try to avoid here) a little bit. I've kind of fallen off reading Lileks lately, but this from yesterday caught my attention. And when I read the linked piece, it was like someone taking things I had thought and felt and tried to express a couple of times in the last few years, and actually made them make sense. Especially this part, which is a much clearer version of what I tried to express to a friend over lunch two years ago when he asked me if I didn't think bad things were happening all over and Islam was just being made into a convenient scapegoat by the current Administration.
"We know it's not really a "war on terror." Nor is it, at heart, a war against Islam, or even "radical Islam." The Muslim faith, whatever its merits for the believers, is a problematic business for the rest of us. There are many trouble spots around the world, but as a general rule, it's easy to make an educated guess at one of the participants: Muslims vs. Jews in "Palestine," Muslims vs. Hindus in Kashmir, Muslims vs. Christians in Africa, Muslims vs. Buddhists in Thailand, Muslims vs. Russians in the Caucasus, Muslims vs. backpacking tourists in Bali. Like the environmentalists, these guys think globally but act locally."
I've also had the same thoughts as the ones Steyn expresses about population trends, although I've never troubled myself to look up the actual stats. Much better just to have a vague fear that I then feel slightly guilty about, because it has such a racist overtone (Those brown people are having more kids than we are! Pretty soon we're going to be knee-deep in them!), but at the same time, this bit from his piece strikes me as exactly on target:
"The refined antennae of Western liberals mean that whenever one raises the question of whether there will be any Italians living in the geographical zone marked as Italy a generation or three hence, they cry, "Racism!" To fret about what proportion of the population is "white" is grotesque and inappropriate. But it's not about race, it's about culture. If 100% of your population believes in liberal pluralist democracy, it doesn't matter whether 70% of them are "white" or only 5% are. But if one part of your population believes in liberal pluralist democracy and the other doesn't, then it becomes a matter of great importance whether the part that does is 90% of the population or only 60%, 50%, 45%."
Which is why I had always told The Wife I wanted to raise two kids. Let's at least replace ourselves for the sake of the planet. But she seems content to stick with the one. Oh well.
So anyway, Bob Denver: Entertainment Weekly had an end-of-year review issue a couple of weeks ago, and one of the featured pieces was remembrances of the celebrities that had died during the year. Tina Louise wrote one about Bob Denver, and for some reason, it got me thinking about typecasting.
If you look at Bob Denver's career, he didn't start out as Gilligan. In fact, his first real notoriety was as second fiddle Maynard G. Krebs on "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis." His starring role as Gilligan was a direct result of his popularity on the former show. The point is, Gilligan as a character was not a direct retread of Maynard G. Krebs.
However, if you lok at Denver's career post-Gilligan, you'll see that about half of his roles (and almost all of the starring roles) have been Gilligan warmed over, either directly or indirectly. There are the three Gilligan TV movies and the two Gilligan animated series, and then there are the two shameless rip-offs.
The later one was "Far Out Space Nuts," about a pair of space janitors who accidentally launch themselves into the unknown and spend every episode trying to find their way back to Earth. Since this was a super-low-budget Krofft kids' show, they jettisoned the supporting cast (except for a wacky alien creature sidekick) and just kept the central Gilligan conceit (which was at heart just a recasting of Laurel and Hardy): a good-natured dim-bulb set adrift with his partner, a physically imposing man who excelled at doing the slow burn. On "Gilligan's Island," that role was filled by Alan Hale, Jr.* On "Space Nuts,"it was Chuck McCann. Like Hale, McCann took his cues from Oliver Hardy in crafting his role (in fact, McCann channelled Hardy's mannerisms so completely, he later ended up impersonating Oliver Hardy in several television commercials).
But before "Far Out Space Nuts," there was "Dusty's Trail," which I might not even remember if I hadn't named my dog after the show. About the time this was on the air, I got a tan-and-white beagle (not a speck of black on her) whom I considered naming Sandy, until the morning after we brought her home. We put her in a box in the living room for the night. The next morning, I woke to find her beside the bed, with piles of puppy poop drawing a line from her box to my bedside. She was promply christened Dusty, and the line of poop piles was, of course, Dusty's Trail (an apt metaphor for hte show, now that I think of it).
"Dusty's Trail" was Gilligan in the old West, starring Denver as a member of a wagon train wandering hopelessly through the Great American Desert like the Israelites trying to find Canaan (and wouldn't that have been a neat idea for a Denver series - "Zach's Oasis," about a lost group of Israelites trying to find their way back to Moses's band, having wacky encounters with Egyptian soldiers and runaway harem girls and traveling camel salesmen played by Phil Silvers or somebody? But I digress).
"Dusty's Trail" was almost completely the same show (from the same executive producer), but it disappeared without a trace, while Gilligan became a television icon. Why? Several reasons, I think. Forrest Tucker (edited after mtreiten caught an oversight on my part)was a talented guy, but his gruff style didn't mesh as well with Denver as Hale's did. And the supporting cast didn't have any of the charisma or chemistry of the "Gilligan" cast. And, I think, there was the question of the characters' ultimate fate. You always knew that, the nature of series television being what it was at the time, you would never see the conclusion of the characters' story. But at least with "Gilligan's Island," you could imagine that at some point, they would be rescued and return to civilization. With "Dusty's Trail," hapless as these guys were, you could just as easily imagine them ending up like the Donner party. Not a pleasant thought.
Not sure where I was going with this. I guess it's easy to get lost when you're discussing this subject, huh?
*Quick Alan Hale story: A high school friend of mine was eating at a restaurant in L.A. called the Lobster Barrel with some friends, and as can happen when four college guys are out together, they passed some of the time quizzing each other on useless trivia. My friend says, "I've got one. What was the Skipper's real name on 'Gilligan's Island?'" And before any of them could even hazard a guess, a familiar voice from behind him says, "Jonas Grumby." My friend turns around, and there's Alan Hale, Jr, the Skipper himself in the flesh. Turns out the restaurant was actually Alan Hale's Lobster Barrel, and the best way to get on the big man's good side was to bring up his best known role, so my friend and co. got to hang with him for a while. Somehow, I don't think the same thing would have happened if you'd mentioned Opie at Ron Howard's Lobster Barrel. And if you'd mentioned Meathead at Rob Reiner's Lobster Barrel, you might well have ended up being shot.
"We know it's not really a "war on terror." Nor is it, at heart, a war against Islam, or even "radical Islam." The Muslim faith, whatever its merits for the believers, is a problematic business for the rest of us. There are many trouble spots around the world, but as a general rule, it's easy to make an educated guess at one of the participants: Muslims vs. Jews in "Palestine," Muslims vs. Hindus in Kashmir, Muslims vs. Christians in Africa, Muslims vs. Buddhists in Thailand, Muslims vs. Russians in the Caucasus, Muslims vs. backpacking tourists in Bali. Like the environmentalists, these guys think globally but act locally."
I've also had the same thoughts as the ones Steyn expresses about population trends, although I've never troubled myself to look up the actual stats. Much better just to have a vague fear that I then feel slightly guilty about, because it has such a racist overtone (Those brown people are having more kids than we are! Pretty soon we're going to be knee-deep in them!), but at the same time, this bit from his piece strikes me as exactly on target:
"The refined antennae of Western liberals mean that whenever one raises the question of whether there will be any Italians living in the geographical zone marked as Italy a generation or three hence, they cry, "Racism!" To fret about what proportion of the population is "white" is grotesque and inappropriate. But it's not about race, it's about culture. If 100% of your population believes in liberal pluralist democracy, it doesn't matter whether 70% of them are "white" or only 5% are. But if one part of your population believes in liberal pluralist democracy and the other doesn't, then it becomes a matter of great importance whether the part that does is 90% of the population or only 60%, 50%, 45%."
Which is why I had always told The Wife I wanted to raise two kids. Let's at least replace ourselves for the sake of the planet. But she seems content to stick with the one. Oh well.
So anyway, Bob Denver: Entertainment Weekly had an end-of-year review issue a couple of weeks ago, and one of the featured pieces was remembrances of the celebrities that had died during the year. Tina Louise wrote one about Bob Denver, and for some reason, it got me thinking about typecasting.
If you look at Bob Denver's career, he didn't start out as Gilligan. In fact, his first real notoriety was as second fiddle Maynard G. Krebs on "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis." His starring role as Gilligan was a direct result of his popularity on the former show. The point is, Gilligan as a character was not a direct retread of Maynard G. Krebs.
However, if you lok at Denver's career post-Gilligan, you'll see that about half of his roles (and almost all of the starring roles) have been Gilligan warmed over, either directly or indirectly. There are the three Gilligan TV movies and the two Gilligan animated series, and then there are the two shameless rip-offs.
The later one was "Far Out Space Nuts," about a pair of space janitors who accidentally launch themselves into the unknown and spend every episode trying to find their way back to Earth. Since this was a super-low-budget Krofft kids' show, they jettisoned the supporting cast (except for a wacky alien creature sidekick) and just kept the central Gilligan conceit (which was at heart just a recasting of Laurel and Hardy): a good-natured dim-bulb set adrift with his partner, a physically imposing man who excelled at doing the slow burn. On "Gilligan's Island," that role was filled by Alan Hale, Jr.* On "Space Nuts,"it was Chuck McCann. Like Hale, McCann took his cues from Oliver Hardy in crafting his role (in fact, McCann channelled Hardy's mannerisms so completely, he later ended up impersonating Oliver Hardy in several television commercials).
But before "Far Out Space Nuts," there was "Dusty's Trail," which I might not even remember if I hadn't named my dog after the show. About the time this was on the air, I got a tan-and-white beagle (not a speck of black on her) whom I considered naming Sandy, until the morning after we brought her home. We put her in a box in the living room for the night. The next morning, I woke to find her beside the bed, with piles of puppy poop drawing a line from her box to my bedside. She was promply christened Dusty, and the line of poop piles was, of course, Dusty's Trail (an apt metaphor for hte show, now that I think of it).
"Dusty's Trail" was Gilligan in the old West, starring Denver as a member of a wagon train wandering hopelessly through the Great American Desert like the Israelites trying to find Canaan (and wouldn't that have been a neat idea for a Denver series - "Zach's Oasis," about a lost group of Israelites trying to find their way back to Moses's band, having wacky encounters with Egyptian soldiers and runaway harem girls and traveling camel salesmen played by Phil Silvers or somebody? But I digress).
"Dusty's Trail" was almost completely the same show (from the same executive producer), but it disappeared without a trace, while Gilligan became a television icon. Why? Several reasons, I think. Forrest Tucker (edited after mtreiten caught an oversight on my part)was a talented guy, but his gruff style didn't mesh as well with Denver as Hale's did. And the supporting cast didn't have any of the charisma or chemistry of the "Gilligan" cast. And, I think, there was the question of the characters' ultimate fate. You always knew that, the nature of series television being what it was at the time, you would never see the conclusion of the characters' story. But at least with "Gilligan's Island," you could imagine that at some point, they would be rescued and return to civilization. With "Dusty's Trail," hapless as these guys were, you could just as easily imagine them ending up like the Donner party. Not a pleasant thought.
Not sure where I was going with this. I guess it's easy to get lost when you're discussing this subject, huh?
*Quick Alan Hale story: A high school friend of mine was eating at a restaurant in L.A. called the Lobster Barrel with some friends, and as can happen when four college guys are out together, they passed some of the time quizzing each other on useless trivia. My friend says, "I've got one. What was the Skipper's real name on 'Gilligan's Island?'" And before any of them could even hazard a guess, a familiar voice from behind him says, "Jonas Grumby." My friend turns around, and there's Alan Hale, Jr, the Skipper himself in the flesh. Turns out the restaurant was actually Alan Hale's Lobster Barrel, and the best way to get on the big man's good side was to bring up his best known role, so my friend and co. got to hang with him for a while. Somehow, I don't think the same thing would have happened if you'd mentioned Opie at Ron Howard's Lobster Barrel. And if you'd mentioned Meathead at Rob Reiner's Lobster Barrel, you might well have ended up being shot.
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