Oregon Literary Review: sneak preview

I hope to release the review on Friday morning.

Highlights of the new issue include:
--Jazz by Asuka Kakitani, winner 2006 BMI Charlie Parker Jazz Composition Prize (score, audio).
--New music by Greg Bartholomew, Alden Jenks, Jose Contreras (score, audio).
--Two full-length plays (with interview) by OyamO, award-winning NYC playwright (presently playwright-in-residence, University of Michigan).
--Essays by Carla Perry, Andrew Coburn, Lynn Jeffress, a new column by Evelyn Sharenov.
--Fiction by Melanie Jennings, Jan Baross (with interview).
--Poems by Alison Apotheker, Christopher Howell, Dorianne Laux, Judith Barrington, Ursula K. Le Guin, Marvin Bell. Two high school poets honored by the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts.
--Translations by George Evans, Sam Hamill, Lars Nordström.
--Photography by Adam Bacher.
--Paintings by Peter Schwartz.
--A literary and visual art collaboration by Craig Van Riper and Suzanne Brooker.
--Storytelling by Mara Stahl (audio).
--Video Arts, a new section edited by Julie Mae Madsen (video).
--and very much more. 160M of literature, hypertext, art, music, and hypermedia.

So long, editor; howdy, writer!

Putting editing chores on the back burner now and becoming a writer again. I can finish up the review without obsessing about it. First up on the writing table, the screenplay I've been drafting, half done, should be able to finish in a few days of good work. Then, with it on the rewriting burner, I can focus on the Sally novel and see where I'm at, having some distance from it now, and see if its complex structure still makes sense to me.

The other thing I have to do is prioritize my various reading projects, especially two that are research for future works.

I'm feeling better today but having had one relapse, I'm prepared for another. I do have to get out this afternoon, to my office to upload the large music files.

I've said this before but this is a dynamite issue. My editors made great choices.

Almost home

Finished coding the music section this morning. Only two things left: uploading the music files, which I'll do at my office this afternoon; and getting the video arts material from my editor. A wrap is getting close!

This morning, if I have my energy, I'm getting back to some of my own writing projects. But first, I need more sleep. Been up since 3 working on this sucker. Onward.

Quick service

Last week I wrote about looking for Columbus and Other Cannibals by Jack Forbes and discovering it's out of print and selling on the net for $100 to $500. So I searched for a copy in a library and the closest I could find was at Eastern Oregon University, which has an exchange policy with PSU. So I requested it, and here it is, arriving today. I'll pick it up tomorrow when I go in to do my large music uploads (assuming I feel up to it). Since I really want to read this, but surely won't pay three digits for it, this has worked out nicely.

Music uploads, a bit of page formatting for the section, and waiting to hear from our new video arts editor ... and I'll be home free. A long haul. But we don't do it again for six months. In fact, already have a play submission for the summer issue.

Low energy, but enough to read if not write.

Progress

Well, I think I have everything ready in the review except the Music and Video sections. Actually music is one of the easier sections from my end but I have large uploads, which I need to do at the office. Not feeling up to going out today. Still taking it easy, finding it hard to shake this virus.

The battle of the sexes: three sonnets

Imagine, if you will, a body tight
with stress; add a mind pickled with booze;
throw in a heart grown cynical by night,
by day asleep; put in the daily news
to taste; cowardice will keep the blend
alive, no falling soufle here; somewhere
there must be a past, memories of when
the world was right; yes, the mouth can drool
a bit; a tired dick grotesquely hangs
its chicken's neck southward like a fool
(a dick always points northward when it bangs):
all this - and then let enter Special She.
Witness resurrection of the He.


"A woman needs a man like a fish
needs a bike," she said before she kissed
him on the lips. Wondering what he missed,
he kissed back, which he later wished
he hadn't done because the police just stared
at him as he stammered through the story
that was his version of events, how sorry
he was about the whole thing, more weird
than anything else, there had been no rape
at all, unless his tongue was charged, and she
had started that, this he guaranteed,
he was a gentleman and not an ape.
Q: what in common have King Kong and Tristan?
A: a fish, a bike, an ape . . . Woman and Man.


When love is in the heart, the body waits
its turn. The fire in the heart can burn
without a need to touch: when lovers learn
this silence, they learn much. When passion baits
too quick a touch, then lovers can create
the parameters of their very doom.
The body when ablaze has little room
for heart - despite the myths of how we mate.
Patience is a virtue when in love.
The best that we can be takes time to grow.
True lovers find a way to rise above
their own desire, and to hold it so.
But ah!, when body gets its turn to speak,
the bed is all ablaze for weeks and weeks . . .

Charles Deemer

These are from Seattle Sonnets.

Making progress

Finished the poetry/translations section this morning, which is always the most difficult section to format. Not sure if I have energy to do more editing today. May take a break, then practice piano and look at my current screenplay. I need to go to my office to deal with the composers since the audio files are too large to upload here at home (with my dial up). But I still have some prose and scripts to finish up here.

The review is beginning to look nice.

Hanging in

Had something of a relapse yesterday and didn't get as much editing done as I'd like. Up early this morning to get at it and finished the poets. On to the translators (in this issue, from Greek, Swedish, Haitian/French, Spanish, French) and composers. But first, back to bed.

Elf

Within the parameters of its genre, a Christmas fantasy, here is a delightful family film, full of comic moments, swiftly paced and logical within the structure of its promises ("a story is a promise"). I never would have watched this on my own but H decided to watch it, and after a long day of editing, I figured I could fall asleep in front of this as easily as in front of anything else, but the narrative quickly grabbed me and held my interest. Professionally and nicely done.

The God Theory

I like to check the schedule of the cult late night radio program Coast to Coast AM (made famous by Art Bell) to see if any credentialed scientists are guests. If so, they usually offer highly stimulating discussions and Bernard Haisch's appearance last night/this morning was no exception. Author of The God Theory: Universes, Zero-point Fields, And What's Behind It All, Haisch presented a stimulating synthesis of hardcore science and spirituality that was so intriguing I just ordered his book (before my resolutions take effect!) and also sent off a copy as a Christmas gift.


Most of the guests on this radio show strike me as not-quite-deranged but the scientists who are not afraid of "fringe" subject matter are among the more fascinating minds around today. For this reason, I applaud the show.

Zero Sum Universe

Somewhere between the carnage on the road in Baghdad
and the swollen face of the unhappy wife up the street
sits a boy at a piano sending musical chills through the mad
corridors where the bodies have been stacked. Dead
meat.

Somewhere between the decapitated head of the latest
victim and the still body in the doorway of the bank,
a woman climbs a mountain because she appreciates
the sweat and struggle. At the summit she gives thanks.

Somewhere between the high and the low, the best
and the worst, between heaven and hell, all the rest
of us live out our small important lives,
finding the spaces in which we somehow survive.

Charles Deemer

Radio highlights

Some highlights from public radio this week:

• Great American Writers and Their Cocktails
  
• Scott Simon on An 'Unsettling' Holocaust Debate in Iran

Editing chores

Been working in code all morning, getting poets online for the new review. About a quarter of the way through them. My goal is to be online with the issue before Christmas, and if I work a few hours each day, I should make it. But I'm scolding those editors who sent me everything at the last minute instead of when they knew they had accepted it. Last issue went much better in this regard.

All the same, it's likely our best issue yet, and this is a great motivating factor in getting through the grunt work.

Running at about 75% today, every day a bit more. Need to remember my own work amidst all this editing activity. Onward.

The pursuit of happyness

My wife and I came out of this movie with the same question: how can a film based on such an extraordinary true story be so disappointing? The film has high production values: good acting, good cinematography. But there's a weak link, and it's this: the screenplay! There is no story density here, nothing beyond a single thread that we quickly understand, and after that everything is repetition, repetition, repetition, and finally it gets old and, yes, boring. What this film needs are some twists and surprises along the way.

Why didn't anybody catch this in development? Maybe for some reason there was too much reliance on the "true" story at the expense of the "dramatic" film. Or maybe the fact that the writer and director are the same person reduced the usual amount of collaboration that goes into fine-tuning a script, the writer/director being blind to his own faults. Whatever it was, everything wrong with this movie, which feels long and repetitive, begins with the screenplay.

From Fortune magazine, here's an article on
the incredible story of Chris Gardner.

Highlights

Asuka Kakitani conducting jazz orchestra

John Nugent has put together another first rate music section for the review, including -- and am I excited to see this! -- Asuka Kakitani's Dance #1, which is the 2006 recipient of the Charlie Parker Jazz Composition Prize. We're publishing both score and mp3 of a performance. This means future jazz contributors will be in the very best company, hopefully a real draw for us. Great work, John!

Storms

We had quite a storm pass through last night, knocking out our power for a while.


The most stressful power outage I ever experienced happened in the mid-80s. I'd just been commissioned to write my first hyperdrama, although no one knew what to call this new form of theater at the time. All I knew was that the play would be performed in the Pittock Mansion, an extraordinary space to write for, and that the narrative would split so scenes would happen simultaneously throughout the mansion (at one point, 8 scenes on 3 floors would be happening at once!). I was calling the project "simultaneous-action theater." The original offer was for me to lead a team of writers in developing this but since the company wanted to open in a year, I convinced the artistic director (Steve Smith) that it would be more efficient to let me write this alone. No committee meetings to slow things down.

It took me a while to get started (see my essay What Is Hypertext?) but once I decided on a plan of attack, I was off and running. To focus on the project, I rented a cabin on Wallowa Lake for a month (at the time, they gave artists an incredible deal -- Joseph had not become artsy-fartsy yet). Man, what a fine month this was! Writing at all hours, boating on the lake for a break, kind and curious lake residents leaving me food and wine at the door ("We have a writer on the lake!" It was a big deal then.).


One afternoon as I was writing, I saw a thunderstorm forming over the lake, dark and menacing. I kept working. In these early PC days, I recall reading that a sudden loss of power could lose what you were working on or even damage your computer -- but I was in the heat of creation and kept working. Thunder and lightning started but I was oblivious to it all. Then pow! a blast of thunder, and I lost all power. My computer shut off, of course -- and that's when it occurred to me that I might have lost my work. I was near the end of my month, and if I damaged my floppy disk I was in trouble (I had a 2-drive Kaypro: programs ran from one disk, data stored on the second, i.e. no hard drive).

It took about three hours for the power to be restored, a very stressful time. I sat at the window, watching the storm, drinking wine, and imagining all kinds of horror if I lost all my work. But when the power returned, nothing had been lost.

The play opened, the most spectacular opening of my career (I wore a white tuxedo and my photo made the society page for the first and only time), an immediate sellout at $100/ticket on opening night, $50 thereafter, unheard of for Portland in those days. Later a Seattle magazine called Chateau de Mort the 2nd most important cultural event in the NW for the year. And I became addicted to hyperdrama.

Further reading:

• The New Hyperdrama
• What Out, Mama, Hyperdrama's Gonna Mess With Your Pittock Mansion!

Piano

Tomorrow is the last class of the term. We get a month off before winter term begins, but obviously I'll continue to practice. A good term! Got my confidence up that I can do this, managed to gain some patience in letting things happen at my hands' pace not my head's. I think I'll be staying in this class for the foreseeable future. Next fall I plan to add a second, Music Theory, a year-long sequence.

Still feeling better but on guard against a relapse like H had.

Oregon Literary Review

Although we have six months to put together an issue, a few of my editors like to give everything to me at the end of the cycle. Consequently I am buried under in grunt work. I hope I can get the new issue out before Christmas. It's a great issue, however, which is ample motivation for Internet grunt work. All the same, I am running out of energy after only a few hours work this morning and thinking seriously of going back to bed. Surely not at 100%. But over 50%, I think. Onward zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Golden Globes

The nominations are out.

BEST MOTION PICTURE – DRAMA

BABEL
Anonymous Content Production/Una Producción De Zeta Film/Central Film Production; Paramount Pictures/Paramount Vantage

BOBBY
Bold Films; The Weinstein Company

THE DEPARTED
Warner Bros. Pictures; Warner Bros. Pictures

LITTLE CHILDREN
New Line Cinema; New Line Cinema

THE QUEEN
A Granada Production; Miramax Films

All the nominations.

I've only seen two of the best film nominations, so won't make a prediction yet. The gala affair is January 15th.

Columbus and other cannibals

Heard mention of this book by Jack Forbes, thought I'd check it out. No local library had it. Using Bookfinder, found a dozen used copies ranging in price from $78 to over $500 -- for a 160 page book that's less than 15 years old! Library search found a copy at Eastern Oregon University, and I requested a loan to Portland State University. Need to get all the "new" books I can before my resolutions take effect ha ha.

I've noticed how out-of-print small press books can skyrocket in price. A slim early volume of my brother's poetry, which he sold for $1, is three-digits now.

Columbus and Other Cannibals

A Review 1998 by Bruce D. Olsen.

Columbus and Other Cannibals: The Wetiko Disease of Exploitation, Imperialism and Terrorism (New York: Autonomedia/Semiotexts, 1992). 160 pp.


Subtitled The WETIKO Disease of Exploitation, Imperialism and Terrorism, this is one of the most important books I have read. It examines the subjects of aggression, violence, imperialism, rape and so on, not just from a Native American perspective, but from a perspective as uncontaminated as possible by assumptions created by the very wetiko (the word for cannibal in the Cree language) disease being studied. Most significantly, the author's central premise is that these evils are not simply "bad" choices which men make, but are the symptoms of a genuine, very real, epidemic sickness, a cannibal (wetiko) psychosis. People who exhibit these symptoms are insane (unclean) in the true sense of the word, they are mentally ill. "I shall argue that Columbus was a wetiko," Forbes writes, "that he was mentally ill or insane, the carrier of a terribly contagious psychological disease, the wetiko psychosis." He defines cannibalism as "the consuming of another's life for one's own private purpose or profit," a term which includes the subjugation of the Native Peoples of this continent, the genocide of Nazism, the pollution of our environment and contemporary pornography. The last chapter offers ways for the individual to recover from this all-too-common disease. It has an excellent bibliography which is useful for further study.


The book is a refreshing, insightful, informative and stimulating look at "Western civilization" and is well-researched. This is a must-read for all non-Indians. Jack D. Forbes is Professor of Native American Studies at the University of California at Davis.

Goose Necks of the San Juan River

I am long overdue for a visit to Utah to see the Goose Necks of the San Juan River, which is the most awe-inspiring spiritual place I've ever visited. Forty years ago we camped on the bluff before there was anything more up there than an outhouse.

Need to fly to Salt Lake City, rent a car, and head out if time is too tight to drive from here. But I definitely need to do this in a summer very soon.

Eureka!

At what point did I realize I was a failure?
I think it was an afternoon in the park,
tramping through leaves on my way home after
coffee, pleasantly mindless, sharing remarks

with myself about the goals of a writing life.
There was a story to finish and a story
to begin. Life was good. I had a home, a wife,
a dog: little in life with which to disagree.

I passed a soccer field alive with kids
and cheering parents. I took a bench to watch.
Here I felt the kind of energy that rids
the soul of doubt: even if a kid botched

a kick, the parents cheered no less loudly
than for heroes and stars. Here’s the perfect
audience, I thought; a writer would be proud
to have such readers, blind to your defects.

But readers are not family. Their fickle tastes
come and go like the ball. They change affection
on a whim, feeling love one moment, distaste
the next. Only family is in blood written.

I have raised no family. My archive is large—
but childless. My books do not beget more
books. My blood does not rise with the charge
to reproduce my kind, steadfast and cocksure.

On the field, the kids yell after a score.
I cheer as well, as eager as a family guest,
and then go home to brood and pace the floor--
here with my books, my room, an empty nest.

Charles Deemer

Mountain climbing

Three experienced mountain climbers are lost atop Mt. Hood, apparently in ice caves waiting for a break in blizzard weather. Rescuers can't get high enough to look for them because of the extreme weather. It's a race against time, fate, and the will of the gods.


I'm not a mountain climber, although I have climbed one genuine mountain in my life: Mt. Timpanogos in Utah. It's a cultural tradition to climb this if you are from Utah, as my former wife (the model for "Sally") was. I didn't like it much. I loved the aspen grove we walked through early on. I loved the scenery. I didn't like the glacier, though it was summertime, and I especially didn't like it on the way down when "Sally" suddenly jumped off the trail to slide down the slide of a glacier, saying "let's do the short cut." That was one scary slide for yours truly. Later her family marveled that it had taken us so long to get up and back -- some kind of record for slowness, I guess. They're a family of over-achievers (for example, all of her aunts had law degrees, and none had ever practiced law!: you went to college and became and doctor or lawyer, then you got married and raised a family. Wow.)

The future Sundance

"Sally"'s father headed (as in patriarch) the clan/corporation that sold the "family land" to ... guess who? ... Robert Redford, which he developed into Sundance. There's a waterfall in the area named after her grandfather. Real pioneer stock. Selling to Redford was a mistake, most of the family thinks now, even though he developed it with more care than most would. It still ain't the same. I was fortunate enough to spend time in the family cabins before Redford entered the picture, when it was remote, gorgeous country indeed.

View from Spencer's Butte

At any rate, once was enough for me. I prefer uphill hikes, like "climbing" Spencer's Butte in Eugene. I used to do that a lot when I was in graduate school.

Premature excitement

I'm looking forward to the new year and my "new plan" based on three literary resolutions:

• buy no book for six months
• check no book out of the library for six months
• read no new book for six months, reading only things I've already read (important exception below)

Maybe, just maybe, in those six months, I can begin the huge reading project I've had for years, reading in succession: Chapman's 17th C. translation of The Iliad, The Odyssey, followed by Kazantzakis' sequel -- a few thousand pages of narrative poetry there? I'm not getting any younger, so if I'm going to do this, I'd better begin! But what a nice image, walking around with Chapman under my arm as the Pop Culture universe screams all around me. I have the first two books on my shelf. Long out of print, they got republished maybe five or six years ago and I was among the first humans to purchase them. I'd read bits and pieces in anthologies and loved Chapman's lyrical translation. This is slow reading, at the pace of reading aloud, but filled with gems to put to memory.

On first looking into Chapman’s Homer

MUCH have I travell’d in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star’d at the Pacific—and all his men
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

John Keats

And, finally, this ...

Young men think old men are fools; but old men know young men are fools.

George Chapman, All Fools. Act v. Sc. 1.

Age & energy

Harriet and I were chatting yesterday about how easily we tire at our age when we're ill. We have less energy when well, of course, but the difference isn't all that big a deal. But get sick, man, the slightest activity can floor you. One of the worst things about aging.

Bad Astronomy Blog

I am an astronomer, writer, and skeptic. I like reality the way it is, and I aims to keep it that way. My real name is Phil Plait, and I run the Bad Astronomy website.

You can find Bad Astronomy here. He has fun debunking the debunkers and keeping reality real. Also publishes very neat photos of the cosmos.

Discovering writers

One of the joys of editing, the greatest joy, is discovering talent. In the current issue of Oregon Literary Review, for example, is a short story Collection 300 by Julie Mae Madsen, whom I discovered because she had season tickets to the opera behind ours and because her boyfriend was a student of mine. A closet writer at the time, she now plans to get an MFA and have a career in writing.

Similarly I have a discovery in the upcoming issue, Helen Harding. A recommendation. Harding wrote 365 short shorts in 365 days and we are republishing eight of them in our upcoming issue. You can find them all at Story A Day. Harding has a life many writers would envy: retired, living in a van, traveling and writing and publishing on the net or via print-on-demand. Another example of the extraordinary talent that slips unnoticed through the mainstream publishing industry.

I put on my editor's hat for a few hours this morning, but I'm exhausted now and suppose I'll tumble back into bed. But at least I have a good start on wrapping up the new issue.

Desperate Crossing: the untold story of the Mayflower

Recorded this on Thanksgiving and watched it tonight, this being a day of staying in bed, napping, watching films. It's quite good, both dramatic and informative. They made specimens of our species considerably tougher back then. No way would I or anyone I know survive a trip like that.

History channel page.

October Sky

In the "feel-good inspirational" genre of films, it doesn't get much better than October Sky. It's all here: kids chasing dreams, the inspirational teacher, local culture conflicts, family conflicts (son v. dad), teenage romance. And the nerds beat out the jocks. Twists, setbacks, victory.

I rewatched this today, still too sick to do anything more ambitious. Since it was my 4th or 5th viewing, I was able to focus on technical things, and craft of the film, and it's first rate within the confines of the genre. The time factor is developed seamlessly, an area student writers always have trouble with, usually by paying too much attention to time details. Here several years are covered with only an initial grounding of the date, October 1957, and then context tells us what we need to know -- and only what we need to know. Scene efficiency is also first rate in the storytelling here. It's a great film for beginning screenwriters to study for how much can be said and shown in so little time, economy being the real beauty of film storytelling. And the emotional journey doesn't miss a beat. What you can call "a textbook" film, where everything is done just the way screenwriting teachers teach it.

Literary humor

Today In Literature has a wonderful story today: Saul Bellow's Human Comedy.

I'm overdue for a rereading of my two favorite Bellow books, Seize the Day and Henderson the Rain King.

As a matter of fact, I should make another resolution: read nothing I haven't already read until I've RE-read everything I want to reread. And then, when I do venture into "new" reading, get into that pile of ambitious books, like Chapman's two volumes of Homer and Kazantzakis' sequel to the Odyssey. Those alone could keep me busy several years. It's not like I'm confident I have "all the time in the world."

Allende, Pinochet, Chile and me

The death of Pinochet brought a rush of memories from 30-odd years ago. We were living in Salisbury, Maryland, on the Eastern Shore. Happily married, I thought, though my wife must have been in turmoil inside, which later would erupt into self-realization as a lesbian. At any rate, I was ignorant of her sexual issues. Just your typical dumb guy.

We visited her cousin in Washington D.C., who worked for the state department. At a party we volunteered to "host" an elderly couple from Chile who were stranded between apartments. We let them come down and live with us for a week in the sprawling farmhouse we rented out of town. When we picked them up at the bus station soon thereafter, their largest piece of baggage was a case of Chilean wine. A fine omen.


It ends up he was the former head of the house of representatives in Allende's government. They had fled before Pinochet caught them after the overthrow of A's govt, which was helped by the CIA. They spoke little English, and we spoke no Spanish. Nonetheless it was a tremendous visit, speaking in sign language but mainly in food, wine, song and laughter. I recall strumming the guitar while they sang patriotic songs (pro-Allende) and at one point I remember him taking off his shirt to show us all his battle wounds. She was an extraordinary cook. We had several Spanish professors from the college over so they could enjoy conversation. A fine visit and memory.

We never saw them again. Of course, with Allende being assassinated in D.C. I wonder if they might have met the same fate from Pinochet's thugs. Maybe not. They were going to go to work as translators (a big irony here: we overthrow the govt, then hire the govt employees as translators) for the state department. It was a long time ago, and I hope they found a good life here.

Later Chile entered my life again. In 1996 I was playwright-in-electronic-residence at Prisma, a theater company in Santiago, with whom I developed a one-act hyperdrama called "The Last Song of Violeta Parra."

• The script
• Production notes

This was a very unique experience, to say the least. The play has had several productions in Spanish (the director's translation) but has never been performed in English. Now and again I think of producing and directing it myself, then I remember how much work is involved and I remember my age and my priorities.

Awards season

The season of film awards begins...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - "United 93," a tense drama focusing on one of the hijacked planes used in the September 11 attacks, won the best picture prize on Monday in the
New York Film Critics Circle Awards.
ADVERTISEMENT


Helen Mirren took out the best actress honor for her role as ruling
Queen Elizabeth II in "The Queen," while
Forest Whitaker won best actor for his portrayal of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in "The Last King of Scotland."

*

WASHINGTON, Dec. 11 /PRNewswire/ -- The Washington, DC Area Film Critics Association (WAFCA) today selected a movie honoring the memories of the brave heroes of September 11, the poignant United 93, as Best Film of the Year in a victory that could spur the movie's burgeoning Oscar hopes. Director Martin Scorsese was voted by the group as Best Director for his smash hit movie The Departed, while Forest Whitaker (The Last King of Scotland) was named Best Actor, and Helen Mirren (The Queen) continued her march to the Oscars as she was named Best Actress as both actors brought characters to real, and even sympathetic, life

So we may have some front runners for the Oscars.

I missed "The Last King of Scotland," it left town so quickly -- maybe now it will return if it's an Oscar contender. Many of the movies I want to see are here and gone in a flash, it seems.

Youngsick, oldsick

Ventured out of the house this morning for the first time in several days -- and may regret it. Was feeling better, now feeling worse. Just ran a couple errands but that's all it took. Such is the difference between being sick young and being sick old. So I'm taking it easy the rest of the day.

But I did get my grades in yesterday! Next on the agenda, get the review ready to release and catch up on a couple reading things.

The paper ran a story about Thara Memory's struggle with diabetes, which has cost him part of a leg and a finger thus far. Thara is a jazz trumpeter who's been at the foundation of Portland's excellent jazz scene ever since I've been in town. He's in his fifties now, a fine music educator as well as musician.


I had a short collaboration with Thara over twenty years ago when we both were considerably wilder than we are today. He wanted to write a jazz opera and finally gave up on doing the libretto himself. So he approached me about doing it. I loved his story and we went forward.

After we had the first fifteen minutes or so, we applied for development grants. We even got the Portland Opera to sponsor us. We made the early cuts. We became a finalist for a national grant. We had an interview, both of us there, composer and librettist, and during the interview Thara threw a tantrum. He wanted in writing that no white man was going to change his music during development. Well, needless to say, that was the end of our application. Without funding, we both went on to other things after that. I still like his project. I wonder if he'd still want to do it.

Vade Mecum

I want the scissors to be sharp
and the table to be perfectly level
when you cut me out of my life
and paste me in that book you always carry.

Billy Collins

Yes, and then let's have a conference on ...

So Iran is hosting a two-day "academic" conference on whether or not the Holocaust existed. Maybe this will start a trend. Next will be a conference on whether or not the Earth is flat. Then another on whether or not there was a moon landing. Then we can add topical ones, like whether or not Elvis lives and, in fact, is really the shy old clerk in the wig down at the 7-11 store.

I don't recall in my lifetime a period when institutionalized ignorance was so widespread.

Comfort food

Poached eggs on toast in warm milk. It was my comfort food sixty years ago, and it's still comfort food today.

8 years ago

Anniversary of Dick's death. Almost incomprehensible that it was so long ago. Seems like I had breakfast with him a few weeks ago.

On the downhill side of grading. Finished the scripts. Finals left, a short essay question. Should get grades in tomorrow.

Been in and out of bed all day but managing to work when I'm up. And feeling a tad better as well, though H had a relapse, so no telling how it will go.

Poets and cars

Does anyone read Marianne Moore today? She was hot stuff when I first got interested in literature. One of the more amusing stories resulting from her popularity is featured in today's Today In Literature. The Ford Motor Company hired her to name their new car. What she came up with was '"Anticipator," "Thunder Crester," "Pastelogram," "Intelligent Whale," "The Resilient Bullet," "Mongoose Civique," "Andante con Moto," "Varsity Stroke" and then, as her very last try for the name magic, "Utopian Turtletop."' Ford returned to an earlier choice, the Edsel. Moore was spared the infamy of naming a gigantic failure.

Hanging in, barely

Very under the weather but am determined to get my grading done this weekend. Next week I have the review to put together. It's a very inconvenient time to get sick.

Changing one's mind

Anyone with literacy in science understands the value of changing one's mind when new evidence demands as much. You reach decisions based on experience and data if you are a thinking person, and sometimes the landscape of support for your ideas changes in ways that lead you to new conclusions.

As a group, politicians seem especially proud of their inability to change one's mind. They call it "consistency" even when so much has changed that their old opinions border on lunacy. Thus it was somewhat surprising when Oregon's conservative Republican senator Gordon Smith took the congressional podium yesterday and said this:

"I, for one, am at the end of my rope when it comes to supporting a policy that has our soldiers patrolling the same streets in the same way being blown up by the same bombs day after day," said Smith. "That is absurd. It may even be criminal. I cannot support that anymore."


Full story.


To audio link.

Calling policy "criminal" is a very big deal in politics. Of course, Democrats who oppose Smith will say he is bending with the wind, but Smith has demonstrated before that he is a man of conscience. I didn't vote for him but I respect him. Oregon politicians can be fiercely independent.

Fulfillment

For this my mother wrapped me warm,
And called me home against the storm,
And coaxed my infant nights to quiet,
And gave me roughage in my diet,
And tucked me in my bed at eight,
And clipped my hair and marked my weight,
And watched me as I sat and stood:
That I might grow to womanhood
To hear a whistle and drop my wits
And break my heart in clattering bits.

Dorothy Parker

First kiss: an American boy, a Muslim girl

They are about twenty yards apart when Hayaam’s veil comes off from the exertion of a throw. Seeing her hair, Wes loses concentration and drops the Frisbee. When he retrieves it and looks back, Hayaam has removed the veil entirely. She stands before him, twenty yards away, with dark hair falling past her shoulders.

Carrying the Frisbee, Wes slowly walks toward her. Hayaam walks toward him. When they meet, they stop, standing close. Hayaam’s face is wet with perspiration. Without makeup, she has the face of a woman emerging from a shower.

Wes says, “You have beautiful hair.”

“I know.”

“I don’t know why you cover it up.”

“Because it’s my decision who gets to see it.”

“I’m glad I got to.”

“So am I.”

Perhaps you are too cynical to remember a moment like this: Wes can feel his heart pounding in his chest.

“Can I touch it?” he asks.

“If you like.”

Wes reaches out and gently touches her hair, letting his fingers rest lightly against the side of her head, just above an ear. Her hair is damp. Hayaam closes her eyes.

“I want to kiss you,” he says.

Without opening her eyes, Hayaam turns her head, offering him her cheek. He leans forward and gently kisses it.

No, he did not grab her breast. They did not suddenly collapse in a passionate embrace to make love on the grass. This is not a popular romance novel. This is not The Bridges of Madison County. This is not a Hollywood movie. This is the story of Wes and Hayaam.

Hayaam opens her eyes and looks at him.

“I have never kissed a man before,” she says.

As she bends forward toward him, Wes expects a kiss on the lips but at the last moment she swerves and her lips touch his cheek. Her kiss is as soft as the landing of an insect.

Neither knows what to say. Hayaam breaks the silence.

“I’d better get home.”

“I’ll walk you.”

They hold hands, as they often do now. They are silent, as if the new physical contact between them, however slight, has opened a dimension of communication beyond language, and their contentment in being together needs no explanation, no interpretation, no words to define it. They are learning to communicate through the pores of their skin.

You may have forgotten how this can happen. Trust me, it is happening to them. They are still too young to be cynical about such things.

They continue silently along, hand in hand, like two halves of the same person, leaving the park and rejoining the world.

From Love At Ground Zero by Charles Deemer.

Paperback at Amazon.

Resolutions

I'm playing the New Year's Resolutions game this year. Yes, I should lose weight, but that has nothing to do with my resolutions. They are something I might be able to stick to:

• Buy no books for six months. I've got stacks of book around here that I've purchased for one project or another -- alas, I do almost no "pleasure reading"! -- and I need to get to them. One way is to stop adding to their ranks.
• Check no books out of the library for six months. To reinforce the above.

This done, I have three biographies, half-a-dozen histories, collections of stories and poems, collections of single authors, and a few scattered other books to bring out of the shadows and into the reading light. When it comes to books, my mind's eye gets bigger than my considerable stomach.

Bring no books into the house for six months! And take care of the dozens already here.

My rule of sleep

Get a lot today. H's cold hit me big time, don't expect to get much done today. In and out of bed, napping. Juices & C. Final deadline for grades is Tuesday, so I should make it.

Rules of Sleep

In the sludge drawer of animals in arms,
Where the legs entwine to keep the body warm
Against the winter night, some cold seeps through--
It is the future: say, a square of stars
In the windowpane, suggesting the abstract
And large, or a sudden shift in position
That lets one body know the other's free to move
An inch away, and then a thousand miles,
And, after that, even intimacy
Is only another form of separation.

Howard Moss

Dec. 7th & 9/11

December 7th, said FDR, is a day that will "live in infamy." Can the same be said for 9/11? On both dates, of course, a foreign attack on the U.S. propelled us into war. But despite the mismanaged mess in Iraq, it doesn't feel like we're at war today. At most it feels like we're inconvenienced because a good many folks dislike us enough to want to destroy us.


I was two when Pearl Harbor was attacked but I still can remember how frightening "blackouts" were along the east coast at the start of the war. In 1942, everyone in America knew they were at war. Of course, the enemy was more tangible then. You had someone more concrete to hate. Today we appear to be at war against "terror," against radical Islam, which is not a country but a set of ideas.

I also remember how strange I felt visiting the Pearl Harbor memorial on the sunken battleship Arizona some twenty years ago. I was partly there representing my mother, who lost a brother in the attack to whom she was especially close. I felt strange because I was greatly outnumbered by Japanese tourists and I kept wondering what they were jabbering about during their constant taking of photos. Were they gloating?

War has a deep legacy. I remember meeting locals in bars in Germany in 1960, veterans of Hitler's army, who treated world wars like the world series -- yes, we're down two wars to zero, but it's a best of seven series, watch out, Germany will rise again! I remember the gasthaus-owner who at midnight, after the German police went home, put banned Nazis marching songs on his jukebox. A fellow Russian linguist would recite Hitler speeches for free drinks to a room of cheering farmers. We thought it was pretty funny at the time. I don't think it's funny any more. I think it tells us something terrible about the human condition.


Last night I rewatched the last segment of the outstanding miniseries "The Road to 9/11" and again marvelled at how focused and dedicated our enemies are and how at the time it seemed so unlikely that anyone should hate us, especially by those in government who were reluctant to act upon clear intelligence that something was brewing. We had a dozen chances to stop 9/11 from happening but no one in authority would take control. I would say the situation is no better today. Was 9/11 just a prelude to something worse to come? When is the next "day of infamy"?

What makes the situation, this new kind of war, so difficult is that we become our own worst enemy. Our exuberant, arrogant psychology of "manifest destiny," believing we are the model for the world, clashes with cultures that do not share our values. Our activity in Iraq has made us less safe than before 9/11, primarily by recruiting countless enemies and future suicide-bombers. Additionally, we now face the temptation of redefining our cherished freedoms in the name of security, fighting the enemy by imitating them. Are freedom and security mutually exclusive goals? If so, which does a country choose?

In such difficult times, statesmen sometimes rise to inspire confidence in a people -- but where are they?

Crawling forward

H on the downhill side of her illness -- and I feel like I'm coming down with it. Low energy, moving through the papers at a snail's pace and just about ready to crash very early, even for me. Hope it's a more productive day tomorrow.

Last Night

Here's a quirky Canadian indie from the late 90s, an end of the world drama with Sandra Oh, and it's the best in the genre I've seen, full of real moments, dark comedy, and a refusal to deliver an Earth-saving happy ending. Real people dealing with a real catastrophe. Very nicely done.

Last Will & Testament

I am not afraid to die.
What I fear is prolonged life,
a body far too weak to cry
for mercy: poison, gun, or knife!

No heaven waits to call me in,
no gentle harp, no angels’ choir;
no Godly afterlife begins,
providing all that I desire.

There’s only this, the here & now,
and when there’s nothing more to do
than lie here like a sickly cow
without the will even to moo,

then pull the plug. Strike up the band
and start the march. Begin the wake.
Take me to a promised land
where dying’s not for heaven’s sake,

which honors this advice my father gave:
There’s nothing to expect beyond the grave.

Charles Deemer

Change of routine

I used to have a weekday routine where I'd rise at my usual early hour, put in some work, then take a break around 6:30 a.m. and check out the new haiku at the website of the Haiku Nurse, which she'd post before getting ready for work. Then she lost her job. Now the lazy poet is sleeping in! I mean, sometimes she doesn't post a new haiku till mid-morning! Or, judging from a recent haiku, she'd rather make love to her boyfriend than get to work.

What's the world coming to. You can't depend on anyone.

R.I.P.

They cut the tree down before 7 a.m. this morning, perhaps to avoid the wrath of neighbors. H said had she known, she would have raced into the street in her nightgown, screaming at them. They made a huge racket cutting it up into manageable logs. The tree was over 200 years old. It came down in a few minutes.

Lunar event

The moon is spectacular these recent days, full or nearly so, rising considerably north of east, climbing to be directly overhead, an inspiring sight. Try to catch it.

Out of retirement?

I celebrated the end of the 20th century by "retiring" as a playwright, by which I meant I was no longer going to write for the stage. This gesture primarily was an escape from collaboration, even the kind favorable to the artist. I didn't want to have to depend on actors, directors, producers to make something happen. Even if I wrote, directed and produced my own plays, I needed actors. I wanted to end my life in a more self-reliant mode of writing.

But there are certain story ideas that demand the stage. I've had two for decades now and they won't go away. I have three choices: write them as plays, as libretti for chamber operas, or both. Of these, the former is the easiest. I may come out of retirement to do them, not worrying about whether or not anyone does them, just write them and stick them in my archive. Both are history plays, both have small casts (2 and 4). I can't get either story out of my mind. This is a sign to write the damn things. I'm tired of waiting for someone else to discover these wonderful historical moments and bring them to life.

I've already done research over the years but I'll look at some appropriate biographies to refresh my memory of the details. I doubted my ability to do one of them for a long time but I must be cockier now than I was decades ago when the story revealed itself to me in a footnote in a biography. Later I kept waiting for Tom Stoppard to write the damn thing. Hell with it, I'll tackle it myself.

All my students turned in their work on time! Now this is a rare moment. Tomorrow the reading begins. Onward.

Lunch break

A very productive morning here in my university office. Worked with Primus on saving 50-odd poems as rtf files on my flash disk. Worked fine, just very time consuming grunt work.

Also managed to write some on the screenplay.

Needed a break, wandered into the local university bar for lunch, a smattering of students there, drinking, smoking, rituals before or after finals. Had a disappointing "all day" breakfast for lunch and resisted the temptation to doctor it with a shot of Jamison's beside my coffee. I am sure that never in my entire life have I had a single shot of anything and not had a third. And clearly I didn't want to do that today, so I passed.

Back to the office with two hours before I collect papers, so I should get more work done. Onward.

Old Man Stanley

Bedazzled Stanley falls in love and falls
from the barstool with equal abandon. How could he not,
his head filled with angels, mermaids, the call
of sirens – young women, all! Lover and sot,
Stanley feels the rush of blood in his brain
and vows never to chase young women again.

When he does take up the chase, bewildered
Stanley scares more away than meets,
a bear of a man, leaning out of kilter,
leering, no gent a decent woman seeks.
They flee. Stanley feels the brain’s red sting
and has another drink and starts to sing.

In his mind he woos them all, the tall
cheerleader at the game, the sultry actress
on the screen. In his mind they all
melt in his arms like snowflakes on the grass.
Stanley has a toddy for the road
and finally staggers home through dark and cold.

If gods are gentle, patient and alert,
they’ll find here a heart longing for embrace.
They’ll understand it’s too late to convert
this sordid soul, to have him stop the chase.
A man pursues the things for which he cares;
Stanley’s lust is water, food and air.

Call him what you will. Pathetic, wrong.
But Stanley gets to choose his own death song.

Charles Deemer

I have an image of Stanley. It's the Jack Nicholson character at the end of The Pledge, a hugely underrated movie directed wonderfully by Sean Penn, based on a novel by Durrenmatt (writer, director, actor all favorites -- how could it miss?), an old man drunk, drooling, bewildered, mumbling to himself. Frankly it's an image that haunts me about my own demise. I'd rather leave grinning -- but demons, alas, are demons. We shall see.

A busy day ahead

Going in early to my office to meet with Primus and help him email this issue's poems to me for the review. His computer skills are marginal. The transfer is made more complex since he has a Mac, I a PC, so I can't go download them onto a flash drive.

I'll take work and should get a lot done. Then at 430 I pick up a huge stack of scripts and finals and come home for the real work tomorrow.

Meanwhile, a ferocious sound of chain saws outside. This may be the day they chop down the fine old tree we thought we'd saved.

To Women

You start it all. You are lovely.
We look at you and we flow.
So a line begins, on the page, on air,
in the all of self. We have misused you,
invested you with primal sin. You bleed
for our regret we are not more.
The dragon wins. We come home and sob
and you hold us and say we are brave
and in the future will do better.
So far, so good.

Now some of you want out and I don't
blame you, not a tiny bit. You've caught on.
You have the right to veer off flaming
in a new direction, mud flat and diamond mine,
clavicord and dead drum. Whatever.
Please know our need remains the same.
It's a new game every time, one on one.

In me today is less rage than ever, less hurt.
When I imagine some good woman young
I no longer imagine her cringing
in cornstalks, cruel father four rows away
beating corn leaves aside with a club.
That is release you never expected
from a past you never knew you had.
My horse is not sure he can make it
to the next star. You are free.

Richard Hugo

Weekly planner

All caught up on reading scripts. Pick up many more, plus their finals, tomorrow afternoon; thus Wed and Thurs and possibly Fri will be devoted to reading and grading them. Would like to turn grades in before piano lessons on Friday but if I don't make it till the weekend, no biggie.

I did some work on the screenplay this morning. Ah, the difficult second act. There is nothing like it.

Will put in a lot of time on the piano today, too.

Dufur does it!

Dufur is one of my favorite spots in Oregon. South of The Dalles, it's a farming community with rolling hills almost as spectacular as the Palouse country to the north in Washington and Idaho.


There's a farmhouse in Dufur that's been converted to a charming B&B but you can enjoy this area at less expense. Staying in The Dalles, another under-rated town, is one option. You can even camp nearby.

Dufur comes to mind today because their 8-man class 1-A football team just won the state championship! For a little town like Dufur, this is a very big deal.

This part of the country is the setting for my novel Emmett's Gift (synopsis). Indeed, Dufur was a model for much of the atmosphere in the novel.

Dufur history.

Sunday chill

Man, it was cold this morning at sunrise when I started my early morning errands. Returned library books, mailed a package at the self-serve machine, filled the tank, a short cruise with the jazz station on. It occurred to me that music is the most stable thing in my life. 80% or so of what I listen to I've been listening to for 30 or more years. And the radio station plays these same songs -- all the 50s and 60s jazz artists. When I turn on to something new, it's usually a new performer doing old material. I guess I haven't turned on to "new" music since the late Beattles! When it comes to pop culture, I'm illiterate -- and have been for decades. Indeed, my interests seem to be going backward not forward. When will I get time to read Chapman's Homer, for example? I have both translations on my shelf.

In fact, one of my New Year's resolutions -- and I have a list this year -- is to stop checking books out of the library for the next six months. This, in order to catch up on all the reading I have on the shelf, books I've bought for one project or reason or another but have not gotten to yet. I need to catch up on books I own before using the library. Another is to buy no books from Amazon for six months so my shelf backlog doesn't grow.

When I got home from chores, I fixed the sick wife breakfast then went to work. Got some writing done on the screenplay (Sally is in hibernation until I get my grades in, then front burner again.) Read some papers -- almost done, in fact, and I'd like to finish today, which would give me two days to write before I pick up the bulk of the papers late Tuesday. I want to get my grades in Friday if I can.

So things are looking good so far. This weekend I also want to get some early Xmas presents in the mail and beat the rush. I've giving more presents than usual this year, mainly because I found a couple recent things that turn me on and that I want to share (new performers doing old stuff ha ha) with friends. So I have a few CDs and books to mail. I have no skill in wrapping packages but will struggle through it nonetheless. Onward.

Introduction to Poetry

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to water-ski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

Billy Collins

UCLA stuns USC!, or the Beauty of Crosstown Rivalries, or Watching Football Can Be Hazardous To Your Health

My alma mater UCLA went into the game against #2 USC as 16 point underdogs. All USC needed was a win to play for the national championship against Ohio State. And USC was on a roll, playing great ball in recent games.

But I've seen almost sixty of these crosstown matchups -- and what you learn is that anything can happen in a neighborly rivalry like this. UCLA's mediocre season suddenly would be successful if they won and had bragging rights in LA. They could avenge all the consecutive losses (7 in a row) to USC in recent years. They could avenge last year's blowout by almost 50 points.


But people laugh when you say the Bruins have a chance in a game like this. They just look at the stats and the records of the teams. They forget about the emotional ingredient in sports. So ... UCLA rose to the occasion, its defense played a spectacular game, and they won 13-9 in a nailbiter so intense that I was worried I might have a heartattack before it was over.

UCLA pulls off shocker against No. 2 USC

By JOHN NADEL, AP Sports Writer

PASADENA, Calif. - Southern California's dejected players trudged off the Rose Bowl field, oblivious to the celebration going on around them. Their national championship hopes had just ended with the biggest upset of the season.

UCLA knocked No. 2 USC out of the Bowl Championship Series title game with a stunning 13-9 victory over its crosstown rival Saturday. The Bruins did it with a vastly improved defense and a quarterback starting on three days' notice.

"Give credit to UCLA. They made it a difficult day," said USC coach Pete Carroll, whose team lost for just the fourth time in its last 59 games. "They kept us from doing what we wanted to do. We had no rhythm. We did not anticipate this happening."

Read complete story.

I watched the action on TV but listened to the game on the radio (which was about 5 seconds ahead of the images) because the commentary was given by John Robinson and Terry Donahue, former USC and UCLA football coaches respectively, who played one another ten times, each winning five games. Robinson was amazing in being able to call what plays were coming up.

UCLA wins! Now somebody like me gets to be really obnoxious and say Told ya! Of course, since I watched the game at home and not at a sports bar, sick H and the dog are the only ones who hear me, H putting another pillow on her head and Sketch running around excitedly, mistaking my energy for an invitation to go for a run. Told ya! I love it.

Agents

I wouldn't mind ending my career with a better relationship with an agent than I've had recently. Over a long career I've had a few, for both screenwriting, playwriting and fiction. The best two I lost through no fault of my own. One, handling my plays, didn't like the way theater was changing in the country (more bottom line oriented, like all the arts) and got out of the business to have babies instead. She's the one who flew to Portland to meet me and told me NW then was like Greenwich Village used to be. "Don't let it change." Yeah, right. Only ten years later it was gentrified yuppieville. The other got wooed by a super agency and could only take clients with her that had earned a million in the last five years, which alas I had not. She said I was one of her favorite clients, too -- that when I made a million, give her a buzz. Yeah, right. I said that all ready.

Otherwise relationships with agents have been pretty project-centered and if the project doesn't move quickly, they lose interest. The two above loved my work and were really dedicated to sticking with it and with me (well, until their circumstances changed). I miss a close relationship like that. After the good phone chat with the agent in Chicago, who wanted five specific screenplays, I harbor hopes against my better judgement that something wonderful might come from it. You'd think I'd know better ha ha. What's that cliche about hope and eternity?

New screenplay

I've been test-driving a software program by writing a new screenplay with it. I'm 37 pages along, into the second act, and everything is progressing smoothly.

I must say, screenplays may be the most "fun" writing I do. Not the most satisfying after the fact but the most fun in the process of writing. I think that's because the rhetorical issues are less difficult than in other forms of writing. It's a story-driven process, not a rhetorically driven process. There's not much actual writing involved in terms of word count, though it's not like poetry where you spend a day trying to find the right word. You just tell the story, writing a blueprint for a movie, knowing all your collaborators are going to add most of the flesh. Consequently, you can draft an entire screenplay in a few weeks if you have the story structured correctly, which is what the software I'm using is designed to do. I've already staggered away from it here and there but otherwise it remains in place and looks strong. We'll see how the difficult second act goes.

I think in 2007 I'm going to try and write four or five screenplays and market them passively, which is to say, post them at InkTip, an online marketing site with a damn good track record. Unless, of course, this Chicago agent looking at my old stuff has something ambitious in mind. We'll see. Not losing any sleep over it one way or the other. I don't have the energy to do the marketing I did when I was younger, but at the same time I apparently am not quite ready to be put to pasture yet either. A screenplay is so damn much fun to write and you have to do something with it when you're done. I put them in my archive, of course, but I still have a bit of non-posthumous ambition floating about. InkTip provides a good service and, for me, a good way to keep my toes wet without spending a lot of energy doing it.

Traditional day

Today is Army-Navy game day, one of the biggest traditions in my life since childhood. That's what you get for growing up in a Navy family. But it's continued long after my parents' death (my God, they've both been gone for almost 20 years now!) and I've even added another tradition to it.

I used to make blackeyed peas every New Year's Day for the Rose Bowl Game in Pasadena, where I grew up. Then the BCS took away a century of tradition with one clang of the cash register, and I lost the Rose Bowl game, which became something else entirely. So I moved my blackeyed peas to the Army-Navy game. Hell will freeze over before they get rid of this football tradition in the military! And that's today's agenda, make blackeyed peas this morning and then watch the game, followed immediately (even overlapping) by the USC-UCLA game in which I will root for my undergraduate alma mater, the Bruins, the pull the biggest upset of the season. If Oregon State can do it, they can -- if they play an errorless game.


Last night we went out to dinner at Seasons and Regions, where I had the best jambalaya I've had in ages (with fried oysters!). H, who has a bad cold, which I'm trying not to get, had comfort food: tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich. This is a fine little restaurant that's also pretty close to us.

I only have a handful of final scripts to read until Tuesday. Because of the Thanksgiving break, which changed our conference schedule, I gave them an extension until Tuesday. I've already given one A ... the guy going to Boston turned everything, including the final, in early, and everything was first rate. So I just gave him his A early so he can relax.

Our talented youth

This afternoon I met the high school girl I've been mentoring and had an hour taped interview. I was impressed with her. Intelligent questions, a careful listener -- and I already know she's a good playwright. Encouraging to see. I told her the truth about "the playwriting life," however, and didn't sugar-coat a bit. A few things surprised her.

Theft mobile?

I think our van may have been in the process of being turned into a theft mobile. Here's the skinny.

• The van looked fine from the outside. No plates, but no visible damage.
• Three parking tickets. But the plates on the ticket were not ours.
• Our plates were in the van -- and the interior seats were gone, the back of the van turned into a mechanical workshop. Dozens of tools left behind! Bolt cutters, fence cutters, big time tools.
• The engine started -- but sounded terrible.
• The van was found parked on Hayden Island, an industrial area.

So what's the story? Given all the tools, it appears that the van had been used for, or was about to be used for, theft activity. Maybe ripping off car stereos or something. But the abandoned tools suggest that something frightened the criminals and they fled. Why would anyone leave so many tools behind?

It looks like H will get her wish and the van will live again. Insurance folks have to do their thing now.

What a fascinating adventure the old van went on!

Friday afternoon on campus

Took the bus to the university after my piano lesson. Have a 3pm meeting here with the high school playwright I'm mentoring, at her request. Not sure what it's about, perhaps some requirement she has to meet (interviewing me or something). So I have a bit of time to pass here. H also downtown, getting her hair done, so we will connect later for an early dinner out and I can get her report on the condition of the van, which she went to see in the junk yard today. She needs a van to haul her paintings around but she does it infrequently enough that it may be more cost effective to rent one when she needs it rather than bringing this relic back to life. But people do get sentimental about their wheels, especially after twenty years.

Piano is going well. I am determined to enroll in the theory class in the fall because the year-sequence can only be started then and I don't want to wait another year. I'm doing pretty well so far, I think the teacher will let me in. I still have a high degree of frustration about all the things I can't do, all the things I hear in my head and can't do. But it's good that at least I'm hearing things, right?

Just got a phone call, some student wants to rap about screenwriting, and he's on his way up here. Later.

A bit exaggerated but ...

From the mail bag:

hi charles.......i read your article on the vertical script format last year.......it changed my life.......i had written 10 screenplays in as many years, but i turned-a-corner when i adopted this format......i love it.....it's organic, perfect....

I've written several articles on "vertical writing," the latest being
this one from Screenwriters Utopia.

It's true. It's a technique that instantly improves a script, even if you don't change a word. Next to verticality, the next "easiest" way to improve a screenplay is to change complex sentences into two simple sentences. Then, here and there, simple sentences into sentence fragments.

The goal is to create something that is easy to read quickly, something easy to skim for the story, rather than something that must be read slowly to be understood. Someone said that screenwriting is the art of writing for readers who hate to read. That's not a bad premise. When you realize that prodco readers, the first who judge your script, get paid by the script, not by the hour, you realize their incentive for making the quickest possible decision about your work. If you slow them down by your writing style, you lose brownie points. Trust me.

Screenwriting is the only writing form about which it can be said: Don't let your writing get in the way of the story. What a strange thing to say about writing! But screenwriting really is as much about storytelling as writing. The writing is as economical as poetry. Thinking of a screenplay as a kind of prose poem also isn't a bad premise. A zinging economy is what you want.

Phone plays

Several years ago I produced a few very short audio plays for the net, all structured as phone conversations.

• RANSOM: You've got to be real careful where you call from when you're setting up a drop. Real careful.
• THE CONFERENCE CALL: Clifford's trying to run a meeting. Mary has her own agenda.
• CRISIS LINE: Matt loves Judy. He wants to marry her. He's just picked a hell of a time to call and pop the question.
• THE PHOTOGRAPH: Heather didn't think Steve would be such a spoilsport about the photograph. Restraining order or not, she finally had to call to set the record straight.
• Access the Phone Plays.

A special literary prize

Forget the Pulitzer and the Booker -- there's an annual Bad Sex in Fiction Award:

Brit nails the Bad Sex in Fiction Award
'A commotion of grunts'

By JILL LAWLESS
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

LONDON -- First-time author Iain Hollingshead scooped a dubious literary honor Wednesday, winning the Bad Sex in Fiction Award for his novel, "Twenty Something."

Hollingshead beat established writers including Booker Prize nominee David Mitchell, best-seller Mark Haddon and literary maverick Thomas Pynchon to the prize, which aims to skewer "the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel."

Judges were moved by Hollingshead's evocation of "a commotion of grunts and squeaks, flashing unconnected images and explosions of a million little particles." His description of "bulging trousers" sealed the win, the judges said.

Read complete story.

I have a hard time with sex scenes in fiction myself. In a screenplay you can just write "they make love" and pass the buck to the director ha ha.