10/2/10: Gwen Stefani Is Just A Girl

Just this morning, I thought, offhand, that there had been a thirsty drought of synchronicity as of late (of ones that I could relate here, at least). That, however, was soon remedied.

The first ingredient came around three this afternoon, while I drank cheap coffee and loaded up my iPod knockoff with music, in preparation for cutting the day's grass. I settled on several albums, including Tragic Kingdom by No Doubt, a classic. It had been years since I'd listened to it, long enough for it to shed its played-out status, and I looked forward to reopening the old grooves while I laid waste to the local greenery.

Ingredient number two came when I left for town and found smoke issuing from under my hood, so much a corny car commercial. My mechanic was a block away, so I zipped down there, watching my truck's temperature gauge climb angrily. Long story short, my radiator's cap had, mysteriously, come loose, and I only had to fill it back up. However, I had to wait an hour before doing so, for the engine to cool. As it happened, my gym shares a lot with my mechanic, so I went and worked out in the meantime, despite having no plans to do so today.

Ingredient number three came as I worked out, listening to Tragic Kingdom. By the time the album had progressed to the third track, "Just A Girl", I was pretty high on endorphins and my thoughts were growing long, and I remembered a Gwen Stefani interview I had read when I still read such crap. In it, "Just A Girl" was brought up, along with how it perpetually received play on the radio, how people wouldn't give it a rest, blah blah blah; and I thought, distantly, I have never heard "Just A Girl" on the radio. Then the next song came on and I forgot all about it.

The clincher came later in the afternoon. Again, I'll paraphrase: I had to be somewhere at five, but because of my freak radiator-cap incident and its stealing an hour from my schedule, I was forced to go early and wait for approximately ten minutes, in my truck. Bored, I by chance turned on the radio, something I very rarely do, and wouldn't have done today if not for my profaned schedule. I frequency-surfed for a while, listening to snatches of songs and skirting advertisements, and then came across a local college station that has a taste for '90s, playing the tail-end of "Just A Girl".

7/26/10: David Wong Fixes His Car at the End

I recently bought John Dies at the End, by David Wong. Don't ask me why. I normally don't buy into hype, or allow myself to be exposed to it to begin with, but somehow I got bit by the hype monster, and purchased the book. I read it rabidly at first, then halfheartedly, finding it way too TV for my tastes. In a nut, the novel was a barrage of dick- and fart jokes, punctuated by some truly great writing. A strange combination. Even so, I endured all four-hundred-odd pages of the text, to find out the devilishly clever way Mr. Wong had John die at the end -- but John didn't die. The book is concluded with John alive and well, with an afterword in which the author mentions that he had originally published the book because he needed to fix his car, a fact that I took notice of for no reason I could ascribe at the time.

Anyway.

That night, with the bitterly droll aftertaste of John Dies at the End on my tongue, I went to eat dinner, and found that my dad had left a newspaper article for me to read. He does this, as a favor to those he knows, tearing out articles of interest and furtively leaving them in places they'll be found. So, I read this latest leaving as I ate my meal, and the first thing that jumped out at me was a picture of a jolly, jowly, white-haired chap, a Mr. Ken Follett, according to the caption. And then, above it, the headline: Need to fix car spurred Follett's writing career.

7/15/10: And God said, Listen to Michael Manring.

I write, as you've probably inferred after reading this blog in any capacity. Unfortunately, I've yet to reach that Promised Land of Published Writer, and since the bills absolutely refuse to pay themselves, regardless of how much I ask, I work a part-time job cutting grass. It's not such a bad job. Sure, I have to wade dog feces and play garbage man picking up trash, and a week of bad weather can mean food from my mouth, but there are worse occupations to be had. Furthermore, the job jibes well with my burgeoning writing career: you can get a lot of thinking done over an afternoon of murdering grass. Walking in circles for hours on end ... the engine noise drowning the music of the world ... jockeying the mower like a bellwether dog ... the sun smiling on your toil ... the endorphins kissing your gray matter .... It's only natural that your mind retreat into itself. I've composed entire short stories in the space of a lawn, jotting notes like mad during my water breaks. And to think I get paid for it, with a nice chunk of exercise and a tan thrown in the bargain. Yes, I like cutting grass.

But enough about that. I only mention it as context for yesterday afternoon, when I was cutting one of my larger properties. As I sauntered over the rolling plot of grass, dodging landmines and scaring up characterization for a zombie story of mine, an odd thought occurred to me. Out of nowhere, I absently thought of a famous bass player I had just as absently read about some five or six years ago, when I still actively played the instrument. I could remember the man's face, the basses he promoted, his reputation as a virtuoso ... but I couldn't remember his name. I wrestled with it for a couple laps, but it ultimately escaped me. I thought little of it, though, considering I'd never listened to the guy's music, nor had any ascribable reason for thinking of him to begin with.

Fast forward to a couple hours later, after I'd finished my cutting for the day and gone to cash a paycheck that had come that day. After I got the cash, the rascally stuff proceeded to burn a hole in my pocket, and I decided to go relinquish a percentage on some new CD's, having just that morning noticed my lack of new music. I then proceeded to my local used-music watering hole and bee-lined for the M's, where I hoped to find a select CD. The one in question was not there, but I did find one that jumped out at me: Book of Flame by Michael Manring. I stood studying the album a moment, and it hit me that the bass virtuoso I'd thought of just hours previous was, in fact, Michael Manring.

So I bought the CD. I listened to it once today, and I found it mildly enjoyable, if a tad stale.

5/30/10: I Didn't Kill Dennis Hopper

We've all seen the story/TV show/movie about the writer who magically finds that his stories come to life, with chaos ensuing. It's a ubiquitous fantasy of the writing class, it seems. Sure, I've had a couple similar ideas float across my gray matter, though I can't say I've ever tried to tackle the tired old plot. Not only does it break the writer-as-the-protagonist rule, but also the ridiculously-overused-scenario rule. Plus, I just don't like it. It seems like a fifth-rate Bentley Little story, or maybe something from Tales from the Crypt. But now I'm rambling.

Anyway, I wrote a short story in the first weeks of May, one of several. Without going into detail, the story's plot involved Dennis Hopper as being our nation's next actor/President, and that he was assassinated. Don't ask me why I chose Dennis Hopper as the unfortunate victim of my antagonist's machinations, he was just the first guy my mind pulled out of its hat. So I wrote it into the story. Except I didn't -- I referenced "President Hopper" throughout the piece, but I couldn't find a way to work in that it was Dennis Hopper without being expository.

Until last night, the 30th, when I was doing the story's final draft in preparation for submission. I wrote it in as a last-second idea, but I needed to look up a list of Mr. Hopper's movies to do so, which led me to his Wikipedia page. As I scanned the page, however, I by chance noticed that he was, surprisingly, deceased, after which I checked the day: May 29th, 2010. The very day before I cemented his fictional demise.

Some seriously freaky stuff, right there.

5/24/10: What's in a Name?

Everyone seems to have a different take on conjuring names for fictional characters. Some writers take the passive approach, using whatever functional title that comes to mind; others make a science of it, correlating popular baby-names for the time period of their fiction, researching regional trends, commencing Pagan rituals, etc., etc. Me, I'm one of the former. It's not that I'm lazy or don't want to enrich my character with a fitting name, I just have faith in whatever my strange mind barfs up when the time comes. I rarely get a bum name, so I've come to stick with this non-process.

Today was no exception. I was finishing up a short piece I've been working on, and I needed a name. Raymond, the erudite name-creature in my head said, so I put it down. But then I needed a last name, and the creature went suspiciously silent. I pondered this a moment, during which I resorted to feeling around Raymond's character some. He was a doctor, I knew, as required by his role in my narrative, and then it hit me that he was Jewish, so I began swishing these attributes through my mind's mouth, seeing what taste it made -- and that's when his surname came to me, Scheinlind. Very Jewish, kind of doctor -- perfect. However, I wasn't sure if I was spelling it right, so I consulted Google, entering, simply, "scheinlind".

A page of results bearing the name came up, so I knew I'd hit the nail on my head. Before I closed out my browser and went back to work, though, I noticed something about the first hit on Google's list: it opened with an account of someone who'd "recently read a beautiful new translation of the Book of Job by Raymond Scheinlind."

If I happen to meet Raymond Scheinlind when I'm at the post office today, I'm going to run screaming (it's nothing personal, Mr. Scheinlind, you understand).

5/4-5/5/10: David Lynch

Did I say I'm not a fan of Hollywood? Well, I'm not, and though I typically avoid film and TV like the plague, every now and then I get the inkling to swallow some moving images, much as some people get the urge to severe a limb, or drink shoe polish. I get the itch irregularly, maybe every few months. Earlier this week, though, I got it two days in a row.

It's always magic when it happens, my movie itch, despite the unpleasantry that usually precede it. It goes like this, most of the time: I'll be going along, doing my starving-writer thing, free from the shackles of The Tube; and, suddenly, my inspiration will die. Just gone, yoinked like a plug. So then I'll get up, despondent, do whatever I have to do, and be left with a couple hours to kill. Over time, I've learned to recognize this as a divine cue to take in a film of some sort, and I always heed it, because I never finish the ingested movie without getting something from it (I've ripped of -- errr, come away with many writing ideas after watching these select movies).

Before I go into the pair of films I happened to stumble across, I should go into the book I was reading at the time, Mystery by Peter Straub. It was a decent read, though I'm not much of a mystery buff, but none of that matters: what does are two elements from the book, the blue rose and, much smaller within the story, the tenor sax. The blue rose is a running element in the text, a key part of the "mystery" and something that's never fully explained, symbolically, at least; while the tenor sax is just mentioned in passing, a little one-line scrap of atmosphere thrown in arbitrarily.

So.

Tuesday, May 4th. I woke up, ate, wrote for less than an hour, and -- poof! -- my inspiration farted out and I was left looking for a film to watch. I had no idea what I should watch, I own no movies, so I wracked my head for any possible movie that may serve my purposes, eventually settling on Lost Highway, for reasons I don't remember. I'd seen the Lynch film advertised when it came out in '97, but never watched it, even though I'd bought the soundtrack (seems like buying a leash without owning a dog, in retrospect). So I went out, rented the film, and watched it, and, having never experienced David Lynch, I was blown away, despite its incredibly disjointed and alienating narrative -- but, again, that's another post. What's important is that one of the film's main characters happened to play the tenor sax, as stated by said character near the start of the film. You may be thinking So what? but the thing is, I just happened to read the page of Mystery referencing the tenor sax barely an hour after watching Lost Highway. I can't remember the last time I saw mentioned the words tenor sax, unless you count mondegreening better sex. Neat, huh? Well, that's only half the story, though.

Now comes Wednesday, May 5th, yesterday, as of writing. I woke up, psyched to tear through a short story to make up for Tuesday's non-performance ... and the same thing happened, an hour of warming up then nothing. Soooo ... back to the untapped Lynch library, this time for Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me. Again, the film blew me away, for its sheer bizarrity and vignette-based narrative, if not its remarkable cinematography, but I'll cut to the chase: near the start of the film, you are introduced to a loose theme that runs through the length of the flick, something never explained or elaborated on -- the blue rose.

It's of note that I finished Mystery, a five-hundred-fifty page novel, on Tuesday afternoon.

Website Open

I've opened my homepage, with a short story, "Big", and the first chapter of The End of Jack Cruz available, as of writing. Check it out.