Tuesday, December 18, 2007
The Writer's Life Colloquium Fall 07
As part of my official “course of study” people hear me babbling about lectures and readings all the time. The blurbs below are just notes, for the sake of memory, from what I went to, maybe more interesting in a voyeuristic way than in gleaning any helpful information (sans links you might just have to know who these people are).
These are the lectures I attended in Fall 07:
September 18. Catherine Stine. Q&A galvanized me for
doing graphic novels. Even made a contact with a publisher!
September 25. David Thompson. Exploration of the
nazi-propaganda film-making went well with my War and Politics lit
class. Other amazing films shown and discussed.
October 2. Carrie Brownstein. Big fan of Sleater-Kinney and
excited by Rock N Roll Camp for Girls. Excellent example of nonfiction
writing in a community environment.
October 4. The Apocalypse Reader. Totally obsessed with
the Apocalypse (and our human/cultural obsession with it). Impressed
and inspired to learn the anthology was created by a new graduate of our program.
November 5. Sasha-Frere Jones. Interested in his writing about pop culture.
November 7. Nina Khrushcheva. Loved the creative, surreal (nonfiction!) way
she wrote about Nabokov. (Proper pronunciation is indeed na-BO-kov.)
November 14. Carolyn Forche. just plain amazing. She was a
really nice speaker. Greater appreciation of poetry due to my War and
Politics class (the russian and polish poets), and how poetry has more
in common with creative nonfiction than I’d realized.
December 10. Yona Zeldis McDonough. Confidence built for one
of my other pet-project ideas, and I found value in
everything she had to say EXCEPT that nonfiction is a red-headed step
child. Out of nowhere, she said that she thought fiction was a “higher
calling” than nonfiction (which is weird, she seems to write a LOT of
nonfiction for kids) which distracted me from her lecture. Deborah
Brodie did a respectable job of smoothing this over in a nice way. I believe transcendence is possible in nonfiction just as in fiction. Maybe Ms McDonough was thinking about cookbooks. Can’t we all just get along? Oh well, I don’t hold it against her. It was rather funny.
I went to all the student readings, and read a piece in one of them.
They are one of my favorite things. Also volunteered in order to attend the LWC
which was great. Yay Colloquium!
[nope, don’t sound like an intellectual yet. but hey, those were just notes. i’m allowed to write “yay” to myself]
Two Classes Left
Hi.
My brain’s rather mush.
If you asked me any sort of question lately I’d probably answer with something like “grapefruit,” as that’s about all I can muster.
Tonight is my second-to-last class before the end of the semester, and a month long winter break. Last night, after a long day, there was apple pie and tv, and it was wonderful, but today I woke up in a panic and needed to be soothed again. I think I might be more upset that school is 25% over, than about getting a last big piece of writing done. But that’s not the way I should look at it, the people I’m in school with now will be readers for life, and that’s a big reason why we do this program in the first place.
I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned how good it is to be with people like me. All my friends were awesome programmers and visual artists, with precious few exceptions. It’s new and exciting to feel myself brought so warmly into the fold of my compatriots. Sometimes I still feel like a person who speaks their native tongue with a foreign accent, but I think that will go away.
I’m excited for the break, as a time to work on half-started projects, get a jump on next semester’s reading and writing some entirely new pieces. Next semester will be different because the second year students are working full time on their theses (thee-seez, that word just looks wrong) and we won’t have them in workshops or literature classes with us. We first years will have to take on the role of well-read smartypantses. pantseseez. pansies.
Good thing I’ll have a month to prepare.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Cherry on Top
I’m not sure exactly why, but all of my favorite sweaters have holes in the elbows. Suede patches on those professor-type blazers suddenly made a lot of sense. I’ve just started to try out ideas. If you’ve got suggestions or tips, let me know, kthx.
So far I like the cherries:
My ideas came from the “available materials” themselves (as they say). It’s more relaxing for me to decide “what can i do with this stuff right here” than to have an idea and search for the elements to create it (like how i normally make Halloween costumes). Both are fun, I just don’t have time to breath, let alone hunt.
More to come!
p.s. my camera has been rather cranky, which is why there ain’t mo’ betta pics.
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
w00t!!1
Woot is Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year for 2007.
Now if I could only take the word “awesome” from my vocabulary. It’s embarrassing.
I like Wikipedia‘s entry on the word.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Virtually Free
I grew up with the TV on. I remember hiding in the couch cushions when I was afraid of the Incredible Hulk and spinning around like Wonder Woman.
Maybe less like other little kids, my impersonation of Steve Austin as the 6 Million Dollar Man included the raising of a single eyebrow, playing along whenever he ran in slow motion and the sound effects went buh-nuh na na na na.... That eyebrow was his determined look.
Vivian Leigh did a dramatic eyebrow when showing Scarlett O’Hara’s defiance or fear. Single-eyebrow action from Joey Tribbiani, playing Dr. Drake Ramore on the soap opera Days of Our Lives, is that character’s “I smell something bad” method acting.
If a commercial came on television while I was spinning around or building forts with couch cushions, my mother would walk by and sniff. (The word “scoff” always made sense to me, because it was so close to the way she’d sniff).
She wasn’t a mom who would sit and watch TV. This woman was no-nonsense. You could tell by her panty hose.
“Yeah right,” she’d say. “Virtually streak-free. Remember they always have to use words like virtually or nearly or practically because it’s not one hundred percent true. The message is always ‘important’ but it’s just garbage.”
It must have been annoying that I’d walk around singing jingles I didn’t understand: “Mazola’s got no! Cholesterol at all!”
Sometimes though, she’d put on General Hospital while she folded laundry or did paperwork, glancing up occasionally. We’d both pay more attention towards the end of the show, and it didn’t take me long to figure out that it would always end with a cliffhanger that would never, ever resolve anything between Luke and Laura.
By nature children like repetition and formulas. Good guy fights bad guy, love becomes marriage, happily ever after, amen the end. Soap operas on the other hand, dragging out plot, and rationing action like food pellets, just infuriated me.
“That’s how they get ya,” she explained. “They’re called ‘soaps’ because they were invented by companies that sell soap just so they could make people watch their commercials. They only want to show you enough to keep you watching the show and the commercials.”
All good parents should speak to their six-year-olds this way when explaining the ways of things. Spades should be labeled as such.
Talk shows and game shows, judge shows (negligible differences) were invented because they’re cheaper than paying writers and actors of soaps, even when they give away cars and prizes. A ridiculously outfitted house on the Real World or flying people to China is still less expensive than paying quality writers, actors, and production crews, even better from the standpoint of the advertiser and networks. A reality show makes itself with a cheap, reliable formula of baking soda and peroxide.
Many shows I like are practically (there’s that word!) night-time soaps. Lost, Heroes, I forget what I’ve been watching. But I love 30 Rock (worship Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin) because they’re good. They’re funny because they’re well-written. Many of the best shows are/were on the movie channels: The Wire, Californication, Sopranos and the like. Funded solely by subscriptions it’s a different formula with a better outcome (not one I would argue for say, the internet in general. information should be free). Shows on movie channels aren’t created for the same purposes as “soap” television, and the difference shows.
It’s about the content, stupid.
I’m going to try to forget that Ugly Betty/Wicked tie-in. That was atrocity in an otherwise lovable show. It begged questions about who owned and was paying for what. Were they trying to sell tickets or call attention to shame the broadway stagehand strike?
Remember when cable was commercial-free? (when is 32 old? how soon is now?)
Once upon a time, bunnies, cable TV had no commercials. The whole point of paying for cable was that you didn’t have to watch commercials. Cable was still an experiment when it was installed for free in our building in 1982 or 1983 (High rise condos like ours meant tricky television reception. Originally cable went where “broadcast” networks literally couldn’t reach). HBO was actually launched in 1972 and only had a few hundred viewers it’s first night. Cable didn’t really take off until 1984 when deregulation allowed for the digging and planting of more cable. (ok now i’m just being a huge dork) Suddenly there was Music Television and Nickelodeon and “Home Box Office”. And for the TV watcher it was good, for a while.
Now I understand why my favorite shows as a kid were imports of Canadian sketch comedy and European cartoons (usage rights & cost factor largely i’m sure). This was the best television I’d ever seen. Lassie made me barf, but Belle and Sebastian made me cry. I loved Mr. Wizard (ask my mom who found me elbow deep in the toilet, kept dry by a thin film of baby powder. try it!) It’s a shame, but Nickelodeon went downhill when they started making game shows (did YCDTOT get paid for the slime idea?).
But it’s all about the money, honey*. If they can get advertisers and make people pay, and that’s the way it was and they liked it**. Meatwad make the money, see.*** Networks and media corporations are making more with new outlets like DVD and internet. As you might have seen, make commercials describing how pirate downloading hurts the creators and production crews, when in reality hardly any money from legally bought or downloaded media doesn’t go to them anyway.
a sidenote via boingboing on the nature of the beast: “in the first ten years of the US DMCA, 20,000 American music fans were sued and not one penny was paid to artists as a result, nor did file sharing decrease”.
*Axl Rose singing Welcome to the Jungle
**Mike Meyers as the grumpy old man on Saturday Night Live
***Theme song from Aqua Teen Hunger Force, I haven’t eaten yet today and I’m very hungry
***
A Comedy Writer on Strike
Over at the Writopia blog, Steve Young, a television writer for Late Night with David Letterman, and the father of star a Writopia Lab writer, shares his thoughts. This is good reading. (Thanks, Rebecca!)
Sunday, December 02, 2007
Thought Competition
Rebecca Wallace-Segall, the writing mentor of my early NYC days, has written a terrific piece “In Praise of ‘Thought Competition’” in the Wall Street Journal. The article is behind a pay wall, but for a few more days you can read it here.
If the link above doesn’t work for you (pay walls be damned) you can read the article on Rebecca’s blog here.
Rebecca’s ability to think large and deep still impresses me (she’s written for Salon and The Voice). Knowing that she’s working with kids at Writopia Lab, people gives me a warm, fuzzy, optimistic feeling because she offers a rare mix of intelligent and nurturing support. Not everyone founds a school and makes it a beautiful success.
Rebecca is sort of educator I hope kids would have, mainly because our school system undereducates and ill-prepares students for pretty much everything they’ll need to know in order to be confident (through self-knowledge) people with realized talents, people who “make” the world and don’t just consume it… without which we are are doomed on a large and small scale. Doomed, I say.
So, yeah, I’m proud to know this lady.
p.s. The story of the insomniac owl, mentioned in the article, was one piece I was lucky to hear at the student reading held at Barnes and Noble on November 19th — howlingly, snortingly funny, well-crafted and smart.
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