Author Archives: Jerry

Why Writers are Neurotic

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Ask any publisher, any literary agent, any writer’s family and friends, and they will tell you: writers are a messed-up bunch. They don’t know the half of it.

First, the obvious: rejection sucks. I get back the form letter saying “not right for us at this time” and I find myself wondering what to do with this work that is obviously crap. I liked it before, and even when I read it now I think it’s pretty good which just goes to show what a talentless hack I am thinking something like that is good because obviously it’s not. It got rejected. So I could submit it somewhere else but why the hell should I bother? Crap’s crap the world around.

Far worse than rejection is Limbo. I send something in, and they say they usually reply within twelve weeks. Now it’s been three months (do the math). Nothing. I don’t want to be that annoying writer that pesters the publisher, but thoughts start to pile up. Maybe it fell between the cracks. Maybe they never got it. The postage has changed since I sent the SASE; maybe the response is lost in a bureaucratic muddle. Hanging over me is the question: When is it all right to submit the work to another market? Do I check with the first magazine to get verification that I am not under consideration there, or does that just make me a pest? For a writer, there is no level of hell lower than limbo.

Another thing: Everybody has a friggin’ story. When I’m in a bar talking to the dentist on the next stool, I won’t mention my teeth, and I don’t want to hear his story idea.

Other writers. God we’re an insufferable bunch. Actually, that’s an unfair generalization. Writers who have branded themselves artists, I do not like to hang around. Strutting preening iceholes, intent on establishing their pecking order. They don’t have conversations, they have cluster monologues, working to establish their personality cults like they’re Kerouac or something. Most of all I hate the person I become in their presence; I join their game. It’s the Sharks and the Jets right there in the cafe/bookstore. At the bottom of this folly lies the assumption that “ideas” are not just redemptive but vital, and that writers are rescuing humanity by exposing these ideas. People don’t read ideas, and people don’t read most of the tumescent drek this crowd serves up. You want to inform humanity? Write about humans. The ideas will fall out of the writing or you’ve simply told a good story. It’s cool either way.

“Hello? Helloooooooo…” Just because I’m sitting at your table in the restaurant doesn’t mean I’m with you. When I get that distant look in my eye, I’m working, dammit. Leave me alone. I am working all the time. Sometimes I can turn down the intensity and pretend to be with you. Most of the time, not. If that bothers you, go chat up the dentist on the next stool.

Expectations. Some of the words I write may make you think I’m sensitive, or caring, or thoughtful. I am a writer. I make stuff up. That’s my job. The people I create, even the bad guys, are much finer humans than I am, unburdened by the need to act without months of deliberation; that’s why you enjoy reading about them. I am spontaneously awkward, and rather a jerk at that. Except when I’m not, which is most of the time. I just made that up to make a point. You see how it is?

The greatest source of neurosis of all (although Limbo is a very close second): great literature. Nothing fills me with the need to write more than reading the work of a master. I read something transcendent, lyrical and wise, and the moment of beauty is besmirched – I will never write that.

But still I write.

Thanks!

Selling Soap – Life On Set

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Ah, the glamor, the heady days of wine, women and song! Ah, the grinding tedium and long hours.

My life as a fake lab assistant began in the inky black long before dawn. I wasn’t sure how frequent the metro was that early in the morning, so I gave myself plenty of time to wait for the train and to make my connection. As a result, I was at the designated meeting point long before I needed to be. Better early than late, I figure, proving that I am not Czech. It was raining, so I stood in the shelter of the metro station entrance and waited to be collected.

More folks arrived, and then a production assistant showed up to gather us in. There were perhaps ten or so of us there, and the assistant had with her a list of the people she was expecting. My name was not on the list. “Great,” I thought, “I can go back to sleep.” No such luck; apparently I was a special extra, and those on the list were mere garden-variety extras. Even now I’m not sure what the distinction is, except I probably got paid more than those on the list. It’s good to be special.

At 6:15 we marched over to the empty factory building that housed the set, and shortly I was sent to wardrobe, where I was given slacks to wear instead of jeans, while the other guy in there was given jeans to wear instead of slacks. I was given a different sweater and warned that it would be cold on set. Over to makeup where they did a quick paint job on my face but left my beard scruffy, then breakfast. One thing I’ll say about this production, they had good grub, and plenty of it.

The production manager filled me in on what was going on. “You will be working in a funny mad scientist’s laboratory.” The lab-coated extras huddled in a knot and we were eventually deployed around a large set filled with old electronics and lots and lots of chemistry equipment, dish washers, and various permutations of the dishwasher detergent we were selling. All around were flasks filled with brightly-colored liquids, but as I watched, all but the blue ones were emptied into a bucket. And so began a long, slow pattern. They would set things up according to the plan. The gaffers would set up the lighting, the extras would be given their assignments, and the directior would decide he didn’t like it. An unplanned hour would pass as they redid everything, and then we would go through a series of rehersals to make sure the lab would appear uniformly busy.

The second shot of the day took especially long. The accident-prone scientist is walking through the lab and everyone is avoiding him. I was given a tray of glasses and was quite relieved when a PA taped them down. I was the last one the scientist encountered in the sequence, so my timing was dependent on how all the other encounters went.

“More glasses on the tray,” the director said, “and don’t stick them down.” So now I’m holding a tray full of glasses and dodging the main guy while going down stairs. We did lots and lots of takes, first to get the timing right and then to get isolated shots of the individuals in the sequence. It is a small miracle that I got through the scene without glassware destruction, and I came very, very close a couple of times, but finally we were done. I set down the tray with a sigh of relief. It was about 12:45, and we had about 7 seconds of the commercial in the can. (It was actually a set of similar commercials for a range of the company’s products; I estimate the total time of all the pieces needed was about two minutes.)

After that, is was much like my first day on the James and the Giant Explosive Device shoot. I had been prominently featured moving away from the action, so I wasn’t going to be much use for a while. Sure enough, that was it for me that day. My only tasks for the rest of the day were keeping warm (not easy), reading, and visiting the food tables from time to time. Had it been warmer, it would have been a good way to spend an afternoon, and a guaranteed disaster for any diet. At 8:15 p.m. I was released. Fourteen hours of action-packed fun!

Because of my specialness a van picked me up the next morning, allowing me to sleep another half hour. Special or not, I spent almost no time at all on the set for the sixteen hours I was there. I was released at 11 p.m. The shoot was running late, and they had desperately wanted to not have shots with extras slip into the next day. (Not desperate enough that they didn’t completely redo the set three times for one shot.) They still had some shots with extras for the next day, but I didn’t have to go back.

It is unlikely I will ever see the final result, but for those of you in Europe (and America too, for all I know), if you see an ad for Sun dishwashing detergent, look for a lab assistant with a scruffy beard going to gray. That’s me!

Thanks!

Don’t Die

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The new-new bartender warmly greeted a bunch of her friends an hour ago — two women and one guy, and things seemed casual and friendly. Then the thin girl with the large breasts arrived. His attention shifted to her, and so did mine. Anorexic Boob-Job Girl, I dubbed her. I started composing an episode about her charms, but then I looked closer. Her upper arms are about the size of my wrists, and I have my mother’s wrists. What I started to write as a joke is in fact a horror, and while I admired her I was shoveling dirt on her grave.

She is anorexic boob-job girl. I’m looking at someone committing one of the most horrific slow suicides imaginable, and I haven’t the slightest idea what to do about it. It’s an American impulse, I suppose, thinking that there is a solution, and that I am the guy to apply it. I feel guilty, now, thinking “Dang! She’s hot!” when I first saw her, before I saw what wasn’t there.

I don’t know what to say to anyone reading this who is shooting for weight zero. Don’t? Stop? You’re beautiful now, just as you are, and no number on a scale will ever change that? There is nothing I can say that hasn’t been said before.

Except maybe don’t die. Don’t die. We need you on this side, sensitive and frightened, honest and hurt. In this big brutal world, we need you more than ever.

I need you. I need to believe that you exist. I need to hope that I can meet you someday, by chance, and you’ll never know that I was the guy who wrote this, and I’ll never know that this helped you, but we’ll bump someday, on the A train in New York or the tram in Prague, just by accident, a little embarrassing incident, something minor we’ll chuckle over for the rest of our time, and we will both discover happiness. Chances are it won’t be me you bump, but some other lonely soul. That doesn’t matter, but it won’t happen if you’re dead.

Words, words, words. Useless futile hopeless words. Sinuous vipers that twist themselves to the tune of the piper. In the end, they are nothing, but they are all I have. Words, and when a life is at stake I know just how useless words can be. There is nothing I can say, nothing I can write, that will stop the woman in front of me from killing herself. There’s nothing I can do to stop anyone from starving herself to death, except ask. Please, don’t. For me. I use the smoke as an excuse, but I can’t get away with crying in a crowded bar too often.

Thanks!

Selling Soap – This is How Stupid I Am

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Apparently, the director for this commercial is slower than most. On day two of shooting, a van came and picked me up at my house and got me to the set at 7:15. At 3:30 I still had yet to be used. I sat and read near the little space heater in the room where the food was.

Sitting near me was a pretty woman, bundled up and sitting directly in front of the heater, reading a worn, cloth-bound book. It looked like literature. As other people were called onto the set occasionally, she never budged. She wasn’t wearing a lab coat, so I figured she wasn’t in the cast, but she didn’t appear to be part of the crew, either. After a while I figured out that she was the set medic. She didn’t speak much English, and she seemed a little shy when people came to ask for cold medicine or whatnot. Occasionally something amusing would happen nearby and we would exchange a chuckle. I tried to think of some way to broach a conversation with her, when we had so few words in common.

Eventually my name was called and I limped out onto the set. My shoes had given me a blister on my heel the day before. False alarm; I limped back to the waiting room. She looked up from her book and I shrugged and rolled my eyes and she smiled. I returned to my book, wondering what I could say to her. A while later the call came again, I limped back out, false alarm, and back I went. Smiles exchanged, back to the books.

Some of you, by now, may have already caught on. Let’s review the salient points:

  • There was a pretty woman sitting a few feet away from me for hours and hours
  • She reads old books
  • I wanted to talk to her
  • She was bored
  • She was a nurse
  • I was injured
  • It is her job to help injured people

You see it? The subtle opportunity I missed? To not only talk to her, but to get some relief for my heel as it bled into my sock?

Man, I’m stupid. I wonder, now, if I would have thought to ask for help if the nurse had been a toothless old man.

Thanks!

deliction

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“For your deliction” might more awkwardly and less precisely be phrased “to be enjoyed by you as a delicacy”, or “for you to find to be delicious”. “For your indulgence” is a common enough phrase, but there are different nuances that leave the substitute inadequate. I’m not indulging you. Deliction is about the simple pleasure of a moment, and has none of the decadence implied by indulgence. I’m not asking for your indulgence, either. If you don’t find this delicious, blow me. “For your delight” is closer, but less tasty.

The closest standing word in Mr. Oxford’s American Dictionary is “delict”, a legal term, a noun, something about breaking laws. Muddled Ramblings and Half-Baked Ideas (“The Empire”), its author, flunkies, hangers-on, sycophants, functionaries, yes-men, no-men, toadies, and armies of brain-hungry zombies do not condone or encourage any legal misdeeds by using the word “deliction” in the “What’s New” section above.

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Selling Soap – The Books I Read

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I knew I’d have a lot of time on my hands on set, so with bleary eyes I surveyed the small stack of books awaiting my attention. On this first day of shooting More Booze Than Blood by Sean Meagher joined The Art of the Novel, a collection of essays by Milan Kundera, in my backpack.

On the metro I slowly digested some of Kundera’s “Sixty-three Words”. That essay is dedicated to defining some of the words he uses and the particular meaning they have in the context of his work; it was inspired by horrific experiences Kundera has had when The Joke was translated from the original Czech. To quote Kundera directly: “In France, the translator rewrote the novel by ornamenting my style. In England, the publisher cut out all the reflective passages, eliminated the musicological chapters, changed the order of the parts, recomposed the novel.” Subsequent translations were based on one of these two, not the original Czech. It reminded me of my eariler episode in which I mention the copy editor for “Memory of a Thing that Never Was.” That was a very clean manuscript, but only if you accept my rambling style. A good translator has to have the courage to defy the traditions of the language to be stylistically faithful to the original work. To paraphrase Kundera: Critic: “That’s not how we say it in our language!” Kundera: “That’s not how we say it in Czech, either!”

I’ll discuss the substance of Kundera’s essays elsewhere, I think, or just practice dropping them into conversations when I’m playing the ex-pat writer game.

Once on location, dressed, and painted, I settled into “hurry up and wait” mode. I pulled out More Booze than Blood. I really, really liked this book. Meagher writes with balls, giving us a cast of characters broken, flawed, and unlikeable in every way, and makes us like them. We cringe and hope and want to smack them and say “Just stop it!” As the reader you see the waste, the futility, as everything slides towards violence, and they see it too. What unites these people is a sense that life is futile, stupid, insane, but there’s no sense worrying about it, because it’s not going to change no matter what you do. I was dog-tired on the metro home that night, but I knew I wasn’t going to go to bed until I finished the book. I almost missed my metro stop, I was so wrapped up. (Note that this book contains some sex, some violence, and a lot of profanity.)

Having said that, the subject of a copy editor comes up again. This book is self-published, and could really have benefitted from a good edit. Many times I got bumped out of the narrative by a distracting grammatical error. (Lay and lie are pretty much backwards throughout.) It’s a pity, but with a little attention from a friendly editor this book would be deserving of a lot of notice. If you like writing with balls, go out and buy lots of copies of this book so the next one can get the support it needs. If errors like that will prevent you from enjoying the work, buy lots of copies, don’t read them, and hope for a reprint later.

Day two of the shoot I didn’t pack the laptop, so I knew I would need even more reading material. I had no idea how right I was, as the day stretched on and on. I packed two more titles from my birthday plunder, Something Grand by John Flynn and Into the Forest by Jean Hegelund. I finished the Kundera on the van to the location, but there are parts of that I will need to go over again.

Something Grand is not in the style of Chandler, as I previously asserted. It is a series of shorts stories, most revolving around the theme of the hardships of the working poor, the impossibility of getting ahead and the passing of demons from one generation to the next. Many of the stories are very good, a couple of them hauntingly so, but others sag under the weight of too much imagery and metaphor — too much salad and not enough meat. I think there’s a school of thought these days that, much like you can’t overhop a beer, you can’t use too much imagery. There’s something for me to learn in that. There is a time for rich imagery and grand metaphor, but at some point you have to climb down into the muck with the poor SOB’s you’ve forced unwillingly into existence and make them work.

Into the Forest is, as I mentioned in a previous episode (after reading only the first paragraph), one of those books where you read the first paragraph and know you are in good hands. It is a very hopeful book about the end of western civilization, an eloquent back-to-nature piece that brings you to the mystical reconnection of mankind and nature gradually, and along the way touches on all that makes humanity grand and frail. I must confess there were parts that got too sentimental for me, but I’m not really a sentimental guy, you know? There are characters in my own writing who are far more sentimental than I am, but if there weren’t, my stories would be bleak, indeed.

Finally, having exhausted all the words I had at my disposal, I accepted from another extra a series of essays by James Baldwin, and read an interesting piece on his relationship with Norman Mailer. When he talked about his reaction when Mailer announced he was going to run for the mayor of New York, it had a strange echo with something Kundera said to me just that morning — that any public life the writer exposes undermines the work, and doing that is irresponsible to the art. Neither of them quite said it that way, and Baldwin might accuse me of putting words in his mouth, but in any case it is something for a blogger/writer to consider.

Consider, consider, consider… OK, done! On with the blog! Baldwin and Kundera would both consider me a hack anyway, though I prefer “storyteller”. (We’ll have to see if The Fish can change that.)

So, what have you read lately? There has been some of this theme stirring in the comments lately, but now I want to hear what you’ve finished reading lately and what you thought of it. What do you plan to read next and why? Am I being too shameless pandering for comments?

NOTE: If you use the above Amazon link to buy the book I get a kickback. It really was a good story.

Thanks!

Strč tinkerbell prst skrz

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I saw this headline on nhl.cz and I find it aesthetically pleasing:

Zopakují Mighty Ducks jízdu zp?ed t?í let?

So, there’s one advantage to giving your team a silly name.

Thanks!

Be right back…

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I’ve spent the last couple of days extra-ing for a fairly silly detergent commercial. I just got off a 16-hour day, and now I’m too tired even to have a beer before I go to sleep, let alone write about my adventures. I’ll get a real episode out tomorrow, when I reflect back on my meteoric rise to stardom and the, uh, meteoric plunge through the atmosphere in a fiery blaze of self-destruction that followed.

Oh, and happy Drop Everything and Read Day! I read two books today, then borrowed another. All while on the clock!

Thanks!

Bum Day

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Today I played a bum in movie you will never see.

I regret not getting a still shot of me fully bummed out. The makeup lady went to town on me — I think she was tired of just covering up blotches and blemishes on the other actors and was happy to have someone for whom her job was exactly the opposite. In the end my skin looked filthy (not just dirty, but that ground-in grime that extends several millimeters below the surface), I had a nasty-looking sore on my lip, and I had a black eye. Some vegetable oil for the hair, and I looked truly awful. Given time, I think she would have continued to add deformities and lesions, but this is the movie business, and there’s never enough time.

It was raining lightly when we made our way from the makeup room onto the streets of Prague. I shouldn’t have looked in the mirror after the makeup was done; I felt a bit self-conscious walking down the street. Doubly so when the first thing we did upon meeting up with the rest of the crew was duck into a little cafeteria-style restaurant for lunch. I did not look like the kind of guy you want in front you in the chow line. (Did I mention the big ketchup stain I put on my chest?)

Lunch finished, it was time to start acting. We made our way to a nearby park and selected a bench. They had forgotten the classic bottle-in-the-paper-bag prop, and so I was handed a plastic bottle of wine (if you take a bottle into most wine stores here, they will fill it for you). The wine was pretty good. We did a few takes. “I think you’ve found your calling,” Little John said. He meant it as a compliment. Actually, I might have been overdoing it a wee bit, but the crew was laughing (later in the day a shot was blown when the crew laughed as I scratched my ass), and I was in touch with my inner bum. I took a few lessons from the Miguel Martinez face book, moved with that careful deliberation that drunks use, and when I moved to the next park bench I sat very heavily.

The temperature was dropping. It was not just meandering in a downward direction, it had a heartfelt need to explore the basement. [As I write this, it is snowing.] We did the scene several times, using the camera from different angles, while I slowly emptied the bottle. For the off-the-tripod shots, the cameraman said he wasn’t able to hold the camera completely steadily after a while. But we carried on, for the art. I blew a couple of decent shots by saying “I could be you!” instead of “You could be me!” Technicalities. I had a lot more lines than I had been told about, and none of them stuck that well.

The rain continued. My shoes leak.

A woman passed by, then stopped on the corner and made a phone call. “Think she’s calling the cops?” one of the crew asked. Apparently this little venture had dispensed with some of the formalities. “Nah, she’s smilin'” another said. Our next location was right around the corner from the police station. There were cops everywhere, but none paid any attention to us at all. I didn’t think about it, I just continued to ply my craft.

That’s what actors say, right? “Ply my craft”? Because, well, I really don’t know crap about that stuff. Or about acting, for that matter. But being a bum on a park bench, that I can do. Being a guy who appears to be a bum wandering the street who is actually not a bum at all, I managed to pull off well enough to make them happy.

“You should have asked for more,” the assistant said as he paid me. Next time, I will.

Thanks!

Sometimes, you see things.

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I am sitting in a bar, watching a woman with no shirt serving beer to a man with no nose. Actually, I have seen that before, in this very bar. What I had not seen before was the event that drove me here.

First, a small detour. I was sitting in the Little Café Near Home when the call came in. I will be getting up absurdly early tomorrow morning. My last word from Athena had been costumes on Monday, shooting on Wednesday and Thursday. I got increasingly neurotic as I received no further word about costumes, and I sent Athena a couple of messages. No response. Tonight, while wrapping up my celebration of successful bumness, my phone rang. I am expected to be at a certain Metro station at 6 am. The good news: starting that early, overtime is a distinct possibility. The bad news: starting that early, I will be getting up even earlier.

But that’s not why I am here, now.

After the hokej (rhymes with hockey) game, Little Café Near Home cleared out. It was just me and Bechovins (rhymes with Bevins, only in Czech). Then another guy came in and started scooting furniture around in a nonsensical way. After some muddling he unplugged the now-quiet television and plugged in…

Guess. Go ahead and try. You won’t get it right, but if you guess something completely crazy and then read the next sentence, which will be more whacked-out than what you came up with, that will make the revelation all the choicer. Have you guessed? All right then.

…a hair clipper. Bechovins was getting a haircut. In a place that serves food. Faced with a choice between drinking in a bar where the only other guy was getting a haircut, drinking in a bar where women with no shirts serve men with no noses, and not drinking at all, I chose “B”.

The man with no nose is much more difficult not to stare at than the woman with no shirt. She is quite pretty, and if everyone here in the bar had a nose, she would be drawing my eye. Sadly for all, that is not the case. He has a piece of gauze taped with a big X over his face, and there is no bulge beneath. It has been this way long enough that I wonder why he has not come up with a better gauze holder, something more comfortable than tape. I don’t know how he lost his nose; there must be a story there. I hope that eventually he gets a new one. In the meantime, what bothers me most is the tape. But, like him, I am getting used to it.

Thanks!

Don’t mess with me, man, I’ve read The Art of War.

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About five hundred years before some guy named Jesus said maybe we should be nice to each other for a change, another guy over in China set out to codify the methods of not being nice, and doing it really well. Sun Tzŭ had a lot of thoughts about war and its purpose. In his mind, war was a means to ensure the safety and prosperity of the people of a nation, and if that was at the expense of the people of another nation, well, so it goes.

In fact, throughout his writing, he comes up with argument after argument to support one of his primary tenets: fight the war in the other guy’s country.

For all that, Sun Tzŭ was not a big fan of fighting battles at all. In his opinion, the greatest generals would never become famous because they would rarely have to fight, and when they did they would already have manipulated conditions through espionage, subtlety, and misdirection, so that the battle was already decided before it was fought. The greatest general of all would never fight a single battle.

He also pointed out that war was expensive. He was a proponent of swift, decisive action, and advised that laying siege to a walled city was folly, and would only empty the coffers of your nation and cause undue suffering among the people, which in turn would undermine the security of your homeland. Instead, he advised swift and subtle action, finding something of value to the enemy that was less well defended, and attacking that instead, forcing your opponent to come out from behind his walls. If the enemy does not know where you will show up next, he will have to spread his forces thin, trying to protect everything. Sun Tzŭ advises not even trying to defend less valuable assets.

Are there lessons for the modern age here? The four years of carnage that was World War One run counter to everything The Art of War teaches. Today’s war on terrorism is less clear-cut. Certainly we are the larger force spread thin as we try to defend everything, yielding initiative. But even spread out, we are massive and can carry big hurt just about anywhere very quickly.

There are two other things in the book that stick out, however. The first is adaptability. The author (and subsequent commentators) lay out the principles of carrying out a successful military campaign, and getting the most from soldiers. Time and again, however, we are reminded that flexibility and creativity are critical assets. Sun Tzŭ also pointed out that direct confrontation is one of the last resorts for achieving your objective.

The second thing that sticks out is haunting, considering our current situation in Iraq. “In times of peace, plan for war. In times of war, plan for peace.” When the US military exceeded all expectations and swept into Baghdad, only to stand to the side as the city descended into civil disorder, setting the tone for all that has followed, undermining our authority and credibility, demonstrating an apathy toward law that has yet to be repaired, we saw what happens when you fail to plan for peace during a time of war. There was a period of two days when we had a (not guaranteed) shot at forestalling much of what has happened since. We could have been the undisputed good guys. We failed.

Some of the details in the book are not relevant anymore, and quite a few other people have done some thinking on the subject since. This work has the advantage of being brief, simple, and to the point. He did not say war was bad, he said it was expensive, and that it was best waged swiftly, or, better yet, without using armies at all. But once you have your army on, ou must know exactly what you want and where it is, understand the enemy and all his plans, and take the fight to him. If you are not certain, stay home until you are.

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How To Tell If You’re Living the Good LIfe

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The day before yesterday, a bunch of us met to go bowling. We sat around upstairs too long, however, and missed our chance. We made reservations for the next day and repaired to a beer garden nearby to enjoy the springtime sun while sipping Gambrinus. Plan B was an unqualified success; we shifted from table to table as the sun went down, clinging to its rays until there were none left. After I took my leave from that group I stopped off at the Little Café Near Home to write for a bit, but I was immediately sucked into conversation with other patrons. Lucky thing, too, because I had forgotten I had agreed to meet Martín the next day to go over the English subtitles he was writing for a short film.

The next day (the “yesterday” referred to above) I woke up bright and early to get some work done before the training session at the bowling alley. Yes, that’s right — this wasn’t just a bunch of people hanging out drinking beer and bowling, this was a group of potential recruits for the Czech national ice bowling team. Sheboygan, here we come! (I don’t think people have quite realized how serious fuego is about this. He’s recruiting the documentary team already.) Training was fun, but boy did I suck. I was drinking non-alcoholic beverages; maybe that was the problem. While I did my best not to fall down, fuego burned up the lanes. After that (and the obligatory beer and pizza tactical session that followed) it was off to the little café for me.

I started in on a pesky sentence until it was time to take a break to work on the subtitles for the decidedly odd short film. For instance, toward the end the main guy wakes up and finds that forty-seven girls have moved into his apartment. They don’t speak at all, they just stare at him in silence. It’s really quite funny. That was fun, and then it was back to work on the sentence. I spent a total of about two hours working on the thing; it’s almost right, but not quite.

I wound up staying at the Little Café Near Home for seven hours, editing, editing, endlessly editing. It was quiet in there, and the new new bartender (as opposed to the now-old new bartender) is starting to figure me out. I had too much tea, then poured a beer or three on top, in what I have dubbed the “poor man’s speedball”. Toward the end of the evening I was just reading parts of Monster that I especially liked, and not really pretending to be working anymore, although I did pick up a couple of errors.

Then it was home, where I talked Soup Boy’s ear off for a few minutes (I blame the chemicals), followed by sweet slumber. A good day, indeed.

Thanks!

The Day the Squirrels Took Over

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It was on this day in 1903 that Hinsdale, Illinois fell to the squirrels. The city fathers imported sackloads of the the fuzzy menace and declared them a protected species. That the citizens of that oppressed town still have not realized their own slavery and celebrate this day by offering up sacrifices is a testament to the diabolical cleverness of these rodents.

The Scandinavians, apparently, weren’t so easily fooled. According to their legends, the squirrel lives in the tree of life, and is the cause of all our trouble and bad luck. Possibly the nuts as well.

Squirrels manipulated events in England to cause the Pilgrims to seek the new world, then stowed away on their boats and swiftly conquered North America.

Glendale, Ohio fell to the squirrels in the 1940s, when, with the help of Tom “Benedict Arnold” Carruthers III, six black squirrels broke through perimeter defenses and took over. In another indication of the mind-control powers of the invaders, the black squirrel is now the city’s mascot.

All this stuff was culled from even less interesting factiods on this page, and then rephrased to remove the flagrant bias of the original author. I tried to find more details about the Miss America Pageant Disaster, but couldn’t find any dirt except other people quoting the same page.

Thanks!

The Accidental Actor

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As some of you are already aware, not long ago I happened to be in the same room as Soup Boy when a message came in from a casting agent he knows. “Hey,” Soup Boy said to me, “you want to be in James Bond?” “Sure,” said I. Now, because of a simple accident of logistics, you will quite possibly see my mug on the silver screen, while interesting things happen behind me.

Recently friends of friends offered me cash money to sit in a bar drinking and being American for some direct-to-DVD movie of questionable pedigree. Drinking in bars happens to be something I’m well-qualified to do, so I agreed. I spent the morning drinking Bernard (yummy), flirting with a woman who may have been the bar’s owner (wasted), and listening while the czech actress struggled with her lines in English (awkward). The writer had tried for a literary tone for the dialog, and the vocabulary was completely out of her range. But I digress.

At one point that morning, the writer/lead actor looked at me and said, “How’d you like to play the bum?” (I must confess, when you look at me, you’re more likely to think “bum” than “Bond”.) Just like that I was cast in a speaking role in a movie that I will do my level best never to be associated with, beyond this post.

As a result of the James Bond thing, I have an agent now. I got a message from Athena last week inviting me to a casting for a commercial. What the heck, it’s only a few minutes out of my day. The waiting room was full when I got there; all around me were distractingly beautiful women and guys talking about the terrifically minor acting jobs they’d had lately. These were people who had taken up acting as a career — “Four years of acting school and now I’m auditioning for this,” lamented one. I tried to read but I couldn’t help but listen in. I recognized the game; the guys were sorting out the out-of-work actor cred pecking order. One or two of them would land roles in this commercial and perhaps move incrementally up the chain.

“I like the beard,” Athena said when it was my turn. “It makes you look like a scientist.” Better than bum, especially when the role is “Lab Assistant”. I posed for my still shots, holding a card with a number on it so they could sort us all out later. Lucky number thirteen for me, and we laughed about my credibility as a scientist when she had to tell me to hold the number right-side up. A couple of still shots, some video of me pretending to count washing machines and becoming puzzled when something doesn’t come out right, then I’m back out into the city — no blood, no foul. I had a very pleasant walk through the city center and after a few miles found a place to eat and write. A good use of a Prague morning.

I didn’t think much more about it until I got the call from Athena. “You got the role of Lab Assistant,” she said, and may have been surprised when I laughed. The Accidental Actor. I’ll be a bum on Monday, a lab assistant Wednesday and Thursday, and rent is covered for April, with beer money to spare.

Thanks!

Birthday Plunder

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One of my birthday gifts this year was a box of stuff called “Genius Tea”. The ingredients are listed in Czech and Slovak, but I did recognize the ever-popular ginko. “I don’t know if it’s for geniuses or it will make you one,” said Big D when he handed it to me. Hopefully the latter; while my water boiled last night I struggled with the box. Finally I got past the tape and the glue to realize I had opened the bottom. Genius.

One of the cool things about being a writer is that you are very easy to buy gifts for. Food, alcoholic beverages, and books are all slam dunks. I got some good books this year, so today I’m going to finish my limerick about a cat with hat hair, step away from the computer, and do some reading.

The books I got:

  • The Art of War by Sun Tzu. — much-discussed, but, I suspect, little-read.
  • Something Grand by John Flynn (autographed) — short stories in a modern style, most about the working poor in America.
  • The 776 Stupidest Things Ever Said — luckily, this book came out before I started Muddled Ramblings. I might start with this one until the Genuis Tea kicks in.
  • Into The Forest by Jean Hegland — one of those where you read the first paragraph and know you’re in good hands.
  • More Booze Than Blood by Sean Meagher (autographed) — he didn’t know it was a birthday gift, but that doesn’t make it not one.

What a grand thing to wake in the morning and know all these words await.

Add the green chile, several packages of my favorite cookies, and a squirrel, and you’ve got yourself one fine pile o’ birthday loot indeed. My sincere thanks to one and all.

Thanks!