From the Books: Make the Bread, Buy the Butter

I don't own this book yet. But I've had it checked out of the library a majority of the weeks it's been in the collection, which means that it's well past time for me to get off my ass and buy a copy, innit? Anyway, Jennifer Reese's Make the Bread, Buy the Butter (subtitled What You Should and Shouldn't Cook From Scratch) is a terrific cookbook. Not just a collection of recipes, it's a chronicle of one woman's quest to take more of a do-it-yourself (DIY) approach to her family's food preparation, and the discoveries she made along the way that there are some things that you certainly should make for yourself (either because it's easier, or cheaper, or just plain better, or all three), and that there are other things that you're just fine buying for yourself at the store.

I haven't done a whole lot of cooking out of the book yet (one new wrinkle is The Wife's adoption of a gluten-free diet, which has us going in other food directions currently), but there are a lot of good insights here on food and making it yourself and the fact that sometimes it's just fine to not do things from scratch. The book is full of frank observations, like this:

If bay leaf didn't exist, would anyone miss it? I've never tasted anything and thought, This stew is just crying out for bay leaf. But I keep buying and using it nonetheless.

And Reese's explorations are hard-core. This isn't just about making your own breads or spice mixes or your own peanut butter. She writes about keeping -- and killing -- her own chickens, and keeping goats. She writes about making her own hot dogs (her conclusion? Just buy 'em.). And she writes thusly about a dish that's wonderful when made at home, but may or may not be worth all the effort: fried chicken.

One rainy Sunday a few years ago, Isabel, Owen, and I decided to pass the afternoon by watching a DVD of The Fellowship of the Ring, that movie about hobbits and elves and Orcs that we'd been hearing about. One hundred and seventy-eight minutes later, during which we neither moved nor spoke, we looked at each other, eyes glazed. We walked straight to the car, drove to the video store, and rented The Two Towers and The Return of the King. It was getting on dusk when I pulled into the Kentucky Fried Chicken down the hill and bought dinner.

My kids were shocked. Happy, but shocked. What was going on with Mom? KFC? I wondered that myself. But we were hungry and the chicken was hot and we had five more hours of Viggo Mortensen to watch. Fifteen minutes after I pulled into the KFC, we were back on the sofa with the bucket on the coffee table, eating mediocre chicken and mashed potatoes and biscuits and watching The Two Towers. It was one of the happiest nights of my adult life and my children still get dreamy and nostalgic talking about it.

Not long ago, I cooked a grand fried chicken dinner out of Ad Hoc At Home by Thomas Keller. I bought the book based on rave reviews of Keller's chicken, which is brined and air-dried before it is dipped in multiple coatings and fried. The effort paid off; the recipe did not disappoint. TO go with that incredible chicken -- because you can't serve fried chicken without fixins -- I mashed potatoes and baked biscuits. There was a salad in there somewhere, too. Frying chicken is messy and nerve-racking because oil spatters and spits and stings your forearms and you have to do it at the last minute, which is also when you're mashing potatoes and pulling biscuits out of the oven and pouring glasses of water and calling to everyone that dinner is ready. Leave it in the pan too long, and the chicken is ruined; take it out too soon and it's a health hazard. You really have to be up for the logistical challenge.

And fried chicken comes with baggage: You expect fried chicken to be so good that people lick their fingers. Literally. You expect people to linger at the table and loosen their belts, lean back in their chairs, tell stories, pull out a bottle of corn likker. You expect people to somehow recognize that this isn't a meal like all other meals.

Sometimes all of that will happen.

Sometimes it will not.

By the time we sat down, I was bleak with exhaustion, everyone was ravenous, and we put away that chicken in about ten minutes flat. The coating formed a crispy sheath around meat that, thanks to brining, was juicy and flavorful through to the bone. The potatoes were a celestial cloud of starch and butter; the biscuits, perfection. But I don't remember a thing anyone said; I don't remember anyone lingering at the table or thanking me or recognizing that the meal was special or iconic or hanging around afterward to drink corn likker. One of these days I will forget the evening ever happened. I suspect Mark and the children already have. But that night we ate KFC on the sofa and watched The Two Towers? That, we will never forget.

Sometimes I have to remind myself that the symbols of wholesome domestic happiness -- hot biscuits, a platter of home-fried free-range chicken, a family sitting around a table -- are not domestic happiness. The family sitting in front of the TV with the bucket may be experiencing more joy and grace and love. Or, of course, they may not be.

Should you make your own fried chicken or buy KFC? Reese says there's no easy answer to that, and I tend to agree. I've made my own fried chicken, and had a good time doing it. And you can probably tell by my self-photos that I've had my share of KFC.

I need to buy this book...and even after I do, I'll probably keep checking it out periodically, just to keep its circulation numbers up.

Answers the Seventh!

And we keep on plugging away!

First of all, I need to revise and extend my remarks from the other day, regarding what fictional planet I would like to live upon. I don't think I gave the question enough thought at the time, so here are some additions:

The Mars of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy (note to self: you're way overdue for a re-read) strikes me as an amazing place that I would love to see, especially if I, like the long-lived characters of his books, get to see Mars all the way from dead red planet to verdant, ocean-covered blue world. I'd love to see that. I saw these photos om Tumblr the other day, comprising what Mars might look like were it completely terraformed:

Wow.

I'm not sure about any one specific planet, but the Commonwealth of Peter F. Hamilton's Commonwealth novels (one duology and a later trilogy) is an amazing place. Hamilton takes the idea of wormholes between star systems and does something amazing with them: he puts them right on the planet surfaces, so that one can travel from one world to another by train.

I also very much would love to live in Iain M. Banks's Culture setting. I can't remember any specific planets (I've only read two of the books thus far), but I find the idea of a post-scarcity world deeply interesting.

Ultimately, though, I think I'd be that strange soul who doesn't really live on any one world. As long as it had room for my books, I think I'd want to live on...a ship. Yup, a ship. A good ship. With a good crew. You can't take the sky from me!

OK, and now, back to new questions that I haven't answered yet. These few will be short answers, just because I don't have long answers to offer on them.

Roger continues his queries as follows:

You get to vote for the Baseball Hall of Fame. How do you deal with the steroid era players?

You get to vote in the Football Hall of Fame. Do you pick a punter? If so, who?

For any Hall of Fame, who has been woefully ignored?

I'll package those all together.

First, the steroid players. I let them in, if their achievements seem to really merit inclusion. McGwire? Bonds? Yes. Sosa? Palmeiro? Ehhhh...maybe not. Maybe those guys wait.

The problem is that Major League Baseball had no real policy for how to deal with steroids in that era. In the absence of a specific policy dealing with banned substances, I just don't see a compelling reason that a bunch of sportswriters should get to appoint themselves Keepers Of Baseball Morality. (And besides, I've grown quite tired of sportswriters in general. I love good sports writing, as much as I love all good writing, but sportswriters in this country have, in general, become an entire class of sanctimonious asses who get offended if you question their brilliant insights. The idea of some of these jerks standing up as moral bulwarks against the horror of a guy who took drugs to increase his home run production? Who cares?

To me, if we're going to decide that those players are all ineligible for the Hall, then we also have to basically vacate the results and standings of every season played during the steroid era. Otherwise, it's just selective morality.

Punters in the Football Hall of Fame? Absolutely. And special teams players, too. Those guys are football players, they contribute to their teams' successes and failures, and they should he in the Hall, if they're good enough.

That said, who has been ignored? The Bills' Andre Reed and Steve Tasker leap to mind. Every year they're eligible and don't get in, and inevitably I hear a very deeply silly argument about "How can a team that lost the Super Bowl have that many players in the Hall?" It's the Hall of Fame, not the Hall of Super Bowl Winners, or the Hall of Stats. Tons of guys should be in who never even got to the Super Bowl.

And for my money, if there's any debate as to whether Kurt Warner is a Hall of Famer, it should end the second he's eligible. That guy goes in, or the Hall is a joke.

Finally Roger asks:

Did you watch the Super Bowl? If so, did the refs blow the (non-)holding call at the end of the game?

I watched all of the first half and a good chunk of the second half, after the blackout ended. We attended a Super Bowl party at The Wife's boss's house, and he lives...out there. Way out there. You go to the Boonies, take a left, drive past East Bumf***, and then another eight miles and you're there. We left a little after the blackout began, and got home for most of the fourth quarter. Had the blackout not happened, we would have missed almost all the second half. (Interestingly, on the way home, I got to drive through my first ever sobriety checkpoint! Luckily, I hadn't been drinking at all that night.)

As for the play in question, I was only partly paying attention at that point. I've heard arguments both ways on that non-call, and I honestly am not sure. The refs blew quite a few calls in that game, but then, Jim Harbaugh's play-calling in that situation was awful. I don't know what possessed him to get first-and-goal that late in the game, when his running game had been clicking all night and when the Ravens' defense was tired, and then throw four times. And frankly, Harbaugh's post-game demeanor was pretty douchey. So even if it was an egregiously missed call, I personally am not terribly offended. Karma, and all that.

We're getting closer to being finished! Great questions this time around...the gauntlet is thrown down for August!

Lake Effect!

No, not the snow. Ice cream.


For the past couple of years I've been hearing about a local outfit that makes artisanal ice cream, called Lake Effect Ice Cream, after our region's most notable climate feature. Problem is, by 'local', I mean within thirty miles of Buffalo, and in the opposite direction from Casa Jaquandor. Lake Effect Ice Cream is located in Lockport, NY, which is quite a road trip from lovely Orchard Park. In other words, we weren't road-tripping just for ice cream. (What else is there in Lockport, anyway? I'm genuinely curious. If there's a good reason to road-trip, I'm game.)

But now, the Lake Effect folks have grown big enough to be able to start putting their wares in local stores, one of which actually is about fifteen minutes away from Casa Jaquandor. So off we went today to pick some up.

And...wow.

I had the Salty Caramel; The Wife had the Loganberry. I suppose Salty Caramel is self-explanatory, but for anyone not from Western New York, "Loganberry" probably needs some explanation. Loganberries are a kind of hybrid berry, between blackberries and red raspberries. They are also a very popular flavor of fruit beverage in these parts, not unlike fruit punch. There are few things more satisfying on a hot summer evening than a glass of loganberry drink accompanying a hot dog and fries. Some places have loganberry milkshakes, and now, Lake Effect makes a Loganberry ice cream.

The Salty Caramel is very, very good. The Loganberry is amazing.

We'll be trying more flavors, obviously. I saw one called "The Aud", which claims to use as a base "Labatt Blue ice cream". Ice cream, flavored like the area's favorite lager beer? Really? Can that be possible?

I will find out, and report!

Sentential Links

Time for the weekly links.

:: I am now... (this is the super-cool part)... a historian. I get to record history. For a living. (Ayup, that's pretty cool. I'm trying to make up history for a living! Not there yet, though.)

:: When I turned 50, I could think, “Maybe I still have another half a lifetime left.” After all, the number of centenarians in the United States has been growing. Willard Scott, with whom I share a birthday, BTW, still announces the birthdays of those over 100 on NBC-TV’s TODAY show, as far as I know.

Now that I am 60, though, I have to acknowledge that I’m not going to live another 60 years, even if I move to Azerbaijan and start eating yogurt soup. (And if I’m wrong, which one of you is going to write to correct me?) (I will. When Roger turns 120, I'll be a sprightly 101.)

:: Earlier today,we saw that Batman was ready to retire, psychological paralyzed by an inferiority complex triggered when he took one measly bullet during a mission.

Superman's "brilliant" plan--set up a fake crime wave in Kandor, so Batman could solve it and get all better.

Problem--the plan misfired (duh), the menace was real, but Batman found out it was a plan and is now all "I hate you!" (I seem to recall that exact plot from episodes of The Brady Bunch, Three's Company, and Eight is Enough.)

:: I will not buy anything I see in a pop-up ad. They are the most annoying form of advertising ever devised. I know the big problem with the internet is that no one has figured out yet how to make a substantial profit out of it. That certainly is my problem. Banner ads are only slightly effective. And newspapers and other sites have found it’s difficult to charge people for their services when other outlets will provide it for free. Why go to reputable newspapers when there are people like me in their underwear banging out blogs? (You know, this seems as good a time as any to get this out in the open: I have never, and will never, bang out material for this blog whilst in my underwear. Make fun of my overalls if you wish, but I am not blogging in my underwear. That is my pledge to you, dear Readers!)

:: Burroughs was pretty much done with Tarzan in 1914. He was feuding with his editor at All-Story over reprint rights and didn't have a lot of motivation to continue the series. But when a new editor took over the magazine and promised to work with Burroughs on his complaints, Burroughs agreed. He even accepted the new editor's idea of making the next story about Tarzan's son, Jack, running away from London to Africa with an ape. It would be the last time Burroughs set part of a Tarzan story in England. (Michael May is digging into the literary past of Tarzan. Check it out!)

:: Good morning, America! Are you feeling a little … discombobulated? Like you didn’t get enough sleep? That’s because you’re under the boot heel of the United Nations and their one-world “Daylight Savings Time” plot.

More next week!

Sparkly!

Day 10: Something that sparkles. #MarchChallenge #tmlphotoaday, originally uploaded by Jaquandor.

I'm doing a 'photo a day' challenge over on Instagram, and today's topic was 'Something That Sparkles'. So I took this photo of my two main pieces of jewelry: my wedding ring, and my star sapphire ring. I'm posting it here just because I really like the way the photo turned out.

My wedding ring is an Irish wedding band. The Wife has an Irish band too, although hers is styled slightly differently. We got each ring set with each other's birthstone, so those amethysts are her birthstone. Her ring has mine (sapphire).

The star sapphire ring was a Christmas gift from The Girlfriend (now The Wife) in 1996, which was the last Christmas for us as a dating couple, as we were married five months later in May 1997. I've always loved that ring.

Due to the nature of my day job, I never wear my rings to work. I'm afraid that some of the things I do might damage them. I keep on the lookout for a cheap 'alternate' ring to wear to work, but I never see any that I like all that much.

Anyway, that's my 'bling', as it were. And now that I have used the word 'bling' on my blog, the earth is that much closer to the Apocalypse!

Sunday Burst of Weird and Awesome

Oddities and Awesome abound!

:: Oh Japan, never, ever change!

As LiveDoor News pointed out this week, a new trend is spreading among Japanese schoolgirls. It's called "cream puff face" ("ganmen shuukuriimu" or 顔面シュークリーム). And, you guessed it, it involves smushing a cream puff in someone's face.

This isn't exactly a new trend, as it's possible to find examples of cream puff faces as early as 2007 and 2008. And, yes, this is a spin on the old fashioned pie in the face gag. But in Japan, the trend really started to take off with schoolgirls in 2011. The Japanese mainstream is just catching on now.

Huh....

(Well, stop the whaling. Other than that, never change!)

:: Check out these detailed floor plans of teevee households. I never realized that the Simpsons have two living rooms!

:: Want to make your own 'Keep Calm and Carry On' posters? Of course you do!




More next week!!!

Planting my Freak Flag in the soil of the Moon!

While I was on my break at work yesterday, I thought I'd take a quick look at the query letter than I'd been using for Princesses In SPACE!!! (not the actual title). Now, this letter has only gone out to about half a dozen agents thus far...which is a good thing, because when I read it, I suddenly had a massive case of The Writerly Panics. As in, OMG I can't do this am I crazy I must be nuts this query is awful no agent in their right mind would ever ever EVER want to read my book after looking at this train wreck of a letter GAHHHH!!!!

When I have a crisis of confidence, folks, I don't do it halfway. I turn into a quivering mass of protoplasm. That's what I do. And then I turn to Twitter and Facebook, where I posted the following:

If second-guessing myself was an Olympic sport, I'd be Bruce Frakking Jenner. #WhyInGodsNameDoIHaveToWantToBeAWriter

So I set about fixing the letter, and had some decent notions about it when the replies started pouring in. Here's a sampling of the resulting thread (edited a bit for clarity):

SCOTT: Because you're good at it and you like doing it?

[That one really gets to the heart of it, doesn't it?]

JASON: Fretting about your query letter?

ME: All of it. Every time I read the thing I get irritated with it.

ME AGAIN: The query letter is EVERYTHING. If I don't get that right, it doesn't matter at all how good the manuscript is, because nobody will read it.

JASON: True, but is there really a problem with it, or are you just psyching yourself out?

[The answer, of course, was 'both'. Sometimes when confronted by a problem, especially if it's a problem of my own making, I have to lose my shit first before I get down to the work of fixing it. Not my favorite part of my personal makeup, and I've made decent strides against it, but there are times when that part of me rears its ugly head.]

ME: I'm confident of my ability to tell a story. I have zero confidence in my ability to sell one. And the query letter is literally a sales letter. It's marketing, which is not a strength of mine in any way.

[This is true. I know that I wrote a good book, and tell me I didn't, I'll just tell you what to go do with yourself. Tell me I wrote a crappy query letter, though, and I'll fall to pieces.]

KERRY: If you were Bruce Frakking Jenner, you'd also be involved with all those Kardashians, so count your blessings, man.

[I had no idea that Jenner had fallen in with that particular clan. Sucks to be him...but yay me, for not knowing anything about it!]

ME: Well, if an agent or two at least requests the full manuscript, then I guess I'm OK. If not, then...there's that. I really hate this part of the process...writing a query letter and writing a novel are related skills only in that both involve a form of writing. But I keep thinking, just because there is some overlap between the tools a mechanic uses and those a carpenter uses, doesn't mean I want the guy who fixes my car to build me a house.

ME: All that said, I think I've got the letter about as good as I'm going to get it. It better be, because it's going out to more agents later!

[Here I'm trying to dial back the panic a bit. Not very successfully, but my cooler head is at least suiting for a fight against Inner Panic Guy.]

BETH: Also- bad plastic surgery would have been involved.

[I have no idea what this means, in all honesty. Hold on a second while I Google it...

(cue theme from The Dating Game as I Google "Bruce Jenner plastic surgery")

Oh. Oh no...no no no. AGGHHH! Moving on....]

JASON: I wonder if perhaps there's anyone you could show it to for some feedback or pointers? (I'm not volunteering -- although I'd be happy to give you my thoughts, for whatever they're worth -- because I'm not so good at the "selling myself" concept either. But if you're really that nervous about it, maybe someone could help...)

[Sage advice, that....]

ME: I've read a lot of online resources for query letters, so I have a decent of idea of what to do. Of course, there also tends to be a TON of contradictory advice. I see some agents saying "Do this!" and others saying "Don't do this!", when "this!" is the exact same thing. I've seen "Use conversational, marketing language!", and I've seen "Write the query in the same tone as the novel itself!" It's mostly a crapshoot...whatever works is what works.

[I should have chosen my words more carefully here, because it's not totally a crapshoot. There are a lot of good guidelines to be found as to how to write a query letter than won't be tossed in the trash on sight. The problem is in going from "The agent won't throw it out" to "The agent will be intrigued enough to request the manuscript". That's where the extra advice can be problematic and contradictory, given that agents are people, and therefore subject to preferences and tastes. And now someone new chimed in, and this particular person's entry into the thread couldn't have been more timely....]

SHEILA O'MALLEY: Keep it simple. Keep it short. And then cast a wide wide net. You can't please everyone. So please yourself - and then throw that sh** at EVERYONE - up your odds, basically, that someone out there will be the one to read it and think, "Huh. Want to hear more." But you can second-guess yourself to death. Just remember: you cannot please everyone. it's the same thing with getting actor headshots. The advice you get is overwhelming. You show people the contact sheet. Everyone tells you to pick a different shot, and give you a thesis paper as to why. In the end, you have to pick the one you can live with - that you think represents you best. Anyway: that's just more UNASKED FOR ADVICE. sorry!! and BEST OF LUCK!

JASON: I see your frustration... I agree with Sheila, though... you can't please everyone, and you can make yourself crazy with the second-guessing. Trust me, I'm an expert on that. Deep breath, do the best you can, and have a nice rum beverage after you get back from the post office.

SHEILA: Oh, and one last piece of unasked-for advice: show it to a couple of targeted people who understand your work, but also understand the business - other writer friends, if you have them. Just to get another eye on it.

KERRY: Anyone know how I can back out of a thread? I thought this was about Bruce Jenner.

SHEILA: hahahaha

[Somehow I think that Sheila and Kerry would get along very, very well.]

ME: Sheila, seems to me that when I lose my shit spectacularly on FB, I am tacitly asking for advice. So thank you and keep it coming, even if it's to slap me upside the head and say, 'Snap out of it!'

SHEILA: All righty then! Keep it short - a couple of snappy paragraphs (edit out any self-deprecating language - you can be humble "thank you so much for your time" without being "I am so not worthy" about it). Be yourself. It's your only shot, really. Because, to get all new Age-y, you're the only you there is. Some people may be like, "Ew. Can't stand this guy." Okay,then - NEXT. Because the next person may be like, "Wow, I'm intrigued." so keep the second-guessing to a minimum. and keep it short. did I mention keep it short??

ME: It's short -- only one page, 12pt, and the focus is completely on the book. I tried to write what I wish the back cover would say (other than 'JK Rowling thinks this is the best book EVER!!!' ). I say nothing about myself, other than my contact info. I have no publishing credits at all, so it seems to me the book has to do the heavy lifting. I feel better about the current draft of the letter, though! (I don't know about being myself, though...I'm not sure a lot of the weird shit on my blog would help! I can see an agent saying, 'Interesting book premise...but what's with the overalls and the obsession with STAR WARS and the pie throwing and the man-crush on Nathan Fillion?' Heh!)

SHEILA: But see that's the whole thing: some agent is gonna be like, "OMG I love overalls, and I love Star Wars too, and I love Buffalo, NY, and WHO IS THIS GUY?? HE IS MY SOULMATE." Be articulate, don't be an ass, but let your Freak Flag fly. Because people respond to those who are confident about themselves. sorry, Elvis dovetail: he wore bright pink suits in high school before he was famous. He was being himself. He looked like a lunatic compared to his peers. But that was what he wanted to do, and he did it, and 2 years later, every boy wanted to wear pink pants because Elvis was wearing them. I say don't worry about seeming "too weird". as long as you are articulate, polite, and don't waste their time.

ME: Oh, I don't worry about seeming too weird -- I just don't know how to fly my Freak Flag (and there's a phrase that is going into my personal lexicon, and I mean, RIGHT NOW) in the context of a query letter. I really don't want to call any attention whatsoever to my lack of publishing credits, but should I mention my eleven years of blogging? I put all the personal stuff way down at the bottom of the letter, on the thesis that the story of the book has to be the major focus. I want to avoid stuff like "It's been my lifelong dream to write and publish a novel!", because all the agents are unanimous, so far as I can see, that you shouldnt' do that...and frankly, it's pretty obvious why. Should it just be a "For more about me, please check out my personal blog at [url]?"

ME: (to KERRY) Sorry, I missed that comment. You go right ahead and Jenner it up! (And I just used 'Jenner' as a verb. Oy....)

SHEILA: Just be confident. Don't be self-deprecating. This is my first novel. End-stop. I write about diverse topics on my personal site (link included) and have been doing so for years. End-stop. Or whatever. Most writers have some kind of home-base where they put personal stuff, so it will be helpful to any agent to check you out - especially if you have no other published work. I wouldn't say "I've been blogging for 11 years." Just mention the existence of your site, and that you cover a wide array of topics (list a few - it will make you seem interesting, quirky, and will be part of your fluttering Freak Flag). And be totally unembarrassed about your lack of publishing experience. You can FEEL embarrassed on the inside, but don't let it seep into your language. No shame in not being published. The only shame is in not being published, wanting to be published, and not having the balls to do what you are currently now doing - trying like hell to get published. I just went through all of this with my play, Kelly...So, as you know, everything depends on the quality of the thing you have written. and you're right on: avoid any language that seems "hopeful" or "dreamy" - "I dream of this book being turned into a mini-series" "I hope you like the book" "I have wanted to be a writer since I was a wee lad." etc. None of that. You already ARE a writer. You just haven't had anything published yet.

KERRY: Maybe consider this: "Finding the Champion Within: A Step-by-Step Plan for Reaching Your Full Potential." By.... Bruce Frakking Jenner.

[Kerry seems oddly fixated on Bruce Jenner.]

ME: (to SHEILA) I already didn't have any self-deprecating language in there, so I'm good! I do think I need to rework my closing, which is the short bit where I talk about me. I think that my APPROACH is on the right track; I just worry a lot about the specific wording. I'm confident as hell about the book itself, though, which helps. I *know* I wrote something good. So when I get home, it's time to power up the laptop and get this thing honed!

And thank you for taking time out of your day for all this comment. It's been a huge help, and not just from the "Snap out of it!" standpoint, either. I'm at a point where specific advice helps most! (I hope it won't bother you that in the inevitable movie to be made from my book, there's no obvious part for Dean Stockwell.)

At least the bad news on that last score isn't limited to Sheila and her favorite actor. There's no real part for Nathan Fillion, either. But Princesses II: Electric Boogaloo is in the offing....

As for the concept of the Freak Flag, I do like that a lot. Part of what I've been trying to do here in recent weeks, what with eliminating my snarkiness and trying to warmly embrace my weirdness, is to do just that: planting my Freak Flag. I wonder what that flag would look like?

Likely something like that.

And a very public thanks to everyone who helped on that thread!

Answers, the sixth!

As usual, I'm taking forever to get this done...but soldier on, we shall! Two questions up first from an anonymity-preferring soul, on a matter near and dear to my heart:

Since you seem to enjoy a pie in the face, did you do the wedding-cake-smashing thing when you got married?

No, we did not. And in all honesty, I'm glad, because -- and this may come as a surprise -- I hate that. I have never found it enjoyable to watch; it always strikes me as a very out-of-place and inappropriate chunk of mean-spiritedness shoehorned into a ceremony that is supposed to be a celebration of love and kindness. I had zero desire to do that, and The Wife agreed with me. At least, I assume she did. I don't even recall bringing it up for discussion.

(Now, I don't judge other couples who do this, and I've seen it at a bunch of weddings I've attended. I don't think it implies anything for the marriage, one way or the other, and if it's your wedding and you really think the cake-smashing thing is what you want to do, then by all means, have at it. I just won't be one of the ones laughing.)

Do you find it funny when protesters hit politicians with pies?

Again, this may be a surprise, but no, not really. The fact is, when you get hit with a pie, you're getting hit with something. If you don't know it's coming, then it seems to me it very well could be taken as assault. Plus the fact that the human response to having something shoved toward their face is to flinch, turn away, duck, all that. It's certainly not to just stand there, close your eyes, and take it. When that happens in movies or teevee shows, it's because it's in the script.

So basically, I don't think a pie should ever be dispatched toward the face of someone who isn't expecting it and likely doesn't want it. (I think both of those questions may have come up in a previous AskMeAnything, but I didn't go back and check. I treat each question as new, anyway.)

Chris asked several questions, one of which is:

Which imaginary planet would you most like to live on?

Oooooh! Tough one. Very tough one, actually. Maybe one of those Star Trek desert planets? The ones that all look like Vazquez Rocks? Nah, probably not. I wouldn't want to live on Coruscant, either. Or Trantor, or any of the other city-planets. Those might be cool places to visit, but to live there? Knowing that all you'll ever see are buildings? Nah.

We only saw it very briefly, but I very much like the look of Alderaan. Well, you know, before the Imperial genocide of its people. Soaring cities in high mountain ranges? Sign me up!

But in reality...and I hate to say this, because none of you (aside from those who beat-read the book) know about it yet, but the main planet of Princesses In SPACE!!! (not the actual title) strikes me as a nice place. And it's got lots of mysteries, the cool part of that being that I get to be the first one to see how they turn out!

More answers to come.

Film Quote Friday: 2010 (The Year We Make Contact)

2010 is a fairly odd film, all things considered. It harks back to when Hollywood's mania for sequels was just starting to get underway, and when the idea of reboots was still way off. And the idea of making sequels to films that were nearly twenty years old? And to films that are considered classics? Yup, it's strange that this project ever got off the ground, even with a pretty decent Arthur C. Clarke novel to go by. But off the ground 2010 got, providing some answers for the extremely enigmatic 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Some would claim that the earlier film should have been left well enough alone, and its questions left to be explored by the viewer. I agree, to a point...but the problem is, as a movie in itself, 2010 really isn't bad at all. It's nowhere near the towering masterpiece that 2001 is, and its feel is so different that it doesn't even feel like a sequel to the earlier movie. It feels like a sequel to a different version of the earlier movie.

Anyway, 2010 holds up well in some ways, not so well in others. As seems typically the case with movies predicting near futures, they're mostly wrong, and what they're really wrong about stands out like a sore thumb now. In the movie, the Soviet Union still exists, and during the film's events, the USA and the Soviets come to the brink of nuclear war. This adds nice tension to the nature of the film's space mission (a joint American-Soviet flight), but it's hard to take it seriously now. But really, how unthinkable was it in 1985 that the Cold War didn't even have an entire decade left to it?

And then there's a little scene where Heywood Floyd (Roy Scheider) and Walter Curnow (John Lithgow) are talking about how they miss Earth, and they get onto a brief bit about the merits of the hot dogs at various ballparks. Curnow opines that the Astrodome makes good hot dogs. Little did they know that the Astrodome's days as a functioning ballpark wouldn't reach 2010, either! But that's all minor stuff. The film's character interactions are nicely done, the cast is terrific (Helen Mirren pushes her Russian accent just to the brink of being too thick to take seriously, but it works), and the visual effects are still outstanding, given the time period. 2010 is an odd film, indeed: it probably shouldn't even exist, but it does, and on its own, it's really not a bad little SF thriller.

Oh, yeah -- this is "Film Quote Friday", so I have to quote the movie. Fair enough. I've done long quotes from movies before, so this time I'll use a very short one. The film indicates that these were the last words received on Earth via transmission from astronaut David Bowman before his disappearance from the Discovery. This line is never heard in the original film of 2001, however -- but it is in Arthur C. Clarke's original novel of 2001: A Space Odyssey. See what I mean? Strange. The quote? Well, the 2001 novel has David Bowman leave the Discovery in a pod and approach the enormous monolith that is hanging in Jovian orbit. This monolith opens up, and Bowman sends home his last report before going inside:

My God! It's full of stars!

Roger Roger!

It's Roger's birthday! Here are a few little somethings in his honor.
















Happy birthday to a right fine fellow. Huzzah!

Fixing the Prequels: Revenge of the Sith (part six)

previously:

five
four
three
two
one

OK, time to dive straight back in. Huzzah!!!

When last we left off, the various forces in Anakin Skywalker's life were starting to use him as a pawn in their own various games. This was starting to have the effects we might expect, as both sides are using Anakin against the other – but Palpatine is doing it more constructively and in a way that is more likely to further his own goals. What always interests me is that of all the adult figures in Anakin's life after Qui Gon Jinn's death, the one who is most consistently encouraging of Anakin is Palpatine. He's done an awful lot of heavy lifting to set Anakin up for his eventual fall.

And that brings me to an interesting speculative question: has Palpatine been planning Anakin's seduction for twenty years?

I'm honestly not sure. On the one hand, Palpatine has shown enormous flexibility in his plans. He didn't get bogged down when the Jedi and Queen Amidala defeated whatever his scheme for the Naboo blockade was – which seems to imply that he didn't really care about that, one way or the other. The entire goal there was to simply get the game board arranged in such a way as to leave him in as powerful a position as possible. Mission accomplished, obviously. His plans seem so reactive, though: could he really predict Darth Maul's defeat? Or Count Dooku's? Likely not...but maybe so. Maybe he has been on the lookout himself, for the most powerful possible Jedi to turn. Maybe he set those earlier apprentices as ones that were doomed to defeat, and maybe he always had a backup plan ready to go for when the next one died. Palpatine has clearly been playing the long game.

And that brings us to the next scene in the film, which is one of the key scenes in the entire Star Wars saga. In this scene, Palpatine smoothly and even gracefully decides to dial it up with respect to his attempts to ingratiate himself with Anakin. He already knows that Anakin sees him as a father figure, because Palpatine has been his greatest source of consistent encouragement. Obi Wan is a teacher figure, not a father figure, and anyway, they are too close in age for Anakin to really take him completely seriously as an authority. As for the rest of the Jedi, they have made crystal clear that they've never really trusted Anakin, even before Mace Windu comes right out and admits it (albeit privately). Palpatine knows that Anakin is predisposed to hear him out, so now he decides to appeal to Anakin's personal pressure points.

So here's where Anakin joins Palpatine at the Coruscant Opera House (red text indicates material not in the final film):

INT. CORUSCANT-GALAXIES OPERA HOUSE-NIGHT

ANAKIN lands his speeder and exits.
ANAKIN runs up the stairs at the Galaxies Opera House.
ANAKIN runs through the hallway and enters Palpatine's box, where the CHANCELLOR is sitting with Mas Amedda and Sly-Moore, watching the Man Calamari Ballet doing "Squid Lake."

ANAKIN: You wanted to see me, Chancellor.

PALPATINE: Yes, Anakin! Come closer. I have good news. Our Clone Intelligence Units have discovered the location of General Grievous. He is hiding in the Utapau system.

ANAKIN: At last, we'll be able to capture that monster and end this war.

PALPATINE: I would worry about the collective wisdom of the Council if they didn't select you for this assignment. You are the best choice by far … but, they can't always be trusted to do the right thing.

ANAKIN: They try.

PALPATINE: Sit down, (to his aides) Leave us.

ANAKIN sits next to PALPATINE. The Chancellor leans over to him.

PALPATINE: (continuing) Anakin, you know I'm not able to rely on the Jedi Council. If they haven't included you in their plot, they soon will.

ANAKIN: I'm not sure I understand.

PALPATINE: You must sense what I have come to suspect . . . the Jedi Council want control of the Republic . . . they're planning to betray me.

ANAKIN: I don't think . . .

PALPATINE: Anakin, search your feelings. You know, don't you?

ANAKIN: I know they don't trust you . . .

PALPATINE: Or the Senate . . . or the Republic . . . or democracy for that matter.

ANAKIN: I have to admit my trust in them has been shaken.

PALPATINE: Why? They asked you to do something that made you feel dishonest, didn't they?

ANAKIN doesn't say anything. He simply looks down.

PALPATINE: (continuing) They asked you to spy on me, didn't they?

ANAKIN: I don't know ... I don't know what to say.

PALPATINE: Remember back to your early teachings. Anakin. "All those who gain power are afraid to lose it." Even the Jedi.

ANAKIN: The Jedi use their power for good.

PALPATINE: Good is a point of view, Anakin. And the Jedi point of view is not the only valid one. The Dark Lords of the Sith believe in security and justice also, yet they are considered by the Jedi to be. . .

ANAKIN: . . . evil.

PALPATINE: . . . from a Jedi's point of view. The Sith and the Jedi are similar in almost every way, including their quest for greater power. The difference between the two is the Sith are not afraid of the dark side of the Force. That is why they are more powerful.

ANAKIN: The Sith rely on their passion for their strength. They think inward, only about themselves.

PALPATINE: And the Jedi don't?

ANAKIN: The Jedi are selfless . . . they only care about others.

PALPATINE smiles.

PALPATINE: Or so you've been trained to believe. Why is it, then, that they have asked you to do something you feel is wrong?

ANAKIN: I'm not sure it's wrong.

PALPATINE: Have they asked you to betray the Jedi code? The Constitution? A friendship? Your own values? Think. Consider their motives. Keep your mind clear of assumptions. The fear of losing power is a weakness of both the Jedi and the Sith.

ANAKIN is deep in thought.

PALPATINE: (continuing) Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Plagueis "the wise"?

ANAKIN: No.

PALPATINE: I thought not. It's not a story the Jedi would tell you. It's a Sith legend. Darth Plagueis was a Dark Lord of the Sith, so powerful and so wise he could use the Force to influence the midi-chlorians to create life ... He had such a knowledge of the dark side that he could even keep the ones he cared about from dying.

ANAKIN: He could actually save people from death?

PALPATINE: The dark side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural.

ANAKIN: What happened to him?

PALPATINE: He became so powerful . . . the only thing he was afraid of was losing his power, which eventually, of course, he did. Unfortunately, he taught his apprentice everything he knew, then his apprentice killed him in his sleep. (smiles) Plagueis never saw it coming. It's ironic he could save others from death, but not himself.

ANAKIN: Is it possible to learn this power?

PALPATINE: Not from a Jedi.

There is a lot to unpack here. But first, just in terms of a movie scene, it's fantastic. The effects are there in the strange opera/ballet being performed in front of them, but for the most part, the scene is just two actors sitting and talking. Ian McDiarmid just nails it here, making Palpatine sound so fatherly, so wise, so warm – and yet, the whole time he is in complete control. Notice how subtly he is able to appeal to Anakin's single greatest fear, without even mentioning it or saying something like "I know that you are afraid of losing Padme". He just slides into this story about Darth Plagueis, casually dropping the bit about defeating death into the mix as if it's never occurred to him that Anakin might have a vested interest in that bit.

And then there's the intimation that Plagueis was killed by his apprentice, with the clear implication being that Palpatine himself was that apprentice. But most interesting is that line about Plagueis using the midichlorians to create life.

Which brings me back to the oft-derided midichlorians.

The main basis on which the midichlorians are loathed by Star Wars fandom is that by positing their existence, George Lucas has tried to make a scientific basis for what was originally a completely mystical concept.

The problem with that way of thinking is that it is incorrect.

Here is how Ben Kenobi defines the Force, the first time we hear about it, in A New Hope:

The Force is what gives a Jedi his power. It's an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.

And here is what Qui Gon Jinn says about midichlorians, when we learn about them in The Phantom Menace:

Midi-chlorians are a microscopic lifeform that reside within all living cells and communicates with the Force...We are symbionts with the midi-chlorians...Without the midi-chlorians, life could not exist, and we would have no knowledge of the Force. They continually speak to you, telling you the will of the Force.

According to the fans, the two explanations are contradictory. But I don't think that they are. Not really. There is nothing in the latter that negates anything in the former. It does add a level of complexity, but so what?

George Lucas has always been heavily influenced by Asian thinking, and not just film making styles, either. There is a great deal in the mysticism of the Star Wars films that is completely compatible with Asian mysticism – Taoism, Buddhism, and the like. When I add that to the mix, I think I see what Lucas is getting at with the midichlorians. They're not an attempt to graft some kind of pseudo-scientific technobabbly hogwash onto what was already a perfectly-good bit of magic. What they are is an expression of a deeply Asian idea, in the way Eastern thinkers have always seen the divide between science and mysticism very, very differently than we do in the West.

In the Asian view of things, science and mysticism are one. I can't help but think that Lucas's thinking here is heavily influenced by the types of ideas you'll find in books like The Tao of Physics and The Dancing Wu-Li Masters. And the idea isn't entirely incompatible with the more poetical passages of the works of Carl Sagan, who advanced the notion that life is not something separate from the Universe, but rather an emergent property of the Universe. In this formulation, the midichlorians are therefore not some new entity thrown in for no reason, but simply the lowest level at which the interactions take place.

That's what makes this scene interesting, because the notion – barely even hinted at – is that Darths Plagueis and Apprentice (we assume it's Sidious) did something that caused the midichlorians to start a new biological process in the womb of Shmi Skywalker. I've never been sure of what to make of this, because it's a fascinating idea that, in the context of the movies, goes absolutely nowhere. The Sith use the Force to create a living being? The implications here are utterly fascinating (did they know where Anakin was? Did they have no idea and were just waiting for him to show up? Did they create a possible hundreds of potential Sith just to see who came to the fore?), and yet, Lucas goes nowhere with it. I don't know if he just threw it in there for the EU authors to do something with, or what.

This is why I continue to hold to my belief that the midichlorians are not a conceptual error. They are a story error. The midichlorians are the gun on the mantelpiece that never goes off. So, all things being equal, I'd excise their mention here entirely, and just leave the midichlorians the way I left them way back when I fixed TPM.

Still, I do love this scene. Palpatine has shown remarkable restraint, waiting until he knows that Anakin is already starting to feel a certain amount of disillusionment with the Jedi to start to sow some more seeds of discontent. And he does it so interestingly, couching his temptations in Anakin's sense of morality. Villains they may be, but the Sith genuinely believe that they are the good guys.

So in the next scene, Anakin gets to present his new intelligence to the Jedi Council, in addition to Chancellor Palpatine's suggestion that he be sent to deal with General Grievous. Of course, the Council seems rather pouty about the whole thing, and they are now in the position of seemingly denying anything just because Palpatine suggested it.

EXT. KASHYYYK-DAY

A WOOKIEE CATAMARAN flanked by WOOKIEE HELICOPTERS approaches the tree housing the HOLOGRAM AREA.

90 INT. KASHYYYK-HOLOGRAM AREA-DAY

YODA and various JEDI speak via hologram. The discussion includes OBI-WAN, MACE, AGEN KOLAR, YODA- KI-ADI-MUNDI and PLO KOON.

Kl-ADI-MUNDI: (holo) Palpatine thinks General Grievous is on Utapau. We have had no reports of this from our agents.

MACE: (holo) How could the Chancellor have come by this information and we know nothing about it? We have had contact with Baron Papanoida and he said no one was there.

ANAKIN: A partial message was intercepted in a diplomatic packet from the Chairman of Utapau.

YODA: Act on this, we must. The capture of General Grievous will end this war. Quickly and decisively we should proceed.

OBI-WAN: Does everyone agree?

All the JEDI concur.

ANAKIN: The Chancellor has requested that I lead the campaign.

They all look at ANAKIN a bit disturbed.

MACE: (a little peeved) The Council will make up its own mind who is to go, not the Chancellor.

Kl-ADI-MUNDI: Yes, this decision is ours to make.

ANAKIN is embarrassed and becomes sullen.

YODA: A Master is needed, with more experience.

MACE: Given our resources, I recommend we send only one Jedi . . . Master Kenobi.

ANAKIN: He was not so successful the last time he met Grievous.

OBI-WAN throws ANAKIN a dirty look.

ANAKIN: (continuing) No offense, my Master, but I'm only stating a fact.

OBI-WAN: Oh no, you're quite right, but I do have the most experience with his ways of combat.

YODA: Obi-Wan, my choice is.

Kl-ADI-MUNDI: I concur. Master Kenobi should go.

YODA: I agree.

All the JEDI concur.

MACE: Very well. Council is adjourned.

ANAKIN is angry.

MACE: (continuing) Obi-Wan, prepare two clone brigades as quickly as you can. If this report is true, there's no telling how many battle droids he may have with him.

91 INT. KASHYYYK-HOLOGRAM AREA-DAY

YODA gets out of his chair and walks to the edge of the platform.

CLONE COMMANDER GREE: The droids have started up their main power generators.

YODA: Then now the time is, Commander.

CLONE COMMANDER GREE: Yes, sir.

The battle begins.

92 EXT. KASHYYYK-BEACH HEAD-DAY

A WOOKIEE CHIEFTAIN lets out a roar as the Wookiee army rushes to face the DROID ARMY. CORPORATE ALLIANCE TANK DROIDS race across the water against the WOOKIEES and CLONE TROOPERS on the beach. DROID GUNSHIPS provide air support, while a SPIDER DROID emerges from the watery depths. A brave WOOKIEE places an explosive on a SEPARATIST TANK and jumps off just before the TANK EXPLODES. From the Hologram Area, Yoda observes the ongoing battle.

I like the bit there in which Anakin takes a shot at Obi Wan's Jedi fighting skills (not included in the film, obviously). But the main thrust of this scene is that the Council is going to resist what they see as Palpatine's machinations, unaware as they are that Palpatine's true purpose is to keep the Council pushing Anakin to be as resentful as possible. They play right into Palpatine's hands, over and over and over again. What might have been, had they decided to just let Anakin have that assignment?

One last note: I love the Thai-influenced design of the planet Kashyyyk. Getting to finally see that planet is a nice reward. (No, we did not see it on the Holiday Special. That did NOT happen.)

And that's where we'll stop for this time. Stay tuned to see Anakn get closer and closer to Darthiness!

Something for Thursday

I played this piece via a band arrangement in college...and I hated it. At first. I thought it was cheesy, goofy, insipid, and idiotic. But the thing grew on me, and kept right on growing, until it became one of my favorite pieces. There's a kind of maniacal glee behind it that makes me happy, and I'm all about the glee these days! Here is the Polka and Fugue from Schwanda the Bagpiper.

A Day at the Farm

Well, it was really cold. So it was really only about 45 minutes.

But anyway, the other day I had some time to myself, so I decided to go to Knox Farm in East Aurora to take some pictures. I knew it was cold, but I didn't figure on how biting the wind was, so I didn't do nearly as much walking around as I had intended. Mostly I stuck around the farm buildings themselves.

Knox Farm is a former New York State Park that was once the estate of the Knox family, a rich clan that once lived here but has since dispersed. The state never really figured out what to do with the place, park-wise, and then the budgetary disasters that unfolded during the Great Recession gave the state the opportunity to eliminate the farm as a state park. (This despite that they didn't even have to close State Parks during the Great Depression, but that was then, when America was more willing to levy taxes in order to pay for things we collectively wanted, as opposed to a country that seemingly wants low taxes and not much else. But I digress.)

Anyhow, here are a few of the photos from that day:







Note the cross-country skiers:





These next two turned out cool, because I placed the camera in a dark place, relative to where I was standing. It was not this bright! But it makes me look all science-fictiony or something.




I also drove up to the Mill Road Overlook, which is simply where the road passes by the top of a wide field on a hill, allowing a wonderful view. Some activists are currently trying to secure this property so that it remains a wonderful view, as opposed to the site of yet another boring development of ugly McMansions. The view that day from up there was wonderfully stark, since it was getting on late afternoon by this point.








I really do love this area!

A Random Wednesday Conversation Starter

What's a movie you thought that you would hate but ended up...not hating at all?

Makin' Meatballs

Food has become a bit of a challenge here at Casa Jaquandor of late, as The Wife has found it necessary to adopt a gluten-free diet. For the most part, we find that eating gluten-free is not that hard, as long as you are (a) diligent in checking the ingredients of what you eat, and (b) curious and willing to explore foods you're unfamiliar with. The Wife is very wide in her tastes and willing to try new foods, so while some favorites have slipped beyond our grasp, we've found other things to eat and we continue to look for ways to get back some stuff that's been ruled out. (I, personally, am not on a gluten-free diet, but it's often easier to just go that way, simply because it seems silly to make two meals every night.)

Anyway, one thing we've been stymied on is meatballs. We've always loved spaghetti and meatballs. We have found gluten-free spaghetti, but gluten-free meatballs have been a bit more difficult. So I figured it was time to take matters into my own hands.

Now, meatballs are one of those things I've always thought I should be making myself anyway, but never did because I was just lazy about it. This was the time, though, so I bought a package of hot italian sausage links and removed the meat from the casings. Then I mixed the meat by hand with a cup of gluten-free panko crumbs, about half a cup of grated Parmesan, two eggs, and about a half cup of milk. After that, it was a simple matter of shaping the meatballs and baking them at 400 degrees for about twenty-five minutes. The result? Wonderful meatballs that The Wife can eat! We had a few of them for dinner, and now the rest are in the freezer. (My total yield was about 36 meatballs.)

So you're going to be a spaceman!

When I was a kid, my dream was to be an astronaut.

Not terribly unique, as kids dreams went, in my generation. The space program had lost a bit of its momentum in the mid-1970s, but the moon landings were still fresh in memory, and in any event, a movie came along in 1977 that made space a going concern for an awful lot of young'uns, myself included. So in my first few years of grade school, I read a ton of space books. I remember very few of them, but I learned a lot from each. One of them that I do remember, quite strongly, is a book by an author and illustrator named Jeanne Bendick, called The First Book of Space Travel. The book came out in 1953, which means that when I read it in first grade (1977), it was 24 years old. And more...the book came out four years before Sputnik flew.

The book was mentioned a while back on the wonderful blog and everything else too. Seeing these images again after so long takes me right back to thumbing through this book while sitting in Mrs. Smith's classroom at Witch Hazel School. (When I should have been working on my assignments...sigh....)

I need to track down a copy of this book! Why it's not in my personal library already, I'm not really sure.

A brief manifesto....

I created this the other night:


This is part of my newer way of thinking, part of which is my newfound aversion to snark. I fully accept that I'm a strange person, and I'm fine with it. Embracing the weirdness seems a lot more productive and likely to produce longterm fun, for me, than trying to aim for some level of conformity that has never much produced large dividends anyway. I could pretend to be a normal person with a normal haircut and normal clothes and normal hobbies, but as they always say on Aaron Sorkin shows, I haven't got that kind of time. Give me long hair, bib overalls, spaceships and ghosts and wizards, and a pie in the face any day.

Sentential Links

Time for LINKS!!!

:: There was me, Amanda, and there was Amanda's TED speech, and she was spending a lot more time with her TED speech than she was with me.

:: It's that great moment of seeing something you loved when you were younger and haven't revisited for a very long time and finding it holds up even better than you thought. (I was a bit older when Pulp Fiction came out, but it’s still one of my favorite movies. I’ve never forgotten the first time I saw it...in a theater all by myself, because it was brand new and word-of-mouth hadn’t started building yet.)

:: How does the play weather a fourth reading? Excellently. It was wasted on my teenaged self, but it was a revelation when I taught it to my son in 2003 and again when I brought it to my daughters in 2009. (Ah, Julius Caesar -- the play that started me on the road to thinking “Hey, maybe there’s something to this Shakespeare fellow after all!” We read it in tenth grade, and we focused on all the usual stuff: Brutus and Anthony, Caesar’s arrogance, the Ides of March, “The good is oft interred with our bones”, et cetera. But when I re-read it last year, what struck me between the eyes was a brief and horrifying scene when the Roman crowd, whipped into a frenzy, kills an innocent poet who just happens to have the same name as one of the conspirators. I don’t recall my tenth grade teacher making much of Shakespeare’s cynicism regarding the malleability of mob opinion, but that’s what I think about now whenever I think about that play.)

:: And all this puts me in mind of the young man I used to be and somehow lost track of.

I miss him. (I think that everybody has this moment at some point in their lives. The sooner we realize that the young guy is still in there, the better life gets.)

:: Not only did he publish without me, he got a patent on the idea as well. He did include me in the acknowledgements, but in science that's worth exactly nothing. (I’m often glad I didn’t end up in academia.)

:: You know what I think? I think wasted potential is a lot scarier than feeling overwhelmed. There is no monster greater than regret. I wouldn't wish it on any one. (I could not agree more, and I have a post on this topic on the way!)

:: But what kind of a place is it, that people are armed to the teeth, and terrified at the prospect of home invasion? What does it mean to live in a country that was, for generations, defined by institutionalized racism? Is South Africa really just Texas with a Dutch accent? (I said that I'm not snarking anymore. I didn't say I wouldn't occasionally link other people's snark!)

More next week....

Answers the Fifth!

Another post or two, and I should be able to put Ask Me Anything! February 2013 to bed. Huzzah! (And remember, folks, you don't have to wait for February or August to ask me anything. I'm always on the prowl for topic suggestions!)

My friend and writing cohort (and Princesses beta-reader) Lynda asks:

When going back to edit your writing, how do you determine what to keep and what to weed out?

My first goal when editing is to look for needless words and get rid of them. In On Writing, Stephen King says that the formula for the second draft is "1st Draft - 10%", and I tend to agree with that. I like long, wordy books, but not too wordy. Of course, what counts as being 'too wordy' is open to debate and opinion, but in general, I really try to tighten up the prose when I start editing. Adverbs? I try to use as few as possible to begin with, and the ones that remain usually perish. Overly long descriptive passages get on my nerves, too, so I try to cut those down as much as possible. And then there is the fact that I can really be repetitive at times in my writing. I'm not sure why this is, but I suspect it's a combination of two factors: first, that I don't always recall what I've written before, and thus stand the chance of writing it again; and second, because I suppose I feel a certain amount of insecurity that the reader isn't going to understand what I'm really getting at unless I pound the point home with a ball-peen hammer.

What I find myself doing, often when editing, is reminding myself that you gotta trust the reader to understand. This is where beta readers come in so handy, and I really wish I'd been using them more in my previous writing projects. When a beta reader comes at you with a question of the "I'm not sure what's going on here" variety, that's a red flag. And if more than one of your beta readers questions you on the same point, than that's a red flag accompanied by sirens and guys shooting flares into the sky and your wife screaming "Stop the car, Frank!" in your ear. (I know my name's not Frank. Deal with it!) Luckily for me, that didn't happen much with Princesses, and I had six people read that thing, and I chose six folks whose tastes I can be fairly assured vary somewhat across a number of genres.

That's the mechanical stuff. Sometimes I'm looking to tighten up pacing or eliminate general flab, and make the book or story flow better. How do I decide, then, what entire scenes to cut? Well...that's a bit tougher, and it relies on trusting my own instincts when it comes to the storytelling. The question I always end up asking myself is this: Does the reader NEED to know this in order for the story to make sense? If the answer is 'No', then it's not necessarily a slam-dunk that the passage is to be cut, but that is an indicator that maybe I can lose it.

In the specific case of editing Princesses, I had a lot of flabby material toward the front of the book, of the 'establishing the setting' variety, and based on feedback, I cut a lot of that in the edits. I also added in a couple of brief scenes in order to strengthen the flow and establish the characters more than the setting. That's another good point to keep in mind: material that strengthens the characters tends to have a longer lease on life than stuff that's just there because it's cool or whatever. Of course, you have to have a relatively liberal notion of what a reader 'needs' to know, because if you really make that rule a harsh one, you can go too far the other way. And that's no good. Unless you're Hemingway. And you're not.

There was also one scene in Princesses that I came this close to scrapping completely, simply because it didn't really move things along -- and in fact, I still don't think it moves things along. But I left it in, because one of my beta readers praised that particular scene for entirely different reasons. So I kept it, on the basis that once in a while, it's OK to have something happen just because it's kind of cool.

My friend (and political soul-mate -- HA!) Scotty asks:

"Into Darkness"-excited or no, Imax or no, and who's the villain?

No, no, dunno. Next!

OK, more detail. Star Trek Into Darkness comes out this summer. Am I excited? Not really. As I've said a few times, in this space and others, I liked the first one, but mainly because I like explodey spaceshippy stuff. As Star Trek, it was a train wreck, and as science fiction, it was utter crap. But it was slickly made and fun to watch and I liked the cast, so I'll see the sequel. But 'excited'? Not really. I won't see it on IMAX, either, just because I have a feeling the sensory overload of seeing a movie like that on so huge a screen would not be terribly pleasant. I like a standard movie screen just fine, thank you. I like IMAX movies, but ones that are specifically made for that format.

And the villain? I have no idea. I do think that Khan would be a staggeringly unoriginal and uninspired thing to do. So would Gary Mitchell. I don't know what they're up to, but on the basis of the first movie and the trailers for this one, I'm not holding out hope for any sense of originality whatsoever. If JJ Abrams is gonna direct Star Wars Episode VII, I'm glad that he's not bringing his Trek writers along for the ride.

Still more to come! Progress is being made. I think. (Unless you folks sneak in any questions after the fact....)

The Time Has Come!

Yup...it's time to start working on the sequel to Princesses In SPACE!!! (not the actual title). I've just found getting back into Deliverance, eh? a bit of a slog, for a number of reasons. First, as I've mentioned before, it was just a mistake to get away from that story for as long as I did. The momentum really flagged, and it's very hard getting back to something in progress when the brain just isn't there. Second, a byproduct of that is that my head kept right on working on notions for the Princesses sequel, and now the story has crystallized enough that it's just starting to burst out of my head. I figure I need to listen to that impulse, and I also figure that if I start now, at 1000 words a day, I should be able to generate a first draft by fall of this year. That way I can have the decks cleared by November, just in time for this year's NaNoWriMo, when I hope to tackle another story idea that's been bouncing about my head for a long time.

What does this mean for Deliverance, eh and The Adventures of Lighthouse Boy? Both are back-burnered...but neither one forever. I'm not turning from them because I dislike those stories. I'm turning toward the one that I need to write the most. Which means it's time to see what those Princesses of mine have been doing, whilst in SPACE!!!

(And no, aside from the one rejection, I have not heard a single thing more from any of my current queries. More queries are going out, though. There's an agent for me out there, and I will find them! No matter what occurs!)

Sunday Burst of Weird and Awesome

Oddities and Awesome abound!

:: If you don't like insects (or art), don't watch this video.

:: Leonard Bernstein rewrites Beethoven's Symphony No. 5. If you've read Bernstein's brilliant and indispensable The Joy of Music, you've already read the transcript of this old teevee program, but to see it is amazing.

:: Like puzzles? As in, physical, mechanical puzzles? Puzzle World is for you. (Ignore the comic sans, if you can. Lord, I detest that font!)

More next week!

Saturday Centus (Sunday edition)

Here we go!

I looked at the ramshackle contraption as Pa put the finishing touches on it. He was ready to light the fuse.

“Oh my God, you really think this thing’s gonna fly?!”

“Simple physics, m’boy! The fuel burns, the exhaust shoots out the bottom, and the rocket goes up!”

“Your fuel is gasoline!”

“Burns nice! My Ma always told me, ‘Use the right fuel’.”

I shook my head. “My Grandma always told me that you’re an idiot.”

Pa laughed as he lit the fuse.

An hour later, the fire department has a whole new story to add to the rest. And Pa’s hair grew back, eventually.

EXTERIOR: Suburban Buffalo -- KFC -- Afternoon -- Winter.

Two cars pull into the KFC parking lot. One pulls right up to the door; the other parks a bit farther away. A short, squat WOMAN in a brilliant sky-blue winter coat and her SON, a young man of about 20, get out of the first car. The young man is dressed in the standard Buffalo attire of jeans that aren't really any color anymore, a jacket that isn't any color anymore, and a utilitarian haircut that screams of 'cut the parts that stick out below the edge of the bowl I've placed on your head'. From the other car comes a long-haired GENTLEMAN, decked out in a black flannel-lined shirt under a spiffy pair of Carhartt overalls. We can tell by looking at the GENTLEMAN IN OVERALLS that he is a fellow of elegance, reason, and is generally a fine person to know. They enter the restaurant, whereupon the GENTLEMAN IN OVERALLS hangs back to examine the menu. Meanwhile, the WOMAN and the SON walk right up to the counter, where the ORDER TAKEN is a crisp-looking teenaged boy in a clean uniform.

ORDER TAKER: Welcome to KFC, may I--

The SON's cell phone rings loudly. His ringtone is a rap tune with the words 'bitch-ass ho' a lot.

ORDER TAKER: --take your order?

SON: (into phone) What? Yeah. Yeah, I love you! But I can't talk about this right--

WOMAN: Yeah gimme a six-piece a'chicken.

ORDER TAKER: Original, crispy, or the other one that nobody orders? [EDITOR'S NOTE: He didn't really say this! I just don't recall what the actual third option was.]

WOMAN: (to SON, without turning to actually face him) You want original or crispy?

SON: (into phone, completely oblivious of his mother addressing him) No! No, don't do that! DAMMIT! I said I love you, why you gotta make this so--

WOMAN: (louder, still doesn't turn around) You want ORIGINAL or CRISPY?

She turns to look at the SON, who is facing the pop machine.

WOMAN: Give him Original.

ORDER TAKER: All right, what sides?

WOMAN: Sides? Whassat salad stuff with the dressing?

ORDER TAKER: Cole slaw?

WOMAN: Yeah! (loudly, to SON, again without turning, again without the SON realizing he's being talked to) Cole slaw? You like COLE SLAW?

SON: Oh, you can't be f***ing SERIOUS! I swear if you--! Yeah, yeah....I said I love you! I said it! What more do you--!

WOMAN: Cole slaw. And fries.

ORDER TAKER: You mean potato wedges?

WOMAN: I got fries last time!

ORDER TAKER: (somehow miraculously keeping his composure, given how young he is) We replaced the fries with the potato wedges.

WOMAN: Oh.

The GENTLEMAN in the overalls, who is diddling with his own cell phone in an effort to look like he's not actually hanging on every word of the morality play unfolding, raises an eyebrow at the ease with which this kid has sold the lie.

WOMAN: Yeah, gimme the wedges. And a drink. (louder) You wanna drink?

SON: (still into phone) Babe, I gotta go. We're in line. KFC. I know you don't like KFC, but what do you care, you're working!

WOMAN: No drink for him.

Now he turns back to face his mother, rolling his eyes and making that 'flapping jaw' gesture with his fingers to indicate that the girlfriend or whomever on the other end won't shut up.

ORDER TAKER: That'll be $12.42.

WOMAN: Here. (hands him a twenty)

SON: I gotta go! We'll talk about this later. Just call me back in half an hour. Just call me back. Call me back! Half an hour! Yeah! Love you, call me back, half hour, bye! (hangs up) What are we eating?

WOMAN: Chicken.

The GENTLEMAN in the overalls bites his lips together to keep from laughing out loud.

SON: Did you order the Chicken Bites? [EDITOR'S NOTE: "Chicken Bites" are apparently the replacement for the old "Popcorn Chicken" menu item.]

WOMAN: You didn't say nothin' about Chicken Bites!

SON: I want Chicken Bites. Got more money? I'll order 'em.

WOMAN: Yeah, here's five bucks. It's all I got. But wait for that guy. You shoulda been ordering with me.

SON: I tried! Bitch wouldn't hang up!

WOMAN: Don't call her 'bitch', she's datin' your ass.

Now the GENTLEMAN IN OVERALLS is scratching his neck so he doesn't have to face these folks.

WOMAN: Get outta the way. Let that guy order.

They look at the GENTLEMAN IN OVERALLS, who realizes what's happening.

GENTLEMAN IN OVERALLS: Oh, go ahead. I'm in no hurry here.

SON: Thanks! See, Mom?

The Son turns to the ORDER TAKER.

ORDER TAKER: Welcome to KFC, may I take your order?

SON: Yeah, I want some Chicken Bites.

The Food Guy from the back of house comes up to the counter with a tray.

FOOD GUY: Order #273? Six-piece?

WOMAN: Yeah.

She grabs the tray and goes to a table in the dining room.

WOMAN: (calling to SON) I'm sittin' down now!

SON: (without turning around) Yeah! Chicken Bites. Uh...large.

The GENTLEMAN IN OVERALLS glances up at the menu board and notices that the Large Chicken Bites is more than five bucks. In fact, even the Small, with sales tax added on, will be more than five bucks.

WOMAN: (now talking loudly to no one in particular) Awww, shit! They only gave me one plate. How am I supposed to eat!

The GENTLEMAN IN OVERALLS brushes a fuzzy or something from the bib of his overalls, trying not to focus on the 'How many plates does one woman need to eat a meal at KFC?' question.

ORDER TAKER: A large Chicken Bites is $7-something.

SON: Ummmm...

He starts fishing in his pockets, but it's clear that the five in his hand is the only money he's got.

SON: Make it the small, then.

ORDER TAKER: OK...that'll be $5.sixty something.

SON: Ummmm....

He is realizing that he doesn't have enough money to pay even that.

SON: Hey Ma--

WOMAN: Tell them to gimme another plate!

SON: You got anymore money?

WOMAN: Nah I gave it all to you! Tell them gimme another plate!

Nevertheless she gets up, returns to the counter, and hands him a twenty. Then she returns to the table.

WOMAN: I still need another plate!

Now she's yelling loudly enough that the FOOD GUY in back can hear her, and he is scrambling to bring up a plate.

ORDER TAKER: All right, here's the change. And here are your Chicken Bites. And here's the--

WOMAN: I need another plate!

ORDER TAKER: --other plate for her.

SON: Ma! Stop!

He holds up the plate for her to see. She calms down. The GENTLEMAN IN OVERALLS, still wondering why she could possibly need TWO plates, waits until the ORDER TAKER acknowledges him.

ORDER TAKER: Hello, welcome to KFC. May I take your order?

The GENTLEMAN IN OVERALLS notices the look in the ORDER TAKER's eye, the look of prayerfulness in hopes that no one quite that crazy comes through the line for a while. He also notes that this fellow has to start every single interaction with a customer the exact same way, no doubt because 'market research' has shown that what customers want to hear in a restaurant is a personality-free, standardized greeting.

GENTLEMAN IN OVERALLS: Sure. I'd like a--

FADE OUT as life returns to normal at KFC.

Film Quote Friday: The Hunt for Red October

When this movie came out in spring 1990, I was on the tail end of a fascination with the spy genre that had lasted two or three years. I'd devoured a whole bunch of Robert Ludlum and Nelson DeMille novels; I'd found Tom Clancy somewhat less readable but OK, and I bounced right off John Le Carre. Shortly thereafter I returned to reading fantasy and science fiction, having had my fill of spy stuff. Nowadays I haven't read a spy novel in quite a few years, and I generally rely on movies and teevee for my espionage desires. (Plus, a lot of the F&SF I read employs tropes of spy stories, so it's not like I'm completely missing out.)

I went with a bunch of friends to see Hunt for Red October the day after the winter semester ended (our school had an odd calendar), and before we went, I remember reading an article in TIME or Newsweek about the troubles that the entire spy genre was facing, what with the Cold War having ended just eight or nine months previously. I found the idea that the movie might suffer because of the lack of timeliness of its subject matter kind of goofy; after all, lots of historical dramas work just fine as stories with tension and suspense, despite the fact that their historical eras are long over. But still, there was some serious thought given to the fact that the spy genre was now going to have to look for new threats. I remember a Wayne's World sketch on Saturday Night Live in which Wayne and Garth lamented the end of Communism with a top-ten style list, one of which was, "Spy stuff sucks." Garth whined, "Yeah! Who's James Bond gonna spy on now, the Guatemalans?!"

I also remember some years back when I got into a heated discussion on a Usenet newsgroup because someone wanted to say that some movie had done something in a very clicheed manner, "just like the James Bond movies of the 1960s used to treat Russians". That ran up all manner of red flags, because only one of the six Bond movies released in the 1960s uses Russians, and in that one, they are hardly depicted stereptyically. In fact, Garth and my Usenet interlocutor might be surprised to learn that there was surprisingly little Cold War subtext to the Bond films until the 1980s!

What does all this have to do with Hunt for Red October? Well, if anything, the years that have passed since the Cold War's conclusion have only helped the film. By pushing those historical circumstances back into history, the film now plays as it always should have: it's a tense, engrossing thriller that pits one man against entire bureaucracies in the face of a dangerous diplomatic and military situation. The film's story is extremely well constructed, with every element serving some purpose. But the movie's dialog crackles! Here are just a couple of instances.

This brief exchange happens when the Russian Ambassador to the United States is meeting with the National Security Advisor, and is still maintaining the fiction that nothing terribly serious is to be read into the fact that the Northern Atlantic is now crawling with Russian ships:

Jeffrey Pelt: Mr. Ambassador, you have nearly a hundred naval vessels operating in the North Atlantic right now. Your aircraft have dropped enough sonar buoys so that a man could walk from Greenland to Iceland to Scotland without getting his feet wet! Now, shall we dispense with the bull?

Ambassador Lysenko: You make your point as delicately as ever, Mr. Pelt.

This brief exchange comes later on, when Jack Ryan is on the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, and the Russian Navy is plowing across the ocean, the sonar systems blasting away into the water:

Captain Davenport: They're pinging away with their active sonar like they're looking for something, but nobody's listening.

Jack Ryan: What do you mean?

Captain Davenport: Well, they're moving at almost forty knots. At that speed, they could run right over my daughter's stereo and not hear it.

And here's a Navy pilot trying to give Jack Ryan some encouragement as they fly through violent turbulence to get to the Enterprise:

Navigator C-2A: What's the matter Commander? You don't like flying, huh? Aw, this is nothing! You should've been with us five, six months ago! Whoa! You talk about puke! We ran into a hailstorm over the Sea of Japan. Everybody's retching their guts out! The pilot shot his lunch all over the windshield, and I barfed on the radio! Shorted it out completely! And it wasn't that lightweight stuff either, it was that chunky industrial weight puke! [offers him the candy bar he's been eating] Hey, you want a bite?

Jack Ryan: Jack, next time you get a bright idea just put it in a memo!

Frivolous stuff, to be sure, but all this dialog rings true because in my experience, people tend to resort to comfortable metaphors and idioms even in the face of stressful situations. Everybody speaks distinctively in The Hunt for Red October, and director John McTiernan gives the actors the breathing room necessary to let the script take flight. The result? An espionage thriller that feels like it's populated with real people. That's the key to any storytelling!

Something for Thursday

I had a piece chosen already, but yesterday's passing of pianist Van Cliburn gave me cause to push that one back a week. This particular work is so associated with Cliburn that it's almost cliche to use it, but there's a reason cliches become so in the first place.

Back when I was in school and taking piano lessons, my teacher -- a wonderful lady named Margaret Hooker -- used to rave about Van Cliburn. She thought the world of him, and I never think of him without thinking of her almost at the same time. I was never that good at the piano, choosing instead to focus my energies on my beloved trumpet, which I imagine had to frustrate Mrs. Hooker somewhat, as I could have done better had I worked harder at it. I'd say 'Story of my life', but then, that's the story of everyone's life, isn't it?

Anyway, I hope that Mrs. Hooker is finally getting to meet Mr. Cliburn in whatever musical realm they now inhabit. There's no question in my mind that if there is such a realm, she's already tracked him down.

Here's Van Cliburn playing the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto #1.