As we approach the anniversary of John Lennon's senseless death, I was reflecting, listening to the marvelous "Instant Karma" collection of cover versions that came out a few years ago to raise money for Darfur, just why this man who did a healthy portion of his work before I was born, and who died before I really knew he was, has such a hold on me.
Lennon admitted in interviews he wasn't the best guitar player or singer in the world, and a fair minded listener would agree. I think what holds me when a John Lennon song is on is his brutally honest lyrics- he admits to being scared and vulnerable and as confused as everyone else is by the world.
That seems to be a theme of work that I enjoy- the sense that life doesn't make any sense. John Lennon reminds me, across decades, that it didn't make sense to him, either- and if that means I'm crazy, then at least I'm in good company.
Saturday, December 04, 2010
Friday, December 03, 2010
Flashing on Friday: An offseason baseball story
Thursday, December 02, 2010
100 Words: It's Not About The Anchovies
The 100 Word Challenge is here, and has been shown, with a healthy diet and regular exercise, to result in weight loss for most people. The prompt this week is "Anchovies", and my entry is called, "It's Not About The Anchovies"
"Why are you getting so mad about anchovies?," he asked. He was watching a basketball game, tall men in white trying to defend a metal rim against other tall men wearing green.
"It's not about the anchovies, Steven," she said. It was about being ignored. Being slighted. Having your needs come last, if at all. It was about having another baby because you needed a boy. It was about your career ruined so that his could soar, it was about your dreams allowed to die like worms on the sidewalk.
"It's not about the anchovies," she repeated softly.
"Why are you getting so mad about anchovies?," he asked. He was watching a basketball game, tall men in white trying to defend a metal rim against other tall men wearing green.
"It's not about the anchovies, Steven," she said. It was about being ignored. Being slighted. Having your needs come last, if at all. It was about having another baby because you needed a boy. It was about your career ruined so that his could soar, it was about your dreams allowed to die like worms on the sidewalk.
"It's not about the anchovies," she repeated softly.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Low Expectations
Michael Solender, who obviously has pretty low standards, has elected to publish a piece of mine, "Je t'adore", in his online flash fiction publication Microw, available here.
It's All Over!
NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, otherwise known as A Month Of Mental Illness, No Sleep and No Friends, ends today. Keen readers of the sidebar note that I am, as they say on Sportscenter, a winner winner chicken dinner- I managed to write 50000 words between November 1 and November 30. This wins me, essentially, nothing at all save the artwork you are looking at. There is a company called createspace.com, an Amazon company, that will publish the book for free, but my book is many weeks or months from being ready for ink and paper.
It was an ordeal this year- a self imposed one, but still. It really consumed a lot of my life and a whole bunch of my free time, but I did it. It's done. It's strange how a burden I put on myself created a lot of real world stress.
It was an ordeal this year- a self imposed one, but still. It really consumed a lot of my life and a whole bunch of my free time, but I did it. It's done. It's strange how a burden I put on myself created a lot of real world stress.
Monday, November 29, 2010
RIP Mr. Kershner as well...
Another loss in entertainment, as Irvin Kershner, director of The Empire Strikes Back, the darkest and best of the Star Wars movies, has passed away.
Don't Call Me Shirley
There are a million tributes to the late Leslie Neilsen across the Internet this morning.
This is another one.
RIP, Mr. Neilsen.
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Turn Off The Blue Light
Rob Neyer on the Red Sox, a.k.a The Known Universe's Most Important Sports Team, failing to resign Victor Martinez, the ubiquitous V Mart who made this season so entertaining, at least if you were a Tampa Bay Rays baserunner. 4 Years and $50 million dollars, Detroit? For a catcher who can't, uh, catch? As the mighty Spongebob Squarepants once put it, good luck with that.
Monday, November 22, 2010
Something I Could Not Care Less About
..is airport security. Esquire has an excellent post up about the kerfluffle about the full body scanners and the attendant fuss they are creating. As I understand it, if you refuse the full body scan, which apparently makes you look like a naked ghost, you are forced into a full body pat down. All this has brought about all sorts of agita, including videos like that one.
Now, I don't care. I can't even afford to fly a paper plane. And, as the Podfather himself Adam Curry puts it, this is all security theater. It's not preventing anything. From the final paragraph of Esquire's take, about true security- genuine, boots on the ground, knocking on doors law enforcement style security:
"This is how genuine security is created in a free society: through investigation, through self-interest, through civic-mindedness, through individual awareness, and through respect for liberty and the common desire for it. We want as a people to be safe — to live in peace in order that we may pursue our happiness. We work to make it so. It wasn't the TSA that caught the shoe bomber or the underwear bomber. It was us, the passengers. How pathetic that those in charge of our security ignore all that in favor of the alternative: total control."
Now, I don't care. I can't even afford to fly a paper plane. And, as the Podfather himself Adam Curry puts it, this is all security theater. It's not preventing anything. From the final paragraph of Esquire's take, about true security- genuine, boots on the ground, knocking on doors law enforcement style security:
"This is how genuine security is created in a free society: through investigation, through self-interest, through civic-mindedness, through individual awareness, and through respect for liberty and the common desire for it. We want as a people to be safe — to live in peace in order that we may pursue our happiness. We work to make it so. It wasn't the TSA that caught the shoe bomber or the underwear bomber. It was us, the passengers. How pathetic that those in charge of our security ignore all that in favor of the alternative: total control."
Friday, November 19, 2010
Flashback with 52/250: "Disguised"
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Things I Don't Understand, Volume MCMXVII
Why this occupies so much media time in this country. Congratulations, blah blah blah. I'm sure William is a decent guy- at least he went and tried to serve his country and do some good, unlike certain recent leaders of this country. But it is mystifying that this is the lead story on my national morning news shows, all day every day, the fact that the scion of a hereditary royal family has asked someone to be his wife.
Monday, November 15, 2010
So.......I guess I didn't win?- "Available Light"
The fine folks at NPR host a three minute fiction contest, which I learned about after they had already had five rounds of it, where they ask for short stories based on parameters set by a famous author. The current round was hosted by Michael Cunningham, author of the utterly marvelous novel "The Hours". The rules were that you had to start and end with phrases he gave you-"Some people swore that the house was haunted" at the start, and "Nothing was ever the same after that" at the end. (Kind of a Halloween thing.) The story had to be less than 600 words, which, they say, takes about 3 minutes to read aloud- thus, the three minute fiction contest.
So I entered, and I didn't win.
Now, they got 5000 entries, they say, which isn't surprising, and the fact that I didn't win is even less surprising. But one of the rules was that the story couldn't be previously published, so I couldn't publish it here. But I didn't win, so I'm going to call that parameter null and void. And I think this isn't bad, frankly. So here it is- a 600 word story, using the rules set out as shown. Call it "Available Light", yet another title cribbed from Neil Peart. I hope he's not a reader.
“Some people swore that the house was haunted?”, she demanded. “A ghost story? Come ON, Dad.” She was ten years old, but she had already mastered the swooping, mocking tones of a teenager. I had warned her about the indignities of camping- the bugs, the dirt, the animals- all things she could forgo for a weekend with Aunt Jennifer, reading stories to toddlers and changing diapers by day, talking Twilight and painting toenails at night. But she cheerfully agreed to join me, which put us here, next to the lake, night creeping in around us, sitting around a small fire.
“Tell me a real story. Tell me how you met Mom,” she said, her innocent face paining me in the jumpy light. With Carolyn dying before she turned 2, my daughter didn’t know her mother as anything more than a framed picture, so she hungered constantly for stories of her as a breathing, feeling adult instead of the spectral presence she was.
“That old thing? I’ve told you that before.” I knew why she wanted to hear it again-it was like a World Series announcer telling a story that seasoned fans had heard before- you knew it already, but you listened for the smooth curves and the satisfying ending anyway. You wanted the rhythms of it more than the meanings of the actual words.
“I know,” she said dreamily, “tell it again.” After her phone died, then mine did, we resorted to swimming, sunning ourselves on the rocks, reading, talking, and just breathing in the crisp air and listening to the thousand small noises that made up the quiet of outdoors. She had been writing furiously in her notebook while I cooked- perhaps a scrap of poetry, or a story, or a letter to a friend. Do kids write letters any more? Probably not.
I told her the story-my sweeping run into the post office, not looking where I was going, headed for the outgoing mail slot, the solid hip check I gave her mother, sending us both sprawling-the apologies, laughter, and conversation that led to coffee, and then dinner, and a sudden rush into romance, and a tiny wedding, and within a year, the red, screaming, wide eyed gift of her birth. I told her of the late night feedings we would have in bed together, falling asleep with her with neither of us watching “Monday Night Football” when her mother worked the night shift. I told her of the hurricane of work and obligation that robbed us of sleep, but we undertook joyfully, goggle eyed with the wonderment of new life. I told her of her mother’s tangled hair, soft brown eyes, proud smile, warm laugh, and tender heart.
I didn’t tell her of the soreness that became pain. The pain that became one doctor, and then another, and another. I didn’t tell her of words like biopsy and malignancy and radiation, of her beginning to walk when her mother no longer could. I didn’t tell her of long afternoons walking hospital corridors carrying her, and later urging her to color in the corner of the room as her mother slept fitfully. I didn’t tell her of the black fits of rage that brought me to near tears as I drove her home alone. I didn’t tell her how she had lost her mother, but I had lost my only friend.
“Then she got sick?”, she asked.
“Yeah,” I told her, “Nothing was ever the same again after that.”
So I entered, and I didn't win.
Now, they got 5000 entries, they say, which isn't surprising, and the fact that I didn't win is even less surprising. But one of the rules was that the story couldn't be previously published, so I couldn't publish it here. But I didn't win, so I'm going to call that parameter null and void. And I think this isn't bad, frankly. So here it is- a 600 word story, using the rules set out as shown. Call it "Available Light", yet another title cribbed from Neil Peart. I hope he's not a reader.
“Some people swore that the house was haunted?”, she demanded. “A ghost story? Come ON, Dad.” She was ten years old, but she had already mastered the swooping, mocking tones of a teenager. I had warned her about the indignities of camping- the bugs, the dirt, the animals- all things she could forgo for a weekend with Aunt Jennifer, reading stories to toddlers and changing diapers by day, talking Twilight and painting toenails at night. But she cheerfully agreed to join me, which put us here, next to the lake, night creeping in around us, sitting around a small fire.
“Tell me a real story. Tell me how you met Mom,” she said, her innocent face paining me in the jumpy light. With Carolyn dying before she turned 2, my daughter didn’t know her mother as anything more than a framed picture, so she hungered constantly for stories of her as a breathing, feeling adult instead of the spectral presence she was.
“That old thing? I’ve told you that before.” I knew why she wanted to hear it again-it was like a World Series announcer telling a story that seasoned fans had heard before- you knew it already, but you listened for the smooth curves and the satisfying ending anyway. You wanted the rhythms of it more than the meanings of the actual words.
“I know,” she said dreamily, “tell it again.” After her phone died, then mine did, we resorted to swimming, sunning ourselves on the rocks, reading, talking, and just breathing in the crisp air and listening to the thousand small noises that made up the quiet of outdoors. She had been writing furiously in her notebook while I cooked- perhaps a scrap of poetry, or a story, or a letter to a friend. Do kids write letters any more? Probably not.
I told her the story-my sweeping run into the post office, not looking where I was going, headed for the outgoing mail slot, the solid hip check I gave her mother, sending us both sprawling-the apologies, laughter, and conversation that led to coffee, and then dinner, and a sudden rush into romance, and a tiny wedding, and within a year, the red, screaming, wide eyed gift of her birth. I told her of the late night feedings we would have in bed together, falling asleep with her with neither of us watching “Monday Night Football” when her mother worked the night shift. I told her of the hurricane of work and obligation that robbed us of sleep, but we undertook joyfully, goggle eyed with the wonderment of new life. I told her of her mother’s tangled hair, soft brown eyes, proud smile, warm laugh, and tender heart.
I didn’t tell her of the soreness that became pain. The pain that became one doctor, and then another, and another. I didn’t tell her of words like biopsy and malignancy and radiation, of her beginning to walk when her mother no longer could. I didn’t tell her of long afternoons walking hospital corridors carrying her, and later urging her to color in the corner of the room as her mother slept fitfully. I didn’t tell her of the black fits of rage that brought me to near tears as I drove her home alone. I didn’t tell her how she had lost her mother, but I had lost my only friend.
“Then she got sick?”, she asked.
“Yeah,” I told her, “Nothing was ever the same again after that.”
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