In the rather long list of Things I Wish I’d Said, is a quote whose attribution I’ve shamefully forgotten. Possibly it’s Stephen King. But it is: “No writer has ever been able to convince his spouse that when he is looking out a window, he is working.”
That right there is a prime aphorism. Witty and true. Of course, you can expand it to family, children, in-laws, etc., but why complicate such elegance?
I had a corollary to that aphorism bite me on the butt yesterday.
I’m engaged in a writing contract right now – I think I alluded to that earlier. Can’t say much about it, of course, but it amounts to another writing-by-committee venture, in which I bring my work to the table and I am informed of every aspect in which I am wrong, wrong, wrong, and my lively and likable main characters are ground down to bland, inoffensive placeholders. It’s not fun or necessarily rewarding, but it is a paycheck, and after a couple of years of scraping by on a part-time job and half, the money is more than welcome.
Anyway, said part-time and a half jobs, after shutting down completely for two and three weeks for the holidays (without pay, which makes the income from the writing gig even more welcome), suddenly gearing back up and demanding more of my time than usual, I am finding myself working hard on my time management, at which I’ve never been that adept. Setting aside blocks of time for writing. I’m told this is how honest-to-God writers operate, they keep office hours. Mine tend to fall in the evenings, from 4 to 8. It’s just the way it worked out – that’s when I have a block of free time, with an option of expanding into the 8-10 range, as necessary.
This scheduling is complicated by the fact that I generally prepare dinner in the evenings, as I’m the one who has – or had – the time to do that.
So yesterday afternoon, I am a couple of hours into my writing – I had started an hour early, yay Sundays – when I realize I am very hungry. I’d had a late breakfast, and had powered my way through without lunch. So I left my sanctum and called down the stairs, “Has anyone considered dinner yet?”
“What were you thinking?”
There was some pre-fab chicken parmigiana, pasta and garlic bread I had picked up the week before, so my family would have something to heat up and eat when I was in town for meetings to puree my writing. They never used it, though, and I suggested it.
“No, I don’t want that. I think you should go get us some fried chicken.”
“Um, I’m writing to a deadline, here.”
“Well, we’re watching Dispicable Me.”
“I fail to see the equivalence there.”
But, there are some things it is useless to argue about. I wound up dressing more warmly, leaving, stopping by the bank (which admittedly I needed to, anyway), getting the chicken, returning, and eating.
Net sum: about an hour of writing time lost.
It did give me a little time to consider, and construct a list of things I needed definitive answers about from the clients, to avoid the “wrong, wrong, wrong”s. That limited what I actually could write about, and I finished that in good time, and e-mailed it out to the various recipients. Was feeling pretty good and full of chicken, until I got an e-mail, saying it was all great as usual, but would it be possible to have three more pages done by tomorrow?
Sure, I sigh, Why not. I’ve still got the 8-10 slot.
You know me, I strive to, when there is nothing to be said, not to say it.
Now there were times, last year, when I was trying to post something every day, Monday-Friday, that I violated this central tenet. Violated it hard. I didn’t like the results. And since there’s no money to be had in this, I stopped doing it. Felt if there was nothing of interest, it served no one to blather on about it. There are plenty of blogs like that.
So I find it a little amusing when I find an e-mail from WordPress in my inbox, informing me that my blog is “on fire”, at least according to the Blog Health-O-Meter, which is trademarked: 2010 in Review.
Thereafter follows some numbers to prove this claim, including the fact that I had enough readers last year to fill eight Boeing 747s. All this is a bit bewildering to me, as I realize this blog amounts to a road hump on the info superhighway.
I derive some mordant amusement from the fact that my most-read post was 7 Bizarre Ways Google Chrome Can Kill You Instantly, which is a post I deliberately titled with a newfound toy called the Linkbait Generator. I have to admit that it worked, so LOL, as the kids say. I used it again today! Can you tell?
Of course, the blow-by-blow on crapfests and other film festivals ranked well. I should hope so, as they’re most time-consuming to put together, not to mention the time spent in Fleshspace actually experiencing the events. There will be more crapfests, and there will be more writings about them.
I could have complained how busy I was during December, but you know what? I was too busy to do that. Trying to get everything squared away at the station before I was booted out for a two-week unpaid vacation, multiple shows per week at Mystery Cafe (which helped with the unpaid vacation problem) and a long-stalled writing project got the go-ahead (which is helping the aftermath of the unpaid vacation).
I got everything I asked for Christmas. I got my wife everything she asked for. The Boy did not get everything he asked for (sorry, Alienware computers and fully-functioning lifesize Mazinger Zs are bit outside our operating budget at present), but was happy with what he got. Then he dropped my old laptop which I had refurbished for him, destroying it, and rendering half my presents to him useless. There is a heartwarming Christmas lesson in there somewhere, but I have not been able to find it yet. All I know is I have schedule time on my own damned computer again.
The writing project continues, despite losing a writer over the holidays. I had forgotten how wearying this sort of writing-by-committee can get however, and it is rather rubbing my nose in the fact that I should be writing for myself, not others. Although the writing for others brings in a paycheck. And paychecks are good.
"But Dad, I'm about to wi - OH CRAP!"
It also means I have primary ownership over my computer by fiat. “I am working to buy you Pop-Tarts and orange juice by the gallon,” I tell the all-consuming moose in my office chair “You can blow the heads off perfect strangers at 3 in the morning, just I had to when I was your age.”
The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:
The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is on fire!.
Crunchy numbers
A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 3,500 times in 2010. That’s about 8 full 747s.
In 2010, there were 109 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 314 posts. There were 141 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 13mb. That’s about 3 pictures per week.
Well, this has been a couple of weeks worth of complications, bad choices and horror stories. Life’s Rich Pageant, in other words. Boring to anyone who isn’t me. Though the time a University Professor informed me she couldn’t be interviewed by me unless it had first been cleared through Communications and Legal (when we both work for the same University) is still a show-stopper for me. Literally.
I’m not bitter that bit of blockage made me do a four minute story about a fucking bake sale. Oh no. Not at all.
So. There is no better way to deal with the suffering that life dishes out than to make others suffer. This is a lesson I have learned from the evening news over the years. So it was undeniably time for another Crapfest.
Dave bought a house in the last year, and moved out to the boondocks, if indeed the eternal devouring Houston has a place that can be considered “boondocks”. He’s now ten minutes closer to me, anyway, which is all that matters in my selfish worldview. So I managed to work my way through the very beginning of rush hour traffic to his domain, while the other fools toiled in the guts of Every Person In A Major City Trying To Get Out To The Boondocks On A Friday Afternoon And To Hell With Everyone Else.
The evening’s itinerary had been the subject of much secrecy, but suffice to say, Dave’s desire to see “something cool” had been squandered on the Crapfest that had not occurred in October (illness, sudden emergencies), and he was once again out for blood, and I was complicit in these desires.
Rick arrived with three DVDs of performances from NBC’s The Midnight Special, which served to fill time until everyone arrived. These were from the latter years, 78-80, when I was in college, and likely too busy playing records and getting stoned to watch Midnight Special. Nonetheless, this stuff was a treat. Bands actually playing their instruments – what a concept. Was Steve Perry ever truly that young? Lionel Ritchie just a face in the crowd with the Commodores. Paul arrived, as did The Other Dave, for his first Crapfest.Alan was absent by virtue of being in a show.
We continued to cherry-pick the performances on Midnight Special, until Paul and Rick conspired to choose Peter Allen’s I Go to Rio. As this was during the aforementioned Lost Weekend phase of my college career, I had missed Peter Allen’s attempt to be a big star in America. I hadn’t even realized he was married to Liza Minelli for while, but then there was likely a period when I was married to Liza Minelli that I just don’t recall. I’ll have to admit that Allen is working his ass off on that stage, dry-humping his piano bench and ripping off his shirt to reveal a leather Yor the Hunter from the Future vest thing while he shakes his maracas and blows time on a coach’s whistle. It was also, bar none, the gayest thing I had seen in a long, long time.
Sadly, that performance is not on YouTube. There is, however, the version he sang at Radio City Music Hall, where he was the first male to dance with the Rockettes:
THIS IS A MESSAGE FROM THE FUTURE: In the intervening years, that Peter Allen video was withdrawn from YouTube… but that very same clip from The Midnight Special became available!
After that, the fajitas being cooked, the margaritas being made, we began in earnest. With the movie Dave had urged me to save, Frankenstein Island.
If you’ve known me for a while, you also know that once upon a time, I was one of a million online movie critics (though when I started, there were only thousands), and I was a member of a coalition of B-movie critics called the B-Masters. We did organized roundtables built around common themes, and the like. One of the traditions was the Secret Santa, where names were drawn out of a hat, and we told whoever we drew what movie he or she was going to review. I was asked to step out of retirement this year, I agreed, and was promptly in a deja vu situation, as I found myself int he same arrangement as the last time I participated: I gave Andrew Borntreger The Spirit, and Ken Begg gave me Frankenstein Island.
Ken Begg, of course, is the proprietor of Jabootu’s Bad Movie Dimension, and he likes to break people. He reduced Andrew to a puddle of protoplasm with Sextette, and Andrew survived shelling in Iraq with aplomb. This is the third movie Ken has given me, the rotten bastard. The first two were Doomsday Machine and Jonathan Livingston Seagull. I think he still resents the fact that Seagull did not kill me.
I got the Retromedia DVD for Frankenstein Island from Amazon Markets for, I think, $2.50, which means it cost more to ship it than its actual worth (which is a telling point). Another tip-off to the quality is that the box says “Directed by Jerry Warren”. Another is that when I spot-checked the disc to make sure it played, the first five seconds make me say out loud, “Oh, fuck you, movie.”
As expected, it is a mess. There is an island, and there are cavegirls, and Frankenstein’s great great etc granddaughter owns it, and she’s married to Van Helsing, and there’s an Igor, and turtleneck-and-stocking-cap wearing zombies apparently on leave from the Batman TV series, and the Monster is chained up in a grotto, and the Floating head of John Carradine crops up ever ten minutes to say the same damned thing over and over again and plastic props and vampire teeth from the post-Halloween sale at Walgreens are in evidence and Cameron Mitchell drunkenly quotes Poe forever and ever and
Surprisingly, this did not break our audience. If anything, it was embraced, as we attempted to keep the incredibly ambitious plot straight in spite of the inept delivery. A bit of palate-cleansing was performed by an episode of Super President (which people still don’t believe existed) and it’s companion feature, the infinitely more badass Spy Shadow. These were also well-received.
Not so our second feature.
It is probably due to the fact that, after much anticipation, I had recently seen The Losers, another DC comics adaptation recently, and was incredibly disappointed, but I liked Jonah Hex. Probably not going to see it ever again, but it was okay. Even though I spent most of the time, as the only person in the room who had read the comic book, confirming that “No, that’s not how it is in the book.”
Best running gag: The Other Dave’s “Aw man, that was the building where we stored all our dynamite!” “Aw, man, that’s the train where we stored all our dynamite!” “Aw, man…”
The Other Dave then begged off, pleading an early morning. which meant it was time for our last surprise feature of the evening:
Yes, that is Ron Ormond’s Please Don’t Touch Me, which had been requested long ago by Paul. An “educational” film, it purports to be a case study of hypnosis and its use in psychoanalysis, along with a bit of historical re-enactment and mondo footage for background. In general, it is the story of Vicki, the drool-inducing redhead in the clip, and the fact that she can’t have sex with her husband. Even the non-psychs in the audience can point out that this might be due to the fact that her mother apparently inserts “Too bad you were raped at the age of 15” into every conversation with her.
Of course, the power of hypnosis and the illuminating lantern of psychoanalysis demonstrates that she was not raped – she was assaulted and passed out, but a kindly passer-by interrupted the crime – and has only been going on her mother’s word all this time. And her husband’s wedding ring, of all things, was what set off the association. And all this is accomplished in one session. This guy is the Einstein of psychiatrists.
Of course, the usual excuse for making an educational movie is giving the audience some skin under the protection of the “educational” excuse, which doesn’t quite happen in Please Don’t Touch Me, even when, via hypnosis, we experience Vicki’s wedding night, When The Trouble Began. There’s a naked back, a bit of side-boobage, and a lot of salaciousness, but nothing explicit, which is surprising when you consider Dwain Esper was throwing nudity at audiences in the 30s all in the name of education.
Also, Ruth Blair, who plays Vicki, is the only woman I have ever seen who can make sliding onto a psychiatrist’s couch sexy, with a expertly nonchalant plucking at her skirt to reveal her garter belt. That’s talent.
The evening wound down, and there was only one thing left: I had promised Rick the episode of Pink Lady and Jeff guest-starring Jerry Lewis, and Dave’s earlier glee at inflicting Frankenstein Island and Jonah Hex on his unsuspecting guests turned into agony and horror. This wasn’t just decompressing, this was explosive decompression.
There is not much left to say about Pink Lady and Jeff. The bits with Jerry Lewis actually have some laughs, primarily because Lewis wrote that stuff himself. One of the interminable Art Nouveau salesman bits gets a bit funny when an elephant goes off-script and Jeff Altman, the Antichrist of Comedy, starts yelling that it’s not funny. A sketch about the second inauguration of Abraham Lincoln turning into a Dean Martin style roast yields the racist joke of the night, about plantation workers starting the NBA; Alice Cooper appears on tape to do “Clones”, and the @#$%ing kids I am watching this with ask, “When did Alice Cooper turn into Gary Numan?”
And we set off to our own hovels, secure in the knowledge that a) That was the house where kept all our dynamite; b) Though there was unaccountable longing for a Frankenstein Island sequel, the Jonah Hex sequel ain’t happening; and c) despite Paul’s whining there are still three unseen episodes of Pink Lady and Jeff.
I was going to take Friday off, but due to a shuffling of responsibilities at work, I took Thursday off instead. I had a nicely productive day at home – well, except int he realm of blogging – so no problems.
Well, except for the problems. Sick wife and child, whom I had to check in on regularly, while trying very hard not to get infected. I felt like I should have been wearing one of the condom suits from Andromeda Strain. I got to be huffy and adult when I made my wife turn off her phone because the teachers and parents from the schools she administers kept calling her every ten minutes, not allowing her any rest. The best was the mother who called because her son had a sore throat, and she wanted to know if it was strep.
The money I could have saved all these years had I just realized I had married a psychic doctor!
This morning, bereft of voice, she was going in because there’s a big field trip today, and apparently she is the only one who can drive a van. My asking, “Didn’t you hire adults?” wouldn’t have helped, so I didn’t. But good grief.
Of course, she moans, she can’t afford to get sick. And neither can I, I have an incredibly busy Saturday ahead of me. Shoot in the morning, show in the evening, just like last week, and fate seems to be conspiring to do the same thing next week. So having a wife that would be allowed to get well would be a very, very good thing, if only in the area of increasing the odds of my NOT getting sick.
I follow @JaytheBigLug on Twitter. That was a happy accident, I saw his name cropping up repeatedly in a silly Trending Topic I was participating in, I liked his sense of humor, so I thought a Follow for a day or two was in order. I’ve never regretted that. Jay does the microblogging thing well, with humor and glimpses into workplace and life. The fact that our tastes in movies are similar also helps.
So when I see something like this:
I have to sigh and say, “Yeah…”
It’s no surprise to anyone that I haven’t liked where this country has been headed in the last decade. Though I can point at a couple of points where there has been a definite step or two forward, there has been a hell of a lot of shuffling back. Xenophobia and shrillness are at an all-time high, and there was never a shortage of those two things in the first place.
Truthfully, no matter what the results of today’s vote, I cannot foresee any possible future where these things will not get worse, either because the xenophobes and panic drones suddenly have power or because they were denied power.
So severing digital ties for a day and then peeking my head out of the bunker to see what remains after the fallout settles sounds best for my blood pressure. I just proved I can go offline for a month and not perish, a day should be fairly easy.
Besides, I have work to do. Still haven’t found an affordable/free HTML editor that fits my fairly proletarian/utilitarian needs (cripes, I can barely fit my head around style sheets. I miss the pragmatism of Adobe Pagemill), so I remain behind on a couple of website responsibilities.
So. I voted a week ago. I put my two cents in the political machine. I now need to focus down to the level of my life, where there’s stuff that needs doin’. The rest of you go on with yer hootin’s and hollerin’, I’ll be over here with my headphones on, swearing because I can’t change fonts. There’s some “hopey-changey” crack I could make there, but fuck it, I ain’t playing that game.
I was in an unaccountably foul mood Saturday night before the show. Call it a cumulative effect, because it wasn’t due to any one disastrous event or another. A series of small disappointments (I suppose mainly due to reality’s dogged refusal to live up to my expectations) led to an unrepentantly ugly cloud hanging over me. No sound guy, so I was running both decks by myself. Done it before, not a big deal… until I find out we’re stuffed into one of the smaller rooms again, denying me the larger piece of real estate that makes such a setup easier.
There was an audience costume contest that night. I wasn’t expecting much to come of it. So I labored at getting the more complicated setup work, tried to prep myself as best I could, and sat stewing in my place as the doors were opened to a crowd of folk who had gotten there way too early. Stormcloud over my head.
Then Princess Leia walked into the room.
This was the New Hope Leia, in the form-fitting floor-length white number, and a damned good job of it, too, right down to the pastry-bun hair on the sides. And then a very credible Wonder Woman came in.
And I took it all back. Life was good, all of a sudden.
It really doesn’t take that much to make me happy, it seems. It was a fairly good show, I only bungled a couple of cues (which is, to me, unacceptable, but what the hell), everybody had a good time.
And the winner of the contest (as voted upon by the non-costume-wearing patrons) was Princess Leia. Hope that made up for Alderaan, Princess.
Wow, yesterday was a day. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the type of full day that leads to interesting writing or fascinating ruminations. It was just a day full of tedious chores. Yawn.
I mean, I could complain about minor-ass stuff that happened. Getting to work only to get a text from the wife that her sugars are wacky again and she’s run out of test strips, requiring me to leave work, drop by the house, then drop off the strips at her school, which is at the edge of a construction zone, then rushing back to the station to floor manage the news stand-ups.
But what would be the point? This is neither world-ending, deal-breaking, or even particularly annoying. It is just something that happened. I complain bitterly over the notion that it has been my turn to be the worrisome one for quite some time, but she refuses to listen to me.
Anyway.
Nice weather has made another appearance locally, cool temperatures, low humidity. I am hoping it sticks around at least another day, as tomorrow morning I’m covering a local charity 5K run, and I could use something a bit comfortable. I would enjoy having to roll my sleeves down for a change. Then, home to rest for the Saturday night show.
Incredibly, this will be the first Sunday in a while where no demands are placed upon me (yet). I am torn between becoming a complete vegetable at home or becoming a complete vegetable at Dave’s house. Either way, vegetation is in my future, and I welcome it.
I voted yesterday, thus renewing my license to complain for another year. I love voting early. No lines, no waiting, and since I choose fairly out-of-the-way venues, no organized harassment of voters. Yet.
Or, as I put it then:
Though honestly, now that I have the new computer, I have much better things to do than watch TV, even if I was digging the new Hawaii Five-O. The better things to do should include catching up on my writing, but I’m still cursing incompatible software and searching for replacements. I’ll be trying a new open-source graphics editor tonight, and hopefully it will allow me to carry on in peace.
Mainly: trying to find an open-source (ie., hopefully free) HTML editor so I can go back to writing reviews. I’m familiar enough with simple HTML that I could likely muddle through using a text editor and a template, but I like looking at a WYSIWYG image and pretending it’s a sheet of digital paper that I have magically conjured, complete with images. More plainly, dealing with my text in-between tags makes my head hurt.
I seem to recall taking a week to get back up to speed the last couple of times I did a forced upgrade. I mean, Good God, I got a copy of Plants vs. Zombies for my birthday, and I haven’t even played a full stage of it yet. Likely because I realize if I really let it get a hold, I’ll be playing it for hours. See also Angry Birds, which has killed my Droid battery a couple of times.
Considering my near-Pokemon relationship with respiratory diseases (“gotta catch ’em all, gotta catch ’em all!”), it’s little surprise I wound up visiting my death-bed for most of last week. A little overtime put in cleaning out my garage, setting up, shooting, then breaking down the International Festival, led to a breakdown of another sort. The more cynically minded among you might point out that this coincided a bit neatly with the arrival of my new computer, but those cynics will be guided to a trashbag full of mucus-soaked Kleenex.
I am feeling much more connected these days, in the thrall of updating my Twitter and Tumblr feeds every few minutes. This is a nice piece of machinery – quad core processor, more RAM than I’ve ever had (and capable of expanding to even more), and I managed to dodge the hideous bullet of Windows Vista. Yes, it came with Windows 7.
And I am finding that nothing I have works with Windows 7.
In all my Web shenanigans, I’ve been using the same graphics program forever, and it ain’t Photoshop. I long ago found Micrografix’ Picture Publisher much more intuitive – hell it was like using one of my hands, it was that damned easy – and stuck with it. Well, Micrografix got bought by somebody years ago, and last iteration they put out was compliant with Windows 2000, I think. Ditto for my ancient but still lightning fast and reliable ULead SuperSaver, which cut down graphic file sizes with little loss of resolution.
I’ve also found out if I plopped down $150 more for Windows 7 Ultimate I could run a compatibility mode that would allow me to use this stuff. Instead, I’ve been exploring the wonderful world of open-source programs.
But really, I kinda expected that. I’d hoped it wasn’t going to be the case, but… (and I’m going to guess Office XP is just going to produce evil laughter from the OS)
What really has me steamed is hardware. The digital video converter I got to use twice? Useless. The programmable game controller that I gave myself as a Christmas present? Works fine, but the programming software is not compatible. Sorry, no updated drivers will be forthcoming.A work-around is devised, a well-reviewed replacement for the converter is only $25, but…
I am ending sentences with but… quite a bit now.
I do keep hearing rumblings that what promises to be my next big writing gig has finally passed the funding hurdles, and at least now I can write at length. Especially since I replaced my broken computer chair. Yeah, that’s another expense we can mark down in the book.
Theoretically I can absorb all these expenses soon, but…
I’m engaged in a writing contract right now – I think I alluded to that earlier. Can’t say much about it, of course, but it amounts to another writing-by-committee venture, in which I bring my work to the table and I am informed of every aspect in which I am wrong, wrong, wrong, and my lively and likable main characters are ground down to bland, inoffensive placeholders. It’s not fun or necessarily rewarding, but it is a paycheck, and after a couple of years of scraping by on a part-time job and half, the money is more than welcome.
But, there are some things it is useless to argue about. I wound up dressing more warmly, leaving, stopping by the bank (which admittedly I needed to, anyway), getting the chicken, returning, and eating.
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