My story “Blood of Virgins” will be appearing in an upcoming episode of the Escape Pod podcast. Escape Pod is currently the 21st-ranked “Arts” podcast over at the iTunes store, and has recently featured work by writers such as Nancy Kress, Robert J. Sawyer, Kevin J. Anderson, and Mike Resnick. My story will probably come out sometime around February/March 2007.
Archives for November 2006
Magritte Exhibit at LACMA
I haven’t posted for a while. I’ve had a bad cold, and have been pretty much out of it. I got sick the week before last, then shook it, but then had a fairly party-intensive weekend, and that put me down for the count.
Before I got sick, I went to a party at JJ’s apartment in Venice. (He got evicted as a result of this party. Always a sign of a good party.) While I was there, JJ mentioned that there were banners all up and down his street advertising a Magritte exhibit at LACMA (the Los Angeles County Museum of Art). He and a friend had gone to see it, but then were told that the exhibit didn’t open for another week. I joked, “And then you’re like, ‘We’ll wait!’ And then you’re camped out in front of the museum in your bowler hats.”
I actually went and checked out the exhibit yesterday. It was pretty cool. The whole floor was covered with a Magritte-esque blue-sky-and-white-fluffy-clouds carpet, and all the security guards were dressed in bowler hats. One of the pieces, a tribute to Magritte, depicted a snow-covered peak, and over it was written: “LION IN OIL.” I was like, “Why does it say lion? There’s no lion.” My friend Drew exclaimed, “I see it! You have to stare for a while.” I stared for a while. I said, “There’s no lion. Maybe sort of a face, but it’s not a lion’s face. Maybe like a skull.” We consulted the text accompanying the exhibit, which talked about how the artist combines text and images that have nothing to do with each other in order to make a point about words and their meaning. I said, “Aha!” Drew shrugged and said, “I saw a lion.”
300
Holy crapmonkeys. 300 definitely has the most kickass trailer I’ve seen in a long time. (It’s a retelling of the Battle of Thermopylae.)
GRRM podcast
I’ve been enjoying George R. R. Martin’s new podcast. (Scroll down to the bottom right corner of the page.)
Liechtenstein
Just sent off my ecopy of “Save Me Plz” to Realms of Fantasy for typesetting. During my final bout of paranoid fact-checking, I actually caught something significant. Throughout all my months of revising, I had the country “Liechtenstein” spelled incorrectly, as “Lichtenstein,” like the pop artist. Not too surprisingly, no one who read the story caught this. It’s a small point, particularly in the context of this piece, but I’m glad I got it cleared up, especially in advance of my next project, “The Warrior Gods of Liechtenstein.”
My Short Story “Save Me Plz” Accepted by Realms of Fantasy Magazine
SWEET! The
Here’s a teaser page for the story. As soon as I have any info on which issue the story will be appearing in, I’ll post it there.
Halloween Party
Here’s a photo taken at a Halloween party I attended last week. Due to cash flow problems related to my credit card info being stolen, I had no costume. Fortunately, the hostess had a spare fairy princess costume she let me borrow. Thanks, Kathleen!
Magicians & Writers
On Sunday I went to a lecture by Jonathan Kirsch, author of the new book A History of the End of the World. His lecture focused on the book of Revelations, and on the many ill-fated attempts to use the book to predict a date for the apocalypse. The lecture was hosted by the CFI (Center For Inquiry) center in Hollywood, an organization that tries to inject a rational/skeptical voice in public affairs. They also host a popular podcast, which features a lot of big name guests.
Some of the most interesting guests I’ve heard have been the stage magicians. Magicians have a long tradition of being skeptics and debunkers (most famously Houdini). Magicians, who deceive people for a living, are particularly astute at seeing through the deceptions of others. (As an aside, one point the magicians make that I thought was interesting is that it’s often easier to fool smart people with magic tricks. One reason is that smart people may be too sure of themselves. The other is that smart people are better at seeing patterns and anticipating what’ll happen next. It’s exactly these sorts of expectations that magicians exploit, since people are likely to see whatever they’re expecting to see.)
I see some similarities here between magicians and fantasy & science fiction writers. Just as magicians are less likely to be taken in by magic tricks, I think fantasy & science fiction writers are less likely to be taken in by fanciful tales. I sometimes meet people who assume that since I’m interested in science fiction I must be obsessed with alien abductions and similar topics. I’m not. My modest expertise in stories about aliens and what it takes to write such stories makes me much less easily impressed when a second-rate imitation comes along. I mean come on, can you imagine if you went before Congress and asked for hundreds of billions of dollars to fund an interstellar expedition for the sole purpose of surreptitiously anal probing a few intelligent lifeforms? Where’s the logic?
Theater Review: The Beastly Bombing; Kirk Cameron & The Banana
Last night I went to see the new play The Beastly Bombing, a hilarious and savage burlesque of contemporary politics. The plot concerns two pairs of terrorists — white supremacists and Islamic fundamentalists — who meet while both attempting to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge. They eventually find themselves sharing a jail cell with the president’s coked-out daughters, and love blossoms. The show was sold out and received a standing ovation. It’s definitely worth seeing, as long as you’re not easily offended.
By now you’ve all probably heard that Ted Haggard, one of the nation’s leading evangelicals and an outspoken opponent of gay marriage, has been engaged in a three-year-long binge of meth-fueled gay sex with a prostitute. As soon as I saw his photo, I was like, “Wait a minute, I know this nitwit from somewhere.” Turns out he’s the same guy who totally lost it during an interview with Richard Dawkins. Haggard chased Dawkins off the church property while screaming, “You called my children animals!” (In reference to Dawkins’ advocacy of evolution.)
Speaking of evolution, have you heard about Kirk Cameron and the banana? This is apparently not a joke. If not, it’s one of the most unintentionally funny things I’ve seen in a long time. It turns out that the banana is proof of design in the universe. “As with soda can makers, they’ve placed a tab at the top … when you pull the tab, the contents don’t squirt in your face.” It’s impossible to watch this video without concluding that this guy’s mind is on something besides bananas. (“Ease of entry … just the right shape for the human mouth.”) As one YouTube poster piquantly observed, “Why does this guy seem to expect that any banana-shaped object is naturally going to squirt in your face?” Among the many, many flaws of the banana argument is the fact that bananas as we know them are the result of thousands of years of cultivation. Wild bananas are practically inedible.
Transformers
(This entire entry is about Transformers, and nothing else. You have been warned.)
At the 2-9 cafe this week, the conversation turned to the upcoming live action Transformers movie, and then naturally to the classic 80s cartoon series. One of my friends mentioned that he owned a copy of the old 1986 Transformers feature film, the one that traumatized an entire generation of American boys by depicting beloved Transformers characters — lots of them, in fact — being brutally gunned down. (Nobody ever died in the TV series.) My friend said it actually holds up pretty well, and I was curious, so I borrowed it from him and re-watched it last night.
It was a strange experience. When you’re talking about Transformers, you’re getting awfully close to my very earliest childhood memories. It’s not often that impressions from when you were five years old rise to the surface. One thing that really hit me was the sense of menace and alieness that the evil transformers used to inspire in me. (It’s almost the same feeling I sometimes get now from reading Lovecraft.) I mean, it’s not that I did believe that the world was full of planes and consumer items that might suddenly, horrifyingly reveal themselves to be gigantic alien robots, but the possibilty was very palpable. Hearing Shockwave’s muffled, reverberant voice for the first time in years actually gave me shivers.
I remember my dad never showed much interest in watching the cartoon, but I got him to sit through the feature film once by promising that it was like a real adult movie with an amazing storyline. When it was over, he allowed that it was better than the TV show. Watching the movie now, I’m amazed he managed to endure it, since 98% of the screen time is just cartoon robots blasting/smashing each other, and all the dialogue is pretty awful. Though the movie does contain some visuals that still awe me. You have to give the writers credit for not thinking small.
At the movie’s climax, the hero, Hot Rod, is transformed into Rodimus Prime, an even more expensive toy … sorry, I mean an even more powerful robot. I remember my dad was confused by this, and I thought he was dense, but it really does make absolutely no sense. The weird thing is, I can vividly remember feeling as a kid that it made sense, but now I don’t remember why.
Transformers featured five characters called constructicons, each of whom could be a robot or a piece of construction equipment, but who could also combine into one even more gigantic robot. I remember this prospect used to thrill me more than anything on earth. Unfortunately, I only ever got my hands on two of the constructicons, and, maddeningly, they weren’t even two who fit together in any way. (I think one was the right arm, and the other was the left leg, or something like that.) I once read a Neil Gaiman quote to the effect that he spoils his kids because he remembers how exciting it was to get toys as a kid, and that if he can buy that much human happiness for a few lousy bucks it’s worth it. I hear that. These days my capacity for thrills is much diminished. I could get married, win the lottery, and get a ten-book contract all on the same day, and that would be awesome, but still not as exciting as getting all the constructicons when I was five.
I also remember how Transformers transformed me into a young death penalty advocate. Every week the hero, Optimus Prime, would subdue the villain, Megatron, only to pronounce that being a real hero meant showing mercy, to which Megatron would chuckle under his breath, “Ha! Only fools show mercy. Mercy is for the week. You can bet I’ll be back to get you next week, Optimus Prime, bwahahahaha!” and I’d be waving my fists and screaming, “No, you idiot! Don’t you ever learn? Kill him! KILL HIM NOW!” I’m not sure if that’s the message the show intended, but it’s certainly what I took away from it. It’s a little scary how much a cartoon like that can influence your worldview when you’re a kid.
The Skeleton & I
Here’s a pic of me taken at the Halloween reading last week. |