Author Archives: Jerry

The Wiener Dogs of Terrible Town

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People joke about the name of my neighborhood: strašný means “horrible” or “terrible”, so Strašnice could be interpreted to mean “Terrible Place”. Marketing was slow to catch on here.

It’s a quiet neighborhood, even at the busiest of times. The sounds that come in through my open windows are the songs of birds and the occasional distant rumble of a tram. Today was a holiday, so I was not at all surprised to find the streets deserted when I left my flat. I moseyed up the street, and saw no one. I heard no sound of automobiles. After a couple of blocks it was starting to feel a little spooky, but when I walked through the little park on my way down to the tram stop it was eerily quiet. There were no drunks on the benches, no kids in the play lot, and, most frightening of all, there were no old men with wiener dogs.

Those who have been hanging around this blog for a while know that wiener dogs and the old men who walk them are a fixture in this neighborhood.

I was alone, Strašnice was abandoned, leaving only me and the ghosts. Perhaps the last thing my landlord had said, (which I pretended to understand but didn’t) was that all living souls were to evacuate the neighborhood today. I paused in the park and contemplated the true source of my neighborhood’s name. Strašit means “to haunt”. In recognition of the sprawling graveyards that define this part of town, my neighborhood is called “Haunted Place”. I live in Ghost Town and today, it seems, is the ghosts’ day to play. All others are gone — the wiener dogs have been packed up with their old men and shipped off to the countryside, the drunks have braved the trams to find a part of town where the beer stores are open on holidays.

Perhaps on other days, when the wiener dogs rule, you could think of Strašnice as Terrible Town. But when even the wiener dogs know better the city’s true nature is revealed. If I knew how, perhaps I could see out the corner of my eye the shades of those who had gone before, the ghosts of old men long forgotten and their forgotten long dogs.

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A couple of fragments I like

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Her lips were full and red, sensuous and stark against her pale white skin. Her blue-black hair was pulled up and back, revealing her long, slender neck. Her eyes were dark, mysterious pools with the glint of treasure far beneath the surface. She looked good enough to eat, but I was too pissed off by then.

“What’s with you guys?” I asked. “It’s like your fashion sense is stranded in the 1920’s.”

She slid an annoyed glance my direction. “At least we have a fashion sense. Look in a mirror lately?”

“Hey, I dress for comfort.”

“Huh. You can take the boy out of the forest, but you can’t take the forest out of the boy.”

“At least I don’t wear clothes I can hardly walk in.”

She turned to look me in the eye. “You don’t like this?” Her tone was haughty, but I could hear the hurt buried deep within it. She turned back and I watched the way the black silk moved with her body, light flowing over her contours.

Damn. I’d marched right into that one. Time to tuck the tail. “Yeah, I like it,” I said, letting a little of a growl into my voice. “You look good.” Luckily there was no need to lie, she would have known.

She smiled her little smile, the one that didn’t show teeth, which meant I was forgiven. She pointed at my sweatshirt and jeans. “But I’m not going anywhere with you looking like that.” I allowed myself to hope for a moment that perhaps I was off the hook, but before I could even open my mouth she said “Go change.”

“Do you really need me there?”

She sighed theatrically. “We’ve been over this. When we get a new member it’s important that everyone is at the reception. It’s a ritual that goes back centuries.”

“Yeah, but I’m not one of you.”

“If you’re with me, you are.”

“I just can’t believe what a big deal you all make of this.”

“Listen, we have to look out for each other, and it’s traumatic for the newbies. We’re not like you. We don’t just sniff each other’s butts and then go out and get drunk.”

I let that pass. I had tried the “more hygenic than shaking hands” argument before, but it never worked. I went to find some clothes she would approve of. It didn’t take long; options were limited. Black jeans, black turtleneck, and a camel-hair coat from the thrift store. I ran my fingers through my hair (no pony tail for formal occasions), and presented myself for inspection.

“Eventually, you’re going to need another outfit. You’d look good in black leather.”

“Give me a break.”

She regarded me harshly, but she liked the way I looked; I could smell it. Maybe, just maybe, I thought…

“Don’t even try it. We’re already late.” She looked over her shoulder as she passed through the door. “Try not to hump anyone’s leg.”

When her back was turned I made a face and silently mouthed the words back at her. Try not to hump anyone’s leg.

“I heard that,” she said.

Sometimes I hate the vampires’ sense of hearing.

* * *

“I can’t believe you said that to Vlad.”

“What do you mean? The dude was being an ass-wipe.”

“Just because someone’s an ass-wipe doesn’t mean you have to call him that right in front of everyone.”

“So what’s the harm? Everyone knows he’s an ass-wipe anyway.”

“Tom, you humped his leg!”

I smiled. “That was for you. Jesus, that guy bugs me. All those Old-Europe airs, that world-weary cosmopolitan bullshit. Give me a break. He’s from Cleveland, for fuck’s sake.”

“You have no right… Really? Cleveland?”

“Guess he forgot to mention that at his big reception.”

“How do you know?”

“You’d know if you’d sniffed his butt. He’s the punchline to a lot of our jokes about vampires. He tried to join us and we shined him on. That’s when he went over to you guys.”

“He’s a werewolf reject?”

“That’s right.”

She smiled her glittery smile, the one with all her teeth framed between her red, red lips. “Oh, that is interesting.”

* * *

“Tell me a vampire joke.”

I thought for a moment. There was no way I was going to tell her any of the jokes we traded around the pub, but if I didn’t come up with something, things would get awkward. “All right, how many vampires does it take to unscrew a lightbulb?”

She scowled for a moment, then said, “I don’t know. How many?”

“That, uh, was the joke. UNscrew. Vampires like it dark.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Usually it’s screw in the lightbulb.”

“Hm. That’s not very funny.” Silence stretched for an awkward moment, and she asked, “how many werewolves does it take to screw in a lightbulb?”

“I don’t know.”

She turned to the ceiling and shouted, “FUCKING LIGHTBULB!” She sold it, too, letting herself go the way vampires never do, making the answer a howl of rage, even putting a bit of a wolf growl into it, and I fell in love with her all over again, even as she blushed and regained her decorum. As I laughed I wondered once more what she saw in me.

“You know,” she said, “don’t let this go to your head, but if I’d gone to that party without you a lot of people would have been upset with me. The ones worth a damn.”

“That’s surprising. Mostly what I get is ‘oh, crap, what’s he going to do this time?'”

“Half of them say that. The other half say, ‘I can’t wait to see what he does this time.’ You’re like the yurodivy, the Russian Holy Fool who is allowed to speak the truth in a sort of code, and be exempt from reprisal.”

“My code isn’t very subtle.”

She smiled. “No, but it’s fun to watch.”

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Back to the Past

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Yesterday it happened. We reached the point in my lessons where I have been entrusted with the tools to travel through time. I now have the knowledge (ability will require a lot of practice) to reach back to events as distant as yesterday, and bring them to life. How will I use this awesome power?

Incorrectly, if my past performance with the language is any guide. But there have been many times when I have thought of things I’d like to say, and even had someone willing to wait while I worked things out, but I would be stumped by the past. I’m going to spend some extra study time this week on forming sentences that speak of a time that is no more. The folks at my regular watering holes have also begun to tutor me now and then, correcting pronunciation they used to let slide and adding to my vocabulary things that aren’t found in the textbooks. I believe I crossed a threshold recently, where I have enough words that I can get the gist of what people are saying (some people anyway — for others speech is still just a long string of sound without any apparent structure at all), and this has increased the enthusiasm of people around me to try and communicate with me.

That has a down side, of course. It means more interruptions to my work and I am more easily distracted by conversations going on around me. A word from the next table will drift into my ear and I’ll pause to think, “hey! I knew that word!”

I am composing an episode about Czech cursing. Stay tuned.

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Summertime Fun!

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An offhand comment elsewhere about another topic altogether made me realize today that (provided I’m not lying on the cutting-room floor) now I, too, can claim connectedness with Kevin Bacon. But how many degrees separate us?

In my case the cutting-room floor outcome is pretty likely (I can imagine the dispute. “The scene’s timing is off; this part has to go.” “You can’t do that. We have to keep the guy looking at the thing.” “Scene’s too long. It’s an action movie. Gotta make it snappier.” “But the guy — the thing…” “Besides, look at him. The way he looks at the thing. Nobody’s even going to notice the action, they’ll all be watching him.” “Yeah, you’re right. Maybe I’ll do a documentary next, about people looking at things.”), so I thought it best not to wait for the movie before playing this little game.

Although, actually, I probably won’t be very good at it. I don’t watch that many movies, and even when I do I forget who was in the cast, so I’m pretty much out of luck here. I’m not even sure who’s in the cast of Casino Royale (for all I know Kevin bacon is in it).

I suppose, since I won’t be in the movie credits (those would be long credits before “1st guy looking at thing when the dude came down the stairs” was included), this is not in the spirit of the “real” game, but screw that. From Jerry Seeger in Casino Royale to Kevin Bacon in the fewest steps. Anyone want to take a shot?

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Adapting to immobility

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When it comes to writing, I’m a creature of habit. Writing, for me, now means getting the hell away from the Internet and drinking way too much caffeine as I scratch out rough prose, all twitchy and birdlike and generally neurotic. Hey, it’s my idiom. But lately the laptop hasn’t been up to the trip, so I’ve taken up the ol’ pen and paper. In the last couple of days I’ve drafted two pretty cool short stories (one has a lot of work ahead of it). I think in the last three days I’ve scribbled about eight thousand words in my notebook. Words that must be revisited from scratch as I enter them into the land of ones and zeroes. As these stories play out into final versions it will be a very interesting test of writing styles: discrete revisions versus continuous editing.

Tonight I wrote a story I really quite like. It’s there, sprawled over a few pages in my notebook (I fit a lot of words onto each page) and it hangs together pretty well, even if it is a series of three fragments. Laura K. Hamilton meets the nitty gritty of everyday life. It’s a love story, not a lust story. I want to share it with you. Hell, I want to sell it. It’s on paper. Paper! Who thought of this crap?

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Another baby step

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I got an email from an agent yesterday, which said (more or less): “We probably won’t take you on, but we’d like to see more of your work to be sure first.”

[Edited post because I decided it’s best not to talk about business negotiations while they are going on. I don’t think there’s any big deal in this case, but it just seems like a good policy for down the road. Sorry for the tease.]

Still, it beats the hell out of a “no”.

*”partial” refers to sending a part of the novel to an agent. For many agents, the process goes something like this: Writer sends a query. A query is a one-page letter describing the work, possibly the first five pages of the story, and sometimes a brief synopsis. If the agent is intrigued by the query, she will request a partial. A partial means a bigger chunk of the story (often the first three chapters or so), and perhaps a more detailed synopsis. The agent may also begin to take an interest in personal information about the writer. Should the partial pass muster, then the agent will request a “full”, and will at long last commit to reading the whole damn story. That’s a big deal for an agent, because reading generally happens in her “free” time. Once the agent reads the story, she will ask herself “can I sell this?” which is itself a complicated question, and “can I work with this writer?” Should both those questions came back with a “yes”, the agent will contact the writer and the two will discuss the possibility of working together. Even then, it’s not a sure thing.

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Sorting out the computer issues

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My laptop is unhappy; the screen light keeps turning off. (This can’t possibly have anything to do with it falling out of my backpack last week. I had been distracted by my company at the time and didn’t take proper care as I zipped up.) I can make out the vague shapes of windows, but there’s no way to work on it.

I decided to finally bite the bullet and get the Intel-based Mac mini so I could use that while the old PowerBook is in the shop, and finally get an Intel version of Jer’s Novel Writer built and tested. Only problem is, there aren’t any Mac minis with the DVD burner to be had, nor will there be for a while. It seems there are none in the Czech Republic at this time, and one guy told me that Eurpoe is fresh out.

I did get a monitor, however, knowing I would need one for the mini when I finally got it anyway. I got it home a little while ago and set it up, and discovered that it even came with the DVI cable that matched my Mac’s Digital Video connector. Oddly, that cable could not be attached to the monitor. Yes, the monitor shipped with a cable that was completely useless without a DVI adapter. I have such an adapter, so no problem, but with the adapter, the regular cable that came with monitor works just fine also. Oh, well, another cable in the “things that might come in handy for some reason someday” bin.

So, I am back! Able to post blog entries and everything. Life is not perfect, however; unless I want to lug around the monitor, I am stuck at home until the laptop is fixed, and my seating position is a little torqued, as the new screen is next to the keyboard, rather than behind it. But if I send in the laptop for service, I won’t have anything. So do I bite the bullet and go computerless for a few days and then return to my carefree nomadic ways, or do I sit chained to my table until I can get the new machine, then sit chained to the table but at least productive while the laptop is repaired? Quite a conundrum.

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Language Log is Ruining My Life

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I mentioned before that I have added a link in the sidebar for Language Log, a blog that is the product of the musings of some (I am led to understand) pretty heavy names in the linguistics biz. That their writing is (generally) as accessible as it is interesting is a credit to them and a drug for me. It’s nice to find eggheads with a sense of humor.

Today I was drifting through the archives brushing up on profanity — how it’s encoded, and how it’s legislated, and what makes something taboo in the first place. Recently they have been posting comic pages that go “meta”, stepping outside the frame to look at just what is coming out of their mouths, as when Beetle Baily asks Sagre how a little flower symbol snuck into his invective. It reminded me of a time I actually laughed at The Wizard of Id:

PEASANT: I’m here about the job in the stables.
STABLE BOSS (holds out small object): What’s this?
PEASANT: Shinola
STABLE BOSS: You’re hired.

I laughed because a clean, family-oriented comic made a joke that was funny for no other reason than it made the reader think of the word “shit”. (It’s like saying to someone, “You’re full of something, and it’s not shinola.”) Certainly the lads in the stable refer to shoveling and various other animal waste-related activities, but this time, there was no escaping the shit — not the substance, but the word. The word is far more taboo than the offal it represents.

After that I read some stuff on recent debates about the nature of language. Some heavyweights in the field, including Chomsky (whose value to the science seems to be his ability to start fights), have proposed a definition for human language that damn near rules out Hemingway’s version of English. Some of those arguments were, admittedly, beyond me, but there is no doubt that my writing here, wandering and layered, a double-jointed drunkard lost in the desert (“recursive” is the word the wonks are all going on about these days), qualifies as human. The argument is that no other animal has true language, because other animals are not able to embed ideas within other ideas, and this embedding makes a language able to convey an infinite variety with a finite number of words. Or something like that.

Personally, I’m new to this game, and dangerously ignorant. As far as I can tell these arguments are all about the mechanics of the language, not what is done with it. If those guys asked me, the two distinguishing characteristics of humans are the ability to misuse tools and the ability to use metaphors. Other animals have developed primitive tool-using behaviors, but only people have invented screws and screwdrivers yet still pound screws in with hammers. Similarly, if you told Koko the gorilla, “You’re pounding a screw in with a hammer,” meaning she was going about something the wrong way, she would be confused because she did not even have a hammer. (Don’t give gorillas hammers. Trust me on this one.)

I’m pretty sure the folks in Language Log Plaza would consider the metaphor bit not to be germane to the current argument, which is OK for now as they are finding plenty of things to argue about already. But if they ever run dry, I’ve got a reservoir they can tap.

What a great job to have, where a major part of the job description is to sit around arguing about esoteric shit. To Koko, there is no shit that can’t be thrown.

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Note to self

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A crowded nightclub at 4am after a few hours of beers is neither the place nor the time to be stacking things.

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As metaphoric as a lunchbox

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Yesterday morning I came slowly out of the Land of Nod with a phrase resonating in my head: gaseous as Persephone. I toyed with it a bit, kind of liking the cadence and the classicalness of it. “She sat across the table, lost in the shadows, gaseous as Persephone…” Persephone’s got that whole underworld thing going for her, to boot. (She’s the first snowbird, finding a warmer place to spend winters.)

There’s only one problem with the phrase: it makes no sense whatsoever. Sure, I like imagery and metaphor as much as the next guy (maybe more), but Persephone was never reputed, to the best of my knowledge, to be gaseous. (Gassy, perhaps, if pomegranate seeds cause flatulence, but that’s hardly the image I was shooting for.)

Stooping to using nonsense like that is what we in the business call “putting on airs”, and writers do it all the time. Some are better at it than others; some can even make drivel like that into poetry. Those few only encourage a host of others to try their hands at it, and most of them suck. I’m sure I could go back and find plenty of times I’ve committed this very sin, but this time I managed not to. For that we can all be thankful.

While we’re on the subject, I’ve added a new link over in the “Blogs for Writers” section, to a place called Language Log. Warning: it cost me several hours of my life the other day. It’s a blog by a group of respected linguists across the US, created for non-linguists. Most entries are very interesting and well-written, and some are downright fascinating. The essays about Dan Brown are entertaining, as they look at his use of the English language. Although “gaseous as Persephone” isn’t linguistically horrible (or maybe it is — my ignorance of the field is staggering), I’m sure they would have something to say about it.

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The first day of the year shorter than the day before

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The days are long this time of year, and I like it that way. This far north it is common for people to go out before sunset and get home after sunrise. (Not for me, mind — I’ll leave that to the kids.)

I was in a chat with some piker pals yesterday morning, and one of them said “It’s all downhill from here,” which summed up my feelings as well. I may have mentioned it here, or perhaps in other writings in other places, but man is the only creature cursed with the imagination to ruin any good time. Three-legged dogs don’t think to themselves, “if I had another leg I could get to that ball faster.” No, they think “Ball! Ball! Ball! Whooeee!” When a cat is curled up in a sunbeam, it’s not thinking to itself, “too bad sunset’s coming,” the cat is just thinking, “waaaaaaaaaaarm.” Creativity and imagination are the bitter pill, as well as the source of hope.

Piker pal’s comment also reminded me of a story I wrote this spring. It’s not one of my better efforts (a bit too sticky-sweet for my taste), but it does describe how I feel about days like today. It’s been sitting on my hard drive in the junk pile, but here it is, for what it’s worth. The paragraphs about dark and light I wouldn’t mind working into a better story someday. The opening line is nice, too, but doesn’t fit.

The First Day of Spring

It started small, the way grand things do.

I was sitting on a park bench sipping my first beer of the afternoon, watching the people around me take advantage of the first truly beautiful day of the year. It was a false promise, I knew, a deception; more snowflakes would fall before winter was truly over.

Summer. It is not simply a segment of the year, not here. It is a gasp of air for the soul, before it is plunged back into the cold and the dark. Each summer seems shorter, the lift it gives diminished, and I know there will be a summer that is not a summer at all, and it will be my last.

A parade of cheery folks streamed past the bench where I sat. Some moved slowly — couples taking the same walk they had for fifty years — while others flashed past, here and gone in an instant — girls pushing themselves along on rollerblades, toned legs moving rhythmically, dodging dogs and children and grandparents.

“Need a refill?”

I looked up to see someone I vaguely recognized and I hoped she wouldn’t be insulted when I couldn’t remember her name. “Sure.” I reached into my pocket for some change.

She took my glass. “It’s on me,” she said. “I’m celebrating.” She turned and headed over to the beer window. I watched her walk and she seemed more familiar from that angle, as if she had walked away from me many times before. When she reached the line at the beer window she glanced back and caught me watching at her.

I wanted to inspect her as she returned, to see if that rang any bells, but that would have been difficult. Instead I looked out over the city spread below.

“Here you go,” she said, handing me my beer. “They raised the price this year.”

“I’ll get the next round.”

“Don’t worry about it.” She stood holding her beer, this woman who had been here before, who knew me, waiting for me to say something more. Finally she gave up. She took a sip and said with a beer-foam mustache, “Mind if I join you?”

I joked to cover my impoliteness. “It’ll cost you.”

“I’m sure it will.” She sat, not too close, not too far. “Na zdravi.”

“Na zdravi” I raised my glass to hers, careful to make eye contact. Around here, toasting without looking the other in the eye is like a limp handshake. She met my gaze. Her eyes were green with golden flecks, and the corners were crunched just a little bit, like there was a smile just beneath the surface — the punch line to a joke she was enjoying telling.

“Aren’t you going to ask me?”

I hesitated, then remembered. “Celebrating what?”

The smile came a little closer to the surface. “It’s my first anniversary.”

“Ah.” I raised my glass again. “Happy anniversary.” It seemed a strange way to celebrate it, buying beers for guys in the park.

She sipped her beer and looked out on the city of a hundred spires. “This is the second-best bench in the park,” she said.

Whoever she was, she knew her benches, as well. “The lady with the plastic hat had already taken the best one when I got here.”

My benchmate smiled. “She’s back? Good.”

“She’s got a new hat.”

“I hope it’s ugly.”

“She’s outdone herself this year.”

She laughed, took a sip of her beer. “Aren’t you going to ask me?”

I thought for a minute. “Anniversary of what?”

“Of the first time I came up here. It was the first warm day last year. I started down by the river and hiked all over until I found myself up here.”

The first warm day. A sacred day, a day that doesn’t go on the calendar but is universally recognized. Not a national holiday, but a human one. “It’s my favorite day,” I said.

“Mine too. There’s so much promise; the air itself is telling us how wonderful the summer is going to be.”

I sipped. She was right, but it was also the first day I started to feel the summer slip away, sand though my fingers, lost and gone forever.

“You were on the other bench that day.”

“Was I?”

“Yeah. The sun was bright, but you were dark and brooding. You scared me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Then I caught you checking out my butt.”

“Uh…”

“I love it up here. I came back every chance I got, and you were always here, on one of these benches, adding a little darkness to the day.”

My beer was empty. I wanted to go get another, or find any reason to walk away from this conversation, if only for a moment.

“You think too much,” she said.

“Pardon?”

“You think too much. Nothing is simple for you. When you watch the sun rise you think of night, but when the sun goes down, you know the day will follow. You prefer the dark, because only then can you contemplate light without sadness. But still you take pleasure in the simple things, like sitting on a bench on a sunny day. That’s what I like about you, that you can be both happy and sad at the same time.” She took my glass and stood. “Aren’t you going to ask me?”

I looked up at her standing over me, waiting, expectant. “What’s your name?”

The punch line. The smile that used her whole face. “Allison,” she said. “I’ll get another round. It’s our anniversary, after all.”

I followed her with my eyes and I thought of the bright days ahead, and the winter that must surely follow.

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My own World Cup scorekeeping system shows that Argentina is a bunch of babies

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Just so you know, I use a bit of strong language in this episode. If the use of the word ‘pussy’ to denote ‘someone lacking the personal fortitude to participate in a physical contest of sport’ offends you, well, uh… too late, but maybe you should stop now. I’m going to use it again.

It’s halftime in the game between Norway and Argentina, and I care not at all who wins. But it’s on the TV here in the Little Café Near Home, and I am watching the game because the box with moving colors and sound controls me with substantially more power than it seems to have over other people. I decided as this match started, though, that I would put on my journalist hat and cover this game for you from my own personal angle.

I mentioned in a previous episode that Argentina was a bunch of ankle-grabbing, whining wimps. Tonight I decided to keep score.

Minute 12: The first Argentina player went down. Oh! The agony! Judging by the pain etched into his face, I thought we were facing a career-ending tragedy. Such promise! Such talent! Wasted, years of productive ball-kicking cruelly wrested from this young lion by a horrible injury to… well, that wasn’t exactly clear. While he gasped in pain, the team captain went over to consult with the coach, discussing strategy, I assume. The stretcher came out (more on that later), and after more delay (not sure, but I think he eschewed the stretcher so he could walk to the sidelines much more slowly than the stretcher would have done) he was on the sidelines, standing, while a trainer sprayed chilly stuff on his knee. Oh, man, the knee. That’s the absolute last place you would want to have an injury like that.

Thirty seconds of playing time later, he was back in the match.

Minute uh, let’s call it 15: Another terrifically painful injury, this time to an Argentine wrist, maybe. Not sure, but too horrible to allow the poor guy to stand, at least for a bit. No stretcher was required; play resumed eventually.

Minute 18: Argentine player Rodriguez was tackled hard but cleanly. He went down and rolled over, holding his ankle. No whistle. He looked around and hopped back up to his feet. Whew! Another horrible injury narrowly averted. (As I edit this at minute 55 the exact same thing happened again.)

And so it went. Twice a Netherlands player took all of five seconds to get up after a rough tackle. There were more Argentine-on-the-grass incidents as the half progressed, but in documenting the first ones I managed to forget the rest I had carefully catalogued in my sieve-like brain. It doesn’t matter; you get the idea.

Argentina may be the best team in this tournament, but they are also the perfect example of why this game will not work in the US as it’s currently played. For the Argentines, being a little pussy and rolling on the grass, crying to the ref for redress, is good strategy. For Americans, it’s just acting like a pussy. In hockey, you don’t have stretchers coming out just so players can’t delay the game as much by grabbing a body part and crying like babies. In hockey, the harder someone hits you, the more important it is to get up and skate like nothing happened. I haven’t watched that many games this cup, but I’ve only seen one player bleeding. He kept playing, got stitches at the half, and came right back out. He was on the US team. (In hockey, they do the sutures on the bench, between shifts.)

Soccer is the ball sport with no balls, at least when Argentina is playing. It’s crazy, because they really might be the most skilled team in the cup. They don’t need to pull this kind of crap. But they do. You know why? It’s who they are.

***
As a coda to this, I have to add that I have seen an increasing tendency in American sport for the players to go begging to the refs for a call. — this just in! Minute 61: Man, I think that guy is done for. He’s in agony! Oh, wait. He’s OK. Back to the diatribe — They don’t pretend to be hurt, it’s more of a big-mouth self-advocacy thing. Still thoroughly distasteful. These little prima donna bitches that play sports for big money seem to think they are entitled to a call, especially in the US — so don’t for a minute think I’m letting the American Whiners off with this assessment of soccer. My heroes are the ones who are a solid bruise the day after the game, but during the contest they gave nothing away. I like the guys who get their uniforms dirty during warmup.

Minute 66: A Nederlander took 15 seconds to rise from the turf. I think his thigh was stepped on, but I’m not sure.

Distasteful. I was disappointed to see players in the world cup (somehow I still associate soccer with class) performing premeditated ceremonies after a goal. Tacky, tacky. tacky. Class players cheer — they have every right to be happy, and I wouldn’t take that from them — they hug the guys who all helped create the opportunity, they thank the fans, and they go back to doing their jobs. Now, doing one’s job in sports has become a marketing opportunity, and you have elementary school kids working on their touchdown dances. Crass, lame, and shameful. My message to the kid wearing pads for the first time is the same as my message to the members of perhaps the best side in soccer. Play the game.

Play the game.

Thanks!

Well, THAT wasn’t the response I was hoping for…

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A couple days ago, I dropped a line to Miss Snark. (Miss Snark is a literary agent who, with her own snarky and anonymous voice, answers all the stupid and neurotic questions that writers have about the business.) I had picked up a couple of comments here and there that writers living outside the US are more difficult for an agent to represent. More difficult means, of course, that the other manuscript that is almost as good gets promoted. So I dropped her a question about how early on I should mention that the difficulties cited don’t apply so much to me, as, really, there is nothing whatsoever preventing me from waking up breathing American oxygen the day after tomorrow.

The reply was less than encouraging.

Here is my question:

Dear Miss Snark,

Evil Editor made a comment the other day that made one of those question marks pop up over my head. I managed to get rid of it, but they keep coming back (usually late at night, keeping me awake with their eery luminescence and faint wood-burning smell).

Currently I am living outside the United States. Evil Editor mentioned in passing that he would consider that a strike against an author because the author would not be available to participate in book promotion. I believe you have also mentioned payment headaches when dealing with authors not in the US.

However, I am not only willing to spend time knocking about the US flogging my work, I’m looking forward to it. Also there would be no problem paying me in dollars and I would pay my taxes in the US.

I assume these things aren’t deal killers, but are they worth mentioning in a query letter to an agent?

And, an excerpt of her reply:

I’m going to tell you the honest to dog truth.
I hardly read the stuff that comes in from overseas cause I’m just so unenthusiastic about the headaches associated with a client that far away. You’d have to write something REALLY great to get over that hurdle.

While this is only one agent speaking, she is still 100% of the sample, and I think I have to deal with this. I see a few options:

  • Put a paragraph in my cover letter expressing that I am geographically disconnected and I’ll live in hell if it’ll help my career (I’d have some good literary company there, I think. It’s even more hip than Prague.)
  • Make all initial correspondence reflect a US address. Because it’s always good to start a business relationship with an intentional deception.
  • Move back to the States and live in Mom’s basement
  • Move to the former Soviet republic of Georgia, and hope they don’t look at the address too closely, or wonder about all those stamps on the SASE.

I’m leaning toward that last option, myself. I could pepper my correspondence with y’all’s and references to Waffle House and whatnot, to reinforce the impression without actually lying. Plus, I hear they have nice beaches there.

Thanks!

Where are you from?

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It’s a simple enough question, and most people have a ready answer. In general, the question could be rephrased “where do you call home?” During my childhood years through college, the answer was Los Alamos, New Mexico. Once I moved out to the west coast, I gradually changed from being from New Mexico to being from California. (This was partly a pragmatic move, as telling people I’m from New Mexico will confuse some folks, and there’s no explaininig it because they don’t even know they’re confused. So, I was from San Diego, unless the person asking also lived there, in which case the question can usually be phrased “where did you live before you moved to California?” In my generation at least, there proportion of native Californians to emmigrants is tiny. Everyone is from somewhere else. The fact I actually was born in California just adds to the ambiguity.

On the homeless tour, as I puttered around the back roads of North America, I usually answered “California” when asked that question, for simplicity’s sake, but as time passed my association of San Diego with home began to fade. Now, I life in Prague, but I am hardly from Prague. Now, when someone asks me where I’m from it can generally be translated to “What part of the US did you come from?” (People can guess my nationality quite easily. Shorts, facial hair, bad at speaking the local tongue: American.) Generally I answer California, because it has a semi-mythic image here, a strange paradise of palm trees, movie stars, beaches, and violent crime. Sometimes I say New Mexico, however, and generally people know where it is, even if they have no image to associate with it. It is a squarish area on the map, and is likely desert because it is next to Arizona, and probably has cowboys because it is next to Texas.

When I got back from Spain I let out a deep sigh and said, “it’s good to be home.” But what did I mean by that?

Thanks!

Trying to come up with non-fiction markets

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I’ve been trying to think of ways to sell the sort of writing I do here in the blog (only more polished, of course). I’m not coming up with much. Travel mags in general want articles about fun places, not someone’s experiences in them. They are not looking for what goes by the name “narrative nonfiction”; instead they want descriptions (and photos) of local landmarks and tourist attractions. They don’t care about the pretty bartender in some back alley pub, or my musings on a conversation overheard, or about a man with no nose.

I suppose I could write in a more traditional travel style, but there are lots of people gunning for those gigs (“Paid to travel? Cool!”), and while few of them are very good, that still leaves more than enough to fill the void, people whose style is naturally more matter-of-fact than mine. Articles for those who actually go to the attractions when they visit a place are best written by people who travel the same way, rather than some guy who prefers to hang out in dark and quiet bars and watch the locals.

Magazines and Newspapers often have columnists who are more or less free to ramble, as long as they keep the focus relevant to the readers, which generally means “local”. The only place I’d be able to contribute something like that would be a rag catering to ex-pats in Prague, but in general my “local” is much different than theirs, and when I write about how annoying ex-pats can be, it may not go over very well. Still, it’s something I should look into. Maybe someone’s looking for an irascible voice that will piss people off. The other tricky part about that is that I would have to lead a more interesting life, and write about it with fewer words.

Gonzo Travel Magazine, that’s what I need. Maybe Letters From a Bowling Alley, or perhaps Rock Stacking World. That would be a sweet gig, traveling the world on assignment, hanging out in rocky places, meeting other stackers, and just generally screwing around. Remind me to search Writer’s Market for rock stacking.

Any of you guys have any ideas? Do you know any magazines or newspapers that actually exist that might like this sort of thing?

Meanwhile, one of the waiters here at the Bowling alley is blindfolded. I bet there’s a story there.

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Thanks!