Monthly Archives: May 2006

Now There’s a sport I never thought of…

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There are four players on the rather small court, two teams of two. They are on bicycles that have been specially modified for the event. Riders may not touch the floor, and they may not kick the ball. Instead, they propel the ball with quick flicks of the front wheel while all their weight is on the back. These guys can hit it hard. Like hockey, you are allowed to catch the ball, but you must immediately drop it straight down.

The game requires remarkable amounts of skill. Players move forward, backward, and they stand on either wheel. They hop the bikes, spin and twirl, and generally put on X-game performances, but without the arbitrary judging. It is an actual sport, by my stringent definition. (No judges, scoring is significant, scoring is constantly a possibility.)

Apparently, the sport has been around a long time. Right now at the Little Café Near Home a documentary is playing, honoring a team who started back in the black and white era (also known as the communist era, but for different reasons), and today, beer bellies and all, they’re still mighty damn good. They have trophies, medals, and awards out the wazoo. Shelves and shelves of them.

OK, the documentary just showed them getting the gold in Sydney. I think it did, anyway. If that’s the case, it is yet one more beef I have against American olympic coverage. There are olympic sports that look cool that I didn’t even know about? I look forward to the day when each channel bids to show a particular event, rather than the olympics as a whole. By not locking up the entire games with a single provider, obscure channels would have a chance to carve a niche for themselves showing events the big boys could never afford to show. NBC can pay a billion dollars for figure skating, while the outdoor network picks up biathalon cheap and NBC learns the hard way that figure skating is not a sport. That, my friends, is the free market, and under that system you would be able to watch the events you like. Somewhere.

Thanks!

Bar 100

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A hundred bars in four countries over the course of a year and a half is hardly an astonishing accomplishment; I’m sure there are those who have dwarfed that figure without even trying. I’m not terribly motivated to inflate the number; there are times when weeks have elapsed without me undergoing the grand adventure of breaking in a new place. I have my principles, and I have places I belong.

For the record, this was not the first time I’d been to the beer garden at Letná (rhymes with met yah), but it was the first time since the Bars of the World Tour officially started.

Letná is a park on the hilltop on the steep side of the river. It is in full bloom right now, as the plants jump into summer with gusto. It is not just the vegetation that responds this way, the population of the city comes out in force on those first few beautiful days that tell you that summer is here, and mother nature isn’t just fooling you this time. As this is the Czech Republic, an important part of enjoying any day is having a nice beer.

The line at the beer window moves quickly, and even on crowded days there is room among the hundred-plus picnic tables arrayed along the hilltop, sheltered by flowering trees. The breeze brought with it a slight chill, and there was constant danger of flower petals falling in one’s beer, but those are the hazards one must overcome to survive in a place like this.

There are dogs everywhere, running and playing among the picnic tables, chasing one another and yapping happily. The number of cigarette butts on the ground around the tables is surprising, even for this city.

The view from up there is one of the best in Prague. (The best view is from the TV tower, because it is the only view that doesn’t have the TV tower in it. Remember the giant Iron babies?) The oldest part of the city lies below you, just across the Vltava, and you can see why this town is nicknamed the city of a hundred spires.

On the pathways people stream past: punk kids on skateboards; elderly couples with their little dogs; and long, graceful rollerbladers weaving between them. Many of those who stroll past are carrying beers, and that is no crime here. (Some of them would be surprised to learn it is a crime anywhere.)

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a story that takes place on one of these benches. When I wrote the story it had been more than two years since I had been up there, but it was (almost) exactly as I remembered it. (I had forgotten about the plastic cups. There is another beer window in another hilltop park, where you leave a deposit and get to drink beer in a more civilized fashion. The story starts strong and builds an interesting character, but ends schmaltzy, as so many slice-of-life type stories do.

I did no writing while I was there; I write this from the Little Café Near Home, days after the fact. At the time, I did not think about the milestone that bar represented.

Unless an unlikely acting job materializes, I will be traveling soon to other countries to meet up with people who like going to bars. That is likely to inflate the numbers substantially.

Thanks!

Monster on a diet

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It wasn’t easy to do; there was some good stuff in there. It’s just that I wanted to start with the voice of the main character. I added some at the start of the now-first chapter, giving the style of prose I do best a workout right at the top. Now, three paragraphs in, the reader will either be saying, “All right, this guy can take me for a ride,” or she will be quite right to put the book aside. Before, readers had to hang with me a while before I gave them a compelling reason to do so.

I won’t submit the revised work for a couple of weeks at least; it needs time to gestate, and there are still some rough spots to smooth over. (I still want to work in a subtle promise that at least one major character that you will really like is going to die.) Additionally, I’m working up a new cover letter with more detail about the story. It seems I have been short-changing myself by trying to keep the description down to two or three sentences. I don’t even remember where I heard that advice, but I’m glad to hear from reliable sources that’s it’s just plain wrong.

I submitted an earlier draft of my cover letter to another Web site for constructive ridicule, but it’s looking like I missed out on the constructive part. I’d point you there, but the cover letter contains spoilers. If you really, really want to see it, let me know. The ridicule part may turn out to be pretty entertaining. We’ll see when the joke is sprung.

By the way, I would like to thank Jojo for her critique of the new opening. Thanks, Jojo!

Thanks!

It’s (almost) Heeere!

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I’ve got a story in the upcoming issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction. They call it the July issue, despite the fact that there will be another issue out before July.

Here is an excerpt of a review of the issue:

Note: apparently there are other stories in the issue as well. Go figure. The review is protected by copyright, so I will only reproduce here the parts that have to do with meeeee meeee meeee.

Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction – July 2006 by Gordon Van Gelder (Ed.) (Spilogale, Inc. May 2006 / ) – Contents: *blah blah blah*

The July 2006 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction is another great one with all the stories getting a Very Good rating from me.

*snip*

The issue is rounded out by stories by new writers. “Memory of a Thing That Never Was” by Jerry Seeger is a nice little tale about a man recruited for a war against The Other. They are apparently aliens but there is more going on here in what makes for some good intrigue.

*snip*

Again, this is a magazine that you should be picking up.

So there you have it! I get a Very Good. So does everyone else, but that just means the magazine has high standards, and somehow I snuck in there. You know what you have to do, right? It’s a three-step process:
  1. buy an extraordinary number of copies of the magazine.
  2. write the editor and tell them how much you like the story by that new guy.
  3. promise you’ll subscribe if they run another of my stories (Note: please don’t sign the letter “Jerry’s Mom” or “Jerry’s credit counselor” or anything like that, or they might get the idea that you are not completely unbiased.)

The goal, of course, is to have their marketing boys say, “It’s uncanny! Sales are through the roof! The only possible explanation is this little story, Memory of a Thing That Never Was. We’ve got to get more of this guy!”

That’s what I’m shooting for, anyway.

The assistant editor who first rescued my story from the slush pile (the large stack of material that people send them even though they haven’t asked for it) will be publishing an interview with me on his blog simultaneous with the release of the magazine. I’ll put up a link so you can read my erudite drivel about things I have no business talking about.

I’m still working on getting the names of the production staff to give them a special thank-you, but I don’t want to pester the editorial staff at the magazine. Maybe there will be credits in the magazine itself.

Thanks!

Happy No Pants Day!

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No Pants day is here again. It’s turned out to be very easy for me to celebrate this year; in fact, it has required almost no deviation from my usual lifestyle.

We have reached a point where there are far more than 365.2422 things to dedicate a day to each year. This leaves us with three options: mount giant rocket motors on the planet to push it out away from the sun so we have more days in a year; attach giant rocket motors around the equator to speed up the earth’s rotation, shortening the days; or pick and choose just which thing we want to use each day to commemorate. The first two options are only quick-fizes, as people will keep on coming up with things like “Left Sock Theiver Day”, and either the Earth will be pushed out past the Oort cloud to accommodate or it will be spinning so fast we will fly right off.

No, in the end, this is not a problem for the engineers to solve.

Adding to the complication is the breed of holidays that do not occur on a regular 365.2422-day basis. The floaters. Easter is one, so is the Chinese new year. Also, No Pants Day. It’s the first Friday in May, so put all your cares away.

So I, only marginally aware of what day it is in most cases, stumbled into No Pants Day. Here’s how I celebrated: I got out of bed, made tea, sat in front of the computer, scratched myself, and “researched” web comics. Somewhere in the mid-afternoon I snorted, said, “Oh, yeah, No Pants Day” and took off the sweat pants I had been sleeping in the night before. I sat back down and continued what I was doing. During the course of the day, I was never twenty meters away from the place I woke up.

It was just like many other days, but this time I wasn’t wearing pants. Now that summer is here, there are likely to be many more unofficial no pants days.

To erase that horrifying image from you mind, I leave you with this song, composed just for this day. Since I am distributing it without permission, the least I can do is give you all the relevant info, so if you find the singer’s voice especially sweet or the writer’s words especially witty, you can look for them.

Singer: Sara Hamman
Songwriter: coulda sworn there was a separate songwriter credit before, but there’s no evidence of it now. Sara has just risen that much more in my estimation. This is a brilliant song. There are others available at the Official No Pants Day Site music page.

I Wish It Were No Pants Day
Click Sara’s face to play

(right-click her face to save the file)

The image is also used without permission, but she shore is purty. I mean, just look at those eyes. On top of that, her voice calls us all to pray at an altar made of carbon fiber composite, draped with silk, and bedecked with the first daffodils of spring. Just listen and tell me I’m wrong.

Thanks!

Crazy People and Happy People

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I’m not good at secrets, and I’m not good at organizing. I am the last person on earth you want to have organizing a surprise party. I’m sentimental enough to appreciate the surprise party, but really, I suck at getting it done.

A couple of days ago I got the word. fuego was coming back to town for his first anniversary. It is widely known that the lad is eight time zones away, setting up for some big movie or another. You can’t say no to the Schmoo brothers. Less known is that the movie has been pushed — production is still a week or two out. fuego is there, in the big wide southwestern US, but his thoughts are with his sweetie, so far away. He hatches a crazy plan. He wants to go back for a few days, to surprise his bride.

Cash is tight. The lad has a job coming up, but in the meantime resources are scarce. I was not there, mind, but here is my understanding of the conversation: “Uh, Mom, I was thinking…”

“Yes!”

Mom’s cool that way.

So before you can say “Uh, wha—?” my favorite brother is suspended by Bernoulli’s principle over the frosty Atlantic and it’s up to me to lure his bride to a meeting where she does not expect to find her husband. It was touch and go for a little while, as I was reluctant to lie outright, and I failed to make the event sound even the slightest bit interesting. She was ready to shine the whole adventure. Only the public exhibition of the latest Pirates cut got her there.

Thus it came to pass that I was sitting at a table across from my partially-concealed brother when MaK arrived. I waved to her and she headed our way. Then she saw him. She froze, and broke. It was one of those moments you feel lucky to witness, an honest moment when there is no pretense, no artifice, just joy.

She cried. He held her. I watched.

Crazy people, happy people, and me. It was a good afternoon.

Thanks!

Sometimes you just have to take a chance

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I just ordered one of today’s lunch specials here at U Kormidla. My near-worthless dictionary translated Vepřový vrabec as “Pork sparrow”. I ignored the little voice in the back of my head saying “if there’s no translation for that part of the pig, you probably don’t want to eat it” and decided to give it a try.

As I finished typing the above my meal arrived, and I can confirm that nothing on my plate bears even a fleeting resemblance to a songbird. Between the chunks of fat there are some nice morsels of meat, however, and piled up with the pickled cabbage and dense potato dumplings, they are quite tasty.

Thanks!

Merry SOS Day

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Our beloved May twoth holiday, SOS day, is also known as “The first twoth where nobody had a really good name.” SOS day is so named because SOS naturally follows Mayday.

So, in order to celebrate the fifth twoth of the year, let us all imagine we have been stranded on a deserted island for the day. It is a friendly island, and while your transceiver peeps out . . . – – – . . . you have a chance to save your own soul. Come on! The sun is warm, the breeze is, uh… breezy, and the azure water in the lagoon is bathtub-warm. Put your feet up and relax. Did I mention that this island has a refrigerator and a bookstore? And what tropical island would be complete without a blender?

Tell us about your SOS day!

Thanks!