Tonight I went to see Harlan Ellison at the Writers Guild Foundation in Beverly Hills. They showed a new documentary about Ellison entitled Dreams with Sharp Teeth, which was followed by a Q&A and then a reception. It was my first trip over to the WGF, and it was a lot of fun. I’m definitely going to try to check out more of their events. One highlight was when I happened to glance up and notice that Ronald D. Moore was sitting right across the aisle from me.

I also really enjoyed the reading I went to last week — Etgar Keret at the Skirball Cultural Center. Keret read three very short fiction pieces interspersed with a lot of funny chat and anecdotes. For example, he talked about how he first started writing: He had been drafted into the Israeli army and was a terrible soldier, so they stuck him with the lonely and monotonous task of watching over a supercomputer to report if anything went wrong with it, but nothing ever did. One day, bored out of his mind, he typed up a short short on the computer. When his shift ended, he printed out the story and went over to his brother’s apartment. His brother agreed to read the story while walking the dog. When his brother finished reading, Etgar asked, “Is it good?,” and his brother said, “Oh yeah, yeah, it’s great. Just terrific.” Then his brother said, “Could you print out another copy of this?” Etgar, brimming with pride, said, “Sure! No problem.” “Great,” his brother said, and used the story to scoop up the dog poop.

Michael Bishop’s son Jamie was one of the victims at Virginia Tech. I met Michael once, at ICFA. I was 19, it was my first convention of any sort, and I didn’t know anyone. Michael really went out of his way to take me under his wing and make me feel welcome, and I have always remembered him as being one of the kindest, most generous, and most likeable human beings I have ever met.

My friend Adam and I, having re-watched Casino Royale and Mission Impossible 3 in close succession, recently concluded that defribillators can apparently be used to cure any medical condition. Then when we went to pick up his girlfriend at LAX, what should we spot but … a defribillator! We looked around for someone in need of medical attention that we could try it out on, but alas, everyone looked relatively healthy. (“What seems to be the problem, ma’am?” “Oh, I’m fine. I just feel a bit dizzy all of a sudden.” “No problem, this’ll fix you right up. CLEAR!”)

Just got word that my story “Transformations” will be published by Realms of Fantasy!!!

Here’s a quick recap on some things I wanted to blog about recently but didn’t get a chance:

On my flight out of New York, two guys in business suits were sitting in the seats right in front of me. One of them was wearing enormous headphones. A flight attendant came by and asked the guy to remove the headphones during takeoff. The guy took off his headphones, waited until the flight attendant had passed, then put them back on again. When the flight attendant came by again, she asked him again to remove them. He claimed that his audio player was turned off. She said he’d still have to remove the headphones. He said sharply, “What’s the reason for that?” The flight attendant said, “I’m sorry, it’s just policy.” The guy grumbled, “That doesn’t make any sense at all.” The flight attendant explained, “I think it’s because headphones like that block sound, and if there was an emergency during takeoff, they want you to be able to hear instructions.” I thought that actually sounded like a pretty good reason, and I expected the guy to concede. Instead, the guy next to him got in the action with a loud and angry, “Oh, so I suppose that means deaf people aren’t allowed to ride this airline?” Huh? The flight attendant was visibly shocked and said, “Oh, sir. Please.” That same guy said, “I’ve never heard that rule before on any other airline that I’ve flown on. Never.” The two guys harangued the flight attendant for another minute or so before finally relenting and settling down to commiserate over how badly they’d been treated. Seriously, some people.

Around L.A., you see an incredible number of car wrecks, but driving to Pasadena last week I passed the worst one I’ve seen yet. I literally came up a hill and said to myself, “Wow, if I didn’t know better I’d say that was an entire car engine just lying by itself in the middle of the road.” Well, that’s exactly what it was. A short time later I passed the car, or what was left of it, its front looking like the roots of a tree that’s just been yanked out of the ground.

In the bookstore recently I spotted what may be the best cover I’ve ever seen, the cover to young Israeli author Etgar Keret’s short story collection The Nimrod Flip-Out. The cover caught my eye, I read the first story, loved it, and bought the collection. I’ve been carrying it around with me, and I’ve noticed that everyone who sees the cover takes an immediate interest in the book. I hope someday I get a cover like that. The book does not actually feature a guy in a bunny suit going on a rampage with a shotgun (unfortunately), but that cover still does a pretty good job of capturing the screwball tone of the stories. The stories are very short, each about three or four pages, which is great because it makes me feel very productive. (“Wow, I read three short stories in just the last ten minutes!”)

Today’s been quite a day for me and podcasting news. Two exciting developments to report:

My story “Save Me Plz” will be appearing on Escape Pod.

And …

Steve Gould will be interviewing me for Podible Paradise, a podcast associated with the Viable Paradise writers workshop.

The Slushmaster just posted the Table of Contents for the June 2007 issue of Realms of Fantasy magazine. It looks like my story “Save Me Plz” won’t be appearing quite yet.

           My friend Andrea Kail now has her own website:

 
I previously announced that I was invited to take part in a panel discussion on the literary influence of Ray Bradbury. The panel will be on April 21st at 4:30 p.m. at the Newhall Community Center in Santa Clarita. (22421 Market Street, Newhall, CA 91321.)

Well, I just found out who my co-panelists will be. Steven Gould (whose novel Jumper is currently being made into a major motion picture starring Hayden Christenson, Samuel L. Jackson, and Diane Lane), Harry Turtledove, Larry Niven, David Gerrold, and Sheila Finch. Wowsers. I hope to see some of you there.

I’m afraid I found the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie to be a bit of a bummer, dude. I was a huge TMNT fan back in the day, so maybe I had unrealistic expectations, but I was expecting something comparable in quality to The Incredibles, which TMNT definitely isn’t. It does have some awesome visuals, such as the rooftop duel in the rain, but the story and writing are standard Saturday-morning-cartoon stuff. I was also expecting the movie to be aimed primarily at 20- and 30-somethings who have fond childhood memories of the turtles, but this is strictly a kids movie.

The June 2007 issue of Realms of Fantasy magazine, which will hopefully include my story “Save Me Plz,” should be out sometime in the next few weeks. If anyone spots a copy, please let me know. Alan Smale’s story “A Trade in Serpents” should also be appearing in that issue, and you can check out Tony Shasteen’s illustration for it here.

Well, I don’t care what anyone else says, 300 gets 300 dead Spartan thumbs up from me. I saw it twice. If I’m going to pay $14 to see a film projected on a giant wall, I expect some serious spectacle, and this movie definitely delivered. I’m also partial to historical dramas, particularly wildly over-the-top and inaccurate ones. In fact, I kind of dislike plausibility in any form. I prefer stories that create their own twisted reality, the less literal similarity to this one the better. I also can’t help feeling that people who are criticizing the movie for its dumbness or politics are not in on the joke. Of course, I may just have a special affinity for this material seeing as I too was raised from an early age to be a wolf-slaying, rhinocerous-gouging badass with an incredible chest.

I made it back to L.A. this morning, took a nap, and now I’m off to my humor writing class. Later.

Last summer my friend Derek was supposed to open for Blues Traveler, but the show didn’t come off due to monsoon rains that blasted the east coast (boo!). Well, I just heard that he’s at it again, this time scheduled to open for Sugar Ray (yay!). Please everyone exercise whatever sway you have with the rain gods to ensure a fruitful concert.

I’m back in New York now. (Spring break.) I’ll be going to Lunacon this coming weekend, but I’m pretty much free during the week, so if anyone else is free and wants to hang out, drop me a line.

On my flight from L.A. to Chicago, aside from a brief interlude in which I watched the in-flight movie Night at the Museum (which was actually better than I was expecting), I spent the whole time talking to the young woman (Polly) sitting next to me. She had one of the those little dogs you carry around in a purse. The dog never moved or made a peep. Polly said that on the flight out she’d had the purse unzipped. A flight attendant had come by and told Polly to zip up the purse, so Polly zipped it up half way, thinking this would be sufficient. It wasn’t. The flight attendant appeared again and said that Polly was now facing federal felony charges for disobeying the staff in flight. When the plane landed, Polly was taken into police custody. She spent a long time explaining — contrary to what the police had been told — that no, the dog had not run amock in the cabin, and that no, she had not refused to obey the repeated orders of every member of flight crew. She was eventually released. Ah, the joys of modern air travel.

And if you think it’s bad for U.S. citizens, just try dealing with it if you’re from another country. My British friend Adam says that every time he enters the U.S. he has to face a string of interrogators who each grill him about whether he’s ever been to Missouri. He tells them, “No, I haven’t. I’ve never even heard of it.” I recently picked him up at the airport, and he related how the interrogator had asked him, “If you’re in the U.S. to go to school, then why did you leave for one week to go to Europe?,” as if to say, “Gotcha!” Adam explained, “I went to visit my girlfriend for Valentine’s Day.” “Hmmm,” said the interrogator, as if to say, “Very suspicious,” and stamped Adam’s papers with a “Probably a terrorist/Full cavity search” sort of stamp. Adam says that getting into the U.S. these days is such a nightmare that more and more people from abroad who are invited to come speak here simply refuse.

This afternoon one of my friends emailed me and said, “Did you notice that Tim Pratt and Larry Niven are appearing at USC today?” I thought this must be some sort of joke, since it seemed too improbably awesome, especially considering that I hadn’t heard anything about it, but it turned out to be completely true. I had already missed their event, but I made it over to campus in time to hang out with them. I’d never met Larry Niven before, and it was a big thrill for me to be able to do so. He’s my dad’s favorite science fiction writer, so I read a ton of Niven growing up, and especially his short stories such as “Inconstant Moon,” “Neutron Star,” and “Death by Ecstasy” were huge inspirations to me. Tim will also be dropping by USC’s Ground Zero coffee house tomorrow at 1:00 p.m. to give a reading, so if you’re in the neighborhood you should definitely stop by. If you’re not in the neighborhood, you can still check out his new collection Hart & Boot & Other Stories, which is one of the best collections I’ve read recently (and I’ve read a lot of collections recently).

Then this evening I went to a production of Maxim Gorky’s “The Barbarians,” which was thrilling, though I found the ending pretty unsatisfying.

This is fun. I’ve been invited to take part in a panel discussion on April 21st in Santa Clarita on the state of science fiction writing today and the impact of Ray Bradbury’s work on my writing and on the genre as a whole. The event is part of the Big Read initiative.

Most unintentionally funny line uttered during my fiction workshop last night: “I didn’t used to realize how badly my grammar was until some friends pointed it out and helped me fix it.”

WARNING: Self-aggrandizement ahead.

Last night in class, my humor prof, comedian Shelley Berman, who plays characters on the TV shows Curb Your Enthusiasm and Boston Legal, said my sketch about two obnoxious guys who visit the zoo was the funniest piece of student writing he’s seen in 25 years of teaching.

That was cool.