One Man Show

One man (person, whatever) shows are all the rage now.  Well, that probably isn't true.  They are always being done.  Probably because (1) you can feature yourself and (2) don't have to worry about anyone else's schedule, ego, etc. and (3) a one person short one act feels "full" while a larger cast piece feels "slight."  Whatever the case is, I've been leaning more and more into writing for the stage.

The problem is that I haven't led an extremely interesting life.  Yes, yes.  I know there are those of you who are going to say "Pshaw, Chris!  Your life is interesting!  Everyone has something to say."  I have plenty to say, but let's be fair - I had a great childhood, I have a great family. I am white, financially comfortable and straight.  I haven't traveled tons and when I have it has always been safe.  I've never done more then dabble in narcotics before I discovered that besides occasional drinking, it wasn't for me.  I know a little about a lot of things.  I know coffee.  I know food.  I know science fiction and speculative fiction and story in general.  And god knows the word doesn't need another show about (1) acting, (2) writing, or (3) comedy.

So that leaves me at loose ends a bit.  But I have a few ideas.

• For a long time, I've been working on a one man piece about Philip K. Dick's nervous breakdown (or visions or whatever) of the mid 70s.  Great material and I love it but (1) I would be totally miscast in it and (2) it is only funny in parts.  It is dark and weird and emotional.  I just don't have a handy venue to pitch it to right now.

• Depression.  It's not like there aren't a ton of pieces about that, but I think it could be funny/sad.  I just don't know if I have the right angle on it yet.  I think I still need some distance on it.

• Sex.  Again, the world doesn't need tons more on this.  But I have had my share of relationships, stretching across the spectrum of possibilities.  I have tons of stories and thoughts.  Of course, it makes me a bit nervous.  (1) A whole show about "the women I've been involved with" could come off as bragging.  (I'd say it is a sign that it's a sign of my ability to form intense bonds and then not make the final step to fully give myself over to them but it is a fine line.) (2) I am uncomfortable putting my partners' lives up on stage.  Names can be changed and the chance of them actually seeing the show are slim, but I still am protective of those memories/lovers.  (3) If I am totally honest, I will come off as an ass.  Yes.  An ass.

Still, I think I may do it.

Erotic Fiction: The Wizard's Staff

WARNING: Extreme language, visuals, uncomfortable moments, repeated use of the word "c*ck."

This is part of a series.

(via Morrissey and Fist Fighting, Mostly)

NaNoWriMo & Omens

While I was writing my first novel for NaNoWriMo, I received a phone call from my friend Jake. He delivered the news that someone I had dated for a short period of time had died on an overdose. (I blogged about this back then.) The point being that I had been writing for a few weeks about regret and death and ends. I'm not saying that her death was a sign. Heck, she'd died a year and a half before I heard about it. But perhaps Jake's call was. Or I at least took it as one.

I just this week decided what I want to write this year. Stories and dreams and memories and beginnings. Today I get a Facebook message from a woman I dated back in 1989-1990. She's been looking through old, old papers and found a file titled "Tales to Sleep." My memories of that file is pretty slim and vague. They were short stories I wrote for her. Specifically to be read out loud to help her get to sleep. Bedtime stories. Fairy tales of sorts.

She wrote me to ask if I wanted copies (if I didn't have any, which I don't). And to tell me she was going to read through them to see if any her son might like to hear in the future. She's been married for awhile now and her son is one. The idea that those stories were all but lost but now have been rediscovered and might be read by/to her child fills me with joy. The whole concept of the stories and their rediscovery fits right into what I want to write about. Eerily so.

And I am taking it as a sign. The NaNoWriMo muse is definitely looking out for me.

Stories

I think I've stumbled upon what I am going to write for NaNoWriMo. The inspiration came from a weird place, as ideas often do. I was on the subway the other night, attempting to read. A lone empty 20oz. plastic soda bottle (most likely Sprite but hard to confirm since the label had been torn off, leaving just the white remnant scraps that are usually left) was rolling back and forth through out the car. Just enough fluid remained to make it's journey and trajectory erratic and unpredictable. It was late and no one in the car cared to be bothered by the bottle as it made its travels to and fro. Occasionally a passenger, when confronted by the vessel rolling up to them like a cat begging for attention, would kick it away or try to nudge it under the benches in vain hope that it would remain there.

For some reason I spent a fair amount of time that bottle and the people. I began to think about how it is pretty and odd and playful and how everyone was all but pretending it didn't exist. I pictured the scene, describing it in my head. And then, for no reason, I thought, "The pooka next to him fiddled with his Nintendo DS, tiny fox claws making tik-tac noised on the buttons."

The whole idea is still being fleshed out in my noggin. It is a world idea I kind of like. Nothing very original. I plan to treat it a bit different than I've seen before. Kind of Alien Nation meets War for the Oaks. Honestly not all the different in tone from the books I've written before... except probably more marketable. Somehow my biblical revisionist New York romantic comedy horror genre wasn't setting the lit world on fire.

Anywhozits, there is still a month left before November. Plenty of time for me to change my mind or to realize that the idea is shallow and totally lacking subtlety.

NaNoWriMo '08

My straight up fiction writing has been lagging lately so I've decided to do NaNoWriMo again this year. I have no idea how considering how my schedule is a lot more packed than it was in '05 and '06 (I took last year off), but my brain needs a jump start.

This year I want to do something unrelated to my previous books which have all been New York male-chick lit/horror/Biblical revisionism (once described as "Nick Hornby meets Edgar Allan Poe"). But I'm having a hard time deciding what. So let's vote in the comments.

Here are some options. I am fully open to taking suggestions (since nothing has sparked any particular fire in me). I don't have to decide until Oct 31st. Sometime in late October I'll post my top few choices and let my readers (all five of you) pick.

• A 15 year old girl who's mom drags her to boy bands because mom wants to hook up with them. (This is just a fragment on an idea.)
• My take on a zombie apocalypse. (I have no idea what I'd do. I only have on scene in my head that is actually conceived for film.)
• Something sci-fi. (I have no idea what this would be but it would probably involve war.)
• A dark family comedy/drama (ala Geek Love or whatever).
• An Alice In Wonderland/Phantom Tollbooth child sucked into alternate world fantasy thing. (This would be easiest.
• A time travel story. (I'd love to do this but to do it well would probably take more careful plotting than writing 50,000 word in 30 days would allow.)
• Erotica. (Want to see me go crazy? Watch what happens when I try to write 1,700 some words of porn a day.)
• A romantic comedy. (I'll need more to go on than just that.)

Oh, and this is old but I finally looked at it.

Super Short Stories. Pt 1.

(I've decided to challenge myself this afternoon. Different genres. 100 words or less. Feel free to give suggestions and feel free to be as specific as you want.)

Spot Speaks (horror)
It wasn’t the discovery that, after all these years, Spot could talk the disturb Jack the most. It was that Spot was saying grace over Jack’s half eaten leg.

Answers (sci-fi)
As Alice was led into the starship, she was in awe of the beauty of the moment. All those years wishing to have proof of life beyond the bounds of Earth and here it was. The alien, grey-green skinned, eyeless smooth face, asymmetrical limbs where there should have been limbs.

Alice geared herself. “Please,” she whispered, “I wish to know the answers to the Universe.”

“Crap,” squished the alien. “I was hoping you’d know.”

Subway Choice (romance)
They stood in the rain at the subway entrance. He shifted uncomfortably in the silence that had settled on them. She stared at their feet on the wet sidewalk. What was in her head, he thought. What is she thinking? All he wanted to do was kiss her. That was all that was in his mind. No thoughts of today or tomorrow, just the moment.

Without looking up, she gently touch a button on his coat. “I should go home.”

Damn. “Yeah. So should I.”

She tilted her head up, grinning. “Yeah. You should come home with me.”

Indiana Jones and The City of Mindless Repetition

SPOILERS

I started to write a whole entry about the Frank Danabont Indiana Jones script. All sorts of insightful thoughts and observations. But then I realized it came down to one thing: It had more Marion.

Really, it had a lot of the same problems of the filmed version. Most of it was just a Greatest Hits collection of action set pieces. I enjoyed where they start off playing with Jones' age, but it gets pretty much dropped. I also liked the Cold War stuff... but that gets dropped. There is a fun bit in the early on with a drunk, depressed and old Jones but it doesn't really go anywhere. A lot of dumped moments in Crystal Skull (see: monkeys and vine swinging) have there genesis in Danabont's script. They're less stupid... but still manage to be pretty stupid. And, yes, it is still aliens. They are angry aliens and the script doesn't feel the need to give as mindlessly stupid exposition at the end, but it adds up the same.

But it had more Marion and that is key. The Indiana/Marion relationship should be the center on it all. It makes me sad to think what might have been instead of the basically "I'm along for the ride roll she was given."

Monkey poop indeed.

It's no "Snakes. Why'd it have to be snakes?" but...

SPOILER ALERT.

I'm working my way through Frank Darabont's Indiana Jones IV draft that appeared on the interwebs. I'll chat more about it in more geek-obsessive-what-could-have-been detail later, but I did want to share my favorite line so far.

Bottom of page 64, after a hair raising biplane chase/fight scene.

INDY
The monkey pooped on my chest.

See? That's good writing!

Too much improv

I overloaded a bit this last week.

Class on Wednesday, show on Friday night, 3 person practice group Saturday, Thank You, Robot practice to day 12 to 3, and then a somewhat random practice group from 4 to 7 today. I had plans to go to a music think at 9pm, but that was apparently cancelled. Now I am wasting time in Starbucks before a thing at 10pm. (There is one persn out there that will admonish me for this evenings plans. Yeah, yeah. But my other plans fell through and if I just went home, I was going to be depressed. Better into the lions' den than to hide in the corner. Besides I'm feeling kind of strong.)

Anywhozits, I've had yet another brain switch with improv this weekend. Nothing huge, but I am seeingthings more three dimenstionally. Imagine that I have spent the last 2 months staring at a square. I've been staring and staring, and I feel I understand the sqaure in total but my hands just can't quite hold on to it. On Friday night I saw something strange about the square, something that didn't quite make sense. On Saturday, I was shown the other side ofthe square, the mirror image. It was disorienting at first to see this other square that was in fact the first square but entirely different. Today someone gently proded me to turn my head. And I suddenly saw that it wasn't a square at all. It's a damn cube! Now I can see three sides of the cube, some sides clearer than others. The sides are all part of the same object, all the sides are connected and rely on the others, but they are different. And I can only see three sides. There is another three I have never even seen (assuming that it is actually a cube and not some more complicated type of object... god forbid that it might be a four-dimenstional cube!).

Yes, stupid analogy, but that's as close I can get.

The novel continues apace. It took me much longer to getto the body than it should. I am going to have to cut a lot of my flashback stuff. The problem is that (1) the flashback stuff is easy to write because I can just expand on the first portion of Genesis, and (2) I have been thing about the flashback stuff for going on 15 years. Not all the time when I first became fascinated with the story of Lilith, Eve and Adam. I think back now to how one dimenstionally I used to think of the story. Ah, the heady days at college! The story means a lot more to me now... and no longer reads like a sensitive straight white boys rant against the patriarchy.

I just need to devote time to the "present" portion of the book. I got to the body too far in. The next thing is that I need to get to Eve. I've been riminating on her for awhile. She used to be so hard for me to concieve of. On the surface she seems so weak compared to Lilith's strength. But now she appeals to me. Both of them share a deep sadness, and their is a kinship bewteen the two. I have been thinking that Eve would only be in one scene, but I am thinking that she my come along for the investigation.

Adam is still dodging me. He needs to be there, he is very important, it is just hard for me to get past what a sheep he was/is. All of his choices seem so shallow and passive. I know that the hook is him as father. (Admit it, he has to be a crappy husband/lover.) His moment has to come from his love for his sons and his attempt to be a good father... and we know how that turned out.

There are some other major points I haven't quite figured out. Like who actually killed Cain. Yeah, the thing that the whole novel hinges on. Sigh.

Neil Gaiman (yes, two Gaiman mentions in one day) recently commented on finishing the first chapter to his new novel.

And today I finished writing Chapter One of The Graveyard Book, and it's a real book. I know it's a real book because there are all sorts of things I don't quite know yet, and I can't wait to find them out.

Happiness.

It's so nice to know that the feeling continues.

Things I Must Do Today

I have been a big fan of FOUND Magazine and of the website. It is definitely the reason I pick up any notebook paper I find in the street. I have never found anything of any import, usually just address or directions or shopping lists. I have found I fair amount of things in french, but I never thing to save them to have translated later.

Today I found something and it just about crushed me.

First the front.

This was slightly ambiguous. I was unclear who wrote it and what "Stay clean for just today 2007 Jan 1" meant. But "hope to see you clean Call Me" started me in a certain direction. And then I read the other side.

I'll pray for Joe too, in my agnostic way.

Reuters picks up Ellis's Second Life article

This is good news for those of us who follow Second Life and how it is the protoculture of the virtual metaverse of the future. (If that sentence made any sense to you, than you care about this. If you didn't, just move along.) Warren Ellis, author of such amazing comic books as Transmetropolitan and Global Frequency, has been writing a series of "Second Life Sketches" on his website since August. Now Reuters has picked it up.

“Second Life is not only the biggest digital art installation in the world, but potentially the most radical shift yet in the way communities are formed online, and possibly also the germ of the next great operating system,” Ellis said. “It’s not only a place where people get as strange as they can, but an incubator for the future.”

Ellis is probably the person giving Second Life the most serious thought... or at least the one writing about. If you are at all curious as to what all of this Second Life stuff is and what it might mean for your children, give Ellis's stuff a read.

(via Boing Boing)

Crichton makes critic a child rapist

Back in March, Michael Crowley, journo for The New Republic, wrote an article critical of Michael Crichton. I have not read it (subscriber only), but I am guessing it didn't deserve this response.

In Crichton's new book, Next, he has a character named Mick Crowley. Let's look at a section:

Alex Burnet was in the middle of the most difficult trial of her career, a rape case involving the sexual assault of a two-year-old boy in Malibu. The defendant, thirty-year-old Mick Crowley, was a Washington-based political columnist who was visiting his sister-in-law when he experienced an overwhelming urge to have anal sex with her young son, still in diapers. Crowley was a wealthy, spoiled Yale graduate and heir to a pharmaceutical fortune. …

It turned out Crowley’s taste in love objects was well known in Washington, but [his lawyer]—as was his custom—tried the case vigorously in the press months before the trial, repeatedly characterizing Alex and the child’s mother as “fantasizing feminist fundamentalists” who had made up the whole thing from “their sick, twisted imaginations.” This, despite a well-documented hospital examination of the child. (Crowley’s penis was small, but he had still caused significant tears to the toddler’s rectum.)

Anal rapist of small children AND a small penis. Now that is a classy classy response.

(via Wonkette)

New & Old & Things I Should Do

I added a new feature, which I am sure you are all super excited about. (Sorry. I had my SARCASM LOCK key on.) But over to the right I have a UP NEXT FOR ME thingy. Just a quick guide to tracking me down. Might cut down on me making numerous posts about the same topic.

For example, right now I am going to remind you that I'll be trying out a sketch at Liquid Courage at UCBNY theater at 11:59pm this Friday (December 15th). Or that on Saturday (December 16th) is SantaCon and that you should get your butt to Halloween Adventure or other retail costume location a pick up a Santa suit.

I have also cut some the links out of my links lists. No matter how much I may respect those folk, I if they don't post regularly, they don't get a slot. (Side note: the little thrill of finding yourself blog roller by folks you don't even know is quite nice. For example Behind Closed Doors. I don't think I know any early 20's fashion industry folks in western New York... but there they are.)
Man, I keep meaning to write mini-reviews of Happy Feet and Casino Royale. And I was graciously taken to see Spring Awakening: A New Musical by a good friend and I should write something about that. Or I could write about how improv practice has been going. Or the fact that I had a another nice contact from a long lost good friend through MySpace. One of my favorite people so that is good. I also keep meaning to write a massive "Why Second Life Is the Future... for Good or Ill" post. And then there is my long delayed Gears of War review. Or a "When does a practice group become a real group and who gets to decide who gets to stay." Or "Podcasting: Harder Than It Seems."

But time is short and I am a busy busy boy. Laundry! On to laundry!

So much stuff to do!

I had a great rehearsal of something new. It was just–

Wait. Let me start again. There is just so much stuff going on right now, that I don't even know how much I'm going to be able to post. Let's go over all of the things you can find me at in the coming days.

Today (Tuesday, Dec. 5th): I shall be hitting Harold Night at UCB. Some fine teams shall be one stage. At 8pm you have T.R.U.C.K.S. and then Beverly Hills. Personally, I think Beverly Hills has the highest "sexy" quotiant of any other team right now. They just drip sexy. Then there is Creep and 1985. Creep has Angeliki George, Ryan Karel and Silvija Ozols who are all amogst my current favorites. Yes, Silvija is my current improv crush.

On Wednesday, I shall be going to Barcade for the Child's Play Fünde Razor. I will be the one losing at Guitar Hero. If that isn't your cup of tea, you should head to UCB at 11pm for a free show of some awesome sketch comedy... Hot Sauce Sells Out. Michael Showalter will there.

Thursday I am going to... you know, I don't know what I am going to. It is a mystery secret plan. I have not been told the details. I am to wear buiness casual.

Then there are meetings, gatherings, plans, and other such that who are not privy to.

But lets flash forward to Friday, Dec. 15th. You want to know where you want to be at midnight? (When I say midnight of Dec. 15th, I mean Friday, Dec. 15th, 11:59pm, just to be clear.) You will want to be at UCB again. Liquid Courage. You will want to see me perform a sketch of my writing. Me and my friend Vin performing. J Bob directing. It is some darn funny stuff. And it is free! Comedy! Drama! Violence! Me with a bad british accent!

Good good times.

And the next day is SantaCon. Wonderfully tasty SantaCon.

105,365

I'll be going to Julep to celebrate. I will NOT be drinking a lot. But I will have one mint julep and sip it like a southern gentleman.

NaNoWriMo - the hard slog, great rewards

Well, I crossed the big 100,000 word line early this morning.

crazy Man, it has been hard. Not hard as in hard to get out the words. I've had little problem actually writing this time. But it wasn't the same magical joy as last year. Maybe I am already a bit jaded. But I think it is actually that the structure was so less set this time... and became a muddled mess. My transitions are all over the place. At times I do crazy event slipping into event. At times I do huge time jumps. I'll have 5,000 words covering 5 minutes of scene, followed by 500 words in which the main character has three jobs, dates and breaks up with a woman and witness a murder.

It is going to be an editing nightmare. It will probably end up being an entire rewrite. That is a bit disheartening. But there is a lot of good stuff scattered through out all of the pages. And I have finally put all of the disparate files together.

I now have 36 or so hours to wrap it up. I am very close... and not. This book needs a long ass prologue. It wouldn't if it were better written. Ah, well. No work today, so it is all writing and then a movie.

Lethem on Dick

(wow, that title is horrible!)

Considering that this blog takes its name from a Philip K. Dick novel, I can't let one pass on.

Author Jonathan Lethem has piece in The Virgina Quarterly Review that is an imagining of P. K. Dick's life shortly after publication of his first novel. Here's a taste of the piece, Phil in the Marketplace.

The one clerk stoops and picks up the book. “Hey, wait one cotton-picking minute. It’s got your name on it.”

“Yeah, I had that published, I got that published.” As if at his command, as if he’d flung the manuscript to New York with the same cavalier abandon as he’d flung the finished product on the music shop’s floor: Hey you! Publish this.

“Flame Disc, by Philip K. Dick. Geez! What’s it about?”

What’s it about? It’s about 235 pages, Ted. It’s about I wrote six novels about guys like you and me nobody wants to read, Ted. It’s about what it feels like to dwell in one place and yet feel you should dwell in another. It’s about there are no mere happy clerks. It’s about the bright paper of its cover and the bright paper of my shelves of complete runs of Astounding and Amazing, the way my dreams got turned into something shiny and put on a shelf, and now I’m one of them, one of those science fiction writers. It’s about my sister, only you can’t meet her because she’s dead.

“Just some pulp crap. I wrote it in two weeks.”

You want a glimpse into my world? Go read it.

(via Boing Boing)

The Book As Art

We went to the National Museum of Women in the Arts today. The they have an exhibition called The Book As Art: Twenty Years of Artists' Books. Very very cool. It was inspiring to see all of the ways books, storytelling and the written word can be expressed. It did leave me with a sense of wanting, as book exhibits usually miss out on one important factor: the sense of touch. Books are meant to be felt. Pages are meant to be turned. And in many of the art pieces, it is how the artist played with (or against) that very aspect of books. Ah, well. Not much to be done about that.

Anywhozits, if you are in Washington D.C. anytime before February 4th, check it out.

Mythbusters Slash

For those who don't know, slash is a special type of fan fiction that puts fictional or real people is homoerotic situations. (Maybe it is broader than that. I don't know.) As far as I know it originated, or was at least hit its sweet spot) with Kirk/Spock tales. I don't quite see the appeal but then again I don't quite get furries or plushies or squishies (are there squishies?) or whatever. Whatever floats your boat that doesn't hurt someone (unless that is what they want).

Anywhozits, there is a LiveJournal community dedicated to Mythbusters Slash. Yes, Mythbusters. Those guys on the Discovery Channel who put urban legends and such to the test. Now, I understand that there is a bit, um, gay about the show (I don't mean that in a bad way at all). I just never thought that there would be a community built around sexy stories about Adam and Jamie and their team.

From Kazohuhouou's tale "Role Play"

Jamie got into a batter’s stance, ready to swing for all his worth.
Adam gasps, his eyes flashing open as he wakes-realizing that it had all only been a fantasy after all…
The paddle drops.
“OH COME ON!” Jamie exclaimed, having lost his chance to spank Adam to kingdom come.

Um, enjoy?

(If anyone finds any Deadliest Catch Slash, please tell me.)

(via Table of Contents, Wired)

Video Games vs. Poloitics vs. Improv vs. The Novel

I realize that this last week has been all about video games. And the week before was all politics. And improv, for the most part, as as been getting a short shift. And the novel has been hardly mentioned at all. But it all makes sense.

Last week was perhaps the biggest week in video games ever. Do next-gen consoles were launched... two consoles with totally different takes on what folks want. And the launches went so differently (PS3 - riots, shootings, muggings, massive reselling on eBay, story after story of people getting ripped off on eBay; Wii - hugs and love and people dressing up as Link and Mario and Wiimote). I've been checking the up on the Next-Gen Console Wars 3 times a day. And I never even posted about the Halo 3 news.

Before that was of course a pivotal election. With much wackiness but a lot less contested than I expected. It was a lot more Wii than PS3.

And then improv has been over for a week. Well, class is. My lovely lovely group is still practicing on Sunday afternoons. And I have signed up for my Level 401 with Michael Delaney. I am excited and a bit scared... everyone seems to love him as a teacher but many have made comments about how it took them a whole other class to get them out of their heads afterwards.

And the novel... I am still plowing through it. I am really trying to get to some sort of end. It is still in a few files right now, so I am unclear on how many words I actually have. I've been focusing on getting a daily word count, but haven't been focusing on my total word count. We'll see what I end up with.

But the other reason I haven't been writing about writing is that this story is both less personal and more personal. Less personal because I am not writing about a character based so much on me and events that so closely mirror my life. But more personal because it comes most closely to my views on religion, God, suffering, morals. But it is harder to right about because it is less about story, less about discovering "joy," which was what last years novel was about. This is more about discovering... "the soul"? Not sure.

So it is still going, and going strong, so no worries.