Sick as a Dog

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This will be a short episode, since I have to use my eyes to write it. My eyes hurt. My head hurts. My lungs hurt. My muscles ache, especially my back. The only time my back is happy is when I’m standing up, but I’m just not up for that sort of exertion. I spent the day tossing and turning, watching the sky become gradually brighter and then watching it get darker again.

I’ve made a couple of half-hearted attempts at doing something useful, but no, there will be none of that.

I made a comment earlier that most of the time I enjoy being single. When I’m sick may be the only exception to the rule. I thought about it this afternoon and it’s not so much the pampering I miss but the sympathy. I just want someone close by who can listen to my complaining and feel sorry for me. Somehow that makes the suffering much more tolerable.

Tomorrow will be better.

Thanks!

Half-Burned Cigarettes

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A while back fuego and I were in a little pub, enjoying food from the bagel place next door and working on our respective projects. At a table nearby there was a group of film students working on a project together. On that quiet afternoon a new phrase entered our lexicon.

The students were from all over the place, so of course they were holding their conversation in English. I found the discussion tantalizingly irritating, like a rash you can’t help but scratch. I had to listen. fuego was eventually compelled to put in his headphones to block out the others’ conversation. We were both annoyed by the students, but it turns out we were bothered for different reasons. It’s funny how strongly the students affected both of us.

They were discussing, with great intensity, things like how far down the Nurse’s cigarette should be burned in one particular shot, considering the different things that the cigarette could symbolize. “If it was almost all gone it could represent…” Absent from their discussion was the story. You can pile up all the symbolism you want, but if the story sucks none of the rest will matter. Let the critics find the symbolism. If the symbolism is an important part of the story, well, then, that’s different. In that case worrying about the symbolism is synonymous with making the story as good as possible. These kids were just looking for extra depth to pile on top. You see the problem with that, yes? Depth has to be underneath.

So says the guy who fancies himself a writer. I was at one point tempted to say something, they were so damn intent on their cigarette. I wanted to shake them awake. “Let it go! Put your energy into the story.”

fuego, it turns out, was contemplating intervention as well, but of a different sort. After an hour of cigarette burnage and other minutia, he wanted to beat them with his chair. It is fortunate he had his music. Later, this is what he said to me as we walked down the street: “I’ll tell you how long the cigarette will be. It’ll be however long it was when you got a good take.”

So says the guy who makes a living turning scripts into movies. In the practical world, all your half-burned cigarettes will be lost in the heat and rush of making the film. Worrying about that stuff doesn’t just waste your time, it wastes the time of the crew who has to try to deal with it, and in the end will come to nothing. “The nurse is smoking.” That’s about all you need to say about that. You can put in that she pulls on the cigarette at a certain point, to help establish the pacing of the scene as you imagine it, and there’s even a possibility it will happen that way. You could even call for an ashtray-perspecttive shot of the nurse — if it helps the story.

Now, when we are working on something together and we get hung up on a point, one of us will point out that it is a half-burned cigarette. Since our definitions of the phrase are slightly different (mine: it doesn’t help the story; fuego’s: it will be lost in the heat of production no matter what we write here), we invoke it at different times. It works, though. No matter what qualifies it as a half-burned cigarette, we know it’s time to drop it and move on.

Which at last brings me to the reason I’m writing this. I have found myself mired in half-burned cigarettes lately. I’m getting bogged down in details that ultimately don’t matter. Better not to mention them at all. (A corollary of the half-burned cigarette: inconvenient minutia is better ignored than explained. This principle does not apply to people doing really stupid things, like cops not calling for backup.) So now I’m staring at a scene that is a veritable ashtray, and I know the answer. It’s difficult to do after all the time and sweat I’ve spent on it, but it’s time to delete the whole damn thing and tell that part of the story an entirely different way. I hate when that happens.

Thanks!

Travel Plans

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I’ve been talking for quite some time about spending some time in the western hemisphere. This morning, full of resolve once again to sit down and just book the dang tickets, I dialed in the travel Web sites and tried to piece together an itinerary. An hour later I was staring dumbly at the screen, having found a very good London-New York flight, but to and from the wrong airport in London to hook up with the cheap european airlines. Somehow it seems wrong to spend more to go between airports in London than it does to go from Prague (or, cheaper yet, Brno) to London.

That’s about when the fizzy sound started coming out my ears and my eyes began to scan deep discounts to Odessa, Calcutta and Bejing. Once again I failed to book my tickets. I’ll make another go of it later. At least I’ve figured out the requirements:

1) Start in Prague in the early Marchish time frame (unless substantial savings can be realized at another time).
2) Long layovers should be in places I can meet up with people.
3) Multi-day layovers acceptable (and even good) but I won’t be renewing my driver’s license until I get to California, so renting a car is not an option.
4) Through some conveyance, I must end up in Cupertino.

5) Then follows a less structured period of driving around. I would like to visit (not necessarily in this order) western Washington, Colville (rhymes with smallville), Bozeman, the Sacramento environs, Scotts Valley, San Diego, and various spots in New Mexico. Weather may alter the list. Alaska, once again, will have to wait.
5a) I suppose I should warn some of those people that I’ll be in the neighborhood.
5b) The last time I drove around the continent for “about 3 weeks” it took more than seven months. I don’t see that happening this time; I’ll be paying rent over here the whole time.

6) Leave from Albuquerque.
7) Long layovers etc (see above), although now I will be able to drive a car legally.
8) Return to Prague late Marchish/early Aprilish. Road Trip Day on the road? It might work.

It seems there are (at least) two ways to travel. Book tickets to fit specific requirements, which is what I’ve been trying to do – although I suppose if my requirements were more specific things would be much easier. Too many choices. Alternately you can just say, “what the hell, I’ll go there”. Just pick some place that sounds cool, and go when the airline tells you you can do it on the cheap. You have to commit fairly long in advance, but it is possible to do what I have dubbed “impulse planning” – you read a list, make a choice, and off you go.

Anyone want to meet up with me in Bali?

Thanks!

Been Writin’

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The words, they are coming right now. It’s fair to say that I’m writing most of the time anyway, but there’s a difference, sometimes. Eighty percent of the time I’m working on the ninety-five percent perspiration thing. Then there’s the sixteen percent of waking moments that I’m not writing. That leaves only four percent of my life for inspiration.

These numbers skew dramatically from week to week, and there are certainly moments of inspiration when I’m working on the software as well. In fact, recently I’ve really had some good ideas about improvements to JersNW. The thing is, I’m writing right now. The words are there for me, scary in their nakedness.

I wrote a bit a while back, my hypothetical advice to hypothetical students, an essay about writing essays. The message was to write without fear. I was (and still am) pleased with that work. There are times when I put something down that is just a little too close to the bone, sometimes here in the blog, sometimes elsewhere. There is a moment of commitment, and I hesitate. Secrets. Demons. Shame. Rambunctious offensiveness. I tell myself at those times, “Write without fear.”

But that’s not right. What I really mean is “write with courage.” The fear is there. In fact, when I feel the fear, that means I’m getting close to something. No, I never write without fear. I write despite fear. I write because of fear. I look back at my favorite episodes here at muddled ramblings, and they fall into two categories. There are the most entertaining ones, and the ones that frightened me the most to publish.

There are also the gray episodes, the ones I’ve written but pulled back from hitting the go button. Eventually I delete those, and the words are lost until I find a braver moment. In the end I am not as courageous as I’d like to be.

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Thanks!

The Water Method Man

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Right now I am reading John Irving’s second published novel, The Water-Method Man. The central point of view is that of Fred ‘Bogus’ Trumper, his nickname well-earned through the countless lies he has used to pave his life. He has lied about mundane and inconsequential shit for so long that when the extraordinary happens, when defining moments occur, no one believes him. But in this self-appraisal that slides easily from first person to third, from present to past, we must admit that while Bogus is an accomplished liar, a man adept at verbal sleight of hand, a captain of obfuscation, he is honest with himself.

Bogus, it seems, works for an independent movie company in search of a project. His boss has decided that Bogus will be the subject of the next film. The name of the film: Fucking Up.

As I read about Bogus I feel the Bogus in my soul, and I wonder how I managed to go so many years without fucking up (more than I did). Recently I’ve reclaimed the Bogus, grasped my God-given ability to fuck up, clinging to what must be a basic human right the way a rodeo rider holds the rope tied around the neck of the angry bull beneath him. The beast is quivering with rage, wanting nothing more than to send me to the dirt and put a hoof between my shoulder blades. In rodeo it’s eight seconds. In not fucking up, it’s a lifetime. For a long time I was doing a good job not fucking up, except now it feels like the whole time I was fucking up.

I’ve not read anything by John Irving that I didn’t like, but I have to say that there’s something in Setting Free the Bears and The Water Method Man that resonates better with me than his later works. Bears has some rough spots that I’m sure Irving would like another go at, but the voice is there. It’s a great double-feature with Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, with a lesson in Czech history on top. (I was not living here when I read the story, but it did inform my perception of the country.)

Maybe it’s Irving fighting against the pulp establishment, but in this story and in A Prayer for Owen Meany, which I also recently read, he has gone out of his way to say, during the course of the novel, that there will not be a definitive end. It may be in his other stories as well, but I wasn’t looking for it back then. Now that I’m aware of it, it seems a bit unnatural, a self-justification where one isn’t necessary. Either you understand or you don’t. Either you like questions or you like answered questions. With Irving there is no happily ever after, there’s just ‘and then we all kept on’, or, ‘and then I continued on the vector of my life, a tightrope act with despair on the right side of my balancing pole, and reckless optimism on the left. Ahead are the other acrobats, waving me on, beckoning to me, and on that narrow path true redemption and true damnation both lie.’

Irving’s gonna wish he said that.

Stories don’t end. Episodes might come to a close with a boom or a sigh, but the story continues. The brilliance of Owen Meany is not the grand convergence of Owen’s knowledge of what is to come, it is about the hinted, not ever written and perhaps periodic reclamation of the narrators soul, his return to the passion of teaching. Irving has a way with words, spare except when he isn’t.

Cells divide and sperm meets ovum. The sperm come carrying heavy suitcases, and the ova have baggage of their own. Somewhere in this convergence of crap is the magic we call life.

Note: if you use the above link to buy this book (or a Kindle, or a new car), I get a kickback.

Thanks!

My favorite job

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I met Belladonna on a movie set, so it’s only natural that she thought I knew something about movies. From the start she was a better conversationalist than I was, more open and sincere, but she eventually tired of trying to reach me through cinema. ‘Do you remember in…’ she would ask, only to be confronted by my apologetic shrug. The list of movies I haven’t seen is immense, and finally she got tired of saying “I can’t believe you haven’t seen…”

There was a period when I felt very comfortable with Belladonna, when there was a mutually understood vast gulf between us. In fact, even now she is one of the few members of the XX set that I can just chill with, although I haven’t seen her for quite some time.

She would be surprised, I think, to learn that once it was my job, my paid profession, to watch movies and talk to people about them.

Once upon a time there was a video store. This is not a David and Goliath story; this little video store had managed to carve out a big chunk of the Southern California market. The way they accomplished this feat was remarkable, however. Get this: they succeeded with two crazy gambits. They offered bulk discounts (if you rent a lot of movies you don’t pay as much), and they offered good customer service.

In each store, much of the time, there was an extra person on payroll whose job was to hang out and talk about movies with the customers. That was it. Much of the time customers would approach that person for recommendations, but other times the movie whisperer would simply strike up a chat with indecisive renters. Did you see X? What did you think? If you’ve got a big sound system, you’re hurting yourself if you don’t see ‘Mission’.

You hit a couple of good recommendations, people are looking for you later. You miss, people are almost apologetic that they didn’t like it, but when they explain why you can nail the next recommendation. My job, even though I ostensibly was in management, was to watch movies at home and to talk about movies at work. I did that job well.

Some of you, the ones who have bought whole-heartedly my craftily-constructed image as an antisocial recluse, capable only of communicating through grunts and belches (and when confronted with a female simply losing consciousness), might be surprised to learn that I did very well in this role. Here’s why: It was a controlled transaction. I can deal with strangers, I can even deal with surprises. It’s uncertainty that’s tough.

Log jam in my head. So many metaphors, so many moments.

Back to Video Library. It was easy work, pleasant work, and almost none of the other people there wanted floor duty. Even people who loved to talk movies with coworkers dreaded going out and talking movies with strangers. So I would do it. It was better than working. It made it easy to go into the office each day. Working with Wendy and Maryann didn’t hurt, either.

Wendy. For a long time she thought I was gay because I didn’t hit on her. I wasn’t gay, I was just afraid. When I dropped a semi-truth to establish my heterosexuality I became a curiosity to her, a science experiment. Had the stars shifted a little bit one way or the other, placing me at the top of the stairs at a party rather than at the bottom, putting me in the back seat rather than in the front seat, I would have come to know all that lay behind the promise that was Wendy. Oh, stars! Still you taunt me so!

Wendy’s friend — I’ve called her Maryann, but as I sit here and remember it seems like there’s been a awful lot of Maryann’s in my life. More than is natural; I suspect I’m painting old faces I remember affectionately with a name I also like. None of them will ever touch the real Maryann, young and poised with dark hair and fair skin and, yes, buxom — she sat at the back of the bus, her stop beyond mine. She sat three rows behind me when I told the lie to Suzie (Susie? oh, please forgive me I don’t remember), the horrible lie that would have been nothing but I repeated it, and again; there was no cock to crow but the betrayal was just as real. And three rows behind was Marianne, cool and perfect and unaware. I never felt as alone as I did at her birthday party.

Which all leads up to Michelle. Susie introduced us; I think she was relieved to divert me. Michelle liked me. I didn’t really understand that, then, and even now it mystifies me. Michelle. To me she was (and still is) some unattainable thing, and I considered myself a dalliance and treated her the same way. We did not share our dreams. We did not reveal our secrets. But now, much too late, much too late, I realize that she liked me. At night, sometimes, I wonder what might have been, even though I know the answer. There is a little echo of her in every strong, intelligent woman I write. I miss her, and hope she is well. I doubt we shall ever speak again. I don’t think I’d have anything to say, even if we did.

That was before Wendy, before this particular Maryann, before Video Library. It was all a long time ago. It was a good job, though, talking about movies.

Thanks!

Mind Share

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I’ve been stretched lately. Not for time; I’m busy but no busier than usual. Concentration seems to be the scarce resource. There are a couple of things that are eating all that my head has to offer, so when it comes time to answer emails or preside over the message forums at the Hut, my good intentions glance off the task like an Apollo capsule bouncing off the atmosphere and condemning its occupants to being the first interstellar humans.

I know that to run a successful business I have to be there for the folks, and I know that to run a successful blog I have to be here. I haven’t the slightest idea what it takes to be a successful writer, though. Sucks that that’s what I want to be.

Thanks!

Zima!

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The phrase “since the communist era” is an overworked one when discussing the weather; it’s as if the weather patterns were affected somehow by the Velvet Revolution. My first winter here was the coldest winter since communist times. There was a period of almost a month where the temperature never got above freezing. Not even once. The mercury never so much as poked its head above the zero line, groundhog-like; it stayed in the cellar. That winter, it was a notable event when I stepped in mud one day, simply because there was mud to step in.

Last winter was the snowiest since the communist era. Memories of the flooding a few years ago had locals looking pensively at the deep snow in the mountains, and when spring rains accelerated the melting process there was a feeling of held breath. I expect there was as much water this time as last, but the powers that be managed the potential disaster much better this time. (Thanks, Austria, for not screwing us over this time!)

This winter is only two days old, so it’s hard to characterize. The temperature is finally below freezing, and I pulled out my winter coat (thanks, Mom!) last night for the first time. Somewhere in Ireland my gloves, my beloved hunters gloves lie, and I miss them right now. (They are fingerless, but with a mitten flap that can be folded over the digits when they’re not typing. MaK dethumbed them for me, making them the only harsh-weather typing gloves on the planet.) Although I am ill-equipped this year, I welcome the cold. It’s one of the things that has forged the national character of the Czechs, an active character in the story of life here.

Thanks!

A Little Bit of Humor for You

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A regular at the Little Café Near Home told me this joke last night. I offer it to you as a lesson about the culture I am now surrounded by. (This is not a verbatim rendition, my rambling instincts are evident in the retelling.)

An American, a German, and a Czech were exploring the deepest jungles of the Amazon when they were captured by a tribe of cannibals. They were trussed up and brought before the chief. With three large pots heating over roaring fires behind him, the chief addressed the captives. “You will each be given two glass spheres,” he said, “and placed in separate huts. I will visit each of you in turn. If you can show me something with the spheres that I have never seen before, I will set you free. Otherwise, you’re on the menu tonight.”

The three captives were each given a pair of glass balls and taken to their huts.

First, the chief visited the American. When he entered, the American was sitting cross-legged on the dirt floor, with his hands in front of him. Over each hand a glass ball was hovering, in complete defiance of gravity.

“Seen it before,” said the chief.

Next he visited the German. Like the American he sat in deep concentration. He was moving his hands fluidly, and the spheres were flying about the room in a graceful dance.

“Seen it,” said the chief.

Finally, the chief visited the Czech. He entered the hut and returned almost immediately. The tribe waited for the verdict. The chief shook his head. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said. “It’s been five minutes and the guy broke one of the balls and lost the other.”

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The Metrics of Rockin’ Out

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It’s a short walk from the Little Café Near Home to my place. (Kinda makes sense, doesn’t it?) Not far out the door, the song ‘Heroin Girl’ came up the wires and into my ears. The wind was chill, but still lacking that true Czech winter bite. The streets were dark and quiet, and I’m pretty sure there were no witnesses to see me covering the last hundred meters to my front gate. (I looked back furtively as I worked the lock; LCNH was closing and at least one of the other patrons that was still there lives on my street. All clear. Whoo. I’ve got a reputation to maintain.

Nick Cave came on next, and I love the guy, but this was not the time for cerebral music. On the stairs up to my flat (no acceptance letters waiting on the stairs), I skipped on to The Jack Saints explaining in electrical mayhem that Gin’s A Good Man’s Brother. Shoes off, moves on, it was time to let go. The Mars Volta only added to that, followed by Gwen Mars, the culprit of my last Rocking Out Injury.

My thermostat is set for 20; cool but comfortable. Right now it is 23 in here. The heater is not going; that heat came from me. (Residual radiator heat must certainly be a factor, although the radiators are also covered with laundry right now, reducing their efficiency.) It was the Hives that put things over the top, and then when Alkaline Trio came on, that was the end. I was, in fact, the quintessential iPod commercial, holding the player in one hand (it kept falling out of my pockets, and I came to appreciate that when the headphones come out, the player automatically stops), white wires connected to my head flinging about with my body motion.

I was not, however, a vague shadow that reminds me somehow of the antishadows left by mannequins on the sides of buildings after nuclear tests. I was 3D, a little more 3D than I’m happy about being, which just increased the work required to move this body in ways that the kids can only envy. (I assume that their laughter is based on jealousy.)

Things are cooling, now, and I have a screenplay due tomorrow. Using Final Draft Pro for the last few days has really helped me appreciate just how cool Jer’s Novel Writer is.

Appropriately, the music is following the script, mellowing; Toad the Wet Sprocket is covering a Kiss tune. I want to rock and roll all night, party every day.

Thanks!

Dream a Little Dream

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This morning as I drifted in and out of consciousness, I had a series of dreams. (I started to say strange dreams, but that would imply that there is another sort.) At one point in a dream I was getting increasingly embarrassed by a chain of events and the people responsible for them. I was starting to wake up, I suppose, because the idea that this was a dream started to make sense. I calmed myself. Only a dream. “Maybe,” I thought, “But they don’t know that!”

Thanks!

Random Stuff

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I’m listening to Saint Low right now. Johnson City. Somehow in that narrative there is something important, something more complicated than love, and it will be lost. They are going to Johnson City, but it feels like the last time. Something’s changed; it’s heavier now. The trip is destroyed by its own significance.

The singer would probably laugh at my interpretation.

I watched hockey tonight, the electric hypnosis coming at times from different hemispheres. During the first intermission of the Sparta/Slavia (rhymes with Yankees/Mets) game, the owner of the Budvar Bar Near Home switched to Rugby. Amazingly (at least to me), one of the teams playing was one that I had seen during the calm part of new year’s eve in Ireland. The game was in its final moments, but is was close and hard-fought. I’m not sure how the players differentiated each other — they were all the color of mud.

Sport, mate. Sport.

There were times when the team with the ball was stalled, and there was a pile. Who gets the ball in such a pile is carefully regulated, but when you can’t move the ball from under the pile, you have to move the pile off the ball. It has been argued that the pads in the NFL actually increase the injury rate, and watching these guys, that’s easy to believe. When the progress of the ball is stalled and the pile is forming people will fly in, head first, smashing into the pile without regard for personal safety. We’re talking about big people, and big hits.

As far as I can tell, there are three reasons a man might fling himself at a pile like that. First, he could hope to move the pile. Second, he might take one of the other team off the pile, someone who had good leverage. Third, he might just like to crash into people, without regard for personal safety. I think to play that game there must always be a bit of reason three.

The whistle blew, the game was over, and they unpiled themselves and began shaking each other’s hands. It was an easygoing, natural sportsmanship that limits the cheap shot because you’re going to be looking those guys in the eye when the game is done, and ideally you’ll be buying each other beers down the street. That is sport.

Saint Low is now telling me that I can just walk on by, like she’s no one. I just wish I could tell her how wrong she is.

Soup Boy sent me an invitation tonight, chocolate night at some club or another. I do like chocolate, but the launch time for the festivities is about now, and I am well and truly done for the day. In fact, today is about done for the day.

Hockey. I was pulling for Slavia, the other Prague team, mainly because they weren’t Sparta, easily the Yankees (ca-ching!) of Czech hockey. It was a good game, back and forth, with both sides pulling off some of those passes that have you saying “Wha — wow!” The game went to a shootout. While I will always rail against the shootout in any team sport (reducing a contest that is supposed to be about how a group of people work together to a series of one-on-one events is a disservice to the entire sport, whether hockey, soccer, or whatever), this was an interesting one to watch. It went long, and I noticed a pattern that held. If the shooter glanced down, even for the tiniest of moments, at the puck, he missed. The shooters who never, ever took their eyes off the goalie scored and made it look easy. Nothing fancy, just smack it by the guy.

I’m pretty sure there’s not a useful life lesson there.

After that game we switched to NHL. They play on a smaller surface and at first the skaters seemed unnaturally large. In the past I’ve preferred the North American version of Hockey, but with the recent rules changes they’re caught in middle ground, no longer the hard-nosed pounding game I like, but without the room to be a game of finesse.

Johnny Cash is telling me that it’s the time of the preacher, in the year of ’01; when you think it’s all over, it’s only begun. I’m pretty sure he’s right about that.

My team, the Flames, they still play old-school hockey. (Incidentally, this means they’re doomed.) That is only secondary to why I am a Flames fan; it would be more accurate to say that I am a Flames-fan fan. I’ve already documented it in these pages, no sense in digging up old laundry and all that, but never before and never since have I seen a row of pretty girls neglecting their jobs because they simply could not tear their eyes away from the hockey game.

I wonder what apartments go for in Canmore.

I only had the one Johnny Cash song handy, now Nick Cave is singing about a woman with a dead man in her bed. I’m pretty sure she’s not referring to me. She’s never met me.

There are times, looking out at the city at night, at all the lights, the sound and the motion; it seems busy but for all that there are no people. My window is just another sparkle.

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Important Safety Tip

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It was colder today, though still warmer than it should be. My wardrobe is limited; today I chose one of my favorite chill-weather shirts, a hoodie that was given to crew members after the filming of Hostel. I didn’t work on the film, my shirt comes via the largesse of others. I mentioned a couple of days ago that I didn’t think much of the movie, but whatever negative feelings I have for the flick are nothing compared to the hatred that many Slovaks have toward it. That nation does not come out looking very good in the movie. Not good at all.

Tonight I found myself at Pizzeria Roma, one of the best places to watch international hockey in this town, as long as you’re rooting for the Slovaks instead of the Czechs. I was sitting at my table, working on a screenplay of all things, when some of the regular Slovaks arrived. I recognized a couple of them, although I haven’t been there in a while. I was just finishing a read-through of the first draft of Revenge of Home Textiles when a local came to my table and sat across from me.

“You speak English?” he said, more from politeness than as an actual question. I closed my laptop and prepared for Conversation. “You made Hostel?” he asked. “No,” I said, “but my brother worked on it.” I gestured to the chair fuego had occupied some time before, although he had already left before this guy arrived.

“I do not think that was a good movie,” he said.

“I think it was a terrible movie,” I replied. “Horrible.”

We went back and forth like that for a while. “That movie… I was in America in 1997. Americans don’t even know where Europe is. When a movie like that makes Slovaks look so bad, and others…” he hesitated. “I don’t want to argue…”

“I think we agree,” I pointed out.

“Do you know Quentin Tarrontino?” he asked. “Maybe you could tell him what we think.”

I laughed. “No, I don’t know him.” (I don’t even know how to spell his name, it seems.) “He just put his name on the movie anyway. I’m not sure why because Hostel really sucks. The guy who made it was Eli Roth. I met him once and he seemed like an asshole, but I was not my best that night either.” In fact on the night in question I was far from my best. Eli probably thought I was an asshole as well, if he thought of me at all. There is at least one person at that party who thought I was an asshole. All that’s neither here nor there; I expect that all my Slovak interviewer heard was “guy who made it” and “asshole”. That was enough for this conversation.

“You could tell him…?”

“They don’t care what I think.” Emphasis on they. “I’m surprised the Czechs let them film the second one here.”

“There’s another one?”

I guess that movie’s not out yet. Word on the street is that it sucks less than the first one, but I doubt I’ll ever find out firsthand. I nodded grimly, kicking myself for being the one who brought that particular bit of news to Pizzeria Roma.

There wasn’t much for us to say after that; his attempt to lodge a protest with the powers that be in Hollywood had failed utterly. I mentioned that just two days ago I had written on the Internet that I didn’t like Hostel, and that seemed to satisfy him. He returned to his people to report on the outcome, and I went back to work.

Thanks!

An aritficial rose, by any other name…

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I am in a café called Meduza right now; it is early afternoon and there is already far too much caffeine in my system. fuego tells me that I should recognize the place, having seen the movie Hostel — in the film the place is ostensibly in Amsterdam, and some semblance of plot development occurs there. If you watch the movie (I don’t recommend it, but those things happen), you can snap out of your coma for that scene and tell yourself, “hey, Jerry wrote a blog episode there!”

If I look up from my laptop and past fuego’s shoulder, there is a woman drinking some sort of tall, layered drink that might involve chocolate. She is distracting; I think she is used to people looking at her, but for me the fascination is a little different than the effect she is trying to achieve, I suspect. By any empirical measure she is attractive; her hair is long, with multiple layers of varying blondeness, her eyebrows are perfect arches over her wide brown eyes. Her skin is a deep salon bronze, her lip color carefully selected to match. Her clothes are simple but work well on her. The overall effect isn’t beautiful, however, and certainly not pretty; she is well-crafted.

As I wrote that last sentence she was joined by a friend (an English tutor, it turns out), very American, and I will admit that the artificial woman’s voice is very pleasant, smooth and low so that her words stay at her table, in sharp contrast to the penetrating nasal quality of the newcomer. So she’s got that going for her, and that’s a pretty good thing. She’s got the Czech cheekbones as well. The natural qualities are there, but she has chosen to hide them beneath a layer of artifice, an attempt at perfection that undermines and distracts from what is already there.

Clearly, this woman needs a coach, someone in her corner to give her the confidence to let her genuine qualities speak for themselves. Someone like me. She’s caught me looking her way a couple of times, and I know what she’s thinking: “That guy obviously has a discerning eye and a healthy disdain for convention. I bet I could learn a lot from him.” It’s either that or she’s thinking “Someone should teach that guy to dress better, and trim that scruffy beard.”

It could be either one. Fifty-fifty, I figure.

Thanks!

The Tip of My Tongue

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11

An hour ago I was writing, putting another layer of polish on a story I don’t know where to send. I was wrestling with a sentence. It was good, but I thought with the right tweaks to it and the paragraph around it, it could be great. Great doesn’t happen very often, not often at all, and I was going for greatness with everything I had.

I sat back at one point, distancing myself from the work for a moment, and thought about something interesting. Something essay-worthy. I mentally composed a few sentences and eyed the button that would bring my blog software forward, thinking that I should jot down a few notes. Before I did that, however, I had an idea for the story at hand, and back I went.

Now, I remember having the idea. I remember mulling the idea. I don’t remember the idea. I haven’t given up on it; ideally there will be an episode immediately after this one that is insightful and erudite, shining a literary beacon on the human psyche.

Right now, however, I’m pissed off.

Thanks!