Stuff and nonsense

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The above link is a ranking of how literate various cities (pop. 250,000+) are, based on newspaper circulation, number of bookstores, library resources, periodical publishing resources, educational attainment, and Internet resources.

It’s also further proof of why I don’t want to live here for the rest of my life. Phoenix is all the way down at number 54. (Tucson was better, at no. 34.)

But the two places I would most like to move to, if (when?) I do leave Phoenix? San Francisco rated fifth and Denver was sixth.

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I’m pretty sure this is the greatest story ever. Do you think Grimace drove the getaway car? And then there’s the obvious question: How does the Hamburgler fit in all this?

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How do you know your credibility as President has reached disastrously low proportions? How about when the top headline in a conservative paper like the Republic in a conservative place like Phoenix starts giving you the quotation mark treatment: Bush to unveil ‘victory’ plan. Ouch.

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It’s the last day of November which means I should have 50,000 words of a novel written … right? Well, not so much. As of this moment I have about 37,000, which is way short of the goal but really isn’t too bad. Especially considering where I was last week, I’m pretty proud of the output. And, as I wrote before I’m mostly excited about having found a story.

I thought about taking the afternoon off from work and seeing if I could squeeze out 13,000 words in 11 hours or so, but then I had a 3.5 hour meeting from hell in the morning so didn’t get anything done then and, well, now I’m blogging so the hell with it, I guess.

Don’t know how often I’ll keep working on this story once December officially hits. I’ll probably bounce from story to story based on whatever mood strikes. The problem I ran into with this story is that I hit a kind of boring section I didn’t want to write, which usually just means I’m muddy on the plot. I started writing other scenes that will go later in the book to get around it, so hopefully with time I can fill in that gap. In the meanwhile, there’s another story idea hatching (related to this character world that has spawned the “What I Am…” short story and this novel – which incidentally now has a working title, “Smoke”), plus the good old LA story, and Christmas stuff, etc etc.

So, ultimately, I guess it’s a failure, but we’ll definitely invoke the term “moral victory” for this one.

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I read on Slate today about a woman writer who feels that Jonathan Larson stole characters from a novel she had published and used them in Rent. I wasn’t going to blog about it, but Lisa’s comment on my Rent post got me thinking about it again, as well as a discussion I had with my aunt over Thanksgiving.

As for whether Rent was partly plagiarized from this lady’s novel, I don’t know – I have ordered both the novel in question and her book where she talks about the “theft” from the library. But I doubt it. After all, rent is – without question – a modern retelling of La Boheme. New city, new disease, Americanized name spellings. But it’s pretty much the same story otherwise. So, if Larson stole from this novel then didn’t the novel also steal from La Boheme? It seems a tough argument to prove.

But the author’s real outrage wasn’t about having been (possibly) plagiarized. It was that she (and by the way she’s openly gay) disliked the portrayal of homosexuals and the AIDS crisis as presented in Rent. She also seems to have a problem with the movie Philadelphia. Interesting note: Rent and Philadelphia were produced primarily by heterosexuals. I’d be curious to know what she thinks of, say, Angels In America, which was written by a gay man. But I digress.

To an extent, I think, she may have a point. I haven’t read her argument in any great depth, but the gist seems to be that it overly sanitizes just how hard it was to be gay in the late 80s and early 90s. Maybe so – what made the Team America gag funny was that it nailed that, “It’s fun to be gay!” thing that seems to be going on in Rent. It’s a tragedy ultimately, but it’s also a lot of fun – and I wouldn’t be the first to argue that the final message is ultimately uplifting, no matter the dead bodies.

But Lisa raised a different point in mentioning her Mom, an apparently open-minded woman who nonetheless had no idea Rent was basically about gays and AIDS. And this is probably true of a lot of people, many of whom might even stumble into the theatre expecting Chicago or Phantom of the Opera. Surely, this has also happened to music theatre goers already.

For me, even that seems like it’s enough. It’s easy to criticize stories that are for whatever reason very close to you because they don’t match your experience. But if you want someone to understand your own personal experience then you have to bring it to them, you can’t expect others to tell your story. Rent tells the story Larson wanted it to. As I said before, it’s silly sometimes, sometimes it’s downright bad, but hopefully it’s close enough to what he believed that it’s an appropriate tribute and memorial to his short life. Of course, most people who see Rent will never get that far. They’ll see gay people with AIDS and hetero people with AIDS and some gay people and straight people who don’t have AIDS. They’ll see them sing and dance and live together and be distinctly human. Maybe it has and will continue to help a few people realize that ultimately all those distinctions don’t make them any less human. That’s a point and a success that no one should want to deny.

I'm just begging for you to mock me

A lot of people, I know, totally hate Rent. I get that. I can see why you might hate it, even. It’s a love-it-or-hate-it kind of show. It’s OK if you hate Rent. But I love it.

Yes, the story sucks. It’s a four act opera condensed into two acts. Poorly. But I don’t love the story. I don’t love the whole bohemian thing. I know the second act sucks. I still love it, for really the only reason you can love Rent. Because of the music.

I like musicals in general. Thank you for your witty commentary re: my sexuality on that count, but it’s true – I’m that rare creature with a Y chromosome who loves both musicals and women. Go figure. I even used to watch the Tony Awards. I think that’s where I first heard parts of Rent – though I’d been hearing plenty about it before then.

There used to be a record store in Cherry Creek North (I can’t for the life of me think of what it was called now) that let you listen to any CD in the store for any length of time before you bought it. This is years ago, before Blockbuster Music did more or less the same thing, before anyone else was really doing this at all. We’re talking back in the days when hearing something on the radio was pretty much the only way to know what a CD offered before buying it. So, curious, I went to that store and listened to Rent. I bought it the same day. I loved it, listened to it a lot, learned all the words. When I worked at a bookstore I used my discount to buy a book all about the production, complete with the full book/script, as well.

I didn’t get to actually see the show, though, until I was in college. (I remember being in New York the one and only day I was there and regretting that there was no way to stay that night so I could see it on Broadway.) The tour came to Tucson first semester of my freshman year and I went with my roommate (a musical theater major no less!) named Vern. I had been a fan before, but how to describe the actual show? It was equal parts rock concert and musical theatre. It’s not just that so many in the crowd knew the songs – they even knew the words. It wasn’t just that so many people in the crowd had the audacity to sing along – it was that they did so loudly. It wasn’t just that you could hear people singing along – it was that they seemed to be encouraging it. (A note: I saw it again in Denver a few months later and the atmosphere was very different. Maybe because it wasn’t a college campus?)

Is Rent perfect? Far from it. That’s something else to love about it, in my book. It’s not exactly a work-in-progress, but the writer died before the thing even opened on any stage anywhere. So there are rough edges. And thank God they’ve left them (and I hope to God the movie doesn’t gloss over those rough edges completely). It’s musically messy, not nearly so polished as your Chicagos or Wickeds. It’s silly. It’s stupid and sappy sometimes, sometimes so blindingly idealistic that even the world’s greatest optimist would be embarrassed.

But it’s just so goddamn good. I though about changing that second to last word and just can’t. That’s the only way to describe it: goddamned good. How can you not be moved by this story? It’s very time-specific, yes, but what’s wrong with that?

I’m nervous about the movie and also can’t wait to see it. There have been a lot of bad movies made from good musicals. Then again, there are those few like Chicago that are just fabulous. I really hope Rent works that well. I like that most of the original cast is back for the movie, no matter how old they look. I’m nervous about what they cut (“Contact” isn’t on the soundtrack? I’ll be so pissed if they wimped out and cut that) and what's with this new song on the soundtrack? Let’s hope that’s just a “rolling over the end credits” kind of song. Mostly I’m nervous because … well, Rent really shouldn’t work as a movie. Half the point was the bare bones stage, the minimalism. I would have been more than happy to have someone film a performance and just release that. Instead, we get a full-on movie.

Doesn’t it seem odd to have a movie with a sizable budget being made of a musical that triumphed the bohemian lifestyle? That doesn’t offend me, it just strikes me as funny. Really, I have little opinion on the bohemian conflict of Rent. I have little opinion on the story at all. Is it a great story? Not really. But it’s a fairly clever update of La Boheme and, really, the point of opera is never the story but just the terrible inevitability of it all – which is a pretty clever metaphor for AIDS. What I love about Rent is mostly the music. It’s like a rock concert. It’s funny. It’s silly. And then from out of nowhere they break out a song that will have you crying like a baby.

I love Seasons of Love. A great song anyway, what really makes it great is how it functions in the musical. As the opening moment of Act Two, it takes place outside of the plot. It’s not even a part of the story – it’s a Greek chorus as much as anything, not an explicit one, but serving the same function nonetheless: Seasons of Love instructs us to watch the second act in a certain way. It salvages what would otherwise be ridiculously tragic, frankly too operatic for a rock musical.

Haven’t seen the movie yet and I’m both nervous and excited about seeing it. Maybe it will suck. But then again if I can sit in a theatre and hear One Song Glory, that might be money well spent.

Read this first, then watch me rant like a lunatic.

I've no desire to actually start an abortion debate here, but I hope you'll understand my point here isn't about abortion itself. My point is simply how abhorent it is to ask kids to do something like this. I don't care what the cause is. Doesn't matter if I agree with the cause or don't agree with it. Doesn't matter if everyone on Earth agrees with the cause. It's just wrong to make your kids do something like this.

Kids don't have political opinions. They just don't. They're kids. That's the whole beauty of being a kid.

I'm not trying to tell you that kids aren't actually much smarter than we usually give them credit for -- hell, I just got back from a vacation where I was hangin out with various cousins of mine ranging in age from 7-11 and I think all of them were smarter than me. But they don't have political opinions. They're kids. That's not their world.

If they have political opinions it's not from any fundamental understanding of the issues, it's because Mom & Dad have drilled it into them. And that's sad enough, but what kind of parent makes their little girl go out in the freezing cold Chicago winter and picket a doll store? Sorry, it just disgusts me.

Thank God I'm Not In High School Anymore

(No) Thanks to Lisa for making me relive when I looked like a cancer victim ...

I'm pretty sure this picture is from the summer following my junior year of high school. I know I still have that shirt. Sorry for inflicting this on you all.

My NaNoWriMo Pseudo-Update

In which I write a blog with literary flair so I don't feel bad about not writing my novel.

Imagine the horror. After four and a half years of being in college, a writer is quite confident that he is ready to write his own version of that great entry into the world of “literature” – the college novel. He’s got only a short period of time, though – he knows if the months become years and the years become decades, well, he’s going to forget what college was actually like. And indeed the months do become years and he is somewhat worried to find that when he is (rarely) moved to write, it’s not the college novel he intended. He may have already outgrown it. And then a well-established writer of a certain literary and populist pedigree comes along and publishes a novel with great national attention (if not acclaim) and, yes dammit, it’s a college novel. The young writer is discouraged (if 70 year-olds are writing college novels, does that mean the college novel is over?) and later encouraged when he reads it (the book gets it so disastrously wrong that he thinks a “true” college novel may still work). He’s also just annoyed. How many people will read this book and actually start to think college is like this?

So he starts writing and it turns out (not that he was even intending this necessarily) that he is writing his college novel, finally. It just snuck on him, but he’s 20,000 words in and suddenly it’s clear – that’s what it is. But here we come to the horror. The horror. The writer looks back at what he has written, looks forward to what he think he will write yet in the story and – the horror – everything that was wrong with that Charlotte Simmons book is present in the one he is writing. It’s a college book that barely even addresses what college is actually like. Really, it’s just – the horror! – a sort of dirty book all about sex.

Yes, there’s a lot of revision this story is going to need, should I get to the end and finish it. It’s not unusual, I don’t think, to start a book thinking it’s about one thing or that it’s going to go a certain direction – and then find out you were entirely wrong: It’s actually about this, and going in this direction. One reason so many books and movies are bad is that, as a writer, it can be hard to let go of where you thought you were going. Maybe you had this great scene all planned out. Maybe you still kind of want to stick it in there (ahem!), even if it doesn’t necessarily fit (fit the narrative, I mean. Of course.)

So far, I hate to admit it, the story I have been writing is essentially the tale of Christina’s sexual exploits during one year of her undergraduate schooling. What a dirty bastard I am sometimes. But, let’s be fair for just a moment – lots of people have written lots of books about sex. Mine isn’t even really explicit, or particularly scandalous. I’m beginning to even think the ending might be redemptive, which would be something almost wholly new in my fiction. And moreover there’s this: Sex really, really truly is a part of college life. Sometimes it’s a pretty big part of college. But here’s the thing: Sex isn’t what you’ll remember about college. It isn’t what you’ll miss. And – no matter how much it might be on your mind – it isn’t how you spend most of your day.

The way I remember it, most people were too busy for sex to actually be a big part of their lives. Hell, I was too busy and I was a freaking creative writing major. If I didn’t have time for girls, then how in God’s name did people with jobs and real majors find the time?

So far there’s only a hint of that in what I’ve written – in the form of a little conversation between Christina and her nearing-30-year-old-friend Jess, who misses college. Or misses what she thinks college might have been, if she hadn’t been in a serious relationship. The point, ultimately, is that Jess is wrong – college isn’t really Girls Gone Wild, it isn’t really Charlotte Simmons. Maybe sometimes it is. But most people who are up until 3a on Wednesday nights are studying – and I don’t mean anatomy.

That’s mostly going to have to come in revision, though, I think. Still, it gives the story a focus beyond the sort of weak plot I’ve been working with, and that’s reassuring. There’s virtually no chance I can get this thing to 50,000 words by the end of the month, but it’s worth it having discovered in the midst of this silly little story I wanted to get out of my system, an actual book. That college novel. Finally.

But what really matters is what I want

Rather than tempt fate by refusing to participate after being tagged, I submit to you the things Google thinks that Matthews needs:

1. Matthew needs to know what is expected of him ... Ain't that the turth?

2. Matthew needs a Mother's Day gift and is just about to discover whether
there's a prize in the cereal box when his mother interrupts his search. Using cereal box "prizes" as gifts ... why didn't I think of that?

3. Matthew needs to double his fluid intake and drink way more than an ordinary child A Guiness, please, bartender. And keep 'em coming.

4. Matthew needs dead babies. I knew this would show up sooner or later. Want to know why I'm not religious? Try having your name be on the bible story about infanticide. Not so fun.

5. Matthew needs to figure out if he’s Matthew or Martha Go figure, but this is where I stopped my search.

How Far We Have Come

I cannot insist enough that you take just a little time and read or listen to this story over at NPR.

It's one thing to watch HBO's wonderful series "Rome" and reflect on how miserable life was in those days, even for the wealthiest and most powerful individuals. The world was not a comfortable place 2,000 years ago, really.

And it's one thing to appreciate the fact that what I will very haphazardly refer to as "modern medicine" has only been around about a century. It's funny to watch a quasi-historical movie like Sleepy Hollow and giggle at all of the wacky "scientific" equipment Johnny depp has to play with. And it's one thing to marvel that it wasn't until 1939, just 66 years ago, that the miralce drug, the drug that literally changed the world - penicillin - was used to stem bacterial diseases.

All of those things are amazing to marvel at. And yet they are very much historical. There aren't really any first-hand witnesses of those moments around anymore. Our grandparents might remember the rise of penicillin, but even they would have been very young at the time.

This is why it's so utterly incomprehensible that the man in this story, who is younger than either of my parents, lived through (and in many ways continues to live with) a procedure so bizarre, so archane, so B-horror-movie-esque. It's barely comprehensible to me that we used to give people lobotomies with no functional understanding of the brain at all. But to do it this way? With (I'm not making this up) ice picks? Ice picks? In the eyeballs?

It's absurd, horrifying, amazing, sickening. Most of all, it seems like one of those things we really should all know about, we should all remember with a degree of shame and apprehension - and yet ... almost no one knows anything about it at all.

Jumping On The Bandwagon

You are Baby Gonzo from Muppet Babies! You have
definitely got some issues that need working
out. Your friends really DO like you, but
sometimes you just can't believe them. Maybe if
you'd just stop unleashing strange monsters
from the Basement . . .


Which Forgotten 80s Cartoon Character Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Ask Someone Smarter Than You

First, an apology for that last post. See, in an effort to refresh myself on Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in anticipation of next Friday’s big event, I am listening to the book at work. Turns out I struggle to (a) make any sense at all and (b) use grammar correctly when I’m also listening to delightful children’s stories. Who knew? You might think this suggests terrible things about my job performance while listening, but you would be wrong. In fact, I don’t need to use my brain to perform my job at all. Basically, I’m just a zombie with a phone: “Give money. Sub. Ro. Gay. Shun! Bad toilet part, bad! Give money!” That’s basically me and my co-workers all day long. Or, no wait, maybe that’s just what our supervisor seems to think our job consists of.

Anyway, on with the show.

I have noticed that people are often seeking out my wisdom with questions on everything from current events, to spelling, to the meaning of life. In an attempt to consolidate this chore I have created this new advice column: Ask Someone Smarter Than You. Namely, me. Here we go:

Dear …

I have a problem but I’m not sure how to solve it. When I’m in crowded places, Disneyland say, I am compelled to stop, inexplicably, and obstruct all manner of people and traffic behind me. I’m completely oblivious. I also do this in stores and even parking lots. Can you help?

- Wait, what was I doing again?

Dear what,

You are the proverbial “exception that proves the rule.” In this case, the rule you are proving – albeit in a roundabout way – is that of evolution. Many people mistakenly think evolution simply chooses the best and the brightest to continue on. This is not necessarily true. Sometimes evolution chooses people with no marketable skills whatsoever. For example, girls who are eager to spread their legs and guys who are attracted to those girls don’t really offer much for society, but they have a remarkable rate of procreation. A good real-life example of this is Britney Spears and Kevin Federline. But back to your problem. See, thousands and thousands of years ago, the vast majority of your ancestors were killed on the African plain when they would stop for no reason whatsoever and get stampeded by a herd of wildebeests or eaten by a lion with low standards. Unfortunately, a few of your people survived and passed these genes on to you. In today’s world stopping in the dead center of Main Street Disneyland is not necessarily going to get you killed, but it’s still an evolutionary disadvantage. And if you’re doing the same thing in parking lots then I dare say your kind are soon to meet your appropriate fate. Anyway, I can’t really help you with this problem. But my good friend Charles here ...

Dear guy who ordered some popcorn chicken and mashed potatoes,

I know you asked for Pepsi and not Dr. Pepper. And I know you asked for honey mustard and ranch dipping sauces even though I gave you barbecue sauce. Wanna make something of it?

- KFC drive-thru chick

Dear Thru,

I don’t really mind about the switch to Dr. Pepper. If it was Diet Pepsi then we’d have an issue. What is a problem for me is handing over the drink when it’s completely covered with soda that overflowed from the cup. That’s rude in any situation because people will inevitably get sticky hands, but when the person is sitting in a car then it’s just plain rude. But that probably explains why you’re working at KFC, doesn’t it?

Dear fanboy,

In a recent Rolling Stone interview Bono named "Electrical Storm" as one of his favorite U2 songs. So why haven't they ever played it?

- The Edge

Dear edgy,

This used to upset me, too, but frankly even I don't understand the innerworkings of Bono's brain. At first I thought maybe the song didn't fit their show that well, but ... well, the thing is it would fit in their set. Ultimately, though, I don't get upset because I'm not likely to get a chance to see U2 live until like ... 2009 or something. I did see two very good shows in Phoenix in the spring. Unfortunately, I skipped Las Vegas this past weekend and of course they proceeded to play what everyone is now hailing as the best show of the tour. I'm a fountain of knowledge, for crying out loud, not an oracle.

Hey Matt,

I need directions. Help?

- Erin

Dear cumdumpster,

I wouldn't say we were “lost” either time, but I nonetheless managed to fail to find both Diana’s school and Disneyland on Friday night’s trip, remember? Diana’s school is one thing (I’ve been there twice and one of those times it was a field), but Disneyland? How does one miss Disneyland? So, what in this past history makes you want to seek advice (directional advice especially) from me? Then again, you did trust me to drive you home on Sunday, so maybe I’m all you’ve got?

Dear “buddy,”

Why do older guys like me always call younger guys like you “buddy?” Actually, that’s not even my question, but it’s a damn good one, too. So I saw you walk toward the register and responsibly go through the actual line the way you’re supposed to. And then I just walked up, avoided the line altogether, and got to the counter in front of you. I even made eye contact with you. Don’t you feel like a sucker?

- The guy from the library

Dear guy,

No worries. Once you were out the door the librarian looked at me and said, “That guy comes in here every few days. He’s a total dick.” The librarian, you may remember, was a woman probably old enough to be my grandmother. This made my day so I bear you no ill will. Except for the calling me “buddy” thing. That needs to stop.

That's all for now!

Plenty of nothing

Well, it’s happened. After a great start in the first few days that gave me a nice cushion, I have now actually fallen behind the pace for NaNoWriMo. I’m still not far behind and I probably shouldn’t worry too much about the actual day-to-day word count but then again this deal is short enough that there’s no luxury time to catch up once you get behind, especially considering distraction such as Thanksgiving, etc coming up.

I’ve several problems with getting it done but strangely most of the problems aren’t to do with the book itself: I’m very uncertain about the story but I think that this was a good choice for a book to write quickly and without thought. The problem is just actually writing.

First came the weekend trip to California. I did at least get the computer out on Saturday afternoon. I think I wrote about a paragraph. But then Sunday on the drive home I had many hours to think about the story and got a little done that night. But I didn’t write at all Monday or yesterday. Tuesdays and Thursdays are what should be my most productive days, but yesterday I didn’t do anything after work but watch some TV and try to clean the house (to pathetically little effect). Life, unfortunately, distracts from writing and while I know the whole point of the month is to let your home fall to shambles around you while you get some writing done … I just can’t do it. My other problem is that generally I prefer to write at night, especially late at night, after Diana has gone to sleep and I’m in bed with the laptop. But the past few nights I’ve actually chosen to go to sleep at a decent hour. So … maybe it is the book after all and I’m just avoiding doing the writing. I don’t know. I’m very conflicted about the story but I’m to the point now where I feel like if I get it out, even if it’s just awful and I never show it to a soul, then at least it will be done and the urge to write the story will be gone. I hope. Or something. I don’t know.

So last night I had a dream that I was at work on a Wednesday and it wasn’t an interesting dream in any way, which is a pretty realistic version of my job. The result was that I woke up this morning thinking it was Thursday. This makes last night’s work dream pretty much the worst dream I’ve ever had. 99.9% of the time I can’t remember my dreams anyway so why didn’t that one vanish? What a crap deal.

Note: I just wrote “carp deal,” which in reality is probably every bit as bad as a “crap deal,” just not as common a saying. I changed it anyway to “crap.” Isn’t it exciting to get an inside look at the way this fabulous blog is put together?

Disneyland was a good time, of course. So our tickets were perhaps less than what is strictly, oh what’s the word? Legal? Yes, that’s it. Not exactly legal. Still, they worked for us. It was reasonably crowded in the afternoon but not busy at all in the morning and we had a good run of getting on every ride we wanted to without having to wait much at all. We walked straight onto Splash Mountain without a wait at all. Good times. We all especially enjoyed the new Buzz Lightyear ride, and the Tower of Terror remains awesome. Good times all around.

I guess that’s it for now. I didn’t really have any point here, but aren’t you pretty used to that now?

Peace out, homies.

And we're off!

I just posted the first chunk of my NaNoWriMo project over at the blog where I hide all that stuff. You can check it out, if you dare.

I'm not quite as enthusiastic as some about the start, although I did write a lot last night. I chose the "new" story, partly because that's more in keeping with the rules and also because I'm more likely to be able to write 50,000 words of this story. I don't value it as much as the other project, because I'm well aware that it's a silly, probably pretty bad story.

Now for the disclaimer.

I've been paranoid about everything I write ever since a conversation I had with Diana some years ago now when she told me that she really believes that most writers are never really writing fiction, or something to that effect. I disagree. I write fiction precisely because my real life is way too boring to be interesting. My real life is so boring I don't even talk about it with friends; I can't imagine writing a story about it.

Now, to some extent I do think she was on to something. What worries me as a writer is the truth that anything I write is my responsibility. If I write a murder scene, it doesn't mean I've ever killed anyone, but it does mean I have imagined it - the more distubingly brutal the scene, the more disturbing my imagination is, presumably. Truthfully, I think we probably all have imaginations that can be, from time to time, very sick indeed. We live in a violent world, a dirty world, and we're only human. For the most part, the main difference is how much of our sick mind we're willing to share with others.

Some stories do come totally out of thin air. They can be inspired by something you see on TV, or read in a magazine, or see across the aisle in an airplane. Some stories come from a closer place, at least at the start. The story I'm writing for NaNoWriMo is more the latter type. It takes mundane and familiar situations and says: What if? That's fiction.

Hope you enjoy.