Weekly Blog 3/28

3/22

I took my nephew to his volleyball game tonight, but my sister called to say that she'd pick him up, so I didn't have to stay to watch it.  I had planned on finishing my library book ("The Hidden Palace" by Helene Wecker) from the uncomfortable bleachers, but instead, I went to the library, finished the book in comfort (hey, it's only seven days overdue), and blogged and surfed Wikipedia.

I met a squat, plain-faced woman with bad teeth this morning, who nonetheless struck me as pleasant and inherently good.  I tried to imagine a scenario in which she gets a curse placed on her wherein she would become beautiful and charming . . . one day a month. 

It's similar, I'll admit, to ideas I've had in the past, but I was pretty energized by the idea throughout the day, even going as far as to come up with a scenario in which the woman is a nurse who is kind to Lara Demming when she is injured, and Old Widow Holcomb decides to reward her (much in the same way she "rewarded" Tali Murray [was that her name?] is the "Remember The Future" story I wrote back in 2016).

What would it be like to become beautiful and popular, but only on the thirtieth of each month?  How would your life change?  How would you rearrange your schedule in preparation for it?  And how much would February suck (more than it already does, I mean)?  Thood for fought.

Now that I am sitting at a library cubicle and jotting down the idea, of course, it doesn't strike me as particularly good or unique, and that's too bad.  But I think I'll do what Big Anklevich always does, and put the idea in a mental drawer.*  If it keeps jumping out at me in the future, coming back into my head and recapturing my imagination, then I'll know I have something.  We'll see.

3/23

Really, this should be a continuation of yesterday's post, but ah well.  Yesterday, I also got an idea for a story for a comic book issue or a short vignette where Clark Kent is eight years old, and his parents are trying to teach him how to pass as human.  Jonathan and Martha decide that Tuesday will be Clark's human day, when he must do everything as though he's one of us, even though it will mean his chores will take hours and he has to be careful not to get burned or injured by things that couldn't possibly burn or injure him.  

Clark tries, but there's a lot to keep track of.  I really love the idea of Jonathan putting something heavy in a bag and when Clark carries it out to the pickup truck with one hand, he reveals that even a grown man would struggle with that, and his secret would be revealed if somebody else saw it.  The boy is frustrated, but he learns that by creating this Clark Kent persona, he gains empathy for how vulnerable and weak the human beings around him are.  It's not fair, but it helps mold him into the man that he'll become.

In audio news, I was asked to perform a short story for a podcast, and it was one by Edith Nesbit, who wrote "John Charrington's Wedding," the last Podcast That Dares episode I finished.  I read through the story (before recording), and the characters are obviously European rather than American (at one point, my character speculates, "Perhaps she wants a rise in her screw," whatever that means), and I wasn't sure what to do.  So, I started recording it with an English accent, but ten seconds later, I decided that if they had wanted an English accent, they would've sent the story to a Brit, not me.  

So I started again, voicing the narrator as an old man, and after about two minutes, I changed my mind again.

This time, I decided on a more gravely version of my own voice for the narration, but did a much younger voice for the dialogue.  Unfortunately, doing that particular character so effed up my voice that I started coughing so hard I nearly threw up.  That had never happened before (I've got the audio, if you think I should include it).  I stopped and got a drink, meaning to take a short break and then finish, and never came back to the story.  Whoops.

3/24

I took my nephew to his volleyball game tonight, knowing it would mean I wouldn't make it to the library.  But I didn't mind.  His team was just awful, and even though he wasn't the worst player on the team, he was pretty bad.  In the past, he's always seemed to know what he was doing in sports, but none of these kids seemed to know how to set up a ball so someone else could spike it.  At least they seemed to be having a bit of fun playing the game.  And my nephew is athletic--maybe he'll get way better in the coming weeks.

My buddy Jeff, who watches more television than anyone in the northern hemisphere, got a thirty-three disc boxed set of the "Columbo" TV series.  He was telling me about it, do I did a search, and discovered the series is streamable on Peacock.  I sat down to watch the first episode (directed by an incredibly young Steven Spielberg), and was vexed to discover that, just like the Eighties revival series that I watched on ABC, "Columbo" spends the first few minutes of each episode showing how the murder is committed (and by whom), thereby stealing every moment of mystery from the rest of the show.  I was saddened by this, but audiences must've been fine with it, because "Columbo" aired into the Nineties.

3/25

I emailed myself the "Balms & Sears" file (last used in February of 2021) so I could open it and look it over.  It's a story I've wanted to finish for five or more years now.  It's one of my resolutions for 2022 (and last year too).  I had planned to start at the beginning, reading through it and adding details, so that when I get to the end (of the previous writing), I'll be in the right mindset to finish it up.  But it looks like it's in terrible shape, with a lot of blanks for character names and clustery paragraphs with sketched-out sections.

So I took a scene I had roughed and turned it into a real scene, from beginning to end.  It was something I hadn't remembered writing, but I was easily able to get into the head of Alec ___ (I forget his last name), since I've thought about him for so long--a boy even more sensitive than I was.  It's funny how, as I mentioned a couple of days ago, this story has stuck in my craw all these years, whereas the thousand other ideas I've had had fallen by the wayside.

I had done a barely-adequate amount of writing, but I made myself run the full 1.6 miles before I would reward myself by finishing the "Columbo" episode I'd started the night before.

Unfortunately, while I was making myself some soup to watch with, my nephew and his mouthy friend came in, pulled out the hide-a-bed there, and turned on their show: they were having a sleepover.  If I had known that, I would have watched "Columbo" first, and then went on my run when the kids came in.  Ah well.

3/26

I'm back at the library, though I only have a few minutes before it closes (I have never asked why they would close three hours early on the one day of the week students don't have school or church, but I'm sure--in fact, I'll put it in all caps, I'M SURE--that the answer would infuriate me).

I opened the "Balms & Sears" file and started from the beginning.  By the time I reached the third page, I discovered that on Page 1, I Alec's grandfather's name was Nathaniel Besser, but on Page 3, it was  Arthur Brownwood.**   I didn't want to waste a lot of time deciding which it should be (I like Nathaniel better than Arthur, and Brownwood better than Besser), but figured I'd do a count, and see which one is used more.

And that was a waste of time, because even though Arthur was used once and Nathaniel was used twice, I just kept Arthur Brownwood anyway.

Actually, a great deal of the things I do are a waste of time.  And not just writing.

I looked through a scene, just like yesterday, and before I was done, they made the "Get the hell out, we got places to be" announcement.  I typed this bit, and now I'm on my way.

I did get to "Columbo" today, but each episode is so long, I'll never catch up with Jeff.

3/27

Oscar night is always special for me (although last year's show was pretty miserable, I'll admit), and I looked forward to it all day long.  Unfortunately, I had a lot of work to get done, so I DVRed it and put it off for as late as I could so I could get my end-of-the-month work in (still didn't manage 100%, but ah well).

Then, it turned out the DVR only recorded a little over half of the show, which I realized as soon as I turned it on (my mind said, "Well, maybe it's running late and the thing is still recording . . . but I remembered living in Los Angeles and the Oscars started at some crazy hour like four pm there so the East Coast could show it in Prime Time).  But ah well.

I won't belabor the point much except to say four things:

1.  The highpoint of the night was when Troy Kostur won Best Supporting Actor.  It was everything the Academy Awards mean to me, and I felt proud to be a human being for that entire segment, from the Japanese presenter worried about mispronouncing the names of the nominees to the sign language translator next to him.

2.  I would've predicted the lowpoint was when they did the big production number for "We Don't Talk About Bruno" and completely ruined the song.  Who would've guessed that changing the lyrics (to be about Oscar) and bringing in Megan Thee Stallion to rap would harm that song more than my nephew listening to it hundreds of times on repeat?  It was the worst of what people who make fun of the Oscars say about the awards epitomized.  But I would've been wrong about it being the lowpoint.

3.  The evening went so late into the night that I totally ran out of time to do my run, even though I changed into my sweats and planned to go out and jog around the block when my recording ran out.  So that means that, for the first time this month, I missed both writing and exercising in a single day.  Sorry.

4.  The Will Smith/Chris Rock thing sharted over all the goodwill (no pun intended) and good feelings of the entire night.  I, like many folks, squinted and tried to figure out if it was a gag that was happening, and rewound it to try to read lips (there were uncensored versions out there that I watched, as people kept sending them to me***, and those were even uglier), and then let it sink in that it was completely serious.  And everybody's got an opinion about it, sure, but seeing Rock try to continue on with the presentation and stumble over his words was one of those moments where my heart just went out to the television screen.

The recording ended, and I went online to find that the whole show had pretty much been uploaded to YouTube (it's probably down now, though I dunno how these things work), and I was able to watch the rest of the show.  I thought of Gino when Jane Campion won, because she is his aunt, but it's weird, all of the rest of the show was tainted due to the earlier outburst (although I commend Amy Schumer's jokes immediately after to try to lighten the mood).

Because I spent so darn long on the Oscars, I failed to either write or exercise today.  It was the first day this month, darn it.

Oh, Campion's not really Gino's aunt.  It's a joke about how small New Zealand is, and how . . . uh oh, Gino's gotten up from his seat and is walking toward me.

3/28

I got an email yesterday that made me pretty upset, and it makes me wonder why I am so easily rattled.  Just this week, I was recording a chapter of Abigail Hilton's new book, and my mom called, and she made this little offhand remark criticizing me, and I'll admit, it threw off my whole game.  I was seriously upset, and had to take a break from the recording to try and get back to where I had been (in my head) before.  I said into the microphone, "It amazes me that in a few short words she can make me this furious.  I should have grown out of this by now."

I transferred that file over and started editing it today, and sure enough, when I got to that part, I now feel a bit embarrassed (you couldn't hear what she said, but you could hear me tightly saying, "Yeah, thanks, see ya," before hanging up).  It made me wonder if everybody else has a relationship in their family that does that to them...

...and reminded me of my father and how incensed I could become with that man, and how, even though he's been gone since 2016, all I have to do is think about his reaction when I was recounting the Jimmy Smits enchilada sketch and I become fighting mad once again (works every time, Bosskdammit).  And I promise you that, were the man not dead, he would have no memory of that conflict from a decade or more ago.  It's only me that gets upset about it, and with no signs of slowing down.

There was a moment at the end of last year when I saw that same instant rage rise up in my brother, and it shocked me, because it seemed so unfounded.  But later, once he was gone and I could re-examine it passionlessly, I recognized a slightly beefier version of my own bad temper in that.  And it's strange that it's only certain people who can bring it out of me.  Big Anklevich, for example, has never made me nearly as mad in all the years of us knowing each other, as my mom can by making a trivial comparison between me and a homeless person.

Huh.

Okay, so I'm back at the library, and pardon my Spanglish, but I'm going to write the miercoles out of the book next few minutes.

I did work on "Balms & Sears" for a half hour or so.  There are several scenes, maybe a dozen, maybe more, in two different documents, written over a period of years, and no particular order to put them in.  It would take Christopher Tolkien going through my stuff to organize it into a coherent narrative. 

Basically, Alec moves into a new town in Colorado with his grandfather, starts going to school, makes friends with an unpopular fat kid, makes friends with a popular athlete, and makes friends with a girl with a secret just like his.  In between all these scenes, Alec interacts with his grandfather, who is not really his grandfather.  The stuff between the old man and the boy are my favorite bits, and it's obvious, looking over it now, that I'm writing Gramps as though he was my own grandfather, who, instead of dying in 1994, was still alive today, just well over a hundred years old.

I've been passionate about this story for years, so long that I don't remember the character names or which scenes I've written and which ones I haven't (there are a couple of pages in my notebook from the book, probably written in 2018 or so, including a bit where Gramps refers to Kellogg's Frosted Flakes as the cereal made in a mental institution.  I am absolutely sure that is based on something, a bit of trivia I have since forgotten, but I haven't bothered to look it up).  At this rate, I'll have the book finished sometime around August or September . . . and I can live with that.

Going back to the email at the beginning and the conversation with my mother: I wish I were a bit more unflappable than I am.  When I was a kid, my buddy Dennis's dad was one of those guys who (seemingly) never got upset about anything, and could weather a ton of verbal abuse from Dennis's mom, and it seemed to just roll off him like the duck's back saying.  I am not sure if that is an inborn characteristic or something that you learn, all I know is that, growing up, Dennis was easy-going and restrained, and his brother was hot-headed and quick to anger.  And it sometimes bothered me that I could see that I wasn't like Dennis at all, that I was prone to tantrums way more than he was, and even though I recognized that, it didn't mean I could do something about it.  I suppose I'll be working on that for the rest of my life.

*And did Stephen King suggest the same thing?  I honestly can't remember, so I'll credit B.D. Anklevich alone.

**You can see why I would've confused the two, since they're so darn close to one another, right?

***Okay, it was only two people, but I saw it so many times (and replayed and reframed and memes made of it) that it felt like something I was being bombarded by from all directions.