The Madness of Tim Curry (and other theatricals)

Posted on May 8, 2012 by Andrew

The madness of Tim Curry (see title) is a special kind of insanity.  It’s the true actor’s gift — the ability to be fully invested in whatever scene and character you are performing at the time.  For example, watch this:

Um… yes.  Thank you, Tim Curry.

I watch this video (which, by the way, was the inspiration for Harry Potter) and I think of writing theater and writing scripts (as I do) that verge on (or wholly embrace) the absurd.  In these scripts, though the story and the world of the play may be absurd, the characters themselves are not meant to be.  The actors must take the roles and perform them with utter sincerity for the play (and the humor of the play) to work.

I make it sound like this way of writing plays was the plan from the beginning.  If it were, it might make the writing of them (and producing of them) much easier.  What happened is that I fell in love with writers like Durang and Ionesco and Stoppard and their sensibilities bled into my own, absurdity through osmosis, absurdity that — even though inane and clearly unreal — will be effective and affecting because, even in this absurd world, the emotions are real.

True, that might be hard to claim about the clip above.  What are the emotions of a wizard/warlock overseeing the Halloween flight of a school of witches?  Apparently, madness, which is not so much an emotion as an oh-god-keep-that-crazy-man-away-from-me.

In my writing (the process itself, not the finished product), language begets language.  In plays, dialogue begets dialogue, and the characters are both led by and lead the dialogue (and therefore the play) forward.  But the only way this can work is through actors who are convinced that, whenever they speak, what they’re saying is true.

Even if it’s a lie.

Which it often is.

Or is it?

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Why I love Jim Henson

Posted on May 5, 2012 by Andrew

It’s not because he has a beard.

It’s not because he’s goofy.

It’s because, despite the mythology surrounding Sesame Street that paints him as an uber-nice guy (which he might well be), he’s complicated and crass and commercial.  I submit to you the following:

Yes, that was the original pitch for The Muppet Show and it shows all the wit and craziness, all the astute observation of society and plainspoken challenge of that society, all the refusal to sell out while gleefully and joyously selling out, all of that which makes Henson and his creations great.  They aren’t simply one thing or the other — children’s entertainment or adult satire — and Henson doesn’t fit into either the idealistic artist or the canny capitalist category, either.

That video is an example of what I want to be when I grow up: i.e., I want to be paid for what I’m creating, and paid well enough for it that I can do that only, as my full-time job.  There’s something so charming about the video, how it nakedly lays out the reasons for why the network should take on the show, and those reasons are aimed squarely at the ego and the pocketbook, but the way that the pitch does it, that’s the key.

Hilarity, hilarity, hilarity.  With a touch of bitterness.

Posted in Television and Movies, Writing | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Look What My Girlfriend Did!

Posted on May 1, 2012 by Andrew

Which is not to say, by way of exclamation point, that such things as will be shown below are rare.  The truth is that Megan is pretty amazing and creative and stylin’.

Also, I am not biased at all.

As my loyal readers know, I was in Wyoming recently for a month, exiled there to work on poems and stories and a novel.  Why was I so punished?  It is better not to ask, lest you be subject to the same dictatorial powers yourself.  Suffice it to say that I wrote enough that my Literary Masters saw fit to free me at the end of the month and I am now safely ensconced again in Houston, free to experiment with my own devices.

But while I was there in Wyoming (O Beautiful Countryside!) I sometimes fell prey to doubt and self-dissension (O Wind-Torn Landscape!).  In order to talk to Megan (see subject of this post), or anyone at all besides my fellow prisoners or our illustrious captors, I was forced to trudge up a hill to the only phone box in the area, quarters weighing down my pockets (since it was twenty-five cents a minute to call persons you wished to speak to; free otherwise), which made for great exercise, but little else.

And don’t get me wrong, I actually treasured this loneliness.  It was amazing to be in the midst of so much land and space and be able to see so far in any direction and yet see no other living soul.  Or dead one, for that matter.  Wyoming is known for its ghosts.

But some days, depression sat on me like an elephant.  I looked at my writing, and  saw no good in it.  I looked at my books, and saw no life in them.  One of these times I sent Megan an e-mail (quicker — or at least less tiring — than a slog up the hill) asking for her to send me some good vibes, because I needed them, and I believe in airborne transference (and diseases).  Also, knowing she had just seen Vincent Price (O Dramatic O’er-Master) in Dr. Phibes I said that I needed no vibes from that man-monster.

This is what she sent in return.

Oh, but I do.  I do! (i.e. It is never wise to refuse Dr. Phibes.)

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Live-Blogging Le Grande Experiment!

Posted on April 9, 2012 by Andrew

I don’t speak French, so I don’t know what the equivalent of experiment is (Exupéry?) and you’ll simply have to imagine me saying the above title in a bad French accent, as though you are watching a B-movie which, at any time, could spin out of control, which it can, and perhaps should.

What is the experiment, you ask?  Well, I’m glad you did.  No, really, because otherwise I’d be sitting here for the next twenty-four hours waiting for that very question.

The experiment is this: Stay up for 24 hours in my studio at Jentel and… well, that’s about it.  Not much more to it, other than staying up and in the studio and seeing what happens.  In fact, this experiment isn’t even very scientific: there’s no control, there are no predictions, hell, there isn’t even a placebo, not a single goddam one!

I’ve always been infatuated with the idea of structured production in a limited amount of time (such as those plays written, directed, and performed all within a day) and sometime in the distant past (Hey there, seventeen-year-old me!) I wrote a play in a weekend and some playwriting programs (Brown?  I’m looking at you.) have every student write a play over the summer including the same set number of items/characters/dialogue (okay, not time-constrained, really, but still an inspiration) and here I am, in the middle of nowhere (is the edge of nowhere farther away from anywhere?) with no restrictions on my time and, darn it (I thought)

I WILL DO THIS.

So, there.  It’s begun, and it’s 8:44 so only 1426 minutes to go!

Check back in as the day goes on, as I’ll update progress, or lack there of.  The only major work I have to accomplish is a commission from Megan titled “The Trouble-Men”.  If you have any other ideas for what I should be doing, let me know comment-wise.

Bahn vonage!

10:56 am

Finished one postcard (Hi, Laura E.!) and about seventy or so pages in the James Merrill omnibus that someone gave me during my MFA and that I have yet to finish, but might (will?) today.  So far, the day has grown normally, but that’s too be expected (I suspect), the goal to keep the normality up for twenty-four hours rather than the normal four or five.

I’ve been hearing planes a lot in Wyoming (they only cross overhead four times a day), but yesterday when Yaminay went to release her beast (a Frankenstein tumbleweed spraypainted orange) into the wild, a jeep passed by that sounded exactly like a puddle-jumping prop plane.

12:30 pm

Finished a commission that Megan is responsible for.  She sent me a photocopy of a picture she found in the Museum of Fine Art’s library and told me to do something with it.  Apparently, that something is a horror story called “The Trouble-Men.”

I’m almost done with my second cup of coffee, almost about to eat an apple, almost ready to finish a postcard (Hi, Laura C.!), almost eager to jump out to the mailbox, almost desperate to go to the bathroom, and almost ready to start something new.

By the way, one of the people responsible for this mess I’ve gotten myself into (and you are witness to) is Sean Wills, a writer who has done several of these marathon events (complete with live-blogging) in the past.

4:43 pm

A talk with the girlfriend (Hi, Megan!) and a nap, along with much reading of James Merrill whose collected poems I am almost finished with.

Box Elder Bugs are having a threesome on my window.

Found a Merrill-translated fragment from Apollinaire that sends curious thoughts through my brain:

And I hear my steps return
Along the paths that no one
Has traveled I hear my steps
All day they go by there
Slow or swift they come or go

6:14 pm

I finished a poem entitled (which is so much better than simply “titled”) “Ode to the Male Honeybee.”  So you can play along at home, here is the Hugh Raffles (via Insectopedia) quote the poem sprung from:

…and the few hundred fat male drones with big eyes whose sole purpose – so far as we know – is to have sex with the queen on her single mating flight and who, ultimately, as winter approaches and food resources dwindle, will be dragged from the hive by the workers, expelled to starve or, if resistant, stung to their death.

Also, here is a picture of some music I am not listening to.

I especially like Mr. Creepy from 98 Degrees checking her out on the sly.

9:35 pm

Okay, here’s where it gets hard.

Is anyone out there?

No, that’s not the hard part.  The hard part is looking out this window in front of me and seeing nothing.  No wide-open landscape.  No sun glorifying the ground.  No thing.  Nada.  In fact, what I can see is myself, and darkness.  And you can’t really see darkness, so I guess it’s just me.  And sometimes a moth.

I finished Merrill’s Collected Poems and continued liking poems he made until the very end.  His punnish and honest “Rhapsody on Czech Themes” really took my fancy and locked it away in a hope chest I won’t be seeing for a long time.  He took it with him.  So much of Merrill’s poetry seems wrapped up in a sort of senseless description, the worst poems (to my taste) abstractions writ large.  But his best are delvings into his mind as he confronts and interprets the world around him.  And they are glorious.

11:35 pm

Hitting a wall of some sort.  Here in Whyoming, this is normally when my brain decides to shut down.  Took a break for crosswords, but I don’t think that was the right thing to do, six letters down two words.  Working on a play that was imagined two years ago but nothing since.  The imagining?  The title:

“Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo”

That does not look like a real word.

2:57 am

Quits, I am calling it.  I spent the last hour or so asleep in the studio-provided recliner (there for probably just that reason) but though I am awake at the moment, my usefulness has declined.  I am aware enough to write this, but little else.

Brave little toaster, toast your bread.

Oh go, just go to bed.

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Everyone Has a Summer They Want to Remember

Posted on March 25, 2012 by Andrew

Animal-less tail

Though, for this animal, it is probably not this summer, unless it wants simply to remember (i.e. be alive) (which it probably is not).

Wyoming is so empty, but it is not the emptiness of the desert or of the ocean. It’s not the emptiness of West Texas that stretches on for miles, barren and baking land.

Here there is the appearance of life. Grass and brush cover the hills and copses of trees stand their (mostly leafless) guard. There’s water running in a creek nearby, and frogs that are calling out their name, rank, and serial numbers after months of hibernation. Right around the Jentel homestead there’s a pimpernel of robins (they don’t yet have a group name, and so I claim the right of naming for myself. Hereversoafter a group of robins will be called a pimpernel. At least by me.) and some sandhill cranes are roosting somewhere in the area. They, too, you can hear murmuring in the distance.

But for the most part, you can walk for half-an-hour or more and see no other animals. On the dirt county road you won’t be passed by a truck (invariably a truck) and you won’t see deer (mule or white-tailed) or antelope or geese or magpies or marmots. You’ll find yourself talking to the just-now-rebudding trees or dead whatever-the-hell-this-is.

My only friend

Banner, Wyoming (and Wyoming, perhaps, in general) is a place where you can see for miles around you. The air is so clear that I can pick out (large, admittedly) details on the top of a mountain thirty miles away. But when I’m on a walk, I can see the entire landscape around me, and it seems like I’m the only living thing in it.

Besides the vegetation.

Sorry for being a kingdomist.

Posted in Living, Writing | Tagged , | 4 Comments

Stalling on Rondo Hatton, The Ugliest Man in Pictures

Posted on March 19, 2012 by Andrew

which is the name of the poem up next on the docket.  It’s sat around long enough in my to-be-written file, so long that I’ve forgotten where the inspiration came from.  You might think that inspiration would be THE MAN Rondo Hatton himself, but actually it’s the phrase I ripped for the title (well, that and the man, Rondo Hatton himself).

I’ve been finding it easier to write at night when the world beyond the window is one, big inky pool of darkness (and cold).  During the day I have to contend with this.

Perhaps I shouldn’t try writing from the top of a hill.

Once I dropped my pen, it was all over. Falcons, thinking it was easy prey, swooped down to pluck the Pentel R.S.V.P. from the air and proceeded to write themselves all over the sky. It was beautiful, and hard to argue with, but the sun tried.

And then it tucked its head under its arm and went to sleep, taking the world with it. And here I am stuck with blank piece of paper and a title trying to create the world anew. Rondo Hatton, where are you when we need you?

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My Mom Already Has More Views Than I Do

Posted on February 24, 2012 by Andrew

is the subject of this post.  And here is the video for which she has more views.

She’s the one that’s a she, said she centered (for the most part) in the screen.

I’m not jealous. After all, I don’t have any videos of me on YouTube dancing or otherwise, so I can’t rightly complain. And I’m not complaining. I’m just showing you how awesome my mom and my stepfather are, and treating you to a fragment of some awesome music from Fred’s down in Mamou, a place even you can get to (if you drive for a while).

I can’t remember the last time I went dancing, which is a shame.  It’s a shame because I really like dancing, and because I don’t think that says good things about my memory.  The last time I remember dancing all night was at my friends’ Jason and Alex’s wedding, where partying in partytown with partypeople lasted well into the night with music handpicked by Jason to make it the rockingest outingest wedding reception dance party with masks ever.  Or, to put it more forcefully, EVAR.

If my mind wasn’t all the time obsessed with writing (either in the process of or thinking I should be doing) would I get more dancing done?  In some ideal world, the writing gets done and the dancing get done, both unbegrudging the other time spent.  In this world, so far, the writing gets done grudgingly and the dancing slips in like the ghost of a dream when Megan and I meet passing through rooms and jitterbug down.  The writing files itself away, but it’s the dreams I savor.

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More Three Sentence Reviews! (For Your Edumification!)

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Andrew

I’ve had this stack of books here on my desk for days.  Weeks.  Months.  Years, even.

Yes, I have read them all. ALL THE BOOKS!

Okay, not these books exactly.  Even less so, since I cut some off of the list last week.  But the premise remains the same: I have books that desire to be talked about (or so they told me) and I must talk about them.  If I don’t, they whisper to me as I sleep.  They suggest… things.  Unspeakable things.  Like Soap Opera Soap.  WHY GOD WHY?

Heresy by S. J. Parris

An Elizabethan thriller featuring the esteemed occultist/alchemist Giordano Bruno  paired up with famed poet Sir Philip Sydney, Parris’ book is so much more than I expected or asked for (though, with a set-up like that, I didn’t have a whole lot left to ask for).  The book is a good example of how historical fiction is akin to science fiction and fantasy, the trick being to create a world that’s distinctly different from our own, and make us feel that world is touchably real.  The novel is not a story of good and evil, but of necessity, and the sorrows that ideologies (intolerant by nature) bring — cradled like precious gifts — into the world.

Feed by M. T. Anderson

As you know from my avowed love of Octavian Nothing (see pertinent Shortcuts), I have a deep respect and awe and love for M. T. Anderson, though it must be admitted that the only thing I’d read to create that impression was Nothing, so when I bought and cracked open Feed I was hit unawares when the opening (the voice and the characters) turned me away.  But, persistent, I was seduced again by Anderson into the life of two kids during the Pre-Apocalypse (and why aren’t there more pre-Apocalypse novels?  Probably because there aren’t that many M. T. Andersons).  Also, it’s I Am the Cheese depressing.

Robert A. Heinlein by William H. Patterson, Jr.

Heinlein fell into being a Grand Master of Science Fiction because the Navy threw him out (for health reasons); he wrote at a pace to outstrip most modern dot-matrix printers; he was deeply political; and apparently I like RAH much more than I thought I would.  Did you know that in the early part of the 20th century there was an End Poverty in California (EPIC) political movement that believed in providing people jobs by allowing workers to take over the factories to produce for their own needs, grew to national prominence and power for a few years, and was swiftly co-opted by the Communist Party and undermined by the Republicans?  Neither did I.

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Three Sentence Reviews for Your Edification

Posted on January 25, 2012 by Andrew

I’ve had this stack of books here on my desk for days.  Weeks.  Months.  Years, even.

These books have all been read, fool!

Okay, maybe not these books, exactly, but books nonetheless.  See, it’s hard for me to read books purely for pleasure.  I mean, I read purely for pleasure, but when I’m done with the book I feel like something needs to have come from it, grown flower-like from the compost of my mind.  That’s where the whole idea behind the Shortcuts came from (and we see how that turned out), an attempt to prove myself useful, probably fueled by years of academic-induced guilt for never really having done all my reading in classes.  Do you forgive me now, Mrs. Trimble?  Mrs. Fripp?

However, as you may have noticed, the Shortcuts have dwindled from a trickle to dried-up stream bed.  But the books have remained, piling up and staring at me with their beady little eyes.  Megan suggested that I trot out haiku-like responses to each.  And while such a terse judgment may not convince you of the book’s worth, or what I love about each, it’ll at least get the books off my desk and onto the shelves where they belong because, as books do when uncased, they have begun to make demands.  They have begun to order pizza.  They have begun to watch American Idol.  They have begun to shed letters and sentences and paragraphs and soon they will be the shadow of themselves, but all the more beautiful (or so they think).

The Apothecary by Maile Meloy

Meloy creates a historical fantasy that lives and breathes, taking your breath away in order to do so.  Janie, a young girl recently relocated to London because her script-writing parents are running from the House Un-American Activities Committee, finds herself embroiled in espionage as alchemists around the world try to counter nuclear weapons.  The writing is beautiful, though I prefer the book before the actions ramps up, when the focus is on character and the haunting mystery has yet to be given shape (at which time it becomes, by necessity, much less mysterious).

The Great Mortality by John Kelly

Here is your one-stop shop for all you ever needed to know about The Great Mortality, i.e. The Black Death, i.e. when Eurasia was depopulated by millions, by 33%-60%, when the world was thrown back into darkness and isolation.  The amount of detail and research trotted out by Kelly is stunning, but he manages to keep the creeping of the plague across Europe a narrative, a story, rather than burying the reader under barren facts.  It’s true that the descriptions of how cities succumbed begin to run together, yet if you are fascinated by human behavior in the face of extremes, as I am, then this is a must read.

The Ticking is the Bomb by Nick Flynn

I love Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, but I was afraid of this book because I thought it’d be more polemic than exploration, more politics than art, more diatribe than dialogue.  But Flynn is nothing if not dialogic: with himself, with the world, with us, with genre.  The beauty that threaded through Suck City is here, woven through all the confusion and pain and responsibility; in fact, the beauty is the confusion and pain and responsibility (and love.  Did I mention love?  No?  Okay, then: Love).

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On Things I Do Not Believe

Posted on January 10, 2012 by Andrew

At the top of the list would be this video:

Actually, all of the Wendy’s training videos.   These are the products of a demented executive.  I ask you, what is going on here?  Are they serious?  Who are they?  And why do they think I want to work at Wendy’s?

(Full disclosure: I’ve worked at Pizza Hut and at a KFC/Taco Bell, so I am not completely without sin.)

Megan pointed out that what these videos imply is that the makers know that working at Wendy’s is mind-numbingly boring and so they are going to try and simply entertain you instead.  Which, I must admit, they succeed at doing, though perhaps not in the way they mean.

It is hard to believe that anyone took these things seriously.  Even if the goal was to entertain the employees, it’s unlikely that they learned from raps or songs any better than they did from experience.

Which is all to say that these videos are the silliest serious things I’ve seen in a long time.  It was the 1980s, sure, but the videos reek of someone trying to be hip when, for the most part, an employee would prefer to skip the videos altogether and just work.  At least I know I wanted to.  I watched training videos when I started working at Pizza Hut that explained how to deliver pizzas.  I was nineteen, and, so, young, and, so, might not have been able to figure it all out on my own.

All I can say is thank God for training videos!  Otherwise, how would you learn how to pour ice tea?

At least, you wouldn’t learn it so musically.

Posted in Television and Movies | Tagged | 3 Comments