Tag: Sentential Links

Time for some linkage!

:: Fast food is obviously not great for you in the best of conditions. So if you’re going to indulge in a burger like me, or (God help you) a burrito – pick a good one. Don’t waste the calories and cholesterol on a Jumbo Jack for crissakes. Treat yourself to whatever you feel is the best. (If I must have a fast food burger, it’s Wendy’s. McDonald’s has its uses, but they’re pretty limited to Shamrock Shakes.)

:: I will not describe the finale to you because like most of this film it has to be seen to be believed. Not the worst way I have spent 90 minutes of my life.

:: I was reading a bit about Scientology today, on account of a Gawker network article about someone who went in to take their personality test just to see what the results were. (Spoilers: She’s a terrible person and she needs Scientology’s help badly.)

:: One of the things I’ve always thought was interesting about Jim Henson is that he never really set out to become a puppeteer. He wasn’t really that interested in the art of puppetry.

:: Taking a picture of a flower is a substitute for picking it. I get to pick flowers and leave them where they are, to live a little longer.

:: Great fear makes your choices clear: get the hell OUT OF THERE. But performers have to learn how to cope with nerves, work with them, embrace them, turn that stress into something positive and expressive. It sometimes takes years to master. This is why actors spend so much time in learning relaxation techniques. Because it’s all well and good to be brilliant alone in your bedroom, but when an audience is suddenly looking at you, shit starts happening to your body that you cannot control. You have to anticipate that: “Okay, I am going to have a dry mouth and throat, so make sure to drink a lot of water, and vocalize.” “Okay, I am going to be scared, so I need to find a way to concentrate and relax anyway.” Normally, this takes training. It takes practice.

People like clutch hitters are those who can come up BIG in very stressful moments. They do not lose their nerve. They are special people, different from most of us. Nerves do not affect them in a detrimental way. On the contrary: nerves are what make the clutch hitters do their best work. They perform their best when the stakes are high. (Longer excerpt than usual for one of these posts, but I couldn’t figure out where to stop quoting Sheila. It all adds up.)

:: Sendak had a tart wit and a low tolerance for foolishness, but when it came to the people who were working for him, he never had a diva-ish moment. He was, to use a sarcastic phrase in a sincere way, good to the little people. And people just don’t come much littler than a young woman calling you to ask if a school may do a staged reading of Where the Wild Things Are. (This wonderful post is almost two months old, but somehow I missed it, so it’s still new.)

More next week!

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Time for linkage!

:: This past year, for spelling, there was this predictable pattern for the homework of approximately 20 words. (I’m fascinated by the acrostic exercise, and I wonder if it would have helped the terrible spellers I knew. On a side note, I often wonder about spelling. I can think of few areas where lack of ability is so divorced from, well, general intelligence. This is to say that I’ve known more than a few folks who are very bright and very articulate and who read a lot and who can hold forth on many topics, and yet, they can’t spell ‘cat’ without three Ms.)

:: Look at that curved beak, it is made for tearing apart his prey.

:: Using corsairs as the pirates is a good move too. I usually enjoy the liberty and style of Western pirates more than the structure and uniformity of the Barbary corsairs as presented here, but so many pirate films focus on the Caribbean that The Sea Hawk is a nice change of pace. (Until I read Michael May’s post, I had no idea there’d been an earlier film called The Sea Hawk, different from the Errol Flynn film that is one of my all-time favorites!)

:: But Elvis stayed scattered on the table for the entirety of the week, in case anyone felt like working on it.

:: All I ask is a little bit of Bobo every so often. Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled to have Dr. Teeth and Rowlf back–some of you may remember that Rowlf the Dog is my favorite Muppet–but a little bit of Bobo is a grand thing.

:: The novel Fight Club only sold about 5000 copies, according to Palahniuk, and the rest of the print run might have been pulped if it hadn’t been for the Fincher film encouraging the publisher to get the copies back into circulation. That the film was no great financial success is a well-known story, as is the disastrous marketing campaign that Fincher still regards with chagrin—he recalls the head of marketing saying “You’ve found the perfect nexus—men don’t want to see Brad Pitt with his shirt off and women don’t want to see fighting.” (I never liked Fight Club, but almost purely on the basis that it simply isn’t my cup of tea. I honestly can’t cite anything that I specifically think is a flaw in it. I wonder what a return to that story will look like.)

:: In my not inconsiderable experience, even the most intelligent and literate authors have between 300 and 800 mistakes in an average sized novel. (Oy…my work’s cut out for me….)

:: It needn’t have been this way, and it still needn’t be this way. There are those who still dream, who understand the call to space, and who are devoting their lives to make it reality. We’ve faced adversity before, and have not let it stop us.

I think we can overcome our own petty blindness. Sometimes we humans look up, not down, and see not just the Universe stretching out before us, but also our place in it.

We’ve done it before and we can—we must, and we will—do it again.

More next week. Or possibly not. You never can tell!!!

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Linkage!

:: The morning after the Poseidon disaster, the broke captain (Caine) of a cargo tug discovers the wreckage and takes his crew (Field and Karl Malden) aboard to look for salvage. At exactly the same time, a wealthy doctor (Savalas) also goes aboard, claiming he wants to assist survivors. But is that really his goal or does he have something more sinister in mind? (Wow…never thought I’d find someone who speaks positively of Beyond the Poseidon Adventure!)

:: Just think of the people your stories are helping.

Trust me–they’re out there.

:: Like two films in one — the first one on land when the inhabitants of Amity Island are forced to deal with a predator that’s slowly devouring its citizens one by one, to the three men (Chief Brody, Matt Hooper, and salty sea veteran Quint) going out to sea to try and catch the shark singlehandedly — Jaws is an absolute memorable classic of the history of the cinema. (The 50 Greatest Jaws quotes — and they purposely omit the one that everybody remembers! What a great movie. I need to watch it again. By the way, my favorite quote in the movie is the exchange between Brody and his wife, just before he sets out with Quint and Hooper: “What do I tell the kids?” “Tell them I’m going fishing.”)

:: Whatever their approach, for these gardeners, creating a garden is a process. It is not a remodel that will beautify the neighborhood while the gardener kicks back and enjoys having finished. It may very well beautify the neighborhood, but it will never be finished — which is really the point.

:: Elvis had been performing “Hound Dog” live for months and it was always a hit with audiences, especially the slowed-down coda, where Elvis went wild, one of his signatures. (Elvis always thought the song was silly, and he originally performed it as a joke, and its success surprised him as much as anyone.) So Elvis and team finally decided it was time to get the thing down on tape, audience demand was enormous. Photographer Alfred Wertheimer was there, and captured Elvis through the whole process.

:: Publishing is a business. As a writer, you are enaging in business with others, sometimes including large corporations. It’s not a team sport. It’s not an arena where there are “sides.” There’s no “either/or” choice one has to make, either with the businesses one works with or how one publishes one’s work. Anyone who simplifies it down to that sort of construct either doesn’t understand the business or is actively disingenuous, and isn’t doing you any favors regardless. The “side” you should be on is your own (and, if you choose, that of other authors). (Sage advice and well-worth remembering. And even though it’s only tangential to John Scalzi’s main point here, it’s along these lines that I always end up thinking that we should be really careful about the way we’re constantly pushed to “privatize” things. Introducing the profit motive is not always the best way to go about achieving certain goals.)

:: Oh, man, check out how terrified Les looks by the idea that even in the fictional world being weaved by Cable Movie Entertainment, Lisa might live! It’s almost as if her death was the foundation on which he built his entire artistic career and sense of self. It’s almost as if he has to kill her again every day in his mind in order to stay Les. It’s almost as if the thought of Lisa alive, standing before him, and seeing what he’s done with his life for the past decade fills him with a the darkest sort of dread. (Oh man, this particular storyline in Funky Winkerbean is beyond the levels of awfulness usually plumbed by this strip. Just the notion that a film company is going to fly the original writer out to the set after the script has been heavily revised, and after a crew has been hired and the film cast, is nonsensical on its face. The bigger problem with the whole storyline is laid out here, but Les’s reaction to Lisa surviving her death-porn movie is just too hilarious to let pass.)

:: For those who missed it (most of the world, as it has to be!) it was announced from the office of the Governor General of Canada yesterday afternoon that I have been named to the Order of Canada. (Huzzah! And let me say this, folks: If you love fantasy but you haven’t read GGK, you are failing at life.)

More next week!

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Linkage!

:: I have a confession to make.

I’m not brave.

:: The garbage we hear on TV and from our friends gets into our heads and we tend to talk like everyone else even when we know better. I resolved a while back to stop saying “theory” when I really mean “hypothesis” but it’s hard.

:: The record for keeping the world’s longest (or largest) personal diary might belong to Reverend Robert Shields, who on a whim began one in 1972 and wrote in detail about himself and every day of his life until 1997, when a stroke disabled him. He then turned his opus, which had to be packed up in 91 boxes, over to a university. Exactly how long is it, and is it a good read? Actually it’ll be a while before we know. Rev. Shields donated it to the university in 1999 with the stipulation that no words would be counted and it would not be read until 50 years after his death.

:: Yog’s Law: Money flows toward the writer.

Self-Pub Corollary to Yog’s Law: While in the process of self-publishing, money and rights are controlled by the writer. (I’ve thought about this stuff a lot as I start thinking about gearing up for my first foray into the self-publishing world.)

:: So in that respect, as much as I loved the series, I’m glad Firefly was cancelled. (I’d like to disagree, but I can’t. When we rewatched the series last year, I found this the most troubling aspect of the show. I’d like to think that they would have figured this out in a putative Season Two — and maybe in the new comics which are continuing the story, we’ll find out.)

:: We spent three hours in that booth in the early-morning hours of Labor Day of 2002.

And then we dated, got engaged, got married, bought a house in the suburbs, had a baby, had another baby. And it was all so easy. And it was the hardest thing either of us had ever experienced. Our hearts soared and our hearts were broken – both at the hands of others, of fate, of each other. And romance fizzles as you concentrate on the kids, on your job, on your mortgage, on real life.

:: To remind y’all: you can ask me ANYTHING, and I will answer, reasonably soon, generally within thirty days. Last time out, I kept getting followups, which, BTW, are fine, but it took a bit longer than I had anticipated. (Go ask Roger anything. My next go-round for Ask Me Anything! isn’t until August, so this will keep you busy until then. And yes, I’m aware that I flubbed this past February’s Ask Me Anything!, and I will finish those answers in August. I probably should have skipped it, with the impending move.)

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Haven’t done one of these in a while! Some links:

:: I’m not trying to raise a Mini-Me, but a thinking, separate person. And, increasingly, she is. (This is, to me, one of the more fascinating facets of parenthood: watching The Daughter’s interests and passions develop, and noting the areas of commonality we have as well as the points at which we diverge. Sometimes I have to catch myself and not allow my thinking to shade into disappointment — “Y U NO LOVE STAR WARS AND SPACESHIPS LIKE I DO!” — but mostly, I find it amazing just to watch another person’s way of being develop. It’s surely a sign of something that I, a former brass player and eternal lover of fine pens, have turned out to be raising a string player whose favorite pens are cheap BIC sticks. And that’s OK.)

:: Therapy is a mixed bag. It takes a long time to understand why you’re holding yourself back and when you finally do, it’s not easy to face. And this is just one aspect. It’s better than feeling that way the rest of your life. But the hardest thing I’ve ever done is getting to know who I am, and why. (Another of SamuraiFrog’s always-moving posts of self-examination. It takes a lot of bravery, I think, to write about oneself like this.)

:: Welcome to farm life: epic views, pure joy, beautiful moments, friends in need, chores, different people, chaos, guilt, and disappointment all within one hour of living. I wouldn’t have it any other way. (Farm life wouldn’t be for me…but I’m really glad it’s still an option for some folks.)

:: I would love to travel the ocean in this bad boy. It could be our flag ship that allows us to move away from the Cave of Cool at a moment’s notice. Tell me these have a job onboard that I could do for them besides cabin boy or bait. (Yup, that thing is pretty nifty!)

:: God, I hate having an English professor for a father. (Mine’s a mathematician. On road trips, I’d ask, “How much farther?” and get a response like, “Our remaining mileage is the only positive integer to lie directly between a square and a cube.” Which I kind of miss, actually…but to this day, he still works number-stuff into casual conversations!)

:: Everyone who thinks they want a big cat as a pet should visit this place, see these animals and hear their stories. (I’m reminded of something Chris Rock said, years ago, when one of their tigers attacked either Siegfried or Roy: “People are saying the tiger went crazy, but he didn’t. That’s what tigers do. The tiger went tiger.”)

:: The contrast between funny actors and comics is most apparent in the early episodes of SEINFELD. Jerry is clearly the weak link. And I’m sure he’d admit it. I give him credit for allowing himself to be surrounded by comic actors who were spectacular and he learned and grew along the way, but who are we kidding? He’s a kazoo player in Wynton Marsalis’ jazz combo. (This is true, as in the early seasons Seinfeld is clearly doing stand-up amidst a bunch of actors doing comedy. He got a lot better as the show went on, though. He’ll never win any acting prizes, but he figured out quite a bit of stuff, and show-Seinfeld became much more of a distinct character as the show progressed.)

:: Oh, sorry, the God of the Funkyverse isn’t actually trying to stop Wally and Rachel’s wedding, just drive it into Montoni’s, where by immutable law all economic and social activity in Westview must take place. They don’t call Montoni’s “The Wedding Chapel of Love” for nothing! Actually, nobody calls it that, but Funky refuses to stop trying to make it a thing. (I wish I had thought of doing a blog mocking daily comic strips, way back when. Sigh….)

More next week! (Or maybe not.)

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Linkage!

:: But now I’m home, and it feels as though I never left. Did I just dream the entire thing?

When you travel, you are who you are in each exact moment; there isn’t time to question yourself. Everything is new. Survival instincts guide every decision… shelter, water, food. A lumpy bed, canned corn for dinner, and cold showers start to become natural, but so does swimming under a waterfall, visiting ancient ruins, and eating couscous in the Sahara Desert. It is a lifestyle of constant change and adaptation. At home, those instincts vanish and our biggest obsticale becomes ourselves. (You know, I think that’s what Tolkien was getting at when he ended The Lord of the Rings with Sam getting home, after everything that’s happened, after bidding farewell to Frodo and Bilbo and Gandalf and all the Elves, and saying, “Well, I’m back.” It’s the idea that the great experience of his life is over but life still looms ahead of him. I often feel that way after trips elsewhere, although my longest trips have never gone more than a single week. Returning always feels like a recalibration of the brain to its original level of smallness.)

:: There will come a day in the future when you will wonder how you could have ever smiled, and you will think that before your life was filled with smooth seas and ignorance is bliss. Hold the memories of the good times like a talisman to your heart, and let the knowledge that the bad days won’t last forever warm your indifference and renew your spirit.

:: I don’t know much about the upcoming sci-fi comedy, Space Station 76, except that it is directed by Jack Plotnik, stars Liv Tyler (whom I adore) and Patrick Wilson, and that it’s currently doing the film festival rounds. Well, I also know that it apparently takes place in the future as it was depicted back in the ‘70s, with Old School sets, costumes, effects, moustaches and feathered hair… which is why I’m mentioning it here on Space: 1970 at all! 

:: It is nowhere written in the heavens that Pro Football shall always and ever be America’s most popular spectator sport. A hundred years ago the most popular sports in the US were horse racing and boxing, and those have faded almost completely from the scene. How much longer does football have at the top? (This is a good point, one which I argued with a friend at work a few months back. He utterly rejected the notion that football will ever lose popularity, to which I pointed out that even baseball is nowhere near the going concern it once was. He seem to deny this, too…but I remember when the World Series began on a Saturday night and when its ratings were high enough that networks simply didn’t schedule new episodes of anything while the Series was running. Now it starts in the middle of the week and networks don’t avoid it at all. None of which is to say that football will be forgotten in fifty years or whatever, but it’s worth noting that the sporting world changes too.)

:: With only a few weeks to go before the very few students I have left write their GED exam, I find these images on the Tumblr. I have nightmares that these will be the answers they will put down even though the real GED test is mostly multiple choice except for the written essay.

:: No wonder people back then believed Heaven and Hell were as real as London. They lived in not just a demon-haunted world but an angel-infested and God-bothered one. They believed the borders between this world and either of the next were permeable and devils and angels were roaming back and forth between here and whichever place they called home and taking living human beings with them as they went. Essentially this meant they believed that this world wasn’t quite real, and you can hardly blame them for that.

:: I always wonder how they’d do THE FUGITIVE today. Richard Kimble would have a bitch of time getting a new identity every week and getting an apartment and job without having his credit record and job history revealed. Whatever story he told employers could be checked on line.

More next week!

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:: Overalls are everywhere at the moment. I’m loving all the new skinny jean overalls. I seriously considered investing in a pair, but I already had the overalls you see here. And no one needs two pair of overalls. That’s just excessive. (Excessive? Never! Obsessive? Well…um…moving on!)

:: I feel like I can get a glimpse of why someone might become a work-a-holic, especially in this stage of my writing career when I’m really fighting hard for my dream. Not writing seems like wasted time. There is a balance to be found for sure. (Anya Monroe has become one of my favorite writer-peeps. Check her blog out!)

:: So, did I know about Ellen Page?

Sure. Why not?

How did I know?

Same way I know most everything I know.

I read it…

…somewhere. (I didn’t know! But then…I didn’t care, either. But you know, it’s interesting to me on this basis: I tend to just assume people are straight, mainly because that’s the statistical likelihood. And then I find out they’re gay, and I’m briefly surprised, and then I invariably end up thinking, “Why do I need to know this, anyway?” I understand on one level why it’s “news” when someone famous “comes out”, but at the same time…I just don’t care. And I shouldn’t, right? Thoughts?)

:: Maybe that’s the muse of sleeping poets and passed out musicians, but my muse is none other than Lucy, and I have always been Charlie Brown.

:: Is it easier to write paranormal, as opposed to contemporary romance?

:: It has taken me a while to realize that the truth doesn’t always need to be shared. And when you do, it’s important how you say it. But there’s even more to it than that.

:: You’ve probably experienced this yourself at some transitional point in life – listened to a song, and its melody and/or lyrics leapt out to fill your mind with stunned silence, that weird missed-step feeling of Fate having a hand between your shoulder blades. Regardless of its release date, that song would then become synonymous with a fragment of time when, for a few moments, you didn’t feel quite so unique, or so alone and unheard by the world, depending on how you viewed it.

:: If a candidate for federal elected office cannot muster the courage or mental fortitude to be interviewed by the singular local paper covering her district, she’s fundamentally unqualified for public office of any kind. (Alan Bedenko is rather unimpressed with the birther lunatic the Republican Party is offering up for Congress in this area. What a disgrace…but then, this is the same NY GOP that begged fellow birther lunatic Donald Trump to run for Governor. Having one of our major parties be so completely insane is so bad for the country.)

More next week. Unless there aren’t.

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:: So yes, I sing. I’d rather sing harmony than melody. I’m a baritone and can generally find the bass line to any song, even those without one. I sing in the shower. I sing inside my head when singing out loud would be inappropriate.

I do sing.

:: You know, I believe you. You work hard for the money. Harder than people know.

But the question is still: How hard?

:: Casper is a GHOST and by definition that means he’s is a transparent spirit that everything can pass through, light, RAIN and even that gun you will throw at the ghost after you waste your bullets trying to kill it.

:: What passes for joy in the Funkyverse: He’s Not Really Dead, Part IV.

:: It’s also to the point that culture is not static and that every generation wants their own music, books and movies. (Odd thing: Aside from a few short stories, I’ve never really read Heinlein. I bounced off The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress years ago, but I’ve never really tried to get into him outside of that.)

:: It’s a trend that comes and goes. Forty years ago we loved Archie Bunker and those kooky Corleones, and thirty years ago we cheered on J.R. Ewing. I suspect the trend really reignited with debut of THE SOPRANOS. Tony Soprano was clearly a monster, but he was so fascinating and complex that he drew us all into his world. Don Draper on MAD MEN was another. Walter White became America’s chemist. Vic Mackey brought new meaning to good cop/bad cop. And who can forget everybody’s favorite serial killer, DEXTER? (I don’t know…to me, evil is only interesting to a point….)

:: The use of drones as a tool to study wildlife is a marvelous idea. We all like the various animal cams. My mother-in-law is absolutely obsessed right now with a camera that’s fixed on a bald eagle’s nest. I saw this footage and was thrilled by its potential.

More next week.

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Linkage…or something….

:: Back in mid-February, our local newspaper social media guru wrote: “A good deed loses some of its purity when it’s broadcasted by the ‘doer’ on social media.” I thought this was self-evidently true.

:: In dining establishments all over America, there is a pattern that is hurting us. We, as Americans, are a nation of consumers, no doubt. We tend to like things big: big cars, big coffees, big houses, big buildings, big sodas, big macs, big deals, big flavors, and big entrée portions. These last two are the ones that concern me most as a chef.

:: There is no reason that this should be the only video of the Court. Proceedings held in secret are suspect proceedings, and proceedings that cannot be recorded, in 2014, are not public in any meaningful sense.

:: Other than that, I have no idea what I’m doing.

:: Meanwhile, in the “fun” Funkyverse strip, the actual, literal spectre of Death is strolling through Crankshaft’s suburban neighborhood, looking for souls to reap.

:: I started a bit of a minor nerd kerfuffle yesterday on Twitter when I said this, but I’m standing by it.

:: But it’s March now, and time to talk about cats. Specifically, it’s time to talk to all the people who hate cats. “Ewww!” they say. “I hate cats! They’re so aloof! They’re not affectionate and demonstrative like dogs are!”

More next week. Theoretically.

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Linkage!

:: Saying you’re going to stop eating meat to prevent animal suffering is like saying you’re not having children to prevent child abuse. Pacifism doesn’t create change. Ever. (Oooooh, I love Jenna Woginrich and her blog and her books, and I love the full-force with which she is attacking her pursuit of the life she has decided she wants. But this bit here stuck in my craw the second I read it. The post is a collection of “life lessons” Jenna has learned, and a lot of them are great. This one, though, bugs the hell out of me. First, the comparison in the first sentence just doesn’t make sense at all, but that’s not what bothers me. “Pacifism doesn’t create change, ever”? That might come as news to the Dalai Lama, Martin Luther King Jr., Mohandas Gandhi, and Jesus of Nazareth, to name a few. And while I’m at it, Tennessee is almost certainly a fine place, but to my way of thinking, no state that doesn’t have any coastline either along ocean or Great Lake is in the “Best state” conversation. But that’s just me and my love of great bodies of water talking….)

:: You know that icy stab of fear that penetrates your chest when you realise you’ve made a huge mistake? (Oh, do I ever…!)

:: Imagine you’ve been following Harry Potter and Voldemort’s conflicts all the way from the first book to the seventh book. Harry and Voldemort are finally battling it out face-to-face. It’s a legit battle, think of the movie version. Then suddenly, someone stronger, even more evil appears and defeats Voldemort, and we find out the seventh book isn’t the last book.

:: Let me ask you a question: after you heard Louis CK’s rant, did you step away from your screens for even an hour? Or did you “like” it, forward it and then go right back to playing Candy Crush Saga? Or checking your emails? Or tweeting something about whatever exciting sandwich you ate today? And if you did, do you often take the advice of rich people who don’t have the same daily grind that you do? Sure, it’s nice to pull over and listen to a Bruce Springsteen song and have an emotional moment, especially when you don’t have a “9 to 5” you have to get to. But a lot of other people want to check the news and need to stay in touch with work. (Aaron thinks that LouisCK is as full of crap as I did last year. Great minds think alike and all that! Speaking of which, I need to return to that topic, now that I actually have a smartphone….)

:: Arthur Chu’s play does not bother me. (Me either. I don’t know what the big deal is. It boils down to “But that’s not how they’ve always played!”, plus, I think, a bit of the old “Oooooh, Chinese guy.” Ken Jennings did some of these things, but geez, look up “Nice white guy next door” in the dictionary, and it’s his picture you’ll find there.)

:: Because in the meantime, it’s the story that matters, and nothing is as joyous as loving the story you’re telling. I remind myself to just immerse myself in the story and that’s what’s important and the rest will come as it comes. And I trust that it will come.

:: Hello? Anybody out there? It’s good to see you all again. It’s been far too long. You’re probably wondering just what the hell happened and where I’ve been, and why it’s taken so long to get this place back in business again. At least… I hope you’re invested enough to be curious about all that. (Jason Bennion is blogging again, huzzah!)

More next week!

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