The Goulash-Pierogi Cold War

I didn't have goulash until I got married and my wife made it for us. The ingredients are simple: onion, ground beef, tomato sauce and pasta (elbow preferred). This is where the cold war begins. With these ingredients. 

It started about 18 months ago when we served goulash for dinner. My father, who was in town, grumbled something about how it wasn't goulash but a red meat sauce. He contended that goulash was a meat stew. This after scarfing down two plates and practically licking the plate. Nothing more came of it and we went along with our merry lives. Then a hot spot flared up thanks to my daughter and some pierogis. 

My sweet daughter has a habit of calling things by different names and long ago called pierogis "potato dumplings." She's not entirely wrong but this isn't the time for food anthropology or semantics, so I never made a big deal of it. While my parents were in town, we had them for dinner one night. This is where my daughter fanned the flames with this conversation:

"Yay, potato dumplings!"

 "What did you call that?" my father asked. 

"A dumpling."

"It's a pierogi."

"I know, but I call it a dumpling."

"It's a pierogi."

"Yeah, a dumpling."

This Abbot and Costello like exchange went on for about a minute more. I could sense my father's rising ire from the sink where I was washing dishes. He walked by me to go to his room and growled, "When you get a minute, I want to talk to you."

I looked over to my wife who shrugged her shoulders. 

I went to the senior apartment attached to our house and sat down on the couch across from my dad.

 "What do you know about our heritage and where we came from?"

"Astoria, Queens?" I responded. (Kinda hard to figure out where my daughter gets it from/)

 "I know you are raising your kids Italian but they know nothing of our heritage."

I was speechless. What culture? Blue collar? Middle class? American? I was seriously confused. The accusation stung. Our family heritage is murky at best and down right swampy on my dad's side. But I let him talk and nodded then went back to doing what I was doing. 

Cold war flare up subsided. My peaceful reaction worked. Maybe I really have matured. Then a few nights later, we made goulash again. My father once again walked by while I was once again doing dishes. 

 "What do you call that?"

 "Goulash."

 "Hmph," followed by the same glance I remembered from being a kid that was about to get in trouble. I said nothing and let him go along his way. 

A few days after that someone put up a meme about this very topic and I reposted it on my Facebook page to discover if I was not alone. Nearly all of my friends said they called what we make (B) was goulash and that A (what my father calls goulash) was stew. I felt vindicated. However, one friend that travels to Eastern Europe quite a bit pointed out that A is actually goulash, so I consulted Google and it turns out we're both right. B is known as American goulash. I never did tell my dad but I felt pretty good about it. I'd rather keep the cold war simmering instead of a full out nuclear assault. 

                                    

    

The Maradaine Saga

I like supporting good people that create good art. (Hell, I'll support good people that create so-so art.) Especially people that are nice to me and come from the same place I do, Central New York. Even though he's a Texan now, you never quite lose being a CNYer. So I'm here to support my friend Marshall Ryan Maresca (friend might be a stronger word, but it sounds better than Internet acquaintance), the author of the Maradaine Saga.

Today is Sunday August 30th and I've decided to embark on a quest and I'm inviting you to accompany me to the Archduchy of Maradaine. We're on a tight schedule since the final book of the Maradaine Saga, THE PEOPLE OF THE CITY, comes out on October 26th. I've come up with a plan for us to finish the eleven books that make up the Saga and smoothly transition into the final book. 

I've preordered my copy, you should too, preordering is important. Like all quests, we need a map, so I've created a pacing guide (I'm a HS English teacher, I can't help it) for you to follow to get you there. I'll post something here on Fridays where I'll discuss what I read and any of you can respond. So, here we go and I'll see you on the other side. 

So you understand, the number is the last chapter you should read for that day. 

Here's the link to the pacing guide.

Hey Netflix, How About This?

 A few weeks back the Internet was ablaze with the rumor that Netflix was looking for the next "family friendly fantasy story" a la Star Wars or Harry Potter. I sort of read it as they were looking for something original and I have ideas. As as joke (but not really) I posted an "ad" on Facebook about anyone wanting to work with me on creating said project. A few nibbled by bringing up IPs they were interested in and one grabbed my attention. I was initially opposed but the poster convinced me that it could work thanks to THE WITCHER. So I set about planning the seasons for said IP. (I spent a whole day planning and casting two seasons of a fictional OFFICE-esque series about where I work and it's amazing.) So, without further adieu and gilding of the lilies, may I show you my plan for DRAGONLANCE: THE WAR OF THE LANCE.

So, I always felt as formative as DL was to me, reading it as an adult left me wanting. There was so much potential for the books that a TV series could bring back. We'd need three seasons, one for each of the book. The first season should be 8 episodes, second and third 10, with some expansion of what happens in books 2 and 3. So, using the chapter epigraphs, I came up with the titles. So, away we go.

Season One: Dragons of Autumn Twilight 

Best cover by a mile and the "smallest" of the three books. There's not much I would add to this. The desire to put Kitiara in this part is strong but she belongs in season 2, especially since she's maybe the most important casting besides Tanis and Raistlin. I don't know about casting but if Kelsey Asbille isn't Goldmoon, I might fight people. Anyway, on to the episode titles:

1. The Old Man's Party
2. Message In the Stars
3. The Forestmaster
4. Smoke In The East
5. The Broken City
6. Night of Dragons
7. The Speaker of the Suns
8. The Dragon Highlord

Season Two; Dragons of Winter's Night:

For this season we expand a little bit and pull in some stuff from out of trilogy books to bulk up our story. I almost bumped this to 12 episodes, but 10 is enough. We add some more of the infighting and politics among Solamnic Knights, give Kitiara some time to shine and I for one can't wait to see the ice boats. So, episode titles (these are the first batch that contain non-epigraph titles, enjoy):

1. The Hammer of Kharas
2. The Blue Lady's War
   
3. Tarsis The Beautiful
4. Waking Dreams
5. The Song of the Ice Reaver
6. The Red Wizard and His Wonderful Illusions
7. The Oath and The Measure
8. My Honor Is My Life
9. The Shattered Sun
10. The Princess and The Blue Lady

NOTE: I'm really proud of 9 and 10. Episode 9 is going to be the "Red Wedding" episode for a lot of people. It's truly one of the more beautiful moments of the series. 

Season Three: Dragons of Spring's Dawning

When I re-read this a few years back, I was so disappointed in this book. It's the shortest by far. The war was over in one chapter. I get that they wanted to focus on the main characters and I'm sure the authors were under tremendous pressure to finish (I'd still love a "director's cut" of the books) them, but I felt this book was rushed. We have another ten episodes for this season and some expansion is necessary. So here's my episode titles and again we've gone off the tracks with episode titles, though most are from the epigraphs.

1. Flight from Darkness Into Darkness
2. The Chronicler and the Mage
3. The Oath of the Dragons
4. The Council of Whitestone
5. The Golden General
6. The Penalty of Failure
7. The Old Man and the Golden Dragon
8. The Queen of Darkness
9. The Debt Repaid
10. For Good or For Evil

So, that's how I'd break down the Dragonlance trilogy into a three season, 28 episode series. There's more details, but I spared you from them. So, Netflix...HBO...Hulu...whoever, I'm here and available. I think there are parts of Central New York that would be great for exteriors and I'll bet we can get some tax breaks, especially with a CNYer at the helm. 

The Imposter Syndrome

 A few months back I was catching up with some of my "boys" via Zoom. It was in the middle of the first month of the pandemic and I think our little group was jonesing for some interaction with people we didn't share DNA. One of the things my wife says is that I need to be more social and she's not wrong. (Yet she thinks that my having a writing session once a month with my friend Brian is weird.) She's joked that I've been more social since the pandemic started. 

Conversation from our little group chat moved from what we were drinking to what we've been cooking (lots of sourdough) to how we've been staying in some kind of shape (my complaining about walking stairs 3-5x a day to some of them running 7 miles a day). It was nice to talk to adults about adult things. (Again, not that I don't talk to my wife but sometimes you need more!) At one point in the conversations someone said something about writing and I griped around the malaise I was in related to my writing. This sparked something in one of my friends and he asked me perhaps the most terrifying question you could ever ask a writer: What motivates you to write?

I froze. I never have a good answer. Or at least the way that I feel.

Before I continue, confession time: I always feel that when I talk about writing with people, I bore them to tears. It's the reason I know that I'll never do a TED talk. It's not that I'm not passionate about writing or that I have what I think are interesting things to say about writing, it's just every ounce of self-loathing and self-doubt bubbles up slides on up to the front of my brain and makes me feel boring. (Comically, I don't have this problem with students.)

My friend asked the question earnestly. He doesn't know me very well so he hasn't lived through all my trials and tribulation of trying to be a famous author. The question really crippled me. I'm usually loquacious but I couldn't talk. A voice in the back of my head snickered and whispered, "Yeah, smart ass, what motivates you?"

I could say something poetic like the written word is the very marrow of our souls.

Nah, not me.

I could say that I hate blank paper and I need to fill it up with words.

Closer, but not quite there. 

Because I want to be rich.

Nah.

"Because I can't not write," I answered. It's a stock answer for me. But it's also incredibly true. In the chat, one of my friends that's read my stuff commented that I'm a very good writer. I was embarrassed and humbled. I always feel weird talking about my writing out loud, it's really a sort if imposter's syndrome. 

Imposter's syndrome is a psychological phenomenon in which people are unable to internalize and accept their accomplishment. This is me to a T about just about everything I do successfully in my life. I'm never satisfied when I cook and I'm constantly trying to get better, though my ribs are so good you can't talk loudly about them or the meat will fall off the bone. There's always a voice in the back of my head nibbling at any sense of accomplishment in my head. I always feel like when someone asks about my writing, I always feel like I can see their eyes glaze over as I'm talking. It's hard to see glaze on a computer screen. As I tried to expand on my answer, I heard the voice in my head, so I talked faster so I could think it before they could. 

"You're a fraud."

Two agents, one abandoned the other I fired. A few very close calls with publishers. 

"You talk a big game."

My friend that's read my stuff props me up by earnestly saying how good my writing is and I aw-shucked my way through that. When I said something about it being boring, they said that it's really interesting and that they can see my passion.

"They have to say that."

I don't know if they do or don't but it felt kind of good to talk about it out loud. 

"Usually you have to pay $100 an hour for that, ding dong."

Imposter or not, I write because I can't stop writing, God have mercy on your soul.

"He won't, he made you a writer for Chris-okay, okay, I'll stop there."

A New Hobby

At the start of summer, my son Cooper asked for a birdfeeder. I'm not 100% sure why, but it's not an extravagant or out of left field request, so we bought it for him. It took me a week or so to buy the seed then another week to set it up. Since I put it up, I can't get enough of it, seeing if I can identify the birds that visit my little bird feeder. I obsess over seeds and making sure there's enough for them. I'm not this diligent with my dog. You know it's weird when your wife says that she got you a surprise and when you find out it's a 40 pound bag of bird seed, there aren't enough kisses to show your appreciation.

I'll perch on the front porch as quietly as I can, my writing notebook and pen in hand, though I don't write when the feeder is busy, I'm too busy meeting with my new friends. There's been the requisite robins and at least three different kinds of sparrows. I call them the Jets (Robins) and Sharks (Sparrows). Lately the Jets haven't been visiting as much. Quite a few doves join the mix along with a real gang of grackles  that unsuccessfully tries to intimidate the other, smaller birds. A few couples join the buffet. A pair of cardinals, Ralph and Alice, that visit several times a day while a pair of pigeons, Henry and Karen, show up the same time every day to partake (Bonus points if you get the reference, double bonus points if you REALLY get the reference). On a rainy afternoon the smorgasbord was attended by a pair of orioles. They're aristocrats names Thurston and Lovey. I saw a bright yellow goldfinch and a red crested lark.Then there's Bart the Blue Jay. That little bastard will sit on the power line and squawk at me until I go inside. I won't even go into the mammals that join the group, which has included several rabbits, two chipmunks and possibly a raccoon.

A few days ago, I gave my wife the rundown of what I'd seen that day. She looked at me with something short of incredulity and said, "I didn't know that you were that into birds."

"Neither did I," I responded. 

Bird watching is serious business and I don't know if I'm built for it. This is not a disparagement of the activity. It requires a great deal of patience and diligence, two things I am not equipped for. But I'm trying.

A few afternoons ago, I was returning home from running errands. As I walked up the driveway, I looked over to my, I mean my son's bird feeder. It was in need of a refill. I scanned the remaining area and saw at least 20 birds staring back at me like the movie THE BIRDS. I'm old enough that it still scared me. I moved a little faster as I waddled my way, penguin-like, into the house. 

The Gut Punch

One of my favorite parts of reading is when you come across something that is so well written that it causes your body to react. The author's words come off the page, blast through your emotional dampeners and cause a visceral, physical reaction. We're talking gasps, tears and outright sobbing. And it's always from a book you don't expect it to come from. Sure TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE is going to pull at your heartstrings but a book about baseball cards? That's when that gut punch is the best. 

Yesterday morning was a damn near perfect morning in Central New York, so instead of staying inside I decided to sit on the front porch and read. I sipped the Dunkin frozen chai my sister-in-law delivered to me on her way to work (I really did marry over my skis in so many ways) and started reading "The Battery" in Brad Balukjian's genius book THE WAX PACK. The chapter is about little known pitcher Jaime Concanower. A card my friends or I would've used to put in our bicycle spokes. Balukjian went all the way to Arkansas to interview him. The last page and a half of the chapter quite literally reached off the page, opened my rib cage and punched me repeatedly in my heart. In front of this virtual stranger, Concanower breaks down about his wife's battle with breast cancer. I shut the book, took a deep sigh that morphed from a gasp to a full on chest sob. Holy shit. It was the perfect combination of story and writing. It was a moment I both envied and appreciated. 

There have been plenty of moments where this has happened. Something so powerful in the written word that my body reacts. The death of Ned Stark. The Red Wedding. The entire chapter "Speaking of Courage" from the THINGS THEY CARRIED. Sean Devine ruminating about his relationship with his father in MYSTIC RIVER. Act I, Scene III of FENCES. All moments where I reacted both emotionally and physically. Gasps and sobs that caused people around me to check on my well being. Even now, in reflection, I'm have allergies. That happened again whole reading "The Battery."

I don't know if it's my father's battle with cancer.

I don't know if it's my unbounded love of my wife. 

I don't know if it's being cooped up in a house for so long.

And maybe it's just a combination of some or all of these things. 

It's 24 hours later and I'm still thinking about it. The sounds of my family's shenanigans filling the house and making me smile. But I'm thinking about Jaime and Gini Concanower, hoping they get to enjoy as many moments like the one unfolding in my house right now.

Mr. & Mrs. Concanower, I doubt you'll read this, but if you do, know that we're rooting for you in Liverpool, NY. 

The Mixtape Era Part 2

A few days ago, I wrote about my love of the "mixtape era." I'm not huge on sharing my fiction on this page, but I thought I'd share a snippet of my 90s set YA coming of age novel, FRESH TRACKS (thanks to Aaron Starmer for the title), that's basically a novelization of my high school's "ski club." The frame work is going to be a mix tape. This is the omniscient opening to the novel. Enjoy and feel free to leave comments
Tape One: Blue Squares and Black Diamonds

Side A: Hart’s Way

1. Missed Opportunity-Hall And Oates

“Keep on missing each other

Our world's out of order”

The first time Ellie Brown and Jonah Cassatore met wasn’t supposed to be the first time they met. The first time was a bright, sunny afternoon in Blossom Meadows park in the summer of 1989. Ellie was trying her new Rollerblades out at the winding, asphalt trails at the park with her friend Cassie. They would’ve been hard to miss in the clunky boot-like skates and short shorts as they clumsily made their way around the park. Jonah and his friends were busy playing a complex, made-up sport involving tennis racquets, blue handballs and a rotating, often contradicting set of rules often made up on the spot by Jonah’s friend Chester that resembled a cross between baseball, cricket and tackle football. At one of his turns, Chester smacked the blue ball a mile. Jonah was supposed to misread it and bull into the brown haired girl just beginning to understand how to use a pair of Rollerblades. But that didn’t happen.

As if the Universe itself conspired against them, gravity seemed to lighten just in the spot where the large Jonah stood, making him far lighter on his feet than he ever had been so that instead of the ball bouncing over his head, he almost caught it. Almost. Instead he sent it careening in another direction, towards a sunbathing Rachel Michaelson, who Jonah instantly became smitten with when he saw her lying on a towel in her bathing suit.  

The second time was a cold, wet Friday night on the campus of Milstead High when Ellie’s’s high school, Giammatti High, was playing Jonah’s Milstead Titans. Ellie went to the game with her friends, piling into her beat up Bronco mostly to watch Cassie’s sort of boyfriend Johnny Camacho shred the Milstead defense and win the game. At halftime, they made their way to the Milstead side of the field for hot chocolate. The Milstead side was crowded and wet and on a slope. Somehow, the normally surefooted Ellie got turned around and disoriented, slipping on some mud and stumbling into a wet, muddy, sweaty mass of the uniformed Titans. She nearly fell when Number Seventy-Two plowed into her, nearly sending her sprawling except for a strong arm grabbing her and gently shoving her aside. Number Sixty-Seven, his painted face crammed into a white helmet, started to say something when one of his teammates barreled into him and said, “Come on, Braciole.” 

It was that close. In an abstract kind of way, they did meet. He was Sixty-Seven. She was Clumsy Girl. But really that’s not who they actually were. The rest of the night, after the game, Ellie wondered who the dark eyed Sixty-Seven was. He looked like he wanted to say something else, but he had a game to play and all. And Jonah thought about the cute girl with the ski jacket. It almost made him forget about seeing Rachel Michaelson making out with a kid from another school at an after game party a week earlier. And just as Ellie was about to go to the ticket booth for a program, she heard someone call her name. She turned and her jaw dropped.. It was Roger, her sort of ex-boyfriend, in a crisp Marine’s uniform. Sixty-Seven was forgotten. 

The third time was one of those super cosmic things where it seemed like the Universe was really conspiring to get them together but couldn’t quite get its shit together. Over the course of four days of Christmas Break, there were dozens of times that they should have met. A waitress at Friendly’s smoked two cigarettes instead of one before delivering the check to Jonah and his friends, causing them to miss Ellie’s arrival. Ellie dropping a ten-dollar bill in line at the record store just as Jonah and his best friend Meechie walked by. Jonah spilled hot chocolate on his lap just as Ellie pulled up next to him at a stop light near the mall. The two of them, in the same bookstore, looking at books on the opposite side of the display shelf like in a really bad romcom.  Ellie and Jonah were literally ships in the night. Ships maybe, just maybe, not meant to meet until that cold, gray late morning on the Hart’s Way chairlift at Black Mountain. 

The Mixtape Era

It's been a while. You would think that the midst of a massive quarantine would be the prefect time to write. Turns out that's not entirely true. I've been writing, but nothing consistent or cohesive. And definitely nothing worth sharing with anyone. A little while back, I had a very brief Twitter conversation about my unadulterated love of the "Mixtape Era" of the 80s and 90s. We live in a day and age that enthusiastically embraces nostalgia, it makes sense to take some time to talk about mixtapes.

I loved making mixtapes. Those slender plastic cases and toothed wheels were the very fabric of our teenage years and where we put our stories. We listened to them in stereo systems, boom boxes, Walkmen and, if you were lucky, car stereos. It was a glorious time where you waited with breathless anticipation for your or that special somebody's favorite song to come on the radio so you could record it. If you were good (I was), you could get it without recording the DJ introducing the song. (This was a serious faux pas.) Honestly, who could afford to buy all those tapes? Unless you joined Columbia House (I did) and gathered up those seven free cassettes/CDs for a penny.

I didn't half-ass my mix tapes. I was persnickety about the actual cassettes I used. I liked the funky, multicolored Memorex cassettes, usually 90 minutes in length. If you were tight, you could get 8-10 songs on a side. I actually preferred the longer 120 minute cassettes and eventually switched to the "chrome" cassettes, in the name of better quality. There was a plan, sketched out in my mind of what to put on that tape. If someone handed me a cheap tape, I'd scoff and buy one of the ones I preferred. It was a sign that this mattered, this was important and that I put effort in it for you, the listener. I like to think that they knew all of this.

I had a reputation for assembling mixtapes. I did't think of them as collections of music but epic stories. I'd create thematic "chapters" in my mixtapes with the occasional interlude of movie dialogue or scenes thanks to a stereo system and my mother's vast collection of pirated VHS tapes (Thanks Video Joan!) Side A might have one with songs like Johnny Gill's "Rub You The Right Way" and "If It Isn't Love" with an interlude of the "You've Lost That Loving Feeling" scene from Top Gun. The next section might continue the upbeat fun with "Brown Eyed Girl," Bon Jovi or "Magic Carpet Ride" by Steppenwolf. It was assembling a story and hunting through cassettes and CDs to find the right song in the right place on the mix.

I'd carefully write on the labels with my creative titles for each side. On the cardboard insert, I'd painstakingly write out each song and artist. I'd label "sections" if there were sections. I'd make sure the cassette was rewound and ready for play. Then I'd walk away, hoping they were happy with the result. I like to think that they were.

I know that vinyl is all the rage, but I miss cassettes. They were MP3 players before there were MP3s. With vinyl you don't have much in the way of choice while a home made mixtape gives you a procured collection of what you want to listen to. It's these ideas that continue today and may be why there is no cassette revival they way that vinyl does. And now mixtapes are playlists and easy as a drag and drop. But there's something missing, something impersonal about playlists. So, I made you guys a mixtape to enjoy.

I Had To Wait For It, But Man, It's Non Stop

Have you guys ever heard of this little musical called HAMILTON? It's pretty good.

Okay, that was a little more James Madison as opposed to Hercules Mulligan, but after several years of being completely obsessed with the cast album for the musical, thanks to Disney Plus, I was able to not just hear but see HAMILTON and it did not disappoint. It's been a week since watching it with my entire family and I'm still thinking about it. For two hours I was able to escape into one of the most important and well crafted pieces of art in my lifetime. So, let's discuss.

Lin-Manuel Miranda's Writing: Having listened to the cast album countless times, I already knew how tight the writing was, but watching it on screen, there isn't a wasted word, movement, action or note. It really is a study in economy in words and something all writers should watch to see how and, more importantly, why it's so important.

Weakness: This is the closest thing to a "hot take" that I have about the musical. LMM (as he'll be known from here out) is terrific, but he's by far the weakest part of the show. He's still a light years better lead than a lot of other musicals I've watched and, to be honest, I think he knows that. He gets the "I want" song and nails it, but anytime he shares the stage with Leslie Odom, Jr or Renee Elise Goldsberry, he's exposed. The bonus is that he's ALL CHARISMA and is comfortable in the role since he wrote it.

Fast and Loose History: Let's address the historical aspects. The play is based on a dense, massive 800 page plus tome and LMM obviously had to truncate, condense and pare what he didn't need to tell his story. (I'm only about half way through it.) He moves things around, cuts things and remolds history in order to fit the narrative and lyrical structure as he sees fit. This is actually is addressed in the second video here, where librettist John Weidman told LMM to "just write the parts you think are a musical." It's solid advice and good advice to any writer. Just write the parts you think you need to write. I've been told that there's more history in the play than you'd think, but I'm an English teacher and writer (or am a writer that's an English teacher), not a history teacher.

Aaron Burr, Sir: Leslie Odom Jr is a goddamned powerhouse. Every time he's on screen he's riveting and even though he's the play's antagonist (not villain), you're rooting for him. He gets not one, but two showstoppers: "Wait for It" and "The Room Where It Happens", and nails them both. His narration through the show grows in intensity and the sheer power of Odom's performance makes you want more from him. (It reminds me of Indina Menzel in WICKED.)

The Just Bros Hypothesis: A few years back, during the WINTER SOLDIER craze, I sort of became obsessed with the controversy of Cap/Bucky being in love was being "erased" from the canon or something like that. I felt that, while that would be an interesting idea, can't they just be bros? I'm all for representation in our media, but I feel that we need more non-toxic male bonding and need to show that two dudes can love one another and not be in love. It's not a well formed hypothesis but there it is. LMM's pretty heavy handed about the Hamilton/Laurens attraction (it's hinted at in the Chernow book too) and while I was on board with it for a while, I'll be honest. I prefer them to be "just bros." (This is a concept I need to flesh out, because I think there's something to this.)

Love Triangle: The love triangle between Alex, Eliza and Angelica is so much better when seen as opposed to listened to. It's a perfect example of how a performance can elevate writing. Angelica is heartbreaking to watch. She's desperately in love with him, but also reads Alex like a book. She sees his ambition that factors into his romantic intentions but that still can't stop her from falling for him. Eliza, played by Philippa Soo, is a stunning balance of strength and vulnerability. Angelica gets all the attention (Goldsberry's performance is part of that) but Soo's Eliza does all the heavy lifting. It's her that makes Alexander seem like a decent man and adds depth to the story. "Burn" is so much better on stage than on the cast album.

A Bunch of Baked Hams: Do you know what a "ham" is? Click here. I'll wait.

Sidebar for those of you that know what a "ham" is: You get the feeling that LMM had a browser tab opened to TV Tropes and just checked off all his favorites to use. Musicals by their very nature are troperiffic, but LMM is enough of a nerd of many levels that he clearly lampshaded enough tropes to fill a warehouse for the "top...men" to uncover and discuss. I am not one of those men.

Oh, you're done good. Back to it then:

LMM has basically created a "world of ham." And it makes the play even better. Lafayette, Hercules Mulligan, Thomas Jefferson and don't forget the King. Jonathan Groff destroys every time he's on stage. My daughter, a burgeoning theater junkie, has already stated that if they ever do HAMILTON at school, she's auditioning to play the king. Granted, they were probably turning it "up to eleven" for the film performance, but the way they are written encourages hammage.

And Finally, Let's Talk About The Stage: The first time my daughter and I saw the stage we both squealed. To see it in action was incredible and the "rewind" was just an incredible piece of story telling that isn't captured by the cast album. Watching it filled me with awe and inspiration.

A few random comments to wrap up:

• I've said it from the first time I heard about the musical: it proves that an epic fantasy musical could work and I might be the damn fool to write it.
• The sheer number of nods, winks and homages in this play is blurrying. Musicals, hip-hop, history, fantasy, etc. I could do three entries on these alone.
• Okieriete Onaodowan, who played Hercules Mulligan & James Madison, has become the model for the leader of my "black Rohirrim" in the "Epic Fantasy I'm Not Going To Write."
• The "ensemble" is just amazing and the elevated members that filled smaller roles was just brilliant.

If you didn't like this play  I weep for you. If you don't see it's value, then you just don't understand. 

I'm inspired again. As "Non-Stop" said, I'm writing day and night like I'm running out of time. 

When Life Imitates The Classroom

A pandemic is defined by the World Health Organization as a "worldwide spread" of a disease. The Center for Disease Control defines it as "an epidemic that has spread over several countries or continents, usually affecting large numbers of people." An epidemic, by comparison, is "an increase, often sudden, in the number of cases of a disease above that is normally expected." (This kind of shoots down the whole "but what about the flu" argument, but that's not what I wanted to write about.) But I know this for an assortment of reasons, the most significant being that just before winter break two weeks ago, I finished a unit on pandemics in my 12th grade English class. Despite the fact that it was the first time I'd ever done it and I created it from scratch, it was one of the best units I've ever taught. It was rough and needs some smoothing, but it was also wildly creepy. Because while we were talking and writing about pandemics in my classroom, there was a real one going on in the world. 

These are strange moments, but they have been remarkably satisfying. My students were kind of excited about the coronavirus. There's a feeling of "holy shit, I did some real teaching there....can I get an administrator to come evaluate me please??? I had students tell me that when family members talked about what was going on they were telling them basic information about how diseases like this are spread and that it's happened before here in the United States. (I'm sure they were a little clearer than what we heard on television tonight.) The basic theme of the unit was learning how to write informational texts in the APA style. Most of my students will likely wind up on a community college campus in the fall taking the requisite pschyes and sociologies with no idea how to write or cite them, so this was a crash course attempt at that. We read loads of informational texts about pandemics, several that sound a lot like what we're experiencing now. I've thought of a hundred ways to fix that the next time, but it worked well this time. We looked at "pandemic" fiction as well, folding in a healthy dose of zombie fiction into the mix. They read excerpts from THE STAND and WORLD WAR Z. These are books you should read (or not if you don't want to get scared about what's going on). 

WORLD WAR Z is intense, scary and unsettling, mostly because it's told as an oral history and that's scary as hell. I've never read a more troublesome book as THE STAND. What King does right in that book is incredible and life changing. What he does bad is so bad it makes you wonder how much coke he had snorted the day he wrote it. Both are terrifying because we are seeing the early beats of each novel unfolding before us and those of us with knowledge of fiction know where this is headed. The media battling one another over which information is more correct. Corrupt leaders, both public and private, taking advantage of the situation to grab power at any cost. Ill-prepared government response to a crisis because of either said corruption or just general ineptitude. (Or both in this case.) Zealots using this opportunity to sell their brand of crazy vodka (there's ALOT of H1N1 experts on social media today...and I was only checking my union's group page for some information, I'm still on a Lenten fast.) It's not hard to see why, some of us are starting to wonder when Captain Tripps is going to get us. 

These are things we talked about as story elements. As things that prop up in these types of story and how authors develop them into elements that express themes. We learned that the scariest type of horror fiction is the one that is not only plausible but possible. My students are still marveling that as we were learning about pandemics, a real one was happening right in front of our eyes and before we knew it, it was at our doorstep. And, they are scared, so every so often I have to take my teacher hat off and don the dad hat. Telling them to relax and that they just have to remain calm. Keep an even head. Wash your hands. Lay low for a while. It's not a hat I'm comfortable with in that setting. But being a teacher is all about wearing different hats. 

Bad Luck

This afternoon, I had started writing something else. An exciting new project that will never see the light of day. Maybe it will under a nom de plume. I don't know. It's early in the writing project and it may turn out to be nothing. I just don't know. A major problem I've been having lately is that I might have too many project monkeys throwing poop at me right now. Unfortunately, I don't have the time, energy or concentration to work on just one. I supposed it's a good problem to have. Maybe the reason the reason I don't want to concentrate on one is that I don't want to finish anything. But that's a talk I want to have right now and not the reason I'm writing this piece tonight. I'm writing because of this post about good luck by my buddy Brian. Go read it. I'll wait. 

When I was in my late teens/early twenties, I was a basketcase. (Some would say very little has changed.) My mom would often lament, "If not for bad luck, you would have none." I bought into that idea and it became my "Dante's Lament" in those days. I wanted to believe it. And I did. But there was more than that.

I made a lot of bad decisions at this time in my life, but if I needed something to break right, it would break left. Every time. It was easy to blame bad luck. It was certainly easier than blaming myself for all the things I was doing wrong in my life. I felt like I couldn't even make the right decisions because I knew that whatever I decided, it was going to go wrong. Where Brian mentioned Polyanna, I compare it to Charlie Brown. I was good ol' Chuck and life was the football. Lucy was luck or fate or whatever you want to call it. yanking the football away just as I was about to kick it. So my philosophy became diving into wrong blindly with no regard. I don't know as if I've ever quite recovered from those days and they remain a dark spot on my history. One I dredge up more often than I care to admit. (It actually reared it ugly head this weekend.)

Looking back, which I loathe doing, was my bad decisions combined with my cautiousness that I've talked about before that led to my life being a hot mess. Luck had very little to do with it. I wasn't willing to take chances and preferred comfort. I shied away from risk and chances. It cost me dreams, but I'm not going to retread those now. 

Luck was an easy scapegoat. When things are going good, our own humility tells us that it's not our talent or skill, that's boasting, but luck. We won't take credit for our own success. When things are going bad, especially when we are making really, really bad decisions and we definitely don't want to take responsibility for those decisions, we blame it on bad luck. Maybe it's time we accept responsibility for our selves (Christ, that sounds Randian, doesn't it?). Or maybe, we make like Sky Masterson and let it roll.

Buying Books

Last week I had a little time to myself. A rarity to say the least, so I decided to take a ride out to my local Barnes and Noble. I had a wallet full of birthday money and I was looking to buy some books, in particular the new book by former 315er Marshall Ryan Maresca, THE FENMERE JOB. And maybe a few more of his books while I was there. I have a two of his already vast catalog, one on my Kindle and the other safely tucked away on my bookshelf.

I treated myself to a venti iced Chai and a salted toffee cookie (I only ate half). To my joy, I discovered that Starbucks (at least the ones in Barnes and Noble) don't use straws anymore. This seems to annoy a lot of people, but having to bring ones own bags to the grocery store and not getting straws doesn't seem like a big deal to me. But that's another blog post, not this one.

I walked around the store, disappointed to find they did not have the book and for a massive store filled with thousands and thousands of books, it felt like there wasn't a lot of selection. Sure there was an entire five shelf rack of GAME OF THRONES books and a shelf and a half of WHEEL OF TIME. Three racks of tie-in novels, mostly related to WARHAMMER. I was saddened that there was no more Dungeons and Dragons fiction on the shelf, a cornerstone of my education as a writer. I perused the young adult shelves where I was deluged with a wave of darkness. Every book cover was black or dark blue or gray with almost identical silver writing. It was dismal. Is it that the "grimdark" subgenre has worked it's way down to young adult and we've decided that there really is no hope? Or was I just being oversensitive? I walked the aisles, moving through the traditional and romance titles before making my way through history and eventually over to the kids section. Even the writing shelves were dominated by Stephen King and B&N's own writing books. I was bummed.

I wound up walking out with my remaining chai and half a cookie. And that's all. And that made me sad. Me walking out of a bookstore without a book is an absurd thought. And a sad one. Is it that it's just easier to hit the Buy It Now button on Amazon and get exactly what I want? That's a good question. Fear not, dear reader, I did not go on without getting Mr. Maresca's book. I contacted the only local, independent bookstore I know, The Golden Bee Bookshop in the village of Liverpool and had them order me a slew of his books for me. So I'm supporting an artist that I love and a local business as well. I encourage you to do the same.

Dueling Fate, So You Don't Have To

If you've paid attention to me at all, either here or any of my social networks, you know that I LOVE STAR WARS (wait until I get around to my #99Inspirations blog posts). It's no secret that I thought the SEQUEL TRILOGY was terrific and thought that what they did for the series was not only important but necessary. My frustration with a portion of the fandom has been evident. Actually, my frustration with most fandoms is pretty evident. Most fans suck. But that 's not what this post is about. This post is about STAR WARS. But I can't discuss the sequel trilogy without discussing fandom.

Much of the criticism laid at the feet of the sequel trilogy is rooted in something I see every day in my classroom. People, especially "fans," want EVERYTHING spoon fed to them. They don't want mystery or something to think about. They want to be told that this bird is the representation of character one, that bird means nothing and have the bad guy spend a minute (because longer than that is the 21st century equivalent of a Shakespearean soliloquy) explaining how he raised fifty dragons without anyone knowing about it. Fans are so tied up into the stupidest minutiae and trivia. They really are fun at parties when they explain how the hyperdrive on the Corellian blockade runner is different than a J-type 327 Nubian class. They complain that things just showed up without explanation. I'm seeing it now over every little thing in the sequel trilogy and it's vexing. Look, we didn't know where Anchorhead or Dantooine were or what half those crazy creatures in the cantina were in 1977. (Hell, we only knew it was a cantina because the associated material told us it was.) We didn't know what happened on Ord Mandell or what Jedi could actually do until Yoda showed us in 1980. The Battle of Tenaab still remains a mystery 37 years later and we hadn't heard of the Sarlaac until we were hovering over it with our heroes.

The other part of it is pure entitlement. But I wrote about that when I wrote about Game of Thrones last May. To sum up: YOU DON'T GET TO WRITE THE ENDING. If that's what you want to do, WRITE your own MULTI-BILLION dollar intellectual property. But that's from a previous rant, not this one. This is about Star Wars. EPISODE IX in particular and more specifically DUEL OF THE FATES

DUEL OF THE FATES was the working title of a previous draft of EPISODE IX written by Colin Trevorrow and Derek Connolly that was ultimately handed off to JJ Abrams and others to rewrite for an assorted of very Hollywood reasons. It was morphed into THE RISE OF SKYWALKER and here we are. A few weeks ago, the Treverrow script leaked and was dissected all across Al Gore's Intrawebs and people were claiming it as the "ending we deserved." I read some of the articles and reviews. I was skeptical. About a week ago, I managed to get my hands on a copy of the script. (Okay, sounds cooler than it is. I just kept Googling and checking Reddit.)

I'm not going to give you a blow by blow breakdown of the screenplay, but I assure you, it wasn't the ending we deserved. It wasn't any better than THE RISE OF SKYWALKER. I finished it and felt kind of...well...MEH. It had some cool moments, but at best it was as good as TROS and at worst it was really awful. Someone on Reddit (I know!) put it best: it exchanged one kind of fan service for another. It's a first draft dated 12/12/16. I ordered the Art of The Rise of Skywalker book and I know that will have notes on drafts and what not. I can't wait for that so I can see the evolution of the story.

I always felt one legit criticism of TROS was the pacing of the first half. If that is your major criticism of the movie yet you felt the DOTF was the "ending we deserved," pacing wasn't your concern. It was something else. I always felt that TROS should've been "Infinity War-ed" into two movies. DOTF doesn't change that. It's a similar pace.

Treverrow gave more for Rose to do and he made the Knights of Ren actually scary. Rose's exclusion is one of the great sins of TROS. Having Luke's Force Ghost "haunt" Kylo was a nice touch, adding a degree of growing madness to the character. There's a suggested romance between Rey and Poe that is as flat on the page as it would be on screen. The implied romantic triad of Finn-Poe-Rey works much better on screen. The ground battle in Treverrow's script would've been epic, but I'm not disappointed by TROS's ending. There's a "Dark Side" Yoda that just kind of sucks and serves no purpose. A lot of the "good" stuff in Trevorrow's script made it into the movie we saw on screen and a lot of the crap got cut out. And we're better off for it.

Chasing The Buzz

A few Fridays ago my kids came home from school, as they do and, like a good parent, I waited until Sunday night to go through their bags. I waded through graded worksheets and school notices that I already read online. At the bottom of the pile was something that sent my heart racing and filled me with warm, fuzzy feelings of joyous nostalgia. The Scholastic Book Catalog. Never has a half dozen or so stapled sheets of colored newsprint brought so much joy.

I get high just smelling the newsprint and ink.

There's a great meme making the rounds about how we're all just chasing the buzz of the Scholastic Book Fair. And it's true. How many great books did we discover thanks to those brightly colored pages, not to mention the hundreds of different ways we learned to make paper airplanes, much to the chagrin of our teachers. The thing was there was no judgement, no shame in what you liked. There was nothing like ordering the books, bringing the money back in sealed envelopes and then waiting weeks for the books to arrive. The excitement of being called up to the front of the class to get them and the triumph you felt bringing them back to your desk. We really are still hunting that high, aren't we?

For a long time I sat at my kitchen counter, thumbing through the catalog, seeing what my kids marked. Then I looked for what I wanted. It was still kind of exciting. Cooper wanted lots of stuff, including things that are a little over his head. But we've started reading chapter books at night now because he wants to read. Natalie is Harry Potter obsessed and her markings were all over the place, still heavy on graphic novels and books that bordered on young adult. There's a conversation to be had about "older" middle grade and "younger" young adult but now's not the time to have that conversation and I may not be the one to start it. Another thought danced with the nostalgia I was feeling. A dark feeling. Why weren't any of my books in there?

It's a terrible feeling to have. But that's all bitterness and nothing else. I decided to enjoy the buzz. I spend too much time in Dante Hicks mode, lamenting the bad luck and decisions I've made. I'm writing, working through ideas. One day, kids will catch a buzz off of one of my books in the Scholastic Book Catalog.

2019: The Year In Review (Sort Of): The Writing

It's the start of a new year and that means it's time for a new notebook and a fresh start. This time of year always makes me think of the last Calvin and Hobbes comic strip ever.

I wrote a long, meandering draft in my notebook looking back at what I wrote in 2019, but that's not making a fresh start. That's looking back and it's certainly not what a boy and his tiger are telling us to do, is it. So instead, let's look forward to 2020.

I'm excited about this year, as far as writing is concerned. 2020 is going to be all about ambition. I feel energized, excited and focused about what I want to do. I'm not setting goals the way I used to...I've learned that's not the best way for me to accomplish anything. Last year, I discovered a new metric to measure my writing. Time not words. I can't thanks Mike Headley for that! I wrote for a total of 342 hours. That's a little less than an hour a day. That's not too bad. But I can do better. I need to do better.

I've thought a lot about how I want to approach writing in the coming year. It's not as simple as saying I want to write X number of hours. It's more than that. I need to think about logistics first. I had a great conversation last weekend with my friend Brian and I told him that I need to set aside a time, each day, dedicated to just writing. Brian wakes every morning and does three pages, every day. He doesn't measure in time. I do. I need at least an hour a day, so that's a goal I'm, setting.

I'd love to sit here and say that it doesn't matter the hour, but I already know that's bullshit. If I don't tell myself that I need to write from 10-11 every night (I'm not a morning guy, so don't suggest 5am), I'm going to put it off and ignore it. So I need to dedicate that time. I don't know if it'll be 10-11, but we'll see. I do know that it's got to be a solid hour. Add that to random times when I can find time to write (students working, after the kids go to bed, volleyball clinics, etc.), I should be able to hit 500 hours this coming year. But that's not all I need to do this year when it comes to my writing time.

In years past I've made lists of what I'd like to write and that hasn't served me in the least. I'm not going to share it here. These will be my "main" projects while I'm going to "schedule" additional projects as well. I've recently become enamored with AO3. I have a complicated history with fancfic but I've been won over by AO3 and decided to use that site to sort of stretch my writing legs a bit. This last year, I also wrote some stuff that never really saw the light of day and I want to continuing to do that along with a few other smaller projects that I've discussed with a few people. I also want to blog more.

For now, 2020 writing goals are to write at least 500 hours in 2020, try to write every day, set up a dedicated time each day to write and set aside certain times during the week to work on AO3 projects, my never seeing the light project and my blog while working on main projects.

Let's roll 2020.