Here There be Whales

Taxes

2008-09-05T17:23:00.001-07:00

This is something of a follow-up to the previous post about Sarah Palin. This is what I mean when I say it pisses me off that Republicans play the populist card. Sarah Palin says in her speech that Obama wants to raise taxes--your taxes, which presumably means the taxes of the average American. McCain made a similar claim during the Saddleback meeting, in the same answer that included his famous "I dunno. Five million dollars?" quip. Obama wants to raise taxes, the Republicans want to lower them.

Now read this comparison of each of their tax plans from the Washington Post. As far as I can see, the only taxes Obama is raising is for the upper 1.1% income bracket. The rest of us actually get a tax break. For the bottom sixty percent, where I fall and so does practically every person I've ever known, it averages out to about a 3.8% decrease. Now, McCain is lowering taxes for everybody--that's true--but the upper 1.1% gets an average 3.9% decrease, while the lower sixty will enjoy less than half a percent decrease in our taxes.

To me, this is a no-brainer. I've said this before. You tax the rich more heavily than the poor because they have more to give. When you're doling out tax breaks, you give it to people who are struggling before you give it to people have more than they need. You help people who can't get their kids through college before you help people who have enough money to send their kids to private preschools.

PS

I just read my friend Bonnie's blog, and I think she's pretty spot-on about who Sarah Palin reminds me of:

Yep. Spot on. Beyond just the looks, the comparison's are pretty impressive. I mean, except for the tax plans.

RNC

2008-09-05T08:33:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine in the program had mentioned he thought Sarah Palin's speech was excellent, so I thought I'd give it a listen. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, partially because she stays away from the really crazy shit she believes in (like teaching creationism in schools) or her hypocritical stance on abortion (she says her daughter's pregnancy was a personal choice within her family, so why shouldn't other families get that same choice?) or her disturbingly unempathetic stance on gay marriage (she's against it, surprise surprise, but claims she has gay friends; so, I guess that's just a big fuck you to them, huh?), but it still nauseates me every time candidates get up and play their "Aw shucks, I guess I'm just a small-town girl/boy with nothing on my mind but your best interests...that's why I want to drill for oil." Yeah. Never mind that Palin has ties to oil companies and, like Papa Cheney before her, has only to gain financially from drilling. She's only thinking of your happiness, completely unbiased.

Beyond that, the overall tone of her quips against Obama were just more of the same snide, mean-spirited jabs that the Republicans have fallen back on for the last eight years. It's the same sort of shit that people who like Anne Coulter (ugh...sorry...that phrase just made me throw up in my mouth a little) consider a witty barb. But it isn't wit. It's snide. It's condescending, both to her opponent and her audience. It plays on the worst, most petty tendencies in the American people. In short, it tells me Sarah Palin is the same kind of cynical, self-serving politician I've seen sitting in office for the last eight years.

It's time we were done with that. It's time we replaced these bastards with people who see governing our country as something really serious, people who respect government and, more importantly, who respect us enough to say "You are bigger than this." I want someone in my government who will call on us to be more than petty and self-serving, who believes we are big enough to come together as a society. That, make no mistake, isn't McCain. It isn't Palin.

Anyway, here's the speech, both text and video. Enjoy.

Well, this is Just Unacceptable

2008-09-02T19:50:00.000-07:00

I realize this blog has been silent for a long while, and it'll probably go back to being that way soon. Sorry for the tease. Suffice to say, I'm busy.

What's rousted me out of silence is the news that, three journalists for Democracy Now! were among the protesters arrested on the first day of the RNC. The show's producers, Nicole Salazar and Sharif Abdel Kouddous, were arrested during a protest while trying to leave the area after police told them to do so (read this transcript of the event and watch the video; she clearly identifies herself as press). The show's host, Amy Goodman, was arrested shortly after while trying to find out from police the status of her two coleagues. Or to put it more simply, the three were arrested while trying to gather news. Seriously. Watch the videos and tell me if there's anything on them that seems arrestable or worthy of charging with felony riot charges (which is what her producers were charged with...for running backward...while crying out, "Press! Press!").

What gets me is not just the arrest itself, which, after the last eight years actually doesn't surprise me (and how sad is that?). What gets me is the police chief's response to the reasons why the incident happened:

The chief said that he'd yet to review the specifics of Monday's incident. But he said that police seek to give ample warning before breaking up what they deem as unlawful assembly, and that if journalists don't clear the scene, he added, it is difficult for officers to look at protesters and reporters and "to make those kinds of fine distinctions."

Fine distinctions? The press are easily identifiable because they wear press passes, which are big dangly name tags with the word "press" written out in big block letters for all to see. Often, they're brightly colored. Not exactly what I'd call a fine distinction to make. And if that wasn't enough, the producer kept announcing that she's press, both during the arrest and after, while she was sitting and awaiting a medic. So, no. That's not an acceptable reason for nabbing someone and throwing them in jail and charging them with felony riot charges. Not at all.

The Swelter

2008-06-10T13:26:00.001-07:00

A couple of days ago, I was down the shore visiting my father. We had this lovely weather for three days. Seventy degrees, a nice ocean breeze blowing inland. It was so beautiful that I took a bike ride to celebrate. A nice long one. Ten miles or so. Late Saturday night, the swelter blew in. I woke up in the middle of the night sticking to my sheets. The air had gone still and the ceiling fan wasn't doing a thing to stir it up. I spent the rest of the night rolling over and over, looking for the comfortable sleeping position. Around eight, I finally gave up on sleep.

Summer is officially here. Not in an astrological sense, of course--solstice is still a couple of weeks off--but damn the stars, the sweltering heat outside confirms it. My insomnia confirms it. With it, all of my productivity has completely evaporated. Hell, I'm easily distracted in the best of weather. In heat like this, I can barely put together two coherent sentences without staring off into the distance and wondering how on earth I'm going to get out of here. Seriously, it's taking multiple cups of coffee, a mind-focusing playlist, and 1000 BTUs of air conditioning just to finish this paragraph.

Still, I've been keeping busy. As the semester came to an end, I slowly started gathering all of the books I wanted to read last year, but couldn't, since I was reading other books for classes. Over the course of a couple of months, what started as one or two books I wanted to read has grown to a stack of books up to my hips, which I can't possibly hope to finish before the year's out, let alone the summer (one of my students this semester told me he reads a book a day during the summer...I'm lucky if I can finish one in a week). I'm whittling my way through it, hoping I'll manage to make at least a dent before I have to start teaching in August. I just finished reading The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories, an excellent and eclectic collection edited by my chair, Ben Marcus. Though not everything in it is really my cup of tea, there was not a single story that didn't grab me and keep my attention all the way through. Currently I'm reading Paul LaFarge's Haussmann, which is a fun read and full of all sorts of nerdy references about Paris.

In addition, I took a position as one of the reading staff for Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art, which is Columbia's journal of literature. And art. I've basically been reading slush, which is the unsolicited manuscripts the journal receives from various aspiring writers. People like me, essentially, who aren't well-known enough that magazines ask for their work. Some of the stories are really excellent, but for the most part the stuff we read is really awful. Actually, awful isn't the word. Boring is the word. Earlie this year, Stephen King published an essay titled "What Ails the Short Story," which basically sums up my feelings while I read slush. The whole article is here, but the part that I'm thinking of goes like this:

Last year, I read scores of stories that felt ... not quite dead on the page, I won’t go that far, but airless, somehow, and self-referring. These stories felt show-offy rather than entertaining, self-important rather than interesting, guarded and self-conscious rather than gloriously open, and worst of all, written for editors and teachers rather than for readers.

It's the last one that keeps getting me. I think ninety percent of the stories I've rejected, it was because they felt like the author was playing it too safe. They're not bad stories, exactly--in fact, some have been absolutely functional pieces--but they don't do anything to define their own space in the literary canon. Either the author's voice is too weak to drown out the rest of the world and induce (as Ben Marcus would have it) the literary hallucination that makes us feel really immersed in a good story, or the subject is too uninteresting to keep me enthralled, but the end result is the same. A story that's easy to put down and forget about. The problems these stories have are, I should say, problems I see in my own work. Timidness. Over-explanation. An overly soft touch. It comes from wanting to be liked. To seem nice. Pleasant.

More and more as I read, both in my every day reading and my slush reading, I find myself looking for stories that are just slightly flawed. Not so badly that they can't keep it together, but just enough that what I'm looking at doesn't feel too constructed by human hands. I look for the glorious messes, the stories where I can see that the author isn't entirely in control but is reaching a little outside of their own grasp. These are the stories that grab my attention and keep it. The ones I want to publish right away before anyone else gets the privilege.

And that's about it for now. I'm planning to spend the summer writing, and hopefully you'll see this blog updated more regularly. I'm a little sad I missed out on the primary season, but really, did the country need another uninformed political blogger? I didn't think so, either. All the same, go Obama, and that's the last I'll say on the subject.

I Turned 3O and All I Blogged Was this Lousy Cartoon

2008-04-13T16:42:00.000-07:00

Well, at least I'm not this far gone.

(Yeah, I know, this is a lame post, but I'm busy. Much to blog about later.)

New Stories

2008-03-09T13:12:00.000-07:00

I've put up a couple of new stories on the Stories I Tell blog. This semester, I'm taking two seminars that are fairly heavy on writing, one with David Plante and the other with Kelly Link. The Plante seminar is focusing heavily on a structuralist view of writing, the idea of which is that you can analyze writing from a less organic place by examining the simple facts of the events in a story. Which sounds really dull when I write it out, but is actually a wonderful and freeing way of approaching a piece. Last week, we created fabulas--time index grids outlining the basic facts of a piece--and then traded the fabulas with other people to see what would come of it when they fleshed it out. The first story, "Birds and Water," is the result of my fleshing out. I should give credit to Ramon Isao, who wrote the initial fabula this story is based on; he really did the heavy lifting with this piece. All the other stuff is just me having fun.

The second piece, "Cyril Shot: Private Eyes" is for my Kelly Link seminar, which is focusing on genre fiction pieces, specifically about transformation. Earlier in the semester, we read an essay by Samuel Delaney that talks about the various signifiers readers pick up when they read a piece of fiction, and the way that genre affects our interpretation of various sentences. He uses the example that the sentences, "Her world exploded," and, "He turned on his left side," take on entirely different meanings for a reader of science fiction than they do for someone reading more mimetic fiction. In response to these ideas, I decided to create a piece around the idea of eyes and seeing. Hence, Cyril Shot. It's much more genre than I normally work in, but I like it, and it's not bad for a day's work.

Enjoy.

Also, as an aside, my long-time friend, Miranda has put up a blog. Check it out.

Experimental Skillet

2008-03-02T07:15:00.000-08:00

One of my more interesting classes this semester is a course in experimental writing with David Plante. The original title for the class was "The Short Story," but basically every class David Plante teaches that isn't workshop becomes experimental writing. Which is lovely, actually, since it's had me writing a great deal without worrying too much about what I'm saying.

Anyway, one of the major experiments we're working on this semester is trying to find a way to use the computer to expand our writing. We're trying to see what the computer does that can't be done on a typewriter. I decided at an early point in the semester to play with using the computer to create an interactive environment, something that is more three dimensional than what you experience on the page alone. So, I expanded my skillet story and came up with this:

Every night, as was his custom, my father would come to the kitchen before my mother made dinner, pull a copper skillet out from behind all of the other pans and wave it over the other kitchenware in an act of ritual blessing. The food processor, the stick blender, the metal and rubber spatulas, the Japanese knives that promised to julienne a tin can should we ever choose to include one in a salad, and so forth. Every cooking implement we had, dad would wave the skillet back and forth above them, his lips moving in slow, silent prayer. He was not religious in any other way, my father. He was, in fact, an atheist, and he would happily expound to anyone who would listen on the ills of needless ritual. This skillet, however, he held up as a sacred object, and by the sheer act of waving it over the other cooking tools, he believed that the other tools in the kitchen would be inspired to the greatness this skillet knew.

Enjoy. If I pulled it off, you should have felt, while you read it, as if you were walking down a hallway, opening doors and peering in as you went.

And Here We Go Again

2008-01-27T10:58:00.000-08:00

The semester officially started this week, and it looks like I'm going to have a good one this time around. Workshop, especially, looks like it's going to be good. Before we got started on the semester, the teacher, Jaime Manrique, had us all submit a few pages of work to each other, just to break the ice. The stories people submitted were wonderful. Engaging and passionate. Excellent work. It's nice to look forward to reading what people turn in. Jaime, himself, has a reputation for being a tough critic, but he's fair and very supportive.

I'm also taking Yiddish this semester, which I almost dropped after the first class. I took it, thinking that since it was similar to German, I might have a good chance at picking it up quickly. Which is true on the speaking end of things. Unfortunately, on the writing end, Yiddish is written in the Hebrew alphabet, something I did not know when I signed up for the class. Being the big Goy that I am, I've never read Hebrew, except when it's transliterated. I decided to stick through it, though. I'm not sure I'll ever get the hang of the alphabet, but that's fine. I'm not looking to write for the Forward, just to be able to order at a deli. So I should be OK. Also a friend of mine in the program is taking a bilingually taught Yiddish literature class, so she and I have agreed to start meeting to help each other. I'll help her with the Yiddish lit, and she'll help me reinforce what I learn.

For those of you wishing to pick up a bit of Yiddish on your own, may I recommend starting with the Bulbes song. Mmmmm...bulbes an Zuntik!

Communist Sympathizing Little Punks

2008-01-10T17:33:00.000-08:00

My eyes are still pink. At night, I can hear them muttering their Marxist propaganda to my ears and my nose and my lips, trying to subvert the rest of my face to their insidious empire's cause. I've been inside for three days in an attempt to contain the situation, lest a plague of antibourgeois body parts rise through the city. Can't have that. It starts with the eyes. Always the eyes.

Tomorrow I break quarantine. I'm done. I've been inside for three days straight watching movies and playing interactive fiction on my computer. I don't think I can do it anymore. I need fresh air and fresh food and fresh vantage points. Literal fresh vantage points. I've been staring at the same four white walls so long I'm starting to think I live in an asylum.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Catherine Lacey...

A little earlier this week, I received a comment from my friend Lacey that she has a blog and has linked mine to hers, and I kind of thought, "I'll give her a little while to get the thing off its feet before I put it up." That was four days ago, and her blog has not only gotten off its feet, but has somehow learned to run before it learned to walk. That's not including the two other blogs she has up. Wow.

Anyway, she's a good writer and a lovely person (and apparently quite the cook/arts-and-crafts maker), so check out her blog. Lord knows it's more active than this one.

Oh, and she's funny, too. Did I mention she's funny?

Pink

2008-01-08T10:41:00.000-08:00

When I woke up this morning, I was somewhat alarmed to find I couldn't open my left eye along with my right. As I suspect is true with most of you, it is my normal routine to open both at once, but today, my right eye opened, while my left remained shut, cemented in place by unpleasant goop that had solidified to my eyelashes in the night. Unpleasant goop is, luckily, water soluble, so I was able to steam my eye open in the shower, a little like prying a stamp off of a letter. When I looked at the eye underneath it, I found it was pink, which, it turns out, is the first sign of pink eye. Yep. I'm a walking conjunctivitis bomb just waiting to induce plague.

In the meantime, I've been working on a couple of short stories for a friendly bet I have going with a friend from the program. Since neither of us had been writing over the break, we agreed on New Year's Eve to write a story in a week and then hand it to the other. Didn't have to be a good story or a long story or anything. It just had to be a story. So I wrote a story about a skillet. Here it is.

Skillet

Every night before my mother made dinner, my father would pull a copper skillet out from behind all of the other pans and wave it over the other kitchenware in an act of ritual blessing. The food processor, the stick blender, the metal and rubber spatulas, the Japanese knives that promised to julienne a tin can should we ever choose to include one in a salad, and so forth. Every cooking implement we had, dad would wave the skillet back and forth above them, his lips moving in slow, silent prayer. My father wasn’t religious in any other way. He loathed church and aspired to atheism (though I think a smidgeon of belief still lingered from his Catholic upbringing), but this one thing he would do with ritual exactness at the same time and in the same way every night.

The skillet was an ancient thing, thin looking and dented all over from years of use. If you glanced at it in a junk shop, this skillet, you’d take it for junk destined for the melting pits. But its weight in your hands had presence, the way a stone left by a glacier has presence on a landscape. The skillet was handed down from man to man on my father’s side for ten generations, and possibly more. It had been hammered out of a single chunk of copper that one of our relatives had dug from the ground and purified in his own smelting pot. The date hammered onto the underside of the pot read 12 February, 1706, and next to it, faded almost to the point of illegibility was his name, Lazar. You could just make it out by tracing your finger along the bottom. Since then, the skillet had passed from hand to hand in our family.

There were a thousand stories surrounding this skillet. The family favorite—not mine, but the family’s—was that the skillet had cooked Marie Antoinette’s last meal, a plate of savory crepes, when she was held away from the mob at the Tuileries. I always thought that story smacked of a tall tale. How would this skillet have escaped the mob in Lazar’s possession or his son’s or grandson’s after the revolution? And anyway, who the hell was Marie Antoinette that she should eat crepes while the people around her made due off root vegetables? The best story about the skillet was its inclusion in the accidental death of my great-grandfather’s cousin Albert. One October evening, while pregnant with their third son, his wife Alana woke in the middle of the night in need of something to get her back to sleep. She was bringing a pot of milk and sherry to a slow boil in the skillet when someone grabbed her from behind. She wheeled around, grabbing as she did so the only thing she could think to defend herself with, that being the skillet, and smacked the person behind her in the skull with it. Cousin Albert died of a concussion in St. Anne’s hospital later that evening. The impression of his head is still visible along the bottom edge of the skillet to this day.

Since that night, it was considered taboo in my family to use the skillet as a cooking implement. My great-grandfather refused to use it out of deference to his cousin (it was all he could do, in fact, to convince Alana not to sell the skillet for the scrap money), and the tradition continued after that. Stripped of common use, the skillet took on a kind of religious power. When family would come to visit, they would ask to see Lazar’s skillet and they would hold it up in the light and run their fingers along the name on the bottom and the dent and the spot of oxidation that people in my family insist is remnants of the sauce from the Widow Capet’s last meal.

There was only one meal I ever saw cooked in the skillet. Beef liver, thinly sliced and sautéed rare with red kale and garlic—allegedly Cousin Albert’s favorite meal, which I always thought spoke poorly of Cousin Albert—followed by crepes suzette. Dad cooked this meal once a year, on Valentine’s Day, and in the event that there was a birth in the family. Afterward, he washed it and dried it and held it out to us to inspect before he set it back into the place where it lived year-round, at the back of the cabinet.

Arlington

2008-01-06T20:39:00.000-08:00

I'm back in New York. Actually, I was back several days ago, but somewhere between here and there, I picked up one mother of a cold, which has had me waylaid for the better part of a week. Finally I'm feeling well enough to compose a thought or two.

The trip to Arlington was a good one. It's been a long time since my mother and I took a road trip--at least since college--and I'd forgotten what an enjoyable travel companion she is. We spent most of the ride just chatting away about everything. Haven't done that in a while, so it was good to catch up. Arlington, itself, is a strange place for me. Since I was twelve, I've been to the national cemetery for more funerals than any other; in fact, I'm pretty sure the first funeral I ever went to was there. I have three family members buried there. My grandfather and grandmother and my Aunt Marie, who died in the first Gulf War. As my mom and I drove through the town, I realized I could pick out landmarks from the various funerals, like the diner we ate in after my grandfather's funeral and the military housing we stayed in on Fort Meyer while we waited for my aunt's body to arrive.

It's strange to me to have a relationship with a cemetery, especially this one, but I suppose there was a time when all people had personal relationships with their cemeteries. When they dug their own graves and said their own last rites. I do like the funerals at Arlington. There's so much ceremony in them, so much respect for the dead. The other funerals I've been to were swift assembly-line affairs. A quick in and out. I don't care for those. I want a funeral with some thought to it.

After that, we went out for dinner with the family--many of whom I hadn't seen in years--and then drove home.

Und dann...

When I got home, I was happy to see one of the books I recently bought from Amazon has arrived. That would be Low Life, a portrait of 19th century New York desolates and delinquents. I'm looking forward to starting on it. I may have to vary between that and the other books I'm reading. One is Pandora's Hope, which is essays on the reality of science studies. I picked it up while looking for a book on neuroscience and wasn't able to put it down in the bookstore. The other is Transactions in a Foreign Currency, short stories by Deborah Eisenberg, which came on a recommendation from a friend and hasn't been great, but hasn't been bad, either.

Meanwhile, in the last day or two, I downloaded and played a short interactive fiction game that made me remember an earlier plan I'd had to write a choose-your-own adventure book. I thought of this years ago, while walking home. I would write a real book--a really in-depth and literary book--that would also include a path you could choose yourself. As with choose-your-owns, it would be in second person, but unlike them, there would be no way to simply die. If you made a misstep, or made a decision that led you to a dead-end, it would take you back to the beginning of the book and you could start over again, or just go back to the page you left off from. Alternatively, if I wanted to get really complicated, I could write it so there were no dead-ends, just alternate possible endings. Either way, the thought had me really excited.

And with that, it's a quarter after one and the day has finally caught up with me sufficiently that I'm a little sleepy. So I'm off to bed, in the hopes tonight won't be as crazy and full of fever dreams as last night was.

PS

I've edited my FAQ to fill out a couple of the questions at the end, which I think petered off a bit in the first version of it. Can't have petering around here...no sir. Peter-free, this place is.

New Year, Slightly Used

2008-01-02T05:10:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year. There. I said it. I'm done.

The holidays really seemed to just zip by me this year. It's like they just sort of drove up next to me on the highway, asked for directions, and then left without saying goodbye or thanks or any of that. Christmas was like any other day with the family. New Years was like any other party where I didn't know anyone (which, these days, is most parties I go to). They've all been just days, like any other day. Which, I suspect, has always been what they are. But still.

In the meantime, I think I've figured out the source of my writing block. Essentially, I'm not writing because I keep thinking I ought to be writing. It's a little like lying in bed, trying to get to sleep when you're an insomniac. The more you lie there thinking, "I'm not sleeping," the less likely you are to sleep. So. I'm not writing. That's fine. I'm not the only one. Apparently, a lot of us haven't been so productive over break. And there's three weeks of break left in which to work.

And that's about it for today. I'm back in Pennsylvania getting ready to head off to Arlington to attend my grandmother's burial with my mother. After this trip, I swear I'm not leaving New York for another month, at least.

No Money Fun

2007-12-29T18:16:00.000-08:00

I promised myself I would write something today, because I haven't been writing and that's, well, a problem for me. I've been reading plenty, and making the most of my break, but no writing. Which is shit, really, because this is the best possible time I could have to sit back and work. No class work. No job responsibilities. Really nothing to do with my time but write. Or revise. Or blog. Which is about the lowest form of writing I could stoop to, and so here I am.

Aside from not writing, I've been enjoying my time off from classes. I've shuttled back and forth between here and Philly a couple of times, spent days hanging around with old friends, drunk enough coffee to bathe an infant. And there's at least three weeks left for adventuring and so much to see.

I realized the other day, after I spent a few hours wandering around the Met with a friend and didn't manage to scratch the surface of their exhibits, that there's really no excuse to ever get bored in this city. There's always something to see or do, much of which doesn't cost a dime. Parks, museums, art exhibits in public buildings. My friend Amanda found a store that has six floors of nothing but expensive textiles that will be lovely if I'm ever inclined to fondle the other half's linens for an hour or two (which happens more often than you'd think from a guy who doesn't know his own thread count).

One of the things that always frustrated me about Chicago is that it never seemed like I could get away with any no-money fun, unless I resorted to harassing people on the street (and I did from time to time). For all that NYC deserves its reputation as an expensive place to live--and it is--there's a nice balance it strikes in offering fun things to do for nothing. It's an aspect of this city I really love and need to take advantage of more often. Note to self.

Right. As blog entries go, I think I'll file that as one of the lesser ones, but for now, I need to go to sleep. Until next time...um...insert witty sign-off here.

FAQ

2007-12-19T11:01:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine in the Columbia writing program has an FAQ section on his Web site (that's Frequently Asked Questions, for those of you born in and around the nineteenth century), and I have to say, it makes me a little bit jealous of him. Mostly because it comprises, in nearly its entirety, the same questions I have on my Questions I Never Get Asked list. For example:

What do you read?
I’m by no means a fast reader though I do manage an average of 50 books a year, most being literary fiction, classics and contemporary alike. See Reading List for suggested titles.

Practically nobody asks me that when they find out I'm a writer. Nobody! It's a sin, frankly, because I have some pretty good taste in literature (The few questions on his list that I do get asked a lot are also on my Questions that Annoy Me list. Like, "Where do you get your ideas?" From my brain, typically.) Anyway, after much deliberation, and a few late-night conversations--possibly/probably including alcohol--I have decided that this blog needs an FAQ. So here they are, the questions everyone asks me all the time. In no particular order.

1. How do you spell that?
It's spelled R-O-S, as in Samuel-S, as in Samuel-I. As in, "Martini and Rossi," which is a vermouth company. Alternatively, you could think of it as being like Carlo Rossi, the maker of fine jug wines. Carlo is, in fact, my uncle from a somewhat estranged side of the family. We don't see him much, but I like to support the family business.

2. Paper or plastic?
Plastic, typically. I know it's not the most environmentally correct way to go on this particular question, but I find I have more use for plastic bags than I do for paper. I can store halved onions in plastic, for example, or any fruits and vegetables that would otherwise do poorly in my fridge. I've also made good use of plastic bags in place of bubble wrap for sending out delicate packages, whereas all I've ever done with paper bags is add them to the trash pile. Or, on occasion, made them into puppets for live-action versions of Fandango commercials.

3. How was your trip?
My trip was probably fine. I don't think I've ever taken a trip that didn't qualify as strictly fine. Which is to say, I've never had a trip take any disastrous turns, but I've also never had a trip so free of basic annoyances that it qualified as transcendent or even great. Most of the time, the trip does get me there and back, though, so I can't really complain. There was this one trip with my friend Holly, though, that went, not exactly disastrously, but kind of berserk.

We were driving from North Carolina to Philly together for the holidays, with a stopover somewhere in Delaware. Newark, I think. Somewhere in Virginia, about two hours south of Richmond, her car stalled and wouldn't get started again. Holly called AAA, and in short order, we were met by two mechanics--one large, who we named the Big Guy, the other small, who we called the Little Guy. The mechanics took a look at the car and said something very necessary had died. I think it was the alternator, but I wouldn't know. So the alternator died and the nearest alternator was two weeks away. We asked for a ride back to their shop to make a phone call, and they told us if we did that, one of us would have to ride in the car. Which was on back of the tow truck. Since neither Holly or I thought we'd be able to live with ourselves if the other person died while on back of the truck, we both decided to ride in the car. It was a little like tailgating at high speed. The two mechanics, seemingly oblivious to the danger Holly and I were in, sped down the highway and off onto a few winding back roads, until we were at their mechanic shop. Once there, Holly and I determined somehow that our best bet was to get one of the guys to take us to Richmond to catch a train. The Little Guy, whose name was Shorty, as luck would have it, volunteered for the task, and off we went. This time inside the cab of the car. Upon arriving in Richmond, we couldn't find the train station, but were able to find the airport. There, we tipped Shorty and thanked him, then bought a plane ticket at the last minute for Philly. This was back in the day when you could still buy a last-minute plane ticket. And with that, the adventure ended.

But yeah, other than that, my trip was fine.

4. Why do you ask?
No particular reason. I was just interested. Really. More often than not, unless the thing I'm asking about is really dire, like "Do I have skin cancer?" or really official, like "Where do I sign?" I'm just asking because I was interested. If you have to ask me why I'm asking, odds are good, this is the answer.

5. What's up?
Not much. What's up with you? Unless there's something madly exciting happening to me, I'd rather hear what's going on with you. Hence the infrequency with which I update this blog. And the number of women I've dated who claim I never tell them anything about myself. Honestly, I'm not that interesting.

6. Are you hungry?
I'm not particularly hungry at the moment, but I could probably eat. I think I've actually come to this answer out of a need to be vague in response to a vague and kind of leading question. The way it goes in my family is that they ask me if I'm hungry, and I say yes, they immediately feed me when I get home. If I say no, they've been known to delay dinner. Which is really the exact opposite of what I want at any given time. Unless I'm really starving, in which case I'll just fix myself a snack, I don't need to be fed the immediate instant I get hungry. So I always find it best to cop to having, not a sense of hunger exactly, but a general disposition towards eating. That hedges my bets nicely.

7. How long are you going to keep this joke going?
I guess that's really it, but in truth, I could keep going for as long as it takes for the joke to stop being funny. And then some. It takes a long time before I cut off a thought that's made me laugh. I mean, take this one. It continues to amuse me so much that I've actually gone back, now, weeks later and added to it. Because there was unfinished tomfoolery to be had, and I cannot have that. That's how dedicated I am to a joke that's only modestly funny to me. Imagine what I do when the joke really gets me off. Go on...imagine. I'll wait.

And there you go. The questions I get asked with the most frequency.

In Philly

2007-12-18T17:44:00.000-08:00

My semester ended a couple of days ago, leaving me with six weeks to read and write and get ready for the next semester. At least, I think it's six weeks. I mean to spend this time actively preparing for next semester, finishing up a few stories and getting started on the novel I've had brewing in my head for a while. One can only hope it'll go over well. In the meantime, I have time to enjoy NYC a bit before I have to start working again.

The semester ended well, by the way. I think I'm finally getting the hang of this grad school thing. Which is easier said than done, really. It took me most of the semester to realize I was having a hard time adjusting to the change of scenery and the new pacing of my life. After six years, I'm not used to school anymore. I'm definitely not used to being surrounded by writers. Honestly, and this was pretty dumb of me in retrospect, I thought I'd just plop right down into a new city, new life, new everything and just merge without a blink. As it turns out, I needed a bit of time, but I think I have the hang of it, at last. I'm looking forward to next semester.

Family news...
My grandmother died over the weekend. Apparently, she hadn't been eating much of anything for a while (something I noticed over Thanksgiving), and it finally took its toll on her. Truthfully, I suspect she decided it was time to let go, and so she did. She died happy, and peacefully, and she died with most of her faculties intact. Apparently, one of her last requests was for a glass of scotch. Grandma liked scotch, and I suspect she just wanted to get a last taste in before she went.

Personally, I'm relatively OK. Most of the time, deaths in my family don't bother me so much. I don't know exactly why, but I like to think I just see death as a part of life. Something I couldn't control and wouldnt'. Plus which, we've been expecting this to come for a long time. A few years ago, grandma's cardiologist gave her a prognosis of just a couple of months, which she shoved in his face and turned into three good years. I think my grandmother just decided she'd had a good run of it and let go. Hopefully, I'll have that much control over it when my time comes.

Anyway, I'm in Philly tonight. The actual funeral isn't until January, but we're holding a viewing tomorrow, and I thought I should be here for it. Half the reason I came out to the East Coast was so that I could be with my family when they need me. I figure I should make the best of it.

It's strange. My grandfather--her husband--died around this time, almost to the day. I remember it started me writing a novel I had been putting off for a while (and then subsequently never finished). Maybe now I should finish it.

So that's that. Next time, I'll have an FAQ section for you guys. That's right...I get some frequently asked questions.

It's Finally Here

2007-11-28T07:22:00.000-08:00

I'm not even going to bother with words for this one. The video below speaks for itself.

I take that back. I'll bother with a few words to say that the large version is up here.

My Disembodied Head

2007-11-27T08:09:00.000-08:00

I finally got off my ass and shot some footage of myself for the Fetus Joe movie and sent it off to Sam, who then chroma-keyed my body out of the shot and left my head just floating there in the doorway. Like so:

It doesn't look like much now, but when it's in motion, my head is a powerhouse like you wouldn't believe. Oh, but you'd better believe it, because if you don't, my head will unleash pain upon you like you never believed was possible.

Anyway, I have to write some narration for the piece, and then the completed video will be, um, complete.

In the meantime, classes have resumed here. A few opportunities have risen and passed, and a few stories have started gestating in my head. I've started making mead to ferment over the winter, which has begun to settle in beautifully, in those wonderful chilly days that make a city foggy and grey and beautifully industrial feeling. I can't wait for snow.

Aaaand, We're Back.

2007-11-22T18:12:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time, I had a blog called Here There Be Whales, and it was a pretty good blog. Made some people laugh. Made other people cry. Sometimes it did both. Usually by accident. Then I started on this whole crazy graduate school what to make myself a writer, and I stopped writing regularly. Which is odd, isn't it?

I think so, too, so I've decided to start updating this page more regularly again. There's a couple of reasons for this. One is that I'm living in a new city, which means a lot of new experiences I really should be sorting through. The other is that I'm honestly a little blocked in my writing. Haven't had a new idea in a while, and I'm kind of hoping writing here will help me start writing out there again. And finally, there's the fact that my dad has started a blog called Pan Zen Zero as a way of bridling his rage at the current state of American politics. It's pretty funny.

Anyway, send me your weirdnesses and your ephemera. I need things to write about.

More Fetusi

2007-10-15T12:43:00.000-07:00

Just a brief entry.

The semifinal cut of the Fetus Joe movie is up online at Sam's Web site. The clip he's waiting on is of me, so I need to get off my ass and do it. If anyone knows someone with a video camera in NYC and a tripod, send them my way!

Fetus Joe vs. the World!

Rumor has is John Williams is signed on to do the soundtrack.

Fetus Joe in 3 D

2007-10-11T19:56:00.000-07:00

I know I've been conspicuously absent from this blog for the last month or so, which sucks for the two people out there still reading this thing. Sorry, but as it turns out, there's actually a lot of work that goes into school. Something along the lines of three or four hundred pages of reading a week, not counting the stories I read for my workshop.

That's not to say I'd rather be back doing nothing at a desk all day...not a bit. I'm just a little bit tapped, is all. If I'm being honest, I'm starting to question whether I belong here, really, as a writer or as a person. Which is silly, but is something that weighs on me.

Enough of that. While I've been staring at my screens and wondering if anything I write is actually any good, Sam has been working on the Fetus Joe movie, which is undeniably good. He's got some hack on to write voice over narration for a good deal of it. Some kind of stream of consciousness bullshit...who knows what these Hollywood desk-jockeys write about these days? Anyway, the rough cut is up at Sam's blog, and rumor has it, there's footage out there of an exploding cat. Here's the rough cut. The aspect ratio's wrong, but I'm pretty impressed by the fact that he got the rubber fetus puppet to defy gravity like that. Also that he made a rubber fetus puppet...that's a skill you can take to the bank. Or David Cronenberg. One or the other.

Good deeds

2007-09-11T08:30:00.000-07:00

This is the second part to my special two-part September 11 post. I normally don't commemorate this day at all, but Sue sent this to me, and I like it. So read on.

NEW YORK - On Sept. 11, Jacob Sundberg of San Antonio has pledged to make eye contact and smile at everyone he meets. Kaitlin Ulrich will bring goody baskets to the police and fire departments in and around Philadelphia. And 100 volunteers from New York – 9/11 firefighters and family members among them – are going to Groesbeck, Texas, to rebuild a house destroyed by a tornado last December.

This is a minute sampling of the hundreds of thousands of people who have pledged to memorialize those killed on 9/11 by doing something good for others.

The heroic acts of all those killed trying to save others that September morning has spawned a growing grass-roots movement. The goal is to ensure that future generations remember not just the horror of the attacks, but also the extraordinary outpouring of humanity during the days, weeks, and months that followed.

"It was the worst possible day imaginable, and in some ways, a remarkable day, too, in the way in which people responded," says David Paine, cofounder of myGoodDeed.org. "We need to rekindle the way we came together in the spirit of 9/11: It would be almost as much a tragedy to lose that lesson."

Sept. 11 has inspired dozens of philanthropic efforts – from groups dedicated to building memorials to foundations designed to improve education in the Middle East. But myGoodDeed has a more universal goal: to turn 9/11 into a day dedicated to doing good – from small, simple things like Lisa Scheive's pledge to help stranded turtles cross the road in Pompano Beach, Fla., to lifesaving efforts, such as John Feal's decision in New York to donate one of his kidneys to help a seriously ill 9/11 worker.

The idea has been endorsed by members of Congress, and at myGoodDeed's urging, President Bush for the first time this year included a call for volunteering in his annual 9/11 proclamation.

After major disasters, Americans have historically tapped a deep reserve of compassion and reached out to others. But in the months and years that follow, those compassionate and civic urges tend to recede. Studies at Harvard's Saguaro Seminar on Civic Engagement in America found that in as few as five months after 9/11, most Americans had gone back to their daily lives and were not more engaged as they said they'd hoped to be. Part of the goal of turning 9/11 into a national day of service is to remind Americans of the inherent joy of giving and to hopefully spur volunteering and charitable acts throughout the year.

"I don't know of any research that's been done on one day of service, but studies have shown that people who do volunteering in high school are more likely to volunteer throughout their lives," says Thomas Sander, executive director of the Saguaro Seminar.

The idea of turning 9/11 into a day of service, charity, and good deeds came from the family and friends of one man: Glenn Winuk, a volunteer fireman and lawyer who worked a block and a half from the World Trade Center. After he helped evacuate his Broadway law offices, he grabbed a medic's bag and ran toward the smoke pouring from the South Tower. That's where his remains were found after the towers fell. Mr. Paine and Glenn's brother Jay had been friends for years. They decided that turning 9/11 into a day of service was best way to memorialize Glenn.

"It completely reflects the way my brother lived his life, and it also specifically reflects how he died," says Mr. Winuk, myGoodDeed.org cofounder. "He laid his life on the line for other people that day."

In 2002, Paine and Winuk sent e-mails to friends and family and suggested they do a good deed, such as donate a day's pay on 9/11. Then the idea evolved, and they founded myGoodDeed.org. In 2004, 100,000 visited their website and pledged to do a good deed on 9/11. This year, those pledging number more than 250,000.

"A lot of people don't know what to do on 9/11," says Paine. "This hits people in their heart and their soul. It connects with something that's fundamental."

I like the idea of taking this day to remember the good things that people did for each other on it. Particularly in light of what's followed, of our government's cynical attempt to use that tragedy as an excuse to push forward its agenda in Iraq. It's good to remember that, for a brief moment, we dropped all of our bullshit and showed our best. I'm not sure what good deed I'm going to do, but I'll do something.

Jakal is a Wily Dog, and a Cold Lover

2007-09-06T07:13:00.000-07:00

So I've survived my first week of classes. It started last Thursday with a class on mosaic literature and ended yesterday evening with a lecture on Elizabeth Bishop. Suffice to say, I love my classes, and I'm a big fan of my fellow classmates. In my first workshop, I volunteered to present first, which meant I had a story due in two days. Beyond that, there's not a whole lot to tell. I could go into further depth, but really, do you want a blow by blow of my first week? No, I didn't think so.

What you will find interesting is the videos that Sam has been making. Well, you'll possibly not find them so interesting as amusing. It seems there is a Jackal loose in the Virginia Stage Company, and boy, is he ever causing problems. Here's the first bit of video evidence. And as though that wasn't bad enough, he's started breaking hearts. (Here are Sam's two blogs on the subject. Blog 1. Blog 2.) Rumor has it, there might be some professional ramifications for Jackal's actions...Virginia Stage apparently frowns on interspecies relationships among its employees.

And That's How I Got Here

2007-08-28T17:53:00.000-07:00

Where to begin?

So much has happened over the last three weeks. To start with, I've found a place. The leaf in the wind approach that I decided to take worked out. In the eleventh hour, the university came through with an apartment a block or so from campus. I'm sitting in it now, and it really is just a fantastic place. Large and well-lit with plenty to see and do all around me and a friendly room mate from Texas who is probably more daunted here than I am. It's an apartment I could live in for a while. Really. I love it.

So, I found a place. And I sold my stuff in Chicago--as much of it as I could bear to part with, which turned out to be a lot of it--and packed up the rest into a little corner of my studio, where I stared at it and contemplated how odd it is that six years of my life, messy and crude and convoluted as it has been, tucked so neatly into a square space.

When that was done, I said some goodbyes. The night it stormed so badly the city blacked out, we went to Joey's Brickhouse and Greg, the owner, invited us in to sit and drink for free by candlelight. So we did. And we ate donuts and had a great time until it was so late I couldn't keep my eyes open. And the next night, Ian hosted us at his place, and I did the same. And on the third night, I did not rest, but went to karaoke with friends who were noble and good enough to brave frat boys singing "Thank God I'm a Country Boy" in horrible, screeching tones.

When I had said my goodbyes, I got into a van with a guy who was also going my way. And we drove. On the day we left, an accident delayed us three hours. Then traffic in Chicago delayed us another two, and for all intents and purposes, it seemed like the city was doing everything in its power to keep me from leaving. Which a part of me kept wishing it had. Wishing I'd get one more day to enjoy it, to spend with friends, to bike around the lake. When my things were packed and we started to drive, the guy I was going with asked if I was sad to be going, and I couldn't really answer because if I had, I wouldn't have been able to keep myself from crying.

We drove two days cross country, and when we got to Philly, I dropped my stuff off at my grandparents' house. My apartment here, while nice, is still occuppied by a guy. He's moving out on Friday, but the university doesn't know that yet, so they think he'll be here for another three weeks. Until he tells them otherwise, I don't get to move my stuff in. So I dropped most of it off in Philly and will get it back later. Until then, all I have are my clothes, my computer, my air mattress, and my bedding. I've moved to places with less.

So I keep reminding myself that tomorrow is orientation and that a week from today classes start and that riding this current has taken me far and that it will take me farther (hmmm...by a curious typo, that phrase nearly became "it will take me father." Perhaps I should warn him...and get my accent checked).

Well-Educated Hobo

2007-08-20T13:32:00.000-07:00

As the time for me to move to NYC gets closer, I should be getting more and more frightened, but somehow I'm not. I still don't have a place to live and I still don't know exactly what I'm going to do for money and I still don't know...

That's right, I don't have a place to live yet, though I'm moving in a week. I thought I had a place lined up. When I left NYC, I had visited a broker and set up a place to live, but by the time the landlords had processed my application, it all fell through. They had given the place to someone else. There was another apartment, my broker explained, and they would give me that one if I wanted it, but it was smaller and the layout was lousy. And from there it stretched on for weeks, with me on the phone with my broker three times a day, receiving pictures of apartments and promises of leases, maybe. My heart slowly sank and this deal slowly, but surely started to feel worse and worse.

Really, all the time gave me was a chance to think and to resort my priorities. What did I really want in an apartment? What was I going to have when I got to NYC. How are my finances going to be over the next year? Then an opportunity came up. Some friends of my friends here needed a room mate, so I e-mailed them to see about moving in. I was two days too late, but it set me to thinking. I like living alone, but living with room mates means my rent wouldn't be as high. My place would be furnished. I would have people to explore with, if I want. It would be a good way to start my time in NYC. So I called my broker and told him that I'm going it alone. He instantly offered to refund my deposit and said he understood.

So that's where I am. Scouring the listings on Craigslist looking for people to live with near me. I don't have a place yet. I might have only a sofa to sleep on when I get to NYC. And yet I'm not frightened. OK...I'm a little frightened, but with the sense that this will all work out. It will all work out. At this point, I've been through so much crap that has finally worked out in the end that I have nothing but faith that I will find a place. Even if it isn't the perfect place, it will be better than paying a broker to find me the place I didn't really want.

In the meantime, I'm left to marvel at the postings on Craigslist. Postings that say things like this one:

"Seeking Attractive Female for Mutual Benefits (Rent)
I am a successful professional that works in one of NYC's most prominent firms. I am willing to assist with rent in exchange for benefits. The more we click, the more generous I get. 420 friendly a plus.

I look forward to hearing from you soon. If interested, please email a pic."

And I'm left to reel at the disturbing probability that he'll find exactly what he's looking for. I shudder to think.

Not Dead, I Swear

2007-07-29T12:31:00.001-07:00

Sorry for the long hiatus. I have no good excuse, except that, what with the impending move, I've been suffering from a bit of verbal paralysis. I've noticed this about myself: when I get stressed, I tend to freeze up on the writing front a bit. That's a great trait for a guy about to enter graduate school for writing.

I'm in NYC looking for apartments and finding the whole process frustrating, daunting, and a whole slew of other infinitives that express my grief over my inability to find a place. I nearly cried when I had to call my dad and ask if he'd cosign for me, since nobody will accept an excellent six-year rental history as a sign I'm a good tenant. If not for the fact that I have great parents and friends, I think I'd be a step closer to fulfilling my nightmare of becoming the best-educated hobo in Manhattan.

Anyway, it's kept me from writing.

In the meantime, while I have slacked away from the blogosphere, my friends have been busy. Sam has officially started up a Fetus Joe blog (he actually did this over a month ago...which is precisely how slack I've been). Before I left my job, I was working on assembling the complete book of Fetus Joe, and though that hasn't come to fruition (yet...crappy real life!), I'm happy new cartoons are coming out. I won't be archiving these anytime soon, though. Anyway, it's not strictly limited to Fetus Joe, but he's a main character. If I ever get off my ass and start having ideas again, I might contribute something to it. Until then, Sam's got the hilarity front covered.

And with that, I'm off to make a few calls and get out into this lovely rainy Manhattan day.

Joe Intro

2007-06-17T16:16:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been compiling a book of the complete Fetus Joe cartoons, including the contest cartoons and a couple of cartoons Sam drew after the boy was born. It also includes an introduction to the book by myself. Here it is, for your amusement.

Fetus Joe Intro

I’ll never forget the day in 2005 when my friend Sam, then recently married to his wife Terry and living off in Massachusetts, called me and told me that Terry was pregnant. My reaction can best be described as a conflict between joy and fear, coupled with mild catatonia. The catatonia, of course, is an all too common reaction to big news—faced with a gargantuan change in their reality, people often need to take a few moments to stammer, drop their jaws, and maybe shriek like a monkey. I have little doubt Sam, himself, reacted in much the same way when he got the news from Terry.

As for the conflict I experienced of fear and joy, what can I say? Of course, I was proud and overjoyed for my friend that he was going to be a father, not to mention wholly grateful to him for playing his part in ensuring the survival of my species. But that word, Parenthood, gnawed at me at night when I was trying to sleep. Just that one word was enough to tighten my breath and send my heart into arrhythmia. Parenthood meant the end of the Sam I once knew. Soon he’d be moving to the suburbs and driving a minivan, taking the kid to soccer practice and weekending at amusement parks populated with colorful cartoon characters. The day would come soon when I’d tell him about some new beer I’d found, and Sam would hike up his over-sized sweatpants and say “That sounds too wacky for my tastes…I’m more of a Bud man, myself.”

Then one day, I received an e-mail from Sam with the subject line “Fetus Joe vs. the Wolverine.” Inside was a cartoon of a wolverine, it’s leg torn and bloody on the ground, its face frozen in the ghastly horror of a bully just beaten down by the class nerd. And above it, a fetus gloating its victory to the world. I was so relieved. What a fool I had been even to worry. Of course! Parenthood wouldn’t destroy Sam…it would just be an opportunity for him to bestow his wackiness onto his offspring.

We can only speculate as to what forces inspired Sam to spend the next nine months pitting his unborn child against wild beasts of all shapes and sizes. A sociologist or a cultural anthropologist would likely tell us that the cartoons came out of a desire to quell his own fears for his child, to symbolically imbue the boy with health and strength, much as cavemen painted images of animals on their cave walls to ensure a successful hunt. But they would be full of shit. Warm, smooth shit. In truth, I suspect they came mostly out of boredom and the occasional need to comment on the events of the pregnancy (such as when Fetus Joe attacked Terry’s sciatic nerve) or the everyday trials of living in Boston (such as the amazing exploding turkey, a common nuisance on the Massachusetts turnpike). Whatever the impetus, all can agree that they were funny as shit. And they proved to me, once and for all, that I never need fear the loss of Sam’s wackiness. For it is a font that springs eternal. In his pants.

Memeify

2007-06-15T14:11:00.000-07:00

My friend Mr. B. has tasked me with carrying on a meme that he received from a friend and that his friend received from a friend, and so forth. Technically, I'm not sure if this actually qualifies as a meme. Since I'm actively aware of the fact that I'm passing it on, I think it falls more in the realm of peer pressure. The Internet equivalent of convincing me to smoke pot or have unprotected sex, because, hey, everyone is doing it. Which, given Mr. B.'s intro of the whole deal, makes me think I'll soon have a nasty case of e-clap. But hey...wouldn't want to be uncool, so here goes:

"Bloggers must post these rules and provide eight random facts about themselves. In the post, the tagged blogger tags eight other bloggers and notifies them that they've been tagged."

Luckily, I don't know eight other bloggers. So I'll be less virulent than Mr. B. was.

Eight random facts about me.

#1 I've recently discovered that I really enjoy making up fictional biographies for my friends' MySpace pages. In them, I turn my friends into great historical figures--assassins, radio personalities, former vaudeville stars. It's one of the most freeing writing exercises I've ever experienced, and I love it. So much that sometimes I make up fictional biographies, even if my friends don't actually ask me to.

#2 On occasion, I think I might actually be God and not know it. More to the point, I don't think I am God, it just occurs to me that I have absolutely no proof that I'm not God. This started several years ago when I was, I don't know, 23 or so and I would meet people on the street who didn't know me. But I knew them and I could tell you a lot about them. Maybe not everything, but certainly a lot more than I had any rights to know. Which is how I imagine God feels when God walks around on Earth. Anyway, I once used this line of thinking in an argument to disprove that Jesus is the son of God. Because I know I don't have any kids.

#3 One time in middle school, I very nearly killed another boy after he and some jock friends stole my bike from me and held me down between two very thick wrestling mats until I couldn't breathe and panicked and screamed for them to let me up. When they did, I ran after him, determined to kill him. Had I been a faster runner at the time--fast enough to catch him--I can say with some certainty I would have beaten him to within an inch of his life. I wouldn't have given it a thought. So if you're out there, Mark, and you're reading this, consider yourself lucky I didn't catch you. I know I do.

#4 My favorite kind of pie--and possibly my favorite all-time dessert--is key lime pie, the best example of which I've ever tasted came from a coffee shop in Asheville, NC, called Old Europe about a eight years ago. I could have eaten that stuff for hours. I've since been back there and, while it's still good, it's not as good as it was eight years ago. Back then it was perfect--just the right amount of tart and sweet with a creamy, custardy filling and graham cracker crust. It was a great joy to have a slice, at a time when great joys were sometimes hard for me to find. The worst slice of key lime pie I ever had was at a diner at a truck stop somewhere in God-knows-where. It looked like a slice of nuclear waste, topped with merringue. This was also the first slice I ever had, so I went around for a long time thinking I didn't like key lime pie until a friend's mom set me straight. Seriously...if you ever make key-lime pie, don't put merringue on it. For the love of all things.

(As a complete sidebar, or fact #4.5, a close contender for the favorite all-time dessert is rich chocolate mousse served with a glass of neat single-malt scotch to sip alongside each bit.)

#5 Once when I was in grade school, I got in trouble with a teacher for taking the bolts out of a standing coat rack she had in her room while I was sitting on the floor watching a movie. She was really flipped out about it, no doubt a reaction brought on by deep neurosis from years of having her coat rack spontaneously fall apart after showing movies, and she demanded that I not only put back the bolts I had, but replace any that were missing on the rack. For some reason, I decided that this was the kind of thing my parents would also really wig out about, so I made up a lie for them that I needed the bolts for a class project in which we were making metal dolls out of thin steel plates and assembling them with bolts. The children were to provide the bolts. My parents happily complied and some weeks later, grinning ear to ear, asked if they could see the metal doll I made in class. I told them the teacher had liked them so much, she had kept them for herself.

In retrospect, my parents knew I was lying from the first word out of my mouth. As they often did because:

#6 I'm a terrible liar. Most people who know me know I'm lying almost as soon as I start. This is because practically the only time I ever lie is if I think the lie will make the world funnier somehow (the exception to this is if I'm skipping work and have to fake sick...but that's not lying, that's acting for fun and profit). So I smile at the lie and people know I'm lying. The amusing side effect of this is that sometimes I'll be telling someone a fact--an actual fact--and it will amuse me, so I'll smile, which makes them think I'm lying. Then the irony makes me smile bigger, and it just goes downhill from there.

#7 The only failing grade I ever received was in a meditation class in college. The teacher had a no-skip policy with only three possible exceptions (so he had a three-skip policy, I should have said). I was really depressed that semester and frequently woke up not wanting to go to meditation class, so I skipped more than my three. At the end of the semester, he gave me a choice: I could either take a failing grade or I could write a three-page paper on some issue of how meditation could help someone's health. I had a writing comp course that year and was so bogged down writing papers, there was no way I ws writing another. So I got an F.

#8 I've only ever won two contests in my life. The first was a call-in contest for a Nintendo videogame system. To win, you had to watch the Mario Brothers cartoon hour after school and call in with a code. I was calling on a rotary phone, so by all rights, I never should have gotten it. But one lucky day, the guy who called in first got the answer wrong and I was next. It was the happiest moment of my eleven-year-old life.

So I think I'll pass this along to, oh say, Ian, Lindsey, Ed, Dan, Bonnie, Jeff, Eric (assuming he still reads my blog), and...oh...let's say Neil.

2007-05-22T09:47:00.000-07:00

Update...

Last night, I e-mailed The Other Matthew Rossi to let him know he had gotten a compliment, and he e-mailed me back to let me know that I should direct all complimentors to his blog, which is here.

My Doppleganger Returns

2007-05-21T12:46:00.000-07:00

I found this comment from my Story blog a couple of weeks ago waiting for me when I came into work today:

Hi, I'm phil from England. I only discovered your writing last night and read solis Invicti straight away. I loved the writing. You have a real talent and I intend to find more of your work. You inspire me to keep going with mine. It was like a rush of sensory images that you couldn't help but be captured and enthralled by. I hope you've written lots!
-PGR

Suffice to say, I was flattered to get the fan mail. For a brief second, I joked with myself that I'm an international success, until I realized I'd never written a story called "Solis Invicti." So I googled my name and up came this. Which is, as I suspected, by The Other Matthew Rossi. So it seems he has surfaced again. Dr. Moriarty to my...um...similarly named Mr. Moriarty.

So, unfortunately, I can't accept the compliment, as it's meant for someone else. But Phil is right. It's a very good story.

Writing News/Blog News

2007-05-19T10:06:00.000-07:00

As my move date comes ever closer, I'm becoming acutely aware of just how unprepared I am to actually move. Things like where I'm housing, registering for classes, figuring out what to take with me and what to leave behind, all seem like things I should have figured out or done by now, but I haven't yet. It's a bit nerve racking. In the meantime, I'm trying to spend as much time as I can finishing up various writing projects. Stories that I started and didn't finish for a variety of reasons.

I've also started a long-procrastinated project of updating my blog to operate more like a homepage for me. Someplace where you can find my stories and poems, in addition to the usual ephemera I post here. I've placed links to new blogs specifically dedicated to my fiction and poetry. I'll be post there more often in the next couple of weeks.

Finally, an interesting opportunity has come up for me in February. It's a bit too soon to go into any detail about it just yet, but if it pans out, it'll be pretty cool.

Going Off the Air

2007-05-13T13:13:00.000-07:00

Short post to let everyone know that I'm going to be shutting off my cable pretty soon, so I won't have any Internet service at home anymore. Actually, that's probably good news for readers of this blog, because it means I'm probably going to be going out to wifi cafes more often. Which means I'll be more likely to blog. When I got the cable installed a year and a half ago, I thought it would increase my ability to blog. Instead, I just find I get home tired, unwilling to blog, and not really inclined to venture out again.

Ban them...Ban them all...
This is kind of old news, in that it happened over a week ago, but here's yet another instance of book banning in a school. In one of the author's blog entries on the subject, she includes this:

One thing I didn’t mention in the last post about the “Citizen’s Request for Removal of Instructional Materials” form that got the book pulled is that there was a checkbox near the bottom with three options. They are:

Do not assign it to my child
Withdraw it from all students as well as my child
Send it back to the proper department for reevaluation

Did you guys see that one in the middle? That’s the one that was checked.

I think this says a lot about the mentality of a person seeking to get a book banned. It says that the parent in question wasn't comfortable with other people exposing her child to moralities different than her own, but that she was perfectly comfortable imposing her own moral sense on the rest of the school. People who try to ban a book isn't just trying to protect their own children from ideas they disagree with. They're trying to wipe out the ability for anyone to choose to think that way, at all.

Small Celebrity

2007-05-04T07:33:00.000-07:00

I've been going through extensive dental work lately to make up for the ten-year hiatus I took from going to the dentist while I was in college and afterward while I was unemployed. That's eight years with no dental insurance, followed by two years trying to figure out how to expain it to the dentist. I was lucky enough to find a dentist who understood. Or at least didn't feel the need to lecture me. I was also relieved to find out I don't have to have my wisdom teeth removed.

And once again, my friend John wrote to me to tell me his English class loves me. This is the class who convinced me last year to become a vegetarian. As ridiculous as it seems, every time he writes to me to tell me that, once again his kids have questions and that, once again, they love my answers, I get a little thrill. It's just a little reminder that I've grown up to be the person my teenage self would have liked.

Slowly lifting the ban...
There was recent article in the NY Times about a liquor company out of New York that has set out to create an absinthe legal for production in the U.S. The product, which is called Lucid, has been a hot subject of debate among American absintheurs. The problem of producing absinthe has long been one of food regulations. The FDA bans any product that includes wormwood, ostensibly because wormwood contains the chemical thujone, which is dangerous if ingested in large enough quantities. Quantities that don't exist in any properly made absinthe (in fact, there's more thujone in sage than in wormwood, so you're likely to get a larger dose of it from eating a plate of stuffing than you will from a proper absinthe).

There have been attempts prior to this to make an absinthe that can fit U.S. regulations, most notable among them being a wormwood-free product called Absente (pronounced "absent"...it's a pun, you see), which replaced wormwood with a related plant called southernwood. What makes Lucid different is that they have supposedly left in the wormwood, but produced the absinthe in a way that leaves out the thujone. It remains to be seen whether the product is any good--Absente is crap--but I'm hopeful that this is a good first step to creating a legal absinthe in the U.S.

Beer me...
In other brew-related news, last weekend I took a trip down to Indiana to attent the Three Floyds Dark Lord Day. For those unfamiliar, it's a once-a-year event to kick off their Dark Lord beer, which is regarded by beer enthusiasts as the Holy Grail of stouts. Dark and sweet and thick like motor oil, it's a pretty impressive beer. I wasn't going to go to the event initially, Munster, Indiana being a long and difficult way to go for a beer, but when I woke up, it was a beautiful day. Just the kind of day for a good adventure. So I hopped a train down to Hammond and took a cab to the brewery and then stood in line for several hours, waiting for the beer.

On the way back, I hitched a ride to the train station with a pair of guys who were very insistent that I accept their ride, and then chatted for an hour with a musician who had just missed the same train I had, which was his ride to a gig.

All in all, the journey was more interesting than the goal. Which tends to be the way these things go.

Laugh or Cry...
Bonnie sent me this article earlier today. For those of my readers who don't like to read, the first sentence should say it all:

Utah County Republicans ended their convention on Saturday by debating Satan's influence on illegal immigrants.

Don Larsen, chairman of legislative District 65 for the Utah County Republican Party, had submitted a resolution warning that Satan's minions want to eliminate national borders and do away with sovereignty.

Satan's minions, in this case, are illegal immigrants. The article contains a number of gems, including this one, which made me laugh out loud:

Illegal aliens are in control of the media, and working in tandem with Democrats, are trying to "destroy Christian America" and replace it with "a godless new world order -- and that is not extremism, that is fact," Larsen said.

Ah yes...I had forgotten about the truckloads of migrant television executives roaming about the country. The whole article is really hilarious until you realize these people are elected officials. It's just another reminder that, as good an idea as Democracy is, if you allow ignorant people to rule themselves, they will do so ignorantly.

Finally...
I'll be running the door at the Belmont Burlesque this Saturday. This week, the show is at Martyr's on Lincoln just south of Irving Park. Apparently, there's a Canadian troupe coming in to be guest dancers. Join us, won't you?

Story

2007-04-13T13:33:00.000-07:00

I got into a conversation with another grad-school-bound writer I know and we decided to do a quick writing exercise. The rules were as follows: 15 minutes writing time; nobody may die at the end; must be set in winter (or a wintry setting); and it must include fire or water, but not both. Here's mine.

"The Riddle of the Albatross"

There was no food. I stood on the shore and watched Andrei search through the flotsam brought in on the last tide. No food floating in the water. All of it had been in cans. Tin cans of tuna. Beans. Vegetables. Any and all of it something we could have eaten if it wasn't on the bottom of the ocean. Lost forever. Like us. I stared at myself in the gunmetal water. My face was like a corpse's—drawn and thin. I grinned and my teeth stood out for miles.

When I looked up at Andrei, he was hefting something out of the water. Something big. A sack of potatoes, maybe, that had floated when the ship went down. I ran over to him to see what it was.

A body. A little girl, still dressed in her Sunday dress. A thick nylon coat and a lifejacket covering her torso. She must have gone down at the same time as us. Three weeks and her body was still as fresh as the day the ship sank. Frozen solid. Nothing thaws in that water, so nothing rots. Her face was like a porceline doll's. Pale alabaster and serene. Only the eyes betrayed the fear she must have felt when she first touched the water. The knowledge she wouldn't make it. I ran my fingers down her face from her forehead and closed her eyes.

Andrei smiled at me. He told me this was a good sign. All this drift from the wreck meant we were on a current. Probably a strong one. The rescue ships would know to follow it. They'd find us. And anyway, we had food now.

I shook my head at him. Three weeks on our little island, while the provisions in the life raft ran dry. I didn't have Andrei's sense of hope.

I abandoned the shore for the camp—our life raft upturned over a pit we'd scraped in the ground—and hid from the wind and the cold as best I could. No food. No trees, so no wood for a fire. Just Andrei and I and the girl and the cold. Waiting for the moment we'd both know we wouldn't make it.

Vonnegut

2007-04-12T08:54:00.000-07:00

I don't usually mourn the deaths of famous people, even the ones whose work I really enjoy, simply because I don't know them. I always figure I'll miss their work in the world, but leave the mourning for their friends and family. I think I might rescind that policy temporarily for Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut, to me, was more than just a writer who I liked. The first book I ever read on my own, without anyone prompting me, was Cat's Cradle, after which I read almost nothing but Vonnegut for about two years. At a time in my life when I was still forming a lot of my ideas about politics and humanity, his books gave me a great deal to chew on. I'm genuinely sad to have read that he's gone.

Technical Difficulties

2007-03-07T21:35:00.000-08:00

The company I had hosting my homepage seems to have been bought up recently by some other company. As a result, their usually spotty customer service has stopped being spotty and become uniformly nonexistant. I rerouted my homepage here for the time being, at least until the problem is fixed.

But I might just leave it here, to be honest. As pretty as my homepage was, I never used it as much as I ought to have. In the next couple of weeks, I might rework my whole site a bit to make it more functional for you, my readers.

All that will have to happen after Toy Chest opens. Come join us.

Neat Little Piles

2007-03-01T13:19:00.000-08:00

Sometimes it astounds me the way life answers all your questions for you. Twenty minutes ago, my office was called into a meeting in which we were told that our office was to close and we were going to either lose our jobs or be sent elsewhere to other jobs.

Two days ago, I found out that Columbia University accepted my application.

That bullet I dodged? Didn't even graze me.

Gay Marriage

2007-02-23T11:16:00.000-08:00

While we're still touching on the subject of things we don't like to explain to our kids, Louis CK has this bit on gay marriage. I wouldn't call myself a fan of Louis CK, but I have to admit, the man is funny. Which is most of what I like in a comedian.

"You won’t find men’s genitalia in quality literature."

2007-02-22T08:09:00.000-08:00

This is my favorite quote of the day. It comes from a from the NY Times a couple of days ago in an article about school librarians who are up in arms about a recent Newberry award winner's use of the word scrotum in her book, The Higher Power of Lucky.

“I think it’s a good case of an author not realizing her audience,” said Frederick Muller, a librarian at Halsted Middle School in Newton, N.J. “If I were a third- or fourth-grade teacher, I wouldn’t want to have to explain that."

I can't help but wonder what it is about the technical terms for body parts that makes people so squeamish. We're fine with our kids referring to their wee-wees and their bajingos, but God forbid they should know the medical terms for their bodies. That's crossing the line. This isn't an isolated affair, either. This follows directly on the heels of a recent incident in which a theater performing The Vagina Monologues renamed it The Hoohah Monologues because a passing driver said she was upset her niece saw the word vagina. Her niece, who, incidentally, has one.

My best guess is that this discomfort in talking about body parts has something to do with adults wanting to preserve their kids' innocence. That somehow they assume that by teaching kids how to talk about sex organs, they'll be that much closer to thinking about sex itself. Which will lead, naturally, into a life of S&M, homosexuality, and, of course, necrophilia.

That's the best explanation I can come up with, because, frankly, the idea of not teaching a kid the proper terms for their body parts is unbelievably foreign to me. When I was a kid, neither of my parents ever felt the need to couch discussions of our bodies in kushy euphemisms. That's not to say I never used little-kid slang for my penis. I did, but it was self-imposed. (I can even remember an incident in which I asked my mother how a doctor knows if a baby is a boy or a girl. Mom casually responded, "If it has a penis, it's a boy; if it has a vagina, it's a girl," which made me go "Mom!" as kids do when their parents shock them.)

What gets me most about the book banning is that it's a book written for kids age ten to twelve. Librarians are saying that younger kids--even kids as young as eight--will probably be more likely to read it, but still...adults need to grow up a bit and remember that kids aren't blind or stupid. By the time I was eight, I knew damn well what a scrotum was and so did every kid in my class. As soon as kids realize their genitals exist, they start talking about them. Parents might as well teach them the right way to do so.

Of course, if they're still dead set on talking to their kids in euphemisms, they might as well use some new terms. Like these, if you have a son. Or these, if you have a daughter.

Other news...
Speaking of childhood, there's an interesting game hovering around on the net called "Alter Ego," which is part choose your own adventure, part personality test. Basically, the game asks you questions and offers you choices. Based on your answers, it develops a life for your alternate personality (the one in the game...not the one you have in real life). Theoretically, assuming you don't kill yourself, you can live out an entirely separate life. The game is less fun than interesting, but it's worth playing through a few times. Oh, and one bit of advice...when the man in the car comes up and asks you questions, run away as soon as possible.

Also, speaking of hoohahs, I'll be attending the Belmont Burlesque this coming Saturday, cohosted by the imaginary Mr. B. Come out and join me for seminudity and crass comedy. It's a lot of fun.

The Lillith Affair

2007-02-16T09:59:00.000-08:00

In the summer after I graduated college, I had a brief friendship with a girl I never met. Her name was Lily and we met on a message board that I had joined with my best friend, Holly, and her boyfriend at the time, Chris. I had joined the board that summer because of an incident in which the moderator--an exgirlfriend of Chris's--had half-read something Holly wrote and then attacked her viciously in sight of all. I was in the mood for a good fight most of that summer, and that wasn't a good fight--it was petty and juvenile and shouldn't have been worth my time--but it was the best I had around.

I stuck around the board for a while afterward. Long enough to get used to and disgusted with message board politics and have a little fun. At one point, I developed an alter ego for myself using an invented e-mail address and a name that clearly pointed to the fact that he was a fictional character (his name was Jimminy C and his screen name was Harvey Eightfoot). He disagreed with everything I wrote and was a lot of fun to combat.

Mostly I spent my time on the board continuing and supplementing debates between me and Chris. Chris loved to argue and so did I, so when we hung out, most of our time was spent debating some idea or other. Free will. Blake. Politics. You name it. And we carried our debates onto the board, filling out points too complicated and long-winded to make properly in face-to-face conversation.

The first time I spoke with Lily on the board was in the middle of a thread on politics, using the screen name Lillith Affair. It's been long enough that I forget the exact conversation we had, but I remember that in the course of it, I got the impression from her that she had lived a hard life. Homeless for a a lot of it and living in the back room of a bookstore where she worked two towns over. I liked her a lot. She was a little flaky, but she was clever and interesting and a tenacious debater, unwilling to let go of a point until it had been discussed away to her satisfaction. I remember some great conversations with her.

The way I finally got my chance to meet her began like this. I had told the board, in some thread or other, that I believed people who turn their heads away from an injustice are responsible for it themselves. That we are all responsible for the consequences of our actions, even if our actions are inactions. She asked where my responsibility was, knowing she was living in the back of a bookstore and not doing anything about it. And I had to admit, she had me there. So I told her I couldn't think of anything I could do for her, if she had anything she needed, I'd help out. A couple of days later, she told me to get in touch if I meant what I said, and since I did mean it, I e-mailed her.

In telling this story, it's hard not to sound like I was an idiot. Looking back on it, there's a thousand bits of better judgement screaming in my head and pointing at the enormous red flags raised around the situation. Which is more or less what my friends did at the time. Chris especially found the whole thing ridiculous. He and I would sit at coffee and when I brought up the situation, he would point out that she could be a serial killer, a robber, or even a forty-year-old man who pretends to be twenty-something women for kicks. And he was right, of course. The only thing I can say in my defense is that my mistake was that of a young man still willing to make himself believe that the person on the other side of the screen was exactly as funny and interesting and likeable as the impression she gave online. That she was who she said she was. That his cynical better judgement was wrong. It was the last bit of my childhood credulity hanging on for dear life.

She didn't need much from me. She was leaving the town where she lived and heading off to Atlanta or some such place where friends and a proper apartment awaited her. Along the way, she would have to stop off in Asheville and needed a place to sleep for the night. Did I have a sofa I could offer her? I did, so we made arrangements and a few afternoons later, I walked to Pack Square at the center of town and sat down to wait for her. I had been there about five minutes when Christopher walked up and sat down next to me. He told me Holly had sent him to wait with me and suggested the four of us get dinner after Lily got there.

While we waited, he pointed out a big balding man and said that could be her. I told him sure, but she could just as easily be that attractive redhead sauntering by. You just never know.

We sat in the square for a half hour, waiting, until Chris looked at me and said, "Matt, she's not coming."

"Probably not," I said, "but what if we leave and then she shows up?"

He said, and I will always remember this, "She won't. I'm Lily."

Chris was Lily. Holly confirmed it. He had created her as an alter ego to debate a point on Taoism with me through a kind of dialectic. He hadn't known or realized that I really liked her, but when I told her I was willing to help her, he decided to see if that was really true.

I should have been mad at Christopher for playing with my emotions like that, but I wasn't. The end of the whole thing was so strange and cathartic that I couldn't muster up any anger for it. Just a sense of release and longing for someone I never met.

The Technophobe Comes Around

2007-02-09T08:18:00.000-08:00

I was about to post an entry talking about how I've recently discovered podcasts and how much I love new technology, when I realized that podcasting has been around for several years now. Long enough to no longer qualify as a new technology. Which puts me pretty firmly at the back of the technological trend, where I tend to be most comfortable. I tend to be the last to try out any new technology. I managed to avoid MP3s until they'd been around so long I couldn't turn the corner without one appearing in front of me. Had I been around when the hammer was invented, I probably would have kept using my rock.

Suffice to say, I like being able to download This American Life and listen to it at my leisure every week.

New Blogger
For a long time, I've been saying that there are only two people in the world who read this blog (you know who you are), and to tell the truth, it's only half joking. I recently added a site tracker to my blog (you can see it at the bottom of the page), which required me to update my version of Blogger to the New Blogger. I can't tell exactly what's new about it, but I like it. Aside from it being just plain easier to use, it actually tells me how many posts I made per month in my archive section. Which has shown me that I wasn't significantly less prolific this year than any other year. Good to know.

The site tracker is also neat. I added it on recommendation from Mr. B. (who doesn't actually exist, by the way...he's just a figment of my imagination, like Mr. Snuffalupagus, who periodically gives me good advice about aspects of my life. When he and I get together, people on the street stop and stare at me sitting around talking to my hand and laughing, laughing, laughing...), and it really is eye opening. It turns out more people than two visit this site. Many of whom are international. Wow.

Number 1
Finally, I recently googled myself and found that I am the number one Matthew Rossi. That puts me right ahead of the Other Matthew Rossi. I can't say I've won the war, but I'm definitely pulling ahead in the battle.

From the Files

2007-02-06T13:59:00.000-08:00

One of the joys of finally having my mind on something other than writing essays for future schools is that I finally have a chance to catch up on the blogs that I've ignored for a while. Blogs of people I don't know, like Neil Gaiman and Jonathan Carroll. Blogs of people I do know, like Mr. B and Ian (who mercifully updates with even less frequency than I do, making catching up fairly easy). I've been amazed to realize how many of them update daily and how good so many of the daily updates are. I tend to take a stance that I only blog when I feel like I have something to say, because I know that if I updated daily, this blog would become a daily weather report (it's cold today, snowing, chance that the temperature will dip down into the negative digits). So I'm impressed when people set themselves to write every day and then still fill their blogs with substance and intellect and wit. It goes to show you, worrying about every word might make a great sentence, but it doesn't get the novel written.

Anyway, it made me realize there's a great deal I could have written about, but haven't for whatever reason. So here they are. A few from the files.

Tantalus
Since November, I've been working with Tantalus, first in workshop and now in rehearsal, for our new show, Toy Chest. Initially, I wasn't going to try to be involved with the show on the creative end, but as the concept for the show began to develop, it drew me in.

It's probably the tightest show Tantalus has developed to date--we had a fully realized script in hand before auditions--and I think it's going to show. As with all Tantalus shows, there's an element of chaos in it that makes it impossible to completely prepare, but we at least have those parts of the show we can control. Which gives us time to experiment with the parts we can't.

The rehearsals have posed an interesting challenge to me. My character is a hobby horse, which means that I'm basically a giant horse head puppet. My costume engulfs my arms, and a mask hides my face, leaving me with only my legs and torso to articulate the character (since I'm a horse, I can't talk much...no one can talk to a horse, of course). To top it, with this horse head, I have a really complicated and nuanced emotion that I have to convey. It's Tantalus and no emotion is simple with Tantalus. Everything has to have layers. So, at times, I feel like I've been asked to work a boulder into a finely engraved relief of Romeo and Juliet with only a sledgehammer as my tool. It's been a genuine challenge, more intrigue than frustration, and I've been thankful for the opportunity.

Like My Literary Forefathers

"I cried like a fool. Those deep, convulsive, wracking cries. Just horrible. But as bad as that was, it really helped me to work out some of this. And like throwing up, as soon as it was done, I felt better."

That above quote is from a friend's blog. I include it because it pretty well describes what happened to me a couple of weekends ago.

I've been drinking a lot lately. A lot. Beyond where I simply wake up a bit groggy and take two Advil and call it a morning. Beyond where I just make an ass of myself in public. I've been drinking to the point where, weekend after weekend, I stumble home and climb into the bathtub, because I know with certainty that I'm going to pass out cold and if I do, I'll probably die from drowning in my vomit. I don't know why it's been. I have speculations that it's just because I've been stressed or that I have been just not exhibiting the self control I ought. But for a month and a half or so, from before New Year's until just recently, I spent at least one day each weekend hanging over the toilet.

Not healthy.

Then a couple of weekends ago, I did something at a party that I thought would hurt a friend of mine. I didn't do it maliciously, but I did it with the conscious thought that it would hurt my friend's feelings if she knew. I just didn't care, because I was drunk enough to not care. The next morning I woke up, feeling like someone had used me as a punching bag the night before and feeling guilty about what I had done. I slid over to my computer, put my headphones on, turned on Johnny Cash's "Hurt" and listened to it in a loop for an hour.

And I cried. Big, hot, loud cry that, if you'd heard it, you'd think my mother had died. You'd think I was tearing out hair and cutting flesh that's how loud and agonized I cried. Everything, every whatever it's been sitting on my heart dragging me down with it for longest time, came up in those tears for the next hour. When they stopped on their own, I played Johnny again. And again and again and again. Like I was wringing out a sopping rag. Until it was all gone and I felt better and I called my friend and she told me it was OK. I hadn't done anything. And she was wrong--I had done something, even if it didn't hurt her--but I was thankful to be forgiven.

And then I went to rehearsal and set my feet toward something healthier.

Chapters
Lately, chapters have been ending in my life, loose ends folding up as though life knew damn good and well it was time to move on. Relationships, both long standing and new have ended, clearing me of ties here and elsewhere, no longer making me choose between one life and another. Opportunities have opened up for me as a writer, and new connections with people have developed that will make that path easier.

My past is folding up behind me. It makes it easier for me to see the now.

Because How Often Does Neil Gaiman Ask a Favor of Me?

2007-02-05T12:15:00.000-08:00

Penn Jillette

The explanation of what this means can be found here. Toward the bottom of the page.

Mars des pingouins

My best friend, Holly, just sent me this. I never realized what a strong visual connection there is between penguins and Napoleon. I'll be keeping a lookout for that in the future.

Back to It

2007-01-30T12:49:00.000-08:00

Now that my brain is cleared out a bit (a more apt way of putting it would be "now that my brain has recovered from being tenderized by an intellectual meat hammer for the past seven months), I can get back to filling it with things that actually interest me. Like photography.

I found this via Neil Gaiman (who found it via Jonathan Carroll), and I think it's absolutely gorgeous. It's the work of a photographer named Bobby Neel Adams, who spliced together photographs of people from different time periods in their lives. The end result is kind of creepy, but altogether really beautiful. He did the same thing with couples, the results of which are stunning.

Photography is my favorite artform, and one of the reasons is its ability to do this. To record pieces of a person's life and splice them together. We look out into the cosmos and the only way we have to relate to it is through the passage of light. A star we look at--that light is the remains of its life from millions of years ago. In this way, a photograph, which catches and holds the light we gave off at a certain age, is literally a piece of frozen time. Our lives caught in silver.

Marmaduke Explained
Marmaduke Explained, while less philosophically inspiring, is the other thing I've caught up on recently. It's not high brow, but it sure is gut-bustingly funny.

More later on the hobbies I've been catching up on.

Bad Blogger

2007-01-25T18:17:00.000-08:00

I've felt lately like I'm travelling the line of a parabolic equation, in which infinity is the point at which I'm done applying to grad school. Which is a fancy way of saying I've had the feeling that the closer I get to finishing, the less likely it will become for me to actually finish.

Then I finished my application to Sarah Lawrence. Then I decided I'm not applying anywhere else. I'm done. I broke the asymptote.

My brain is a fucking pudding. I haven't thought of anything but working on graduate school since before this summer. Or I've thought of them, but haven't had the time or the energy to express them in words to anyone.

Sorry. I really have wanted to blog more often than this. And I will. Things to tell to all of you as soon as I've had a moment for my brain to coagulate a mite.

In the meantime, here's this.

One Down

2006-12-29T20:38:00.000-08:00

I mailed my Columbia application in today, complete with personal statement, writing sample, and literary essay. It's been a while since I've written a literary essay. Readers of this blog (both of you) will know that, from time to time, when my fancy is tickled, I like to review theatrical pieces I've seen. But it's been a long time since I've written a really thought-out review for a piece of literature. I ended up with a review of Chuck Palahniuk's Haunted that I was pretty happy with, so I thought I'd include it here. Enjoy.

Caulk in the Mosaic: A Critical Response to Chuck Palahniuk’s Haunted

In the afterword to the paperback edition of Haunted, Chuck Palahniuk laments that the first time he read the story “Guts” out loud, nobody fainted. He seems genuinely saddened and he solidifies that impression by going on for the next six pages, recounting in great detail the various fainting incidents at bookstores and universities around the world, about the medical causes of fainting, about his editor telling him he’d, “done enough damage with this story.” Much of the afterword gives the impression that Palahniuk only wrote Haunted as a device to make people faint, since it’s about the only aspect of the book he sees fit to mention. Fortunately, somewhere in the last paragraphs of his essay, he comes to something resembling a reason for writing the book:

“My goal was just to write some new form of horror story, something based on the ordinary world. Without supernatural monsters or magic. This would be a book you wouldn’t want to keep next to your bed, a book that would be a trapdoor down into some dark place. A place only you could go, alone, when you opened the cover.”

Those are brave goals. Never mind that horror novels have tried, pretty much since their conception, to create a safe place for their audiences to explore the darker side of their nature, whether their monsters are supernatural ones or real-life. It’s always admirable for a writer to set out with more than just story in mind, and the horrors of every day life are worth exploring anew by each generation of horror stories. It’s an ambitious goal, which makes it particularly disappointing that the book falls so very short of its mark.

Haunted’s structure is its failing. Palahniuk chose to write Haunted as twenty-three short stories bound together by a framing narrative about would-be writers at a month-long retreat. This form is called a mosaic narrative and, done well, it can be a subtle but effective way to express an idea or a mood. It can be a great form for horror, which works best when it creates the almost subliminal feeling of just waking from a nightmare. Unfortunately, mosaic narrative requires a great deal of delicacy and finesse to pull it off, and this is where Palahniuk falls short.

Taken just as a book of short stories, Haunted would be worth reading. Stories like “Evil Spirits,” about a girl who escapes from a secret island where the U.S. Navy quarantines carriers of deadly diseases, or “Dissertation,” about a tribe of Native Americans who carry a gene that makes them periodically turn into monsters are interesting reads and evocative of modern fears about disease and strangers, but they can hardly be called horrors of the “ordinary.” The very best of the stories in Haunted, “The Nightmare Box” and “Poster Child,” tap into a relatively simple and genuine kind of horror: the horror of being stripped of mirth by something as simple as an idea.. In and of themselves, the stories are decently written. Even where they don’t entirely work as horrors—really, what’s so horrific about the rich urbanites in “Slumming” pretending to be bag ladies for kicks?—they are entertaining enough that they would warrant sitting down for an afternoon to read them.

Where Haunted falls apart is in Palahniuk’s attempt to jerry-rig a novel out of a book of short stories. A braver writer could have done it. Someone who trusted his stories to speak for themselves could have built a mosaic out of them with just the thinnest of outlying structures. Palahniuk almost does it—each story is preceded by a poem about its narrator, which could have worked nicely as a framing device. But Palahniuk, seemingly unwilling to lose his audience to subtlety and nuance, had to drive his point home with a sledge. So he built a monster of a framework in the form of a half-realized story about people in a writer’s retreat sabotaging their lives and their writing through their collective need for drama. That’s great, or could it be, but the ultimate point he makes in this framing narrative—that we’ve become drama obsessed as a society—feels forced on to the rest of the book. It’s as though he had an idea for a book of horror stories, but feared that their point wasn’t self-evident enough, so he foisted a half-realized narrative about media obsession on them. As a result, rather than helping the stories and binding them together, the framework gums up the flow of the book. In the rare cases where his interludes are short, they’re readable, but as Haunted comes to a close, Palahniuk labors ever harder to make his point fit the rest of the book, and his hand becomes all too visible moving in the stories.

What’s more, rather than giving his characters actual names, he labels them with condescending epithets like Miss Sneezy, Comrade Snarky, The Missing Link, essentially removing any chance that his readers will find actual horror in their stories. For a horror story to really work, the reader has to be able to see themselves in it. The reader of a horror story has to be able to say, “There but for the grace of God go I.” In naming his characters as types and epithets, Palahniuk makes the stories safe for his readers by taking them outside of the story. It gives his readers permission to view his drama mongering character, not as extensions of themselves, but as something other than them. They can say, “I’m not the one who gets caught up in this trap. It’s the Comrade Snarkys of the world.”

Haunted set out with an ambitious goal in mind, but to reach such an ambitious goal takes a writer willing to stick out his neck and let his work stand on its own. Chuck Palahniuk is never willing to keep his hand from meddling in his stories, and the end result is that, rather than giving his readers a trapdoor into a dark place, Haunted hands them a shallow basement full of dull frights and penny-dreadful shocks.

The Art of Stuber

2006-12-13T08:06:00.000-08:00

I haven't said much about the upcoming Tantalus show, Toy Chest, largely because I haven't said much about much of anything lately, but also because saying too much about it at this point would give away much of the surprise of seeing the show. What I will say is that Toy Chest is going to be the best Tantalus show since Ragnarok. I dare say, I expect it to be better than Ragnarok was. The script is tighter, the concept is better realized, and the creative forces behind it are working in much better unity than we did during Ragnarok. I expect it's going to be a doozy.

Also, I was pleased to hear recently that Ben Stuber is going to do the poster art for the show. I first got to know Ben during The Prometheus Myth and very much fell in love with his artwork. Though they were underutilized for the production, Ben's designs for the puppets were stunning and dynamic, capturing not just the stiff appearance of the character, but the mood as well. I've since come to enjoy his paintings, as well. At times stark and minimalist, at others, quite lush in color and dimension, Ben's art is going to be fantastic for this show. It's dark and surreal, lively and fantastic. I can't wait to see what he comes up with for us.

Measured Out in Coffee Spoons

2006-11-30T07:50:00.000-08:00

Time keeps flying by ever faster as I approach my grad school deadlines, tightening down slowly to that asymptote where I have only the thinnest margains in which to measure out my remaining time. I don't know what happened to November, but it's gone. The absence of night terrors about small grey men and strange metal lumps dwelling underneath my skin isn't proof that I haven't been abducted by aliens, but somehow I think the guy in the New Age bookstore was off the mark on this one. Whatever the reason, I have no time to waste. There's too much I need to write and not enough time in which to write it.

In the meantime, I've been remiss in my blogging. It's not that I haven't had anything to write about. I have. But every time I sit down to blog, I start thinking about all of the crap I still need to get done, and I panic a little. To date, I have started and failed to write blog entries on the following:

Two photo essays, one on what to do with two pounds of muscadine grapes that a friend happens to have growing on her back porch, and one on how to make my family ravioli.
A review of The Fountain (which is very good, by the way, but only if you're prepared to turn off reason for a while and watch it with your dreaming brain) in which I was going to talk about time and acceptance and brilliantly unify these things into a single concept that would have blown your minds wide open across your kitchen's back wall, where all the world might have seen them.
Endless observations, some witty, some merely whiny, about the process of applying to schools.
An essay about the endless bits of wonder and small magic that I find in cities. Such as a basket of pears my girlfriend and I found attached to someone's house one day with a note instructing people to take as many as they wanted.
A ton of generic entries about my everyday life that would have caught my friends (the only people I believe actually read this) and fans (who exist in my head, but don't tell me to burn things) up on what I've been up to.

So here I am, and for once, the act of procrastinating has intersected with the act of blogging and the two have unified into a kind of procrastiblog. That sound you hear is the fourth dimension tightening around me.

Just a Quick Reminder

2006-11-06T13:12:00.000-08:00

Hey folks. Just a reminder that, if you live in the U.S., tomorrow is your chance to implement some change or put in your vote for the status quo (if you don't live in the U.S., I'm flattered you're reading this, and I'm really sorry...just be happy you don't live with the guy*) . I'm not long for promoting any one candidate, but I will say I'll be positively green with rage if you don't vote for someone. Yep. Positively. Green.

As a bit of an election day special, Jay Is Games has been running nothing but politically based games for the past couple of days. One such, September 12, a Toy World, is an interesting meditation on the nature of violence and terrorism. You're given a crosshairs and your objective is to shoot or not to shoot. If you shoot, you can aim for terrorists, but watch out to avoid civilians. What results should be reasonably obvious to anyone who's given a moment's thought on the question of why people become terrorists in the first place (hint: it's not just because they're a bunch of crazy people who don't value life the way we do).

So there you go. Now go out there and vote (tomorrow).

House of Tea

2006-10-25T20:40:00.000-07:00

The other night, I got home from a Tantalus meeting and found that my father had sent me this article, about the House of Tea in South Philly. When I was a teenager, my father and I would regularly visit the House of Tea as part of our weekend grocery shopping. The first green tea I ever drank was from there, a Japanese sencha that a overbrewed until it was intolerably bitter.

The owner of the House of Tea was named Nathaniel. He was this short man with a great big Franklin stove of a belly who wheezed with every breath and knew more about tea than anyone I've ever met.

He'd say things like, "I'm a seventh level tea master. I could become an eighth level tea master, but it would take too long."

How do you become an eighth level tea master?

"You perform the tea ritual over and over again, meditate on tea, write poetry about tea."

The man always had a story to tell, no matter when you were going into the shop. He'd deliver it in the most matter-of-fact fashion, without theatrics or elaboration, as though he wasn't telling the story for any other reason than to tell you the story while he was measuring out your tea. I was never sure if they were true stories or if Nathaniel was just an accomplished bullshitter, but it never much mattered to me. They were fascinating stories and that was all it took to keep my father and I in wrapt attention for, at times, a good hour.

Nathaniel died a couple of years ago and with his departure, I had assumed that the House of Tea was no more. It's good to know it's still there and that his daughter is carrying on his work. Maybe I'll stop in there the next time I'm in Philly. See if she's got her father's gift for gab.

Homeward

2006-10-06T15:17:00.000-07:00

My vacation time is coming to an end, and for once at the end of a vacation, I'm happy to be going home. Which isn't to say that I haven't enjoyed being in Asheville. I have spent the past couple of weeks reconnecting to people and friends I never should have lost touch with, and for that reason alone, this trip has been fantastic. Now I'm ready to go home and be in my city and see my friends from now. I'm ready, most of all, to sleep in my own bed again and enjoy the company of a familiar form there with me. I have moved forward and so has Asheville. It was good to be here again and to know that it's still here. It will feel good to go home and start forward again.

My, but There's a lot of Banjo

2006-10-04T11:46:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I said goodbye to a friend of mine I haven't seen in two years. She had come in from Durham the night before to see me and reconnect a bit, and we'd spent a couple of days wandering around town. We had seen a Klezmer Gypsy Tango Punk band (the combination of genres sounded very promising and delivered on it abundantly) play at a pirate/goth club owned by an old friend of ours, who, as my friend from Durham pointed out, always threw the best parties anyway, so it really made sense that he opened a bar.

After the show, we crashed on sofas at a big old semidilapidated house where I know people. My friend was a bit mortified by the entire idea of just dropping in on a group of people for the night and was doubly mortified when she saw the place we were dropping in on. I think it was the giant spider in the bathroom. Or the squatters we displaced coming back at two in the morning, looking for a place to sleep.

The next morning, we had breakfast at Tupelo Honey and spent the rest of the day window shopping in galleries too expensive for either of us to ever afford . Then we said our goodbyes in the afternoon in a parking garage and I walked off happy to have seen my friend and wishing it was more than just a couple of hours in a couple of years. Wishing I had someone around to talk to. I walked into the Everyday Gourmet to check my e-mail and to write a bit, and as I fixed my coffee, I got into a conversation with an elderly lady who spent the next hour telling me her life story--a hell of a life story, at that. By the time she was done and I was off to get dinner, my blues were gone and I was ready to move on with the night.

This is the kind of town Asheville is. It's the kind of town where you can have the most interesting conversation of your life with a complete stranger and you can spend hours sitting in a coffee shop refilling the same cup of coffee for a dollar fifty. It's a quiet mountain town whose streets are alive at night with bluegrass musicians and street artists of varying quality. It's a place where the worst poverty you've ever seen exists side by side with grotesque wealth. It's a town of rastafarian white kids who drive to downtown in fancy cars with leather interiors and hang out talking about bringing down Babylon, not seeing their own part in it. It's a town where even being open minded means corraling your thoughts into a specific viewpoint. It is it's own bubble, and what a pretty bubble it is, a self-contained little generator of a kind of energy I find I need from time to time. It would be easy for me to forget why I left in the first place, but ultimately I find myself thankful for what I've had since I left. For opportunities I've been given and for the people I've got.

It's Better in the Mountains

2006-09-27T09:35:00.000-07:00

I arrived in Asheville on Sunday after a painless flight spent mostly sleeping. The night before the flight was a jumble of business, running around buying bottles for samples, packing, racking a batch of muscadine wine from the plastic bucket in my kitchen to its fancy secondary, a Carlo Rossi jug, piling organic fruit into my freezer so the fruit flies don't get it. At ten o'clock, as I made myself some angel hair pasta with peppers and eggplant, my friend Biddle called and asked if I wanted to have a walk-on role in a burlesque show. I did, so at eleven o'clock, with my luggage only half packed and my kitchen still not fruit-fly proof, I put on my best used-car salesman costume and made my way down to The Playground to walk on during the Belmont Burlesque and hand the MC divorce papers. Then I watched the rest of the show, went back home, finished packing, and slept for two hours before heading off to the airport. I boarded the plane, put my head against the window, and fell sound asleep.

I woke in Charlotte, caught a puddle-jumper over to Asheville, and was met at the airport by Sam and his boy, Nate. They drove me into town for some brunch at the Frog Bar, formerly the New French Bar, with folks in town for my friend Tracy's wedding. As Sam and I found parking in town, we drove past the Frog Bar, and there was everyone--Tracy, his bride Julie, Lauren and Jeremy, Terry; my old college friends--sitting outside drinking bloody Marys and beers as they had on Sunday mornings years ago. It was strange. I might have been staring at a memory.

It's strange to me how much has stayed the same as it once was. I'm sitting in Gold Hill right now, which was the coffee shop where I spent the entire summer after I graduated college. I sat in the same seat everyday, writing plays and chatting with my friend Kim, my friend Sam the jazz musician. The name of the cafe has changed. It's the Everday Gourmet, now, but they still serve the same coffee and I'm still there in the same seat, the same age, writing in my notebook. I'm incognito at the moment, wearing a beard, and I bet my name is different, but it's still basically me there. My replacement. Someone to fill the space I left. A great deal of the town is like this. Names have changed to protect the innocent--The World Coffee Cafe for Old Europe, The Frog Bar for the New French Bar--but even under new management, they're still basically the same places they always were.

Still, not to sound like I'm not enjoying my time here. On the contrary, there's a certain beauty to it all. There's a joy in coming back and reconnecting that I haven't experienced in other homecomings. Although Asheville hasn't changed so much, I have, and in returning, I have the opportunity to change who I am to this city. To fill a new space.

If You Stare Long Enough into the Abyss, It Asks You a Quant-Comp Question

2006-09-23T18:41:00.000-07:00

The GRE is officially over and done with. I took it yesterday afternoon on the sixteenth floor of 20 N. Clark St. in an office absolutely devoid of any markings. A room could potentially be more colorless, but I'm at a loss for how. There's an interesting kind of ritual to taking the GRE. I'm forbiddent to talk about the test in any explicit detail, so there will be no nudity in this post, but I can say that before you go into the testing room, you have to place everything on you into a locker. Bare of all cellphones, pagers, books, paper, pens, hats, jackets, little knicknacks that remind you of your mother, the photograph of the girl you left waiting for you like a war bride back home, you pass from the first room into a second room. A kind of holding area where they ask you if you are prepared--Is this your name? Did you leave all of your worldly possessions behind? Did we give you enough scratch paper?--and then they take your photograph and lead you into the room where you will take your test.

Not to romanticize it, but the whole ordeal is rather like the rites of manhood in some tribal cultures. The entry into a special area, the power relationship between priest and boy/proctor and test taker. It makes me think that Albee must have written Zoo Story just after taking his GRE.

Anyway, it's over. My score, for anyone interested, was a 1370. 690 verbal; 680 quantitative.
Afterward, I made a bonfire of my study materials and sat on my back porch drinking beers and watching them burn. Tomorrow, I leave for Asheville to visit with old friends I haven't seen in far too long.

1380<1450

2006-09-11T17:10:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning with something of a panicky sweat on my brow. The GRE is eleven days away, and I woke up feeling less prepared to take it than I ever have before. So I took a sick day to take a practice exam and study. I did better on the practice exam than I thought. 760 verbal and 620 math. Which means, not surprisingly, that I'm better with the English language than I am with the numeric language. I can up that math score some, but I mainly want to spend the next eleven days writing essays. Thanks to Sam, who was nice enough to send me essay topics. I'll post my answers here soon. I promise.

The essay section actually remindes me of a poetry professor I had in college. His name was Garland and he was a fantastic guy, but he let me get away with things I really shouldn't have gotten away with. Such as my answer to essay question that asked us to compare and contrast three poets we had read. I had compared and contrasted them according to their sexes and whether the first letters of their names were vowels or consonants. I remember thinking I was pretty clever at the time. How wrong I was.

Garland, if you're reading this, rest assured it's come back to bite me in the ass. I'm off to go write essays arguing whether--well who knows what topic they'll want me to argue.

Can I Take the Physical Challenge?

2006-08-22T19:30:00.000-07:00

As I've mentioned, I'm taking the GRE in a few weeks. I've been preparing for it, studying vocabulary, brushing up on my eighth grade math, panicking slightly. Mostly, I've been taking practice exams online and with my computer. This helps me to see my trouble areas in the math and verbal sections, but it doesn't help me with the essay portion of the test. I figure the only way for me to get better at the essay section is to write a lot of essays, so I'm asking for your help. Send me essay topics. They need to be phrased in the form of an argument (i.e., "The only way to really cut loose and have fun on a Friday night is by studying a nice stack of flash cards."), but other than that, I leave it up to you. I'll publish the resultant essays here.

The Tyrant Calls You...
The first issue of the NY Tyrant is out. Buy a copy and you can read my story, "Every Little Farm Girl Knows How to Fix a Tractor." You can get it via their Web site or, if you live in NY, at your local independent bookstore.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

2006-08-21T12:42:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm back. I'm not actually going to bore you all with the details of my summer vacation, but in brief, I traveled up through the foreign lands of Canada to Niagra Falls, which would be utterly gorgeous if not for the fact that it's surrounded by one of the tackiest tourist towns I've ever seen. After that, I hiked in the Zoar valley and wandered around western New York for a few days before I caught a train to NYC to visit friends and then caught a bus to the Jersey shore, where I stayed for most of the rest of my trip.

I actually did get some fishing done. My mother's husband, Joe, and I went out deep-sea fishing one day. I caught this guy, a mahi-mahi who later became this meal, and Joe caught half a dozen sea bass. The rest of the time, I mostly relaxed by the water, read, kayaked, and spent time with my niece (picture to come) before I caught the train home.

On my way back, the train was waylaid by a group of monkeys who were hellbent on taking over the train. I managed to fend them off from most of the rest of the passengers, but was taken prisoner. They brought me to France and forced me to perform street theatre with giant puppets for days at a time. Finally, I escaped on one of the elephants and found a cruise ship bound for Chicago by way of the Atlantic. I stowed away disguised as a cocktail waitress and made my way back home one cocktail at a time. The ocean was lovely, and the tips weren't half bad, either.

Anyway, I'm back. I have a month to finish prepping for my GRE, a trip to North Carolina coming up, and all sorts of other craziness to deal with, but I'm back. It's good to be home. When I got off the ship at Navy Pier, I had a definite sense that I was back home, back in my city. I took it in on my way to the train, and boy, did it feel good.

Update
This is my niece, Maude. Tell me she isn't adorable.

As luck would have it, she's also fond of her Uncle Matt. I love family.

Gone Fishin'

2006-07-27T20:20:00.000-07:00

Hey, all (both of you), I'm going to be gone for a couple of weeks, starting tomorrow. I'm taking off tomorrow with a friend for a few days of hiking in upstate NY, followed by a few days in Manhattan. Then I'm off to the beach. I probably won't be updating while I'm gone so, well, don't miss me. Both of you.

Strange Ending

2006-07-16T13:11:00.000-07:00

The Strange Dreams of Nobody in Particular closed this weeked. It was a great run, and thanks to the many talented people who worked very hard on it, we pulled off a final marathon that I'm very proud of. Now all that remains is our encore performance in Millenium Park, and then my baby goes off on its own for a while. I'll miss this show. More than I think I realized.

Belle Epoch...
Last Saturday, I woke up, went to the store for some milk, and when I came back, noticed that my mail had come. In it was a package containing a small bottle of hausgemacht (that's German for Home made) absinthe. It was sent to me by an acquaintance on one of the absinthe forums I'm a member of. He had received a bottle of it and wanted to share his good fortune. There's really nothing quite like receiving unexpected presents of absinthe in the mail. It made my morning.

As recently as a decade ago, the only place anyone could get absinthe was the Czech Republic, which sold mixtures of cheap essential oils in poorly rectified alcohol to American tourists for far too much money. Today, there are several online suppliers, of varying reputation, that you can go to for your absinthe fix, but what really impresses me the most are the HGers, the people who make absinthe at home. There's a surprising number of peope in the U.S. alone who make absinthe. They come from diverse walks of life--IT people, military men, theatre folk--and they're united simply by a love of this drink, its complex history, the desire and ingenuity to pull off a culinary challenge.

This is what I love about absinthe. Beyond its history, beyond the mythology and romance of the drink, I love the ingenuity that it inspires in people. Even people who aren't making the drink make accoutrements for it, from spoons and grilles made by artists like Kirk Burkett, to a slew of homemade fountains, some merely functional, others unique works of art unto themselves. I have to admire the cleverness of these people. Anyone can buy the accessories to go along with a drink, but it's this ingenuity and creativity that makes it a hobby. I'm happy to raise a glass to that.

Strange Dreams at Millenium Park

2006-07-16T11:13:00.000-07:00

I've been sitting on a bit of news for a while, not wanting to jinx it, but I think it's safe to talk about it now. A few weeks back, right around the opening of Strange Dreams..., our artistic director, Glen, got an e-mail from the city, asking if we would be interested in performing Strange Dreams... for Millenium Park's Promenade Performance Series. We wrote back and said that we would definitely be interested, but we didn't hear from them again.

On Friday, they wrote to Glen to tell him we've been booked for performance this coming Wednesday and on August 5. This is a fairly big deal. It means good exposure for Tantalus, and on a personal level, it's good to know people like the show.

Before the Offer Expires

2006-07-10T13:53:00.000-07:00

Hey all. I can't believe I almost forgot about this. Tantalus Theatre Group is running a promotional sale of T-shirts and sweatshirts. The shirt features the Tantalus logo on the front with our Web address on the back. Sweatshirts come both with hoods and without, as zip-ups and pullovers. E-mail me soon if you want to order one and I'll place an order with you. If you don't live in Chicago, don't worry. We can either mail it to you, or I can bring it back east with me when I visit this summer. Details for the order are below. I believe I need to get them in within the next couple of days. E-mail me if you're interested and I'll send you the information about the prices.

In other news, Strange Dreams... is almost finished. We run for two more weeks and then, poof! It's gone. I've considered going back to the original stories, though, as written and reworking them. There's a lot to Strange Dreams... and although a show about storytelling is very different than a book about storytelling, I think it could make a really good children's book. It has potential, anyway.

After this show closes, a long hiatus from the company is in order for me. Mostly for practical reasons--I can't study for the GRE and focus on getting into grad school at the same time as I focus on Tantalus. But it's also to give me time to think and to rest. We've been going through a lot of restructuring lately, rexamining our mission statement, and it's made me realize a couple of things. One of them is that I really do care a great deal about this company. It's been such a part of my life in the past three years that I have a hard time conceiving of what I did before I was a company member. The other is that, despite that, I may be in a very different place artistically than Tantalus is. I need some time to think about that.

Here We Are, Now. Entertain Us.

2006-06-24T12:09:00.000-07:00

I've been entertaining a lot this past week, having folks over for dinner and drinks out on my back porch. I had forgotten how much I enjoy having folks over for dinner. Living in a small place and on a limited budget means that dinner parties are more or less out of the question, and since I don't have a proper table to sit at and eat in doors, even small parties are fairly impossible in the winter. The upshot of that is that I don't cook as much as I would like. Cooking for one is distinctly different than cooking for lots of people. I tend to make myself simple, small meals--like pastas and rice dishes--that I can eat in a sitting without too many leftovers. If I make larger, more complicated recipes, I can't eat it fast enough, so I end up wasting food. I hate wasting food.

So with all of the people coming by this week, I decided to take the opportunity to cook a couple of feasts. I'm particularly proud of the mushroom-spinach burgers I made on Thursday, so here's the recipe for any of you folks who want to try it out.

Mushroom-Spinach Burgers
Inspired by the Asheville Brew and View (and particularly by a failed attempt to find the same in Chicago when Amanda was visiting a couple of years back)

2 lbs portabello mushrooms
1 bag of baby spinach
1 medium onion (in truth, this was half a large onion and some leftover of another onion, but I estimate it came out to roughly as much as one medium onion)
2 eggs
Bread crumbs
Garlic, thyme, basil, and other herbs to taste

I washed the portabellos and spinach, then chopped the portabellos until they were coarse. Just enough to get them into manageable pieces to sautee. Sauteed the portabellos in a large skillet, then added a good portion of white wine. Enough to essentially boil the shrooms for a bit. After that cooked for a while, I slowly added the spinach--putting the lid on the skillet when I did, so that the spinach would wilt and cook into the mushrooms--until I had added the whole bag of spinach and cooked everything until the liquid portion was gone. After that, I tossed the whole mess of mushrooms and spinach into a food processor and blended until it was good and pureed. I'd rather have had them a bit chunkier, but my food processor doesn't do that very well.

I also ran the onion through the processor, then tossed everything into a bowl and mixed it well. Added the two eggs and the bread crumbs until the mixture was firm. Then I formed it into patties and broiled them.

They were a little mushy, but all in all, they were really good, especially for a first attempt at a burger clone. The next time I try it, I'm going to leave about a third to one half of the mushrooms out of the puree and simply chop them up so that there's a bit more of a meaty feeling. Also going to add more egg and use either matzoh meal or oats instead of bread crumbs. The ultimate goal being to have a burger pattie that's firmer than the ones I had. I've also found that they firm up pretty nicely when I reheat them the next day, so I might give them more time to set before I broil them.

In the mean time, if anyone wants to come over my place for a bite to eat, let me know. The oven's all fired up and ready for you.

Speaking of Suburbia

2006-06-18T12:35:00.000-07:00

I was exploring Jay is Games today and found the interactive work of art, Blue Suburbia. Explore the surreal environments, the haunting collage of sounds and words, the strange imagery. Blue Suburbia is what I think we'd see if we could walk around inside other people's dream lives. Enjoy, but be careful...there's a couple of dead ends.

Edit: As I've explored this further, I've found some portions of it are fairly disturbing. I know a few of you will find this genuinely creepy and that it will resonate with a couple of you in ways you might not like. Personally, I think it's a worthwhile thing to go through, but just so I'm playing fair, be warned.

Strange Dreams Come True

2006-06-16T07:57:00.000-07:00

Gosh, I'm bad at self promotion. I can't believed this almost slipped my mind, but The Strange Dreams of Nobody in Particular opens tonight. This represents the culmination of two-years of gestation and workshop, and I'm really proud of what this show has become. I think it has a real sense of warmth and welcoming to it, and it really captures a lot of what I wanted it to. It has a real sense of the simplest magic of theatre: that of telling a story.

Come join us for this wonderful show.

Blog Reading

2006-06-15T09:50:00.000-07:00

I spent the last couple of days at work reading Mr. B's blog, catching myself up on his hijinx. If you haven't read it, I recommend it highly. It's a really good mix of essays and storytelling, journals and jokes, memes and personal observations. He's got a balance there that makes it a real joy to read, and when I read it, I get a really good sense of where Mr. B is at that particular moment. It's a good way of catching up with him if my schedule's too busy to permit me to walk the block and a half to his apartment and say hi.

On occasion, I don't particularly care if I write in this blog, because everytime I sit down to write something, I think, "Eh...nobody really reads this thing anyway." Reading Mr. B's blog was a good reminder that, in fact, people do read this thing and for a lot of folks I know, it's how they keep track of where I am. So I'm going to try to update more often from now on.

Sub-Urbia

2006-06-14T12:04:00.000-07:00

I've been watching Strange Dreams... run throughs most of this week and have thoroughly enjoyed listening to the direction that the stories have gone in. Many of them are vastly different than when I wrote them, having been told back and forth and changed with each telling. It's been fascinating to watch.

The other day before the run began, Danielle and I were walking around Water's School Gardens collecting kindling for the campfire. Water's School Gardens, for anyone who hasn't seen it, is a wonderfully overgrown and rugged piece of land, fenced off from the city by an overgrowth of brush and grass. Tall trees block your view of the skyline and fences of fallen branches separate paths from garden plots. Walking through it feels less like walking through a community garden in a major metropolitan area than it does like walking through someone's backyard deep in Appalachia. As Danielle and I gathered dried wood (not from the fences), I commented to her that I could be very content living in that space and she agreed, adding that she really was a country girl, even though she grew up in the suburbs.

I thought about that. I grew up in the suburbs, too. Lower Makefield Township. If you go there today, you see housing developments made of row upon row of identical townhouses occupied by a strange mixture of elderly retirees and young parents or miniature mansions owned by folks living out of credit cards. The same folks who used to tell me they didn't have any money, back in my canvassing days. If you go there now, it's exactly what you expect a suburb to be. It's plastic communities, it's minimalls, it's conformity. But it wasn't that way back when.

When my family first moved there, LMT was still more farms and forest than anything else. We moved into a good-sized grey/blue house on Hollow Branch Lane in one of the newly developing subdivsions in the area. What I remember is that, if you walked to the end of my street, you were at the edge of the woods. It wasn't like living in colonial America or anything--I'm pretty sure the colonists were without malls--but the woods were pretty extensive, and my brother and I spent many afternoons walking up and down the mud paths buldozers were carving through them, mucking about in streams and drainage ditches, generally ruining our good sneakers and pants. My first book collection was a collection of Golden Guides. I had almost every Golden Guide to different kinds of animals and when my brother and I would go out on an expedition, we would come back with animals a plenty and explain what they were in great detail to my mother.

Gradually, my subdivision grew, as did the subdivisions around it. Local farms where my family bought our fresh produce were sold off as the farmers got old and developers offered them a healthy retirement package. Those bulldozers whose tracks made such good hiking slowly tore down the woods and leveled the dirt and dug foundations and laid down asphalt. As the subdivisions grew, they eventually overlapped, and it wasn't long before what had been woods and farm turned into a subdivision megalopolis with munchkin box houses as far as the eye can see.

Most of the woods around my house are gone now. Now it's subdivisions and strip malls, and the drainage ditches are festering and stale and nothing lives in them. Most of my childhood stomping grounds have been stomped. Sad as that is, it always makes me happy when I find a place like Waters School Gardens, a little bastion of overgrowth and nature that has somehow managed to keep itself cut off from all the clutter of a city like Chicago.

Back in Real Life

2006-06-08T09:30:00.000-07:00

I spent the last week or so catching up with all of the people and things I neglected during the run of The Prometheus Myth. I spent some time with my uncle here and had a long phone conversation with someone very far away and very near to my heart. I bought a book to help me study for the GRE and made flash cards to study vocabulary and started a batch of a new kind of mead (a hibiscus/apple mead that I think will be divine served cold on a summer evening). But what I've really wanted to do is to go away into the mountains and recharge for a while.

The exact feeling I want is the feeling you get when you wake up in a tent in the middle of nowhere. It's early--earlier than you'd usually wake up--and you've been sleeping on the ground and you're a little groggy, but you're rested and the morning is full of possibilities. You walk barefoot across wet, dewy grass to the remnants of your fire the night before where there are people already cooking breakfast and pouring coffee from a tin kettle (or maybe you slept next to the remnants of your fire the night before and you walk across the grass down to the spring for some water). And someone's got a guitar or folks are talking, but the key is everyone's there together.

I think I'll get that in a couple of months when I head off to Rochester for a couple of days, and I'll get it in spades in the fall when I head back down to Asheville. But for the time being, I'm here in real life and I've got this city and all of the people in it to enjoy. Life seems suddenly full of possibility, as it always does in the summer. It's a good feeling.

Soon Unbound

2006-05-24T12:19:00.000-07:00

The Prometheus Myth closes this weekend. Anyone in the Chicago area who wants to come see it should do so. Really, it's a great show and it represents the last five months of my life pretty well.

I've been involved in this project so long, it's hard to imagine not having rehearsal or a show every night. There's going to come something of a postpartum depression following all of it. It's been a beast of a process, and I'm going to miss it and the folks who've been on this crazy ride with me. So come see us move with our whole bodies and listen with our eyes and play with puppets. Then drink with us afterward. There's a closing night party on Saturday night for all those interested and willing to drop an extra couple of bucks.

After this, it's time to study for the GRE and get cracking on grad school. In addition to my writing workshops, I've recently decided to also apply to several viticulture and oenology programs in and around the country. More on that later.

Holy Exquisite Corpse

2006-05-18T07:27:00.000-07:00

The wheels to get me to grad school are officially in motion as of this week. I registered for my GRE and have begun researching schools, tuitions, etc. Which means I need to start studying, writing critical essays, revising my writing portfolio, etc. The hardest part about all of this, I think, is simply beginning to do it. I'm frankly a little afraid to start moving forward. But it must be done and fear has to be put aside and self actualization and so on and so so forth.

So.

Here we go.

Luckily, it's the summer, which, since I work for a university print shop, means I have fuck all to do with my day but sit and research grad schools on the Internet.

Wine...
I've been promising/threatening to post something about ferments and wine making and so forth on here one of these days. This weekend might be the time to do it. I meant to start a batch of white wine to turn into base absinthe alcohol last night, but was waylaid at the grocery store by Jess and Glen, who whisked me off to a friend's birthday party, where they forced me to drink delicious champagne and eat delicious cheese. Oh, the agony.

It occured to me as I was paying for the grapes to make white wine that, with grapes costing 3.99/lb, I might have actually paid less to buy five gallons of cheap wine than I did to make my own. That's a good life lesson to learn.

C'est la vie.

Finally...
Erin sent me a link to Zoom Quilt today. Play with it...do...my only complaint is that it doesn't last longer.

2006-05-15T12:18:00.000-07:00

Small bit of news...
Last week, I got an e-mail from my friend, John Crea, who I knew in high school. He now teaches English classes at a school near where I used to live and he was teaching a course on Thoreau and transcendentalism and asked his students if they knew anyone who, whether they knew it or not, was a transcendentalist. The kids answered and then turned the question on him. He told them that he felt that I was a transcendentalist and then told them a bit of what he remembered of me in high school and so on and so forth. So apparently the kids were really fascinated by me and had a bunch of questions for me.

Anyway, as I was considering my answers to some very well thought out questions about my life philosophies, I started wondering how I was manifesting those beliefs in my daily life and kept finding that I really wasn't. I purport to be a person who wants to live in harmony with nature, someone who loves animals and believes in their rights, someone who is moral and ethical and considerate of my choices, etc., but too often, I think, I've come to take the easy road--to essentially say, "Well, I believe these things, but you know, it's really difficult to actually act on those beliefs." And for me, that's not an acceptable response.

So I've decided to become a vegetarian. My hope is that, by forcing myself to make a conscious decision about one major aspect of my life, I'll also start making more conscious choices about other areas of my life. Hopefully I'll be a better person for it. So don't feed me any steak.

Edit:
I should clarify that I'm still allowing fish in my diet. So technically, I'm a pescetarian. But the basic idea is the same.

Web Business

2006-05-14T11:41:00.000-07:00

With The Prometheus Myth up and running, my attention can now turn to other matters, like applying to grad school, writing, and more immediately my next show, The Strange Dreams of Nobody in Particular. Shiny has been rehearsing these past couple of weeks and I can finally come and see what's being made. From what I've seen, it's going to be a great show.

Alex Willan, the graphic designer for Strange Dreams... has sent us some sketches of the poster art. It's beautiful.

And Ian Knox has update the Tantalus Web site to include these designs.

Opening Night

2006-05-13T12:37:00.000-07:00

The Prometheus Myth officially opened last night to a good audience and much applause. I brought some absinthe with me afterward to share with the cast, and it was met with much curiosity and interest. Its possibly my favorite thing about my hobby--sharing absinthe with people who haven't ever had a chance to try it before.

Maybe it's the fact that today is rainy and grey and I'm a bit hungover from last night's cast party, but there's a twinge of melancholy that comes with the opening of a show like this. A bit of advanced nostalgia. I've gotten attached to this group of people, which tends to happen with a long and intense rehearsal process. I've sweat with them, moved with them, literally carried all of them at one point or another on my back. And they've done the same for me. I'll miss this crew. Hopefully I'll see them all frequently when all this is over.

In the meantime, there's twelve more shows to do. Come see an amazingly talented group of people nail Prometheus to the wall. Or rock, as the case may be.

May 12 - May 28, 2006
Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays 8:00PM
Sundays 5:00PM

RiverFront Work Lofts
2147 S. Lumber St.
Chicago, Illinois 60616

$12 suggested donation
$10 students and seniors

2006-05-05T13:36:00.000-07:00

News and Updates...

With The Prometheus Myth going into tech, I decided now would be a good time to take a little time off from work to, well, avoid going crazy with stress. Which gives me a chance to update all of you with my life. I'll be glad when we open. Six months is a long time to rehearse a show. Come see it if you get a chance. The space is a bit out in the middle of nowhere, but it's really cool, and the trek will help you get into the show. Trust me.

Strange Dreams... rehearsals are off and running nicely. The space is a community garden in Lincoln Square. It's the kind of space that has no business anywhere in this city. It's like something I'd find back in Asheville. I love it.

Finally, NY Tyrant should be out by the middle of the summer. If any of you want to buy a copy (and you know you do), you can buy individual copies from their Web site through a Paypal account.

And that's that. Now I'm going to go back to the big important things I've got to do today. Like napping. Happy Cinco de Mayo.

I Didn't Even Know he Was Running for Office

2006-04-25T07:41:00.000-07:00

Yeah, yeah...I know I've been running silent for the past couple of weeks. Mostly for reasons already cited. Strange Dreams... begins rehearsals this evening. We've got a great cast and I'm very excited to see this get going. I still need to finish typing the script, though, and I need to finish typing up a marketing blurb before someone kills me, but things are well under way. And The Prometheus Myth opens in three weeks. So that's been pretty busy.

I've got a couple of ferments going at the moment. I'll post more on them later. But first, I thought I'd get you all good and foaming at the mouth. I've got no link for all of this, so the complete article will be included below. My favorite quote from this has got to be, "The 250,000 people going to it will go back to their legislators and pressure them to vote for Jesus." That and the bit about the dinosaurs wandering around the Garden of Eden. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Read on and stock up for the coming Dark Age.

Genesis of a museum
Creationists, saying all the answers are in the Bible, put their beliefs on display in $25 million facility
By Lisa Anderson

Tribune national correspondent
Published April 25, 2006

PETERSBURG, Ky. -- The recent fossil discovery of a 375-million-year-old fish that could lurch ashore on bony transitional fins--apparently a long-sought missing link between sea creatures and land animals--made a spectacular splash in evolutionary science circles. But it created nary a ripple on the placid American campus of Answers in Genesis, where an enormous museum chronicling the biblical six days of creation is rising fast amid rolling fields.

Ken Ham, co-founder and president of Answers in Genesis, believed to be the world's largest creationist organization, and most "young-Earth" creationists are as unimpressed by science's finding another piece in the evolutionary puzzle as they are with science's finding the Earth to be 4.5 billion years old.

Using biblical calculations, young-Earth creationists believe the planet is about 6,000 years old; old-Earth creationists believe it could be older. Both, however, take the Bible literally and reject Charles Darwin's evolutionary theory that all life, including human, shares common ancestry and developed through random mutation and natural selection. Evolution enjoys near-universal support among scientists.

Not so among the American public, about half of which endorses creationism, according to polls. While new concepts such as intelligent design, which posits that life is so complicated that an intelligence must have devised it, recently have suffered setbacks from court rulings and scientific findings, creationism thrives, and Answers in Genesis is a strong sign of that.

Just hours after the fossil fish, called Tiktaalik roseae, landed on the front pages of many newspapers earlier this month, it also surfaced on the Answers in Genesis Web site. In a posting titled "Gone fishin' for a missing link?" the organization, in effect, threw Tiktaalik roseae back.

"Because evolutionists want to discover transitional forms, when they find a very old fish with leg-bone-like bones in its fins, they want to interpret this as evidence that it is some sort of transitional creature. . . . It may be just another example of the wonderful design of our Creator God," the posting said.

Absolute certainty

For creationists, there are no transitional creatures and no doubts. In the Book of Genesis, the biblical calendar of creation is as clear and simple as it is sacred: God created creatures of the sea and the air on Day 5. Land animals and man appeared on Day 6. And all of this, including the creation of Earth, happened about 6,000 years ago.

"Is the Bible the word of God or is it not? If you're going to reinterpret it from ideas outside the Bible, which continue to change, then it's not," said Ham, 54, a former high school biology teacher from Australia, who leads Answers in Genesis' 12-year-old U.S. branch. "The point I make is the Bible's account of creation is so black and white and has not changed, but man's ideas have changed." (Brief interruption here; remember this quote later, when you get to the part about the dinosaurs. One of the things that gets me most about creationist "scientists" is their hypocritical claim to believe that the Biblical account of creation is literal and complete, while simultaneously attempting to incorporate new discoveries that aren't Biblical into their worldview. There are no dinosaurs anywhere in the Bible. Any attempt to claim otherwise is pathetic at best, and at the worst, plain fraudulent. In fact, for a long time, creationists claimed dinosaur bones were a hoax. Some even went so far as to say they were placed there by God as a test of faith. The whole idea that a species could go extinct was, for some time, considered heretical, because it implied that God could somehow have created a creature that wasn't meant to be here. The point I make here is that Ham wants to claim that Christian ideas about creation haven't changed. But they have, and only the hypocrites can really claim otherwise. I now leave this slightly less than brief interruption. -M)

Ham is far from alone in that belief. According to nearly a quarter-century of Gallup polls, about half of all Americans consistently agree with the biblical account that "God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so." Polling also indicates that a majority of Americans say creationism should be taught alongside evolution in public school biology classes.

"It is strengthening. It's not adding more proponents, it's growing in terms of giving increased confidence to those who share that belief," said Ronald Wetherington, an anthropologist at Dallas' Southern Methodist University. He cited an American political climate in which creationists, who include many so-called values voters and evangelicals, feel politically and culturally empowered rather than marginalized.
In the United States, Answers in Genesis maintains a mailing list of 500,000 names and a monthly newsletter that goes out to as many as 120,000 readers, according to Mark Looy, chief communications officer.

Many of them have laid the financial foundation for the 50,000-square-foot, $25 million Creation Museum that Ham is building with donated money on a near-50-acre campus in the northern Kentucky countryside. As of March 31, almost $21 million had been raised, according to the Web site.

Minutes from the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, the location is no accident, as underscored by the airport's slogan, "Half the U.S. population within an hour's flight."

While mainstream scientists shake their heads, marketing research indicates Answers in Genesis may be welcoming up to 250,000 visitors a year after the museum's scheduled debt-free opening next spring, according to Michael Zovath, vice president of the Creation Museum. Admission fees remain to be determined.

"The 250,000 people going to it will go back to their legislators and pressure them to vote for Jesus," said Volney Gay, director of the Center for Religion and Culture at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. "There's a suspicion of science and a suspicion of intellectuals in general."

Said Ham: "What we see is if you can get information to people, their worldview will be changed, and the way they vote on issues, on a school board or whatever, will reflect that change."

But some visitors well may come from abroad. Startling the British scientific community, earlier this year an Ipsos MORI poll for the BBC , found that 48 percent of Britons accept evolution, 22 percent believe in creationism and 17 percent choose intelligent design. Further, while 69 percent want evolution taught in the science classroom, 44 percent wanted creationism included.

Those kinds of numbers fuel and finance Answers in Genesis. The organization also maintains offices in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and the United Kingdom, which is the fastest-growing ministry after the U.S., Zovath said. In fact, he said, the strength of the 3-year-old British operation has reached the point that it held its first international conference there last weekend in Derbyshire.

Earlier this month, the Royal Society, Britain's most prestigious scientific body, signaled its rising concern about creationism and education by issuing a stern statement "opposing the misrepresentation of evolution in schools to promote particular religious beliefs."

Nonetheless, already there has been talk of charter flights from Britain to visit the museum next year, Zovath said. What they and other visitors will see promises to dwarf any other such creationist museum effort in terms of scale, presentation and marketing savvy. Once past the entry gates, flanked by two hulking steel silhouettes of stegosauri, they will enter a sprawling, parklike campus, graced by a large lake and lush landscaping. In the center of it all: an august, faintly templelike building done in honey-colored stone and fronted by 11 thick pillars.

Inside, the museum will feature 31 rooms, 200 exhibit themes produced by a former Universal Studios designer and 55 video presentations, all offering creation science's evidence for the Genesis account. There also will be a 2,600-square-foot bookstore with a medieval castle motif, a 150-seat Noah's Cafe with dinosaur footprints embedded in the floor, an 84-seat planetarium, a 60-seat theater and a spacious refreshment area with palm trees and a waterfall.

The dinosaur replicas, many of them animatronic, are spectacular: Creationists say dinosaurs lived simultaneously with humans because their death came only after original sin. Some of the more compelling effects are in the key rooms depicting what are called "The Seven C's of History." They are: creation, corruption, catastrophe (the destruction of the world by Noah's flood), confusion (Babel), Christ, the cross and consummation (his death and resurrection).

Along the Creation Walk

For instance, soft lighting, gentle sounds and pleasant fragrances will mark the Creation Walk, where Adam and Eve chat with God in the Garden of Eden before they are corrupted to commit original sin by an animatronic serpent. The dimly lit Corruption galleries, by comparison, will feature videos of pain and suffering, noxious odors and the heat, literally, turned up.

"We're trying to make this the most uncomfortable place in the museum to show how original sin has corrupted the universe," Zovath said on a tour through the site.

Through constant speaking tours, daily radio broadcasts and numerous publications, Ham relentlessly drives home the message that Answers in Genesis "is a Christ-centered ministry dedicated to upholding the authority of the Bible from the very first verse."

The museum, he said, is the embodiment of that and a "symbol of Christians making a stand, a physical stand here, not in a nasty, aggressive way, but in a nice, aggressive way."

Terms of debate

Evolution: Charles Darwin's theory, accepted nearly universally by scientists, says that all life on Earth, including human, shares common ancestry and evolved to its present state through random mutation and natural selection.

Creationism: Advanced by religious conservatives in response to Darwin's theory, creationism adheres to the biblical account that God alone created the world and all life in it, much as it is today, at one point within the last 10,000 years.

Creation science: Claims scientific evidence for the biblical version of creation.

Intelligent design: Considered a successor to creationism, intelligent design became popular in the early 1990s after the U.S. Supreme Court banned the teaching of creationism in public schools in 1987. Intelligent design posits that there are weaknesses in Darwin's theory and suggests that an unnamed intelligence must have designed some aspects of life.

-- Lisa Anderson

More Thoughts on Immigration

2006-03-27T15:35:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago, after the march against HR 4437, I got into a discussion with a friend about illegal workers and my friend pointed out that the "jobs Americans won't do" rhetoric is ultimately the president's rhetoric and that protecting the current status of illegal immigrants in this country is comparable to protecting indentured servitude. After a brief back and forth about the issue, I had to tap out, because her points were good ones, and I really don't know enough about illegal immigration to properly argue.

Today, Tom Tomorrow's blog had a reprint of his thoughts on the issue of illegal immigration and the president's idea that the illegal immigrants are good for doing the job Americans won't do. Here's the post, in full. It summarizes my friend's points pretty well. In short, the president wants to give illegal immigrants a "temporary worker" status, which would allow them to work in this country without without application of U.S. labor laws to their status. So they'd still be overworked and desparately underpaid and the risk of deportation would only be lifted in the thinnest way. Put like that, I can't deny that's a problem. Certainly I could never advocate a new age of slavery in this country, nor could I advocate any law that allows corporations like Walmart to violate labor laws any more than they already do.

Still, there's something that bothers me about all of this. There were hundreds of thousands of people marching in the protest against HR 4437. These people weren't Bush supporters (the Bush=Nazi signs that some were carrying gave that away) and they weren't ignorant, well-meaning middle classers, either. These people were immigrants. Many of them, I'm certain, were illegal immigrants. Clearly there's a reason people come to this country illegally, despite the dangers and the shit working conditions. If I knew what that reason was, I'd write it here. The rhetoric of "opportunity" and "land of freedom" springs to mind, beaten into me as it was when I was a kid. Maybe the promise that their children will be American citizens, protected by our laws, if they're born on our soil.

On a deeper level, this isn't about illegal immigrants or immigrants, at all, but the American worker. It's about big corporations finding a loophole in American labor laws so they can pay their workers nothing and keep all the extra money for themselves. Clearly, the president's men shouldn't be allowed to exploit that loophole. But at the same time, the proposed wall around America to keep illegal immigrants out somehow doesn't seem right, either. Not because it would be ineffective (although it would) but because it misidentifies the threat to our working class. It isn't the Mexicans. It's the businesses and the corporations who abuse their workers because they know they can always find someone who will work for less. This practice isn't limited to illegal immigrants. Abuse of legal unskilled laborers is not as uncommon as we want to believe, and while there are laws in place to protect those laborers, the punishment for violating them is usually a slap-on-the-wrist fine.

Tom Tomorrow has a quote on his blog that sums up my thoughts on this issue nicely:

“Society is made up of groups, and as long as the smaller groups do not have the same rights and the same protection as others - I don’t care whether you call it capitalism or communism -it is not going to work. Somehow, the guys in power have to be reached by counterpower, or through a change in their hearts and minds, or change will not come.”- Cesar Chavez

The argument that the way to protect illegal immigrants from abuse by large corporations is to kick them out of the country and build a wall, and the suggestion that laws that make illegal immigration a more criminal offense is wrong, because it strips the rights of people who already have no power, while leaving intact the power of the people committing abuse. Until we turn our eyes inward and enforce already existing labor laws with real consequences, it won't matter if the worker is American or not. She will still be abused.

V

2006-03-23T11:39:00.000-08:00

Today started out so promising. The sun was shining, the air was cool but not cold, and that damp, earthen smell that signifies spring was in the air. Then the clouds rolled in. The day is still fighting for good weather--if this was a weather report, there'd be a bit of sun peaking out behind the cloud graphic--but it's not looking great.

I went and saw V for Vendetta with Mr. B last night. Here's Ain't it Cool News's review in full:

A few weeks ago, the British House of Commons passed a law banning the “glorification” of terrorism. This proposal is viewed as frighteningly broad, as the word “glorification” could have many interpretations and definitions. Obviously, this lack of clarity brings with it the potential for tremendous abuse of authority.

The timing of this measure is grimly ironic given the impending release of V FOR VENDETTA, an incendiary film that passionately renounces such lawmaking, and constantly reminds us that the obliteration of freedom – both personal and broad – tends to start in simple, subtle, and apparently well-intended ways.

At its heart, V FOR VENDETTA is not a terribly complicated story. It’s the journey of three characters. One towards vengeance, one towards awakening, as the third tries to understand the slipstream of destruction left in their wake – ultimately finding himself enlightened by the journeys of the other two. Save for a few twists and turns (which aren’t particularly twisty or turny), V’s plot is so simple that it hardly merits regurgitation:

In a totalitarian Britain, where asking questions equals dissent & citizenry/press know that their government has over-consolidated its power, an “every person” (Natalie Portman’s Evey) chances into a firestorm of dissidence unleashed by a man called “V” (voiced and performed by Hugo Weaving, although he is never seen.) Evey’s eyes are slowly opened to the truth about, and the dangers of, power. How easily it can be attained, and how fully it can misused. More importantly, she learns that the most potent word that can ever be spoken by anyone, anywhere, is a simple word with only two letters: “No.”

The movie is almost ridiculous in its simplistic structure. But “structure” isn’t what V FOR VENDETTA is about. It’s about essence, and meaning. V is very much an allegory for human events: The Nazis of yesterday, the insidious dangers facing our world today, and what our failure to recognize such patterns means for the world of tomorrow. Notions like the United States’ Patriot Act, Britain’s increased video surveillance of motorized traffic, America’s pre-knowledge of (and possible inaction towards) 9/11, and the movement to dilute the legal sanctity of homosexual relationships are all pointedly evoked. More subtle, but equally dangerous, trends are also touched upon (“If you’re not for the war in Iraq, then you don’t love our country!”); their dangers are vividly (and viscerally) illustrated here.

V FOR VENDETTA is far from perfect. The pacing in the film’s final quarter feels decidedly less urgent than the material that came before it, and the movie leaves are about ten jillion questions unanswered – some of which are better left unanswered. Despite such quirky shortcomings, V FOR VENDETTA is a frequently potent, consistently stirring film whose greatest impact rises not from the story it’s actually telling, but in its relationship to the world we live in. In the reality V FOR VENDETTA urges us to create, the film itself would probably never exist – because it would not need to exist. If only we were there, and if only that were so.

But in the here and now, V is a constantly chilling and sometimes humbling wake-up call. A rather brilliantly considered one at that: It’s certainly possible to argue the artistic merits of the film. But if one argues what the film is saying, then we effectively becoming one of the very people the film is warning us against…much like the dynamic forcibly created by V himself.

It’s challenging to accept that the ideas worth dying for are not always the ideas our governments tell us are worth dying for. It’s even more uncomfortable to swallow the notion that we, as a populous, are responsible for the actions of our government simply because we put The Powers That Be in office. “If you want to see who is responsible…” intones V, “Look no further than a mirror.”

After the movie, I looked in the mirror. I’m not sure I liked the person I saw – as a citizen, or as a father. This being said, my twelve year old understood this movie. He felt it. He got it.Maybe I didn’t do such a bad job after all. And, maybe there’s hope for us yet…

Alan Moore has this great way of using the superhero genre to comment on humanity. In The Watchmen, his heros are just as broken as the people they fight, and perhaps more so (the character Rorschach's back story actually fits the psychological profile of a lot of serial killers). If the lens were turned just slightly, we'd see them as monsters, or at the very least, desperate neurotics.

V uses its hero to ask the question "what is the difference between a freedon fighter and a terrorist?" And mostly its answer is "The direction of your lens." And though it was written 20 years ago, it has a startlingly poignant message about the times that we are in now--about what causes a populace to give up freedom to an increasingly dictatorial government, about the way fear can can be used to play upon our minds. Go see it. It won't disappoint.

Strange Dreams...
I've been fairly silent, I know, about The Strange Dreams of Nobody in Particular. Mostly this is because Shiny and I are still in the "writing and structure" phase of the project, where we write story after story and then arrange and rearrange them on a big whiteboard and try to see how the entire massive endeavor will look to someone who isn't us. Which is why I haven't had much to say. Writing about writing is a bit like dreaming about sleeping.

Suffice to say, the project is coming along. These days I alternate between thinking, "Oh good...we're right on track," and, "Oh God...we'll never get this thing off the ground! It's too big." And I think a lot of it depends on what time of day I happen to glance at the whiteboard.

One bit of good news is that Ed and Steve of ...i think not fame have agreed to write songs for the show. Those two can write a mean folk song. We had a preliminary meeting with them a couple of weeks ago, and it left me very excited.

Finally, speaking of Mr. B, he has a blog and has finally given me permission to put up a link in my sidebar. Which I will do right now.

Pi Day

2006-03-14T10:35:00.000-08:00

So it turns out today is Pi Day, today being March 14, which can be written out as 3.14. Celebrations sort of unofficially start at 1:59 (3.14159) , but you can really celebrate all day if you want. Pi Day celebrations include indulging in anything that starts with the letters "pi". Presumably, this means you could dress as a pirate while drinking a pina colada and pining for your lost love. Pining doesn't make for a great celebration, though, so I recommend piling on top of some new love, instead.

Or you could just go the obvious route and eat a slice of pie. Make sure it's a square pi, though, because "the pie is sometimes square, due to the pronunciation of the equation area of a circle: πr2 (i.e. pie are squared)." Math geeks are so cool.

Something Happening Here

2006-03-10T11:36:00.000-08:00

This is the view from my office window right now:

If you can't see it, those are people down there as far as the eye can see. Thousands upon thousands of people, marching in opposition to HR 4437, an antiimigration law written, "To amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to strengthen enforcement of the immigration laws, to enhance border security, and for other purposes. " I don't know enough about the particulars of the law to comment on it (HR 4437 apparently restricts immigration rights and makes it a criminal act to employ an illegal immigrant), but as my boss pointed out, illegal immigrants are already deported. How much more illegal do we have to make it?

Still, there's something about the feeling of this much charged emotional energy in one place that is incredibly invigorating. It's palpable. You can feel it, even nine stories up, you can feel the crowd cheering, the drums. It really is amazing.

(thanks for Bogdan for the picture)

Out of Touch

2006-03-07T15:05:00.000-08:00

Sweet Mama of Judah, I haven't written in a long time. Sorry about that. I've been busy with rehearsals (coming along nicely...I'm getting very fitt) and writing Strange Dreams... (also coming along quite nicely...we will have music in our show, thanks to Ed and Steve).

The big news of the past two weeks is that a story of mine has been accepted for publication. On paper and everything. My story "Every Little Farm Girl Knows How to Fix a Tractor" will appear in the inaugural issue of NY Tyrant magazine. At the moment, I'm working with one of their editors to pare down and tighten the story. Suffice to say, I'm excited.

And with that little bit of news, I'm off to a Strange Dreams... meeting.

Feel the Burn

2006-02-18T08:56:00.000-08:00

Rehearsal was cancelled today, which leaves me with a day unexpectedly open to do with whatever I will. It's honestly a bit disappointing, because I look forward to rehearsals, but at the same time, my body could use the day off. Since The Prometheus Myth is going to require a lot of physical strength and stamina from its actors, we've started devoting a half hour of rehearsal to something called FIT training (FIT supposedly stands for something other than "fitness" but nobody seems to know what), which is a cycle of low-impact aerobic exercises designed to firm muscles and build stamina. We've did our first bit of FIT training on Thursday, and I have not been so sore since I took a step aerobics class in high school. Truly, I never realized how out of shape I am. So I'm glad to be getting back into shape. And I'm also glad I don't have to do it today, because Thursday kicked my ass from there to Sunday.

A Good Week for Artwork...

One of the cool things about my hobby is that, since I'm making something that people want, I can periodically trade a bottle for something else. I recently ran a batch of absinthe and sent a bottle to Sam and Terry. In trade, Sam offered these:

I love them. Sid Wangmeister, incidentally, was the porn name I took for myself in college when I was writing the as-yet unmade existentialist porn, Coital Solution (the tag line of which was "Show Me How to Make Mayonaise, Baby"). Sid was the comic relief for the film. He owned a kosher deli and would make suggestive jokes about pickles. Perhaps you see why this film was never made.

On Tuesday, I also received this. I didn't get this for barter, but the money I spent on it helped my friend Ursula take a trip to Costa Rica for some very good causes. So everyone wins.

I think I'll spend my day off buying some hanging brads and searching my apartment for wall space.

Radio Free Xsnania

2006-02-09T18:40:00.000-08:00

I realize I've been running on silent for the past couple of weeks, and for that, I'm sorry. There's a couple of reasons for this. One is that rehearsing for The Prometheus Myth and trying to write Strange Dreams... has kept me busier than I naively expected it to. It's not so much that I have no time to write here, it's just that the time I do have I spend either sleeping or catching up with people I really love, so I just haven't had any impetus to write.

Strange Dreams... is coming along nicely. It's hard to say if it's exactly where I thought it would be at this point, since I really didn't have any idea how to begin crafting this piece when we began, but my friend Shiny and I are writing stories and sharing them, and those stories are engendering other stories, which in turn bear other stories, and so forth. In short, the basic idea of the show, that we create our world through telling each other stories, is proving truer than I'd ever imagined.

The Prometheus Myth is also coming along nicely. In fact, fuck that, it's easily the most interesting and amazing piece of theatre I've gotten to work on in a long, long time. We had our one person leave the show already (there's always one in a show like this) and have spent the last two weeks working intensively with a Lacoc (sp?) movement teacher to learn to move as a group, create still but dynamic scenes, etc. It's been a little like military training, except the movements have been a lot more flowy. But the basic elements--not standing out from the group, being in the scene without dominating the scene, using all senses to make yourself aware of both the space around you and the people in it--is very military. I love it.

Last Saturday, our head puppeteer introduced us to Zeus, a six-foot bunraku puppet with a fully articulated face and hand. It's amazing. I got to play. And we get to do this until May.

The other big reason I haven't written is that in my off time, I've been really sick with some kind of creeping nasty cold that's kept me up coughing all night. It's slowly subsiding, and I've been resting a lot and drinking plenty of tea and sleeping at seven every night, but it's still lingering. Even as we speak, I'm drawing up a hot bath for myself to hopefully suck some of this cold feeling out of me and loosen my lungs a bit. Then an early bed time for me, I'm afraid.

Stupid disease.

2006-02-01T16:08:00.000-08:00

To bury the hatchet...

This comment appeared in response to my ICM post of a few months back, and since that post is way far back in time, in the interest of presenting both sides of the argument, I thought I'd bump it up to the front:

I've been living in an ICM property for a few years and have had nothing but a great experience with these guys. While I have had a few maintenance issues during that time they have always responded promptly to my requests. When my fridge broke I had a new one in 3 days. The one time my hot water went out they had someone by to fix it that same day. I have recommended a few friends to ICM as well and they have all been very happy with their apartments.

I've heard other people have good experiences with ICM, but I just didn't. In my experience with them, they rarely made repairs in good time (when I left my apartment, the gaping hole in the close floor that they continually said they'd repair was still there) and their mode of doing business was at best unprofessional (they never once returned a phone call from me to let me know it was received or to tell me when their workmen would be over), at worst bullying and rude.

To their credit, however, after I moved out, they returned my entire deposit with interest, which is more than any other landlord has done. Their business manager even called me to apologize that they had misplaced the SASE I had sent and to tell me the check was on its way. Had the rest of my dealings with them been so professional and polite, I would probably still be in my apartment with them.

For Actors

2006-02-01T10:07:00.000-08:00

I got this e-mail from my friend Braden last night:

Hello actors. I hope this message finds you all gainfully employed. My name is Braden LuBell, and I am an experienced acting teacher and monologue coach, with a degree in acting and directing from Emerson College. I have worked professionally as both an actor and a director, as well as spending last year as the casting director for a new theater company in Philadelphia. After many extremely successful experiences in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, I am attempting to begin teaching and coaching again, here in Chicago. I have worked with a large spectrum of age groups (adolescent to middle aged), and actors of all levels of experience (novice to professional). I can work with you on pieces you already have in your repertoire, or I can help you find new monologues to work on as well. I am thorough, I love what I do, and I will always remind you how to have FUN with your work - too often forgotten about in the stress of trying to be an actor. You can always trust I will not send you off without making sure you are at your absolute best. I am charging a mere $15.00 an hour for my services. This is an embarrassingly low rate, I know, but I am hoping the price’s lack of intimidation will entice people to at least give me a go-around. Of course, should anyone request it of me, I can provide enthusiastic recommendations from former students, many of whom are professionally working actors today. I will come to you, or if you are not comfortable with that, we can arrange for an inexpensive rehearsal space. No commitment required; you can work with me once for an important audition, or we can set up a weekly appointment. Again, it’s a mere $15.00, so there’s nothing to lose. ( …Except $15.00.) If you have any questions at all, or you would be interested in setting up a session, feel free to email me at : http://by101fd.bay101.hotmail.msn.com/cgi-bin/compose?curmbox=00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000001&a=d38e8d0312268d23c7cd005df3529d9dc1e0951f4f824bd0e4aebb9c08968ef4&mailto=1&to=bradenlubell@hotmail.com&msg=6491A36F-8A34-4DB6-A3B1-2645ABC31969&start=0&len=4671&src=&type=x Best of luck with all your endeavors, and I hope to hear from you soon. All good thoughts, Braden I can vouch for Braden's skill. He directed Sue's show for the SF Fringe Fest, and it was excellent. So if anyone needs a monologue coach for auditions, go to him.

Heirlooms

2006-01-19T19:27:00.000-08:00

How to describe Pop?

Pop was my dad's grandfather, my great grandfather. I never met him. He died before I was born, but one of my earliest memories is of him, of sitting on a bench in a train station next to a man telling me he's my great grandfather. I've seen pictures of Pop, and I'm pretty sure it's him in my memory. That memory might just be there because of the world of stories about Pop that live on.

Pop spent most of his adult life working in glass. He was kind of a rennaissance man, so he applied himself to several trades; he worked at a specialty bookbinding house for a while, he painted, he etched glass, he cooked. He invented the ravioli recipe my family traditionally makes for Christmas dinner every year. When my father was a teenager, Pop took him and his cousins on trips up to NYC, down to Trenton, to Boston, to Washington, D.C., and cultivated a real love of travel in them. My mom describes him as the most complete gentleman she ever met.

I've always liked the stories about Pop. Like I said, I never met him, but since I became an adult, I've always felt like some part of him was a part of me.

Today, I got home and found an unexpected package at my door. I opened it, and found these inside:

These were decorated by Pop. He etched the Rs onto them (R for Rossi, of course). They are the only two left in the world, and my father gave them to me, because he said my Christmas gift this year reminded him of Pop and of the spirit of experiment, invention, and artistry that Pop had.

I can't think of a time I've felt more honored. I can't think of a gift I'll cherish more.

Acting and Workshop

2006-01-16T09:33:00.000-08:00

Happy Martin Luther King, Jr., Day. Since I'm a state employee, I have the day off, and I plan to use it to its fullest extent. Whatever that might be. At the moment it means taking the chance to work on a project I've been meaning to get to and updating you on my life.

Last Wednesday, I auditioned for the Anatomy Collective's spring show, The Prometheus Myth, which is a movement/puppetry-based show in development around, well, the Prometheus myth. It was one of the most fun auditions I've had in a while and as such would have been worth going to in and of itself. I got a call from them on Saturday, and they told me that I've been cast. I'm looking forward to it. The show looks to be great fun, and the people doing it are neat, so I'm stoked. First rehearsal is on Wednesday.

My Strange Dreams...
The Strange Dreams of Nobody in Particular is my contribution to Tantalus's summer. I've been promising for a while that I'd talk about it here, but have been avoiding it because I'm not really sure where to begin. So I figured I'd just choose a place now and get it all out. Sorry for the information dump.

Strange Dreams...is going to be a serial show to be performed in its complete form over the run of a weekend. So Thursday will be one part, Friday will be the second, Saturday will be the third. The complete version will take a mosaic narrative structure, which will mean that an audience member can conceivably take in only one night and still leave feeling as though she has seen a complete show, or she can see all three nights and see a larger, richer show. Each show is like the tiles in a mosaic: each can stand on its own as a simple thing of beauty, but taken as a whole, they fit together as a large and intricate story.

At its core, Strange Dreams... is about storytelling and the simple type of theatrical magic that comes with listening to a good story told well. Spectacle in this piece will be minimal and largely peripheral, and the audience will be asked to use their imaginations to a degree not often asked of a modern, movie-going audience.

Since I've never created a show of this type, and since I've never seen a work of serial theatre, this piece poses several major challenges. Marketting is one of them. How to get an audience to come back several nights in a row? The other big problem is structuring the shows so that they can both stand alone and fit together.

I didn't know how to do this, so for the past month and a half, I've been in workshop with Tantalus folks and some trusted friends, exploring the art of storytelling and developing ways to tell a large story using several smaller stories. In the past two weeks, we took the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice and wrote stories around the negative space of Orpheus and Eurydice. Some of these stories intersected directly with Orpheus and Eurydice's story, some were far reaching, but related to the story. The idea was to use the negative space surrounding Orpheus and Eurydice to paint a picture of the myth itself. We played with this method for two weeks and then applied a structure, based in a nine-card tarot reading, to the whole thing. The first row of the nine cards dealt with the past. The second with the person that the reading is being done for. The third is the future.

We assembled stories in this way, wrote a few new ones and adapted old ones to better fit the tarot structure. On Thursday, we presented the findings of the workshop to some close and trusted friends in the form of the nine-story telling of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. I have to say, I was impressed with what we created. The workshop presentation wasn't the show we're going to perform, but it was an impressive piece of theatre in itself. From the comments my friends made and from their suggestions, I've learned a great deal about how we need to approach Strange Dreams... in order for it to work. We still have miles to go before we can even think of sleeping, but it was a very successful workshop and for the first time in a while, I'm absolutely confident that Strange Dreams... is going to be an amazing show.

Finally, what this workshop has renewed in me is the sense that there really isn't any excuse for bad theatre anymore. The show we presented at the workshop was put together in two weeks with no script, no costumes, no props, no money expended, just five people working hard and playing with their imaginations, and what we ended up with was an hour-long show I'd be proud to present at a festival. Given that, I can think of no excuse for creating a bad show. Just something to chew on for a while.

PS...
If there's anyone reading who is skilled in brazing metals and would be willing to share some of that knowledge with me firsthand, please let me know. I'm at a bit of a loss with a project I'm working on at present. Thanks.

The Mud Queens are Back, and There's Gonna Be Trouble

2006-01-12T11:23:00.000-08:00

I love the Mud Queens of Chicago. Aside from the fact that they've brought back the timeless art/sport/giddy thrill of watching women writhe around semiclothed (and often not so much clothed) in mud, not only do they practically give away their shows for the low price of five dollars (which buys you bands, mud wrestling, and a kick ass party), they make you feel good about watching seminaked (and often not so much semi) women kick each other's asses, because all of the profits go to support The Young Women's Empowerment Project.

Fuck yeah.

Show Me Your Package, Mr. President

2006-01-10T14:34:00.000-08:00

U.S. says opens some private mail in terrorism fight

"U.S. officials can open personal mail arriving from abroad as part of the fight against terrorism, and do so when they deem it necessary to protect the country, a Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman said on Monday.

"News of the little-known practice follows revelations that the government approved eavesdropping on U.S. citizens without judicial oversight after the September 11 attacks, which sparked concern from civil liberties advocates and some lawmakers who called for congressional hearings. "

Let's be perfectly clear on one thing, here: The government did not approve eavesdropping on U.S. citizens without judicial oversight. The Bush Administration approved it. When you say that the government approved these things, it indicates that Congress had a notion that this was going on and that proper checks and balances were observed.

They weren't, as indicated by the countless congressmen who were apalled to find out what was going on.

2006-01-05T10:12:00.000-08:00

One of those thoughts I probably shouldn't share...

If orgasm is, as the French put it, le petit mort, the little death, then I have committed suicide countless times.

Happy New Year

2006-01-01T11:21:00.000-08:00

What the title says. I've got nothing more to say than that. Hope you all have a good one, full of love and prosperity and...um...various foodstuffs.

2005-12-22T18:46:00.000-08:00

To Supplement Yesterday's Post...
Thanks, ACLU.

My Addition to the War

2005-12-21T14:07:00.000-08:00

Bonnie sent me this today. If you're one of the people who doesn't read the links I attach, then you're lame. And you're going to miss out, because this one is really good. It's Fuck Christmas, which is written by the same guy who wrote Fuck the South (neither a sentiment I wholly agree with, though oddly, I agree with everything he says in each...go figure...) and it basically addresses this whole myth about the liberal plot against Christmas.

There's a lot written out there about the plot against Christmas (which is as silly a thing to say as "the liberal plot against fluffy bunnies" or "the liberal plot against cute puppies" and is equally fictional) and I have little to add to it (though I'd like to point out that here Gibson cites "Santa dumped from Coke cans..." as one example of the way in which Christmas is being attacked and also mentions Christmas lights and Christmas trees, but fails to bring up one single example of Christ actually being devalued...but I digress), except this: read the subtitle of John Gibson's book. If your eyes aren't that good or you're just lazy, I'll help you. It says:

How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday is Worse than You Thought

That phrasing "the Sacred Christian Holiday".

I was raised Christian. Not by particularly fanatical parents, but my mom and dad did set out to make sure I had a good Christian education. That I had a good basis in the faith. My dad was active in the church until, one day, he was listening to something someone said and realized "Wow...I don't actually believe any of this." I had a similar moment at the age of thirteen. But thirteen years of Sunday school and Bible reading (admittedly somewhat light when you're Episcopalian) drills a certain knowledge of the faith into you, and let me tell you, Christmas is not the sacred Christian holiday. Not by a long shot. Christmas is not the most sacred holiday to anyone but the big corporations who glut on increased holiday sales.

The most sacred Christian holiday does not happen for another few months. I'm talking about Easter, of course, the real high holy day of the Christian church. The day when Christ died, was resurrected, and assumed his place on the throne of Heaven (assuming you're believe all this). That's the mystery of the Christian church. That's the miracle. That he was born--well, that's no great wonder. More or less everyone does that at some point in their lives.

People like Gibson focus so much energy on the renaming of Christmas trees to holiday tress, the absence of Santa Claus in the public sphere, etc. But these are all pagan elements that have been taken by Christians over the years and made into symbols of Christmas (hell, Gibson even points out in his little rant that these are parts of a Germanic pagan winter festival). When you get right down to it, they are secular elements of the holiday that have been added over the years and adopted by the public sphere, and they have nothing to do with Christ's birth.

If we're arguing that the Christmas trees and lights and Santa are all indivisible now from Christmas, then I'd counter that Christmas has been made, by the importance placed on distinctly non-Christian elements, into a secular holiday. But clearly, it isn't that. Jews don't celebrate it. Nor do Muslims. Nor, to my knowledge, do Hindus or Buddhists or any of the other 20 percent of the population that makes up the rest of this country. So what makes Christmas holy? I don't know...not precisely...but I'd argue that it has more to do with families who come together to be with each other and love each other, with people taking a timeout to share some good will with everyone they meet, with church congregations who come together as a group to celebrate the beginning of their miracle, and with a sort of private revelation, if you are a believer, that the king was born this night and with him, the hope for all mankind. If I'm right, which I think I am, then you'll see that nobody is really able to attack that. And you'll see that, though liberals might have had a hand in making Christmas at large a secular holiday, it is the people on the far right slinging slander who have made it something crass.

Our Christmas Present from the IRS

2005-12-19T11:32:00.000-08:00

It's cold out. Very extremely cold out. The thing I love about standing outside in cold like this is how utterly silent everything is. I would think that in the cold, with all of the molecules of air tightening together, sound would travel excellently. It would be crisp and travel to our ears as through a steel tuning fork. But it doesn't. The air is crisp, but soundless on days like this. I like that.

Holiday celebrations are already well under way. The past two weekends have been full of holiday parties with eggnog and mulled wine and the ocassional snowball fight. I leave in three days for home, which I'm looking forward to. My gifts are all made (liqueurs for all, this year), some are given, etc.

The big news right now involves Tantalus. We received a notice from the IRS on Saturday and are officially a not-for-profit organization. This is excellent news, because now it means that on top of benefits to us, any donations made to us are tax-deductible. It's a good thing for Tantalus.

I'm taking an extended hiatus from the company after The Strange Dreams of Nobody in Particular goes up. Just a little time to work on projects of my own and reevaluate my life. After that, we'll see where we are. Recent developments and past issues have sort of come together over the past couple of weeks, and I've realized that I put far more work into Tantalus than I get out of it in terms of artistic fulfillment. That's a problem. Tantalus is very much a company of directors and idea men. As a writer, Tantalus doesn't really offer me much. As an actor, it's become clear that I'm not going to get the opportunity to grow and expand my skills. So it may be time to move on. It's not something I'd do lightly, but it may be time.

Grad school has finally begun to call me, too. It may just be a time for change, in general. New years aren't always that way, but they can be.

I...um...Wow..You What?

2005-12-07T20:57:00.000-08:00

I found this through one of the absinthe forums I'm on. One of the members of the forum is creating an Egyptian-style mummy out of a chicken. I'm torn between horror and morbid fascination. Actually, I'm torn between morbid fascination and sarcasm, as I keep trying to find an appropriate mummy's curse joke and just can't seem to place my finger on it. I know there's one in there somewhere, but like the tomb of King Tut, it eludes me.

Quick, somebody, draw me a cartoon or something to express the appropriate joke!

Announcement...

I braved the bitter cold to go see my friend Molly perform as the featured poet at the Funky Buddha Lounge on Monday. I've mentioned Molly on this blog before. She's an exceptionally talented poet and gives a mean performance and I told her so. She asked me to plug this, so here you go:

I've joined a writing ensemble here in chicago. We
have a show put together about chicago, and it's
amazing. For now we're going as The No-Name
Ensemble, because we've been so busy with
everything else...that well, that got left behind.
We'll be the feature at The Green Mill on Sunday,
December 11th. The open mic starts at 7, feature
at 8, and slam at 9. It's $6 at the door. You can
see the sign from the Lawrence stop on the Red
line. It's going to be an amazing show!
We'll also start a monthly show at Martyr's starting
Jan 3rd.
I hope to see y'all there!

Incidentally, they're currently performing as the No-Name Ensemble. I don't want to talk for Molly but I bet anyone who could find them a name would get smooches or something for it. I suggested the Spoon River Ensemble. There were no smooches for me. But do go see them if you're in Chicago. They're really good, and this is coming from a guy who doesn't like slam poetry.

Collecting Anatomy

2005-12-03T07:52:00.000-08:00

On Thursday during workshop, Glen told me about the Anatomy Collective's show, "Many Things are Destroying Me," and asked me if I might like to go see it. I said I would, so after my relatively failed writing session at the Pick Me Up, I trained home in a piss-poor mood to my home and then bused (bussed? bust?) out to Wicker Park for the show. By the first five or ten minutes, the bad mood was completely gone.

In essence, "Many Things are Destroying Me" is actually three shows: an interactive installation, a play, and an afterparty (if you can consider an afterparty a show...which I do). And the three parts were disparate enough that it's really difficult for me to review them as one item. The opening installation was a little like walking through a live-action version of Fly Guy. It invited the audience to wander through and a beautiful and surreal environment and interact with the miming characters within. A pair of women, bound in a wirework cage underneath a starscape of broken wine glasses sensually hand danced and made eyes at audience members. A mime in the middle of a circle of flowers played spin the bottle with himself (and anyone who wanted to sit with him) and tossed around an apple with a dancing girl in white and a persnickety writer who wandered the audience announcing himself with a horn. All of this was set to the music of an accordion player, who sat in the corner and whose face was so serious and intriguing that I was simultaneously enticed and terrified to walk up to her. In all, this was my favorite part of the evening, and not just because I'm a whore for artistic installations that invite me to play (although I am), but because of the balance struck between inviting play and giving the audience space. Which is to say that the Anatomy Collective provided ample opportunity for people like me to come and play, while not neglecting the beauty and visual elements necessary to rope in people who prefer to sit back and watch. It's a difficult balance to make--one that even some of the most accomplished spectacle companies often fail in, in my opinion--and the group pulled it off wonderfully.

The second part of the show consisted of five short absurd plays by Chicago playwright Taavo Smith. In them, a pair of men stand before the "Author" (played by Taavo, himself) and ask him questions fanboy-style, though all but his one knee is paralyzed. In another, a man and a woman talk around the presence and possibly rape of another woman (who may or may not even exist). Though they were well written, these really break no new ground. Instead, they tread over the same ground covered years before by Beckett, Ionescu (woot! spelled it right.), Pinter--essentially the canon of absurdist plays. In and of itself that might have left me unimpressed and cold, but they were acted with such commitment and skill that they really took on a life of their own outside of their genre. Thus a scene in which two men held an argument in gibberish, which in unskilled hands might have turned into just another knock-off of the French Dadaist movement, was performed so adeptly that it truly allowed the audience to divorce themselves from the meaning of words and experience the emotion of the argument. Sudden shifts in mood and style in the aforementioned man-and-woman scene helped lend gravity and a real sense of unease to a conversation that said nothing particularly unsettling or creepy.

At the party afterward, I got to speak with Taavo, as well as the Anatomy Collective's artistic director, Stephanie Acosta and company member, Alex Miles Younger. I found them very giving and unpretentious, and I really think that this aided in creating the inviting mood of the show. Because had they been pretentious or dismissive or uninviting, themselves, this would have bled into the performances of the actors. It's good to know, then, that there are people creating fun spectacle and interesting shows who are not so full of themselves.

In all, it was truly a delight to see this show. If you can, I recommend seeing it. It runs again tonight. If not, look for the Anatomy Collective's next performance, Prometheus. I have a feeling it will be very interesting.

Wherein the author’s own sense of irony comes back to bite him in the ass…

2005-12-02T18:21:00.000-08:00

Possibly the worst experience I encounter with any regularity as a writer—even worse than sitting in front of a blank page and not having any idea what to write—is sitting in front of a page full of words, fully aware of where I’m going with a story, and completely unable to find the words to get me there with any grace. Because once I know where I’m going, figuring out how to get there seems like it’d be the easy part (I could MapQuest it or something…surely there’s a MapQuest function that maps out narratives for you…well, there should be.)

I’m sitting at the Pick Me Up right now, ostensibly putting work into my pig story, but really just listening to music and, once in a while, writing a couple of sentences that I quickly delete because they sound forced and absolutely worthless. And I’m listening to music, which I already said, but it’s worth noting because “Paperback Writer” just came on, because I added it to my writing mix, because I thought it would be really clever to listen to a song about a failing writer while I wrote.

I am not clever. I am a putz.

Back to writing. Or whatever it is you call this nonsense I’m doing.

Churning the Waters Like a Hurricane in the Atlantic

2005-11-29T21:20:00.000-08:00

Today, I took a different route home than I usually do. I stopped at a grocery store to get some cheese and crackers and coffee for the first day of Strange Dreams of Nobody in Particular workshop, which meant I took the bus up to a certain street and caught the el from there. For no reason, I stopped in a shop to Christmas browse and then quickly left because it was a lame shop. A moment later in the shop and I would have missed her. A moment sooner and I would have been on the train too quickly. As it was, I stepped out of the shop right as a girl from the first play I directed walked by.

Running into old friends from Asheville in this town is worth noting at any time. There aren't many of us here...in fact, I don't know of anyone other than me here who I went to school with, though at times I wish the case were different. But running into a friend from Asheville now--even an acquaintance--is really remarkable. I've just been having a conversation with another friend from Asheville, one who also came out of the woodwork recently, about connections with people and how they come and go. And why some people reappear and why others stay vanished.

Synchronicity is strange. If I was Yoda, I would have much to meditate on. Even in my poor little non-Jedi skin, I should consider a thing or two.

Cambridge, Part 2

2005-11-22T18:51:00.000-08:00

Years ago, when I was in my senior year of college, I came up to Cambridge to visit my friend, Miranda, who was then a freshman at Harvard. I remember walking around Harvard Square, bustling urban center, and feeling daunted by the activity, the scope. I remember walking through Harvard Yard among the dorms of brilliant students, the halls of academia, the library, and feeling--in my then very insecure way--like I had absolutely no business being there, no right to walk around among the great minds of my generation.

Today, I walked through Harvard Yard again for the first time since my visit with Miranda. I sat in the same tea shop where I met her here on Brattle Street, in the same seat, and drank possibly the same cup of tea I'd had. I walked through Harvard Yard, past her dorm, past the library. It's all as I remember it. Nothing has changed, except that, woefully, Miranda is nowhere near Cambridge anymore, and that I felt perfectly in my right place.

babies, babies, everywhere...
My niece, who for the time being is possibly named Maude, but whose name is really indeterminate, is doing just fine. She has learned very quickly how to breast feed (interesting side note: babies have to learn to breast feed...they don't know how to do it instinctively...weird, huh?), and remains incredibly cute. Which is actually quite rare for newborns, who tend to look a little like squished Jack o' lanterns for the first couple of days.

Not at all apropos of my Jack o' lantern remark, I went to visit with Sam and Terry and their boy, Nathaniel today. He's a healthy ten pounds after three months of life and is very talkative. He's even beginning to make basic sorts of language sounds, which I didn't think babies could do until much later in their babyhood. So, well done, Nathaniel. Sam and Terry are taking very well to parenthood.

So many babies here. I've never been a giant fan of babies, except in the abstract, but--and perhaps this is because I have a certain familial closeness to these two (at heart, if not entirely by blood)--I couldn't get enough of Maude and Nate. It kind of makes me want to move here.

I'm heading to Philly tomorrow. Thanksgiving's going to seem like a really drab affair by contrast to all of this. Just another feast holiday, the same one we had last year.

Cambridge

2005-11-21T22:55:00.000-08:00

This morning, after a long last night of rearranging my flight and last-minute packing, I got up early, went to work for an hour and a half, and then left to catch a 10:55 flight out to Boston. I got here at two, right as my niece came into the world, caught excellent train karma from the airport to the hospital. A kind midwife led me into the labor room and told another, somewhat more businesslike midwife that I was Jenn Rossi's brother (a minor omission of the in-law) and they asked if I could come in. I didn't even get my bags down before my brother tackled me (not tackled, exactly, but I can't remember anyone greeting me with such gusto), followed by my mother, followed by Jenn's father, until I finally had to tell everyone in the room that I'd very much like the next person I kissed to be my niece.

She's lovely. She's a week early, but she was right on time because she arrived almost exactly when I did. And she's very strong and curious like I was when I was newborn. And she's beautiful. And she has a smell about her that can only be described as new-human smell, as in she smells the way we smell uncorrupted. And have I mentioned how beautiful she is? Well she is. I hope Uncle Matt gets to be a big part of her life.

We waited around the hospital for a while, and finally Jenn was moved to the postnatal ward of the birthing center and we said our goodbyes for the evening. I was entrusted with my niece's placenta, which was given to me in a large plastic tub. The kind they put potato salad in at the deli. The plan is to bury the placenta tomorrow. I do not know where we're burying the placenta, but I think that I was voted into the task because a) I'm Mike's brother, b) I'm the least squeamish family member, and c) I wrote a story about a uterus that rises up against its owner, so it seemed only natural that I should be the one to help bury a placenta.

Now I should sleep. Because my computer says it is 9:55, but my computer lies because it is actually 10:55 here, and it's actually three in the morning, according to my body.

I have a niece!

She's a Comin' From the Uterus When She Comes

2005-11-20T15:55:00.000-08:00

I got a call from my mom earlier today. My sister-in-law is in labor up in Cambridge. By the time I get home, I'll probably have a niece. Which got a hearty "Woo hoo!" from me. I can't wait to meet her. At the moment, I'm trying to figure out a way to change my flight and come to Cambridge on Monday or Tuesday.

Call me uncle Matt

After This, Some Dreams of My Own

2005-11-14T21:56:00.000-08:00

Sitting at home with a glass of absinthe, hoping that will help bring a nice deep sleep on.

I just got back from watching Moving Dock's production of Einstein's Dreams. By and large, I found the production a bit sleepy, but there were some moments of great imagination and some bits of nice staging, such as the world in which time changes very slowly, which featured actors moving in unison to a metronome.

The highlight of the evening was the reception and talk given by Alan Lightman beforehand, which was just plain fun because I've been wanting to meet him ever since I read the book in high school. I'm always amazed when I see amazing writers, because by and large I always expect great writers to be very dominating, and by and large they are always very giving, humble people.

Anyway, it was great to hear the man talk. And apparently I hung on his every word. But what wonderful words to hang on.

Sleep now.

I have Internet access at home, now, as evidenced by the fact that I'm writing this just before bed. That means nothing, really, in the grand scheme of things. Except that if you write to me at midnight, I'm fifty percent more likely to write back at 12:05. It also means that I can take my time on blog entries, so I can edit them for quality and the like.

Right. Definitely sleep now.

Next time: Internet games and resurrections from the past.

All Saints

2005-11-01T08:45:00.000-08:00

As time marches forward and this blog gets older, I find myself periodically checking my previous posts to make sure I haven't reused the same titles over and over again (for example, I didn't use "All Saints" last year, but I am almost certain I have used the title "Best Laid Plans" at least three times, because whenever plans derail that's the first thought in my head).

Last night's War of the Worlds parade festivities went off reasonably well. Various Tantalus associates showed up in suits and sunglasses as men in black covering up the alien landing. Others we gave Hazmat suits and cotton swabs to assess the possibility of an alien infection. The reporter who was supposed to interview us to let the crowd know exactly what we were doing there had some technical difficulties, which meant we stood around waiting in the rain for about a half hour before we finally scrapped the idea of an interview and just decided to work the crowd. Which we did, and it was fun. I can't, in fact, remember having more fun on Halloween since I was a kid.

After the parade, I went to the Playground to catch the final Monday Show, which was easily the best installment I saw this run. There's some talk of another run starting next summer, and I sincerely hope that happens. The Monday Show is consistently the best improv show I've seen in this city. It's made Monday my night to sit back for an hour or so and see just how cool and interesting and complex people are. I would be really sad to have to say goodbye to it.

Speaking of excellent shows, Capote should be required viewing to anyone who claims to be an actor. It's rare that I watch a movie with a well-known star and am able to forget which actor I'm watching. In Capote, there was only one moment--a microsecond--when I remembered it was Phillip Seymour Hoffman acting. The rest of the time, it was Truman Capote on the screen. Go see it. I wept. You will, too.

And finally, since you've been good little boys and girls, I give you my Halloween costume: