Posts Tagged ‘Clarion West’

Write-a-thon, Day 32: My family and other animals

Posted: July 24, 2013 in music, Record reviews, Writing
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
4

Snoopy letter make me rich and famous

I put an hour and a half of today into the Write-a-thon, though I had to use most of my lunch hour to do it. It was the most interesting part of my work day, that’s for sure!

“Visions are worth fighting for. Why spend your life making someone else’s dreams?” (Tim Burton)

I’ve been writing most of my life; at least since I was 12, when my sixth-grade English teacher gave us a writing assignment every Friday. I’d been reading like crazy, but I don’t remember trying to write anything before Mr. Gray made us do it. Some Fridays he had a topic and some Fridays he said the sky was the limit; the only rules were that you had to finish in a set period of time and then you had to read what you’d written in front of the class. That last part might’ve been voluntary.

Most of what I wrote was about my family. My sister, who was 4, was the frequent star, but my brother, parents, and grandparents all made an appearance. The stories often had a science-fictional bent, but I didn’t realize they were funny until the first time I read my work out loud. Turns out, my family is hilarious, and without being taught I somehow knew just which details to use and how to use them to get those laughs.

Of course, if my family was truly dysfunctional, I would’ve written Angela’s Ashes by now. Instead they’re merely aggravating.* This places me closer to Erma Bombeck and Phyllis Diller than to Chelsea Handler or David Sedaris. Or the guy I just read about who’s a recovering meth addict who’s written a novel about meth addicts and zombies fighting for world domination. But my family gave me my start, and though it’s taken me years to figure out what this start has meant, it’s the only one I’ve got.

“It took me my whole life to learn what not to play.” (Dizzy Gillespie)

* Certain parties who are married to me might offer a different perspective.

Random Pick of the Day
Deodato, Prelude (1972)
Brazillian child-prodigy keyboardist Eumir Deodato (why wasn’t I born with an awesome name like that?) can play just about anything he feels like playing. His jazz-fusion records are a mixed lot, though I’ll take his Top 40 hit “Also Sprach Zarathustra (2001)” over anything by Weather Report or Chick Corea.

Prelude shines when Deodato brings on his guitarist, John Tropea, a man who can play jazz and imitate Santana, Jimmy Page, and some funky Motown. They shortened “2001” sufficiently to fit on a 45 by removing Tropea’s 4-minute solo. “2001” will live forever; “Baubles, Bangles and Beads” and “September 13” are pretty good. The band’s cover of Debussy’s “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun” is inferior to Frank Zappa’s “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Sexually Aroused Gas Mask.”

Random Pan of the Day
2 Live Crew, As Nasty As They Wanna Be (1989)
They want to have sex. Big deal. I want to have sex. I don’t think this is scary at all. (Shut up!) If this music was a latex toy, it’d be the one at the bottom of the bargain bin the day after Christmas.

 

Write-a-thon, Day 31: Faster than a bullet that has yet to leave the barrel

Posted: July 23, 2013 in music, Record reviews, Writing
Tags: , , , , , ,
2

Snoopy 2 rejections at once

There are 11 days left to go in the Write-a-thon and though I wrote again today I have to admit that my original goal of hitting 50,000 words by August 2 was just a wee bit optimistic. I’ll be lucky if I get to 30,000. I do wish I wrote fiction faster, but I don’t. Marketing writing – that I can do fast. Advertising, editorials, web copy – I’m a speed merchant. These blog posts? Warp factor 6! But when I have to invent characters and situations and see how they play out, I move one. step. at. a. time. Sort of like the way the first primitive Mariners played baseball.

My hero, John Updike, wrote that “There’s a kind of tautness that you should feel within yourself no matter how slow or fast you’re spinning out the reel,” and though I gave up fishing in 1967 when my brother took three bass and all I hooked was a lousy starfish, I take heart from these words.

Right now there’s a kind of tautness in the back of my brain, or a bubbling. All day long, and often just before I wake, something back there is working on this book. Objects and actions bubble to the surface, things I can use on a page I’ve already written or one I have yet to write, like a bird finding the right-shaped stick for its nest. (We saw an osprey nest on Cape Cod that looked as if the occupants had built it out of firewood.) I’m mixing my metaphors here but I’ll trust that you get what I’m driving at. I wouldn’t go so far as to say Esteban esta caliente, but I do feel kinda warm.

Random Pick of the Day
Paul Van Dyk, In Between (2007)
In my house we have this divide over anything that isn’t rock ’n’ roll. Trance (or techno), for example, is not only not Special D’s thing, she classes it with The Thing, The Thing From Another World, The Thing with Two Heads, 10 Things I Hate About You, and Thing. Despite the constant scorn I live with, I like this stuff. The dance-floor anthem on this disc is “Far Away.”

Random Pan of the Day
One Direction, Up All Night (2011)
Boy bands sure have deteriorated since The Beatles. Today they’re all strip-mined from the same barren earth. Bruce Springsteen could use One Direction for dental floss.

I’m going to start Randoming bands with numbers in their names. We’ll see which one becomes the first to move from Pan to Pick.

 

Write-a-thon, Day 30: Do ya think I’m texty?

Posted: July 22, 2013 in music, Record reviews, Writing
Tags: , , , , ,
0

Snoopy thanks for not sending 1

The biggest challenge for me when returning to my regular life following a vacation that includes my family is food. I just spent a week ingesting 22,000 calories per day, including anything that swims and whatever comes out of an ice cream scoop. Basically, someone stepped on my foot, I opened my mouth, they shoveled food in. But today I ate streamlined meals that included a number of vegetables. What’s up with that?

I rallied despite these hardships. I impressed everyone at a job interview, including me; helped put our household back together; and spent another hour in the Write-a-thon, working my way through everything I scribbled last week. I remember this now. This is the easy part: Typing up my notes, editing as I go along, making changes in previous chapters that occurred to me on the plane. It’s as if someone else did all that work and all I have to do now is supervise. But I’ll finish with the last page of hand-written work in a day or two. Then it’s back to the blank page on the screen and just my imagination, which, hopefully, will run away with me.

Forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won’t. Habit is persistence in practice. (Octavia Butler)

Random Pick of the Day
The Who, The Who Sings My Generation (1965)
They certainly sang “My Generation” as well as “A Legal Matter,” but those might not be the best songs on their raucous debut – “The Good’s Gone” and “The Ox” are still rock at its finest (and messiest).

Random Pan of the Day
The Who, Live At Leeds (1970)
I love this album! If Led Zeppelin had tried this they would’ve gotten a concussion. But what I love is the original six-song release. Here’s what I’m panning: The 14-song version of 1995 (“The Big One”), the 33-song version of 2001 (“The Deluxe”), and the four-CD, 55-song version of 2010 (“The 40th Anniversary Collectors’ Edition That Makes The Big One Look Like a Weenie”), which includes 32 songs from a concert in Hull. No offense to anyone living in Hull, but as I understand it, that’s not Leeds.

The expanded editions give you about three days’ worth of new music, but also what feels like years of stage banter that’s almost indecipherable and adds nothing to the experience even when you can decipher it. Pete is out of breath from all that windmilling? Roger thinks something is funny? Was that Keith who just hacked up a hairball? Would you please just fucking play?

The producers picked out the best songs 40 years ago: “Young Man Blues,” “Substitute,” “Summertime Blues,” “Shakin’ All Over” (my favorite), “My Generation,” and “Magic Bus.” I don’t know about you, but they are all that I need.

Parnassus 072013

This is the Cape Cod bookstore where I discovered Lord of the Rings in 1970. I was 15 and all I was trying to do was go for a walk to escape the chaos in our vacation cabin. You never know when or where books are going to strike.

 

Write-a-thon, Day 29: It’s the end of the vacation as we know it (and I feel fine)

Posted: July 21, 2013 in music, Record reviews, Writing
Tags: , , , , , , , ,
6

Finally found a boat I could afford
Finally found a boat I can afford!

I’m back from Cape Cod with plans to build either a lighthouse or a windmill in the backyard. We had a wonderful, though emotional, trip, with many indelible moments; for example, the store on the New Bedford waterfront that advertised the four basic food groups of Massachusetts: SNACKS TOBACCO LOTTERY COFFEE. (It was closed.)

How can we not cherish the memories of the bored teenager, the adoring grade-schooler, the parents who can only talk about their cat, and the three hours it took us to drive the 50 miles the hell off Cape Cod? Bliss! Will we ever forget the T-shirt that proclaimed “What happens at the Eastham Turnip Festival stays at the Eastham Turnip Festival” or the bumper sticker at the approach to the Sagamore bridge that said “Never forget Chicken Man”? Sure we will.

Favorite meal of the week: The Reuben Flounder at the Yardarm in Orleans.

Favorite ice cream experience: Poit’s Lighthouse Mini Golf. The ice cream was OK. It was the experience of eating it on a hot, humid night in front of a mini golf course where vacationers have been dodging the mini lighthouses for 60 years that wins the prize.

I could rhapsodize further. But first, my novel.

In our last, very exciting episode, I had discovered that continuing the Write-a-thon while also coping with my family was impossible. I had to fight to hold on to every brain cell. The only writing I did was three hours on the plane to Boston and three hours on the plane back to Portland, but those were six productive hours. Today was our first full day back in the non-vacation world, and when I wasn’t emptying sand out of suitcases and restocking the fridge, I plowed into the pages of dialog, stage directions, character studies, and miscellaneous notes I brought back.

Plus I finished Chapter 6. That last one easily counterbalances the 300-motorcycle parade that stopped us cold in Barnstable on Saturday while we were still trying to escape Cape Cod. You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.

In life the firmest friend/The first to welcome, foremost to defend
We returned to an empty house. This was the first time since 1992 that we weren’t greeted at the door by happy barking. The silence was louder than the loudest bark. I kept going by keeping going, ticking off chores one after the other.

A dog. Got to get one.

Box score
– I’ve written 23 days out of 29
– 29.5 total hours
– Word count: Got lost in all this unpacking. Next week.
– This was my first post on the Write-a-thon

My sponsors (all hail):
– Karen G. Anderson
– Laurel Sercombe
– Mitch Katz (he and Liz celebrated their 16th anniversary yesterday)

Thanks for waiting for me!

Random Pick of the Day
Peter Rauhofer, Club 69 Future Mix: The Collected Remixes of Peter Rauhofer (1998)
Herr Rauhofer, who died in May, grew up in Vienna and became a pioneering New York dj. Club 69 Future Mix pulls together many of the remixes he did for new wave and R&B acts of the ’80s and ’90s. At this distance, the only names that still resonate are Depeche Mode (“It’s No Good”) and Falco (“Der Kommissar”). The CD falters in the final tracks, but if you like house, try this one. I especially like it because I found it for a quarter at a yard sale this morning.

Random Pan of the Day
Traffic, The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys (1971)
In the early ’70s the title track seemed like the essence of cool. Now I’ve heard it surpassed many times by jazz players. Also, now I understand that it’s a rant against their record company, like The Clash’s “Complete Control” and The Sex Pistols’ “E.M.I.” If I’m going to listen to someone complain, that someone is going to be me. OK, this 11-minute slo-mo monster still has power, particularly when played at 2am, but the rest of this disc doesn’t. The prog-rock is dull. “Rainmaker” sounds like Yes needs a nap. The only Traffic song I still seek out is the title track from their debut, Mr. Fantasy (1967).

Write-a-thon, Day 22: All the young dudes

Posted: July 14, 2013 in Writing
Tags: , , ,
2

I may have underestimated the emotional and physical impact of being with my aging parents and the newest Bielers, the niece (14), the nephew (11), and the cat (1). I wrote nothing yesterday, Day 21, though we did put on a birthday party for the cat.

Thus ends the first half of the Write-a-thon. The second half began today. Despite a family that never stops talking when everyone else is talking, or asking the same question 17 times, or the work in keeping my wife sane, and a semi-rural countryside where every street, widow’s walk, and stone wall remind me of something from when I was a kid and spent my off-hours throwing stones at the Redcoats, and the humidity that’s so thick it’s like wearing another person — despite all of that, I wrote four paragraphs.

This is going to be tougher than I thought.

Miscellaneous notes:
Best Western drapes a sash over the foot of every bed. It looks exactly like something a Vulcan would wear to a Star Fleet awards banquet.

A decommissioned aircraft carrier docked in Newport, the USS Saratoga, is waiting to be scrapped. In the meantime, it’s been colonized by peregrine falcons, barn owls, and great horned owls. These predators enjoy killing pigeons, ducks, and each other. The Providence Journal (“ProJo”) ran an awesome photo today of a peregrine falcon winging its way toward the carrier’s flight deck.

We packed everyone into two cars and drove to the art gallery in New Bedford where my Dad’s rope had been used in a sculpture honoring the New Bedford waterfront. I had seen it online, and it was impressive there, but in person it was a real knockout. The artists had posted a photo of Dad and an excerpt from my blog. We both felt honored.

In 1979 my Dad gave a box of tools each to my brother and me. My brother never claimed his. I’ve been using mine all these years. We wanted to give these tools to my nephew, so today I hauled my brother’s toolbox out of the basement and into the back yard where we could air out the dead-walrus stench from decades of mold. We had to throw away all the packaging and some of the more porous tools. When we spread the survivors out on the picnic table, I felt as if I’d traveled back to 1979. There was my hammer without a single scratch or dent. I’d forgotten that it had a black stripe on the head. There were my screwdrivers with no paint flecks on the handles or corrosion on the blades. The nephew was ecstatic, my sister less so. Sorry, sis, I’m the fun uncle. Logistics are your problem!

Today as I wrote I used a word I’ve never used before: runnel (“A narrow channel or course, as for water”). I was inspired by the humidity.

Somerset Creamery still has some of the best ice cream I’ve ever eaten!

Older Entries
Newer Entries