The Record of the Month Club/Boys on Film

A confession

2012-02-15T17:40:00.000-05:00

Those of you who've been following this blog since it's early incarnation (back when it was called the much-catchier "Kill Your iPod") know that I've been fairly resistant to digital music. That's all changed now, and I feel I owe you that much of a confession.

I have an iPod, and I love it.

Please know that I didn't purchase it. My friend Eeon gave it to me, either as a bribe or because he's a very nice person. It's a mini in a white silicone case with my pink Monster High headphones. What I really love is the "shuffle" feature. I'm in the process of loading all my music onto it, and I love the randomness of hearing Steely Dan's "Everyone's Gone to the Movies" followed by Billy Idol's "Dancing with Myself" followed by Electronic's "Some Distant Memory."

Part of it is a desire to pair down what I own. I'm in the process of going through my CD collection and trying to figure out what stays and what goes. In the digital era, do I really need Reel Big Fish's Turn the Radio Off if, on the rare occasion when I do listen to it, I'm only going to play two songs before I remember how dumb it is. If ten years from now, if my computer explodes and my ipod melts and I absolutely need to hear "Sellout," I trust that I will be able to find it somewhere in the vastness of the digital universe.

But the great thing about picking through 500+ CDs is discovering music I'd forgotten about--like the Crash Test Dummies' awesome cover of XTC's "Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead" or The Long Blondes "Giddy Stratospheres" or Feeder's "Comfort in Sound."

In order to continue justifying my music smugness, however, I've decided that stuff I don't care a whole lot about is going to be purchased digitally and music I love is going to be purchased on vinyl. No more CDs. I managed to pick up Donald Fagan's The Nightfly, Tom Waits Nighthawks at the Diner and Huey Lewis and the News Sports for $15 bucks total, and I have to say, no digital transfer of Fagan's "IGY" comes close to how unbelievable smooth it sounds on vinyl (it's what they use to test the sound systems at The Beacon theater in NYC, where I saw Steely Dan back in Sept) .

Clearly, I'm not the only person who realizes this (even if I was into vinyl before it's resurgence, as Kill Your iPod readers will remember) because I was crossing through FYE the other day and THEY had a vinyl section. And not just a bunch of old Eagles records--new stuff by Taylor Swift (blech) and reissues of classics like The Clash (yes!).

Smugness justified. Carry on.

2012-02-10T20:36:00.000-05:00

This week I finally made a decision that's been weighing on my soul for many, many years. I came to this conclusion based on a lot of inner-searching, catchphrase mining, Wii-playing, and record shopping:

Back to the Future is better than Star Wars.

I was in Binghamton last week, cashing in on a bet I'd made with my arch-nemesis Mike (Happy Birthday, by the way) and scouring big-box stores from the Monster High Operetta doll I've been coveting but am too cheap to pay $30 for on ebay and, not finding it, Ian bought me Back to the Future for the Wii, which I had also been coveting because Telltale Games is awesome.

I WANT THIS DOLLY!

So we played it for all of Super Bowl Sunday, which then got me thinking about how awesome Back to the Future is. It's funny, it's intelligent, storywise, it's filled with wonderful callbacks and repetitions that aren't just shoehorned in for the sake of selling more toys. The friendship between Doc and Marty seems so damn genuine, and everyone has known a Biff (mine was Chris Hampel, and he was as big and dumb a neanderthal as any incarnation of Biff ever was). And, as I pointed out before, "The Power of Love" is the awesomest way to start your day short of getting shot out of a cannon. (and Alan Silvestri > John Williams any day)

In watching the trilogy again, as an adult (I always had a soft spot for III, probably because, at 11 years old, I had a weird sweet little crush on Doc. No, I do not have daddy issues, unless you count that it was my dad who sat through endless viewings of these and who still occasionally calls me "McFly" when he's not calling me "Godzilla.") I realized that it was time to admit that there was only room for one sci-fi trilogy in my life, and Back to the Future was it.

It was a relief, really. I felt like a real grown-up, leaving behind a devastatingly geeky childhood. Remember, this was the 90's, and the films hadn't been re-released yet. You had to buy Star Wars Insider in a brown wrapper. Wal-Mart didn't stock an endless array of action figures. Oh yeah, I was soon-to-be cutting edge, but translated, that meant that my sister Hilary and I were pretty much alone in our universe.

My obsession with Star Wars came very close to ruining my life. For all of high school and a good chunk of college, I dated a boy I'd fallen in love with solely for his great love of Star Wars. We saw The Phantom Menace, in theaters, ten times. In all fairness, we lived in Cobleskill and there was nothing to do other than go to the Park Theater, which still only costs $3.50. Aaron was a prequel defender, despite the fact that I pointed out the inconsistencies, such as:

-Leia remembering her mother (as she tells Luke in Jedi)
-Obi-Wan being Ben Lars' brother (I knew this because I had the official Star Wars character guide, which explains why I was capable of getting up at 9AM on a Saturday morning to watch MST3K . . . easy to get up when you haven't been out late the night before).
-Obi-Wan apparently forgetting Leia existed, despite, according to Sith, being there when she was born.
-Midiclorians, anyone?

Aaron sort of scoffed these off, forgetting that just because he had all the Star Wars tee-shirts (which he wore with tapered-leg jeans, white crew socks and Nike running shoes) did not means that I was not just as much of a Star Wars nerd as he was.

(Side note: Last night I impressed/depressed my boyfriend Ian by speaking in Hutt, which I remember more of than I remember of four years of high school French--je suis un ananas to you too)

I almost married this man. And when I mean almost I mean ring on the finger, engagement party held, wedding books at hand. It's a decision that I realize, in hindsight, would have destroyed my life and probably his. And I blame Star Wars.

I tried re-watching Star Wars with a Rifftrax last fall (original trilogy VHS, baby--no Greedo Shooting First bullshit here!) and I couldn't do it. It all seemed so stage-y and weird. But watching Back to the Future didn't feel awkwardly nostalgic, it felt like seeing an old friend. It filled me with such joy, such rapturous bliss in a way that I remembered Star Wars did when I was 13. Because good-vs-evil doesn't seem like a fairy tale to me anymore. I look around and I see various shades of evil every day--like Rick Santorum. Or the owner of dogs that were starved to the point of eating their own feces that I had to grit my teeth and listen to make excuses for why he shouldn't be charged with animal neglect because my editor believes in the full story. And that's not to say I don't see good in the world too--there's my minister, the Rev. Mark Montfort, who is a beacon of all that is good and light and kind in the world. Or my editor, Jim Kevlin, who fights daily for justice and freedom of the press and who more-than-occasionally buys me lunch.

But it's a battle so commonplace that it's not a fairy tale anymore. But what grown-up doesn't wish she could go back in time and make things right? Who doesn't wish they could alter the circumstances of their families, their fate, history itself? That's a fairy tale I need to believe in.

Discovery

2012-02-08T20:03:00.000-05:00

I've discovered that it is impossible to have a bad day when you've started it with Huey Lewis and the News "The Power of Love"

Try it on a Monday morning!

Red Dirt and WTF

2012-02-02T15:44:00.001-05:00

So I apologize for the last, oddly-cryptic post and the long delays between real posts. It's been a weird couple of weeks here at Record of the Month, and normally I don't exorcise my demons publicly, but since the person who that was aimed at was posting cryptic messages on his Facebook account (which you've noticed I'm not on) I figured that if he googled me, he might find me here and maybe we could get a real conversation going.

If he did, well, he didn't respond. Moving on.

Watched Red Dirt last night in my continuing quest to see Walton Goggins naked and, I have to say, it was worse than The Room. At least The Room has a Rifftrax. And while yes, Walton Goggins was exceptionally naked (was he wearing a merkin?) it didn't make up for the fact that there was not a single scene in the film that wasn't a giant pile of film school cliche. There was rain on lily pads, claw-foot bathtubs, even a nice scene of two dogs walking along the railroad tracks that had nothing to do with anything.

Characters complained about not being able to get out of the small town of Pine Apple, talked about how no one understood them, parents were dead, aunt was insane, protagonists were frustrated, opera was played to heighten tension, people walked around barefoot. Yawn.

The really disturbing part, in my mind, was Griffith, the protagonist. He's having sex with his female cousin, displaying no homosexual tenancies until Manic Pixie Dream Goggins comes along. They do Manic Pixie things, like wrestling in the water, offering to paint a house plaid, building a giant pin-cushion in a field and painting sex-cousin's phone number on her barn roof (your guess is as good as mine, because this is never explained) MPD-Goggins keeps talking about moving on and they become blood brothers, and then Griffith gets mad at MPD Goggins for being all homo-y towards him, and I guess at the end Griffith becomes gay and they kiss and run off together. At least that's what Wikipedia said, because the minute Goggins said his tearful goodbye to the aunt who was suddenly magically cured of crippling depression by a few car rides, I turned it off and sealed it up in it's red envelope to be mailed back from whence it came.

The disturbing part is, of course, that the film implies that being gay is a choice. Griffith was perfectly content to have sex with women, even if they were kinfolk, but it isn't until someone gay comes along that he even considers that he might like boys. Being gay, from my understanding, isn't something you just decide to do--it's who you are from birth, no matter what troll-person Rick Santorum says.

For a piece of gay cinema, I think Red Dirt sends the wrong message . . . and is just an awful film in general. Too bad, because we haven't seen Walton Goggins that nude since.

This will have to do.

Two Can Play the Cryptic Messages Game

2012-01-20T19:06:00.002-05:00

"So buy a pretty dress
wear it out tonight
for anyone you think could outdo me"

Ryan Adams, "My Winding Wheel"

Screw You, SOPA!

2012-01-18T15:41:00.000-05:00

This blog has been blacked out for long enough--but make sure to tell your idiot moron governing body to keep their filthy paws off our internet!

https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/

A Very Puppet Christmas

2011-12-27T12:59:00.000-05:00

Ian, never one to back away from fulfilling my obsessions or showing me with gifts, delivered this year with a puppet theme . . .specifically, MST3K. I recieved a silver Tom Servo necklace, 3 Gizmonics patches, a very warm red sweater that he stiched to read "Joike" (in reference the opening skit in Santa Claus; Gypsy had started knitting it for "the other guy" but ended up giving it to Mike) and, from his newly-sainted mother, 3rd-row tickets to go see Cinematic Titanic in Feb.

Ian also got me Hobgoblins 2, which is the un-riffed sequel to my very favorite episode. I unabashedly love Hobgoblins, occasionally exchange emails with Rick Sloane (who is a very smart and charming man) and I have the Fontanelles on my mp3 player. It's fun and it's silly and it's cheesy, a perfect execution of a very bad movie.

The sequel? Not so much.

I was expecting a sequel, but it's really more of a reboot. Kevin, Daphne and the gang are back, but Mr. McCready's in a mental ward, they're all in college and they've never been attacked by Hobgoblins before. We have to waste time getting to know the characters again even though we remember them from the first movie--Daphne's a slut, Amy's frigid, Kevin's a weenie, Kyle likes porn, Nick is a tool (literally and figuratively).

The Hobgoblins manifesting your biggest fear is kind of cool, but overall, it's too self-concious of it's cult status, and the joke's never funny when the target is in on it.

Also, the guy playing Steven Boggs (Kyle) part is ugly. Steven Boggs looked exactly like a guy who broke my heart when I was 17, but that didn't stop me from being the president and co-founding-member of the Steven Boggs Fan Club. My sister Hilary was VP, and he whole of our duties involved owning a pair of red shorts.

They did, however, make sure to play "Kiss Kicker" "Love-Me-Nots" and "Passion Kills" at various points throughout the movie. That brought joy to my heart.

Sorry Rick. I hope you'll still autograph my copy when I send it.

Happy Boxing Day

2011-12-26T05:30:00.002-05:00

For all the hosers reading this blog:

Merry Christmas!!!

2011-12-25T05:19:00.000-05:00

From Record of the Month/Boys on Film . . . Merry Christmas!

Day Three of Our Christmas Music series

2011-12-23T17:26:00.000-05:00

No "Christmas Shoes" here!

2011-12-22T17:22:00.000-05:00

Continuing our Christmas season song series . . .

Happy Hannukah!

2011-12-21T16:31:00.001-05:00

My friend Beth and I saw Eight Crazy Nights on the 8th night of Hanukkah when we were in college . . . and it's become tradition to watch it every year.

Happy Hanukkah!

Alec Baldwin is a Douchebag

2011-12-10T14:13:00.000-05:00

I'm doing a Boys on Film post early, because I can't keep my voice quiet on this. It's too stupid and anger-inducing and I'm home sick anyways.

Remember When He Looked Like This?

Alec Baldwin, former cutie and now professional coke-addled fathead, got kicked off a plane for refusing to turn off his phone. Why? Because he's more important that you--well, his reason was (other than being more important than you) was because he was playing Words With Friends.

And gamers are defending him.

Hardcore gamers disgust me. They are loathsome, vile creatures (I can say this because I've dated them) who think only of themselves and their stupid fake worlds. Hey, it's okay if I skip dinner with my girlfriend, I have a guild meeting! Couldn't come to class, I had to go on a raid! (yes, that was an actual excuse from a student). And now with Angry Birds and Words With Friends on our damn phones, we can ALL become self-absorbed douchebags!

Ten years ago we would have collectively told Alec Baldwin to clamp his jowls shut and to stop being such a nerd, then one of us would have given him a wedgie. Now, since it's socially acceptable to be a geek/jackass, we leap to his defense. He is the 1%, thinking that he has priviledges that we non-TV star 99% don't, and we're defending him because we too cannot tear our faces away from a game for a few hours.

Imagine if the flight attendant told him he'd have to stop snorting coke in order to put his tray table up. We'd be shaking our heads and saying "Poor Alec, he needs rehab." But because it's a game, and games are "harmless," we jump to defend a grown man who threw a temper tantrum because he had to stop playing his video game. A grown man. I haven't thrown a tantrum about a video game since I had a Nintendo.

Word to the wise, Alec. You have to turn your cell phones off when you're on a plane. It's the law, we all have to do it. If for no other reason than having your phone on means someone will call, and you'll answer, and then everyone around you has to listen to your stupid inane conversation for the entire duration of the flight and it would be completely justified for the flight attendants to strangle you with your oxygen mask. You can live for a few hours without your precious widdle tele-o-phone. Do a crossword puzzle. Watch It's Complicated as your in-flight movie. Nap. Flip through Skymall. Turn to the person next to you and say, "Hi, I'm Alec, I'm going to Denver, what should I do when I get there?"

Oh., and act your damn age, you big baby.

Anne Perry is O.G.

2011-12-08T20:33:00.000-05:00

Original Gangsta

I watched Heavenly Creatures last week and it really freaked me out. Screaming, bloody people do that to me. Watching it before bed was probably not the smartest thing I've ever done.

But one of the things I learned about this is that Edgar-winning mystery writer Anne Perry is, in face, Juliet Hulme, who, other than being played by Kate Winslet was, in 1954, convicted of beating her best friend's mother's head in with a brick wrapped in a stocking.

She writes crime novels now.

Poser

Let's just say, hypothetically, that I had a professor who, if rumors are true, did hard time. Let's call him "The Grimace" because, well, that's what he looks like. And let's also say that this professor published a book of crime stories. But he, unlike Perry, won't talk about it. Absolutely refuses. And I suppose I can see why--although it's a great platform for a mystery writer and being a wuss about it only proves my point that Anne Perry is O.G. Sure, she doesn't go around bragging about bludgeoning a woman to death, but it's there on her wikipedia page for the world to see. No sense hiding from what someone can track down.

She knows murder because she's murdered someone. Her novels have an admitted raw intensity because she knows what it's like to take a human life. It's not what I would recommend as a course of action for a mystery writer, but damn if it doesn't--in some weird way--make me admire her just a little bit more. Maybe because she's not such a weenie about admitting it.

We Need to Talk, Walton

2011-12-06T21:16:00.002-05:00

It's about your ad, darling. You are a strong southern man with a perfect ass and inky eyes and abs I could bounce a quarter off of. You play sensitive, troubled, violent men with a charm and a grace usually relegated to the British. You have replaced Clive Owen as my primary brooding delivery system.

But Walton, dearest, real men don't say "ephemeral."

Justin Townes Earle at Foothills

2011-12-03T14:36:00.001-05:00

For the last few weeks I've been obsessed with Justin Townes Earle's "Harlem River Blues," which is about as close to a come-to-Jesus moment as I've ever had with a song. Not because of the lyrics, which are ultimately about suicide, but just in that it's so exubrant and whole and uplifting and spiritually fulfulling that I tremble whenever I hear it. I want to put it on a mix tape and send it to Walton Goggins and tell him I think of Boyd Crowder whenever I hear it in hopes that he likes to too. I have become a disciple of JTE.

. . . . despite the fact that he looks like an Irvine Welsh character

So he was performing at Foothills last night and for twenty bucks, I had to go. Thor went too, and we both sat in revered silence while he played. I'm still new to his music, so I didn't know most of his songs, and although he played "Harlem River Blues" and my heart palpatated and I actually trembled, I was sad that he didn't play "Can't Hardly Wait," as he's been known to do.

But he officially won my heart when some drunk guy yelled "Play John Prine!" and he yelled back "Don't tell me what to do!" I want to marry him.

Also, I got Harlem River Blues on vinyl, and he signed it. It's the only signed record in my collection.

The Boys on Film Guide to Being Deathly Ill

2011-11-29T11:30:00.001-05:00

If you're anything like me, you're going to work yourself into a crippling cold/flu sometime this winter. And if you're anything like me, you're also going to be a big baby about it. When I am sick, I require the utmost in pampering and comfort, i.e. making a nest on the couch, catering to my demands for drugs/remedies and letting me watch whatever I want to watch on TV.

For your convenience, I've compiled my essential pairings for surviving the flu season--these remedies and shows are tested and proven to go together like apples and sharp chedder, bacon and eggs, Morrissey and crying a lot . . . you get the idea.

1) Breaking Bad and Nighttime Theraflu: Theraflu is such a wonderful invention. It tastes so, so gross, but when it kicks in, you feel great. You don't even care that you're sick . And I'm pretty sure you can make meth out of it (which is probably why it's so effective) making it a perfect choice for when you're skipping chemistry. It's science, yo.

2) Law and Order and Chicken Soup: L&O is the ultimate in comfort. For all the bad stuff there is in the world, you know that in 55 minutes, all will be well again. I recommend original L&O because Sam Waterson and Jerry Orbach exude a stern, grandfatherly

warmth, like forcing you to push fluids because they know what's best for you and you know they're right.

3) Bernie Mac and Saltines and Ginger Ale: Last AWP I got food poisoning, and God bless Matthew, he trooped out in the D.C rain to find me ginger ale and saltines while I stayed in my room, watching Bernie Mac only because I was too weak to change the channel. They were running a marathon, and when he got back, we watched all day. It was funny, heartwarming, and clever enough without going over my foggy head.

4) Mystery Science Theater 3000 and ginger tea: I love MST3K, but even more than that, I love falling asleep in front of MST3K. It's a steady stream of level noise, rarely punctuated by any explosions (which would have cost too much) or yelling. The movies are boring, and Joel has such a soft, comforting voice, you almost can't help but drift off. (Pod People also has that sleepy new-age soundtrack) The ginger settles your tummy, opens up your sinuses and reduces inflammation. The best ginger tea, by the way, is made from ginger chews--pour boiling water over one and stir until dissolved.

Me again!

5) Beetlejuice and Green Tea: This works so well I recommend it to my students in my syllabus. Beetlejuice gets better every time you watch it, and green tea is really good for you.

Get well soon!

Lyrics I Like: "Boys of Summer" by Don Henley

2011-11-26T10:24:00.002-05:00

Who's with me that the famous Don Henley lyric "I can tell you, my love for you will still be strong/after the Boys of Summer have gone . . ." would be a hell of a lot better if it was:

"I can tell you, my love for you will still be strong/after the poison spiders have gone . . . "

I think it's a much more evocative lyric, describing two lovers separated by a giant spider invasion, hoping to be reunited when and if they both survive . . . way better than some dumb summer romance.

That's what is sounds like he's saying, anyways. Why Warren Zevon hired such a mushmouth as a backup singer, I'll never know.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2011-11-24T10:32:00.000-05:00

I am grateful this Thanksgiving for, besides my readers, finally having enough sense to say to hell with National Novel Writing Month and writing my book on my own damn time. For finally figuring out that Chris Baty is just a dope with a website who doesn't determine my writing career, and that this book will get done when it gets done and no sooner.

Morrissey once sang, "There's more to life than books, you know," and I'm starting to realize that. For so long, I defined myself by my work. I had to work harder, stronger and more than everyone else because I had to prove that I could, that I wasn't just another lazy slob like everyone thought I was. It was routinely suggested by both friends and family that I not even bother applying to most colleges, because I wasn't good enough to get in. What that instilled in me was a merciless drive to succeed, to prove them wrong, often at the cost of my health or employers taking advantage of that ethic as a means of paying me less for more work . . . but this past year has shown me that none of that really matters. What matters is the friends that I love, my fluffy kitten and my boyfriend.

This isn't to say that I've given up on writing or that I'm taking a step back. Not at all. I still have that drive to succeed, but it's going to be on my terms. I'm not going to kill myself for another book that won't sell. I'm not going to beg for acceptance anymore. And it is that peace, that faith that something larger than myself will sustain me, that I am most grateful for this year.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

Fighting Fish

2011-11-21T18:26:00.000-05:00

My friend Eeon had a video camera back in college and used to film all sorts of weird things, like me talking to our friend Jim about pornography (and inserting Chewbacca in post) or making a music video for his hit song "Emo Kid," the follow up to 2003's "Crazy Werewolves" and both featured on his album Bad Music for Bad People, still rated as Triangulon Records top-selling album. He also served as the cinematographer on my film Barbie Girls which, God willing, will never see the light of day.

But here, in it's entirety, is perhaps Eeon's most famous film, "Fighting Fish."

Eeon is really a master of sound, bringing to the film a Thom York-esq understanding of how sound can create not merely a mood, but an unconcious understanding of the underlying construct of the scene. These are not just melodies, these are emotional notes. The set design and the clever use of garbage, including the tin cans covering the windows--perhaps to block out the ever-present eyes of the Big-Brother-esq Department of Social Productivity (played with a subtle sinisterness by Jim Devona) give this film a gritty, Robocop-Detroit feel inside a confined apartment space, creating a realm which is both concrete and abstract in it's twisted parinoia. It is not merely a box of Zebra Cakes, it is our faceless narrator's increasingly tangled emotional state, a head full of junk, not unlike the twisted wreckage of the car crash that claimed his parents lives.

Really, there isn't enough room on this blog to dissect and get to the core of "Fighting Fish." It is a stark, brutal film, one that haunts and lingers long after the credits roll.

This Week in Musical Obsessions

2011-11-19T11:41:00.015-05:00

"The Moment" by Atomic Tom. I don't sleep when I'm in NYC and find myself watching a lot of basic cable, usually culminating with me catching a few precious minutes of zzz's in front of Two and Half Men.

One night, while flipping channels, I came across the Fearless Music showcase, featuring Atomic Tom's "The Moment." As you've probably noticed, I'm pretty damn cynical about modern music, but this just blew my mind--it reminded me of something I could remember, struck up an emotion I couldn't name.

I like real love songs--songs like The Replacements "I Will Dare" that capture the awkward desparation of falling in deeply, madly, passionately infatuated in love. "The Moment" is exactly that. It's about that one moment where you get that absolute rush of love, those great terrifying shivers that cause you to seize up and go silent (or worse, babble) in your beloved's presence.

I'm pretty much done falling in love. I've met the man of my dreams and we've been together for awhile. But sometimes I miss that tipping-backwards feeling of a new love. That's where music comes in. It's fantasy. For 4 minutes and 35 seconds, I can remember that rush without having to go through all the trouble of falling in love again.

Record Party!

2011-11-12T19:37:00.000-05:00

My friend/Odd Couples stage manager Thor came over last night for an oft-delayed record party. Holding a record party is simple, you just get some records and play them and maybe have some food and talk about whatever comes to mind. We talked about our high school music teacher Mrs. Sobieski, apartment hunting, tattoos we'll never get but like to joke about, really, just random stuff.

One of the really cool things about record parties is that because the record sleeves are so BIG, you notice the names of the musicians who played on them and can draw neat parallels between the session musicians. For instance, last night I noticed that Rick Marotta played drums on both Steely Dan's The Royal Scam and Warren Zevon's Excitable Boy. Neat, huh? And sure, you can look that up on the internet, but without it right in front of you, would you?

We got through Katy Lied, The Queen is Dead, Rockabilly Classics and the first disc of Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King. We chatted. We drank pink lemonade.

And then Thor put on Justin Towne Earle's Midnight at the Movies and the game changed.

When I was finishing the first season Justified, starting the currently in-between-titled novel I'm writing now (not for NaNoWriMo) and planning for my two-week trip to Oklahoma, I became very interested in Kentucky. I rented Harlan County USA and watched it the instant it came in the mail. What really struck me about it was all the singing. They were out on the picketline, singing union songs from the early part of the century. One woman wrote a song to teach everyone. Not in a "I'm going to go to Nashville and record an album" kind of song, but a song to say what she was thinking. Song, in this culture, was a means of communication. It was raw and unacompanied and sung to get a message across.

And that's what I heard when I heard Justin Towne Earle. It was music in it's pure, raw form, and it was heartbreaking and sad and lovely and wonderful. I wanted to cry. I wanted to put it on a mix CD and mail it to Walton Goggins. I wanted to listen to that album all night long. He covered "Can't Hardly Wait," which automatically endears him to me because I love The Replacements.

That's the magic of a record party. Your friends bring some stuff you don't know, you play some stuff they don't know. Thor got his first real taste of Warren Zevon. I discovered Justin Townes Earle. And at the end of the evening when we said goodnight, I realized how such a quiet little evening had reintroduced me to two friends--not just Thor, but the power and the core of music itself.

F*** You, NaNoWriMo

2011-11-10T19:38:00.042-05:00

I had a major breakthrough with NaNoWriMo this week--it can go to hell.

It's not that I'm giving up. I planned to write 60K in 30 days. It's a doable goal, and I intend to finish it . . . but if for whatever reason, I don't, my life is not over because some twerp in California decided 30 days makes or doesn't make me a novelist.

NaNoWriMo plays on a culture of selfishness--it encourages people, good, normal people, to abandon their families, their pets, their pleasures in life to indulge in a pathetic attempt to create meaning. These are not real novelists. A quick glance at the Published page reveals very, very few legitimate authors (and if you've ever read The Night Circus, you can tell it was written in 30 days--maybe less) at legitimate presses--a lot of POD and micro presses.

No, these are housewives and teenagers, helping themselves to a chunk of time at the beginning of the ultra-busy holiday season to demand This is MY time!!! I'm a NOVELIST!

Let's face it, Jesse Pinkman
is just a teenage Shane Vendrell

I had two choices the other night after working 2 of my 5 jobs--write 2K in a book I honestly couldn't care less about, or watch Breaking Bad with my darling boyfriend, who I hadn't seen all day, and snuggle my kitten. I chose Breaking Bad, and not just because Aaron Paul is the flavor of the week.

So I graded some papers and watched Breaking Bad. Aaron Paul is a hottie. And Ian was sweet, and Bosco was cuddly, and when I am on my deathbed, I doubt I'll be saying "I wish I'd spent more time in my office working."

It's admirable that NaNoWriMo people want to write. I'm glad it's helping me get back in the daily routine. Maybe it will remind me to update this blog a little more. But in the end, you have to ask yourself why you're really doing it. Is it to feel special, to accomplish something, to escape your miserable life?

Writing can be enjoyable. It doesn't have to be a coffee-swilling, hair-pulling, cat-ignoring frenzy. But a story needs more than 30 days to unfold. I have an outline and I'm still discovering new things about my characters (like that the mother in this book is the same Virginia Davenport that protagonist Oren Barry fantasizes about in the other novel). The "No Plot, No Problem!" slogan is a recipe for frustration and disaster.

Why only be a novelist in November? Instead of chaining yourself to the desk while you could be eating cranberry sauce with your kids, why not write 1K a day over two months? Or give yourself Sundays off and take a walk. Don't give Chris Baty another moment of your precious time.

Happy Birthday!

2011-11-10T15:44:00.000-05:00

Happy 40th to Walton Goggins . . . and here is a present for all of you. I already took the liberty of unwrapping it:

NanoWriMo Week 1

2011-11-03T15:51:00.000-04:00

I'm three days in and at 4K . . . I'm doing 2000 words a night in about an hour and a half, and I haven't done Day 3 yet. The novel is breezing along, thanks to the outline I meticulously constructed the week before. That's the secret to NaNoWriMo. Outlines. Plan it down to the bone marrow and you'll never lack for something to write.

I'm almost enjoying it, actually. Seeing my word count on the little graph each night, type-typing away, finally feeling good about writing again. (Finally writing again, frankly.) 2K isn't an unattainable amount by any stretch of the imagination, it just requires some patience and the ability to say no to TV, no to kitten, no to friends dropping by for a few hours each day. It's only for a month, after all, and only for a few hours. And besides, TV is mostly wasting time anyways. Even if it's The Shield.

Happy Halloween!

2011-10-31T09:19:00.000-04:00

Rounding out our Spooky Cartoons feature, Disney's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow in three parts. Far superior to the Tim Burton mess and a Halloween tradition in my family dating back to my very early childhood. My dad has a photograph of my sister Hilary and I in our footie pajamas, acting out the dance scene. It makes me happy just thinking about it.

Happy Halloween!

NaNoWriMo: The Nathan Rabin of Book Writing

2011-10-27T21:12:00.000-04:00

The last time I did National Novel Writing Month was my senior year of college--and after about a week, I got bored and moved on to something more interesting. I "won" (completed 50K) in 2003 and 2002 (yipee) but decided that I was finally past the realm of part-time writer and onto bigger and better things.

Well, the other night I had a cool dream, and I plotted that dream out to novel-length--YA novel length, to be exact. And with a million other things going on, I realized that NaNoWriMo might be a good way to partition out some time to focus solely on finishing this book. YA novels generally clock in around 60K, which is only 2K a day, 500 over the usual NaNoWriMo haul. I'm a workaholic, so the only way I can allow myself to do anything I'm interested in is if I lable it work. I need goals and limitations, otherwise I use what little idle time I have watching MST3K. By structuring myself into to 30-day limitations, I have to go hard or go home. But while persusing around the website, I noticed two things:

1) Like most people who post on forums, the NaNoWriMo forum goons take themselves WAY too seriously. Heaven forbid you write down a note that you might use later (and possibly word for word! oh my!) in your novel. I get it, we're supposed to write a whole novel just in that one month, but that brings me to my next point

2) NaNoWriMo hates working writers. Camp NaNoWriMo boasts as one of their objectives, "To be able to mock real novelists who dawdle on and on, taking far longer than 30 days to produce their work."

Fuck you, NaNoWriMo.

I apologize on behalf of all those asshole "writers" out there who dare labor over their work, polishing it to perfection and submitting it, often times to multiple rejections and, if they're lucky, to rewrites by editors and agents towards publication, because you're better than them. You wrote a novel. You jacked off 50K of bad spelling, plot holes, over-wrought prose, cliches and tripe over a 30 day period and that makes you special. I apologize to all the "auto mechanics, out-of-work-actors and middle school English teachers" who are so offended by the works between hard and paper covers in their libraries and bookstores. I apologize on behalf of Raymond Chandler, John Steinbeck, Dorothy Allison, Jane Austin, Mary Shelley, Alexander Dumas, Lewis Carroll, L. Frank Baum. Roald Dahl, George Orwell, Flannery O'Conner, Michael J. Nelson, Jim Kelly, Mike Kimball, and all those other jerks who dared to waste time on their craft.

When did sub-par become admirable? I get it, the goal of NaNoWriMo is to practice writing without tearing down, but sneering at and spitting upon working writers who struggled to get recognition is a dick move. It manifests that continued theory among artists that if you have to work for something, you're not a genius, as though some magical fairy exists solely to dig through people's desk drawers and pull out manuscripts deemed worthy of admiration. It's Rabin-esq, and it's wrong on all fronts.

I'm kind of sorry I signed up for it, honestly. As one of those criminal professional writers who takes herself and her career seriously, I don't know if I want to be lumped in with a bunch of bitter housewives and teen girls in Twilight tee-shirts. I don't want to comiserate about what a hardship it is because I live that hardship every day. Writers block blows, but I don't get the luxury of logging onto a forum and bitching--I have until 3pm on Tuesday to get a story done, and if I don't, there's a big gaping hole in the Hometown Oneonta where it would go. I labor over essays short stories that get rejected time and time again. But I love it, and that's why I keep doing it. And I will keep doing it long past November. I was doing it long before November.

Writers stock our bookshelves. They make our TV shows interesting. They fill our newspapers and our magazines with more than just ads. How about giving them a little credit, NaNoWriMo, instead of ripping them to shreds?

YOU ARE TEARING ME APART, NANOWRIMO!

The Maitlands

2011-10-25T21:13:00.000-04:00

Yep, that's us!

Spooky Cartoons 3/4

2011-10-25T09:11:00.000-04:00

My personal favorite, "Trick or Treat" from 1954

Spooky Cartoons 2/4

2011-10-18T09:14:00.001-04:00

"The Skeleton Dance" from 1929. The first Silly Symphony cartoon.

Halloween Playlist

2011-10-15T08:07:00.100-04:00

Halloween is my favorite holiday, easy. I love the costumes, the candy, the movies (Ed Wood, old-skool Tim Burton before he sold out and became dumb, Elvira, the Addams Family, the whole campy lot) The halloween parties I threw in college are still talked about, and this year's party will mark a whole decade of my annual bash. This year Ian and I are going as the Maitlands. Not only is it an awesome couples costume, which I've been bugging him to do for years, but it fulfills my lifelong dream of being Geena Davis.

Not Pictured: Me Marrying Jeff Goldblum

I hate going to club Halloween parties and hearing them play whatever crap is on their ipod. I can dance to "Bad Romance" any day of the year (not that I would). We only get to hear "The Monster Mash" once time a year, and I want to hear it at least six times, followed by "Dead Man's Party" and then back to "the Monster Mash".

For those readers who are throwing their own parties, here's the official Record of the Month Club Halloween Playlist, compiled over ten successful party years. Spin these and your party is guarenteed to howl.

-"Bump in the Night" A-Teens (yes, it's from Scooby Doo 2--but it is consistantly the most requested song at my parties)
-"Dead Man's Party" Oingo Boingo
-"Monster Mash" Crypt Kicker Five
-"Hell" Squirrel Nut Zippers
-"Hayride to Hell" The Fontanelles (on the Hobgoblins soundtrack--hard to find, but if you're interested, shoot me an email and I can show you where to get a copy)
-"Monster Rap" Elvira
-"The Addams Tango" (because where else are you going to see Indiana Jones tangoing with The Joker?)
-"Zombie Stomp" Elvira
-"Weird Science" Oingo Boingo
-"Boogie Man" White Zombie
-"Haunted House" Ray Stevens (my dad's favorite)
-"Moondance" Michael Buble (more dancible than the original--for the couples)
-"The Time Warp" Rocky Horror Picture Show (even the people who don't dance will dance to this. That being said, I hate the Rocky Horror Picture Show and always have. Kevin Murphy agrees with me on this.)
-"Thriller" Michael Jackson (for years I had a "no Thriller" policy, but my friend Seema finally convinced me to include it, and it's stayed ever since. Still not one of my favorites)
-"Remains of the Day" Danny Elfman (from The Corpse Bride. Damn it, I love Danny Elfman)
-"Devil in My Car" B-52's
-"Feed My Frankenstein" Alice Cooper
-"Little Demon" Screamin' Jay Hawkins
-"The Ghost in You" Siouxsie and the Banshees (again, for the couples--there's something sincere and sweet about seeing couples in costume slow dance, and it gives everyone else a chance to get a drink and see if there are any fun-sized Snickers left)
-"Every Day is Halloween" Ministry (I like to play this at the end of a party--it's a nice reminder to come back next year)
-"Halloween" The Dead Kennedys
-"Living Dead Girl" White Zombie
-"Cemetary Polka" Tom Waits
-"Halloween" The Misfits (mosh pit!!!!)
-"Ghostbusters" Ray Parker Jr. (not Jack Black)

-"Bad Devil" Devon Townsend (This was played at the 2006 party only)
-"Pet Cemetary" The Ramones
-"Poor Skeleton Steps Out" XTC (not a dance song, but still fun)
-"The Ghosts that Haunt Me" Crash Test Dummies (very chill--good for when people are coming in)
-"Cretin Hop" the Ramones
-"Halloween" Siouxsie and the Banshees
-"Red Right Hand" Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
-"Whistlin' Past the Graveyard" Tom Waits
-"Don't Fear the Reaper" Blue Oyster Cult
-"Werewolves of London" Warren Zevon
-"Who's That Creepin'" Big Bad Voodoo Daddy
-"All My Friends are Zombies" The Pricillas
-"Party at the Leper Colony" Weird Al
-"When You're Evil" Voltaire
-"Black Magic Woman" Santana
-"Boris the Spider" The Who
-"Beetlejuice theme" Danny Elfman
-"Riding on the Wings of Steam (remix)" Chris Vrenna (from American McGee's Alice)
-"Gremlins theme" Jerry Goldsmith (I can't explain it, but every time this came, partygoers start hopping up and down.)
-"Phantom of the Opera" Nightwish
-"Bela Lugosi's Dead" Bauhaus
-"Nature Trail to Hell" Weird Al
-"The X-Files Theme"
-"Masqurade" Phantom of the Opera
-"This is Halloween" The Nightmare Before Christmas
-"Requiem" Mozart
-"I Put a Spell on You" Screamin' Jay Hawkins
-"Dead Man's Party" Hillbilly Hellcats
-"Mean Green Mother from Outer Space" Levi Stubbs (from Little Shop of Horrors)
-"Eye of the Zombie" John Fogerty
-"Zombie Zoo," Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
-"No One Lives Forever" Oingo Boingo
-"Surfin' Dead" The Cramps

(The following pair have to be ripped from the videos themselves--they're almost impossible to find otherwise, but well worth the effort)

-"Transylvania 6-500" The Creature with the Atomic Brain

-"Squeezit The Moocher" The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo
(From Forbidden Zone)

October Feature: Spooky Cartoons

2011-10-11T09:07:00.003-04:00

Part 1 of 4 in a new Boys on Film feature--spooky cartoons to celebrate Halloween This week, "Lonesome Ghosts" (1937)

Where Have All The Grown-Up Movies Gone?

2011-10-04T15:52:00.000-04:00

Watched True Lies the other night with Ian and I got thinking about how there really don't seem to be date movies for grown-ups anymore. You know, the kind mom and dad left you home with a babysitter or made you go to bed while they watched in the living room. Some action for the men, some kissy stuff for the ladies, and enough humor to make it enjoyable for everyone.

When was the last time one of those came out?

Movies for people who pay their bills and have jobs and don't live with their parents fall into two catagories: Adult-alescent action movies (i.e. anything starring Jason Statham) and chick flicks. Girls get dragged to watch some skank like Megan Fox or Olivia Wilde tongue a dude in some vague application of "love story" and guys have to see some emasuculated toad like Ryan Gosling play video games (but then be forced into giving them up for the woman he loves) in some vague application of masculinity. And let's not forget some laughs from the writers/producers/caterers of Insert Judd Apatow-Type Movie Here. Girls poop in a high clas department store! Steve Carell is encouraged to date-rape a drunk girl! Oh for fun!

What happened to movies for grown-up couples? Not 35 year old adolescents playing Xbox and farting on each other and miserable housewives fantasizing that Pierce Brosnan and Hugh Grant would fight over them while singing? And when did we, as women, start embracing the concept that we could be gross too? What would Arlene Dahl say?

Also, sexy scenes. Where did those go? The striptease in True Lies is far sexier than anything Hollywood could soft-focus today. It's a little raw and a lot clumsy and kind of romantic, which keeps it being as exploitive as a lot of similar scenes feel. It's not Showgirls. Jamie Lee Curtis is awkward, and that's what makes it feel real . . . and real is sexy.

The Library Book Project

2011-09-29T11:19:00.001-04:00

For those of you who weren't helping me haul boxes on Sunday (thanks Eeon, Mike and Tim!), I moved (again) to a little two-bedroom rental house on a private road with a yard that you could film an episode of Justified on.  And for those of you who haven't known me very long, I have a rich and sordid history of moving. Since I was eighteen, I have packed and unpacked sixteen times, making this most recent move my seventeenth. On average, I stay in a place for about nine months, the longest stay being three years on Chestnut Street . . . and in all likelyhood, we'll be packing up and moving out of this place in the spring, with the intentions of buying a house.

Each time I've moved, I've gotten rid of more stuff. This time, I got rid of a ton of clothes and books. All my lit mags were handed off to Mike, a hefty chunk of pulp novels went to Amber in exchange for bagfuls of awesome sweaters and dresses (and sweater-dresses, including a blue-green hooded one I've craved ever since I first saw her wear it at the Green Earth). Records and DVDs went to both the Oneonta Teen Center (including the first entry in "Teenage Wasteland," Empire Records) and The Vault in exchange for a few bucks. Clothes that weren't traded went to the consignment shop, and clothes that they wouldn't take went to Salvation Army. Some books went to a used book store, others were given away . . . and those that I couldn't bear to part with were packed up and stored.

I've decided that, for the length of time that I'm here, I'm going to rely on the library and books handed off to me by friends. I realized that I rarely read a book twice (with the exception of The Long Goodbye, which I read yearly) and that having a ton of books on hand did little but take up space.  I realized that simply having The Handmaiden's Tale on my bookshelf did not mean that I was ever going to read it.

Also, I recently discovered the pleasures of going to the library. Unlike bookstores, which seem very very daunting to me, a library has a sense of quiet order to it. There's the sense that, because you're reading on borrowed time, that the reading takes priority. If I take out The Handmaiden's Tale, I'd better read it in 14 days or cough up a quarter for each day I delay.  The best part is that the library is free, and there's no clutter or anything to pack up at the end. If I don't like a book, I can take it back, no questions asked.

This isn't to say I don't support the Green Toad, my local bookstore. I love small bookstores much more than any big-box mega-store on the planet. And this doesn't mean I'll be getting an e-reader anytime soon either. I like the feel of a book in my hand, and I like to give books as gifts.

But I consider this an opportunity and a challenge--if this was a stunt blog, I'd make careful notes about my library experience as a way of preserving libraries or other such silliness. Heaven knows I'm not so great about keeping up with the blog and the last thing I need is another column to write. If anything, this new undertaking is a way of clearing out the clutter of my life and of getting back out in the community. Ordering a book for a penny on Amazon doesn't force me to interact with anyone (not even the mailman, because our mailbox is located at the absolute top of our driveway).  Having to go to the library will force me to engage with others. . . and I don't think that will be a bad thing.

Oh Well.

2011-09-18T22:23:00.003-04:00

Congrats to Peter Dinklage on his Best Supporting Actor Emmy

2011-09-17T23:39:00.000-04:00

Holy cats, I just got back from seeing Steely Dan, and it was awesome. "Rarities" night at Beacon . . . demos, songs they wrote for other people, songs that didn't fit on albums, songs they only did in concert and one that go erased in the studio during Gaucho and had never been re-recorded . . . and, of course, "Peg" and "Reelin' in the Years."

It was too awesome for words . . . but worry not, I'll have plenty of words on the Emmys tomorrow . . . well, really only one . . . either a "NO!" or a "WHOO-HOO!"

Kurt Sutter IS Nathan Rabin in PEOPLE LIBBY HATES

2011-09-15T11:00:00.006-04:00

Despite writing, acting on and executive producing The Shield, Kurt Sutter still manages to be a tremendous douchebag. Not only did he throw a pissy little bitch fit because the lame Sons of Anarchy didn't get nominated for an Emmy, but now he's saying that, not only is TV written for men, but "I've learned that men write shows about the struggles of men better than women. . . men can write male characters more accurately."

Pictured: Kurt Sutter's Emmy

Fuck you, Kurt Sutter.

Never mind that Shawn Ryan said that there is no reason why women, who make up the majority of the TV watching audience, shouldn't be in the writer's room.

And never mind that FX, on both which Sons of Anarchy and The Shield ran, is pretty much the ass network. There are naked male backsides galore. You can't tell me that isn't there for the ladies to enjoy . . . your arguement doesn't wash, Sutter, so shut your stupid mouth.
I am a broad and my male characters kick ass. Check out the Jay in "The Weather Girl" or Johnny in "Johnny Strikes Up The Band". Don't you sit there and tell me that because of gender I don't understand how to write the other. It's this kind of bullshit sexism that makes middle-age women blame the patriarchy for why they can't masturbate and then I have to listen to them read lurid descriptions of "self-discovery" at open mics and other such literary events.
You're ruining it for everybody, Sutter. Just because you behave like little girl who didn't get a Bratz doll for her 6th birthday doesn't mean the rest of us have to.

Teenage Wasteland: Monkeybone

2011-09-13T10:03:00.003-04:00

Wish I Had a Brendan Fraser in B&W Pajamas

When I was 19. Brendan Fraser in leather pants was about the sexiest thing in the world. It was just before I developed my super-crush on Ewan McGregor, and I unabashedly loved Monkeybone. It was a huge influence on my fashion in college; I have a black-and-white cocktail dress inspired by the one Fonda is wearing in the dream sequence at Hypno's and used to own a green velvet dressed modified to look like the one Rose McGowan wears in the prison break. I also have a little plush Monkeybone in black-and-white pajamas.

I might be the only one, and in later watchings, I can only barely see why.

Yes, it's a weirdly messy film. In the directory commentary, Selick reveals that a lot of key scenes got lost in editing and that Fox kept insisting it be raunchier, which explains the extended and awful Chris Kattan sequences (punctuated by Brendan Fraser in leather pants singing a version of "She's a Brick House" that tragically gets blander as I get older). But the parts of it that are good, namely the Downtown sequences, are amazing. They're creeply and playful and weird, which makes them even more creepy. I've always loved Tex-Avery/Carnival visuals of Hell, Purgatory and the Afterlife, and Monkeybone had all of them. The use of black and white, the lavish puppets are top knotch, but why the hell would anyone want to see puppets when they can see Chris Kattan playing essentially a rotting version of his Mango character? Oh that's right, no one. Pandering to your audience never works, kids.

But in later viewings, I do see why the film didn't hold up with mainstream audiences. It required a knowledge of what the product was supposed to look like, rather than what it did. It required the viewer to look past Chris Kattan and see the beautiful visuals, the lovely Anne Dudley score (why they didn't get co-star Bridget Fonda's husband Danny Elfman to compose is beyond me)

I've always felt a little sorry for Henry Selick--he's the real director of The Nightmare Before Christmas, and his talent for stop-motion is unmatched. Burton was originally supposed to be part of Monkeybone, but dropped out and left Selick hanging, which might explain why Fox felt they could push him around. Adding insult to injury, Burton went with another animation company on The Corpse Bride. But then Henry Selick kicked his ass by returning with Coraline, so I guess he won the puppet wars in the end.

Ultimately, Monkeybone suffers from the same style-over-substance that destroyed Cool World (another flop I've got a soft spot for) But there is some substance in there, buried deep underneath a lot of lameness. It's a film that I'm better off not watching again, instead savoring what I remember it being rather than what it might actually be.

Food. Sir Mix-A-Lot and My Ass Complex

2011-09-10T22:59:00.000-04:00

For some reason, at every wedding I've been too, the DJ plays "Baby Got Back." Nothing ruins a hip-hop song more than seeing your mom/your dentist/your friend's aunt doing the humpty-hump.

I love this song, but it's giving me a complex about my own backside. I've been told that I have, as Mickey Rourke put it in 9 1/2 Weeks, a "heart-shaped ass," but at 5'3" and 98 lbs (through no dieting or planning of my own) I'm sad because Sir Mix A-Lot wouldn't stop his Mercades to whistle at me. I'm fine with being an A-cup, but I wouldn't mind having a bigger booty so I could effectively dance to this song because as it is, I feel like a dope out there. I've only recently gotten over not being a Brick House, but I'm just not content to be lumped in with the "skinny girls." Especially because when people say "skinny girls" it always comes with a sneer.

I love food. And I know, people hate when "skinny girls" say that they love to eat, but ask any man I've ever gone out with and he'll comfirm, which has always made me a very popular date. I love to cook (which also made me a popular date). I love red meat and good cheese and crusty bread, dear God, I love bread. And fruit desserts topped with lots of fresh whipped cream. And bacon and eggs in the morning. Salt bagels with Nutella. Life is too short not to eat delicious food . . . especially with beautiful boys. So please, Sir Mix-A-Lot, show me some love.

That being said, if I am ever in a position to make a mix tape for Walton Goggins, you know this is going to be the first song on there.

In Dreams

2011-09-07T19:16:00.002-04:00

When I'm not lying awake and panicking or having wake-up-screaming nightmares, I tend to dream very cinematically and, if I'm lucky, can remember the dreams when I wake up. I've gotten some of what I consider my best work out of dreams, and I credit this to three of them starring Walton Goggins. It's like getting to watch my favorite TV shows while I'm asleep, and sleeping is something I love even more than watching TV.

Nice of you to invite me into
your dreams

The third, which I wrote over the weekend while trying to avoid writing an article about the devestating flood that washed away Middleburg and Schoharie, (I grew up in Schoharie County, two towns over) was inspired by the one dream I didn't have about flooding. No, in this dream, I got shot while during an interview and wound up in Purgatory, with Walton Goggins and Jay Karnes playing my roommates (but not as themselves or any of their characters)

I wrote it in a very different way than I've written any of my other dreams. The narrative is very short and the whole thing comes to 912 words and is written with minimal description and dialogue much like "Hotel Jesus". It made me rethink how stories are written.

Traditionally, fiction is taught in that Raymond Carver school--long, plenty of dialogue and description, a slow build to a climax, a short story as we all picture a short story. But in flash fiction, there isn't room for that. And I suppose I could have written "Purgatory Blues" the same way I wrote "Keyton's Keys" (which also came from a dream and also starred Walton Goggins") which clocked in at just over 6K. I could have described Purgatory in full detail, but for whatever reason (laziness, I imagine) it called out for a more compact format.

So I began to wonder--do we choose the story's format, or does it write itself? I have a friend who refuses to write anything under 15K. He just doesn't think he can. Never mind that most places won't pay for and publish that length of work anymore, and although plenty of online lit mags (like Tin House) will publish longer work, he wants to get paid. It's fair, I suppose, but do all stories need to be told in long form? Is more description, scenery and dialogue required in order to tell a proper story?

I didn't set out to write a flash fiction piece. If anything, on "Hotel Jesus," I actively tried to avoid it for fear of becoming a malcontented douche. But after what seemed like a hundred false starts, I settled into the form of "movements" and short scenes that became the Pank-published piece it is today. All without becoming a malcontented douche. Let's hope the same works on "Purgatory Blues"

Teenage Wasteland: Empire Records

2011-09-05T02:53:00.009-04:00

In keeping with my reminiscing about my late teens/early 20's, I took a personal day and watched Empire Records. I was 19 when I saw this movie, a full five years after it came out, but I watched it in Oklahoma, the first summer I was out there after Martin, who I saw every time I was out there, dumped me to marry someone else, and only shortly after Dan, who looked exactly like Lucas, (black sweater and all) broke my heart.

When I wasn't holed up in my room watching movies rented from Blockbuster and listening the Smiths on my discman, I was sulking around in my Doc Martens and getting told by my now-ex-stepfather that I was an embarassment to our family.And having worked in a chain music store (and a chain video store), I could only have dreamed of getting to pick whatever I wanted to listen to instead of having to listen to Crutch eight hours a day. I liked to imagine I could live a life where I worked part time at a cool place and had an apartment with a plaid couch and got to wear awesome clothes and play records. Empire Records was pretty much pornography for me.

I kept Empire Records around in later years as a guilty pleasure because, frankly, it's not that good of a movie. It breaks the 4th wall in weird places, it's so carefully plotted and intricatly designed to appeal to a generic "teen" audience with fake edginess, pseduo-deep problems (Gina is a slut who hates herself, Cory is a secret speed addict to keep up her perfect appearence, AJ wants to go to art school but is too scared, one girl tries to kill herself) and radio-friendly soundtrack packaged to showcase the hottest new bands (Cracker, Better than Ezra, the Cranberries and the Gin Blossoms).

I watched it today because I needed some cheering up. And despite all of it's awful, it did the trick. I like movies with 90's pop music, guys in black turtlenecks, combat boots with plaid skirts and Renee Zellwegger. I'm difficult to pander to, but it's nice that someone made the effort.

College Mix CD Time!

2011-09-03T09:15:00.000-04:00

I came of age during that shameful period of music known as the late 90's. This was when VH1 ruled the airwaves, handing us down the top ten videos of the day (who decided these things?) in a never-ending loop of Smash Mouth, Shawn Colvin, Sugar Ray, Fastball, and Savage Garden. The radio was alive with ska and neo-swing from the Mighty Mighty Bosstones and the Cherry Poppin' Daddies. Thanks to the Spice Girls, a short girl could easily purchase platform shoes tall enough so she could kiss Jeff Goldblum squarely on the mouth, should the chance ever present itself (my knee-high platform boots had dragons up the side and caused me to be late to math class enough times to warrent more than one detention).

My college years were earmarked by two things--Clerks (both the movie and the cartoon, which I still quote) and the 90's music I had come of age with. Now that I didn't have to share the lone family computer and dial-up internet access with three sisters, a mother who was finishing college and online-poker obsessed stepdad, I was free to peruse Kazaa for songs I was too cheap to buy on CD and that had been lost to mix-tape technology years ago. Better still, my friend Courtney was living in a dorm with fast internet (for the time) and a computer that could burn CDs. I would send her lists and she would return with CDs when she came home on weekends. Fiona Apple. Barenaked Ladies. Classics like "Call Me Al" and "Burnin' for You." Theme songs from TV shows like The Advntures of Pete and Pete and Roundhouse I played Love Amomg Freaks "Clerks" and wrote chapters for what was sure to be my breakout novel (it wasn't).

Baby Boomers and hipsters like to mock people for liking late 90's/early 2000 music, always forgetting that it was what surrounded us. Our parents could play all the Beatles records they wanted, our older siblings could give us Smiths CDs, but like it or hate it, this was the music that we came into our own with. For a lot of us, these were the first CDs we'd purchase with our own money, making that transition from cassette to CD (my first was Savage Garden's eponymous debut--and for the record, "I Want You" still holds up--the rest don't, but that remains a solidly crafted song--also, the keyboard player was smokin' hot). Embarassing as some of them are, there's a lot of joy there, a reminder of carefree days . . . and really, isn't the whole point of music to make a listener feel something?

Next time you're in the car, bust out the Goo Goo Dolls. Sing "She's So High" to your girlfriend at karaoke. Play "Fly" at a party and see how many of your friend's faces light up. Tell high school stories. Remember old jokes and quote movies from your teenager years. You have nothing to be ashamed of.

Reprise the Theme Song and Roll The Credits

2011-08-30T18:32:00.000-04:00

When I was nine or so, my lifelong ambition was to be on SNICK's Roundhouse. It seemed like such a perfect fit for me--I could wear babydoll dresses and floppy hats (neither of which, at nine years old and stick-skinny, looked good as on me as they did on the 20-somethings that populated Roundhouse) and I could sing and dance and be on TV. More than being on TV, it was the singing and dancing part. Especially the singing--the songs were the next logical step on my way to music geekdom, making that transition from Disney soundtracks to what would become the pop music I adored.

I was very fortunate to be a kid in the early 90's, when surreal and odd was in for children's programing. The dad on Roundhouse had a chair that he could roll around the stage in and the sets rotated to become classrooms, living rooms, bedrooms, whatever was needed. The loudspeaker was an actor with a cardboard speaker on his head. The Adventures of Pete and Pete had two brothers with the same name, a payphone that wouldn't stop ringing and a squid for a school mascot.

And let's not talk about the insanity that was Ren and Stimpy or Rocko's Modern Life.

It was all so weird and clever, when kids were trusted to have their own worlds and not be talked down to or yelled at. None of it was pandering, none of it thrived on the latest fashions or guest stars we would recognize (what 10 year old knows who Iggy Pop is?). SNICK trusted us to be intellegent and creative in our own rights, and that's why those shows endure with my generation today. Will Hannah Montana play well ten years from now? Will anyone remember iCarley or The Wizards of Waverly Place?

My guess is no.

If they revived Roundhouse right now, I would go audition on the off chance that maybe I could finally get a dream to come true. Okay, so I'm not the greatest dancer, but I can learn a few steps and belt out a tune . . . and I finally rock a babydoll dress.

From the Vault/Saddest Songs: The Magnetic Fields 69 Love Songs Vol. 1

2011-08-27T08:00:00.002-04:00

My friend Bix understood exactly how I felt about the Magentic Fields 69 Love Songs vol 1. I had put "The Book of Love" and "All My Little Words" on a mix I made for him, and he came up to me with this wonderous look on his face, as though he couldn't believe I knew the Magnetic Fields too. Because with all the white noise of music out there, between Lady GaGa and Nickleback and Katy Perry and Justin Beiber and all the other billions of bands overtaking the airwaves, it's almost wonderous to find someone who knows the same little band you do

He, like me, played that album over and over and over, terrified to listen to anything else by them for fear it wouldn't be as good. "Then I heard "Papa Was a Rodeo," he told me one night over champagne at an art gallery in Brunswick Maine. "And I played that one over and over. And I knew." He had this dreamy, sincere look on his face, as though the two of us were speaking the secret language only Magnetic Fields listeners understand. Because there's something so intimate about the music that you swear you must be the only person on earth who feels the lyrics, and when you find someone else who feels them that same way, it's almost magic.

My sister Shaun, giver of all things wonderful and musical (including The Smiths and Siouxsie and the Banshees) gave me 69 Love Songs for Hanukkah one year. I took to it instantly, playing it through headphones on my discman, laying on the inflatable mattress I slept on during visits home, mouthing along in the dark as though the words on my breath might somehow reach their intended targets in the universe.

69 Love Songs was my album for boys who had no intentions being for me what I needed or wanted them to be. "Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side," "Absolutely Cuckoo" and "My Sentimental Melody," in that order, were all songs for Dwight, spelling out the ever-deepening emotional divide between us. "Come Back from San Francisco" went on the first CD I made Michael, "I Don't Want to Get Over You" was for James, who I eventually got over and "Reno Dakota" was for Jay, who had a habit of vanishing for years on end, leaving me wondering if or when he might ever reappear.

And like any good album, it grew on me. I discovered songs that I'd skipped in early listenings now held a curious truth to them, like the cleverness of "Chicken With it's Head Cut Off" and I can't hear "All My Little Words" without picturing Jay Karns in the shower and Walton Goggins lifting weights.

2011-08-23T22:31:00.000-04:00

I have realized something beautiful about Netflix Streaming. Something more beautiful than being able to watch Archer in one sitting. Something more beautiful than Blackadder.

Netflix streaming will be the death of film nerds.

I am a film nerd. And I can be a pretty arrogant one. I mean, heck, I keep a blog about it. My freakish knowledge of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and other formerly-obscure B-movies lends me a sort of superiority, especially when combined with my extensive background in literature.

No more. And I couldn't be more grateful.

For as much of a film snob as I am (I've seen three movies this year because everything else looks so mind-numbingly dull that I'd be better off getting a lobotomy) I hate other film snobs. I hate hearing people sneer, "Oh, well, Robert Rodriguiz doesn't really do grindhouse film because he has more of a budget then grindhouse directors had, which is why the original films look that way" No, really? Please, tell me more crap any idiot already knows. Please, go on about how special you are because you've seen Rubber.

Now, with streaming, we can all see Rubber.

No more pawing through VHS tapes at Salvation Army in search of the Mamie Van Doren hosted "Teenage Theater" version of Ed Wood's The Violent Years. No more buying pirated DVDs of foreign films from Kim's Video on St. Marks. No more tape trading. And with the death of all those activities goes the thrill of being able to turn your rubbery chin up at someone who's never even heard of Never Been Thawed.

And soon, former film snobs will be able to come out of their basement and into the light. Instead of looking down their blackhead-addled noses at other people, they'll be able to converse with them about Poultrygist and Mother. New dialogues will open up over Mountain Dew and Snowcaps. We will all make in-jokes about Dr. Katz together and we will know what someone is referencing when they say "*Except this glove." The AV Club will go silent, and Nathan Rabin be forgotten. My God, it will be beautiful.

But, with the good comes the bad. Like that Charlie Sheen won. Major League III is no longer avaliable for streaming. He did it! He finally did it! You maniac! You took away the greatest thing America has ever seen!

*The Critic "A Little Deb Will Do Ya"

From the Vault: The Pretenders "Back on The Chain Gang" or, The Hardest Pop Song On Earth

2011-08-13T19:05:00.000-04:00

I've been trying to get back into singing lately. My friend and Odd Couple co-star Tio was a finalist for the local Idol competition, and I've been thinking about trying out. I did a lot of singing in high school--musical theater, showchoir, chamber ensemble and all the terrible things that come with them. That, and I never scored below a 5 out of 6 (usually getting a 6) at NYSSMA.

But a neck injury in college and a bout of infection that left me sounding like Tom Waits for six weeks when I was 22 more or less ruined my chances of ever being the screeching soprano in a metal band (or opera, whichever) and my descision to no longer persue musical theater left me with very few options for professional singing. I don't play an instrument and there aren't a lot of karaoke options here, so I just sort of reduced myself to singing in the car and, occasionally, karaoke.

But I was listening to the Pretenders, and I was thinking about all my friends that do Idol every year, and thought that maybe I should get back into it. I put "Back on the Chain Gang" on my record player, looked at my cat sitting politely on the couch, and, as I began to sing, I made a discovery.

"Back on the Chain Gang" is the hardest song in the world to sing.

My friend/writing partner Matthew makes fun of me for loving this song. He calls out Chrissie Hynde as being a proto Natalie Merchant, a whispy little thing with a fairy voice. Her voice is a little on the fey side, but what she does have is a master's control over it. "Back on the Chain Gang" is riddled with grace notes, which less-talented singers usually gloss right over. This explains why American Idol-type covers of The Pretenders always suck so monumentally. Because they key isn't sliding up and down the scale, it's about hitting each one of those notes individually and moving to the next one. It's a lot harder than it sounds.

This, by the way, coming from someone who routinely (and against her will) sang "Seasons of Love" from Rent, which a lot of musical theater types will agree is the hardest song in the genre to not screw up. "Back on the Chain Gang" is a million times harder. Because not only are you trying to hit each of those notes, but you're trying to convey the same tough/tender/melancholy/hopeful tone of the song. It's not about making it sound "pretty," it's about making it sound as real as Hynde makes it.

Maybe someday I'll get it . . . but for now, I'm having fun trying.

Lyrics I Like: John Mellancamp "Key West Intermezzo (I Saw You First)"

2011-08-06T15:54:00.000-04:00

"This loud Cuban band is crucifying John Lennon . . ."

What a great lyric. It's probably one of my top ten of all time. There's just this wonderful atmosphere around the whole song, you know what that band sounds like without ever hearing them. The whole song is filled with great images like that--"the bone colored dawn," in the 3rd verse springs immediately to mind.

I have loved this song since I first heard it in my early teens, thanks to VH1's Top Ten Countdown. It easily ranks among my top favorite songs of all time. Every time I hear it, I have to play it at least twice. There's this beautiful longing to it that you don't hear very much anymore, this yearning that lacks violence or whining, a straightforward "Please, just look at me" that every lover, at one time or another, feels.

2011-08-02T23:27:00.001-04:00

All I'm going to say about Cowboys and Aliens is that it didn't have enough Walton Goggins. Although, to be fair, a movie could be nothing but him standing there nude for two hours and I would have the same complaint.

ACTING!!!!

(If you want the full review, just click that link up there and it will take you to Liz Ellis' The Insatiable Critic.)

But let's talk trailers. For starters, I reiterate my previous hatred of James Franco. He makes this face, and I can't do it because I'm on a blog and you're all out there (but come to my house and I'll do it for you) that I can only describe as his "Look Ma, I'm acting" face.

Secondly, I kept hoping Battleship was a joke, like Don't! or Werewolf Women of the SS. But it's real. It's real and it exists and it is so horribly stupid that I felt my brain leaking out of my ears and all over my refashioned western-style shirt.

I watched Breakfast on Pluto last week, driven by the fact that I love Cillian Murphy because he looks exactly like my dear friend/former boyfriend Geza . . . but I couldn't stop staring at Liam Neeson. Man, he's sexy . . . but Battleship? Really? Look, I can forgive The Phantom Menace (we all make mistakes) but he conciously made the choice to star in a movie based on a toy no one I know has ever played. I don't understand why he would do this. It hurts me to think of all the sad reasons why.

And that's what sort of bugged me about Walton Goggins part in Cowboys & Aliens. He may not be a household name, but he's well-regarded by critics, has a small but insanely rabid fanbase (me) he got nominated for an Emmy (some say one show too late) and he has a damn Oscar . . . and the part he played seemed beneath him, like it was something he would have played in his early 20's, when he'd just arrived in Hollywood and would take any part they threw at him. It seemed a little too dumb, a little too hick-like, for someone who consistantly tries to show his native South as anything but a hornets nest of poverty, ignorance and toothlessness. Even his role in Predators had more meat on it

I won't post the Battleship trailer. Here's Werewolf Women of the SS instread.

2011-07-28T17:30:00.000-04:00

Alas, Poor Lem

Let's just get this out of the way first. Yes, I do have tickets to the midnight screening of Cowboys & Aliens. I've been waiting a year for this film and I didn't want to have to wait another day. Hell, last night I dreamed Shane Vendrell was a Jedi and was flying around the galexy with Obi Wan (Ewan McGregor--it's the one part of my Star Wars roots I just can't seem to stay true to, sorry) on a quest to avenge Lem's death. Oh, and Jedi Shane was in love with me. I dream in really bad fanfiction.

Point is, I'm staying up past my bedtime, and I even have a snap-front western shirt I fashioned into a dress to wear. Liz Ellis over at The Insatiable Critic kindly agreed to host my review, so I'll post an update and you all can duck over there when that goes up. Liz is awesome.

* * *

I wasted way too much time reading The AV Club's Silly Little Showbiz Book Club yesterday, (that is, before I realized it was by my arch-nemesis Nathan Rabin) but in reading Nathan Rabin hate on Chris Farley for being Catholic and tearing off melodramatic, angst-ridden prose like sheets of cheap toilet paper in the Taco Bell bathroom, I had a breakthrough of clarity and realized that my Creative NonFiction mentor Jaed Coffin had been right--snarky prose is for douchebags.

Rabin's style consists of, if I may borrow mentor Coffin's wise words, shitting all over everybody and everything. He hates Catholics, he hates people who don't know who Belle and Sebastian are, he hates everyone who isn't as smug or as darling or as bald as he is.

And I used to write much the same way. I was better than everyone, smarter than everyone, smug and pretty to boot. You can see it in some of the prose I have over on the sidelines there. And even though I resented being called out on it the first time (figuring that he was just not as good/smart/smug/pretty as me) I realized later, especially listening to Jaed talk about respecting the stories and the people you're interviewing, that a guy we called "Brospringer" behind his back was actually right. And he was not only right, he was a genius for bringing honesty and respect and not being a privilaged douchebag back to CNF.

When you're writing CNF, you are basically saying to the audience, "I have something important to tell you about myself. My life is so important that you have to listen to me." Whether you're writing about your parents dying or your drug addiction or going to the movies or listening to records, you are already being kind of a dick by expecting that peole care about what you have to say. If you're good, like Kevin Murphy, you make your stunt into something universal, something all the readers can connect with. If you're a dick, like, say, Dave Eggars, the audience is chained helplessly to their chairs, forced to listen to you scream in their face MY PARENTS DIED AND THAT MAKES ME SPECIAL!!!!! I SHOULD BE ON MTV!!!! LOOK AT ME!!!!

It is my goal now, as I write this blog and as I write essays, to step away from the snark that gets me laughs and look at the subjects of my essays, whether they're myself or my ex-boyfriends or my wacky family, with the kind of respect that makes my readers say, "wow, she has rendered that in a way that I can relate to." I'm just sick of being a jerk to my readers--they don't deserve to have all that negativity thrown at them. I want to learn to tell them a multi-facited story so they can decide for themselves if my ex-boyfriend is a dope without having me screaming HE WAS A JUNKIE OTAKU LOSER, CAN'T YOU SEE THAT?!?

That isn't to say I won't still be snarky. I'm not perfect. I will probably still say sarcastic things about my mother and my ex-boyfriend and Nathan Rabin. But my goal is no longer to be the smartest/smuggest/prettiest girl at the dance. Mr. Rabin already has that covered.

In Praise of Beautiful Film

2011-07-26T16:12:00.003-04:00

I almost never see modern films I would consider "beautiful." Let's face it, these days I'm pretty much stuck seeing movies because they either have Ewan McGregor or Walton Goggins in them, and that's about as beautiful as I get. As I've noted before, going to the movies has become just something we all do, crammed into icebox cattle-car theaters, jamming salty snacks into our gaping maws as a means of escaping our pitiful, empty lives for two hours.

Which is why seeing Beginners at the Alamo Drafthouse was such a life-affirming experience.

We spent a week in Austin, TX with our good friend Sterling and he insisted that we go to the Alamo Drafthouse cinema. I know you all think we picked this movie just went becaue Ewan McGregor was in it, but in fact, we only went because nothing else interesting was playing. For starters, you order food at the Alamo Drafthouse. Not crappy Applebees quality microwaved crap, but really good food for decent prices. I had a steak sandwich with fries and green tea, with a Harry Potter-themed caramel apple cake for dessert. Sterling got some sort of vegetarian sandwich and Ian got a pizza. $6.50 got you unlimited popcorn with real butter. They treat you like a human being, a real person, at this theater, not just some faceless consumer. Kudos to the staff of the Alamo Drafthouse, and my only complaint is that you're not here in Upstate New York (and that you were showing The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai the day I left the state).

After our orders were placed, we were treated to the Alamo's famous Pre-Show, a series of short films, old ads and a crazy PSA about talking and txting in the theater. Here's one of the shorts; watch and be terrified:

Simply put, it was the ultimate movie going experience. But even if I had to sit in a tin box with no food, drink or AC (it averaged about 103 on the trip) it would have been worth it to see Beginners. It's the most beautiful film I've ever seen. Not just because of Ewan McGregor, with his quirky romance and his charmingly baggy sweaters, but because the visuals were so intense, the colors so vibrant and the images so carefully chosen that I wanted to cry from the beauty of it all.

By Charles Bremer

There's one shot, a single shot of his father's white tea cup with a green caterpiller crawling on the saucer, all set on top of a red book, and it just struck me as this delicate, tender, wonderful thing. As McGregor narrates the differences between 1950 and 2005, still-frame images of the night sky and photographs and objects, set against a stark black background (very reminiscent of Charlie Bremer paintings) appear. It's a very unique way to set up a film, and a gamble as to not appear too quirky, but it worked.

And when we all walked out of that theater, bellies full, into the hot still air of late-night Austin, we felt as though we'd been part of something. That we'd seen a glimpse into the lives of real people . . . and for crying out loud, that's what cinema, what art, is supposed to be about. It doesn't matter if those people are sitting in a cafe or are being attacked by robots or flying around in space. We have to care about them, we have to see their lives, if we're going to want to spend all that time with them.

I, for one, could have spent the rest of the night with those characters. Even though the film opens with Christopher Plummer dying, I still got misty eyed when the hospice nurse shook Ewan McGregor awake at the table and said, "He's gone." Because through visuals and clever writing and good acting, I was lead to believe that those people on the screen were real. I cared about what became of them, how their lives turned out, whether or not they got what they wanted.

And really, isn't that what makes cinema (and art) so wonderful? Not special effects, not fart jokes or pop culture references or Steve Carell running around screaming, but the lives of people . . . people we know, people we love, people who may or may not be a part of us. We like music because of how we can relate to it, how it makes us feel--isn't it time we start asking the same thing of our movies?

Stuck in Hell With Katy Perry

2011-07-23T00:17:00.003-04:00

Pictured: Katy Perry in Concert

Am I the only person on Earth who thinks Katy Perry sounds like a braying ass when she "sings"? (I use the term loosely) I tend to avoid autotuned pop garbage, but when you're sitting in a Waffle House in Tennessee (State Motto: "Welcome to Hell! Now Starring Elvis!") and "Firework" comes on, well, the victim cannot be blamed for the assault. You can just hear the autotune straining to keep her screaming to a banshee minimum so as not to cause mass ear drum explosions.

I know a lot of stupid songs. A lot of them. But wow, this one takes the cake for utter and supreme awfulness. Not just because it's generic feel-good "you are so special and everybody loves you" garbage designed to make ugly, pimply-faced adolescents attain a sense of superiority they haven't earned and will never deserve, not because it's pre-Glee-a-fied for high school show choirs to sing at graduation (like they did at my sister Beth's graduation last month), but because it's actually factually wrong. A sample:

Just own the night

Like the Fourth of July
Cause baby you're a firework
Come on show 'em what you're worth

Oh, Snap!

For starters, People Who Write Katy Perry's "songs" (again, I use the term loosely) For Her, the commonly vernacular is "fireworks"--the singular has been phased out. You don't buy a single "firework," even if you buy one single solitary Black Cat from a tin shack along the highway outside of Purcell, Oklahoma, it's still fireworks, plural, unless you want to sound like a moron.

Here's the thing about fireworks. They're pretty for a second and then they burn out almost instantly. They have no substance, nothing memorable, just a loud noise and some sparkly lights and then blackness and silence. Not exactly a metaphor for being super-ultra-special . . . more like a metaphor for Russell Brand's career as an American movie star.

No one ever really remembers a fireworks display. You remember that they happened and that maybe you scored behind the bleachers during them, but you can't exactly remember what each one looked like as it went off. It's a group effort (after all, a lone firework would be really, really dull), and after awhile, they all look the same, like girls who shop at Hot Topic, or scenes in a Michael Bay movie. So much for being super-ultra-unique and individual.

Additionally, fireworks irritate people, they frighten children and make people with Hyperacusis cry out in pain. So Katy Perry's singing about herself, I assume.

Fireworks aren't worth much. Again, they burn out quickly, leaving only some smoke and charred cardboard. They cost almost nothing and can be bought at every gas station and roadside shack from Pennsylvania to New Mexico (can you tell who just took a road trip?) so they have no real value in trade or economic worth. So the line "show them what your worth" is actually a horrible insult--you are worth nothing, kid, and you will be forgotten almost instantly after you explode and burn.

We can only hope the same holds true for Katy Perry . . . she's such a pathetic case, clearly a Lady GaGa knock-off without any of the charm, uniqueness or talent. Quite possibly, she's not even human. My friend Matthew is convinced she's just a sex doll with a bad voice box attached. She is, in essence, a firework--destined to burn out quickly and be forgotten like every other pop star. . . .but not quickly enough.

BOO-YAH

2011-07-14T20:06:00.000-04:00

Finally, Walton Goggins NOMINATED FOR AN EMMY!!! About freakin' time!

From the Vault--Shameful 90's Edition

2011-07-02T21:57:00.000-04:00

There's a burger joint on St. Mark's Place that I take everyone who's company I enjoy--I discovered it while out with my friend Eeon, and then we took Pete (also of Canned Laser), and last weekend, I took Matthew to thank him for driving eight hours to see me in The Odd Couple. It's an awesome place, a tiny, cramped little joint with sliders topped with carmelized onions, 3 beers on tap and Guiness milkshakes, pecan pie and the best fries on Planet Earth.

But this time, for some reason, they'd set the satellight radio to the 90's station, and it got progressively worse as our meal went on. It started off promising enough, "Allison Road" by the Gin Blossoms (I have an unabashed love for the Gin Blossoms that Matthew claims he will never understand) and "No Rain" by Blind Melon (which I'm trying to decide whether or not it's an inanely stupid song or a bright bit of pop genius, like "Brian Wilson" by the Barenaked Ladies) . . . but then the unthinkable happened.

Whether it was because lunch hour was over and everyone else with normal hours and normal cubical jobs was dragging themselves back to another half a day of soul-crushing work, the tone of the radio turned from nostalgia to the Toaster-In-The-Bathtub Hour. It started with Semisonic's "Closing Time," which I have hated since it spawned (my ex-friend Caitlin maudlinly used the lyric "Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end" as her senior quote . . . in 2001) and then went to the Verve Pipe's "Bittersweet Symphony" and then "Desperatly Wanting" by Better than Ezra.

Audrey Hepburn does
not endorse Deep Blue
Something

. . . and then, in case you weren't already about to stick your genitals in the deep fryer, came Deep Blue Something's "Breakfast at Tiffany's."

I know a lot of bad songs. A lot of them. But "Breakfast at Tiffany's" was the "Hey Soul Sister" of the 90's. It's inane, it's whiny, it's really, really dumb from a band with a faux-intellectual name. And you just know at least one guy in the band was a lit major with bad facial hair.

A sample of the brilliantly crafted lyrics:

"So what now?

it's plain to see we're over

and I hate when things are over"

That is easily the most crybaby lyric in history. Here's the chorus, won't you?

"And I said
what about
Breakfast at Tiffany's
She said, I think I
remember the film
and as I recall, I think
we both kind of liked it
and I said, well that's
the one thing we've got"

They're sticking together because of a film they can't remember whether or not they liked? I guess there are only two things left to do.

1) Netflix Breakfast at Tiffany's and watch again to see if maybe this time you can be sure whether or not you liked it. I had to watch The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension three times before I could say that I liked it.

2) Break up. This girl sounds like a moron if she can't remember whether or not she liked a movie. Then again, you're in Deep Blue Something, so it's not like you're going to do much better unless she's deaf.

The wonderful thing about "Breakfast at Tiffany's" is that you can make up lyrics really, really easily. They don't have to rhyme or fit or anything! It's plug-and-play songwriting, like

"And I said
what about
Buckaroo Banzai?
and he said
I think I remember the film
and as I recall
you fell asleep when we watched it
and I said, well I, tend to do that"

Or:

"And I said

\what about

Breakfast at Tiffany's?

and you said

That's my favorite song

and I'm pretty sure

I left you in the parking lot

oh well, at least I

know all this now"

We're back, and thank you for your patience!

2011-06-30T17:46:00.000-04:00

Let's kick things back off with a combination Boys on Film and Writing post, won't you?

Almost a year ago I made a deal with my friend Mike. Mike is a devourer of film and television to the point where he watched over 100 movies last year. Mike hates cop shows (and real cops) but Mike is also a writer and considers himself extremely hardcore, so I begged and I pleaded and told him that he absolutely had to watch The Shield, if only for his soul as a writer.
He agreed, but on one term. He would give The Shield a two-season minimum viewing . . . if I would watch Dexter seasons 3 and 4.

He loved The Shield. He watched all seven seasons in the span of about two months. We discussed it at length. He bought me a Strike Team tee-shirt for my birthday. He is the Dutch to my Claudette.

But man, this Dexter thing is killing me.

Also, I hate his horrible pink lips
and that eerie white line
around his mouth . . . ugh

I am a woman of my word, but this deal might be the end of me. We're four episodes in and every time we put it in the DVD player I want to claw my eyes out. The voice overs are starting to drive me mad. What, did the writers just look around the room, pick something out and write a vague metaphor for it?

Cheese danish. We're all like the cheese sometimes, stuck in the middle of a ring of flakey pastry, flakey people who don't understand what it means to be trapped . . . .

Lamp. Sometimes we're on, sometimes we're off, but we're always consuming resources, burning out in a fire-fueled blaze of glory. . .

Day planner. Our days are planned, our lives marked into neat little boxes before we're put in a neat little box, lowered into the ground, expired like last year's calender . . . .

See how easy it is? You try it! That's what the comments section is for!

The writing on this show is so bad. Not only have the writers clearly never actually talked to a woman (which is why Rita, who had to be "saved" from her abusive husband, who goes to a generic job in a beige dress suit, is the "ideal," whereas Lila, being self-reliant and sexually voracious, has to be portrayed as a psycho--the writers of Dexter are scared of women . . . also, their idea of being "sexually liberated" aka Deb, means falling into bed with every man she meets) but they've also never seen a child (I imagine they're told to stay outside of 500 feet around playgrounds and elementary schools) because Astor does not speak the way a child speaks.

Also, Dexter is murdering innocent people. That's fine, Vic Mackey kills lots of "innocent" people. Shane kills one very innocent person and I still have the mad hots for him . . . but with Dexter there's a sadistic nature to it, an enjoyment even though he keeps harping every ten seconds that he can't feel emotion (also, there's a code of Harry, Harry's Code, Harry was his father and he had a Code, the Code of his Father, Harry.) He kills the child molester in episode 3 even though he'd served his time and wasn't caught molesting anyone . . . it wasn't even until after he's dead that Dexter sees he has the pictures of Astor on his computer . . . what happened to forgiveness? He makes a point, in one of his many voice-overs, that the man had served his time and was free to go back into society, unlike Dexter's other kills, who had gotten off because of a technicality or lack of evidence and Dexter was cleaning up with the police couldn't. We could somehow agree with that . . .but his capture and intended murder of Doakes, his stalking and murder of Lila and his manipulation of Jimmy Smits brother is pushing it.

This would all be fine, of course, if we weren't given a series of rooting interests to direct us into liking Dexter. He's getting married! He's having a baby! Sympathize, damn it, he's a WONDERFUL person. Look, Casey Anthony clearly throws one hell of a party, but that doesn't mean I want to invite her over on Saturday night. Same goes with Dexter.

Oh, and in episode 4, Deb interrogates a suspect, which would go unnoticed except that they insist on pointing out that she doesn't have her detective shield . . . and officers don't interrogate suspects.

It just comes down to lazy, incompetent writing, which I hate more than anything. I can take bad writing, but I can't take incompetence. I read a story in grad school that was so riddled with errors (like "steal-toed combat boots" when steel-toed boots are industrial boots, not combat footwear) that it made me want to tear up the MFA that currently hangs over my desk because she has the same one despite the fact that she's an utter moron. There's suspension of disbelief, which is needed for all fiction, but then there's insulting your audience. Dexter insults it's audience. It's boring and it's tiresome and it's making me long for the cracking wit of The Hills. Or the Forever Leather commercial that runs on the Utica Public Access. Or the O'Reilly Factor . . . anything but Dexter. Please.

But I am a woman of my word above all things, and I shall prevail . . . even if it kills me.

2011-06-21T08:07:00.000-04:00

It's Hell Week here on the set of The Odd Couple, so we'll return to our reguarly scheduled ranting (including the promised post on Rick Sloane) next week.

In the meantime, amuse yourself with this little gem:

From the Vault--Happy Father's Day

2011-06-18T20:06:00.000-04:00

Don McLean has not aged well. When I was in, oh, eighth grade or so, I thought “American Pie” was a good song, and “Vincent” a better one, but “American Pie” has been reduced to a pile of self-righteous hippy cheese and although “Vincent” still remains a haunting piece of music, when paired with the rest of McLean’s tortured-artist songbook, seems like just another trite piece of “oh, pity the artist” schlock.

I can, however, point out every single reference and allusion in “American Pie.” My dad was a master of drilling us full of two kinds of trivia—music and local history. To this day, I can still point out all the caves between my dad’s house and the church we attended. While all my friends were waiting on their dial-up internet to research each line for a frankly lazy history assignment (which is what we did before Wikipedia and Google) I simply played through the song and wrote it down in numerical order in about 10 minutes. My then-friend Caitlin said it was cheating, but let’s face it—she was just jealous.

Then again, you never know

The song that stays with me is from this same playbook, but it’s a rare one, from his first, eponymous album. “Bronco Bill’s Lament” is the first-person narrative of an ex TV cowboy. It’s sad and it’s beautiful and it’s been forgotten to everyone but vinyl junkies. Even the concept of the singing TV cowboy is something almost too nostalgic for most people. Although the western is making a mini-comeback, I doubt we’ll see any of the old-timey cowboys with the glittery shirts and the guitars.

It’s sort of like Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind” only simpler, prettier and more haunting. The eponymous narrator has finally accepted his fate and is perhaps singing to some magazine interviewer charged with digging up a fluff piece on an old legend. And he sings:

“Oh I always liked the notion of a cowboy fighting crime
This photograph was taken in my prime
I could beat those desperados,
But there’s no sense fightin’ time . . . .”

The poetics are very basic, almost high-schoolish, but in their simplicity lies their charm. Much like Elton John’s “Your Song,” (which is better sung by Ewan McGregor) “Bronco Bill’s Lament” does not suffer from complexity or an attempt to be deep, which “American Pie” has a fatal case of.

My sister had this song on a mix tape my dad made off the live album, and we used to play it over and over and over on the stereo in the room we shared for ten years. Because when you’re a kid, something like this seems so deep and meaningful, and a lot of that meaning has stayed with me. No one wants to be forgotten. No one wants to be used up and thrown away. In a way, I suppose I feel sorry for Don Mclean. He probably had something to say, in his self-righteous hippy way, and just wasn’t good enough to be remembered for anything but “American Pie.” He had all Dylan’s ambition and much of the same intentions, but his lyrics were too straightforward, too similar-sounding, too whiny. It’s the curse of a lot of musicians, to be damned by their one hit song. Hell, Warren Zevon would forever be the “Werewolves of London” guy, and his entire catalogue is made up of nothing but amazingly genius songs. Even jokey-sounding songs like “Gorilla, You’re a Desperado” still drip with his sarcastic, caustic wit and charm.

But ultimately, my love for this song comes back to my dad. My father is a consummate music lover and a musician himself, the man responsible for most of my music collection--Warren Zevon, the Talking Heads, Steely Dan, Men at Work, Oingo Boingo, the Pretenders, the Vapors, the Gin Blossoms and Cyndi Lauper. One could also accuse him of causing me to hate the Beatles from overplaying, but I say that blame rests more on my sisters than on him. We always had music playing in the car and he was constantly singing—sometimes replacing lyrics with fart noises, other times replacing them with the name of our cat, Scallion (my favorite being, “I see a red cat and I want him painted black”). Music was like breathing to him—it was a constant. My sisters and I all have very different tastes, but we all come back to those few common threads. Driving home from visiting my grandmother in the nursing home for what would be the last time, we played Steely Dan’s Pretzel Logic because it’s hard to be sad during “Barrytown.” Everybody loves “Barrytown.” And it all comes back around to my dad, a quiet man in his own right, the keeper of the sacred songs.

The rest of Don Mclean, except for “On the Amazon” (which always makes me think of my friend Will Ludwigsen) sucks for the same reason the rest of the Don Mclean catalogue sucks—it’s self-righteous hippy garbage. But this one song almost makes up for it, a gem among rubbish, a reminder that even when we think we are most forgotten, someone somewhere remembers us.

Happy Fathers Day, Dad.

New Writing Links

2011-06-15T20:14:00.017-04:00

My essay, "The Memory of Taste" is featured in the June issue of Umbrella Factory.

But more importantly, my friend Mike Langworthy's essay "A Dance Recital Reveals More Than Ballet Cliche" is now online. Go on, read it, my stupid blog can wait. It's a beautiful piece, one of the best I've read in recent memory, probably because Mike Langworthy is a damn genius in the craft. It takes a real CNF writer to step outside the petty bullshit of bad dads/neglectful moms/drug addiction and all the other boo-hoo whineyness and allows himself to be changed by something outside of himself.

Saturday, I'm in Love

2011-06-04T04:50:00.001-04:00

I recently rediscovered The Fontanelles, and damn it, they're awesome.

For those of you who missed the episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 where the 'bots skewed Rick Sloane's Hobgoblins (more on this on Monday) there's a scene where our heroes go into Club Scum and listen to The Fontanelles play "Kiss Kicker 99" ("Love Me Not," my favorite, plays when they're just outside). I always liked "Kiss Kicker 99," and it wasn't until the magical invention of The Internet that I even had a chance to dream of getting it. My friend Chris managed to find it for me, and I played it over and over and over, but it was the only song of theirs I could find, and this made me sad.

(And for those of you familiar with the MST3K treatment of it, well, we did call a guy I went to grad school with "Pig Liquor," after Mike Nelson's mis-heard lyric and declaration, "I would not want Pig Liquor"--in all fairness, his last name sounded, well, like Pig Liquor if you said it fast enough, and although Pig Liquor wanted me, I did not want Pig Liquor)

BadCultMovies is selling copies of the soundtrack on ebay, and seeing as how my chances of getting their original 45 are pretty slim, I went ahead and bought the 7-song EP as a little treat to myself. I almost never buy CDs anymore, but this was too good to pass up.

Holy Crow, is it good. Even better than I expected.

It's very Cure-esq on the guitars (think "Killing an Arab" or "The Lovecats") and lyrically, there are a lot of cool fairy tale/nursery rhyme allusions, (especially on "Love Me Nots" and "ShooFly") but not in a weird lame way. And as for the jangly melodies, well, they ultimately lack the Cure's melodramatic silliness and keep with in the originally intended punk spirit. This is probably because Spit Spingola is a much cooler name than Robert Smith.

Because I Love You All

2011-06-03T19:01:00.002-04:00

You're welcome

Celebrity Fantasy: Special Panel Edition

2011-05-31T18:04:00.000-04:00

My latest fantasy is the only one I have that takes place in my actual house, and it's a three-way. You see, ever since Ian bought me a full-sized, fully functional replica of Tom Servo, I've been watching a TON of Mystery Science Theater 3000. And this, along with my rantings about the sorry state of cinema, lead me back to Kevin Murphy's brilliant A Year at the Movies. Because Jay Sherman is fictional, that leaves Kevin Murphy to be my favorite film critic. Not only is he a genius, but he is also hysterical and has a strong midwestern common sense, which I can respect, probably because it's a foreign concept to me. I believe that most movie critics are wimps paid off by the movie studios (how else can you explain Roger Ebert giving Daredevil "two thumbs up!") but Kevin Murphy is no one's man. He also hated Rocky Horror Picture Show, which almost makes me want to marry him.

The other participant in this little exercise is Geena Davis . . . and they both come over to my house and I invite them in to sit on the couch, and because this is a fantasy, the arms aren't all clawed up from Bosco's constant climbing. I offer them a drink and some spinach triangles and we get down the business of discussing film. I want to hear Geena Davis speak on women in the media. I want to hear some of Kevin's own rantings. I want to add in my thesis and hear them both tell me how smart and perceptive I am for a 28 year old, the exact target audience for drivel like Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and yet, how wisely I eschew the pop culture idiocy of my peers.

We drink some coffee and take some pot-shots at Nathan Rabin. Kevin gives me a high-five. Geena Davis tells me I'm the smartest girl she's ever met and offers me a job at the Institute. Because I want to feel smart. I want to feel well-versed and intellectual and like someone cares about what I have to say . . . I guess that's the fantasy of every blogger.

From the Vault: Mix Tape Blues

2011-05-28T09:14:00.001-04:00

Something about the summer heat makes me drag out old mix CDs, and this time, I'm listening to the mixes my BFF Matthew and I made for our frequent road trips to conferences and grad school residencies.

Mix CDs are almost as good as records. Mix CDs are almost always made with a specific purpose in mind and the memories of that event get locked into the music itself. When I played "Bizarre Love Triangle" on Beautiful, Terrible Things: The Best (So Far) of Libby and Matthew, I was transported back to the Chicago AWP dance floor, watching two skanks in matching lace-trimmed satin nighties do the whole "get down on my knees and pray" bit more than was called for. The pounding rhythm of Duran Duran's "Last Chance on the Stairway" is the pavement beneath our tires on peach-colored summer morning drives to workshop and the Psychedelic Furs "The Ghost in You" is pure, nostalgic bliss.

The driving mix CD is the best of the bunch. It is an adventure for an adventure, a tangible culmination of anticipation and execution. I've been listening to a mix I made for our January trip to our grad school residency in Freeport, Maine. Getty Lee's voice on "Fly By Night" reminds me of New Haven, cold and icy and a little bit thrilling. I cannot hear Squeeze's "Tempted" without hearing our friend Ben groan and roll his eyes from the backseat of our rental car, and I can't hear The Servant's "Beautiful Thing" without remembering how quiet and crystal-cold and beautiful the Haraseekett Inn was. And when it's 80 degrees and humid in my house, I can't help but long for the snowflakes that fell as "Bring on the Dancing Horses" played.

Come July, I will have been out of graduate school for a year. I've got the framed diploma and the student loan payments to prove it . . . but the only thing I really miss is that trip, those 6-8 hour drives when it was just us and bad coffee and good music and the frantic, caffinated conversation we're famous for, a language we speak that no one else understands. We didn't need any major momentous moments . . . just the quiet, intimate ones captured and held forever, a memory in melody.

Since today is writing day . . .

2011-05-26T17:34:00.000-04:00

. . . I feel like this is as good a time as any to announce two major successes.

1) Matthew and I's essay "The 12 Conference Commandments" has been scheduled for publication (issue TBD) in The Writer magazine. Yep, one of the Big Industry Three. I feel like we've officially made it, and now no one, not even my junior year writing professor, can say I'm not a writer. The Writer magazine makes it official that I am.

2) Umbrella Factory just picked up my essay "The Memory of Taste" for their June issue. Will post a link when it goes live.

Top Secret Notes from an Editor

2011-05-26T01:24:00.008-04:00

I just finished the first round of shortlisting/rejecting submissions for The Midnight Diner and I'm sorry to say I rejected far more than I shortlisted. I hated doing that, and I did what I swore I would never do--I sent a form rejection letter. The more rejection letters I got, the more I realized that the form rejection letter is one of the most polite forms of rejection (after the form letter with the handwritten) note at the bottom. If a letter is too personalized, i.e. telling you exactly why they didn't take your story, it comes off as insulting. Because really, that's just ONE editor's perspective, and maybe that editor ate a bad crawdad the night before or had a fight with her boyfriend or any number of outside factors, so why should I take that editor's advice when I send it out someplace else? Especially if it's not a "do this and resubmit." I got some notes from PANK on "Hotel Jesus" with the suggestion that I submit it again, and I did, and it got published--but the "this isn't for us oh and make the main character have an eyepatch" is just stupid, and I would hate getting it so I hate sending it.

Switching gears . . . .

The Midnight Diner is a Hardboiled Genre magazine with a Christian slant. Yet, I found that I was getting two types of stories--generic Christianity (angels, God, stories we all know and love told with guns) and generic genre ("I'm dead!" in Paranormal and "I'm killing somebody!" in Crime). I rarely found one that had both a Christian slant without being generic, and a genre slant without being cliched. . . and what I realized was that too much of Christian genre writing is slamming those two elements together and hoping the pieces cling long enough to work.

I don't write what I call "Christian" fiction, but I've always been fascinated by preachers and I've lately been fascinated by the concept of Grace. In the past six months I've written a series of unrelated short stories under this umbrella (not counting "Preacher Man/Absolution/First Night in a New Town") and I'm realizing that a good Christian story, like any good story, is about people. Not just people of faith, but people saved by the grace of a force beyond their control. For Lila Ann Albany, the narrator of "The Hand of God," it's a teenage preacher's son who saves her life with a hardback Bible in a violent, Flannery O'Conner-esq twist. For Oren Barry, the protagonist in "Keyton's Keys," which features no direct religious references at all, it's about accepting the grace that forgives his past and trying to be a better man. And for Oswald Lapis, the minister in the untited story I'm writing now, it's a girl who shows him mortal love when he can barely believe in the love he preaches every week.

I've read what seems like a million stories about angry angels, thinly-veiled retreads of well-known Bible stories (usually involving guns and swear words, ooh, how edgy), pedophile priests, one last romantic encounters with ghostly lovers and devils coming to church, and each time they get more and more and more tiresome. There is so much more to Christianity than Thomas Kincaid schlock and badassed Bible verses.

The supposed Rapture came and went without incident Saturday night (except for my friend Jim, who didn't answer his phone when I called him at 6PM EST and has yet to call back, leaving me to assume that he was, in fact, assumed into Heaven. Good for him, I say. I like to imagine that he's eating sno-cones with Patrick Swayze). I think there's a lot of really great stories in there--none of this "Left Behind" crap, but stories about regular people. Such as:

--A non-believer laying awake the night before wondering what will happen next and still being changed even after the Day of Judgement fails to materialize.
--Someone who left everything behind and is disappointed that they're stuck here on Earth because they've been scammed into believe Doomsday is coming. (LOTS of good material to milk here)
--Someone ends up Raptured due to a clerical error
--The character gets to Heaven and realizes that, because of the specifications on who gets in, realizes that all the people they really love are left on Earth and that "Heaven" has become their own personal Hell
--One person gets Raptured, while their lover/sibling/parent is left behind

. . . and these are just my ideas. Go ahead, take them. I'll probably never get around to writing them anyways. Good luck with them, and send them over to The Midnight Diner. Direct your cover letters to me personally and although I make no promises of publication, I would like to read them. And really, when was the last time an author gave away their own specific story ideas? Not that I've ever seen.

Point is, these are the kinds of stories I want to read in any genre. Stories about people, just normal people with average jobs and average lives who have something extraordinary happen to them--even if it's as simple as meeting someone on the street . . . but make it someone, some idea, that changes them, because one of the problems we all have in life is that we don't change. And why should we? We're always right, everyone else is wrong. After all, Harold Camping himself said that there was no possibility the Rapture wouldn't occur at 6PM on May 21st, 2011.

Yet, here we all are, stuck in this broken world together. Who needs sarcastic angels and apocolyptic wanderings when we're surrounded by so many people, all with their own stories to tell? Find these same people in your imagination and tell their stories--give them words and breath and life. That's how you write a good story.

Bread and Circuses, Pt II

2011-05-24T17:44:00.001-04:00

Continuing our discussion from last Tuesday . . . .

With trained actors no longer being necessary, screenwriters obsolete and directors being phased out (I watched The Burbs and Gremlins 2 this weekend and found myself thinking "Whatever happened to Joe Dante?") Cinema is rapidly becoming a fast-food atmosphere. Hollywood wants you to hand over money for a sub-standard product because they know their audience will watch, literally, anything. How many times have you heard a friend say, "I saw it because it was something to do." Now, how many times have you said that? How many times have you forked over $10, more than an hour's worth of the minimum wage the guy at the concession stand is making, to waste two hours of your life seeing a movie you had no real burning desire to see in the first place?

This is known as "Bread and Circuses"--as in, "give people basic entertainment, and they won't notice us over here taking their money, their land and their lives" We're so distracted by the shiny lights and the 64 oz collectable drink cup that we don't notice that gas is over $4 a gallon, gas-drilling companies are threatening to destroy Upstate New York the same way they destroyed Pennsylvania, we're still in Iraq and that so much of the food we eat is pure poison. We've been made too fat and sick on genetically-engineered popcorn topped with chemicals and High Fructose Corn Syrup and Big Macs to protest, too blinded by an endless succession of rapid-fire commercials and piles of toys to notice that we're wasting what little time we have on this earth putting cocaine directly up Michael Bay's left nostril.

And we're complaing in the whole time. We bitch that our stomachs hurt, that we're tired, that we're broke, that there's nothing good on TV and they don't make movies like they used to. Then we eat another Whopper, down another 64oz of Mountain Dew, watch another rerun of Keeping Up with the Kardashians and go down to the multiplex to watch a bunch of cardboard cutouts perform a story we know by heart from the last six times we've seen it.

(Side note: I had a "Last Night Before the Rapture" party this Friday, and I instructed people to bring junk food because what did it matter? The world was ending . . . but after a weekend of eating junk food, I feel completely gunked up--I don't know how other people go through life feeling this way because they consume nothing but microwave dinners, Doritos and cheap, nasty beer. I feel like I'm going to die.)

Summer Blockbuster Season is descending upon us, not unlike the fire, brimstone and earthquakes that were supposed to start at 6PM this past Saturday, only more painful. We've got a record number of sequels, reboots, remakes and other useless garbage coming out this summer, and the best way to show Hollywood that you're not going to take their crap anymore is to stop giving them your money. If we don't see bad movies, in theory, they'll stop making bad movies. Think about it. Do you think there would be a Transformers 2 and 3 if no one went to see Transformers? No, there wouldn't be--you are part of the problem. Try being part of the solution.

So here's a nice list of things you can do other than wasting money, time and your health in the cinema this summer:

1) Make your own damn movie, either as a group effort or as a contest. Divvy up your friends, set a minimal budget ($15?) and either a) Remake a blockbuster a la Be Kind Rewind (I can guarentee that even the most cardboard box imagining of Transformers 3 will be loads better than the one playing in theaters) or b) challenge everyone to make an original short film. Give them a time limit, like 24 hours. Host a red carpet event and screen all the films.

2) Volunteer. Work at a soup kitchen for an evening. Pet kittens and walk dogs at a shelter.

3) Go for a walk--not a walk to the convenience store to buy some Fritos, but a walk in a nature preserve or a mountain or down streets in your neighborhood you never explored.

4) Go to a religious service (maybe try a faith that you don't belong to) and think about how you can be a better person.

5) Host an Iron Chef potluck--pick a theme ingredient and have everyone make something to share

6) Pick a current movie you want to see, then go through Netflix and find either the original or one similar. Japan has more giant robot movies that you can even begin to imagine.

7) Write letters to all your far-off friends--not an email, not a facebook post, but a real physical letter. Include newsclippings, recipies and other fun things.

8) Have a craft party. Make paper, sock puppets, tee-shirts (I love Generation Tee) voodoo dolls, chapbooks.

9) Have a slumber party and watch movies you used to watch as kids. Try Flight of the Navigator or The Explorers. Have everyone bring cute pajamas, a lovey to snuggle with and a cereal their mother wouldn't let them have for breakfast the next morning.

10) Run around outside like you're eight years old again. Play Frisbee, Calvinball, Tag, Fizzball. Toss a football or a baseball around. Bonus points for wearing tuxedos!

11) Go through all the crap you've aquired in life and divvy it up into piles--keep, sell, toss, donate. Be brutal, because really, do you need that stuffed Pikachu? Are you ever going to wear that long black lace Lip Service dress again? Wouldn't it be better in the hands of a kid who's going to love it, or a teenage girl who can actually fit into it? Hold a yardsale and make some extra cash. Put the good stuff up on ebay and let people duke it out. Donate stuff for a tax write-off.

12) Learn to do something that will save you money--grow a plant you can eat. Take a hunting course. Learn to fix your toilet or your windowframes or do your taxes so you don't have to hire someone to do it for you.

13) Take an adult ed course. Learn to ballroom dance or write or paint landscapes or play piano.

14) Audition for a play. If you don't get in, offer to help paint sets, make costumes or hunt for props

15) Clean your entire house. Scrub grout with a toothbrush. This isn't fun, but you might be amazed with the results.

16) Make an episode of a reality show about your life.

17) Set aside the admission price every time you decide not to go to the movies. At the end of the summer, go to eat at someplace you normally wouldn't be able to afford. Remember to dress nicely.

18) . . . or if you're really nice, donate all that money to charity.

19) Read all your old diaries and the bad poems you wrote in high school. Use them to start a fire in the grill and have a BBQ.

20) Play mini golf or paintball. Divvy up into opposing teams named after TV shows or movies, such as Farmington PD vs Oswald State Pen.

And if you must go to the movies, why not check out a second run theater? They're cheaper ($2-$5 instead of $8-$12) and half the time, empty. Or an independently owned art theater where you can pretend to be a film snob? Or better still, a drive-in. You pack a picnic and not be chained to bad popcorn and neon nachos. Bring some chairs and sit out on the lawn, under the stars, enjoying even the crappiest of movies . . . or if the weather is less than ideal, inside your car, making MST3K-style commentary. Dwight and I once went to the 3-screen drive-in in Warwick, NY and halfway through War of the Worlds, switched the signal over to Herbie, Fully Loaded. The results were hysterical. And if the movie really, really sucks, enjoy the age-old tradition of making out in the backseat.

It comes down to this--in the words of the great, two-time Pulitzer Prize Winning Film Critic Dr. Jay Sherman, PhD, "If the movie stnks, just don't go."

2011-05-20T14:37:00.000-04:00

It was too awesome, that's what happened

There's a sequel to American McGee's Alice coming out in a few weeks and the part of me that is still twenty and listening to Coldplay's "Clocks" is thinking "Awesome! I've been waiting forever for this!" and the part of me that has a job and a boyfriend and a life is thinking "Ugh, enough Alice--and hey, whatever happened to American McGee's Oz?"

And I'm not going to
give you the satisfaction
of a screen shot.

I'm not going to talk about how much of a stupid, pandering retread Madness Returns is probably going to be except to say that okay, so her parents didn't die in an accidental fire the way they did in the first game, which is why she was in a mental hospital and got out at the end to live free and happily. So now she's still in therapy, and goes back to Wonderland in repressed memories, and in the end we're going to find out that . . . what, they were murdered by someone she imagines as the Queen of Hearts/Jabberwock/Mad Hatter? Gruesome--so will there be a third part where she avenges their murder? Were they murdered by her? Then why would I want to play a murderous pseudo-goth teenager, that doesn't sound fun

I don't know. And I don't care.

I am really sick and tired of people telling me that I have to play a game because it has a "good story." Frankly, I hate being told that I "have" to do anything but eat, breathe and sleep, but with as little time as I have now, the last thing I "have" to do is sit on my butt.

I like games with Rabbits in them

If I wanted a good story, I'd see a movie or watch TV or, I don't know, read a book. And some games DO have good stories--like Sam and Max, which is all story, told in puzzles and dialogue. Or Epic Mickey, but Epic Mickey would have been a lot more awesome as a movie or a comic than as a game, because in order to get to the awesome story parts with Oswald, you have to wander through a bunch of mind-numbing gameplay. The story of Bioshock is very neat (and supposedly, Atlas Shrugged taken to it's logical and extremely bizarre conclusion) but again, hours of wandering around collecting items and shooting a series of identical bad guys. And I've got serious mad old-skool love to Chrono Trigger, but again, I'd rather watch it as an anime or read it as a comic than have to fight my way through the Black Omen one. more. time.

But by contrast, games like Katamari Damacy and Rabbids Go Home and the old-skool Mario Bros games have only the most basic of storylines--Fix the universe. Pile stuff up to the moon. Save the Princess. And the gameplay is simple, and it's not pretending to be something that it's not. It's just a game, and it's fun, and I have wasted more hours than I can count trying to roll up the right sized cow. They're cute and they're simple and I don't ever feel like I have to try and justify it to anyone because it's just a game.

Besides, most modern video games seem to take far more effort and frustration that the story is even worth. Like Epic Mickey. It's easier and less involved to just read Alice Through the Looking Glass, plus you can take it outside and maybe follow a white rabbit someplace on your own adventure.

This isn't even, of course, touching on how stupid and tiresome "dark" fairy tale retreads are. That's for another day.

Bread and Circuses 2011

2011-05-17T17:52:00.000-04:00

I think we have officially reached the end of the era of the Movie Star. Gone are the days of Humphry Bogart, Sean Connery, Harrison Ford, George Clooney and Johnny Depp. We are entering the era of the franchise, where the only quality an actor must posess is a generic enough face and enough talent to shout "Oh no! A giant robot!"

As we head into the summer, most of the movies we've seen coming out from major studios have either been franchises (Harry Potter, Transformers) reboots (Batman, Planet of the Apes, the upcoming Spiderman) or sequels (Johnny English Reborn, Pirates of the Carribbean 4, The Hangover 2). Even movies that seem original (Cowboys and Aliens, Sucker Punch) are based on pre-existing material, in those cases, comic books no one's ever read, hence the originality factor.

The problem with franchise films is that they strip away any chance the actor has of, oh, I don't know, acting. Because Spiderman has to be Spiderman, damn it, or the fanboys will mess their underoos, Andrew Garfield has to be pretty much the same as Toby McGuire. James Franco and Shia LeBouf are interchangable, just slightly-updated Hayden Christensens and Elijah Woods. Blockbusters don't make Hollywood names anymore because Hollywood doesn't want pay someone $20 million dollars for a performance. Imagine, if you will, a world where Han Solo didn't say "I know" in response to Princess Leia's "I Love You" in The Empire Strikes Back because Harrison Ford wasn't allowed to be Han Solo--he was just allowed to wear his clothes for a few hours. That would have sucked, because that one line, which Harrison Ford improv-ed based on his own interpretation of his character, tells us so much about Han that two hours of exposition couldn't have revealed.

Because there aren't characters anymore, the actors aren't allowed that grace. It's basically Halloween every day--Shia LeBouf gets to put on his Transformers-guy costume, but he isn't allowed to create that character because that character doesn't exist. He's basically a prop for a bunch of special effects.

And hell, even Christensen and Wood, who were in two/three of the highest grossing films of all time can barely get work anymore--because they're too recognizable as Anakin and Frodo, so they get replaced with someone of equal nerdiness who comes cheaper and no one will notice. (Also, because Hayden Christensen can't act.) Jesse Eisenberg is (was) a cheaper Michael Cera. Seth Rogan, Zach Galifanakis and Jonah Hill (who Matthew says "looks like he invented pink eye") can all play the exact same character (fat stoner asshole) with almost no difference between them. There was a big difference between, say, John Belushi, Chris Farley and Horatio Sanz as far as filling the "fat funny guy" role--Belushi was crazy, Farley was sweet but dumb and Sanz, well, he's just unfunny. But now we've got three fat guys all trying to play the same role in various incarnations.

I have a whole theory on guys like Seth Rogan anyway--women are expected to see these nerdy, fat, loser guys as their new romantic leads (like Knocked Up) We've been asked to lower our standards without men lowering theirs--if anything, now the average sclubby guy thinks he DESERVES a hot girl, simply for being "who he is" (we'll call this the "Nathan Rabin" trend). The horror of that aside (The tagline of Knocked Up was "What would you do if this guy got you pregnant?" and my answer is "grab the nearest coat-hanger") having the "everyman" (because let's face it, American guys aren't getting any hotter) be the romantic lead just furthers my theory that actors are becoming interchangable--because with Jonah Hill finally succombs to fatal pink-eye, they can just pick another fat schlub from Nowhere, America to replace him, probably without anyone noticing.

But you can't replace Leonardo DiCaprio. My guess is, and I hate admitting this because I hated him for years. DiCaprio will be the last movie star. He's the last of those big-names with any screen presence or charisma. You can't make a new Johnny Depp just by giving someone a hipster haircut and a fedora. These are actors with real raw talent, but that's not what Hollywood wants anymore. Talent is too hard to replace.

Hollywood is creating a class of actors who will never be household names. James Franco's name alone will never be enough to sell a film to a wide audience, which is good because the less James Franco we have, the better off we'll all be. This new class of Hollywood actors has a shelf life of about ten minutes, which is, frankly, fine with me because they all suck.

New Interviews, Guest Postings and Links

2011-05-14T15:15:00.000-04:00

If you'll look over to your left, you will see that I have added a bunch of new links to other blogs and several links to interviews and guest postings I have done. If you have a blog and would like me to add you, please shoot me an email and I will gladly do so!

Also, new story this week: "The Gypsy Girl's Guide to Knitting," link under "Stories and Essays." More housewife dread, if you're into that sort of thing.

Scenes From An Italian Shut the Hell Up

2011-05-14T04:13:00.001-04:00

It's time I took issue with something I should haven taken issue with a long time ago.

Billy Joel.

I have a love/hate relationship with Billy Joel. His was the first concert I attended, with my then-boyfriend Aaron and his dad (my mom wouldn't let me go unless I had a chaperone) He would have also been my second concert, if that same boyfriend hadn't decided to give my ticket to his friend Mike and go with him instead.

So needless to say, since we broke up almost seven years ago, I haven't really listened to all that much Billy Joel. Every so often I'll get a craving for, say, "Summer Highland Falls," which reminds me of a boy I was in love with at summer camp, or "Allentown," which despite the fact that Billy Joel is hardly the working-class hero he's always claimed to be (see also: "The Downeaster Alexa,") is a pretty awesome song. But for the most part, I leave those albums on my shelf. Joel seems like a parody of himself these days; I remember seeing him on VH1 Storytellers back at the height of my Billy Joel craze (I had yet to discover the Smiths or Tom Waits) and he claimed he never wanted to become a "Las Vegas version" of himself. Well, I saw his concert at Shea Stadium on TV late one night in NYC when I couldn't get to sleep and Two and a Half Men wasn't on yet, and he was exactly that. No, he was worse than that. Las Vegas requires a little showmanship, so unless the show was Billy Joel puppeting a Billy Joel puppet clinking away on a piano in a whimsical fashion, what I saw was a tired old man trying to smile and clank out the same old tunes he'd been playing since 1984. So much for retirement, Mr. Joel.

Since I don't have a picture
of Geza, this one of Cillian
Murphy will have
to do

No, what I want to take issue with today is "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant." I used to sort of like this song because it reminded me a bit of my ex-boyfriend Geza, who, despite the fact that I dumped him in eleventh grade after three months of dating, still remembers my birthday and meets me for Japanese food whenever I'm in NYC.

But it got stuck in my head this afternoon while I was making dinner for my boyfriend's mom, and I realized something so utterly and unspeakably awful about it that I almost want to throw out all my Billy Joel albums.

Please, sample these lyrics, won't you?

Got a new wife
Got a new life
and the family is fine

This is a real sentiment of the baby boomers. Just get a new wife, an new life and sure, everyone will be just f'ing fine with it. What about the old life, Mr. Joel? The kids you left behind, the wife you left? Are they fine?

It's a sentiment that, as you can imagine, really pisses me off. Baby Boomers think that the whole world revolves entirely around their happiness and only their happiness. I can't tell you how many times I've heard "Well, if I'm not happy I can't be a good parent." No, SCREW YOU. I'm sorry that your kids and your wife prevented you from banging models or getting a Ferrari or somehow came along and made things not a never-ending party FOR YOU.

And here's Billy Joel, trubador of the Upper Middle Class, singing cheerfully to a woman he left about a woman he left and the new bride and the do-over family. Fucking classy, Mr. Joel.

That's not to say I'm against divorce. Sometimes things don't work out despite the best efforts of all involved. I don't think people should stay in relationships that aren't working, especially if there's abuse of any sort, but all too often I see abandonment predicated entirely on selfish needs to "find" oneself. I see parents abandoning their kids and taking on new "special friends" because being a parent no longer suits their immediate needs.

Newsflash, Parents: You are always going to be parents. That's not to say you don't get to have fun, especially once you've got empty nest, but your needs NEVER come first. Ever. When you create a child, you are passing on your genetics and throwing away the idea that you are the center of the universe. You're not. And frankly, neither is your dumb kid, but that's not the point (of this essay). The point is that you create something that is both outside of you and a part of you--and that part can't just be pushed aside when he/she interferes with your mid-life crisis party routine.

Even worse, and this is going beyond Billy Joel and into the realm of Baby Boomer Writing (because I'm on a tear and you can't stop me now!) is the idea that divorce, especially for women, is something to be proud of. Like it's so brave to tear your family apart so that you can feel "free" again. Because the kids that get left behind will never be free. They develop complexes that inhibit their abilities to have meaninful relationships. They settle down with men they don't love because at least it's something stable between the back-and-forth shuffle from one parent to another. They go through the rest of their lives looking over one shoulder because if they can't trust a parent to love them enough to not exit their lives at the earliest convenience, how can they expect anyone else to stick around?

This is why I don't have kids. Because I'm a flighty narcassist. But I hope one day I can put my own needs aside to get up in the middle of the night with a crying baby. To sit through a ballet recital or a soccer game. To clap during a high school performance of Anything Goes and not be wishing I was somewhere, anywhere else but sitting next to other beaming parents watching a bunch of acne-ridden teenagers in cheaply-made sailor costumes clomp around to "It's De-Lovely"*.

That day may never come. And I'm okay with that because I understand the sacrifice and as of this writing, I'm not willing to make it. Maybe that makes me more selfish than Billy Joel, I don't know.

But what I do know is that "Scenes from an Italian Restaraunt" sucks.

*For the record, I played Mrs. Harcort in my high school's production of Anything Goes. I should have played the mobster's girlfriend, but I didn't . . . ah . . . give the right kind of audition, if you catch my drift.

Alot of Idiocy

2011-05-13T22:04:00.001-04:00

This is a day late and I'm sorry. For those of you keeping score at home, Tuesdays are Boys on Film, Thursdays are Writing and Saturdays are Record of the Month. But it's Friday, and this is the weekly writing column . . . but I think it's worth the wait.

I was in Walmart today buying envelopes and I saw a teeshirt with a picture of Marilyn Monroe and her quote "I don't know who invented high heels, but women owe him alot"

That's not a typo on my part. The shirt actually said "alot"

*sigh*

Guess that stereotype of Walmart being filled with ignorant illiterate rednecks has to come from somewhere.

It's bad enough that I still see "alot" in college papers, but someone actually passed that through. Some corporate CEO looked at that product and said, "Yep, it's good" despite an enormous, glaring typo.

Or maybe it's no longer a typo. Maybe we've just becomes so stupid and lazy that "alot" has finally become a word, like "bootyliscious" or "crunk." I mean, our teachers are just glorified babysitters (at least that's what I'm expected to be when I'm in front of a college class and was fired from SUNY Cobleskill for being, among other things, too educated (I also had the nerve to slip on some ice on their sidewalk and injure my back)) who are expected to teach to a test so schools can get the government funds that allow administrators to collect salaries of 100K while their teachers qualify for food stamps . . .but it doesn't matter, because even if they were trying to use their six years of college to actually teach anything, the students themselves are so coddled by their helicopter parents that if little Madison or Jayden wants to spell it "alot" well, she/he's so special and perfect and precious that she/he can go right ahead because whatever she/he does is just perfect, like her/him.

Maybe it's a class issue. "Eh, they're poor and uneducated, they're shopping at Walmart, they won't notice." Whatever it is, it's obnoxious as hell, and it's wrong. We should be ashamed of ourselves . . . that is, if we can tear ourselves away from watching Ow, My Balls long enough to feel shame.

Making Her Triumphant Return to the Stage . . . .

2011-05-11T22:46:00.000-04:00

I auditioned for the first time in ten years last night, for the Oneonta Stage Players All-Female version of The Odd Couple. I went in with the basic expectation of trying to prove to myself that I could still do it, with small hopes that I might somehow end up with the role of Vera, which, when I saw The Odd Couple with Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick (3rd to last show, by the way, and I have no idea how my friend Ann got tickets because the run sold out faster than a garage band), was played by Lee Wilkoff, who originated the role of Seymour Krelbourne in Little Shop of Horrors.

And I got it.

I got the part.

I read cold and I was suddenly inspired by a girl I went to grad school with, a girl we'll call Princess. Princess was not the brightest crayon in the box. She was a few tacos shy of a combo plate. A few ants short of a picnic. You know the drill. And she had this voice, this little stupid idiot vacant voice that allowed you to actually hear the flies buzzing inside her empty skull. I played Vera like that, with that same tight, clipped little speech pattern . . . and I got the part.

I got the part.

Ten years after I swore off acting, I got the role I really wanted.

Guess I owe Princess a thanks.

Independent Ink now avaliable!

2011-05-10T10:34:00.000-04:00

I'm on the cover,
so you know it's good

The innaugural issue of Independent Ink, which features my short story "The Weather Girl" (with bonus interview!) is Now Avaliable for Kindle download.

They're also currently seeking new fiction, so all you writers out there, get those cover letters ready!

2011-05-10T09:11:00.002-04:00

At Matthew's recommendation (after all, he watched The Shield for me) Ian and I started watching Nip/Tuck, which now we can't get enough of. It's not like we even like it all that much. It tends to wander off and drops storylines and whole characters for episodes at a time, and the wife is annoying and sex-addict Gina has just climbed above Corinne Mackey on the list of TV Women I Hate. If I have to see her again, she might just top Ava.

It's basically television methodone. The Shield was heroin, and we were going through withdrawl, and although Nip/Tuck isn't as good a high as the real thing, it might allow us to get back into watching TV like normal people, without the big heaving sighs of "well, it's not the Shield . . ."

But man, oh man, is this show dark. And depressing. There is not a joyful moment to be had in the two seasons we've been watching. I mean, even The Shield had some genuinely sweet, touching moments--BBQs in the Mackey's backyard, Shane's clogging routine before Lem enters the arm-wrestling contest, the decoy squad streaking through the Barn, and plenty of one-liners to keep everyone smirking.

But my God in Heaven, there is never a break in Nip/Tuck--whether it's Julian losing his infant son or Sean's girlfriend committing slow suicide while he watches or his ugly horrible son Matt almost killing a girl or one of the nine million times Sean's wife threatens to leave him, it's all so mired in heavy-handed angst.

And yet, we keep watching. We have to. We have to make sure these people are okay even though we don't like them. It's a train wreck. It's a soap opera. It's bad for me and yet, I have to have it. But, just so you know, I can quit any time I want.

From the Vault: Nightmare of You

2011-05-07T08:16:00.001-04:00

By all rights, I should absolutely hate Nightmare of You. It's a holy hell of pop-indie cliche horrors by a dude who has clearly never, ever been touched by a girl and takes this out by playing his Smiths albums and crying. Don't get me wrong, I have cried over many, many Smiths songs ("Rubber Ring" is perfect for all occasions of weeping, from break-ups to quarter-life crises, although I have shed tears for "William, it Was Really Nothing" and "These Things Take Time")

It's as though lead singer Brandon Reilly dug through Morrissey's garbage and found his high school notebooks, helping himself wholesale to lyrics so melodramatic that would make even Robert Smith say, "dude, chill." From the ever-present romanticism of death (especially car crashes (a la "There's a Light that Never Goes Out") as featured/stolen in "Dear Scene, I Wish I Were Deaf" and "I Want to Be Buried in Your Backyard") to use of Morrissey-tinged words like "dismal" and "charming," and seriously, (stop using the word "romantic") and the sort of creepy obsession with violent crime, the whole package reeks of scattered gardenia petals and sad, lonely desparation.

And you just know Brandon Flowers of the Killers could take this guy in a fight. And I could take Brandon Flowers in a fight.

But they've also got these charming Johnny Marr styled melodies, which make even shlock like "Why am I Always Right" (sample lyric "I love you terribly/I swear that this is true/but I just can't stop my hands from smothering you," which I put on a mix CD for someone and probably shouldn't have been surprised when he broke up with me) is undeniably catchy. I like to think of it as Morrissey for beginners--because listening to the Smiths is a life-changing experience. I remember listening to my older sister Shaun's copy of The Queen is Dead and hearing that opening melody and knowing that my life would never be the same. That song forever changed how I heard music and how I understood lyrics. It had a profound effect on me as a writer, the beginning of a change in style from overwrought to carefully, cleverly constructed. I won't say I've gotten to Morrissey-level lyricism yet, but I'm making strides.

When you're a teenager, it might just not be possible to absorb that much change. I'm still absorbing the Smiths, still hearing new melodies and understanding new lyrics (the vinyl really helps on the former) even though I've been listening to the same songs for 10 years now. Although I only recently discovered "Our Frank" and any song that more or less declares, "If you do not stop talking, I will puke blood" speaks volumes to me.

But alas, I guess we can't all be Morrissey. And for those days when we can't be Moz, Nightmare of You will do.

2011-05-05T07:56:00.017-04:00

"What have I remembered
what did this used to be?"

Crash Test Dummies, "Winter Song"

I finally decided it was about time to do some spring cleaning. I've held onto just about everything I've ever written, from the first story I attempted back in fifth grade to triplicate contributor copies of the magazine containing my first paid writing gig, an essay about chem-free college housing. (I bought an $18 Sephora lipstick with part of the money)

So I dug up my trunk and dove in. Out went the workshop manuscripts from an undergraduate memoir class I hated (the teacher made us read Dave Eggars, ugh) Goodbye letters from people I don't remember writing to. So long early drafts, bad poetry (SO much bad poetry) and X-Files fanfiction. I saved a few pieces of writing from old friends, including "Betty is a God," by Jason Bates, which remains one of my favorite stories of all time.

To prove how hip and with it I am,
here is a picture of Jeff Goldblum from 1996

I also found my old diaries. I didn't dare looking at anything from earlier than college; it might just all be too embarassing and sadly, a lot of it has degraded, faded and smudged over time. I took a peek at my 8th/9th grade diary and all it did was make me laugh. I was such a dweeb. Good thing I've gotten over that phase and am now completely cool.

I've been keeping a diary since 6th grade, but my late college diaries are the best. I'm not sure if it's because I had a lot of fun in my senior year of college or if I just more creative with collages and little pictures glued next to my entries--mostly pictures of Ewan McGregor and Clive Owen, although there are mementos from dates, movie tickets, secret confessions of love for movie stars I would die before admitting I liked*. Programs from plays and my first public reading, a wrapper from a Dum-Dum a crush had given me and entries written in colored gel ink. It was this wonderful time of anticipation and excitement and fear--I'd started a new relationship with Ian, Sin City had just come out and I'd just discovered Tom Waits and Raymond Chandler. I had all these great friends and threw fun parties and headed up the Pen is Mightier fiction club (yes, named for the Celebrity Jeopardy skit). Everything in those days seemed perfect, and I chronicled every cup of Bubble Tea, every SVU marathon, every pulp novel and every late-night conversation after fencing club over Dr. Pepper and curly fries. It was a bittersweet read, because a lot of those people aren't in my life anymore, and I miss them.

I was also happy to notice that I was extremely funny in my diaries. I made all these weird little observations and thoughts and captions for pictures. But I was also extremely melodramatic at times, which is not as cool. What can I say? I was an ex-goth English major.

As Randy Hickey once said, "That was fun until it was sad." The flipside to reading old diaries is that I read a lot of stuff I wish I hadn't written down, stuff maybe I would have been better off not remembering in such detail. I had to relieve the death of my cat Scallion, the slow decline and eventual death of my grandmother, my mom and stepdad's awful divorce. It's not like I was going to forget those things, but reading how I felt at the exact moment they happened seriously bummed me out.

So why do we keep diaries? Is it to remember what we might otherwise forget, good and bad? Is it so that we can share them with our children (God help me if my kids ever see some of the stuff I wrote--I can't afford that kind of therapy on a Plucky Journalist salary) or is it in arrogance and hope that two hundred years down the road, someone might read and put them in a museum to display what it was like for a 21 year old girl in Binghamton, NY? I'm not really sure what the point is. But I know I can't part with a single one of them, from the Kerioppi notebook to the oversized sketchbook which, at last count, was 50% Jeff Goldblum, 40% Walton Goggins and 10% complaining about my family. And frankly, Walton Goggins is the only real change since 6th grade.

*It's Jude Law, okay?!? I think Jude Law is kind of cute . . . you know, for a total cad.

2011-05-03T08:10:00.002-04:00

I recently had this weird craving to watch Children Of Men. I have only three things to say on that film:

1) Watching a dystopian war-ridden nightmare before bed was not the brightest idea I've ever had
2) Clive Owen is amazingly hot and we don't see enough of him
3) That movie is still awesome

When I was lying half-concious from food poisoning in my hotel bed in DC back in Feb, I was flipping channels and came across Sin City, formally My Favorite Movie of All Time. I saw it twice in one weekend--the only other movie I've ever done that with was Predators, and that's only because I lived above a $2 movie theater and had, literally, nothing better to do.

So I watched "The Big Fat Kill" section, and man, he is so hot and that movie is still great. Mostly because of Clive Owen (and Mickey Rourke, of course, but he's not hot like Clive Owen).

I sort of let my obsession with Clive Owen fall by the wayside because he reminded me a lot of my ex-best-friend, but it's been a few years and I'm ready to love again. Now if only he would start showing up in movies again . . . .

I left my knife at home, so I'm just going to smash the glass and eat my beer with my hands

I like Clive Owen because he is a man. Manliness drips out of every pore. This is not a guy who plays World of Warcraft, he goes to the horse races. Clive Owen does not keep Smirnoff Ice in his mini fridge, he drinks pints of beer so thick you have carve them with a steak knife before you can drink them. Clive Owen does not wear skinny jeans or white belts or ironic teeshirts. He's so damn manly that I'm surprised he doesn't chafe himself on his rawness.

When he comes on screen, you know Clive Owen means business. He has a monotone and a grizzled face and a crooked nose and when he grins he looks like he wants to eat you. But he also has a stage presence unlike anyone else (except maybe Mickey Rourke) and he commands a screen. He's the kind of men women want and men want to be. In an era of pretty boys with names like Channing and Shia, a dark, dour British man is a much-needed breath of fresh air . . and yet, he was gone almost before we really got to know him. He was a big thing for a hot minute, and then . . .nothing. There's Trust, which I didn't get a chance to see, and The Boys Are Back, which Ian refused to see with me, but otherwise, he is gone. If I really wanted to get melancholy, I could point out how much this mimics my ill-fated relationship with Dwight, but I'm not that silly.

The other thing I like about Clive Owen is that he is devoted to his kids and his very . . . ah . . . British-looking wife. I love married men, and better still, I love a devoted married man. I can't explain it--preachers, professors and married men. Those are my kinks.

Ewan McGregor is charming. Jeff Goldblum is coy. Walton Goggins is clever. But Clive Owen is manly. And can't a girl have one of each?

Stories and Essays UPDATED

2011-05-02T20:18:00.000-04:00

After many requests (okay, so just one--thanks Dan) I've finally gotten around to updating the STORIES AND ESSAYS tab over there on the left.

There are a few ways to read this, but here's how to maximize the enjoyment:

--"The PI's Wife" should be read BEFORE "Friends and Other Lowlifes." There is a 3rd Victor and Sheila story due out later this year titled "Midnight to 6AM.

--"Gin for Two" and "Unplanned" go nicely together. Mostly because they're sort of about the same person. There's a third one that hasn't been published yet.

--There is a sequel to "Spare Change" in the latest issue of Criminal Class Press titled "Vice Undercover." They asked me to set it in the 80's, but you can imagine it otherwise.

--"This Charming Man, Still Ill," "Death in Hollywood Anonymity" "Pretty Boys Need Not Apply" and the Best of the Web/Best American Essays nominated "No Valentines for Generation Twilight" are all nice off-site additions to the Boys on Film catagory of this blog

--"Johnny Strikes Up the Band," "Love and Vinyl" and "Wallflowers on the Dance Floor" is a good triple-play of music-related fiction.

--Ideally, and this means a little extra searching (or emailing me) The Crimson City/Loring stories should be read in the following order:
1) "First Night in a New Town"
2) "Big Night Out" (Hardboiled #39)
3) "Until Proven Guilty" (Needle Winter 2010)
4) "The Carpool" (Hardboiled #41)
5) "Last Night"
6) "Absolution"
7) "Road Trip"
8) "Preacher Man" (The Midnight Diner vol 3)
9) "Merry Christmas Mr. Taylor" (Pulp Empire vol 3)
10) "Props"
11) "Broken Dreams at the Clover Leaf Hotel"

These were from a short story collection that never got published in it's entirety--when I sell a book, I will probably compile all of these into an fan-only ebook.

Happy Sunday!

2011-05-01T08:07:00.001-04:00

Why the hell not?

2011-04-30T07:49:00.002-04:00

HAPPY

BIRTHDAY

ME!

2011-04-29T19:23:00.001-04:00

Yeah. Like This.

Every so often, I stumble across a song in my collection that reminds me of my ex-best friend, who we'll call Dwight. And every so often I'll dream about him, and it'll remind me of how great things were, rather than how badly it all ended.

I tend to avoid songs that remind me of ex's, whether they're friends or lovers or boyfriends. I didn't listen to a single Billy Joel song for almost four years after Aaron and I broke up. I gave up October Project after Martin shattered my heart by getting engaged to someone else while we were still dating (worst. breakup. ever). I keep my Matthew Sweet and my Elvis Costello CDs even though I don't listen to them ever, but I turn off Elton John's "Levon" when it comes on the radio because it makes me cry thinking of a man who used to tear up whenever he heard it. I still barely listen to the Smashing Pumpkins because I had to get over two guys who were both fans.

But I still listen to Cracker's "Sick of Goodbyes" and John Mellancamp's "Key West Intermezzo" and all the songs that remind me of Dwight. I play Oingo Boingo's "War Again" and once again I'm on the NJ Transit and we're leaning against each other, half-asleep and sharing earbuds, alone in the car and alone in the world. Or the Goo Goo Dolls "Blackout," driving through a hailstorm while our friend Mike stood outside in line for Green Day. That would have been six years ago today--the day before my birthday. We were buying party supplies for my infamous Sin City party.

I wonder if he ever listens to the mix CDs I made him or if he ever dreams of me. I like seeing him in dreams, when everything is great and all is forgiven and nothing has changed. I could apologize for what I did, but all it would do would be to forgive the past. We have no future and I think we both know that, which is why neither of us has tried to reach out to the other. We're different people and nothing we could do would be enough to reconstruct what we had.

But when I'm listening to those songs, or I see his face in dreams, I get this wonderful bittersweet feeling. Because for a few minutes while I'm sleeping, we're friends again. For a few minutes, there's nothing between us but old jokes and an instinctual connection. He's always exactly how I remember him, with his curls and his grin and that laugh. And I wake up with one of our songs in my head. Bon Jovi's "I Am" or Sonata Artica's "Shamandalie," which when I heard I knew was how things would end.

And they did. And it was my fault and Dwight if you're reading this, I'm sorry.

* *

I'm turning 28 tomorrow. Time keeps ticking down, and the older I get, the more I want to distant myself from the past. When I was younger, my whole existance was bent on trying to recapture what I felt like I'd lost. I pined like it was a hobby, and while there's a part of me that misses the passion of those days, the better part of me is glad for what lies ahead. . . because what's gone is gone, and will never be again. I'm learning to be okay for that.

The fire, Baby . . . there's no place in the world for our kind of fire.

2011-04-28T09:52:00.001-04:00

Yep, that's my dad

Normally I get a little nervous reading my friends books. Heck, I didn't read my own father's book until I was well into my teens. I'm always afraid that the book is going to suck, and then I will either have to lie to them or tell them that it's awful and then they won't be my friend anymore.

This was not the case with Vincent O'Neil's Death Troupe.

Before I get on to how great this book is, I want to say a few words about Vinny. He's an awesome guy. Matthew and I met Vinny at the first Crimebake we attended and he was so sweet and funny and generous that we've been pals ever since. He's just as great and as earnest a guy as you'd ever want to meet, and he's a great writer, to boot. Finding all these characteristics in one person is pretty rare, since writers can often be pretty big jerks.

Death Troupe is a mystery novel for writers. It's about writing. It's about the struggles of writing and what being a writer does to people. It can unite or divide. It can make partnerships or it can end in murder, sometimes both. And Death Troupe explores all of this with a dark charm I've come to recognize from reading Vinny's Exile series . . . but I'd have to say without hesitation (or bribery) that this is Vinny's masterpiece, and with each chapter I read, I get inspired to go back to my own work . . . which, given some of the crazy circumstances of late, is a feat of it's own. Now if only the book weren't so damn hard to put down . . .

2011-04-26T09:30:00.000-04:00

You Know You Want It

My friend Eeon, who is one half of Canned Laser and is perhaps the funniest person alive, recently turned me onto the comic Preacher, seeing as how one of my failed novels (but several stories) were about a vigilante preacher who I'm just going to come out say is about a million times sexier (in my head) than the Rev. Jesse Custer

Unless Jesse was played by Walton Goggins.

Preacher isn't exactly my cup of tea--it's a little on the Frank Miller side, lots of random swearing and violence for the sake of swearing and violence (although I will defend The Hard Goodbye as one of the finest pieces of short crime fiction written in recent history--other than "The PI's Wife," of course) But with rumors recently flying about a possible film adaptation, I would like to nominate our own Boyd Crowder for the coveted role. He's got the voice, he looks good in a suit and even better with a Bible in his hands, and he's got that sexy hair (okay, so it's a little sparse, but Jesse's rockin' that early 80's Jeff Goldblum in The Fly pseudo-mullet an no one wants to see that.

Seriously, though, he'd be perfect. I can't imagine an actor who'd be better for the part. But you just know that if they ever get around to making the movie (they won't) they'll cast some ponce like Shia Le Pouf or James Franco. And Jessica Alba as Tulip. Chance Crawford or some other weird shirtless dude faking a bad Irish accent as Cassidy. Gross Gross Gross.

So the point is, Hollywood, if you're not going to do something right, don't bother doing it at all.

Records . . . seriously

2011-04-23T21:29:00.000-04:00

As an early birthday present (I'll be 28 a week from today and we're celebrating by watching The Room) Matthew sent me a cool suitcase record player so that I could listen to my ever-growing vinyl collection when I'm working in my office (the main turntable, which I took before my stepfather could come back to the house for his stuff, is downstairs in an enormous record cabinet that Ian bought me for Christmas). The difficult part of both is keeping adorable kitten Bosco from trying to practice his DJ scratch techniques with my Boz Skaggs records.

Vinyl really does have a deeper, richer sound, and there's a wonderful feeling of finding something good mixed into a crate of Boston and Eagles records--my best finds so far has been Warren Zevon's Sentimental Hygine (which sounds massively overproduced on vinyl, a sound lost to tape and CD) Danny Elfman's So Lo in a $3 Bin at Last Vestige in Albany. Matthew and I routinely send each other packages of dollar vinyl with small cards and post-it notes explaining why we picked each album. Ian has been buying me Tom Waits and Smiths records every Christmas since we started dating almost seven years ago.

Vinyl has a wonderful intimacy to it, and simultaniously there's a group mentality about it. When you put on a record, everyone hears it. The speakers fill the house and strange things begin to happen. Sometimes people start dancing. Other times they get very quiet, as though they've never heard a song you know they've heard a million times. People who are normally not dreamy get drifting looks on their faces and start pawing through your collection, making requests for what to play next. They take out each record, pour over the liner notes and the album covers. Discussions begin. Stories are shared. Albums are flipped and B-sides are played. A CD can fade into the background, an iPOD can be shuffled around and ignored, but vinyl demands to be heard. It demands more of the listener, which is probably why it's been mostly abandoned. It's not just noise to block out the sounds of life--it is a life of it's own, a reminder of how beautiful and pure music can sound.

If you ever get a chance and you own a record player, find a copy of Warren Zevon's eponymous first album and play "Frank and Jesse James." The opening pinao chords are perhaps the most beautiful sound you will ever hear, and no other version--mp3, tape, CD or 8-track, does it justice.

What's a James Franco?

2011-04-19T11:12:00.000-04:00

Pictured: James Franco

Will someone please explain to me what the deal is with James Franco? It seems like he's everywhere, and yet, I cannot for the life of me picture him or recall ever seeing him in a movie. Maybe because he's only in Oscar-baiting tripe like 127 Hours (Oh Danny Boyle, where have you gone?) or pro-rape stoner crap like Your Highness (and just when I'd forgiven your complete inability to act, Natalie Portman) and I'm not in college anymore, so I don't have to pretend to like those films.

According to IMDB, it's his birthday today, but I came from the site ten seconds ago and I can't remember what he looks like.

He's the REM of actors--generic in every respect, and yet, for some reason, highly lauded by people who should frankly know better. Sure, REM had some catchy tunes, but the lyrics were just a series of phrases strung together. Here are some lyrics from "Radio Free Europe"

Keep me out of country in the word

Deal the porch is leading us absurd.
Push that, push that, push that to the hull
That this isn't nothing at all

Yeah! Whatever that means!

Apparently, Franco released a collection of short stories, because he's such a genius. Even perpetual Franco pole-smokers The AV Club didn't give it an exactly favorable review. They even try to back it up by reiterating his talent, less he stop blessing them with his Heavenly presence, but the resentment is clearly there.

And then there's this, but I'm not going to write another word about it because I refuse to give Franco the pleasure of making me (or my beloved readers) vomit.

Seriously, Franco, who do you think you are?

A few announcements

2011-04-09T09:35:00.000-04:00

Not only did PANK finally pick up a story of mine, but they also did an interview--check out my Gonzo answers here

I'm on the cover of Independent Ink! Because I'm awesome! There's an interview with me in there too. For some reason, people care what I say.

I've been in NYC all week, so we'll return to our reguarly scheduled programming on Monday. I have done absolutely no writing and watched way too much Two and a Half Men, which I don't even like but is easy to fall asleep to.

2011-04-07T08:10:00.000-04:00

Every author has a book that made them stop and think, "Yeah . . . yeah, this is what I want to be. This is what I want to do." For some, it's great works like Dune or The Great Gatsby.

For me, it was a Dungeons and Dragons novel titled The Tainted Sword.

It was 5th grade, the mystical year 1992. Every kid had a Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance book in their backpack . . . every kid except me. I don't remember what else I was reading (it would be another year before I discovered Star Wars and Jurassic Park) but I had no interest in four inch thick dragon books (I still don't).

My friend Ann, in her infinate wisdom and perpetual coolness (which remains to this day) gave me a book she had just finished reading. From the first page, I was hooked. The progaonist, Jo, helps restore the fallen knight Flynn to his former glory. Cheap and cheesy as the words themself were, the story of redemption, of honor, of a woman's bravery . . .I'm convinced that this, combined with Cutthroat Island, made me the feminist I am today.

That, and it had the first sex scene I'd ever read, except for the time my mother caught me reading H is for Hooker. "He brushed aside a lock of her hair that had come unbound during their passion . . . ." Pretty sexy stuff for a 10 year old who wouldn't get a boyfriend for another five years.

Turning those pages, I remember having that wonderful thought . . . I could do this. I want to do this. I got a composition book and a Bic pen and haven't stopped writing since. I gave up on writing fantasy in college, mostly because I wasn't very good at it (although my story "Gabriel," (which I'm just now realizing can be traced directly back to The Tainted Sword, right down to Roxanne's red hair) was a finalist for Writers of the Future) but I had since discovered boys and Raymond Chandler. I still have all those early stories somewhere, including a 400 page, 2-volume novel series I wrote, the title of which completely escapes me at the moment.

I borrowed that book from Ann so many times that she finally gave it to me. The original copy still sits on my shelf. I pull it out once in awhile to remember where I started and why.

2011-04-05T09:00:00.004-04:00

As I mentioned earlier, I gave up swearing for Lent. More on this here, but in addition to giving up cursing, I also gave up celeb gossip. I had already given up TMZ (for the most part) as part of my New Years Resolution, but I was sitting there on Ash Wendsday, reading The Superficial and wondering how long I would last before I dropped my first f-bomb (6 hours) and I realized that here I was, ingesting something that was fundementally bad for me and a waste of my time. Because really, what does it matter in my life what Lindsey Lohan had for lunch?

So I clicked out of the page, and haven't read any since.

Negativity breeds negativity. When I was living in NYC, I was surrounded by newsstands and glossy gossip rags screaming about Nick and Jessica's divorce. It actually depressed me--I got anxious just walking past a rack of magazines, the bold headlines of their impending marital doom made me really, really sad. Not because I gave or ever have given a fig about Jessica Simpson. I'm not even sure what a Nick Lachey is. But the public airing of their dirty laundry made me sad for humanity, and I had to make a deliberate effort to look the other way. And you know what? It worked.

I'm doing this, partially, for Charlie Sheen. And again, I don't care one way or another about Charlie Sheen; I've seen exactly one of his movies (The Three Musketeers) and watch Two and a Half Men only when I'm staying in NYC, it's 1AM, I can't sleep and it's either that or the Times Square traffic cam. And as his spiral started downwards, I, like everyone else in America, watched in horrified fascination.

But then I realized that I was a major part of his problem. I had become one of the people who clicked on every news item, thus giving him the audience he sought. I realized that I couldn't actively participate in a man's public suicide--it was sick and it was wrong and I'm glad to be rid of it.

I no longer read gossip headlines at the grocery store--instead, I look up recipes or *gasp* talk to my boyfriend. The time I was wasting catching up on Heidi Montag is now spent writing or listening to records or writing letters to my friends. My productivity has increased and I don't feel so bogged down with the ugliness of the world--because gossip is never nice, it's always judgemental and this world is too beautiful for the feuds on Teen Mom to fill it with poison.

This isn't to say I've given up celebs--but rather, I've switched my focus. I look up old interviews with Walton Goggins because the way he creates his characters inspires me in my writing. I read about Geena Davis' work at the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media because I think she's a rare breed of woman. I try to find people who inspire me, not waste my time with their petty garbage.

2011-04-04T09:22:00.001-04:00

If you had asked me, at 13, what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have said, "Geena Davis." To a 13 year old girl, she was the most beautiful, most exciting, most wonderful woman I had ever seen, either in real life or on film (although my dad's friend Judy was a close second and remains, to this day, the funniest woman I have ever known). I think I might love her more than Walton Goggins.

The author, generously, at 13

As a 13 year old girl with stringy brown hair, big round glasses and three beautiful sisters, two curly blondes and one with an enormous mane of Indian-dark, crimped, waist-length hair, I dreamed of one day being beautifiul--and when I saw Geena Davis for the first time as Mogan Adams in the catastrophic film flop Cutthroat Island, it was as though I had fallen in love.

That was what I wanted to look like. She was handsome, strong, she had big full lips and her tits weren't fake and huge. When I later read an interview in the Parade magazine insert that came with the Sunday paper, I found out she was not only beautiful and talented, she belonged to MENSA and made her own clothes--as a bookworm, a beginning writer, fan of patterned leggings, (Lucca and I shared a proclivity for short boots) Star Wars geek and a general 6th grade weirdo, this spoke to me. Not only did I want to look like Geena Davis, I wanted to be Geena Davis. I wanted to be a pirate/ghost/journalist/bank robber/space bride/vampire. I wanted to be an actress/genius/fashion designer with giant crimped hair and Jeff Goldblum/Matthew Modine/Alec Baldwin (when he was cute) on my arm. I wanted the freedom to live out loud the way it seemed like she did. Because she confessed (as I realized all actors do, only she didn't seem like she was lying) that she had been an awkward teenager, but she went to Hollywood and never gave up and became this beautiful goddess on my TV screen. "It never occured to me to go home," I read over and over in that Parade interview. "I just kept telling myself, "it's just around the next corner.""

I STILL fantasize about this

I grew into all of her movies. My mom let me stay home from my dad's one friday night, got us a bag of mini Baby Ruths and Ranch Doritos and finally showed me Beetlejuice--it's one of my favorite memories of my mom (not like she's dead or anything, don't worry). I played Cutthroat Island endlessly, endlessly with my friends Jess C. and Jess LP. I was an still am an unabashed fan of this film, I don't care how cheesy and awful it is, and when I actually met Matthew Modine I would have told him this but I hadn't eaten that day and was concentrating more on not fainting when he kissed me on the cheek.

She wore fangs in Transylvania 6-500 because she was shy and wanted people to notice her, which is the exact reason I wear pink go-go boots or do silly MPDG things like give people Warren Zevon records when I can't get up the courage to tell them that I want to be friends.

Also fantasized about being Geena Davis RIGHT HERE

When my stepdad left, I was so angry and hurt that for days after I got the news, all I could do was lay on the couch and watch Earth Girls are Easy on loop--my stepdad had, after all, left his wife and kids for a nurse he worked with, so Geena prancing in pink lingerie singing "The Ground You Walk On" after she's thrown him out and is destroying all of his stuff struck a deep, lingering chord with me (especially because I had stolen his record player and turned his first pressing of Abbey Road into a bowl). I wanted Jeff Goldblum to drop out of the sky and take me away from the awful reality that I was ultimately disposable to someone who had entered my house seventeen years ago and expected me to absorb him into my life, when clearly I had no been absorbed into his.

I nurtured this fantasy that Geena Davis was my real mom and she'd given me up because she didn't want me being a spoiled Hollywood brat and that one day she would come and get me and I could get out of Cobleskill, out of my crappy teaching job, out of a life that was rapidly falling to pieces. I stared at myself in the mirror, looking for any traces of generic familiarity--after all, I didn't look like my mother, my father or my two full sisters (I do, however, bear an uncanny resemblance to my half sisters, although none of us look like our mother.) If Geena Davis was my mom, it meant that I wasn't stuck in Cobleskill--I could get out from a town that was suffocating me and would swallow whole so many people I loved. The best compliment I ever recieved was when my BFF Matthew told me I was a little pint-sized Geena Davis, that I did, actually, look a little bit like her. (I do have a little freckle the same place she has a small beauty mark)

Lately my late 20's/out of grad school/out of work/no agent/no book Geena Davis worshipping has turned to the Emmy-winning, immediately cancelled Commander in Chief. This was on during the terrible year I lived in NYC, and I used to flip back and forth between that and House. I never got to finish the series, so I got it on Netflix and have spent the last two weeks lying on the couch in a combination of utter misery and utter fascination--because seeing her, handsome and powerful, her deep voice commanding and tender and a little bit haunted, makes me feel 13 again. I am again that little girl, dancing around her room to Bryan Adams, imagining herself somewhere--anywhere--but my hometown hellhole. On stage at Radio City Music Hall or the Winter Garden. A sound stage in LA or on location off the coast of Thailand. Because it's just around the next corner. Whatever it is, it's not far from where I'm standing right now.

Just around the next corner . . . .

See Libby Cudmore Live! Hear Her Speak Words of Wisdom!

2011-04-03T12:21:00.001-04:00

My writing partner Matthew and I will be giving a workshop next Saturday--details are below, register online, come, hang out and savor my wisdom!

"Stop Killing Trees: How to Write for the Internet"

with Libby Cudmore and Matthew Quinn Martin

Location: Ripley Grier Studios

131 West 72nd St.

New York, NY 10023

12pm - 2pm

Description:

Internet publishing is different than print. It is crucial for writers to learn how to adapt and to know which outlets are worth submitting to and which are a waste of time. The needs of these editors are specific and unique to the medium. In addition, agents are out there reading. How can you effectively use internet publication to develop a dynamic platform for your creative work? This workshop will help teach participants how to navigate the uncharted waters of internet publishing.

Bunnies, Pandas, and the Joy of Judging Movies I Refuse to See

2011-04-02T13:51:00.001-04:00

Easter is my favorite time of year. Bunnies are pretty much my favorite thing. It's one of my favorite words (say "Bunny" and try not to smile) and they're nice pets (I had one named Sally growing up and she was a firecracker). Last year Ian's mom found a nest of baby bunnies, less than 10 days old with their little eyes still shut, and I got to hold one and it was so teeny tiny that it fit in the palm of my hand. I could have died from cuteness.

This Blog Takes Stuffed Bunny Donations

Stuffed bunnies are also awesome (I have a whole menagerie, including Pinko, my Peeps bunny, Nubbins, the clucking Cadbury Bunny I torture Ian with, Mr. Bunn, a skeleton bunny in a pink suit, Pwang, who is crocheted and a the big felt Max than Ian made me for Christmas a few years ago). I had to actually remind myself that I was an adult and couldn't justify spending 30 bucks on a plush Oswald, no matter how cute he is.

Even my kitten Bosco agrees with this judgement, because every so often he will take one of the Bunny Menagerie and drop it on our heads if we don't get up early enough to feed him. We call them Bunny Bombs, and it's hard not to be mad when you've got a bunny on your head.

Almost as good as bunnies is Cadbury Eggs. I would eat Cadbury eggs every day if I could. They're overly sweet and sticky and delicious and they make me feel like a kid again. The fact that you can only get them a few months out of the year makes them that much more delicious.

But this Hop movie is ruining everything.

Everywhere I look is that stupid flannel-wearing rabbit. He's all over the candy aisle. He's on my Cadbury eggs. And although the movie is getting awful reviews, I'm sure Nathan Rabin loved it because the titular rabbit is a slacker rabbit who's probably drawing a comic book or starting a rabbit band or something, because all slackers are really handsome geniuses at heart and never fat lazy slobs with pizza stains on their ironic teeshirts.

Aww . . . .

Here's what I don't get, and again, I didn't see the movie because I don't have children (one more reason to avoid parenthood). So E.B (I had to look this up) is a teenage rabbit who doesn't want to take over his dad's role as the Easter Bunny . . . but if there's one thing anyone knows about rabbits, it's that they breed. A lot. He's not the Easter Panda--so E.B doesn't want to take over the family business, why doesn't Papa Rabbit just hand it over to one of the other 25+ children he has (those that didn't get eaten by stray cats).

I come from a family of five girls and I can say that competition between siblings for parent's attention and affection is fierce. And if you've ever heard a rabbit scream and fight, yeah, it's kind of like that. So E.B wants to become a drummer, let him! I'm sure one of his siblings, maybe one who went mostly unnoticed when they became Rabbit Class President or went to Rabbit College or got a Good Rabbit Job because E.B was the squeaky wheel who got all his parents affection despite being an utter ungrateful screw-up, would LOVE to be the Easter Bunny and deliver joy and Cadbury Eggs to all. It's the Prodigal Son thing, I get it, but the truth is that I've always hated that story.

New Column: From the Vault

2011-03-26T23:32:00.000-04:00

(The blog is going to be changing over the next few weeks (i.e. when I get around to it) There's going to be more focus on writing, and I'm going to try and bring back some of the music stuff. Less ranting, less swooning and more essays . . . but don't worry, as long is there is Train, there will be ranting, and as long as Walton Goggins lives and breathes, there will be swooning.

I think I have that same scarf!

I've never really liked Saturdays. When I was a kid, this meant that I had to go to my dad's, and although I love my Dad more than anyone on the planet, he lived in the middle of nowhere and I was too young to drive anywhere and even if I could, it wasn't like I had any real friends to drive and see. When I got older, I had to work Saturday nights, and even now, my boyfriend works Saturday nights, so I'm stuck here alone. Other people, people with social lives and friends and cable have something to do, but I just hang out, write, listen to records and, occasionally, discover something I'd forgotten.

I have a vague recollection of adding Ryan Adams' "My Winding Wheel" to a country mix CD I was making bacj when I was living in Binghamton and obsessively collecting music. I don't know why I downloaded it or if I ever listened to it, but a few weeks ago I pulled out the country CD and threw it on to try and work by.

I ended up skipping over most of it. One of these days, I will develop a taste for country music, but despite being born in Oklahoma, it just never caught on. I like Meryl Haggard and I do a version of Cracker's "Lonesome Johnny Blues" that'll knock your boots off, but for the most part, I tend to skip that station.

There was something about that Saturday that was particuarly lonely. For some reason, my heart was a rock in the pit of my stomach. I was missing a phantom piece of myself, something I had no recollection of ever posessing but knew I was sorely lacking. And when I heard the strains of "My Winding Wheel," something just clicked. Something felt right.

Adams' raw, quaking voice and Springsteen-esq guitars give the song this beautiful, sad, hopeful dispair. His suggestion that his girl "buy a pretty dress/wear it out tonight/for any boy you think could outdo me" is a challenge, and not necessarily a cruel one. She has a choice. He wants her to go with him, but he offers her a chance to go find someone, anyone, who will love her as much as he does, pretty dress and all. It's a song for lovers separated by time and distance and the folds of life . . . and it's so simple and pure and pretty, and I listen to it over and over and dream.

The only downside is that I discovered it right as I was finishing up the first season of Justified, and for some reason whenever I hear it, I picture Ava. And you all know how I feel about Ava.

I heart Oswald

2011-03-23T16:04:00.001-04:00

I discovered two things on St. Patrick's Day. One, no one, no matter how drunk, messes with you if you're wearing sunglasses and carrying a jagged chunk of brick.

Two, and more importantly, I discovered Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.

Because our downtown was swarmed with obnoxious drunk college students too stupid to do anything but drink and wreck a town they don't live in, we holed up inside with the Wii and picked up Rabbids Go Home and Epic Mickey. Generally I'm not a Disney fan and even less of a Mickey Mouse fan, but the idea of a Disney wasteland and the return of Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks first character (who happens to be a bunny, my very favorite) was pretty enticing. And hey, what else were we going to do?

The game was fun at first and then quickly turned to irritating and carpel tunnel inducing. We liked Rabbids better. But we got far enough to unlock a full-length Oswald cartoon from 1928, Oh What a Knight.

Cool!

It's Impossible to Google "Team Rocket"
and NOT see pictures of hideous cosplayers

I have a passing fascination with animation as both an art and a storytelling medium. When we think "cartoon" our minds generally leap to either full-length animation (especially when you say "Disney") or half-hour cartoon show--GI Joe, Pokemon, etc.

We don't really think of cartoons as being the 5-10 minutes shorts they originally were, shown before the newsreel and in between a double feature. I've always loved Tex Avery's sexy fairy tale shorts like "Red Hot Riding Hood" and although I tried to like the Fleischer Bros, the Betty Boop stuff was a little on the weird side (and by "weird" I mean "acid-trippy"). And cooler still, the music on the cartoon was lifted right out of the video game--that's not the cool part, actually, that's a really sucky part--but the cool part is that because the short was silent, the music we would have been hearing if it was 1928 was being played on an organ, live, at the front of the theater.

So there we were, with our Wii and our couch and our chips, watching something that for decades had been locked somewhere in a vault, forgotten by everyone but pop culture historians. It was a weird, wonderful, sweet little moment, a glimpse at history in the all-too-plush comforts of the present. As tenchincally beautiful as Rango was, I'll take the rounded shapes, the soft lines and black-and-white scheme of vintage animation over CG or worse, the motion-capture carnival of souls that is the homophobic, misogynistic Mars Needs Moms.

I like Oswald. I think he'd be a good sidekick for Max if Sam ever goes rouge.

Surprisingly, I Liked Rango

2011-03-06T22:09:00.000-05:00

Most of my friends have stopped going to the movies with me, because I either A) Hate the movie and deconstruct why it sucked all the way home or B) Gush about what a babe Ewan McGregor/Jeff Goldblum/Walton Goggins/Whoever was. I've stopped liking what theaters expect me to like, and of the Oscar nominated films last year, I saw 2 and I guess only liked one of them (fuck you, Inception, you're not fooling me!) Of last year, I only enjoyed I Love You Phillip Morris, Morning Glory, the Last Exorcism and yes, Predators (I didn't say it was good).

And this year, I'm only excited about Cowboys and Aliens because it combines three great things--Harrison Ford, Walton Goggins and Clancy Brown. But mostly the first two. It's like my 11 year old self and my 28 year old self are giving each other a high five. And . . . yeah, that was the only movie I was planning to see.

POINT IS that I was certainly not planning to see Rango. I gave up on Johnny Depp, officially, after Public Enemies. I'd mostly written him off following Pirates of the Carribbean 2 and gave in, with regret, to Sweeney Todd. I got tired of his shtick and missed the Johnny Depp I'd loved when all the other girls I knew were in love with Justin Timberlake--Depp's quiet, nuanced, subltle performances in Edward Scissorhands and Ed Wood. I didn't like his trademarked wackiness, which felt to me like a half-reheated Hot Pocket version of his Hunter S. Thompson gag.

Sad to say, Rango had a lot of that Johnny Depp-ness, including a cameo by Raul Duke himself (with an awesome homage to Ralph Steadman serving as Dr. Gonzo).

And in spite of this, I really, really liked Rango.

For starters, the film doesn't cater to any demographic. Movies are made, for the most part, to appeal at least two of these demographics: teenage males, teenage females, older men, older women, and stupid little kids. This movie appealed to none of that. Everyone (thing?) in this film is ugly and un-plush-able. Johnny Depp is not awkwardly hot, he's a freakin' lizard. There is a lot of grown-up humor in the film, but not enough for packs of adults to get a babysitter and go out on a Saturday night. Films that don't appeal to any demographic appeal to the Me Demographic. I don't like being labled and I don't like being pandered to. Studios don't know me, because if they did, they wouldn't have taken so long to release I Love You Phillip Morris and Walton Goggins would be a leading man.

This compared to the two previews which opened the film--the revolting-looking 3D CG crap-a-ganza Mars Needs Moms (it was fun with it lasted, Princess and the Frog) and the utterly generic Kung-Fu Panda 2 (I miss the offensive, loud Jack Black that I hated) two films which appear to prove that kids are stupid and their parents are also stupid.

Rango is dark. It's very dark. And weird. There were moments where I felt a little awkward, like watching Rango flirt with a naked headless Barbie torso (three minutes in), or the presence of massive frog prostitute boobs. There's a lot of western-y type stuff even I didn't catch onto at first and a body count that rivals Hardboiled. There's talking roadkill. Creepy walking cactuses. Massive frog prostitute boobies. The plot to Chinatown. It's not not a kid's film in that kids can't handle this (after all, Who Framed Roger Rabbit is dark and weird and wonderful) it's not a kids film because they probably don't get it or care.

And that's fine, because again, it wasn't trying to appeal to any demographic. They made the film they wanted to make at a time when everything has to be based on a pre-existing franchise. Gore Verbinski didn't get locked into how many toys he could sell or how many teen girls would buy Rango-inspired lipgloss sets at Claires. He made the movie he wanted to make, and it STILL kicked the ass of vanity projects like Take Me Home Tonight . . . . and that is the ultimate Hollywood Fuck You.

Fire in the Hole

2011-03-01T22:45:00.000-05:00

Who is it out there that likes Train's "Hey Soul Sister?" Damn it, even just writing the title gets it stuck in my head. I hate this song. This song is an act of terrorism. It's a war crime. I had to listen to Britney Spears' "Piece of Me" on the hour, every hour when I worked at FYE (I swear, she samples a chicken in opening bars) and I would take that in a heartbeat over "H-- S--- S----"

Gizmonics Institute Does Not Endorse Torture . . . or Train

The brain-numbingly awful lyrics make me pine for the days of "Meet Virginia." No, Train, that probably isn't Mr. Mister on the radio (stereo) because it's 2011 and Mr. Mister hasn't been relevant since 1990. They put out an album last year and they still aren't relevant, and you just sound like an asshole for even mentioning them.

As for the tune, well, maybe it's part of Train's evil plot to take over the world. Much like Dr. Forrester and TV's Frank, Train must have some sort of plot to make people go weak and submit to anything, anything, just to not hear that song anymore. Worse, it's an earworm that makes me wish I had a drill to stuff through my skull. Once I even think about the title, it's stuck in my head for days. Not even thinking the word "bunny" to the tune of The Commish theme makes it better.

Welcome Back

This song makes me want to set myself on fire. It makes me want to kill people. It makes me want to toss a grenade into an orphanage. It makes me want to fire a rocket launcher into a church. So will somebody please, please, pass a consitutional amendment to ban this song from the airwaves? I will vote for whatever Presidental candidate removes this song from the radio. Obama, Palin, Lobsterman, I don't care. Just please make it end. Please make it stop.

Whatever Happened to "My Immortal"

2011-02-27T13:20:00.001-05:00

On New Years Eve, when most people are out at parties drinking champagne, my friend Ari was giving me a full-scale performance reading of the horrible and hilarious Harry Potter fanfiction "My Immortal." If you haven't read it, really, just look at the first few chapters (I ended after chapter four, where they "both smoked cigarettes and drugs") and come back . . . I'll wait.

(la dee dee dum . . . Walton Goggins . . . la dee dum)

Back? Okay, good.

So a couple of google searches for the infamous Tara Gilesbie turned up a twitter account and several fanpages, including links to her now-defunct myspace page (Ah, MySpace . . . for general losers, shitty bands, child molesters and cheating scumbags like my ex-stepdad.) Whether any of these are really her is up for debate. Whether she wrote the story as a joke or as an actual fanfiction from the deepest recesses of her black goffik Mary Sue heart, we will never know.

Oh Hi Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way

I wonder who she is and what she's doing. Did she really slit her wrists because of all the trolls? Did she go on to college, get her bachelors in creative writing and end up at Stonecoast MFA telling me I needed to work on my sentence structure? Does she look back on this and find old pictures of herself in chalk makeup and Lip Service dresses and laugh her head off, or does she still turn out page after page of fanfiction, hidden away in a Mead notebook scrawled with anarchy symbols and upside-down pentagrams while My Chemical Romance blares from a stereo painted in white-out? Does she admit that she is the one who wrote "My Immortal" and does she show it to people from time to time, pulling out the orignal notebooks with the math equations to prove it when they don't believe her? Has she become the Tommy Wiseau of fanfiction, once so serious, now pretending it was all a joke?

Tom Servo Does Not Endorse Fanfiction

I ask this because, in my own stupid way, I was that girl. I revile fanfiction as a rule, but if you go through my trunks you'll find tons of X-Files stories, complete with a Mary Sue named Gina and a lot of Scully hatin', all in spiral-bound Mead notebooks with Tom Servo drawn all over them.

I also have tons and tons and tons and tons and TONS of bad poetry, but I'll let you read my fanfiction before you read my poetry. Yes, Morrissey, I wrote such bloody awful poetry.

And yes, I was a goth chick. In my defense, I was a goth chick before it was cool, and only my finest dressed came from Hot Topic, because I was fifteen and I didn't have any money for an $80 lace dress when I could modify one from Salvation Army for $10. My mom wouldn't let me dye my hair or wear makeup, so at least I was saved from that embarassment. I listened to the Cure and the Smiths and Siouxsie and the Banshees, none of which were cool in Cobleskill, NY in 1998. I watched Tim Burton movies before he was fashionable with the Claire's crowd, but, unbenownst to me and despite all this tragic hipness, I was just like every other idiot loser teenager.

The Author, Looking Goffik

I look back on those photos with a combination of embarassed laughter and envy. Laughter because, well, I'm wearing Queen Amidala lipstick and a black lace dress with sleeves that drag when I walk. Envy because I didn't care. I wasn't a particuarly self-conscious girl; I didn't get hurt when people made fun of the way I dressed. I chose to dress that way, and I knew it had consequences. I didn't care. I miss those days. I miss my striped tights and my long black dresses and my bad makeup. I still have the dresses, and sometimes I put them on, but I look at myself and feel silly. I'm not that girl anymore. Sure, I still have my Morrissey hoodie and I bought some skinny black jeans and sure, I've got a pair of striped tights that are really really warm, but I'm not Belladonna Ravenwood or whatever stupid name I probably called myself on whatever goth messageboard I frequented. Despite what I told myself, it was a phase. A long one, but a phase nonetheless. I got to college, where I should have been "free" to "be myself" (already had that one covered) and was too lazy to go through the motions. I didn't have a bus to ride, I had to hoof it to class and that's hard to do in 4-inch platform heels. I realized myself had grown up and could move on to new fashion statements--the Tom Waits/Patti Smith/Jackie Boy inspired androgyny I went through when I lived in Brooklyn. The Cyndi Lauper/New Wave phase I went through in grad school. The Victoria Beckham skinny jeans and heels phase I like to pretend I'm in now (Victoria Beckam has heating oil and lives in California, so she can wear heels all the time). Or the freedom to say, "fuck it, it's cold, I'm putting on my boyfriend's big wool sweater and I don't care."

And my writing changed, thank God. But I look back on those with a sort of affection too. Those were my first crime stories. Writing those paved the way for the kind of writing that would help me make a name for myself. Will I be sending them to Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine? Probably not. (Then again, they've rejected everything else I've sent them, couldn't hurt, right?) But maybe one day I will resurrect Gina, my first assassin, and make a name for her without Mulder and Scully.

Tara, wherever you are, I hope you're well. I hope you've learned to spell. And I hope you've learned to laugh at yourself . . . and maybe gotten some better taste in music. If you want, I'll make you a Siouxsie mix tape.