Filed under impulsive pastimes …

May 28 2012
9 Comments
ask the experts, impulsive pastimes, news

Ask the Experts: Oppression and Propoganda

Senya Maximov came into my life through the Fulbright program at Missouri Southern. After I shared the only three Russian words I knew (da, spoceba, vodka), and after he shared perfect British English, shared language led to shared life. Joplin felt like Senya’s new home. Though he wanted to stay, his visa expired. I scheduled an interview at this new coffee joint on second and main called Cooper’s—they made a great pulled chicken sandwich, a rather unexpected virtue for a coffee shop. Senya popped open his kettle chips and I flipped on my recorder.

For twenty-six years Senya lived in Russia. “I grew up in Moscow,” he said, “and it’s a huge city. I was born in the Soviet Union.” He remembers enormous lines for loaves of bread, bone-bare shelves in shops and waiting necessities. “You’d come to a shop and one shelf, there would be like… chicken. And on another shelf, there would happen to be soda. So everyone would be buying soda and stand in line for it. Your neighbor would come home and say, ‘Hey! There’s fish today!’ And you would rush to the shop and try to get the fish before all the other people.” Continue reading →

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May 21 2012
3 Comments
impulsive pastimes, lancelot's roundtable miscellany, life, The Writing Life, Writing

“Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.”

Recent Work Miscellany

The following articles by yours truly will come out next month, this month or next year at this time:
  • “To Prevail or ‘How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Flak’” in Hollywood and Vine (article, May/June 2012)
  • “Poker in the Pokey” in Poker Pro (article, June 2012)*
  • “Stamping the Name” in Encounter (article, May 2012)
  • “Choices Make the Man” in Encounter (article, Spring, 2013)
  • “The List” in Encounter (article, Spring 2013)
  • “Remember My Death” in Encounter (article, Spring 2013)
  • for older stuff, see published works and projects under the Writer tab
*This was cowritten with another writer under the pseudonym Thom Schriver

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May 14 2012
6 Comments
Entertainment, gergia, impulsive pastimes, life, The Writing Life, Writing

On Being a Public Figure Before Peforming

This post is one of my unicorns.

What I mean is I have inched toward this post without warning of its approach for years. In Southern Illinois, as is the case in other parts of the world where they don’t junk cars but “let ‘em rust down,” high school morons hill hop. Hill hopping fits onto the roster of hick track and field, those games that need “don’t try this at home” stickers. Young sixteen-year old men (and women on the coasts) rev up their car engines and catapult over hilltops on country roads, daring other cars to meet them head-on. Thing is, not all other cars are chicken–some just play chicken. Another dozen teens will die this year meeting unseen cars while hopping hills.

Somewhere between hill hopping and unicorns lies this post. No one can catch a unicorn. Unicorns find you. No one expects to die hopping a hill in a Pontiac, but it happens. I’m blindsided by this post because for the last seven years, in the midst of all of my other writing, I have worked on my world of Gergia. No other novel existed–only Gergian books and notes and maps. If Rowling and Rothfuss can work on one series, win a writer’s contest and instantly publish a best seller, anyone can, right? That’s what I thought anyway, and so I pushed off all other projects — twenty novel ideas, dozens of short story ideas, screenplays, journalistic things — for THE SERIES.

The last few weeks, my writing slowed and stalled. I… Was… Crawling… Through… Sentences. It was block in the proper sense of the word–my discipline was trying to force words like water through a clogged toilet. I stalled at the 52,000th word. I would rework scenes, attack the story from another angle and stop at the same place. Another angle, more resistance. It was like trying to chop down a cherry tree with a brand new axe WHILE circling the tree like a foe from some spaghetti western. Only the tree was no bringer of cherries. It was this colossal inbred monster of its cedar mother and redwood father. My axe also turned out to be a cheap camp hatchet.

Something happened this weekend that changed all of that. This week I was armed with an axe and a maul…

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May 07 2012
12 Comments
Entertainment, impulsive pastimes, literature

A Comic Weekend

When I woke up early on Saturday to a barking spaniel, it took me a moment to realize what day it was. Since Mark was on a shoot and Ryan moved to Nome Alaska to watch huskies race across the arctic tundra, that left me and Nate to brave the waters of f…Fr…FREE COMIC BOOK DAY!

Now hold up, hold up.

Before you all write comparison and contrast essays about this post and the last one, let me say that I’ll drop this post and throw down right here with anyone who says graphic novels are not literature. One, you’re talking to the guy who’s reading through the Harvard Classics. (Side note: Yes, I’m still on Paradise Lost. No, I haven’t given up). I’m no lit-genius, but I think my literary opinion weighs in more than, say, the gal who offered the tip of her light saber to her infant for suckling purposes or the dude who came to FCBD sporting legit-replica stormtrooper armor. (Not that I’m against dressing up like a stormtrooper. In fact, if you choose to dress up for something like Free Comic Book Day or a midnight showing, what better choice than a stormtrooper, a bugger, a death eater, Spiderman, Bluebird or anything else that covers your face?) As a self-proclaimed lit boy, I say graphic novels count as legit-lit for similar reasons that screenplays count. Two, take your pick of brilliant books. Continue reading →

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Apr 30 2012
2 Comments
Entertainment, humor, impulsive pastimes, Writing

Tomorrow, I Work for Free

Well I scribed postscripts on every post between the ninth and now to remind all of you people in need of writing, editing and story that I work for zero dollars tomorrow, May first. Since this is a rare thing, since so few people truly grasp the gravity and abstraction inherent in this sweeter-than-sweet concept of “zero dollars,” a concept other people in America refer to as “free,” I decided to draw an educational picture of zero dollars.

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Apr 23 2012
2 Comments
Entertainment, impulsive pastimes, music, poetry

Oh My God

Since this is a platform first for my business, I try to keep spiritual/political/inflammatory things from here. I typically fail in an epic sort of way. However, as many of you saw on the sociable networkings this week, I — a soon to be twenty-five-year-old man — came down with THE SHINGLES. I capitalize it so it feels like crappy horror film from the forties.

I’ll spare you the details and the complaining.

INSTEAD

I’m posting lyrics from a song I discovered this weekend. Sharing it for four reasons.

  1. It refreshed my soul when I was down and if we can’t share what moves us, then what are we doing?
  2. The 20th Century Poetry post was well-received by some newcomers, and I think the last half of this song does some interesting things poetically as far as song lyrics go. The first half’s not that great, but it’s necessary to set up the end.
  3. Last year, I changed the subtitle of this blog to “Crossing Every Threshold.” Though you all will one day find out how that fits into my novels, I try to cross the lines people put up to divide one another. I’m not talking about petty edginess or rebellion. I just know all kinds of people and care about all kinds of things. Under that assumption, this is just one more threshold for us to walk across together. You might be surprised at what you find.
  4. I typically care little for this band, but for songs like this we have a song-lyric book market. I’ll save the band name till the end:

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Apr 18 2012
19 Comments
book review, Entertainment, impulsive pastimes, literature, poetry

The Penguin Anthology of 20th Century American Poetry

I used to be a poet. Of sorts. At least I used to think of myself in that way when I was young. Now as an adult I rarely find time for poetry, rarely make time to think high thoughts and enjoy language for its primary purpose: intimacy. We tend to favor language for persuasion and information, but those came long after its first purpose of raw communication. When people say “Did I use that right?” or “Is that even a word?” they’re worried about information or persuasion. Typically in those moments where we worry about the “right” word, communication was already achieved and the usagery of proper-fide grammatics matters little. Ironically poetry, one facet to the language of intimacy (a space shared with coos, sighs, moans and prayer), depends on “the right words in the right order.” At least to Coleridge…

That realization and a tip on poetry reading threw me back into the game. Now I’m reading again, but not to sound smart or to get information or to persuade some girl to date me. Now I read to find those garnets and emeralds in the riverbed of poetic thought that show the way to diamonds—those phrases, those thoughts that express what it means to be human.

I started with my American anthology, moved to my Major British Writers tomes for  Rime of the Ancient Mariner and the version of Faerie Queen edited by none other than Clive Staples Lewis. Eventually, however, I started to realize that other than the New Yorker and the Missouri Review, I’ve yet to read work by living poets who influence the craft. My poetic imagination (until this week) grew no older than 1967–the death of Langston Hughes. That was forty-five years ago. That discovery threw my poetic imagination into a mid-life crisis. Continue reading →

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Apr 16 2012
1 Comment
Entertainment, film, impulsive pastimes, movie review

Titanic: The Real Heart of the Ocean

Took Kiddo to the centennial showing of Cameron’s Titanic Saturday. I got my money’s worth-it held up well after all of these years. Not the boat, the film. Boat still sank.

I expected the post-production 3D rendering to ruin the experience for me, but I conceded to take Kiddo anyway. After all, she never saw it in theatres and she’s a Titanic FA-REAK. One project in a college history class – that’s all it took. That and the terror that I might die from hypothermia. I still remember working night shift at the hospital on a relatively slow night and getting this call:

“Baaaabe!”

“What’s wrong?” I asked. “Who died?”

“I don’t want you to!”

I laughed. I’m not the most sensitive person when I’m caught off guard. “I’m dying?”

“No, but you could. Can I see you?” I could hear her crying.

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Apr 10 2012
6 Comments
book review, creativity, Entertainment, impulsive pastimes, literature

The Independent Book Blogger Award

Goodreads believes book bloggers start and energize that conversation we all love: “Have you read anything good lately?” To reward those of us who keep that conversation thriving, Goodreads created the Independent Book Blogger Award. Four bloggers in four categories (Adult Nonfiction, Adult Fiction, Young Adult and the Publishing Industry) will win a FREE pass, airfare and hotel room for BookExpo America in New York City.

There’s no way I’m gonna win this thing, but I’m all about underdogs. I cheered for Kansas this year like I cheered Butler on last year, and I’m not a basketball guy. At all. I’m pretty sure of all the things I do in the world, my basketball skills are way in the negatives. If there was a character sheet for Lance Schaubert and all his skill points were distributed according to what I’m good at and what I’m terrible at, I’d be so colossally terrible at basketball that the moment my character tried to shoot a free throw, he’d crit-fail and accidentally kill himself. Under. Dog.

As I was saying, so many fantastic bloggers exist, I won’t win. However, I entered anyway because, well, underdogs should always enter. When enough underdogs enter things like this, eventually we get some inspiring David-verse-Goliath story worth a retelling or two. This underdog entered in the fiction category because we talk about fiction here more than children’s, nonfic and the publishing industry combined. There’s five sample posts, five glimpses at what we do here. As always, I love you guys. I’ve got the most supportive readership in the world, small as you are. You’re great people.

Voting opens today and lasts a paltry thirteen days. That leaves us little time to shock and awe the world with our dogged under-ness. Three ways you can stand with the underdog:

  1. Vote [for me].
  2. Share [this post].
  3. Revel [and bask in the glory].

Vote for this blog for the Independent Book Blogger Awards, because you’re an underdog kinda person too.

Vote

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Apr 09 2012
9 Comments
creativity, impulsive pastimes, production, Storyssentials, The Writing Life, Writing

On May First, I Work For Free

What May Day means for me:

From Chicago to Paris to New York City, the History of May Day seasons our past with workers’ revolutions. This May first, millions of people worldwide will take part in a General Strike against a broken system, asking the question: what would a day be like without 99% of us? Those who suffer under economic injustice will refuse to work, go to school, do housework or even shop. Instead they’ll hit the streets.

Those who enjoy their work – freelancers like me – will still work all day, but for free. Consider it a one-day jubilee where everyone gets a holiday and a hall pass. On May Day I will offer my writing, editing and story consultation services but I won’t charge you a cent.

What May Day means for you:

Some of you have procrastinated hearing critique on your screenplays and stories. Others of you wanted my help, but because of life circumstances you couldn’t afford my rates. On May 1st, I remove the roadblocks of procrastination and price so that we can get your ball rolling together. You get what you need, but for free.

Here’s how it will work:

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Apr 02 2012
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Entertainment, impulsive pastimes, music, music review, video

William Fitzsimmons & Denison Witmer Live

At the jewelry store we used to call them A.B.C. gifts: anniversary, birthday, Christmas. My bride Kiddo included Valentine’s, New Years and St. Patrick’s day in this one, but A.B.C. V.N.Y. St. P. sounds like some store acronym for a New York city shop or a military outpost. As A.B.C. gifts go, this one was iconically Kiddo.

A man one inch shorter and three pounds lighter than my smallest friend walked out and played “Little Flowers.” Oh. That must be Denison Witmer. He looks good. Thought he’d be taller. The song chilled my bones. Was I really at a concert after all these years? More than that, at a Denison Witmer/William Fitzsimmons concert? Wait, better – was I really sitting on top of the stage next to my wife at said concert with only the length of a man between me and the musicians? I’m no fanboy nor groupie and I refuse to idolize people. That’s not what I’m getting at with the questions.

I’m talking about intimacy and soul.

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Mar 26 2012
1 Comment
creativity, Entertainment, impulsive pastimes, production

Like Grandma Schaubert Used to Make: Rainbow Cobb Salad

We owe Amy Malone for this recipe, though we modified it a bit. Okay, Kiddo modified the food.
I modified the words…

Necessary Equippage:

  • 1 head lettuce (severed from the neck)
  • 1 bag fresh spinach
  • 6 oz. of that tricolor spiral pasta
  • 1 bag sweet peppers
  • 1 pack grape tomatoes
  • 1 pack baby carrots
  • 1 block of marbleized Colby-Jack
  • 1 cucumber
  • 1 package of turkey bacon
  • 1 bottle of magical Italian dressing (sprinkle fairy dust from your spice cabinet if your store doesn’t carry the magical variety)

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Mar 19 2012
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creativity, Entertainment, impulsive pastimes, production

What I Learned Gardening 240 Square Feet of Weeds

Never give an impulsive overdoer like me a machine like a tiller. Last year could have ended worse. They could have gifted me a dynamite manufacturing machine or an automaton or a printing press for crying out loud. In the end, I suppose the tiller was the mildest option come springtime.

Blades dug into the soil as I pushed it and rocked out to Denison Whitmer’s Are You a Dreamer? album. The metal flung rocks and old milk jugs and a random wooden palate out of the earth. This was good, this getting the rocks out since you can’t really rock out to Denison Whitmer. Rather, Whitmer unwound my day into the softening turf. I lost track of time and ended up tilling, as the title says, two playrooms worth of backyard. Continue reading →

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Mar 12 2012
2 Comments
creativity, impulsive pastimes, literature, production

Artistic Delusions of Grandeur

There you sit among the crowd at the most prestigious award ceremony for your craft. The host takes hold of the podium. “And the winner is…”

He opens the envelope and reads your name. People stand and applaud wildly as you walk forward and give some moving acceptance speech.

We artists dream this up at some point. It may come in a a vision, a daydream or delusion but regardless we’re surrounded by all the people we respect and care about and they’re telling us how awesome of a human being we are to achieve such genius. Call them “fans” or “mentors” or “judges” or whatever, but they’re there, tucked inside our fantasies.

For me, the delusion happened like this: I read a leadership book that told me I needed a BHAG – a Big Hairy Audacious Goal. Never the one to be outdone, I decided I wanted to write forty works of revolutionary quality spanning eight or more genres by the time I die. Big. Hairy. Audacious. Goal.

Did I mention audacious?

Continue reading →

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