Midway-ish

Lack of updates generally point to one of the following:
- Inability to write, guilt over thus, and fleeing from any chance at flexing the writing muscles
- Lack of time to write due to insanity of life and/or work
- Illness
- Extreme apathy toward life in general and feeling like there's nothing worthy of writing about

Combine issues two and three, and that's basically the reason this time. I'm trying to be a dedicated mentor, passable worker, powerhouse novelist, and quasi-decent friend... and it's exhausting. It's just that time of year.

However, I wanted to take a moment to say that, while stressful, this has been one of my most fulfilling NaNoWriMo years yet. Why? I have an amazing collection of writers around me. In inspiring and encouraging them, I inflict the same wisdom on myself. When I feel like throwing in the towel just to focus on other things (including helping them make it through the month), I get energized by their passion. I'm finally getting a bit of the teaching bug, if you will, though I definitely do not have enough patience for that...
Mentoring, though, is damn satisfying. If I had more time to dedicate to it, I know there'd be even more worth sharing, even more rewards to give, even more encouragement to dole out, even more emails spewing variations of 'don't give up -- you can do it!'
I've always volunteered and given back to causes I'm passionate about in some way, but never with writing. It's such a (generally) solitary and isolating line, but it doesn't always need to be. Crawling out of our dark little writing cozies and chatting with each other, even consoling ourselves when nothing seems to be going right, is great motivation for retreating back into our own little worlds and continuing our journeys.

Also, it's great to be around literate people. Just, you know, for life in general.



Required link to fundraising page for NaNoWriMo for those who like writers and kids and books and reading (it's all tax deductible and I have swanky broke!writer rewards for any size donation. Any.Size.): Click here and show some love.

I Wrote a Book!

I wrote a book! I wrote a book!
Take a good, hard look -- I wrote a motherfucking book!

No, really. I did.

*whew*

It took about three years to get a draft in a place where I felt it could be viewed by others for eventual submission to agents. A little over my original nine month plan, but hey, I'd never written a book before. I was young and optimistic.
Still, for anyone out there struggling with a creative project, completion negates any whining about how log it takes to get there. Stay the course (or "Stay on target."). Distractions will always arise. Life will always be complicated and seem to block you at times (or oftentimes). However, if you work your ass off and try... really, really try, you can do it.
Don't listen to Yoda. There is a wasteland of try on the way to 'do,' and that journey makes it all the more worth the satisfaction when you reach what you're trying for -- I can now say this from experience. Like a boss.

Now to scan through the very drafty sequels to prep for NaNo. And start looking for agents.
Yipes.

Perhaps also take my own advice and have a look at the screenplay baby I've neglected for far too long.



I wrote a book.

A Lannister Always (verb)s His (noun)s

Winter is coming to my office... well, really it's already here. Three of us fell victim to the siren song of Game of Thrones when it began airing on HBO. One more joined our clan out of a desire to understand what the hell the three of us were talking about all the time.
Now, the three have undertaken the task of making our way through all the novels as our patience will not allow waiting for the series to complete production and air in the spring. We want winter to come. We welcome it and all the tales it brings.
We also make ridiculous in-jokes (see title), geek out about casting rumours (I'm starting to chant a list of actors I want in the series each night the way Arya chants her list of those she wishes to die), and drool over Game of Thrones foodies offering delicious recipes inspired by the books.

And we feel Peter Dinklage not only deserves the Emmy nomination he received, he deserves to win.

Also, the books series is as enrapturing as the show. I cannot remember the last time I plowed through a 1000+ page novel in three days.
Can you?

Oh, my beautiful idiot...

"Then you stole me... and I stole you."
"I borrowed you."
"Borrowing implies the eventual intention to return the thing that was taken... What makes you think I would ever give you back?"







He calls her “Sexy.” He strokes bits of her and sweet talks her while also banging her parts with relentless and seemingly reckless abandon. He stole her, and she allowed herself to be stolen. They traveled for hundreds of years together and never spoke... until she was ripped from her home and crammed into a fragile female form.
Talk about innovation.

“The Doctor’s Wife” may eventually rank among the best ever Doctor Who episodes for sheer inventiveness alone. That and the brilliance that is Neil Gaiman.

While I am insanely jealous of this literal outside the bigger-on-the-inside box thinking, it is also inspiring. It fires some of those dormant, struggling synapses within my own writer’s mind, begging me to re-examine some of my own projects. They call to me, requesting that I Gaiman it up a bit --- to think of the maddest things imaginable, the seemingly impossible twist, and write it.
I’m not what one would call a true worshipper at the altar of Gaiman, but I may have just become a convert. Any writer who can do something entirely new with the Whoniverse after its nearly fifty year history deserves more than respect. He deserves adoration, accolades, and genuine gratitude for his innovative and inspiring ideas.

The brain is aching. The fingers are twitching. The soul is yearning for something new. I’m ready to leave myself unlocked for the mad thief of inspiration to rush inside and take me for a ride.

Happy Lightsaber Day!

In honor of the 40th birthday of one of my first, and deepest, celebrity crushes (and a man who would have made the original PFH list were he not already married when he became even semi-famous), I give you:

Forty Reasons I Love Ewan McGregor
(some of these are purely physical – like anyone would make my list of Potential Future Husbands without being delectably attractive)

40. Save a horse, ride a biker – a biker who traverses the globe with his best friend. Repeatedly.

39. He makes this beard actually work

38. Taking up the family business – though warned against it, followed after his uncle Dennis in taking up acting for his career

37. Familial Star Wars ties FTW – Wedge Antilles, meet Obi-Wan Kenobi… oh, wait…

36. His lightsaber – anyone who wields one of these bad boys earns extra points in Hotness (yes, even Christopher Lee)

35. That smile – GUH. *faints*

34. Cool former roomies – When I get access to a TARDIS, I’m totally going back to the days when Ewan, Jude Law and Jonny Lee Miller used to bang around together.

33. He’s crawled into and out of a toilet – now that’s flexibility…

32. His feet.

31. He’s not afraid to wear eyeliner – and looks damn good in it.

30. His adorably flawed southern accent in Big Fish.

29. Big Fish – possibly Burton’s best film, and one sans Johnny Depp, and who does it star…

28. Scottish, without the unintelligible brogue = hot

27. Looks great in a kilt = hotter

26. Honey and glitter and leather, oh my!

25. Has one of the most heartrending and exciting episodes of ER to his credit.

24. Those eyes…

23. Can be forgiven for The Island because (spoiler) there are scenes with two Ewans at once.

22. Has perfect pitch and ain’t afraid to break it out.

21. Devoted family man. Now that is hot.

20. When I get around to crafting the Gay Nudist Musical, he will be the first one I call.

19. Made time with Christian Bale and Jonathan Rhys Meyers… in the same movie.

18. Has played a gay/bi man so many times I lost count = secure in his sexuality AND non-judgmental about others’

17. Looks good even with a rattail.

16. Priest garb = forbidden hotness

15. He’s what makes Moulin Rouge believable, emotional, and painful. Without him it’s just a story about a singing slut who’s dying but will whore herself out one last time to save her theatre.

14. Did I mention the motorcycle?

13. Animated films: check. (Robots, Valiant, etc)

12. Tortured author: check. (James Joyce)

11. Rogue Austen Man: check (Emma)

10. Jedi: checkmate.

9. Stunning profile.

8. Protective of his family and insistent on his kids living outside the spotlight.

7. I love so much of his work (and him), I can usually forget I ever saw Eye of the Beholder. In the theatre.

6. Down With Love: innuendo can be just as hot as full-frontal.

5. His ‘lightsaber’ – you knew it was coming.

4. Humanitarian = hot

3. His laugh… especially his giggle.

2. Coolness under pressure – the man played guitar and sang surrounded by European maifa psychos with guns. That takes a healthy dose of…

1. Fearlessness. Whether it’s riding motorcycles around the world or baring all for the camera, the man knows his limits but is never afraid to test them.

Got a little Lycan in you? Would you like some?

While doing some cleaning and organizing this weekend (both mental and physical), I happened to spend a ridiculous amount of time with the telly on in the background, flipping between Indiana Jones trilogy (There are only three. Just three. Do you hear me? Only three movies exist!), and the Underworld trilogy.
Now, much as people might react with surprise and dismay, I am not really on the Underworld fan-wagon. Why not? Well, a) not a fan of Kate Beckinsale. She just does nothing for me. B) For being movies crammed with cool action sequences filled with almost as much gore-splatter as a Tarantino flick, they move at a snail’s pace. Every time I watch one I feel like six hours of my life have gone by; I don’t know what it is but the pacing on those films is so awkward. C) Vampires vs. werewolves stories need to have something really compelling for me to engage in them (like Taylor Lautner with his shirt off, or Ian Somerhalder being the NewSpike, or Seth Green as a tiny-man-by-day-wolf-badass-every-full-moon kind of guy, or Ian Somerhalder with his shirt off… you know, deeply compelling stuff). Actually Underworld has a rather compelling take on the whole vampires vs. werewolves mythos, it’s just buried under horrid pacing, electric blue contacts, and Kate Beckinsale’s dripping wet latex suit. So why did I spend a not-insignificant portion of my weekend with this train wreck of a series in the background of my life? Simple: Michael Sheen.
Don’t get me wrong, the Brit actors in these movies kick a ton of ass: Tony Curran, Derek Jacobi, and Bill “I’d watch him read the phonebook” Nighy, but they all behave pretty much as one might expect them to behave in this kind of genre. Waltz on, Michael Sheen, and it’s goodbye Tony Blair, hello tortured badass Lucian. The first Underworld features Suave Badass, except for the brief scene where he tells Michael about the start of the war and his forbidden love affair with Viktor’s daughter. I just spoilered you for the whole series -- Whoops :P That one sequence earns him the cred to have his own movie where he gets to Maximus Decimus Meridius his way through the whole movie, except Michael Sheen’s such a badass that he lives through it all, damaged though he may be, to carry on another seven hundred years (just spoiled Gladiator, too. Don’t think I missed that). Also, unlike many of his lycan comrades (and nowadays seemingly EVERY vampire), Lucian never gets whiny about his situation. His life blows massive food-poisoning-from-KFC sized chunks, but he deals with it. He takes one look at his lover’s dumbfuck daddy and says, “All right, old man, you want to have at me for centuries for loving your daughter? Bring it. ‘Cause Im’ma throwdown with a vengeance you think only you possess… and then I’m going to even the score and blend the races like I did with your babygirl, just to piss you off.”
Now, I admit to my affinity for tall, lanky, (generally) pale English blokes, but I don’t typically go in for Michael Sheen. Yet you lather that man up in movie sweat, give him some longer-and-dirtier-than-Strider hair, tan & buff him up a bit and turn him into a badass Lycanthrope and I will watch the slow-moving hours tick by content with my British werewolf hunk keeping me company.

I though all writers drank to excess and beat their wives...

You know I think at one time I secretly wanted to be a writer.

On the topic of favorites, my favorite movie usually elicits one of the following responses:
Hmmmm....
I've never seen that...
Really?
or
That's a great movie!

Obviously it's the final response I like to hear. I also make the delineation between 'favorite' and 'best' in situations like this. A favorite does not equate to the belief that this is the most exceptional item in whatever list is being discussed -- though both are quite subjective, despite what creators and discussors of 'best of' lists would have people believe.

So what is my favorite movie? The Philadelphia Story.
It replaced The Princess Bride sometime after I turned 19. One day I want a dog that I can name CK Dexter Haven. I will call it Dex, except when I have to call it across distance ("CK Dexter Haven! Ohhhh, CK Dexter Haaaaaaven!" will ring out then) or want to chat to it (this is when "CK Dexter Haven, I would like to talk to you," will be employed).
I'm going to preface the intense gushing by stating up front that generally speaking I'm not a huge fan of either Hepburn or Stewart. This isn't to say I don't like or appreciate their work (though in my younger days I generally did not), but merely to state that neither of them interest me much as actors -- not in the way I'm interested in Cary Grant or Ingrid Bergman or Leslie Howard or my own trifecta of Gene Kelly, Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye.

What has, from my second viewing on, fascinated me about this movie is the balance it strikes between farcical and biting comedy, light-hearded and emotional performance, and frivolous and serious issues. I cannot think of another move that is this funny while examining, on a very real level, societal conventions, prejudices, marriage and alcoholism. Still, the serious undertones of the movie never deter from the fact that it is one of the sharpest, wittiest, best-timed comedies ever.
Not only is the writing spot-on (and with some improvements I think from the original play), but the direction and casting are intrinsically linked to how good the movie is. It's one of Cary Grant's most understated (and therefore, I think, under-appreciated) performances. It's a perfect fit for Stewart's style without seeming repetitive of his other work. It's an obvious tour-de-force for Hepburn who obviously knew how to steer her own career as she tailored this film to suit her and did so flawlessly. Personally, other than Grant's wonderful portrayal of Dexter, my favorite performance in the film is Ruth Hussey's Liz. There's more than a touch of myself in her character so there's the self-identifier working in her favor; however, it's also a role of great sympathy and gumption, written and played with a sincerity rare in any era of film.

As I sit here writing this and desire to delve into the depths explored in the movie, I'm rendered incapable of being too serious about it since right now Mike is drunkenly hiccuping his way around Dexter's house as Dex patiently takes it all, and all the while the plot thickens. Yes, a comedy where you have to pay attention. Concept.
That in itself is the underlying brilliance of The Philadelphia Story: it doesn't let you rest. Similar to His Girl Friday and yet I think more accessible, more romantic, and blatantly more humourous, it takes multiple viewings to understand all the layers within it, yet never loses the core of romance and comedy. For first, and even second, time viewers I wouldn't recommend trying to read too much into the film. There are some disparities in how it treats the ideas of relationships and prejudice which are reflective of the time in which it was made, and there are a lot of feminists who slam the movie because they only see the film for these flaws and not the overarching messages. Still, as a snapshot of society created for entertainment, it's remarkably reflective and perceptive of the world it inhabits.
However, even if you just come for the romance and the funnies, you can't do much better than this movie.

People doing cooler and better things than I…

It’s been a heck of a week. I wanted to write more and yet every time I sat down to type something interesting, intelligent, creative, spontaneous or whatever, nothing happened. Even my subconscious has become dull again. However, there are some pretty damn awesome people I know writing some pretty damn awesome things. So I will share those I lieu of being able to create anything worthwhile myself:

1. Running to Tahiti Lovely, talented, bright, gorgeous Rebecca ranting about society’s obsession with physical female perfection and our inability as women to reconcile ‘healthy’ with ‘thin.’
2. Luv & Kiwi First L.A. pal Tishy joins in my anti-snobbery campaign against aggravating hoity-toity literature types who refuse to find merit in anything that isn’t nominated for a Pulitzer or hasn’t been around for over 100 years. We don’t share the same love for the same type of books, but gal-pal and I do share an overwhelming love for books and disgust for those who stop taking anything you say seriously once the words, “Yes, I’ve read the entire Twilight series,” leave your lips.
   Also, she directed me to Apartment Therapy which is equal parts awesome, depressing and inspiring.
3. Merry Maudlin Other than adoring the name of her blog, her style is marvelous and her posts always entertaining. This week she made an offhand comment about the developmental issues in Disney characters that not only cracked me up at work but made my little mind ponder the oddness of Disney psychology.
4. Hyperbole and a Half I make no secret of my adoration for Allie and her hysterical drawings and entries. Sometimes I’m afraid she may be stalking me and patterning her development as an adult after my own horrid attempts and colossal failures, but if only my life were able to be painted in such entertaining ways… this most recent entry delves into the psychology of little girls who want to play ‘boy’ games and are more likely to figure out ways to stalk you like a wolf and gnaw you to death than worry about grass stains on their pretty dresses. Yeah, that was me.

Holiday Stress Relief

Most people know that, for various and sundry reasons, the holiday season presses down on us with stress like an older brother presses down on a head-locked sibling. Far from having immunity to these stresses, this week I am exceptionally grateful for not only my office co-workers, but for our newfound form of stress relief thanks to a holiday party gift exchange. During the exchange, filled with fighting and yelling and cajoling over a myriad of cool items (and booze), one item landed itself blessedly into the hands of one of the office staff. Since its arrival on Friday, two other staffers, myself included, have run out to their nearest big box retailer to purchase this ultimate tool in stress relief:















Since Friday afternoon this little toy has brought untold joy and excitement to more than half the staff. We've had shooting competitions involving everything from moving ducks drawn on white boards to targeting by facing backwards with a mirror to straight out regular skill and luck. And yes, shooting these little buggers has a bit to do with luck. It's not an exact science. However, for such an affordable source of fun (and with a few modifications which are already being executed -- and some personal decorating which will happen soon), one can excuse the lack of a completely accurate, scientific and logistical method to firing off several rounds of this magnificent little time waster.

Some offices have pool and Foosball. Some even have arcade games. We have Nerf guns, and damned if we don't have just as much fun with our little six-shooters as any group of kids (or college students playing humans vs. zombies) would.

Admiration

In the world of writing intelligently about 'fandoms' (I really hate that term sometimes), there are only a handful of people who really inspire me and make me gooey with admiration -- a good kind of respectful gooey, not a naughty gooey. These people tend to write about topics and fandoms which are... let's say 'age inappropriate.' Or perhaps a better way of saying it would be these are people who possess the intellect and reasoning capabilities to appreciate much higher forms of art and entertainment, but prefer (usually) to spend their time with what their equals and superiors in such areas of study might refer to as dreck, or utter trash.

Here is an entry on Eclipse, and Twilight in general, which exemplifies what makes me gooey for those who could obsess and write about 'high' art and choose the trash instead.