Butchered Paper

Taken to tax.

2012-02-05T08:01:00.000-08:00

At some point in the coming weeks I will need to sit down with an enormous stack of papers and electronic files and do my taxes.

Last year, this process did not go well. No matter how many times I did the numbers and the number of moths that floated their way upward from my turned-out pockets, it was the government's decision that I had somehow held onto more than my fair share. It was determined, thanks to my long association with The Daily Bugle, that I was a small business.

Given the fact that the Bugle's outstanding invoice to me now equals more than I ever made from them over the six-odd years I wrote for them, this was a bitter pill to swallow.

This year, however, I've tried to do a much better job of things. I've scanned receipts and tracked business expenses. I've kept a list of write-offs and an e-mail file of electronic statements. I've tried, though I still don't believe it to be an accurate designation, to think like a business.

I have no idea what the outcome will be and have considered hiring someone to handle this all for me...though I don't believe that it would truly change whatever awaits on the other side of that long form.

It's just that it would be much easier if I could simply sit nearby with my hands clamped tightly over my eyes.

Steal this book!

2012-02-04T12:44:00.000-08:00

While this past week in New York was something of a blur, I found myself with a few hours between the time when I had to vacate my hotel and when I needed to get to the airport. In that window I managed to get to two amazing bookstores - 192 books in Chelsea and Posman Books in the Chelsea Market - and pick up one book that's been on my reading list and one the achingly hip British store clerk informed me had only just come out, apparently ushered into the world in paperback.

I'll also say that Posman's Books was a surprise as well as I was actually only in Chelsea Market doing a kind of logo/packaging safari. What can I say, I'm a sucker for really good branding.

The book I did not buy, though I saw prominently displayed in both shops and despite the fact that it too is on my ever growing list, is P.D. James' Death Comes to Pemberley. What I love about James's project is that, in my opinion, it appears to be one of those wonderful moments when so-called genre fiction and literature meet in a wonderful way. On this list for me already is The Last Werewolf, a brilliantly literary monster story and, as it was my unexpected find in New York, A Monster's Notes by Laurie Sheck, which seeks to retell the Frankenstein story.

Full confession is that I don't think that there will ever be a genre piece coming from my laptop. A good friend of mine completed a very British Christie-inspired mystery during the last NaNoBlueBlahBloop and to him I tip my hat. But it's not for me.

Which means that I am stuck with a few titles for books I will never write that I feel compelled to leave casually on the countertop while I simply walk away. I'm orphaning them on the doorstep. Dropping them from my pocket onto the street.

You get where I'm going...right?

So, here you have them, genre book titles from Artboy to you. Take two...they're very, very small:

Beaver Cleaver: Horror in the North Woods

The Philadelphia Gory: A.P. Bagel's Cream Cheese Chronicles

Two for the Shoe: A Cinderella's Sisters' Mystery

Egg Rolled: A Number One Detective Tale

Moby, Private Dick: The Great Noir Detective

Just a Minute, Mr. Postman: A Mail Order Mystery

Minute Slice: A Thirty-Minute Murder

The looking glass ceiling.

2012-02-04T11:33:00.000-08:00

I am a behind-the-scenes person. My day jobs - with little exception - have been of the sort that, when I am doing what I do really well, no one knows that I'm there.

And, in those instances where they do, it's often wondered what, exactly, it is that I do.

I am part of phone calls, meetings, presentations and programs. I help design materials and strategies and events.

I find answers, decode acronyms and track down data.

It's what I do and, in all honesty, I'm generally more comfortable working the backstage. I am someone who both blushes easily and giggles when nervous. Singling me out for public praise causes these two reactions to collide.

I keep thinking this is why I find myself chafing a bit over a social media site run by an organization to which I belong. You see, it's for writers and authors and, more often than not, what it is is not interesting conversation and the exchange of useful information about opportunities and projects, but an ongoing broadcast of self-promotion, self-congratulations and occasional chest thumping from a few of the alpha males to remind all and sundry that they are really who the people have paid to see.

I find it all kind of disheartening and, frankly, kind of embarrassing.

The question, of course, is what to do about it. I have no intention of leaving the organization because the benefits outweigh this swamp of unfortunately directed self-esteem issues. The outlet in which this is all taking place could also be useful for creating the kind of networking and connection space that I've been craving. While it does seem that my freelancing is going to be picking up some more steam I'm quickly realizing that - while my attic studio is an unquestionable blessing - I'm not entirely interested in picking up where Emily Dickinson left off. In other words, while writing is a solitary pursuit and I've never been a laptop-in-the-Starbuck's type, some community would be nice.

Or, maybe the question is actually why this bothers me so much. Maybe it's not that I'm uncomfortable with the amount of self-congratulating that's going on over there in that corner of the Internet, maybe it's that I'm just uncomfortable with the idea of self-congratulation altogether. After all, if a "job well done" compliment sends me scrambling for the door, what's the likelihood that I would ever actually declare something I've done a job well done?

On the road again...

2012-01-30T18:16:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow I head out again.

This is something folks who do not travel for their jobs will tell you is a lot of fun.

But, if you do travel for work, you know that traveling for work is only fun when discussing those bits and pieces that occur outside those times that you are working. And, when those bits and pieces are not overrun by late flights, frantic e-mail activity and a ringing Blackberry.

I'm dreading tomorrow's trip (1), though it does mean getting to see someone who means a great deal to me. Which is, all cards on the table, the only reason I'm not in more of a state over this trip. The dread-making point of the trip will come soon enough but, in the interim, I get cocktails and gossip with a good friend.

As I write this...or rather, what I wrote up there just a minute or so ago, I'm conscious of the fact that another friend, The World Traveler, was worried about what the sand from an Egyptian dust storm had done to his phone and my reluctance to take a 90-minute flight seems both petty and kind of lame.

But, here's the thing.

After a lot of years of not feeling entirely settled, I now feel settled. The view out my kitchen window makes sense to me. The sounds and smells and tiny everyday errands feel completely what I should be doing.

As frustrated and angry as I have been over various things during this winter of my discontent, I know that Leopold and I made the right decision coming here to this rural city. So much so that I hate to leave even for the brief trips that must be made to continue to make this all possible.

So much so that, when unlikely and unwise opportunities peek their shaggy heads around the corner, they seem much more palatable than they would have now some one year ago.

And, who knows, maybe that flutter will be the thing to make all these other things...these bits and pieces...fall into place.

Crazier things have happened.

1. Which, for those of you peering behind the curtain does will not bring me to the land of monuments and ramen noodle-dependent House staffers. Soon...very soon.

There's no excuse for you.

2012-01-28T13:16:00.000-08:00

Walking across the parking lot of one of our rural city's minor malls, completely and utterly engaged in a conversation with myself (1), and snapped to only just in time to swerve around someone who, weighed down as he was with a giant coffee and not the cart full of groceries I was schlepping around the icy slog, had apparently been equally involved in some kind of in-his-head thing.

Only just realizing what had happened I turned to apologize and instead heard Joe Coffee Cup saying, "Excuse you."

See what he did there? He called attention to my thoughtless act by pointing out how rude I was by being more rude.

Clever, right?

Needless to say, any feelings of remorse I had immediately left me.

I also resisted the urge to yell after him, "You don't know me."

So, when all was said and done, I think I ended up totally on top.

1. Okay, actually, I was ranting about a situation over which I have no control. You know how you do.

Surfing for distraction.

2012-01-26T17:29:00.000-08:00

About a month ago one of my cousins asked, on my Facebook wall, "Do you just look for things to piss me off, or is there someone that doesn't like you very much that sends all this stuff your way?"

See, my BIG job, like pretty much every job that I've had in my adult life, involves my reading a lot of news. I have Google alerts and blogs I read regularly and then, of course, all the links that my real and virtual friends post and forward and pass along.

And, even as I add new stops on the information superhighway, I still pull off to visit old friends which means that...really...I spend a lot of time reading really depressing stuff. That's the trouble when you work in advocacy and activism. It's more often that you're spending your time making sure things don't get worse as opposed to celebrating how much better they've become.

Lately, that stack of depressing has seemed a bit taller.

I mean, c'mon. Newt Gingrich?

Rick Santorum?

And, in the interest of full transparency and equal time, President Obama really thinks that drilling in the Gulf of Mexico again is a good idea? Sure. Why not. What could possibly go wrong?

This might be why, in the last three days, I have probably listened to Kelly Clarkson sing "Stronger" somewhere in the neighborhood of 37 times.

It's also likely why the Roller Derby Queen and I have been trading clips from Toddlers & Tiaras. My personal favorite being Alana, a freakishly hyperactive girl whose long list of catchphrases includes "honey boo boo child".

I know what you're thinking, but I'm okay with that.

Sort of.

Is that a Batarang in your utility belt or...?

2012-01-25T14:48:00.000-08:00

So, I had actually meant to write about this piece when it first came out on the Comics Alliance blog but, well, I didn't.

Back on January 19th Adam Wheeler penned a little OpEd about "The Myth of Sexy Superman and the Search for Superhero Beefcake". I will say up here in full sight that some folks might take exception to some of the images that accompanied the piece, though there is absolutely no nudity and, in point of fact, were any of the characters depicted in the illustrations female instead of male, they would simply look like panels from an off-the-rack superhero comic.

Which was really what made Wheeler's "Sexy Superman" so well timed and such an interesting read. While debating the depictions of women and sex and violence in comic books is hardly new ground to be covering, the launch of DC's 52 and some of the decisions that were made for that universal re-boot seems to have made everything old new again.

But here's what really excited me about Wheeler's article.

I felt like I was in graduate school again. See, I was a theory kind of guy. Nothing made me happier than a course listing that promised a semester's worth of sticking things under the microscope. It was the closest I ever came to taking apart a car's engine to see how it worked.

Consider this passage from Wheeler's "Sexy Superman":

"But it's not equivalent. Superhero men are idealized, yes, but they're rarely sexualized. While women are presented as broken-backed boob hostesses whose every move is a bend-and-snap designed to flatter and entice the presumed-male, presumed-straight reader, the men are sexless paragons of strength, with propaganda poster good looks that serve as visual shorthand for their masculine, heroic bona fides."

The sound you are hearing is the beating of my tell tale heart.

"...presumed-male..."

"...presumed-straight..."

"...sexless paragons of strength..."

"...visual shorthand..."

Freaking catnip.

Hello blogger, my old friend.

2012-01-24T14:28:00.000-08:00

In case you were wondering, yes, I hate when I'm not blogging.

That's not, of course, the same as saying that anyone misses me when I'm not blogging.

That's not to suggest that the world is somehow poorer for the lack of my blogging.

It's not even to say that the blogosphere is poorer for my failing to blog because, if the blogosphere is to really be believed, no one really blogs anymore. We're all chatting on the Facebook.

That is to say, we're all chattering away on the Facebook until Anonymous comes through with their promise and takes the Fantastic Friend Factory down to prove, once again, that they can do this kind of thing.

Better, to prove that they can do this kind of thing in the fashion advocated by every movie villain ever created. They've told the Fantastic Friends Factory that they're going to take them down, when it's going to happen and then laughed maniacally while stroking a long-haired white cat while the Fantastic Friend Factory shouted back, "You'll never get away with this villain(s)!"

Shazam.

Stuck a feather in his cap.

2012-01-17T17:15:00.000-08:00

Before heading off to the BIG retreat I laid in some pre-cooked meals.

Some soups, a vegetable stew, spinach macaroni and cheese. Nothing that was going to get me a spot on Food Network, but enough to make Leopold's life easier as he pulled a week as Finkelstein's solo parent.

Sitting in the kitchen last night, trying to make a whole lot of words come together into a reasonably coherent article, Leopold came up behind me and gave me a big hug and a kiss on the cheek.

Artboy: What was that for?

Leopold: I'm just so glad you're home.

Artboy: Really?

Leopold: Yeah. I was running out of stuff in the freezer.

I can't write right now, I'm writing.

2012-01-16T16:36:00.000-08:00

I'm sitting here writing this blog post to avoid writing the freelance pieces that I want to get wrapped up in advance of the possible freelance project that might be showing up on my doorstep at about that same time.

This is, of course, in addition to my BIG writing job, aka, the day job.

And these freelance jobs writing and the BIG writing job are themselves currently in the way of the two personal writing projects that will likely never pay me at all.

And that's not even touching on the long radio silences that creep up on this blog which, for those of you that can remember that far back, I started so that I would be given a reason to write on a daily basis. Write for me, not for a paycheck.

The freelance pieces that will, in theory (1), mean a paycheck are for a new editor so that's adding to the feeling of panic that is preventing me from getting the words moving on the page. Despite the issues that I used to have with my old editor, we each knew where the other was coming from. I had built a solid relationship with him and he knew he could count on the work that I did.

But this is a new editor and there are other items floating around these pieces that must be written that are making them all the more difficult to write. Which leaves them on my "to do" list.

Which is full of other BIG "to do" projects.

Which leaves my personal projects hanging out by the bar, waiting for a table.

1. Isn't it always.

You gonna eat that?

2012-01-04T14:55:00.000-08:00

I am not hungry.

Okay. I'm hungry. Really hungry. Hungry and have been hungry all day hungry.

I didn't skip any meals. I didn't skip any between meal snacks. I didn't skip any between meal snacks snacks.

And now it's time to come up with a plan for dinner.

But here's the thing. Today is one of those days where I don't have a single good idea about food or dinner or eating and that's exactly why I'm hungry right now.

Some years ago, amidst the piles of fad diets that come out all the time, one emerged that encouraged you to follow your hunger. If you wanted peanut butter, eat peanut butter. Cheese? Eat cheese. Peanut butter spread on cheese and eaten while balancing on one foot over the sink in your kitchen? Sure thing. It's all yours.

I have no idea if it really worked or works, but I do know that, on days like this where I eat kind of aimlessly, I'm never full.

Which is making it feel like the bar has been raised on coming up with a dinner plan.

It also means that I'm really, really, really sorry that all the good Christmas candy is gone.

Really.

What are you gonna do?

2012-01-03T14:29:00.000-08:00

Like most everyone, there are a lot of things that I can't look back on without cringing.

And, no, I don't mean that in the non-literal sense. I'm talking actually, physically cringe inducing.

There are friendships that should have been maintained. Purchases that should have remained cash in my bank account. Jobs I should have likely taken or quit far earlier than I did. Opportunities I should have pursued, obstacles I should have observed and advice I should have listened to.

I should have said "no" more often than I like to think about.

Which is not to throw any shade on the "yeses" that make me very happy, not the least of which being my decision to accept a ride from Baltimore to Philadelphia and a dinner invitation from the man who would one day find himself being referred to as "Leopold" on this blog.

In all honesty, that one probably ranks as the "most of which", if such a thing exists (1).

But, this evening I'm thinking about that road not taken that gets talked so much about. Mostly, I'm wondering if it ever really existed to begin with.

More often than not, when I think of the things that I could have done, or the things that I maybe should not have done, I can still really clearly trace how it is that I would still have ended up in this little attic office, trying to keep my feet warm and listening to Finklestein snoring in her bed.

See, when the marker of another year passing is my birthday, I tend to freak out a little. It makes me anxious. I tend to serve myself a nice cold glass of regret with my cake. New Year's has generally been the same way. A big red "X" for the calendar where we're all supposed to gather around and come up with a list of resolutions for how we will be better in the New Year.

I'm going to be thinner, better read, a better cook, a better housekeeper. I'm going to get a promotion or quit my job or take more trips.

One that I've seen quite a bit this year has been to get off Facebook and spend more times with friends and relatives in the real world.

But even that last one is about fixing something...too many resolutions spring up from what we see as our shortfalls and shortcomings.

The past can't be changed and no one deserves to spend the opening months of the year scolding oneself for decisions made by someone your current self might not entirely recognize.

I will never be on a 30 under 30 list (2) for my writing. This year I'm deciding that that's okay. All I can do is start this New Year as a New Year. All I can do is say "yes" and "no" and "whoa, no thank you, please step away from the car" while thinking more about the future than the past.

Except, of course, for one particular Philly to Baltimore road trip (3).

1. No. I'm not just saying that because you read the blog. No, I'm not. No, I'm not. No. No. No. Stop it.
2. Fine. Or 40 under 40.
3. Yeah. That one was on purpose.

Winter of a lot of discontent.

2012-01-02T14:00:00.000-08:00

The other day I made an innocent comment on the dreaded Facebook about a certain celebrity chef who, in a perfect world, I believe would live next door to me and be my best friend.

First, to be clear, this statement was made while sitting on the couch watching said celebrity chef put together a counter full of food that looked far superior to anything that was going to happen in our kitchen without, say, my actually standing up. And, really, that wasn't about to happen.

So, really what I wanted was not so much a new best friend, but for the celebrity chef to live next door and bring me food while I sat on my couch.

But where's the poetry in that?

Time passes and then, someone who serves to often be a reminder of the fact that you do not get to choose your family, decided to post a blog entry that someone wrote regarding the celebrity chef and her decision not to participate in a Make a Wish foundation wish. It was, as these things are, accompanied by a snide comment.

Why would someone do this?

Perhaps he was concerned that I would actually sell my house and set in motion a scheme to live next door to the celebrity chef?

Perhaps he too hopes to one day become her best door neighbor so that they can enjoy theme brunches together and he wanted to throw me off the trail?

Or, perhaps he was, once again, being kind of a jerk on my Facebook page.

Irony of this entire exchange is that this particular relative is a tri-corner hat sporting member of the Tea Party which means that I'm to feel moral outrage that Celebrity Chef won't do a cooking lesson for the Make a Wish Foundation while Tea Party Relative is advocating for political candidates who don't care whether the children who are making wishes actually have access to healthcare.

Moral outrage is a funny thing.

When I just can't go there with you.

2011-12-26T10:15:00.000-08:00

So, it seems that I'm not the only person walking around with a chip on my shoulder.

Depending on what you read and where you spend your time online, you may have heard about Work It, a new sitcom set to kick off on ABC. Both GLAAD and HRC have come out against this show where two men decide to dress as women in order to land jobs. The feeling is that it's offensive to the transgender community.

I've not seen the show, but have spent a good deal of time reading whatever I can find about it and here's what I've gathered.

The show is horrible. It goes for easy laughs by hauling out every kind of stereotype it can get its hands on.

But, even when reading a review of the show written by an activist whose work I have admired for some time, I'm not able to get fired up about the men dressing as women aspect because, basically, it seems to be the least offensive thing the show has going for it.

See, if I thought that what the writers behind Work It had actually taken the time to craft some kind of mean-spirited sitcom intended to target transgendered individuals, then I'd be on board. I'd be posting and hollering and signing on to any letter I could get my hands on. But that's not the case here. The writers who came up with Work It seem to have simply created a really bad, really unimaginative show. For that reason I can't really get more worked up about this show than I am about, say, Two Broke Girls.

I'm irritated that the bar is being set so low. I'm offended that, for whatever reason, the former big three networks seem to have decided that they're going to let cable handle developing shows that involve creativity and imagination.

It also has me wondering what the line is. The Birdcage was considered funny. There have been no protests over classic movie channel screenings of Some Like It Hot. La Cage Aux Folles has not earned ire and consternation. I've not gotten a petition about Bugs Bunny dressing up as Carmen Miranda. Men in drag (1) has always been a part of comedy.

And all this is to say nothing about the lines so many have worked very hard to draw between drag, people dressing in clothing typically identified with the gender that is not their own, and being transgendered. One is costume, the other is identity.

So what is it about this show that has touched a nerve?

1. And in the case of several episodes of I Love Lucy, women in drag.

Fits and pieces.

2011-12-08T15:58:00.001-08:00

I'm angry.

Lately I've been in one of those periods where my time has largely been spent writing and editing for a number of BIG projects, which means that my radio listening has been more music than talk.

Today, however, I let NPR news and talk run in the background. This was not a good idea because, as the day draws to a close, I find myself ridiculously angry. I'm angry at Congress. I'm angry at my state's governor. I'm angry at President Obama and the sideshow exhibit that is the GOP line-up.

I'm angry at the economy and the Tea Party and those people whose only contribution to the country's educational system is telling people who actually work in classrooms all they're doing wrong. I'm angry at the idea of "useless degrees", as though the problems that we face is because there's an excess of intellectualism. I'm angry at a political party that is letting Newt Gingrich lead in the polls while, out the other side of their mouths, they trumpet family values and a return to morality.

I'm angry at bullies that cause kids to take their own lives. I'm angry at the parents of bullies who have failed not just their own child but someone else's.

I'm angry at church leaders who use faith as a bludgeon and not a candle in the darkness.

I'm angry at world leaders who are letting our air and water be poisoned and short-sighted corporate leaders who care more about the bottom line than the burned out horizon they are leaving for those who will come after us.

I'm angry at people who mock the Occupy movement because that's easier than trying to understand why it's happening. I'm angry at people who have forgotten where they've come from.

I'm angry.

And here's the thing. I actually have one of those jobs where I am working to try to make a difference. In fact, I've spent my entire life working places where the rule of the day is to make a difference, to make things better. I'm not ashamed to say that today is one of those days where I get to the end of things and ask myself, why?

No answer right now. No tidy little bow.

I think sometimes you just have to let yourself be angry.

Ooo-ah-oh.

2011-12-05T14:00:00.001-08:00

Years ago, when I had started, without really realizing it, actually being a writer for a living, I attempted to open a particular piece by referencing The Buggles "Video Killed the Radio Star".

"I heard you on the wireless back in '52, lying awake intent on tuning in on you, if I was young it didn't stop you coming through..."

You know the one.

Well, as it turns out, my boss at the time did not and he insisted, perhaps rightly, that no one would ever understand the reference.

And as you might be wondering how that was possible, that he was unaware of a song with lyrics like, "...now we meet in an abandoned studio, we hear the playback and it seems so long ago, and you remember where the jingle used to go...", I will say I do not know. I don't think it was his age. He was a journalist so it wasn't that he was holed up in a physics lab somewhere or, as is sometimes the case with Leopold, a practice studio where it is always the early Baroque era. But he had never heard of the song so the intro paragraph I loved vanished.

I've been thinking about the song lately (1) and all the times that video, also known as technology, has been going to kill something.

Or, more accurately, the times when technology has been going to kill something and, instead, winds up creating the kind of shift in thinking necessary to open a given form up to become something different.

That was one of the realizations that was strong and forward in my head when I came back from the writers' workshop I attended over the summer. People there were doing things that I never would have considered doing on my own. Things like short narrative poems that seemed more like a chunk of short story more than what I would have thought of as poetry. Novels made up of one page intervals. Short stories that read like a single sentence. Now, Lou Beach's collection of stories that took their word count from the original restrictions from The Facebook. It's one of the many reasons why the only universal rule I know of when it comes to writing is that you need to read a lot. You need to constantly be investigating what's out there to see and learn from.

A friend recently took a trip to South America and declared it a sabbatical to recharge his creative juices. That's not really an option for me, but I'm going to see what might be out there for the desk-bound among us.

Because, really, if The Buggles were wrong about video killing the radio star, maybe they were also wrong about our being able to rewind.

Or, at least, recharge.

1. And perhaps playing it a bit too much.

NaNoNoMo

2011-11-29T16:41:00.001-08:00

As I had predicted, I ended up bailing on this year's National Novel Writing Month early. By the end of the first week I wasn't even posting a word count anymore.

Long story short...the whole enterprise simply became more frustrating than fun. Maybe it's because so much of my time is driven by deadlines and constantly shifting due dates. Maybe it was juggling BIG issues. Maybe it's because I was left largely on my own, without the weekly check-in/writing date that The Novelist and I did to break up last year's NaNo, I just don't know.

Trying to come up with a solid reason would only end up making this short story much, much longer.

Not 50,000 words long. But longer.

And so, I continue trying to turn little bits and pieces into stories likely destined for the proverbial desk drawer.

Is it just me, or does anyone else hear a Peggy Lee song playing in the background?

Short. Temper.

2011-11-07T17:08:00.000-08:00

The Roller Derby Queen and I were having a conversation where she said one of those things that makes perfect sense.

Bad travels fast.

Okay, that wasn't exactly what she said, but that's the essence of it.

When something is going wrong in your life it's more than likely that it's going to end up overshadowing the everything. It ends up taking all the air out of the room.

Which is why NaNoWriMo is leaving me in the dust. Instead of doing the writing I should be doing to catch up on the word count, I can't seem to put a single coherent thought together. Which is making NaNoWriMo exceptionally frustrating.

Which is making me think of walking away from it for this year.

Truth be told, I don't actually think I'm a novelist. It's never been my great ambition. I love the short story which is unfortunate in a time when some will tell you that the short story is over. Which, ultimately, doesn't really matter. When the books are all destined for the drawer in your office, it's remarkably easy to ignore market trends.

But, tonight, I just can't decide. Am I short, or is it simply my temper?

BIG troubles

2011-11-07T16:50:00.000-08:00

So, today I ended the day with a call from my BIG (1) boss.

It came at the end of one of those days where it feels like, one after another, things are happening to you and there's nothing you can do to slow it down. Earlier, before the BIG boss, I had a call with my really BIG boss, BIG's BIG boss, and had a moment where every emotion that I was feeling came clearly enough to the surface that I heard the voice on the other end of the phone change. Change in a "it's not that big a deal" way...

Which left me feeling both embarrassed and more than a little childish.

So, by the time my BIG boss called I was sufficiently frayed.

The details of the conversation are unimportant except to say that they returned to a conversation I've found myself having frequently with folks, and it is this:

Writing is actual, real live, honest-to-sweet-Mary-above work. It takes skill. It takes talent.

And some folks refuse to recognize this. They know more than I do and that's that. There's nothing to do to change that fact.

At the end of the day, I was told, I just have to let folks do with my work what they feel they need to do.

Pieces that I spend hours laying out and fine tuning?

I need to leave them open enough so that people, people without degrees in art or design or writing, can change them up as they see fit.

So why, I wonder, am I there? Because, honestly, I'm increasingly confused about that.

1. Big Important Group...my workplace.

I'm gonna let him fly.

2011-11-05T11:11:00.000-07:00

So, among the things that I do NOT recommend doing during NaNoWriMo (1) is a morning of errands and laundry that includes a stop by the comic book shop.

And why is this, you might ask?

Because you will find yourself sitting and working on your manuscript wondering what possible harm there could be in stopping long enough to read Justice League Dark or the new issue of Batman.

I also received, for my purchases, a Legion of Super-Heroes Legion ring. If you are unfamiliar with either the Legion or the accompanying ring it's like this:

The Legion of Super-Heroes is a team of heroes from the 30th and 31st century who are buddies with Superboy. Saturn Girl. Lightening Lad. Bouncing Boy. Matter Eater Lad. It's like that.
Members of the Legion were each given a ring that allowed all of them to fly.

And now, I have one.

Of course, on my way out the door, Comic Dealer did remind me, "Just don't test it out. Okay?"

Somewhat amazingly, this warning appears no where on the ring...which is really just kind of asking for it.

1. Besides spending time writing in your blog as the 10,000 word checkpoint is just 24 hours away. For those who are wondering, the NaNoWriMo counter says that, at the pace I am going, I will finish my novel by February 1. This sounds impressive, were it not for the fact that, as I may have mentioned, I'm still finishing last year's novel.

The first rule of NaNoWriMo...

2011-11-03T16:24:00.000-07:00

The first rule of NaNoWriMo is to simply write.

Write hard.

Write fast.

Write messy.

Don't think too much about what it is that you're writing or where it's going because, the first time you start to invest too much in this 30-day draft, in cleaning things up and worrying about what will be taking place in your plot in a few days or a few hours from now, you will get bogged down. You'll miss your daily word counts. The little counter that tells you how you're doing will start to place your reaching the 50,000 word goal in late December, sometime in early January.

I have already, as you know from my previous post, looked down and tripped over my own shoelace.

I am also, as you will also notice, spending time and wasting words here in my blog and not in my manuscript.

A manuscript that I have, despite knowing that NaNoWriMo glory rests not necessarily in the quality but in the quantity, started already to worry about. Despite having two projects already going, two manuscripts that need my attention and, ideally, some significant portion of my brain power, I'm dismantling and re...mantling (?) the draft that I started just three days ago.

I'm the literary equivalent of the buxom blonde who twists her ankle while running away from the zombie in heels. I looked back.

The second rule of NaNoWriMO is never look back (1).

1. I have no affiliation with NaNoWriMo. I am in no way empowered to make rules for them.

NaNoUhOh

2011-11-02T17:14:00.000-07:00

So, as I did last year, I'm tackling National Novel Writing Month.

I have not had the excellent start that I did last year.

Some of this is because I don't have a writing buddy that I am meeting with on a regular basis as I did when The Novelist and I were using NaNo as an excuse to get together and eat ice cream.

Some of this is because I've been slammed by work deadlines. The less I say about these, the better. We'll just say that I'm having some BIG problems of late.

And some people are awful.

But much of the issue is stemming from the fact that I started an idea that I find I have no interest in at all, mostly because I fear I have created a lead character who is entirely uninteresting.

And why is that?

I believe it is because the individual that I put on paper is likely 20 years younger than the character that is shuffling about in my head. The character in the manuscript I have been writing has short blond hair. In my head, he is a balding, what's left of his curly red hair is only on the sides. He has a paunch. He wears tweed trousers and thick rimmed glasses and, for the purposes of the where and when of the story, he would likely have a raincoat of some sort. In my mind, it's a very traditional khaki colored trench with at least one missing button.

So why, I find myself wondering, is this other guy wandering around in my story while the person I think I was meant to be writing about is stuck in my head.

I have no idea if trading these two guys out will solve my problems. I have no idea why there's some blond guy in jeans bumping about the pages that I'm struggling to write. I mean, what's so scary about putting yourself in the head of a sixty-year old guy whose facing an occupational crisis and is feeling pushed out and overshadowed by people whose greatest advantage is being hip and attractive and whose greatest talent is how much they've achieved at a very young age.

Oh.

Right.

Artboy: Embarrassing Myself Since 1971

2011-10-31T17:39:00.000-07:00

This summer I ran away to a writers conference.

It was a birthday present to myself that did not go exactly as planned...largely because of this unfortunate habit that I have of not remembering exactly who it is that I am.

See, people who know me often do not realize that I am painfully, terrifyingly shy. If an event entails mixing and mingling, my stomach sinks and I go quickly into panic mode.

So, really, nothing says "recipe for success" like a campus full of strangers, the prospect of sharing my writing with said strangers and, because why wouldn't it, the work stress and deadlines that followed me deep into western Massachusetts.

And then there was my mobile.

Because I was juggling work calls, work e-mails, urgent work calls, urgent work e-mails, unimportant work calls and e-mails, and "Oh, I totally forgot you were on vacation" work calls and e-mails, I was toggling my phone settings roughly once every few hours.

Which is how I forgot.

Sitting in a reading by the author Steve Almond, one of the authors who I had specifically attended the conference to hear read and, if possible, workshop with, my phone began to ring. That's right. Steve Almond. The guy who wrote Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life and the absolutely and totally freaking brilliant Candyfreak: A Journey Through the Chocolate Underbelly of America (1). As intensely humiliating as it potentially is to say this, Candyfreak falls into the category of books that changed the way I think about writing.

Yes. That's right. A book about candy made me want to be a better writer. Based on that look, I'll tell you about the Twinkie book in another post.

And so, of course, it would be Steve Almond's reading when I would forget to switch my phone to silent.

"I bet whoever's phone that is feels like a real asshole," Almond said without missing a beat.

"He does," I said to the two women in front of me who had turned around when the ringing started coming from my workbag.

Well, tomorrow night, if you're in Newtonville or somewhere nearby, it's your chance to make a jerk out of yourself in front of author Steve Almond at Newtonville books. He's not only an amazing writer, but among the most entertaining readers I've heard.

You can also check out his website to see other places he'll be reading.

Really, you'd be an asshole not to.

1. Which brought the Idaho Spud candy bar into my life.

Draw your own conclusions.

2011-10-28T15:06:00.000-07:00

I am feeling in the middle right now.

On the one side, I'm watching friends and even a colleague or two who are doing exciting, incredibly creative things that, even if they were not my friends, would impress me.

On the other, I'm working on several deadlines that require me to stick to formulas that I've already created. They are, if we were to borrow from the language used to describe other media projects, elements of the "legacy" media.

And, and I'll do this up here and not in footnotes, here I am using the word media as an element of communication and not, as the shorthand is often used, to imply a journalistic endeavor.

I'm writing and designing print documents...items that some will simply tag in their PDF form onto an e-mail and send with the same care and attention with which you would forward a knock-knock joke or electronic chain letter.

I even had a meeting today where I realized, midway through, that I felt like I had run out of ideas. A few of the items I proposed were even met with the phrase that makes the creative mind go cold, "Oh, we did something like that a few years ago."

And now I'm sitting here wondering not just how to get my own creative juices flowing, not just how to get excited about work again...but how these folks feel as they're watching their projects take flight.

I e-mailed one of them today, cheering the fantastic piece that he had helped bring about, and his response sounded a bit like he was surprised that I would have been so taken.

So, is that what it is when one of the expectations of your work is that you will be creative, always wanting to do more, better and surprising?

Are you simply always living in the eye of the hurricane?

And, if that is the case, then how do you know the difference between the hurricane's eye and creative dead air?

Squatters.

2011-10-27T16:59:00.000-07:00

So, if you stopped by earlier today you might have noticed a comment had been made on one of my posts.

It seems the reader, whose name I did not recognized, was so moved by what I had written that she decided to offer low to no interest loans to anyone who happened to come by.

I know. It's very, very generous.

The world would be a better place if there were more fake-person-robo-spammers posting to random blogs about their dubious financial products.

It reminded me of a running issue that I had with another arts writer (1) who, out of the blue, began placing links to his stories in the comment section of my reviews. On a few occasions, the message left was, essentially if not explicitly: "Artboy might have hated this show but our critic thought it was great. You should read our review here [insert link]."

The situation infuriated my editor who was mostly angry about the fact that the other arts writer was plugging his publication for free on our website. It was free advertising that was capitalizing on the fact that I was a critic who people actually read.

Now, my writing is simply anonymously spammed.

How's that for a really depressing virtual reality check?

1. For any who happens to know the individual I am talking about, you will likely be amazed that I refrained from placing the word "writer" in quotes.

Holy [BLEEP] Batman.

2011-10-26T16:45:00.000-07:00

So, Frank Miller wrote a graphic novel.

I love Frank Miller or, more accurately, I love Frank Miller's work.

Like a lot of self-identified comics geeks, The Dark Knight was nothing short of epic in my world. It's beautiful and dark and moody and was, truly, my ideal for what a comic book should be.

He wrote, and another huge favorite of mine Bill Sienkiewicz illustrated, an Elektra: Assassin mini-series that absolutely blew my mind.

He created Sin City. Pant. Swoon.

Sigh.

But now there is a significant ruckus being kicked up about Miller's new book, Holy Terror, which some have said falsely conflates Islam and the terrorism of Al Qaeda.

Comics Alliance, my personal online workday cigarette break, closed out today with the following quote from Miller: "I can tell you squat about Islam. I don't know anything about it. But I know a goddamn lot about Al Qaeda and I want them all to burn in hell."

Shocking quote, right? The kind of thing to drive folks into a frenzy.

But here's the thing. After reading that quote I went to Frank Miller's website, and here's what he had to say:

"Let's keep in mind that, back in the forties, Superman punched out Adolf Hitler. Or that the O'Neil/Adams Green Lantern/Green Arrow series in the seventies was a left-wing screed that climaxed with Jesus strung up on the head of a jumbo jet. Subtle stuff, all of it.

Come on, Propaganda is rampant. News objectivity is a twentieth-century myth. We only complain about propaganda when we don't agree with it."

There's more. You can read it for yourself. I agree with bits and pieces and feel the hairs on the back of my neck raise from others.

What do you do then, with a writer who says, without shame or hesitation, that he's well aware that he's created something that is blatantly, without shame, one-sided in its view. He's mad as hell, and he's venting it out in the way that he is able. He's a guy that has created some of the most iconic comic books of recent times, so he's created a graphic novel that is explosive and angry.

And, if you know Miller's work, you know that explosive and angry is not a new thing.

And I couldn't help but wonder if Miller's work is being viewed differently because it is a graphic novel, a series of ideas and emotionally-based expressions being played out in a format that some identify with Archie and Veronica. We've had other artists create works of art as provocative as this. We've certainly had writers raise issues with the same violent enthusiasm.

And, more often than not, when the artist in question is pressed, they often divorce themselves from their work. They are "exploring the public discourse." They are "trying to incite a conversation."

Miller's work? It's because he's angry.

Don't get me wrong. Anger can go too far. Propaganda can go too far. Virtually anything in this world over which we have control can go too far.

The question here, it seems to me, is whether it's Miller or the criticism of his work that's perhaps gone too far.

Artboy in the attic.

2011-10-26T16:02:00.000-07:00

On Wednesdays, Leopold teaches piano lessons.

Normally, I find a way to be out of the house for his evening lessons. Not because I mind the sounds of a piano lesson, but because I suddenly become horribly aware of how generally loud I can be up here in the attic.

Just less than an hour ago, in fact, I was listening to NPRs All Songs Considered music feed, while waiting with the phone on speaker for a student loan representative, while asking the dog to stop doing whatever it was she was doing at the time (1), while talking to myself, wondering aloud when it is that Mr. Rochester will be getting back with those whoopie pies.

Yes, I made that last one up.

Edward Rochester would never have brought whoopie pies.

1. Say what you will about dogs being or not being child substitutes. All I know is that I find myself correcting Finkelstein's behavior with such blind regularity that the minor, ongoing infractions barely register. Not, "don't pee on the carpet" reprimands (2)...more like "don't", "stop", "knock it off", "I'll kill us both, I swear to god"... That kind of thing. You know how moms do.
2. Which, don't get me wrong, is awesome that I don't ever need that one.

cough

2011-10-26T15:42:00.000-07:00

So, sometime between yesterday and today, I got sick.

Scratchy throat. Stuffed up nose. Hacking cough.

It's really charming.

But it also raised, yet again, an interesting element of working from home.

When you work from home and you are sick, what would it actually mean to call in sick?

I mean, when most folks call in sick, they're calling in to say that they will not be at work that day because they are staying home.

But I'm already home.

Keep in mind, in this instance I am raising the question of an illness that is more irritating and annoying than anything else. The kind of an illness your co-workers would actually like you to stay home with so that you don't pass it along to everyone else but you don't because, well, it's just a cold.

So I went to work...which is in my home. So I was home, sick, but not home sick.

Or homesick.

Which would be another really interesting thing to stay home from work over.

"I'm afraid I won't be coming in today. I'm homesick."

Well, I'll be...

2011-10-24T14:44:00.000-07:00

So, last week was a BIG week which meant my time, for the most part, was not my own.

It's amazing how much more drained you feel at the end of the day when you realize that you're not going to your own house.

You're not going to be sleeping in your own bed.

There's no reason not to pick up a project after getting home, curling up in bed (1) with your laptop and not the book you're reading (2).

It also means that I tend not to write anything that isn't going to have someone else's name on it at the end of the day. It's not that there isn't a silver lining to be found there (3). This time around I got to have an actual working breakfast with Tintin, a journalist who is neither red-headed nor known to travel with a small white dog, but whose country-crossing schedule makes my own look quite zombie-like.

It was at breakfast that this happened:

Tintin: So, it sounds like you're really settled in.

Artboy: What?

Tintin: Well, like this is what you do now.

Artboy: What?

Tintin: That BIG is where you were meant to land.

Artboy: What?

I mean, what?

This was a line of thought that I had not previously entertained. In fact, what I had been thinking for much of the week is how stealthily I have systematically booted myself backward every few years. Moving myself further back down the proverbial ladder and the payroll chart. While it's starting to look like I'll be able to pick up some additional freelance work, my mind is wandering again. I've been wondering what comes next...where I will go next.

I was not thinking, this is what I do now.

Damn.

1. Or sofa bed.

2. Which, right now, is Swamplandia. Fan-freaking-tastic.

3. Beyond the part where, most of the time, other people pay me to write far better than I pay myself.

Eating out.

2011-10-15T13:06:00.000-07:00

As I may well have mentioned in a previous post, because of the spiritual community that Leopold belongs to, we do not eat meat on Fridays.

Or, put more accurately, I do not serve meat for dinner on Fridays. I've been known to enjoy the odd Friday beer and burger combo.

But this week is the last week that we will be getting a meat delivery from our CSA. Our vegetable share, thanks to the very different climate here in our new rural city home, ended last week. Which has started me thinking in a very different way about the omnivore's dilemma.

This week, for no real reason but that there the temperature had dropped a bit and, for reasons I will likely be writing about in the not-too-distant future, we were holding off on letting the furnace kick in until a visit from our friendly neighborhood repairman, I started a pot of beans.

Simple. Easy. Two cups of beans and some cold water set on the back of the stove for the day. Add some sauteed onion, a baby eggplant, crushed tomatoes and a few hits of rooster sauce...a kind of really good vegetarian chili.

Add to that a side outing I took today to the natural food store located nearby. This is one of two that I had known about but, as time tends to fill faster than you think it will, I had never been to either. So, since Leopold was stuck behind his desk working on a paper about the Biblical Great Flood, I took the opportunity to make a visit and pick up some animal crackers (1).

As natural food stores go (2) this one was actually much larger and better put together than a lot that I've seen. The staff was young and a goofy in a really fun way, joking with each other and singing while they stocked shelves (3). A huge selection of beans and grains and dry goods. Locally-sourced or sustainably raised meat in the freezers. A small but respectably in-season vegetable aisle. There were people out front collecting signatures to get marriage equality on the ballot.

If NPR had been playing, it would have been the kind of scene a fiction workshop would have shredded for being too unrealistic.

But there it was, sitting an easy drive away in our new rural city.

All this making me think that it might be time to push the Friday thing a bit further. Because I was trying to finish up some odds and ends from our last CSA veggies before they went bad, we were actually meatless a few times. Braised celery with tomatoes and lentils on pasta one night. A kale and lentil stew with brown rice another. Artichoke and cheese quiche with roasted potatoes another.

And, as much as I will always consider a good cheeseburger the real test of a restaurant's bar menu, these vegetarian experiments and the discovery of a wall full of solid, cheap options has made me think that a challenge might be in order.

See, most vegetarian cookbooks bore me. While I think that there are some great techniques out there, the reality is that too many fall into the perception that folks have of vegetarian cooking. They are the NPR-listening, gay marriage petition pushing, "natural food" store of food publishing.

But, when I have a chicken in the freezer, or pork chops or ground beef...I don't go to our cookbooks. I might, to check a cooking temperature or sample a time, but I've long since passed that point where I need a daily tether. I know enough to intuit time and temperature. I have a pretty decent artillery of tools at my disposal. I'm not afraid to make my own stock or braising liquid.

So why is it that I've been giving vegetables an easy out on this deal?

Too few months ago, when our very brief CSA had finally started, I tore into our first delivery bag and Leopold joked that I finally seemed excited to cook again. With winter creeping closer every day, and a new farmer's market season well off into the distance, maybe that pot of beans is something to keep my eye on.

The food industry has made it so it's entirely possible to eat exactly and precisely the same four meals every day of the year, wherever you are. The ingredients will likely always be close at hand. What happens then, when we give in and make the most with what we have?

1. Get it? Great Flood? Animal crackers?
2. A phrase I can't use without instantly imagining a bunch of people in loose-fitting hemp clothes selling dented melons while raving about the pot of bee pollen tea they just brewed.
3. Not in a Glee way, more like how you do when you're riding around in the car.

Pre-occupied.

2011-10-15T10:36:00.000-07:00

I am one of the 99%.

Big deal, right?

I mean, I can appreciate a good slogan as much as the next urban camping enthusiast, but there's been something bothering me about this entire back and forth.

And it started before the Tea Partiers decided that their brand of standing in the middle of public spaces screaming at people passing by and waving sometimes incredibly offensive signage was different than the Occupy movements brand of standing in public spaces screaming at people passing by and waving sometimes difficult to fully comprehend signs.

It started before Herman Cain decided to purport the idea that being unemployed and living in poverty was a character flaw.

It started before I had to comprehend the idea of people cheering that the space they were occupying was NOT going to be cleaned and sanitized when many of us who have lived in urban spaces would have been more than appreciative of someone offering to clean and sanitize anything.

It started before the annoying dismissal of the Occupy protesters by a commentator who took issue with the fact that locations were often planned based on the availability of wireless. For anyone speaking in the context of a news organization to not understand the why of that should be more embarrassed than the citizen activist who wants to stay within broadband distance of a hotspot.

It started before the Democrats began putting their toes meekly into the shallow end of the Occupy Wall Street movement, trying to determine when these protesters would eventually wield the influence sometimes demonstrated by the Tea Party.

It started before the Republicans conveniently forgot that, when it was the Tea Party waving "Don't Tread on Me" flags in the streets, they condemned anyone who questioned the motivations of loyal Americans trying to have their voices heard.

It even started before the latest Facebook revamp caused comments made by members of my family, about the whining spoiled liberals with private school educations and advanced degrees, to serve as my morning wake up call.

In other words, it started pretty early, kicked off, as a matter of fact, by an e-mail exchange with a family member who wanted to hear a "liberal" perspective on the protests.

What I said, and what many commentators and individuals skilled with The Photoshop have worked hard to convince us all otherwise, is that I see the Occupy and the Tea Party movements as far more alike than they are different. Maybe the tactics are not the same. Maybe the overall power structure is different and the expressed goals diverge more than they overlap, but at their core, they are both emotions-based outbursts.

I won't diminish or demean either (2) by using a word like tantrum, because I mean outburst much like I would use the word "cloudburst". This is about a sudden release, a flash storm of frustration and anger and, I'll say in both cases...despite the surface support the Republican Party has decided to afford the Tea Party...a sense of real helplessness and powerlessness. A desire to want to make things better, even though the visions of what that "better" future will be are wildly different.

And in that desire to see things get better, I have to say that I'm fully onboard.

In that, I am the 99%.

1.) Points to the Occupy folks though...the spelling has been generally pretty good.

2.) At this point at least.

Why I don't have a book contract.

2011-10-11T18:42:00.000-07:00

I was sitting behind someone at a book festival a few weeks ago who made the statement, "My agent told me that the animal memoir has crested."

I will note here that this particular individual had managed to mention her agent enough times that there was no choice but for the woman seated next to me and I to exchange eye rolls with one another.

But, today I am here to say that it's not that the animal memoir has seen its day come and go. It's just that people are telling the wrong story.

Here, I will tell the inspirational dog story that the others are afraid to tell.

Why?

Well, because it's kind of gross.

You see, last night, upon arriving home from a dinner party, Leopold went to fetch Finkelstein only to discover that she had had...an accident. A...number two kind of accident.

Finkelstein is not a dog who is prone to accidents. I can, in fact, count on less than one hand the number of times that she has not made it outside.

On two occasions, she was flat out mad. Leopold was away. Our regular dog walker (1) was away. I was working crazy hours and had been deemed completely incompetent as a single parent. Finkelstein was left no choice but to administer her own brand of tough love.

And, in one instance, the last one I recall, she was suffering from a passing stomach bug, which is what did her in this time.

After an unplanned, and very chilly, outdoor bath and a thorough scrubbing of her crate (2), the Fink retired to the comfort of her favorite blanket.

Or, she briefly retired to her favorite blanket. Finkelstein and I would venture out three times before her usual morning walk. At one point, bleary eyed and disbelieving that she needed to go out again, I threw Leopold's giant L.L. Bean flannel coat over my shorts and a pair of Vans to take her out (3).

"It was only later," I told Leopold, "that I realized I was walking our dog dressed as an Alaskan hooker."

But after all this, the accident, the bath, the multiple late night walks with Nanook of the Nooky, and her usual morning walk where things were shown to still not be entirely right, Finkelstein came into the kitchen and went to the spot she goes to when she is waiting to be fed.

And she waited.

And she waited.

I, for all obvious reasons, did not feed her breakfast, hoping quite out loud that we would soon move from "explosive" to plain old "diarrhea" very soon (4), but truly had a moment where I couldn't help but admire our girl's cockeyed optimism. After all that, she was ready to sit down to her usual breakfast.

It's certainly not the kind of story the pet memoir literati is looking to tell, but when you've been up all night walking the streets, you take what enlightenment you can get.

1. ...who broke all the rules and would take Finkelstein with her for hours at a time. For the price of a 20-minute walk, Finkelstein was officially transformed into a girl about town. She was Doggie Golightly.
2. I know that it is controversial to some folks but, I will swear on anything you hold holy, Finkelstein is a big fan of the crate. She will actually take her bones and toys and put herself in the crate. She's the sullen teenager we've never had.
3. Temperatures here are already in the 30s at night. You would not believe how happy that makes me.
4. Every dog owner I know is in full agreement. Nothing causes your stomach to sink faster than the realization that the dog has diarrhea. It's beyond me that it was not named to a circle of Hell.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand...GO!

2011-10-06T11:33:00.000-07:00

Today a stack of discs arrived in the mail and, somewhere in the background, a timer began ticking.

As is often the case, I've landed myself in the middle of a project with little time for turn around and less room for error.

Okay, that's a little dramatic.

Actually, it's a lot dramatic.

If I were to miss the deadline (1) no one will die. Children will not go hungry. The opportunity to cure cancer will not be lost. The world will keep spinning.

People will continue to make theoretical lists of very important things against which less important things will ever be measured.

And I will continue to take on projects that will make me kind of crazy and frantic for little to no money and a thin bit of satisfaction.

Sunrise. Sunset. Sunrise. Sunset.

1. Which I will not.

Boots.

2011-10-05T17:00:00.000-07:00

For the last several days I've found myself listening to Adele's Someone Like You.

A lot.

Kind of obsessively actually.

I'm going to blame it on the arrival of fall, with the sun going down early and the weather getting colder in a pretty rapid fashion. There's something that just feels right about walking the dog in the gray end of the afternoon with a sad love song playing in my ear.

Which is kind of where the conversation that I had with the Roller Derby Queen started.

You see, I have a theory.

While the Walkman and the Discman were able to let us carry our music around with us well before this -- to say nothing of portable radios and its kin -- the iPod lets us program to our heart's content.

It lets us, with very little effort, create an actual soundtrack for our lives. A seamless, high-quality, carefully curated soundtrack as plotted and planned as the scoring of a big budget Hollywood movie.

Which is why we love the iPod, even if that's not why we think we love it.

It's 15 minutes of fame, with Adele cheering us on.

Or, more accurately, urging us to cry on her shoulder.

Cheers.

2011-10-03T17:15:00.000-07:00

After dinner, Leopold headed up to his office to read and listen to music. I finished cleaning up the kitchen and then checked in before heading to the family room to watch the second episode of Prohibition, the new Ken Burns documentary.

Artboy: Do you want anything?

Leopold: Are you having anything?

Artboy: Well, I'm going to watch the second part of that documentary, so I'm going to open a bottle of wine...otherwise I'm afraid that the mob will come in and take over the house.

Leopold: Of course.

Seriously?

2011-09-30T08:59:00.000-07:00

If you have something to say, something you absolutely and honestly believe, then say it.

Don't try to dress it up in a flag and tri-cornered hat and call it patriotism.

Don't sample various explanations to see which get the loudest applause and then go with that one.

Don't say that you didn't hear the booing.

Don't try to distract folks with a long list of things that you think people want to hear so that the thing you know they don't want to hear is less out in the daylight.

And don't say or do something clearly intended to be shocking and controversial and then express your dismay that people are shocked or find what you're doing controversial.

This all started when I read about a GOP student group at Berkeley who held what they claimed was a satirical race-based bake sale to protest a bill that would allow California's university system to consider race, ethnicity and gender in admissions decisions.

The cost of baked goods for "Whites/Caucasian" was $2.00. "Asian/Asian American" pricing was $1.50. Separate pricing was also offered for Latinos and Native Americans with a discount for women as well.

The student GOP group was then, reportedly, shocked that people found what they had done to be racist.

Of course, given that the group posted on a Facebook page about the event: "Hope to see you all there! If you don't come, you're a racist!" I'm going to say that they knew exactly what they were doing.

But stepping up and saying that they were engaged in an activist protest against what they see as the mistreatment of "Caucasian/White" students by the university system is risky. After all, making a case for the oppression of individuals who identify themselves as "White/Caucasian" (1) is a difficult side to argue and, at a school like Berkeley, hardly a popular stance to take.

It's also kind of laughable.

So, instead of taking ownership, they did what a lot of folks are doing. They claimed to have been misunderstood.

Which means that I went beyond having little respect for the position that they are taking and having no respect for them as an organization.

It's a list that seems to be getting longer every day.

1. I keep putting this in quotes because this is the phrasing they used on their bake sale sign. I can't even get into the issues involved in the breakdowns.

ch-ch-ch-ch..oh, forget it.

2011-09-29T07:33:00.000-07:00

The saying goes, "The more things change, the more they stay the same."

I do not like change.

Or, in the past I have not liked change.

Now I find it's the things that are the same that are getting to me a bit.

Or, more precisely, the fact that the more things change, the more they really do stay the same.

And no, writing it out in French would not make a difference.

It would still be saying the same thing.

Just in French.

Status symbols.

2011-09-27T15:06:00.000-07:00

So, the other day I was reading a review of I Don't Know How She Does It, a movie based on a book that would, by my reading, really, really like to be the next Devil Wears Prada.

Based on the review, and every other review I've read, I don't think that's going to happen.

But here's what struck me.

Momster.

This is, apparently, the word used to describe the stay-at-home moms who do all the things that the harried working mom does not. They bake. They volunteer. They are, if we are to buy the shorthand, the enemy of the working mother.

Which is why, as she begins to wrap her review, writer Ella Taylor makes the point of offering that "...we working mothers should be grateful to stay-at-home moms who work their unpaid tails off raising funds for school arts programs and who, when called upon by women working late for emergency child pickups, quietly say, 'No problem, take your time, she can eat with us.'"

Which made me wonder if that's really what the divide, the divide between those who stay-at-home and those who work in an office, really is about. Is it really that stay-at-home moms are unappreciated by those who depend on their ability to jump into the void and lend a hand or that stay-at-home parents (1) spend their evenings scoffing at store-bought cookies working folks bring to the PTA potluck?

Or, is it that tale as old as time, with the grass being greener on the other side?

Or, is it Facebook?

Before the Facebook, the world of daytime was largely secretive. It happened behind closed doors after everyone else headed to work and school. The day of the stay-at-home parent was a mystery generally distilled into a list of completed chores and a meal on the table.

Now, those folks who spend their days in an office see ongoing threads of Facebook posts about trips to the park, afternoon walks and rainy day movie marathons. Even laundry is made lighter when distilled through the Mary Poppins-like lens of watching life at home unfold through chirpy social media.

"Too much laundry! Hope to get it finished soon so we can take advantage of the beautiful day outside!"

And that unbridled online cheerfulness is compounded by the choice factor. The choice of being able to work or not work is not really a choice for some...I would actually say it's not a choice for most, but I've not really got any hardcore statistics to back that one up.

"I need a break! Heading to Starbuck's with the kiddos for a little time out of the house!"

Which means that mid-afternoon Starbuck's outing with the kids is not simply a trip to get an overpriced cup of coffee, it's the ability to stand up, put on a jacket and do whatever you want to do for a few hours while it is still daylight.

So, maybe it's not really a war between the office and the momsters and their male counterparts. Maybe it's just Facebook, transforming the ability to stay-at-home into a "status" symbol.

1. Because it's not just moms who are staying home to raise kids...it just seems that no one has taken the time to come up with the male equivalent of "momster" or the ever popular "stepmonster".

First, there's this.

2011-09-27T14:09:00.000-07:00

So, I'm in the middle of writing a different post but here's what happened.

Often times, when I'm struggling to come up with a book cover to illustrate what I'm writing, I'll scroll through a few of the design sites that collect great book covers or some online book reviews to see what's out there.

Other times, when those fail, I hit Amazombie and go through their best seller lists or do a keyword search or three.

Today, coming up empty on all fronts, I decided to do a search and used the word "office".

And what did I get back?

Guides for how to use various office products. Which is not particularly surprising.

Mixed in, however, with all those dry "ctrl/alt/delete" textbooks was a surprising number of flowery romance novels placed in office environments.

Which is not particularly strange, I guess, except that the other romance novel trend that I seem to keep tripping over is that category made up of what some have dubbed "bonnet rippers". These are romance novels that involve Amish people.

All of which means that the "recommended based on your past searches" list on my Amazombie home page looks really, really strange.

No where to run to.

2011-09-23T12:41:00.000-07:00

It appears that the theme for today is refuge.

As in, taking refuge.

Folks have slowly dropped off my Skype feeds.

A few people have waved the white flag my way to say they're heading home to start the weekend early.

A few people are using the "working from home line", not realizing that it's a euphemism that works better for some than others (1).

And I, of course, am puttering around in my blog, because I'm trying very hard to get back into the mindset of the work I need to do today.

Yesterday ended poorly with BIG, and my response has been the kind of mental frustration that saps your attention and leads you to rail angrily about the fact that someone wants you to feel nervous for what might happen to their $600K annual take.

Which you can feel is more or less fair. That's the beauty of things.

But digging out of these mental ditches is nothing short of a drag. My best laid plans are sitting there, staring at me from my to do list. My body quite literally feels physically exhausted. My brain is bouncing from one thing to another. My motivation has been shot to nothing. The rest of the day is stretching out in front of me like a deserted stretch of highway.

I'm writing phrases like "deserted stretch of highway".

And I'm starting to wonder where it is that I can go to hide out from the world.

When everyone else is heading for the hills, where do you go if you're already there?

1. If I've been waiting for something from you since yesterday, when it was to be turned over to me by the mysterious COB, and I still don't have it...what you call "working from home" I read as "staying home to watch the last episode of All My Children."

Must be funny.

2011-09-23T08:34:00.000-07:00

The other day I listened as a Republican politician explained, with a kind of indignant condescension, to an interviewer just how wrong she was.

Using his own publicly disclosed finances as an illustration of who exactly would be impacted by the proposed changes in the tax laws, the politician explained that, of the roughly $600,000 he made on an annual basis, some $200,000 was spent feeding his family and keeping a roof over their heads.

That meant that he had just $400,000 left to re-invest in his business.

Oh, the humanity.

A mere $200,000 to shoe and feed his children.

But even leaving that ridiculous statement aside, placing the idea that we are to feel some sort of empathy for the fact that this individual is ONLY clearing $600,000 annually into a cookie jar for a rainy day, there is the offensive idea that the proposed tax changes would potentially cause him to have to lay people off.

Because that's what the issue at hand really is.

It's not about not having enough money to keep food on the table, it's about asking others to make sacrifices you are not willing to make. It's about having no idea what it is to live from paycheck to paycheck to such a degree that you expect others to understand the stress of having to live within a $200,000/annual household budget.

Because I don't.

A tale of two authors.

2011-09-22T17:43:00.000-07:00

Today I heard the authors of two books - each earning the kind of early critical praise that makes you think this literature thing might just catch on - interviewed on NPR.

Two different shows. Two different hosts. Two very different authors.

The interesting thing?

I had actually read about both books before hearing the interviews. One instantly caught my attention, the other I thought of as having a clever, but not particularly arresting, idea behind it.

And now? After hearing the author interviews?

I've completely flipped my opinion.

The author of the book I thought would be completely fantastic seemed uninteresting and a bit vacant. The author of the book I thought would dissolve under the weight of its own conceit was charming and funny and just the right kind of dry.

I feel that I might have found a way to judge books by their covers in a whole new way.

No. I'm not saying it's right.

I'm just saying it is.

Overnight sensation.

2011-09-22T17:27:00.000-07:00

So, I know that I've already mentioned DC Comics' New 52, the reboot of their comic book universe that's intended to attract new readers and save the superhero-making industry from a slow demise.

But here's the thing.

I can't get my hands on most of them.

Sure, this isn't particularly surprising. My rural city was hardly high on the list of places the myth makers down in Gotham were targeting. I never imagined we'd be getting all of the new titles. As much as I would love to read Frankenstein, Agent of Shade, I didn't figure he'd be tromping his size 17s up this far north.

But, no Wonder Woman. No Batman. No Batgirl.

I've snagged a copy of Action Comics #1, with its brand new boho Superman. I have a copy of Justice League. I have my fingers crossed that, next week, I'll manage to land an Aquaman.

I could, of course, get copies of pretty much anything that I wanted online.

No. Not from a friendly virtual neighborhood comic shop.

From eBay...where folks who snatched up first editions of DC's New 52 promptly turned around to resell them.

Ignore the fact that many of the books are getting panned.

Red Hood and Catwoman for mixing up the terms "reboot" and "booty" and serving up heaping helpings of misogyny. Green Lantern and Wonder Woman for horrifyingly graphic depictions of violence in books that have been rated "T" for teen readers. Action Comics for being intensely boring (1).

But forget about content or quality. Forget about those folks who are earnestly interested in following this pretty significant moment in the arc of comic books.

Buy 'em up and sell 'em off. Folks will surely pay any price. You are absolutely, positively going to score a profit.

What could possibly go wrong?

1. Yeah. That was mine.

Genius!

2011-09-20T15:22:00.000-07:00

The good folks at MacArthur have announced the newest list of geniuses.

I am not on the list.

I'll give you a minute to come to terms with that.

It's okay. It's taken me a bit as well. We'll get through it together.

But here's who is on the list.

No, not Kay Ryan, though she's on the list and we're all very happy for her.

Francisco Núñez, many congratulations, (1) but we're not talking about you today.

Peter Hessler? A. E. Stallings? Ubaldo Vitali? Great names. Very geniusey.

But no.

No, the person who made me send up an actual cheer would be Mr. Jad Abumrad, who I have actually referred to as a genius in the past and am now heartened to hear that I'm not alone.

If you're not familiar, Abumrad is the co-host and producer of WNYC's Radiolab, a show that makes me very, very happy. The show knits together great journalism, incredibly textured sound and fascinating new ideas.

In a story in The New York Times about the MacArthur announcement, Abumrad refers to the show as "the central creative mission of my life".

Which, seriously, makes this announcement all the more fantastic.

And now I have to go figure out how to return $500,000 worth of comic books and Sharpie markers.

What can I say...I counted those chickens before they were hatched.

1. And thank you also for finally motivating me enough to learn how to finally use the accent keys on the mac.top.

In which I re-use a book cover and get all philosophical.

2011-09-18T09:34:00.000-07:00

So, about all the posts this morning.

This is my last morning in San Francisco and it is, mostly, a day of hanging out and waiting for my late night flight back to my rural city. It means that I am operating completely without schedule and, thanks to a bit of persistence, enjoying the incredibly fast and highly-functional wifi connection of an incredibly empty Starbucks.

What can I say. Sometimes The Mermaid really earns her keep.

But here's why sitting in a Starbucks clacking away on a mac.top earns a post. Or, more precisely, here's why sitting in a Starbucks clacking away, posting to my blog, on a mac.top earns a post that is not filled with post-ironic scorn and/or sarcasm.

This Starbucks is largely empty.

The Starbucks less than a block from here, the one directly attached to a hotel and the size of a New York City apartment kitchen, was packed like a circus act. People were ill-tempered and short, oblivious to the short-order cook frenzy of the counter staff who, to their great credit, assaulted no one why I was in the store, and most, it seemed, who had never actually ordered anything in a Starbucks. My favorite being the woman who, in this extraordinarily busy place, with a line of some 20 people behind her, decided allowing her seven-year old to place the family's order would be a good idea.

We'll leave aside that the kid was ordering lattes for herself, her siblings (1) and an unknown number of people with a fondness for making the lives of Starbucks employees miserable.

And we'll leave aside the fact that the kid couldn't remember the order and kept running back and forth between the increasingly frustrated guy at the counter to her mother who was, inexplicably, standing in the middle of everything while one daughter was apparently texting a novel-sized message to a friend, one of the boys began eating a sandwich snagged from the case and the youngest was turning his pockets inside out, shaking them, declaring how much sand was in there.

And, finally, we'll leave aside the fact that, when the counter person, watching as the line now snaked to the door and the list of highly-specialized drinks (2), asked the mother in the most polite fashion possible, if she could please give him the list of drinks so he could be sure he had them right, she bellowed back at him to come to where she was at the pastry display so she could point to the exact items they wanted.

And so, knowing that I wanted my morning to include both a chai and a chair and some Internet, I walked past that scene of familial terrorism, and discovered this place, with its big glass windows, empty (3) counter and disarmingly friendly employees (4).

All it took was going a block, a block that meant moving away from, not towards, the frenzy of Union Square. It was doing the opposite of what would be expected, and it paid off.

1. There were four of them, the oldest being perhaps 12.
2. They were like snowflakes. No two were the same.
3. Though now beginning to fill. All good things must come to an end.
4. It also includes a view of a large black and blue banner for the Folsom Street Fair. If you don't know what this is, I strongly suggest that you do not Google it in the presence of your children or most of your elderly relatives. It falls in the NSFW category...which is why I giggled a bit when the perfectly coiffed women of a certain age who came through here wondered to each other what went on at the street fair. I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest they were not from here.

With a grain of salt.

2011-09-18T08:59:00.000-07:00

So, yesterday, we had the event that was the reason that I came to San Francisco (1).

One of the people there used an example in her talk that caused The Freelancer, who was in town for other reasons, to turn in his chair and pull a face.

I did not return said face.

One, because as the person who had brought together this particular crew of people, that would have been really, really rude.

And two, because I found what she had to say really, really interesting.

This individual, we'll call her The Ecoliterati, calculated the miles used to make two separate salads. One she made herself, the other purchased.

The salad that was purchased? The ingredients used - sea salt, pepper, oil and lettuce - traveled more than 35,000 from farm to table. The other, the one that she made, used sea salt that she made by letting sea water evaporate, local dried red peppers that she crushed and oil and lettuce that were also gathered locally. She brought the mileage down to something like 36 miles. The salt and pepper alone were just about a mile.

I eat horribly. I know that. As I've said in the past, while Leopold has done very little to change the way I dress, my eating is far better when I'm cooking for the both of us than when left to my own devices. But this simple example - which was actually designed for school children - has stuck with me and really made me think.

After our first summer in our rural city we're already re-thinking how we'll do next year's farm share. The other night I made a pretty amazing salad with fried green tomatoes made from tomatoes Leopold grew in our yard and lettuce from a farm nearby (3). But little reveals like The Ecoliterati's salt and pepper thing, really does inspire a person to do a bit more.

Maybe not The Freelancer...

1. Yes, that's true. If this were a Nancy Drew mystery about the mysterious identity of Artboy (2) that first line would be written down in a notepad of some sort and might well lead the gang to jump into their speedy roadster.
2. No. I know. It's really not all that mysterious...but soon we'll, maybe, be having some fun with that.
3. Pretty sure the eggs and flour I used killed any illusions of it being low mileage...

We are experiencing technical difficulties.

2011-09-18T08:36:00.000-07:00

The wireless connection in my hotel is free and, might I say, worth every penny.

Facebook will open but posting is generally impossible.

I have no access to my work files.

Yesterday, as the day progressed, I lost the ability to access my personal e-mail.

Pulling down directions from Mapquest has not worked.

Posting to this blog was not happening at all.

Except now. At 6am.

Though it won't let me insert any artwork.

Or, actually post.

Which means it's not working.

Remember when I was saying how I didn't really like traveling?

Time. Travel. (PHL>SFO)

2011-09-15T09:56:00.000-07:00

Today, I'm on my way to San Francisco.

Or, more precisely, I'm sitting waiting to be further on my way to San Francisco.

When the announcement was made that we would not all be able to board our flight because of issues involving weight, balance and an unidentified "weather issue" between this City of Brotherly Love and the City by the Bay, some were quick to, how do you say, freak the hell out.

I, on the other hand, as a person who views airline travel as something to be feared and endured, thought only of the movie of the week to be made, where scenes of people filing to their seats are interspersed with that of a gruff ground crew manager insisting to a worried luggage handler, "It'll be fine. Just get the bags on and get this bird out of here (1)." And so, now I wait.

I'm not a traveler. I don't particularly enjoy it, preferring instead my house and my schedule and my own bed at the end of the day. I already miss my attic hideout.

It's not to say that there aren't some stops that I'm looking forward to during my brief time in San Francisco. I love the labyrinth at Grace Episcopal Church, especially the outdoor space early in the morning. I'll be doing some event promotion (3) in some great sections of the city and brilliant food landmarks.

I'll be making a point of going to this place, Isotope - The Comic Book Lounge, which makes me a little weak in the knees. I'm setting up time to write, with an actual, honest-to-goodness person who I am NOT related to waiting to read the fiction piece I'm working on. There's even research that I'm doing for a non-fiction project to be done.

And, thanks to the fact that a red eye flight is required to get me back home to our rural city (4), additional stops are sure to be inserted into the itinerary.

What I won't be doing, or, am not currently scheduled to do, is see some of the folks who were once part of my every day life. I have mixed feelings about this, coming as it does on the heels of other news that brought me a bit back into the past, because I find myself in that place where you wonder where the line is between bitter and "for the best".

What is it that makes some parts of your life so difficult to walk away from? Those times that, no matter what you do or how logical you try to be, keep you looking back, wondering about the choices you made. Even when you know, without question, that you would do it all the same way all over again.

Fortunately or not, it's looking like I'll have a fair amount of time to be thinking about this.

1. What can I say. That's how he talks. It's the kind of role that Ed Asner would have totally ruled back in the day (2).
2. Or Bea Arthur.
3. Not that glamorous. What? You might have thought it was glamorous.
4. Time, time, time...see what's become of me...

Walking on sunshine.

2011-09-14T14:35:00.000-07:00

Lately, I've developed a strange mental tic.

Artboy: I keep saying Walkman when I'm referring to my iPod.

Leopold: Really?

Artboy: Yeah. I'll be heading out the door to take Finkelstein for a walk and I'll stop and say that I have to grab my Walkman. Apparently, I plan to take our walk in 1985.

Later we will address the fact that I feel the need to explain to the dog why I have to go back in the house.

What would you suggest?

2011-09-13T15:28:00.000-07:00

Patricia Marx's new book, Starting from Happy, is made up of 618 "mini-chapters", which makes me ridiculously happy.

This summer it's been demonstrated to me, over and over again, that the boundaries we place on what a book should be, what a story should be, how a novel should be constructed, are actually only suggestions.

I find this incredibly heartening, because these quirks and inventions are about transforming the substance of the novel, not simply the delivery method.

52 Pickup

2011-09-12T09:55:00.000-07:00

If you are not a comic reader, or if you have managed to be away from your radio and television, receive no newspapers or magazines at your house and do not live within 10 miles of a comic book shop, it might be that you are unfamiliar with DC Comic's New 52.

Allow me to shorthand it for you. Starting back on August 31, DC Comics - home to Superman and Wonder Woman and the dark knight detective Batman - reset the comic-o-meter. Fifty-two of the publisher's titles will start over again at issue #1 as a way of capturing new readers, exciting old readers and generating much publicity for the cause of sequential illustration.

It's also, I have to believe, no accident that this massive reboot is all taking place as a new school year is beginning because, really, that's how our lives work, right? No matter how long it's been since you headed off to the bus stop with a lunchbox tucked safely in your backpack, there's something about the end of summer that always feels like the start of a new year.

Which is why the blog has a new look and I'm dusting off the keyboard once again. There are deadlines - outside and self-imposed - ahead for me and, with any luck, some actual time to meet them.

Increasingly, I also find myself hoping for my own reboot of sorts. But hoping only gets you so far...then it's about making changes on your own. Or, sometimes, retracing your steps a bit.

See, in the New 52's Action Comics, Superman doesn't fly. He jumps. He leaps tall buildings in a single bound...which is just what he did back when he and his outside-the-pants red briefs first appeared on the scene. Flying came later.

Which makes perfect sense. Flying always comes later.

Nothing you can say...

2011-06-05T10:58:00.000-07:00

So, because genetics have created a situation where I am unable to walk away from an idiotic exchange, I've spent the last couple days engaged in an increasingly strange back and forth on the Facebook.

You might notice that I'm not even going to refer to it as a discussion or conversation, because, well, it really isn't.

What's become striking to me is that the person on the other side has begun to refer to opinions, ideas and courses of action that are being advocated by "my guys". It seems nothing you can say can tear me away from my guys.

Which is all news to me because, well, I didn't know that I have guys. If there's one thing that I've always really liked about the friends that I have and many of the people whom I've gotten to meet and work with, it's that they're mostly a pretty intelligent bunch. On any number of occasions some of us have failed to see eye-to-eye with one another and it all works out. No harm. No foul. As corny and optimistic as it sounds, several times I've found my own opinion moved. That's the beauty of having smart friends and from having an education that is entirely based on the critique system of learning.

There is no easier way to learn humility than, once a week, to sit in a room, unable to respond, while a large group of people dissect the work that you have done.

Not that long ago (1) I was involved with a group of people who outsiders would have likely considered to be "my guys". Some were, some weren't, but those who were weren't "my guys" for the reasons those outsiders would have thought.

Chief among the things that made my time spent with this particular group stressful and frustrating was their habit of either agreeing or remaining completely silent. With a few notable exceptions, these were people who were near clinically uncomfortable with constructive disagreement because to disagree with someone meant risking that they would not like you. That you would be seen as an outsider. A pain.

To be fair, this was a fear that was proven reality on several occasions, occasions where I watched grown adults play out the roles I always suspected they had or had wanted to play while in high school.

This is, ultimately, not part of my nature. While I will freely admit to being lousy at confrontation, I like to think that I'm pretty good when it comes to having a discussion. At the end of it, I don't have to agree with you and you don't have to agree with me. Disagreement is fine. Some might even assert, as I like to do, that it's part and parcel of this little experiment we're calling democracy. We each get to have an opinion. We each get to have a position and our own set of ideas.

We each have the right to plaster the Constitution on the side of a bus and brand our family vacation.

We each have the right to make as many jokes as we feel moved to do about the person that plasters the Constitution on the side of a bus and brands their non-political campaign family vacation.

And we each have the right to turn to the person next to us, or on the other side of the computer screen, to say that your joking is out of line or misplaced.

And if that person next to you happens to be, I just ask one thing.

Just remember who you're talking to.

It's me.

Just me...the one without the "guys".

1. Okay, at this point it's getting to be a fairly long time ago but, I'm not so good at moving on from this particular situation...a button the Freelancer is fond of pressing.

For love and money.

2011-05-31T17:46:00.000-07:00

So, when we headed up here to live at the doorway of the Northern Highlands (1) I had the crazy idea that I would work just one job. No more running around like a crazy person stitching this bit to that bit to keep the bill collectors and the bank happy. One job that started after breakfast and ended before dinner.

One job that would let me write and do silly little projects and learn to play the piano (2).

And, truth be told, it all seemed to be working out pretty okay. Until, that is, I made the mistake of thinking about tomorrow.

Not tomorrow, tomorrow...but distant but not too distant future tomorrow. With one of those birthdays that is divisible by 10 on the horizon and the opportunity to pursue a BIG benefit, I started making contributions to a 401K.

This has always been something that made me laugh, the joke being that I'd really like to find a job I love doing before thinking about retiring from it.

But here's the funny thing. The addition (3) of that one little line item has thrown my balance (4) completely off. With just one small change, the kind of change that we are all told is the right thing to be doing, one job is suddenly very barely enough.

Now, as is often the case, there are things that I can do. There are things that have been paid for ahead of time and plans to reduce the scarier budget items that lurk up here in the land of vacations (5), but it was another moment when all the numbers and statistics and articles in the paper came sharply into focus.

I don't think that I want to ever hear another expert scold me for my inability to save. I don't want to hear the utter disbelief in the voices of journalists opining on the new study that showed that most Americans say they don't have $2,000 in reserve cash for an emergency. Don't tell me I need 6 months worth of mortgage put aside. Don't tell me to pay myself first.

Because it all sounds really, really good. Pay off my credit cards. Pay off my student loans. Contribute the maximum to my retirement plan.

I know all the things that we're all supposed to do.

But, really, what good are all those pieces of advice to folks for whom the balance is not just tipped, it's broken?

What happens then?

1. Which I've been told is an actual thing. I'd quibble but, truth be told, growing up I had no idea that the neighborhoods in this rural city we now call home, had actual names...so what do I know?
2. I never had any intention of learning to play the piano.
3. Or, subtraction as the case may be.
4. Literally.
5. Three words: fuel oil bill. Screw you Stephen King...you are not the scariest writer in Maine. That title goes to our oil company.

drum roll.

2011-05-29T13:19:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to make something new happen.

If it does happen, if I can get all the pieces to come together, it's going to be awesome.

Or, at the very least, it's going to be kind of cool.

Maybe.

Maybe a little cool.

It won't suck.

Entirely.

If it doesn't, however, if it dies on the proverbial table, then...well...you'll never know. Because, odds are good, I won't tell you.

This is one of the advantages to having a secret identity.

And, you know, a really cynical outlook on life.

So you say it's bread? That's been sliced?

2011-05-27T14:18:00.000-07:00

I am often late to the party.

I see no particular shame in this, it's just the way that I go about things. I overthink. I overplan. I am somewhat famous for talking myself out of things.

Evidence of this can be found in the notes that I have squirreled away in various notebooks that, after spending a good deal of time engaged in procrastination and telling myself why this project or that project won't work, later appear on the shelves of bookstores with the names of other writers gracing their covers.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that any of these ideas would have made it to publication because they worked for someone else. That's not the way the game is played. It's just that, more often than not, the announcement of a new book about [insert subject of book here] is when I think, "Well...damn."

But this post is not about being late to the party on a book.

No, instead, this is about my discovery of a fantastic book resource that everyone and their brother already knew about.

Following a link to a story about the recent Lambda Literary awards - where, it seems, Edward Albee gave the crowd something of an *expletive* you very much kind of speech - I discovered the Wall Street Journal's online book section.

It's amazing. It's everything that I've ever wanted in a book section. Reading through it I've found some half-a-dozen books that I want to get my hands on. I've read three great interviews. I've already started to worry that new content won't be added at a fast enough clip to keep me happy.

It is, my friends, a total party.

Though, odds are better than average, that it's a party you've already been at for a while. Which is okay...just give me some time to catch up. (1)

1. And while you're waiting you can read these notes I have for this story I'm thinking of writing. It's about this guy who's obsessed with capturing a whale.

Isn't it...well...you know.

2011-05-26T16:08:00.000-07:00

Recently, I used the word "ironic" incorrectly.

It was one of those flip responses. "Well," I said, "That's ironic."

"Actually," the Roller Derby Queen responded, "it isn't. Unless you'd like to change the meaning of the word 'ironic'."

So now I seem to have developed something of a phobia when it comes to using the word.

All this as a precursor to wondering if it is at all ironic that I find myself completely unable to remember the fact that Monday is Memorial Day.

I really want it to be, because there's just something so great about irony.

At least, I think there is.

Wait watching.

2011-05-17T13:12:00.000-07:00

More often than usual, I've been being asked, "What's it like working from home?"

Which is to say, all of three people have inquired about the obstacles and opportunities of having a desk roughly 600 miles from that of your direct supervisor.

The short answer, or series of answers, is that I love it. Years of freelancing has given me some fairly solid organizational skills when it comes to managing deadlines and workflow. Technology gives me access to everything I would need or want from the BIG office, while luxuries like a wireless printer mean I need only to turn around instead of walk down the hall to fetch things. My lunches are better, my tea often loose leaf and I can live stream NPR without fear of reproach for slowing down the network.

But then there are days like today. Days when the spirit is not moving and, were I in the office, I would instantly instigate a conversation with the Roller Derby Queen...most likely about my crippling level of writer's block/writer's apathy. I would covertly read online comics. I would watch the clock.

Here, however, I fight the urge to sneak out to the bookstore, or the real world comic shop. I flip from news/talk to music to keep myself from talking back at the hosts or the guests. I leave Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter in the other room...even though I'm nearly, almost, practically finished (1).

Which is why I'm writing this blog post that is, for the most part, about my complete lack of motivation for doing the writing I need to be doing.

And cookies.

Because that's the other thing that I would be doing if I was sitting in my BIG office and not here on this rainy, dreary day. I would be eating overpriced baked goods.

So what's it like working from home?

Slimming.

1. And damn. It's good.

Common Cents.

2011-05-15T10:43:00.000-07:00

I know.

I know.

I know.

If the title of this blog post was given a 1950s black-and-white cowboy movie Indian name it would be "Limps Laden with Unoriginality", but it's all I've got right now.

And yes. I know that it should be Native American and not Indian but I was going with the whole 1950s thing.

Anyway.

So, as I've mentioned in a now nauseating number of posts, I'm trying to carve out more time for my own writing at the same time that I'm trying to mold my BIG day job into something with more of a creative focus. While the latter continues to be a struggle, the former is doing much better.

In fact, I've been accepted to a week-long summer institute where I would be studying memoir with this guy.

The problem is that, to secure my place in the workshop, they're asking me to do something unspeakable.

Pay in cash.

As Leopold and the Roller Derby Queen were quick to remind me when I voiced my concern about this particular aspect (1) they both invoked those magical words: tax write-off.

Even with that I find that I'm taking this decision seriously, for reasons far bigger than a hit to the bank account (2). Reasons like the shyness that most people don't know is a very real part of my personality. That anniversary that I mentioned down in the footnotes. My fear of showing up and finding myself surrounded by real writers, writers who have ditched the day job or spend their days teaching creative writing or are still in that brilliant in-between place that is an MFA program.

My lack of new work.

At this point I still don't know what I'm going to do. I have, in order to allow time for my payment to arrive, about one week to decide.

Which is great, because I was really feeling short of deadlines these days (3).

1. And can we take a moment to give Leopold full credit for his encouragement of my pursuing this opportunity? If I go it means that I will be away for our anniversary. This would be one of the reasons that we'll soon hit lucky 13. It hasn't always been easy, but it's been amazing.
2. To put this all in perspective, if all my clients were to settle their outstanding invoices I would not only be able to pay my tuition without a blink...I would be able to score something way better than a dorm room for my accommodations and bid farewell to the folks at Visa. So, this is more about the worry that comes from having a Depression-era mindset than actual empty pockets.
3. Yes. Sarcasm.

book/cover

2011-05-11T19:07:00.000-07:00

So, following the plane travel of my discontent, I am currently working my way through a week in a non-rural city.

Heading from the BIG office to where I'm staying, I took advantage of the extra hours of daylight and the pleasant temperatures and wandered my way through neighborhoods that - as it has been pointed out to me on several occasions - most of us couldn't afford to live in.

But here's the thing. Even though it was still quite lovely out, even though the outdoor seating at the restaurants and bars I passed were bustling with happy people and rushing servers, I couldn't help but notice how empty these large homes and spacious apartments were. There were no signs of life in the yards or in the darkened front windows.

There were no kids in playing on the stoop or friends sharing G&Ts in icy kitchen glasses. Dozens of dogs ran at one another, rolling around on the fake turf of the gated dog park while their owners stood one next to the other on the edges of the fray.

Which is why I started to construct an elaborate scenario in my head, about unhappy people, working late to cover their mortgages. Of elderly empty nesters, who bought their now impressive homes when these neighborhoods were more dangerous than destination. But now, the kids are gone to their own families. The house that went from bargain to status symbol is now rambling and empty. The prosperous-looking owners have long since run out of things to say to one another.

All very dramatic. All very dark.

And, also, very much fueled by the homes I visit when I find myself back in this fair city. Homes that are warm, but not stately. Homes that are crowded with bits of homework and undone laundry and dogs that beg for just a little more attention. Stiff drinks in mismatched glasses and dinners where you help yourself at the stove. Stories that have no purpose mix with inappropriate jokes and outsized laughter.

I was judging the book by their covers.

The chaos of my friends' houses and apartments make them homes. The magazine quality of these massive stone buildings that I walked past made them cold.

The long walk home reminded me once again how much I want to be a writer.

p.s.

If you're wondering about that cover over there...the one floating around stage right...it's another case my judging a book by its cover. I picked up Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter out of curiosity. What I'm quickly discovering is that it's one hell of a piece of writing.

Artboy's terrible, no good, etc - Airport Delay #2

2011-05-09T09:44:00.000-07:00

I don't think that I'm a bad guy.

Or a crank.

I am, however, quite admittedly, not a glass half-full kind of guy.

By nature or nurture I am a worrier. I see obstacles as obstacles and not challenges. I worry about the details because I live my life with relative certainty that it is the tiny details that will eventually cause you the biggest problems down the line.

So, when stuck sitting in the middle of a terrible, no good, very bad day, and that terrible, no good, very bad day is populated by the vaguely bored, apathy-prone individuals that make up those uniquely insular communities that are airports, it is easy to get me going.

For example, while I have come to expect very little from chain bookstores and even less from airport bookstores, here's a first world issue that's completely on my nerves.

Say that there is an author whose newest book has been released to great reviews and with even greater enthusiasm. More than that, the release of this new book (1), without fail, mentions the stunning collection of short stories the author (2) previously published.

So you go, feeling more the need for a collection of short stories than a novel right now (3), and you are informed that the book is out of print. You can, however, order it online. And you are told this same story at multiple bookstores - chain, independent and that valley of the damned that is the airport bookstore.

"What's the big deal?" I hear you asking yourself. "Move on. There are countries where people are starving/rioting in the streets/living in the shadow of nuclear disaster/dealing with flooded homes/rampant unemployment/unidentifiable skin conditions. It's a book. You can order it online.

"What's your damage, Heather?"

I don't know what my problem is, to be very honest. Except, well, this.

The narrative that most people are all too comfortable with says that people do not read anymore. They don't buy books, they don't read newspapers, we need to put it online with lots of bells and whistles. There's no money in publishing and the only books deserving of attention and publicity are those written by celebrities about how they lost weight/got off drugs/discovered happiness through world travel.

Which is not to say that Baron Brussel is a struggling artist eeking out her books in a windowless garret heated with lumps of coal.

But, really, what's a person got to do to keep a book of literary fiction...particularly a short story collection...in print? What does it take to keep your place on the shelf?

And what will it ultimately take for publishers and, frankly, the buyers who stock the shelves of all these airport bookstores, to pay a little attention to those of us, dying breed that we are, love to read, and buy books in the real, live world?

These are, unfortunately, questions that I will need to leave hanging here in the ether as, it seems, my laptop battery is officially half-empty.

1. The title of which rhymes with "bwamplandia".
2. Whose name rhymes with "Baron Brussel".
3. Though you are absolutely planning to pick up this book that rhymes with "bwamplandia" because not only does it sound wonderful it has a cover to die for...

Artboy's terrible, no good, very bad day...and it's just getting started.

2011-05-09T06:27:00.000-07:00

Today has not started well.

Or, more accurately, it started well but quickly derailed and now I find myself stranded in an airport trying to distract myself. I've tried to get some work done but that's not happening.

I've tried to read, but no.

Tried to buy a magazine or two but, no. That didn't work out.

Until just a bit ago the airport was filled with Marines (1) which made getting on the wifi pretty much impossible.

The televisions are all tuned to Fox Headline News which, while not an automatic non-starter, it's Fox Headline morning news which, apparently, means that all the on-air talent is either dressed for cocktails or closely resembles a gang of pastel-shirted insurance salesmen a few drinks into happy hour. You know the way, the ties are on but the jackets are off, the sleeves are rolled and buttoned but the shirts have lost enough starch that you know these are "regular guys" delivering the sports and weather.

And the cheer. Oh, the sheer joy that these people have for everything. The fake banter. The practiced, but pretty, amazement, shock, or puzzlement.

And now, finally online and able to get online I'm listening to Terry Gross on NPR's 24-hour live stream. This should be a tonic. This should be the thing that's helping me rally.

But no.

This re-broadcast of Fresh Air Weekend is a discussion with Janny Scott, the author who wrote A Singular Woman, a biography of Barack Obama's mother, Ann Dunham. Which isn't exactly the issue.

The issue is the fact that Gross begins the interview with a quote from the President who, according to Gross and, apparently, Singular Woman's preface, has said that if he had known his mother was going to die of cancer he would have probably written a book that was different from the one he did write, Dreams from my Father.

It's an idea that infuriates me because, as a statement, it's as hollow as the playful back and forth between the Headline News crew.

Yes. Of course. The passing of a spouse or friend or parent or family member often becomes the kernel that inspires the writing of a book. At its best, that seed will flourish into something lovely and smart and, ideally, more about the person or the relationship between the author and the person about whom they are writing. At worst, and I think of this based on a Facebook post that I read yesterday afternoon, it becomes a strange and narcissistic journey. A chance to dab your eyes for the audience, to generate sympathy rather than empathy. To not so much talk about the person you are ostensibly honoring by capturing their life in words (2) but making sure it remains all about you and how good you are for being the faithful biographer. The selfless mourner. The brave soul left behind.

And, hell, if you're a writer whose impulse leads you to give a parent immortality on the printed page, there's really no rule that says you need to wait for them to, you know, die from cancer.

Which is why that reported statement really gets under my skin.

If a book about your mother was truly in you, you should have written it. Otherwise, all I'm hearing is an expression of guilt hoping for an audience ready to offer an audible, heartfelt absolution...preferably one that lands you once again on the NYT Bestseller list.

1. What does one call a large number of Marines in one area? A troop? A flock? A gaggle?
2. As is done often and fantastically by the good folks at Story Corps. and their traveling studio.

See me.

2011-05-05T16:56:00.000-07:00

For the first time since 1955 the name Elvis is not one of the top 1,000 names in the U.S.

Think about that.

For more than 50 years someone has looked down at their damp, wrinkled, pink newborn baby and said, "Elvis."

In those early days of course this is understandable. Elvis was the king. He was young and handsome and impossibly famous. He was a swivel-hipped heart throb whose voice may well have been the background during the conception of a few of those bouncing baby Elvi.

He was also, and I have to believe this played a role in the minds of one or two of those post-pregnant women, very good to his mother.

I, on the other hand, was born in the 1970s into a household where the Bible was considered the best baby name book. I was given a very traditional name at a time when very traditional names were not the thing to do.

The sting of this was most often felt during those closing moments of the television show Romper Room, the Baltimore-based children's show that started with the earnest recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance and ended with Miss Sally looking through her magic mirror and asking, "Romper, bomper, stomper, boo...tell me, tell me, tell me do...Magic Mirror, tell me today, did all my friends have fun at play?"

Miss Sally would then look through the mirror and see Michelle and Kenneth and Tristan and Julie and Sarah and Keith and Christian...and on and on and on.

She would never, however, see me.

I find myself wondering now, however, if Miss Sally ever saw Elvis?

bin talking.

2011-05-04T17:02:00.000-07:00

Leopold and I, as has probably been taking place in a lot of households of late, were discussing the recent military strike in Pakistan that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden. Truth be told, I've been having a lot of conversations about what took place that day.

The Roller Derby Queen and I have been wondering about the fine line between cynicism and conspiracy theory.

A few of my cousins and even my sister, though I'll admit that I've allowed those bits to remain the kinds of one-sided volleys that the Facebook seems to foster, have voiced their own varying opinions, which have ranged from dismay over our nation's habit of transforming every significant event into a bizarre flag waving, frat boy pep rally to a strange comment by one family member who wished he had been able to pull the trigger.

My response was to suggest that chances were very slim that bin Laden or any major terrorist figure was going to appear in the limited space between his couch and his beer fridge.

Sitting at dinner the other night, NPR going in the kitchen as it always is when I'm in the room, Leopold stated his disbelief that the kind of building being described in the news could have gone unnoticed.

Leopold: I mean, remember when all those people were living in the house in our neighborhood?

Artboy: Which house?

Leopold: The one at the end of the block.

Artboy: You mean the one that we thought had a huge family living in it that we later found out was a squat/whorehouse?

Leopold: Yeah. That one. *pause* But we still knew there were people there.

First impressions.

2011-05-03T16:02:00.000-07:00

Here's a funny thing.

Not far from our house here in our new rural city there is a low-slung building that, the first time I passed it on foot, instantly caught my eye.

And why is that?

Because the minute that I saw it I thought, "Funeral home." And I did this not because it had a sign out front that said: funeral home. In fact, when I got close enough that I was able to actually read the signage, the building is actually a "life tribute and arrangement center" with a large "family reception area" attached.

So what was it that made me think "funeral home" when I spied this relatively anonymous brick building that was NOT surrounded by hearses and mourning family members on their way to a life tribute and/or reception?

The font that was used on the signage. It screamed funeral home.

Which is funny.

Because, really, if you're going to go to all the trouble of coming up with a moniker like "life tribute and arrangement center" so that you don't have a big sign on your business that says "funeral home", you might want to ask the designer to, I don't know, steer away from a font that likely has "coffin" in its title.

Getting it together...

2011-05-02T18:59:00.000-07:00

Now ends the winter of my discontent.

Okay. No. Not really.

But I have been taking the time to try and get some things in order.

In the aftermath of taxocalypse I've devoted attention to creating the systems I need to more responsibly keep track of receipts and expenses and donations. It's not to say that this will at all change the outcome of next year...but I'm going to go down swinging.

I've put similar attention toward household expenses, buckling down with some new budget goals and may even...wait for it...try to figure out how to make this whole grocery store coupon thing start working for me.

I'm avoiding the credit card and have started looking at some of the online resources for doing better with the ones I do have.

But more than all of these things, I'm trying once more to carve out honest and for real writing time.

Not freelance writing time. Not work for other people or letters or e-mails or the rest that will go out with someone else's name. My own writing. I've even done something that I've not done in a long time.

I applied for a spot in a writing workshop.

True, I'm feeling a little punk that my application was submitted with a piece that has been floating on my computer for longer than I care to think about, but this was to get started. This was to shake the dust off. Upcoming deadlines, I am determined, will be the hopefully not-too-greatly-disappointed recipients of brand, spanking new work.

Which means all those bright ideas and clever starts and "wouldn't it be funny if..." bits and pieces need to get a little attention.

As does this blog. While it could all go the way of Nablohbluebitters past, I'm going to try and get back to the once-a-day posting. Or, at least, once every week.

Or, perhaps, often enough that I don't have to pause before entering my password because I'm trying to figure out what it is.

So, no, it might not be the end of my discontent. Which is okay.

After all, I need to have something to write about.

Uncle Arthur!

2011-04-27T17:57:00.000-07:00

For the last week or so I have been reminded of something my grandmother used to say.

F**k.

Actually, technically, what my grandmother would usually say was, "Fu-cryin' out loud."

But she was fooling no one.

Work for BIG has been, put plainly, work. Like pushing things uphill work. While it's raining. In a foot or so of mud. And not just any mud. That mud that gives off enough of an odor that it makes you start to wonder if it's just mud.

The Daily Bugle has still not paid me. Hogwarts owes me money. And the new freelance client that I've taken on may well have been a mistake if only for the time that I'm having to give it that puts pressure on both my day job at BIG and the ability to do some actual writing of my own...which I miss more tangibly than I ever missed making art when that too started to get pushed aside in the name of bills and bank account.

So I've been asking various and sundry how to go about getting my groove back.

I know it's going to happen sooner or later. Here's hoping for the sooner.

A fool and his 1099-misc.

2011-04-12T18:59:00.000-07:00

So, remember the part where a certain collection of someones said that we had nothing to fear from the changes that were being made to our taxes? That only those in a certain income bracket far from my own were going to be seeing changes?

Well folks, I've seen some changes.

I've just finished my taxes thanks to an extended battle with the folks at the Daily Bugle who seemed to think that my 1099-misc was not really something that I would need.

And so, because I'm way too honest to ever get ahead, I did my taxes with the same fearful honesty that I have done every year. Last year, when the whole vexing trial was through, I turned to Leopold and said, "I don't know what's going on, but I barely made it without owing anything."

This year I turned to Leopold and said, "I didn't make it."

This is both frustrating and disheartening...particularly as I sit trying to get myself organized to deal with the continuous juggling of day job and freelance work.

Ah-ha! You're saying...it's all that freelance work!

But no. Not really. When all is said and done the money that I've actually gotten from the Bugle is not enough to send me to summer camp. Well, unless I find a summer camp willing to accept the monstrous invoice the Bugle has run up.

Don't get me wrong. I'm ready to pay my fair share, but something seems out of whack here. See, as fun as some of what I get to do when I'm not working for BIG can be, I sit in front of this laptop for all the hours that I do so I can try to put a little aside. To keep the credit card clean and a little money in the bank and, as far off as that time seems, to maybe one day experience what it's like to have a retirement fund. Instead, I find myself coming up with a chunk of money so that I can pay more - ironically on a year where I lived somewhere where I lacked the "representation" portion of "no taxation" - to the government while corporations like GE spent the evening watching back episodes of Glee on Netflix.

Thanks a lot taxman.

Coo coo ca choo.

lit.

2011-04-08T09:59:00.000-07:00

So what would inspire me to brave crosstown traffic in the pouring rain to get down here to the blog for a post after so long an absence?

One word.

Stupidity.

Though maybe that's too strong a word. You see, Artboy is currently a road show and I'm sitting in one of the East Coast's airport behemoths waiting for my flight. I had a bit of a layover that I put to use with a couple of conference calls, "what were you thinking???" e-mails and even a skillful dodge of a message I'm not in the mood to address at this point.

I also, and this is the part I now regret, made a stop by the chain bookstore at the edge of the food court.

This was my mistake.

I could say more, but I think a simple transcription will suffice here:

Bookstore Clerk to Anonymous Woman with Giant "I've Hiked Through Europe" Backpacks and Trying Too Hard Middle Eastern Scarf: Can I help you find something?

Anonymous Woman with Giant "I've Hiked Through Europe" Backpacks and Trying Too Hard Middle Eastern Scarf: I don't think you have it.

BC: What is it?

AWWGIHTEBATTHMES: Jane Eyre.

BC: (pause) Who?

You Know Who: Jane. Eyre.

BC: * (puzzled expression that says, "Who?")

You Know Who: Jane. (pause) Eyre.

BC: Who wrote it?

At which point I turned to You Know Who and said, "That conversation just hurt my feelings."

You Know Who: Right?

At which point I changed my opinion of her scarf.

No. Not really.

Shelf life.

2011-03-09T09:54:00.000-08:00

I still don't have bookshelves in my office.

Leopold does...and they're really quite handsome.

We have a beautiful pair of shelves that we hope will be delivered any day now for the family room.

But the floor of my office is currently playing host to several large stacks of books, comics and a really snazzy wireless printer.

The issue is that I can't find anything that I really like because what I want is something that is unique. That makes a statement. And, of course, that will fit up the awkward staircase that wraps its way up to this here attic.

I've spent some time poking around the Internet...trying to find interesting DIY bookshelf projects that pique my interest and enthusiasm. Most, unfortunately, involve woodworking.

Which I'm not opposed to in theory. I will note here that there are actually tools in the toolboxes on the worktable in our basement. Three-dimensional design was one of my favorite classes in art school. I did metalwork and casting and built frames. I earned my work study money doing maintenance and repair on the equipment in my department's shop. In our old house I did some amount of home repair (1) and continue to wander through hardware stores just to see what might be on the shelves.

And this has largely been my approach to the shelf quandary...walking through our neighborhood hardware store looking for things that look like they want to be bookshelves. So far, nothing has really caught my eye.

The bigger issue is that I'm kind of seeing the bookshelves as step one in an attic organization...new desktop for the desk. Some kind of chair perhaps. Something to make this room of my own feel a bit more like a creative space and a bit less plagued by cardboard boxes (2).

A BIG training is forcing me back into the air and back into a cubicle next week...this is to say nothing of the freelance jobs that are crowding my schedule with things that, unfortunately, all have to be done sooner than later. So, digging deeper into kitting out this space will have to wait.

Hopefully, inspiration will not.

1. Though I always left the electrical stuff to Leopold. I know my limits.
2. Most of which are filled with games and craft supplies that are waiting to be moved to their new location in the family room closet which is currently filled with boxes of books and DVDs that will be moved to the family room bookshelves when they arrive. It's all about the domino effect.

Just dessert.

2011-03-08T14:24:00.000-08:00

Among my list of favorite books is Steve Almond's high-fructose road trip Candyfreak: A Journey through the Chocolate Underbelly of America. For me, the book was as much wish list as memoir...a book about Almond's journey to track down small batch and independent candymakers all around the country.

It was my own, private, chocolate-coated On the Road.

My own sweet tooth didn't come into full force until I was an adult and, while it is does not always lead me to the most discerning of choices (1), my favorite sugar high inducers are not found on the average checkout display rack.

Aero bars (2). Skybars. Idaho Spuds. Homemade whoopie pies.

Now that I work from home, however, my mid-afternoon sugar hit has been replaced with, at most, a high-fiber granola bar.

Yeah. I know. Not really the same.

We're continuing to spend a little bit extra to stock organic vegetables. Our milk is soy, our flour is unbleached whole wheat and our meats are from an actual butcher. This summer a large chunk of our food will be coming from our brand spanking new farm share.

While we were always big on eating at home we've probably upped the ante on that count. Lunch, for me, is now always eaten at home. Due largely to their refusal to put a shop in our side yard there is no Starbuck's runs during the day. Leopold isn't big on desserts and, while appreciative when I do, is just as happy when I'm not baking cookies or brownies or other things that he doesn't feel we need to have free access to all the time.

In other words, we're eating even better than we were...and we were doing pretty good before.

What I keep wondering, however, is if I'll reach a point where I don't crave that 3pm cookie? It seems in poor taste to compare the situation to having a phantom limb...but I might have to do that anyway.

That absent cookie is like a phantom limb.

How's that for the first line of a memoir?

1. Hello Twinkies.

2. The original...not the mint ones.

One leg at a time.

2011-03-07T19:10:00.000-08:00

If you're a fan of the Weather Channel you know that it has (1) a long winter here in the frozen north.

Truth be told, I love this weather so I have very little to complain about (2).

But talking to The Mum the other day (4) I had one of those instances that some would take as a "you can't go home again" moment. We were in the middle of another snowstorm, this one mixed with ice, and she was hoping that no one would later regret the decision not to cancel that evening's high school basketball tournament games. The state tournaments exceed all reason here so there was very little chance that anyone - particularly those under the age of 17 - would look at the road conditions before making a sound and careful decision about the wisdom of heading into the dark, icy night. They were going.

My response was to agree with her and say, "It's true. I remember days like this when I would spend all of five minutes wondering whether I could get to the mall and back."

I was a mall kid. I loved shopping. I loved clothes. I went through all of high school without wearing a pair of jeans. I wore oversized sweaters with dress shirt tails hanging out. I wore baggy cargo pants with the cuffs pegged. I loved thrift stores and the Salvation Army and St. Mary's "fill a bag for a dollar" policy at the used clothing shop. I did my very best to look like an extra from a Brat Pack movie.

And then, somewhere during those early years of college, I fell from fashionista grace. Or, more accurately, I became exhausted. Today, when I see kids going to school or church or walking down the street in planned-to-look-unplanned outfits I think, "You're going to burn out. Wait and see."

Jeans and t-shirts became my uniform. V-neck sweaters and hoodie sweatshirts. A supervisor once observed of a class I was teaching that it was hard to determine where I left off and the students began.

I have systematically dismantled every dress code I have ever encountered. Slyly at first, and then with full intention and vigor.

But now, even with a freshly purchased batch of ApeSnort t-shirts folded and in the clothes basket (5), I am encountering another one of those moments. Leopold and I have an event to attend this weekend...and I have nothing to wear. My suits are...at their youngest...four years old. The new sweaters that I do have are carefully oversized to look smart with a pair of jeans and my fake Vans.

And the thing is, this is an event where I should be going, ready to work my butt off, ready to start to get the word out that I'm a professional writer that folks should know and trust. I've even started work on a personal website for that very reason.

But, like the website, I'm just not sure what it all should look like. The fact of the matter is, I'm a jeans and baggy cargo pants guy. I love my t-shirts and love that there are so many cool, upstart t-shirt artists out there (6). I dig a good hoodie.

Trust me, I'm not looking for a What Not to Wear moment. Leopold, while he has always cheered those times when a suit has been mandatory dress for me, has always had to admit that I've never looked quite bad enough for an ambush makeover.

Not long ago my cousin's five-year old daughter was spinning in front of the mirror, delighted with the new dress she got to wear to a father-daughter dance. "My friends are going to love me in this dress," she said, causing my cousin to try to explain to her that your real friends will always like you for who you are, not what you wear.

Which is true.

It's not going to save me a trip to the mall of course, but it's true.

1. And continues to be...

2. And we'll note that I'm saying this with the pre-frozen makings of a decent ice skating rink in our basement...something about the slow melt of eight or so feet of snow and three solid days of rain showers. My aunt refers to her basement as her "cement pond"...Leopold is simply mourning the reality that ours will never include a "fancy eatin' table" (3).

3. Beverly Hillbillies reference for those wondering why we would put a dining room table in our basement. Hint: It's not really a dining room table. Hint Number 2: Leopold was being funny. He doesn't really want one.

4. Leopold and I have now reduced the distance between us and my parents from 600 miles to something like 8 minutes.

5. I did not buy the Mickey Mao t-shirt...though now I think I should have. I did by the Meat Emporium t-shirt...which I will not be bringing with me next time I visit BIG.

6. Did you see the Babe Lincoln shirt? Babe. Lincoln. Genius.

Clunk.

2011-02-23T15:19:00.000-08:00

One thing that you need to understand from the start is that Leopold and I now live in a state with a bottle bill. This means that, when you return a bottle, you get back the additional 10 or 15 cents you paid so that you didn't have to figure out a way to carry a liter or two of wine back in your cupped hands.

When I was a kid we used to collect returnables with a vengeance. The walk from our camp to the general store usually brought in enough money to buy two or three comic books (1).

Back then, when you got to the store, you took your cans and bottles to the back storeroom where someone sorted and counted everything. At the grocery store the process was pretty much the same, someone would sort and count what you brought in and then give you a slip for the cashier.

Now, however, in another one of those "you can't go home again moments" we have Clynk. You're given a roll of special green bags to put your bottles and cans into, a roll of labels to use to mark your bags and a little keychain card to activate the door where you drop your returnables off.

And through it all, you don't have to interact with anyone.

What's funny is that I'm learning to use this system in a place where the self checkout lines are always empty. During our first trip to the grocery store I insisted on using one, Leopold occupying his time by ducking away every time a manager had to trip the machine back on or okay one of my purchases. She laughed every time, in a friendly, good-natured way, noting that she'd be back because: "You'll need me again soon enough." I go for full service now.

This is not a place where people bowl alone. At the Home Goods, when I got a little carried away picking up sheets and blankets and topped the heaping mess off with a new dog bed for Finkelstein, the woman behind me offered to give me her cart. I didn't take her up on her offer but thanked her and said, "I just came in for some socks...I just needed one thing."

"Well," she replied, laughing, "You didn't do a very good job now did you?"

This is how things go here. The teenagers behind store counters are friendly. Gas stations are staffed with attendants who fill your tank and wash your windshield. The salespeople at the Best Buy actually come up and ask if they can help you with anything. A woman I had never met before and I ended up having a 25-minute conversation in the middle of the street about good places to get ethnic food and why restaurants don't stay open long around our new rural city home.

Another woman asked politely if she could pet Finkelstein and then told me that her dog is staying with someone else right now and that she was worried she wouldn't get him back. "I've been real sad about that so thank you. That made me feel a lot better."

The plumber who fixed our frozen pipes told me all about where he had been that morning and where he was headed next. The locksmith chatted about the weather and what a hard winter it had been. A local editor traded e-mails with me, responding to a blind inquiry faster than some members of my family would return a phone call.

All of which makes the presence of that Clynk machine so baffling...though it will be nice to have my comics money back again.

1. This is not so much a comment on how inexpensive comics were as the amount of public drinking that took place on those few miles of dirt road.

Watch this space.

2011-02-21T09:38:00.000-08:00

So, they don't have a cover posted yet and there's not a lot of information to be had but there's a book coming out that we're going to go ahead and say deserves a spot on your bookshelf.

Now, you might be saying to yourself, "Do I really need a book about tea and tea stories and tea memories and the writings of famous people that have to do with tea?"

To quote the philosopher, "You might rabbit, you might..."

But, more to the point, are you going to miss the opportunity to buy a book that, when Amazombie produces the titles of "Active discussions in related forums", has a list which includes: The Mysterious Nazi or Why Bigotry and Race Hate Thrive in America as well as Temple of the 8th Day Twinkiests (Chocolatey Ho-Hoers also are welcome)?

I just have two words for you.

Marketing. Genius.

Peek-a-boo

2011-02-20T13:24:00.000-08:00

You might never have heard of photographer Michele Iversen...but she might know about you.

She might know that, when you think no one is looking, you're fond of padding around the house in a ratty pink bathrobe eating Saltines right out of the box.

She might know that you always fall asleep just after the start of Masterpiece Mystery, even though you tell people it's your favorite show.

She might know that you only nibble around the outsides of a piece of toast, feeding the remains to the moody parrot that you keep in a cage just to the left of your breakfast table.

You see, Michele Iversen takes what some refer to as surveillance photographs and others would consider stalker-butt crazy. And, while points could be given for both answers, the grainy, crouching textures of her Night Surveillance Series images makes me lean a bit to the latter rather than the former.

I thought of Iversen's photographs the other night when Finklestein and I were taking our last walk of the night. For the most part, the houses in the blocks surrounding our new neighborhood were dark. After all the years that I've spent living in cities the quiet and emptiness of the streets at night is striking.

As we turned the corner and began to pass one of the many giant Victorians that still serve as single family homes in this area I was struck by the image of a man standing in the window of what seemed to be his library. He was wearing a tweedy sweater and was standing back to the window, his hands cupped into one another behind his back. It was his complete lack of motion that drew my attention, that and the fact that his was the only light on on the block.

As he stepped away and toward the light switch I realized that he had been bent over an enormous book that laid open on a table by the window. The kind of book that, in other place and setting, might be wheeled about on a library trolley.

I don't know what it was about that moment with the man in the window, who could have been looking up anything from a word for his crossword puzzle or reading an evening prayer, but it's stuck with me. In my mind it's gone very soft focus...not blurred and covert like Iversen...but gentle, like a Dutch old master painting.

Rest assured, this does not mean that I'm going to start cruising the streets with a camera and a pair of night vision goggles, but it does mean that I'm going to start paying attention when Leopold reminds me to close the curtains.

Okay. Now you're just messing with me.

2011-02-17T06:09:00.000-08:00

So, remember the Wonder Woman television series that was on and then off and then on again and then off again and now it's on again?

Well, aside from the fact that its journey to television is feeling more and more like the scenic road Turn Off the Dark is taking to Broadway (1), the casting of Wonder Woman has been announced. And let me tell you, I'm not happy.

I know, I know, Adrianne Palicki can grow her hair out and get it dyed and blah and blah and blah. David E. Kelley and crew might even change their mind and decide NOT to have Palicki play three separate roles (2) whose very names seem designed to drive many of us into a full on frenzy. (3)

But it's always seemed to me that the role of Wonder Woman needed to go to an unknown, someone who wouldn't be "the girl from Friday Night Lights".

Maybe I'm going to be proven wrong. Maybe I'll one day be glued to my television, waiting to see what Diana Themyscira is going to do next. (4)

1. Can you say re-write? Apparently, the folks in charge can.
2. She's playing Wonder Woman, "powerful CEO" Diana Themyscira and "plain assistant" Diana Prince...we won't even go into all that's wrong with the names. Oh. Who am I kidding. I totally will.
3. Yep. I did.
4. Okay, that made me gag a little. It's the name of the freaking island! What island you might ask? The island where Wonder Woman is actually from. So, essentially, Kelley has essentially renamed Wonder Woman's secret identity in a fashion roughly as imaginative as the Brady Bunch episode where Jan names her imaginary boyfriend after the drinking glass on the coffee table. What the heck are you thinking David E. Kelley? And how does someone act as their own assistant? That would be the opposite of having an assistant! And she's supposed to be a "plain Jane" assistant? As in what? As in the eighties teen movie thing where, "Oh, c'mon plain girl, let me take you in the bathroom and show you how to put on lipstick..." and suddenly she's the bell of the ball and dating the high school quarterback until she dumps him for the earnest nerd...who's also gorgeous but wears glasses...who loved her all the time? And how the hell many secret identities does one person need? Would somebody get me David E. Kelley on the phone? Oh wait. Why don't I act as my own assistant and do it myself!

Fishing trip.

2011-02-17T05:30:00.000-08:00

Sarah Vowell has a new book coming out. (1)

I'm a fan of Vowell's writing but can never help but wonder, would anyone read her work if she hadn't been on This American Life? I mean, here's a woman who writes about Puritans and ain't that Constitution a laugh riot essays.

Frankly, it's a question that I have about more and more of the books I see. Not so much, how did this book make it to the shelf but, how did that book become a sensation?

The three of you that read this blog are already familiar with my frustration over the fact that most books aimed at young adults are more about trend targeting than actual writing. The best way to guarantee sales of a novel is to be able to swap your cover out for a still from the "major motion picture" loosely based (2) on its content. A grim childhood or personal history of abuse will move your memoir off the shelf.

And, of course, for a little while longer there's Oprah.

It's hardly a secret that most publishers don't put the time and energy into marketing new books that they once did. The friends I have who have done book tours have done so through a combination of frequent flier miles and the comfortable sofas of friends and relatives. In fact, from Facebook pages to blogs to Twitter to movie trailer-like videos, a good amount of the burden of marketing books falls on the shoulders of the author.

The power of reviews has been diminished by the sheer number of reviews out there. Sure, getting a thumbs up from The New Yorker or the Christian Science Monitor is still a big deal, but people are more likely to check out what the last person to buy a book on Amazon has to say than Fresh Air's Maureen Corrigan (3).

But maybe the problem is the idea of the sensation. Maybe the urge to have books be a sensation is where things go all off kilter and deserving books end up on the dreaded front-of-store $2.00 table. Perhaps I'm getting the question wrong from the very beginning.

Which makes finding a way to end this post a little difficult. I feel a bit like the kid whose finished their assigned essay only to discover they didn't read the question correctly. And maybe that's the point.

A good book isn't necessarily the one that becomes a sensation, it's the one that leads you to think about things a little bit differently and ask different questions.

Now let's all link hands and sing a verse or two of Kumbaya.

1. Yes. Yes. I know Scoopgirl. I know. But that doesn't change the fact that she has a new book coming out.
2. Sometimes to the point of being unrecognizable to anyone...including the author.
3. Whose book is actually in my bag right now.

A room of my own (and other overused phrases)

2011-02-14T11:03:00.000-08:00

I now work from home.

Or, more accurately, I now work from a home some 12 or so hours north on I-95 from the place Leopold and I used to call home. That was the big news, the big change that was coming at us over the horizon that we were only able to share with a very small circle until, it seemed at least, 11,000 pounds worth of boxes were being loaded into a moving truck.

We've traded the monuments and museums of Washington, DC for what the postal service refers to as a "rural city" in northern New England. (1)

So now, instead of heading into a BIG office, I climb a set of stairs to the attic, where Finklestein keeps an eye on the neighborhood from her new perch by the window that is conveniently set near the floor, tucked under the peak of a gable.

In a way that I know would not have have been the case too many years ago, the whole situation seems to be suiting me. The pace is a relief. By my own estimation my productivity seems to be up...getting to tackle projects that have been on the shelf for quite some time. Lunch break means a walk downstairs to the kitchen and dinner has - so far at least - been on the table between 7 and 7:30pm.

I'm not naive of course. This is the honeymoon period. Life hasn't quite kicked in all the way and soon enough there will be appointments to organize and work trips to take and that host of bits and pieces that fill our daily lives.

But for now at least, Finklestein and I are settled in quite comfortably, just enjoying the view. (2)

1. Near as I can tell, all "rural" means in that particular oxymoron is that USPS wants an out when it comes to overnight delivery.
2. Though I don't bark at the FedEx delivery truck nearly as much.

Not done yet.

2011-02-13T12:28:00.000-08:00

I've spent time monkeying around with some things here on this much neglected blog, all of which is still up for trashing and reworking at a moment's notice.

What I've decided, however, is that I might wait to directly ask for reactions until I'm ready for the answer.

That wasn't the case with this exchange.

Artboy: I re-designed the header of my blog.

Leopold: So it doesn't look like Freddy Krueger anymore?

Artboy: You thought it looked like Freddy Krueger?

Leopold: (no response).

Artboy: Well open it and tell me what you think.

Leopold: Oh. (long pause) I see what you're going for here.

So, yeah, I'm not done yet. Mind the walls on your way out. The paint's still wet.

Change is afoot!

2011-01-02T13:20:00.000-08:00

Things never seem to quite go the way that you expect them to go and it's looking like 2011 is going to hold true to that bit of wisdom.

For now though, the big change that is afoot must remain something of a mystery. Which is wearing really, really thin for Leopold and I.

What's been most interesting, however, has been the direction folks have expected our news to take. In those instances where we have had to divulge (1) the most immediate response has been, "Oh. I thought you all were going to have a baby."

Because that's what couples announce, right? Babies.

Well, it's not a baby. It is not even baby adjacent.

But lugging this secret around? It is starting to make my back ache.

My feet are kind of swollen too, but I think that's something different.

1. Along with a secrecy pledge that would have made the Kremlin proud.

Turn Off Your Tweets

2010-12-30T08:02:00.000-08:00

Despite, or maybe because, I am both a superhero geek and a musical theater nerd, I've been watching the rise and fall and rise and fall again...this time hard...with a broken arm and a fractured rib or three...of Julie Taymor's Spider Man: Turn Off the Dark musical.

When I expressed my initial sense of complete and utter discomfort a friend of mine who is also a theater critic her immediate response was, "C'mon, it's going to have music by Bono and The Edge."

It was only later that I found myself wondering if she was being sarcastic.

The latest on the show, which has just put the latest of four actors in the hospital with stunt-induced injuries and moved one lead actress to quit, is that Broadway actors from other shows have begun tweeting that it should be shut down.

Which bugs me.

Not because I necessarily think that anything that Taymor and Bono et al. have developed is worth someone ending up in the hospital over. Were this a big budget Hollywood film I actually think production would have been shut down some time ago...if only because the financial weight that it's carrying is astronomical and the potential return on investment seems to be evaporating thanks to the bad press over the injuries and some dissatisfied social media chatter.

But I do believe that Taymor has a vision...perhaps one that is reaching a bit farther than it should...and to have other artists dismissing what she is trying to do in 140 characters or fewer seems dismissive and not a little self-serving. And that's to say nothing of what it says to the actors in the show who are moving forward with not a little bravery and a great deal of determination.

Perhaps Turn Off the Dark will become a spectacular failure of historic proportions. Maybe Taymor and crew are going to need to start scaling back a musical that simply overreaches what is safely possible in live theater at the current time.

But to be hurling tweets from the safety of one's own Broadway dressing room hardly seems up to the "show must go on" spirit of things.

A place for everything.

2010-12-19T14:53:00.000-08:00

On my way to meet Leopold I stopped by one of the big brick and mortars that I rarely visit.

While I continue to do my very best to shop local, books are where I unquestionably fall down. I'm just that much of a junkie (1). To be fair, however, I will say that I went in with a very specific item in mind. This was not a casual browse. Volume 3 of John Layman and Rob Guillory's amazing comic series Chew has just come out and I'm anxious to track down a copy.

For the unfamiliar, Chew is the story of Tony Chu, a cibopathic detective working in a world where the avian flu epidemic has turned chicken into contraband. Cibopaths, we are told, are individuals who get psychic readings from the things that they eat. I'll note here that Chew is not for the light of stomach. While the artwork is fantastic and the storytelling brilliant, Chu does eat a thing or two that is best not considered for too very long.

But I, as I sometimes do, digress.

So, I stop in long enough to give the shelves an unrewarded scan and then, as I turned to head back outside, it caught me square in the eye.

"Teen Paranormal Romance".

This is not a book. This is not a satirical movie. This is not the name of a great indie band (2) or a great indie album.

It's the name of an entire section in this behemoth bookstore. An. Entire. Section.

I have to think that I'm not alone in finding utterly and completely depressing. I mean, I understand that success breeds copycats. Look at what was spawned by Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Or by the Harry Potter books. Or, hell, the vast majority of what fills those shelves marked Science Fiction, Fantasy and Mystery.

But, those sections...and the copycats housed within them...are marked "Science Fiction", "Fantasy", "Romance" and "Mystery". Not "Adult Female Pirate Romance". "Adult Dystopian Future Fantasy". "Not Particularly Deep Gay Fiction" (3).

So why then devote an entire shelf to "Teen Paranormal Romance"?

The argument could and probably would be made that it is intended to make life easier for parents and aunts and uncles and all the rest doing a similar dash into the bookstore for something, anything, that will bring a smile to the face of that otherwise sullen teenager enduring her way through the holidays at Grandma's house...with only her iPhone and Facebook friends to keep her warm.

But I also think this is further proof of that thing that I have opined on before, that most teen literature is not intended to inspire a love of reading, but brand devotion. The industry is not developing a next generation of book lovers, but a class of genre junkies who eventually lose interest in choosing between Team Necrophilia and Team Bestiality and wander away altogether.

And that's a prospect scarier than all the glittery teenage vampires put together.

1. Though circumstances may soon have me trading in my hard cover addiction for more frequent trips to that Miss Kitty of the book world...the library.
2. Though it should be.
3. I'm just saying.

It's a mostly wonderful time of the year.

2010-12-15T16:21:00.000-08:00

I admit it. The subject line?

Totally stolen.

But I am fully onboard with the sentiment. Not because I don't love the holidays. I really do. Christmas Eve is my absolute favorite of all the holidays - holy or otherwise. There's something about the anticipation of it all and the sappy memories I have of sitting in my parent's living room with just the lights of the Christmas tree on (1).

But this is also a time of year that, despite my best intentions, stresses me out. The excuses most often given for this do not really apply to me. I work very hard not to overspend my budget. I work very hard to plan gifts I think people will genuinely enjoy. I have greatly whittled down my shopping list to a very small circle, with bottles of wine and the above mentioned champ wishing others good holiday spirits.

I even like to shop (3).

Despite all these things working in my favor I always feel rushed (4). And stressed (4). And easily panicked (4). Even though I know in my head that everything will be as it needs to be, I always hope that this will be the year it all comes together more easily. More cleanly. More smoothly.

Perhaps next year Tiny Tim. Perhaps next year.

1. Later on, this very Rockwell scene was expanded to include three or five glasses of champagne...a tradition that has been continued my and Leopold's house, which really does help make the season bright. What? Don't judge me. You don't know me. You don't know my life (2).
2. This too is stolen, from one of my students. He's a totally wonderful nightmare who is bright, funny, engaged and capable of completely disarming me at any given moment. For the full effect please imagine a skinny, hyper-caffeinated white kid shouting, "You don't know me! You don't know my life!" in a raspy falsetto, all while gesticulating wildly. This is an average 8am for me.
3. For others. It is safe to say that I drive Leopold insane at this time of year. I'm the kid that asks for books for Christmas. it would only be worse if I were to ask for books wrapped in socks.
4. Because I am.

Heartburn.

2010-12-15T15:51:00.000-08:00

This past weekend involved a good chunk of time spent in airports and on airplanes. While there was certainly a fair amount of work waiting for me on my laptop and more in my bag, I took the little forced "life recess" as an opportunity to grab the paperback editions of a couple of books that I've been interested in reading for some time...just not enough to want to pay the hardcover price for them.

What can I say. There's economy is affecting all of us.

One of the books that I picked up was Julie Powell's Cleaving. While not quite a follow-up to Julie & Julia (1), in Cleaving Julie has decided to throw herself into the world of butchery in order to escape, to be perfectly frank, the train wreck that is her self-esteem.

The cover - and the author - want you to see this as a kind of meaty meditation on obsession and love and lust and relationships...shot through with recipes because, you know how you do.

But, ultimately, it really isn't. Or, that's not how I'm feeling about it as I continue to slog my way through its pages. Powell's Cleaving falls into that dangerous territory between confessional memoir and feel-sorry-for-me monologue. She renders herself as a fairly unlikeable and entirely self-destructive personality which, in terms of the writerly act of such a thing, is fairly brave. Perhaps more so when coming from an author who made something of a name for herself as being a kind of hapless young woman whose two anchors were her husband and Julia Child's enormous cooking tome.

Bravery, however, doesn't always equal good writing. Gutsy writing, sure. But not good.

1. And a book/movie combo that seems to have been neatly shuffled to the back of the "how food saved my life" shelf by the continuing fervor surrounding Eat, Pray, Love.

Hello darkness my old friend...

2010-12-10T12:19:00.000-08:00

"So, the blog has been silent again."

With very few exceptions I have come to regard this as the most popular sentence in the blogosphere.

In some cases because the novelty has worn off and folks have moved on to new methods of baring their souls to the world.

In others it is because people have run out of things to say.

In yet others because people have come to realize that, as in a good conversation, talking constantly is not always a good thing.

I've bounced in and out of this space. First so that I would get myself on the path of doing some kind of personal writing every single day. Now, so that I have a place to play around with ideas and, frankly, to vent about those things that lose most folks attention within the first few minutes of my speaking about them.

Hmmmmm. If only I had an example to use. If only, if only, if only.

Oh. Wait. How about this?

For the link averse, here's the deal.

The Smithsonian Portrait Gallery - a museum that, because it is not on the Mall, is often overlooked by those tourists hoping to get their DC culture ticket punched as fast as possible so they can get on to the important things like the Hard Rock Cafe and the Pentagon City Mall - has recently mounted an exhibition titled called Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture. The exhibition included a video by the artist David Wojnarowicz that included 11 seconds of footage where ants crawled over a crucifix.

The full work, as described by the artist and those familiar with the work, is about Wojnarowicz's lover's death from AIDs.

Cultural giants and art experts like Republican Representatives John Boehner (Ohio) and Eric Cantor (Va.) immediately came forward to denounce the work and remind anyone that thought that we were past the Mapplethorpe years that the culture wars are alive and well and living in the minds of the narrow minded and ill-informed. A refreshingly short-lived push was made to take away the Smithsonian's federal funding despite the fact that the exhibition was privately funded.

This did not keep on political player from asserting that it is impossible to say that the show was privately funded because it used electric and heat and cooling from federal dollars (1), and going on to say - and you're going to love this - that he sees no reason for taxpayers to be funding a museum (2) when most would rather go to a game or a sports activity and...wait for it...we don't fund stadiums with public money (3).

My greatest disappointment being that no one called Boehner and company out on their desire to keep Americans from seeing the original Star Spangled Banner or the Constitution or the books from Thomas Jefferson's library. That they wanted to pull the funding from a zoo that does holiday events for children and from places where kids can learn about science by visiting with spaceships and dinosaurs.

Yep. That's what's in all those elitist museums. Stupid history. Dumb records of American achievement.

Who the heck is interested in that crap?

I will also count myself amongst the creative types furious that the Smithsonian removed the work. I'm even more incensed by the fact that a protestor (who had the genius to strap an iPad to himself and stand in the gallery playing the video...you sir, are not only amazing but probably deserving of grant funding...) was banned from the Portrait Gallery for life.

No. I'm not kidding. For life.

Here's the deal kids. I have no blind love for the current administration. I certainly pledge no allegiance to the Republican party. But, if you're willing to have an intelligent conversation with me, I will happily engage with you. I recently had a student write an essay defending a stance I whole heartily disagree with. I thought - in terms of her argument - she was being naive, privileged and short-sighted.

But instead of telling her why I thought she was wrong, I'm currently working with her to write a stronger, better essay. That's the deal that we've made. I'm not there to tell her what to think. My job, as a a teacher, is to help her tell others what it is she thinks.

What I have no patience for, however, is ignorance. And really, when you make the "museums are for the elite" argument...particularly a museum system like the Smithsonian that is free and open practically every day of the year, truly serving the role of being America's attic...then I have no time for you. You are, and I have no other way to say this, an ignoramus. And for the leadership at the Smithsonian to cave in and change any single element of its programming based on the petty, uninformed grievances of an ignoramus makes me sad beyond words.

We are heading into strange times, certainly not for the first time.

I can't help but hope that it might be for the last.

Which most certainly makes me as naive as my student.

1. This line of reasoning being somewhat...what's the word...insane to those of us who work in fundraising and deal with divisions between funding streams and restricted and unrestricted funding on a daily basis.
2. Seriously, emphasis his.
3. Um. Yes you do.

Getting smashed.

2010-11-17T12:42:00.000-08:00

So, my first impulse today (1) was to jump on the bandwagon of folks who are not impressed by the new Green Lantern trailer. This is something of a bummer because I've been really looking forward to it.

But then I realized that my discontent wasn't Green Lantern specific.

The problem that I'm having is the exact same issue that I had with the big screen Incredible Hulk movie and which I fear will be my issue with much of the new crop of superhero flicks that are in the pipeline.

Too much computer animation.

For Green Lantern, Ryan Reynolds suit is sewn entirely out of pixels and special effects. The result, at least as it seemed to me in the trailer, is something that looks not unlike body paint...painted on a body that doesn't look particularly anatomically accurate (2).

A similar rumble of discontent worked its way through the comics blogosphere when the costume that Superman was to wear in the Tim Burton Superman movie was leaked. An opinion that fell closely after objections to the "hipster Superman" who will be starring in a graphic novel about the Man of Steel.

Sure, I admit it. I'm the guy sitting on his porch yelling at kids to keep their e-books off my front lawn, but there's something being lost here. We don't have, almost literally, the texture of these super threads that used to tie all the mutants and aliens and gamma ray-enhanced beings to the real world. It's the magic that lets one believe that maybe, just maybe, Hal Jordan's ring could have ended up on their own finger.

But as frustrated as I get with all the technology, at least I've not crossed the line.

I haven't done this.

1. Okay, so it didn't actually start percolating until I was on the Comics Alliance website during lunch but, as the kids say, whatever.
2. No. I don't mean that. Sheesh.

Everyone's a winner! Or else.

2010-11-16T07:55:00.000-08:00

So, what happens when a group of judges get together to award a significant amount of prize money to a promising, young, female playwright only to decide that - amongst the pool of candidates nominated - no one meets the standards put forward by the competition?

They borrow from the handbook of playground kickball games the world over and declare a do-over.

And why? Because a whole lot of people stomped their feet and said this could not possibly be the case.

This is supposed to be one of those times when I look at an issue from various vantage points presented and say that I can understand where all involved are coming from. This is a difficult and thorny issue and good points are being made by people on all sides.

Except, well, it's not. And the points being made by some - especially those who are claiming the award rules are ageist (you have to be under 32) and that the failure to award the prize is another example of the rampant sexism of the theater community.

That's not to say that people don't have any right to be bummed out by the idea that a deserving 33 or 34 year-old can't be considered for the $25,000 Wasserstein Playwriting Prize, nor am I suggesting that a degree of exasperation over that money remaining on the shelf for next year's awards isn't entirely understandable. Particularly if you were one of the 19 finalists who were told that there work did not measure up to the standards of the prize at this time.

But this is not about sexism or ageism or any other "ism". It's about a group of judges trying to meeting the standards they felt they were charged with upholding. The fact that out of the pool of nominated individuals - which in and of itself meant meeting an arm's length worth of criteria - is not a comment on the entire world of theater. It's a comment on the work that they reviewed as they saw it.

That's what makes it a contest.

The final blow.

2010-11-15T10:04:00.000-08:00

It's sometimes hard to know what it is that will ultimately set you off.

For me, it was the new biography of Isabella Blow.

Between NaNoWriMo (1), teaching and the writing that I'm struggling to keep up with at my day jobs, the stack of books that I want to read keeps growing like the tower of shame which it is. There are even some books that aren't even in circulation yet that I'm already dreaming about...like Sarah Vowell's new edition.

And then, there it was, Blow by Blow, The Story of Isabella Blow.

Sigh.

Blow was one of the most influential voices in fashion, she's perhaps best known for the role she played with bringing attention to the work of hat designer Philip Treacy and discovering fashion bad boy Alexander McQueen.

Her death by suicide reads like something out of a great Victorian novel. During a weekend house party in the Hilles, Blow went into the bathroom and drank weed killer. She was later discovered by her sister Lavinia and, for some time, her death was reported to be due to illness.

Even if her sister wasn't named Lavinia it would still sound to me like something out of Agatha Christie. Like her Aunt Jane Marple would have stumbled into the bathroom moments later and recognize a peculiar discoloration on her fingertips or something.

Walking into the bookstore and seeing Blow by Blow on the shelf I had that moment of realization.

I can't afford to buy all these books that I want.

The truth of the matter is that, if we're being very, very honest here, I probably should have refrained from buying most of the hardcover lovelies that are currently laying about our house like post-retirement dot-com millionaires.

And so, it is time to make that leap that so many book lovers have done before me.

I will go to that great literary pimp, that trader in hardcover trollops.

I will go to the library.

The library.

Maybe it's because I've typed the name Lavinia twice today, but I'm feeling a bit like a Jane Austen character right about now.

1. Which I apparently respect a bit more than NaBloooBlamBlow, as I actually bothered to learn the very silly acronym.

Just a bit of butter.

2010-11-14T06:44:00.000-08:00

The Farmer's Wife sent me a message on the Facebook.

Farmer's Wife: Are you and Leopold coming to Thanksgiving still?

Artboy: Yes.

Farmer's Wife: Can you bring those string beans again?

Artboy: (staring blankly at the screen, not entirely sure what string beans are being discussed)...uh...sure (1).

Farmer's Wife: Great.

Artboy: I mean, sure I will if you remind me what string beans we're talking about.

Farmer's Wife: The Paula Deen stick-of-butter-will-probably-kill-us-all beans that nearly caused a fistfight between your cousins.

Artboy: Oh. Those beans. Happy to.

Ahhhhhh...the holidays.

1. Which, in the language of the Facebook comes out like: "Yes."

Lacking the words.

2010-11-12T12:59:00.000-08:00

We are experiencing technical difficulties, please stand by.

Okay.

So it's not so much that there are actual technical difficulties as it is the fact that I made a deal with The Novelist to tackle National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short (1).

So far, things are going well but, as we enter the word count deadline for week two, I'll be honest. I'm struggling a bit.

Currently, I'm running a couple...okay, a few thousand...words behind where I'm supposed to be if I plan to meet the goal of writing 50,000 words of fiction in just 30 days.

So, don't delete this space from your blog rolls and sidebars (2).

It could be that Leopold and I will engage in some kind of witty banter when we all least expect it.

1. And kind of silly.
2. Unless you were already heading in that direction. In that case, just please remember to tip your waitress. She has kids to feed.

Status Symbol

2010-10-28T09:40:00.000-07:00

Last night something big happened.

Something significant.

And, as so many of us now do, I changed my Facebook status.

Now, as I am doing here I will say that I did not share the big story on my Facebook page. I didn't even share it when I was almost instantaneously contacted by a family member to tell her everything I knew.

"Don't worry," she wrote. "I won't tell anyone."

Less than a minute had passed before the next e-mail arrived. "Okay. I will."

Less than a minute after that another e-mail arrived, the story was already making the rounds. It was a bit fractured, but largely laid out as it was in the real world.

Minutes ago I got even more details to the story. Through Facebook.

It's funny really. In the last several weeks I've spent more time on Facebook than I normally do. I've been running back and forth from jobs and printers and assignments, riding on buses and trains at all times of the day and night. Invariably, instead of opening a book, I've been flipping through Facebook pages.

People mourn. They announce births and deaths. They rail about politics, the economy, civil rights and what costume they will wear for Halloween.

And it's all done with the same tone. The same volume. There's no choice really, because that's one of the things about social networking. We all get to be different in the very same way. We decorate pages with funny images and post videos and music that we like. We add clever phrases and post status changes from our desks and mobile phones and from the seats of buses and theaters and restaurants.

When this all started, when Facebook and MySpace and all the rest came into being, it was played out like a new common square where we could all hang out. A place where great ideas would be shared and we could all be "friends".

But right now, as I think more and more about the social networks, things are feeling far less social.

Second verse, same as the first.

2010-10-23T10:09:00.000-07:00

I am prone to phases.

In truth, it was one of the things that caused me the most issue when I was a student in art school. Where most of my classmates became deeply embroiled in a passionate affair with one medium or theme or idea, I bounced around trying to make the images in my head a reality on paper. On fabric. In metal. In plastic.

Nothing ever really seemed to stick and it did not pass without notice. In a refrain that reality show competition judges had not yet made famous, I was consistently told by faculty members that they weren't able to see "me" in my work.

It wasn't until I was just a few months until my thesis exhibition that I finally hit on something, a series of tiny cast-plastic sculptures that each came with a little story.

Later, when people would hear I went to art school, they would ask why I "gave up" being an artist. My answer has always been that the pieces I was making got smaller and smaller and the titles I was giving things got longer and longer.

Which is all true.

Writing the collection of short stories that became my MFA thesis was - while not easy - a much less vexing process. I wrote about artists and process and materials. All the jumping around I had done finally had a purpose. I knew about encaustic and oil painting and weaving and installation art.

But when those stories were finally done, and those pieces went out into the word either alone or nicely packaged together as they were intended to be, the light dimmed a little. It's not that I stopped writing - I've done nothing but since finishing my degree. But, with the exception of a few fits and starts, it's not been fiction.

I've written about media and politics and the arts. I've drafted heft research papers and quirky little columns. I started this blog.

Lately I'm finding that an old familiar is back. My affection and occasional obsession with comic books and graphic novels and superheroes back with a full-throated vengeance. It's a hornets' nest buzz in the back of my head that has inspired me to track down some terrific online comics and comic writers. I've thumbed (but have not purchased) the new Best American Comics. I'm getting really excited about the new Green Lantern movie.

So what to do with it all?

That might be too much to figure out on a Saturday afternoon.

All the world is waiting for you, and the magic that you do.

2010-10-21T13:07:00.000-07:00

Can I tell you what has me ridiculously excited?

News that a new Wonder Woman television show is in the works.

Or, it's on the table.

Or, there are rumors about it.

Or, there are Internet rumors about it (1).

I have loved Wonder Woman for as long as I can remember. Playing superheroes with my first grade best friend - gender issues be damned - I always wanted to be Wonder Woman (2). I loved the original series starring Lynda Carter, the Superfriends cartoon series that included the character and the comic books.

Granted, I've always been a fan of the supergrrl.

The Batgirl episodes of the Batman television series were my favorites, a little thrill would go through me whenever that purple motorcycle would flash across the opening credits, signaling a guest appearance by Yvonne Craig.

I loved Buffy and Isis and, now, there's the chance that Diana Prince is on her way back.

Little things people. Little things.

1. Yes. There is a difference.
2. At the time I was unaware of the character Wonder Man...and eventually I would move on to always wanting to be Aquaman.

But will they ever get their own bar night?

2010-10-19T10:35:00.000-07:00

Comics Alliance - the site that has brought you great things like a Spiderman/Calvin & Hobbes mash-up - did a recent post about the rise of the writer-artist at DC Comics.

The one-man band has always been more of a rarity in those streets where supermen and women are leaping tall buildings in a single bound. But maybe that's why it sometimes feels like true innovations in the creation of superhero books are so few and far between.

When Superman first took to the sky (1) no one had really seen anything like him before. Likewise Batman, the millionaire vigilante who patrolled the streets of Gotham City as the kind of ultimate expression of the self-made man.

Ditto for Wonder Woman, titillating S&M overtones and all.

All characters created around tiny tables at a time when the only boundaries were the panels filling the pulp pages of the comic books they would later occupy.

It's not to say that there is nothing new under the sun. I've always detested that expression as, while not without more than a little truth, it also provides far too much shade for the lazy and unimaginative.

But, when I think of the people who have sent a jolt through the art form, it has been the inspired soloist. The timing seems right for something of a renaissance for the artist-writer given the DIY tone of the times.

Can I get an up, up and away?

1. Literally leaping over tall buildings in a single bound...the original Man of Steel didn't actually have the power of flight in those early days.

Durn fer'ners...comin' in here and takin' our jobs...

2010-10-18T09:35:00.000-07:00

I have a song stuck in my head.

This is not out of the ordinary for me, I'm often walking around with my internal iPod running on an endless loop.

But today the song in my head has the wrong lyrics and this is starting to drive me crazy.

While Sting is still an "alien" a "legal alien" he is no longer an Englishman in New York.

He's a bus driver.

As in, "I'm an alien, I'm a legal alien, I'm a bus driver in New York."

Annoying, right?

iAm busy.

2010-10-17T12:53:00.000-07:00

"Every now and then," Leopold says as he pulls out his iPhone, barely placing it down on the table before he begins pecking at the screen, jumping between his e-mail, his calendar and a Scrabble game he has been playing with a friend for some time now, "I feel like I need to be seen pressing the keys on this thing."

Without looking up he quickly concludes, "I guess that means we've lived here a really long time."

Sweet Merciful Minerva! Or, Holy Job of My Dreams Batman!

2010-10-16T08:11:00.000-07:00

I have a history of embarrassing myself in front of people I admire.

If not reduced to a state where I lose most of my ability to speak like an intelligent human being...or a mildly autistic six-year old (1)...I begin to interview them (2). I have also been known to simply flee (3).

The other night, however, I employed a new strategy. I bought a particular collection of folks who I have come to greatly admire professionally drinks (4).

I will come clean and say the jury in my head is still out as to what degree I may have looked as ridiculous as I do when the scene replays in my head based wholly on a single exchange.

You see, one of the people at the table writes about comics. More than that, he writes about comics brilliantly because, go figure, he himself is an unashamed comics fanboy.

Or, at the very least, that's how he comes across.

And so, when the one person at the table who knew me prior to what we will now refer to as "The Night I Attempted to Pick Up a Table of Culture Critics" introduced me to the table and said comics writer (5) said that he knew my writing I blurted back, "I read your work too."

Or, at the very least, that's the way I remember it in its least embarrassing iteration.

I will also note here that I don't recall if there was an ending to his sentence. Like, "...and I think it's very good." Or, "...you rarely make me question your overall literacy." Or, "...but the less said about that the better."

"I read your work too." This is what I said to the comics writer in question when what I really wanted to do was pull a full fanboy and let loose with how fantastic I think his writing is...especially this gem (6). That's what I wanted to do, but did not do in the hopes of avoiding the addition of another pratfall to the scrapbook.

So close.

1. The Gwen Ifill Incident.
2. The Ted "Apparently I Am Writing a Book About Iron Chef and Must Learn All About it Right Now" Allen Horror.
3. The Great Ira Glass Escape.
4. Note to all fanboys and girls out there: buying people cocktails is a very good strategy.
5. Who also writes about books in the event that there is someone beyond my three regular readers for whom that cv addition might be important.
6. This was sent to me by The Theatre Critic on a particularly bad day. That day instantly turned around.

Hello Blog. It's me, Artboy.

2010-10-14T18:53:00.000-07:00

It's been a frantic couple of weeks and it's not really showing signs of letting up. Priorities over the next several days is to try as hard as I can to catch up on the laundry, get the house back together and try really, really hard not to buy any new books.

That's right. As nuts as things have been I've spent some time browsing the shelves and, well, I'm afraid there are some items that have caught my eye.

Michael Cunningham has a new book, By Nightfall, which sounds pretty much as wonderful as The Hours. There are artists involved. Of course it's going to be good.

Tom Rachman's The Imperfectionists looks like the kind of book that should be hanging out in my house, waiting to be read.

And then there's John Waters' Role Models which, let's face it, was written by John Waters so...c'mon.

As the list of books that I'm craving continues to grow the voices in the back of my head are getting louder and louder. These are the voices of folks like the Cheap Bohemian, VanPelt and The Roller Derby Queen who wonder, often and out loud, why it is I don't just go to the library.

The answer?

Where others fill their closets with clothes or their kitchens with gadgets or their livers with fancy cocktails, I love a good book (1).

I like the crack of a fresh book spine. The feel of a freshly printed page. The heft of a hardcover.

Which is why one of the books that I have lately picked up is a book about how to make books.

I consider this my "teach a man to fish" phase...

1. Okay. I'm not opposed to a fancy cocktail or two.

Like a spiral in a circle, like a wheel within a wheel...

2010-10-03T10:48:00.000-07:00

So, I've already admitted to picking up a copy of Our Patchwork Nation. And even leaving all bias aside, it's a pretty fantastic book. A serious piece of investigative journalism that recognizes the necessity of good narrative.

While it follows in the great tradition of journalists dropping into communities to tell the towns' individual stories, Our Patchwork Nation shines because Dante Chinni has taken the time to really get to know these towns that exemplify the 12 community types the Patchwork Nation project identified.

It's a great read.

I also discovered that Sloane Crossley released a book, How Did You Get This Number, at the beginning of the summer that I somehow missed. David Rakoff added Half Empty to a list of essay collections that already included personal favorites Fraud and Don't Get Too Comfortable. David Sedaris has thrown Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, A Modesty Bestiary onto the stack.

While we were in Maine both of my parents slipped books into my suitcase and that doesn't count the books that Leopold gave me for my birthday - which are largely finished - or the books that VanPelt passed along when we were in Georgia or the strays that have been waiting on my desk for a while.

In other words, my bookshelves are running over.

This is a problem that I'll take any day of the week.

Am I blue? Not entirely...

2010-10-01T11:10:00.000-07:00

At one point during our trip through the great American south I flipped the radio over to NPR.

After about 20 minutes Leopold looked over and started to laugh.

"What?"

"You love listening to the news."

"Why do you say that?"

"You're talking back to Michele Norris."

Which I was and which I do...a fact that Leopold knows better than anyone. After all, on more than a few occasions he has walked into our house to find every radio in the house tuned to NPR so I don't miss anything as I move from room to room.

If you're having trouble reading this post because you're simultaneously rolling your eyes about "The Media" (1) it's not that I am an individual of blind faith. Sometimes when I'm talking back to Michele Norris or Michel Martin or Jim Lehrer, I'm telling them that they're missing the point. That they're getting it wrong. That there's another way to look at the story that they're covering.

Which is really the way that relationship is supposed to work. Watching the news or listening to the news or reading the news isn't meant to give you the answers. It's to help you reach your own conclusions.

Which is why I'm so excited about the publication of Our Patchwork Nation by Dante Chinni.

Before you ask (2), yes, I know Dante. He's a good friend and a fantastic writer.

But what most intrigues me about the book and what I've loved about the Patchwork Nation project is that it embraces how complicated our country really is. No red state, blue state. No conservatives think this way and liberals think that way. It wonders out loud about the issues that influence ideas and opinions and recognizes that the circumstances that cause me to think one way about an issue will not be the same for someone else in another part of the country...even if our profiles might seem the same in a 20 second soundbite.

So I'll be picking up my copy of Our Patchwork Nation and, yes, I'll be getting it signed.

And yes, you should too.

1. Which is high up on the list of words and phrases that drive me insane...mostly because it doesn't mean what the people who use it think it means. But that's for another time.
2. Not that you would.

Solo act.

2010-09-28T18:45:00.000-07:00

Here's the funny thing.

Tonight I find myself with one of those rare evenings where I have no where that I'm expected to be.

I'm not on deadline for the magazine.

The work that I have to have done for tomorrow is done.

The work that I could be doing that will be claimed by someone else as their accomplishment I have no interest in doing.

The work that I'd like to be doing for myself is not interested in being done. There is a temptation to say that I'm experiencing another bout of writer's block but it's not that dramatic. It lacks the depth of desperation I generally feel when I realize that I'm experiencing a creative freeze. It's more a complete lack of inspiration.

And, in a way that is not usually me, I'm finding a certain amount of satisfaction just sitting here with my laptop, writing here in the blog. Not engaged in some big project. Not stressing out over what I'm not accomplishing.

Just writing because I like to write.

When I was in graduate school I remember a conversation with the person I thought should be my mentor because the work we did shared some kinship though I would never, ever put my writing anywhere near the work that he had done and continues to do.

In the course of one of our weekly meetings he asked if I was planning to do a novel for my thesis.

My response was no, I didn't know that I really had a novel in me. I quickly added that it felt like something of a deficiency on my part. At the time it felt like everyone was working on a novel or digging up the bones of one family member or another for a gut wrenching memoir. I told man who would not be my mentor that I didn't really feel like anything sufficiently bad had happened to me to allow me to run with that creative nonfiction crew.

The man who would not become my mentor laughed and said that not every writer is meant to write a novel. We don't really all have one of those big books in us. We write what we write and we worry about what it will become later.

So tonight I'm letting myself worry about it later.

Yeah, that's right pile of dirty laundry. That goes for you too.

Butchered Paper

Taken to tax.

Steal this book!

The looking glass ceiling.

On the road again...

There's no excuse for you.

Surfing for distraction.

Is that a Batarang in your utility belt or...?

Hello blogger, my old friend.

Stuck a feather in his cap.

I can't write right now, I'm writing.

You gonna eat that?

What are you gonna do?

Winter of a lot of discontent.

When I just can't go there with you.

Fits and pieces.

Ooo-ah-oh.

NaNoNoMo

Short. Temper.

BIG troubles

I'm gonna let him fly.

The first rule of NaNoWriMo...

NaNoUhOh

Artboy: Embarrassing Myself Since 1971

Draw your own conclusions.

Squatters.

Holy [BLEEP] Batman.

Artboy in the attic.

*cough*

Well, I'll be...

Eating out.

Pre-occupied.

Why I don't have a book contract.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand...GO!

Boots.

Cheers.

Seriously?

ch-ch-ch-ch..oh, forget it.

Status symbols.

First, there's this.

No where to run to.

Must be funny.

A tale of two authors.

Overnight sensation.

Genius!

In which I re-use a book cover and get all philosophical.

With a grain of salt.

We are experiencing technical difficulties.

Time. Travel. (PHL>SFO)

Walking on sunshine.

What would you suggest?

52 Pickup

Nothing you can say...

For love and money.

drum roll.

So you say it's bread? That's been sliced?

Isn't it...well...you know.

Wait watching.

Common Cents.

book/cover

Artboy's terrible, no good, etc - Airport Delay #2

Artboy's terrible, no good, very bad day...and it's just getting started.

See me.

bin talking.

First impressions.

Getting it together...

Uncle Arthur!

A fool and his 1099-misc.

lit.

Shelf life.

Just dessert.

One leg at a time.

Clunk.

Watch this space.

Peek-a-boo

Okay. Now you're just messing with me.

Fishing trip.

A room of my own (and other overused phrases)

Not done yet.

Change is afoot!

cough